New 'sober' UN report challenges Republican Climate Hawks' free market dogma

A new report of the United Nations the warning of catastrophic global warming does not seem to have shaken the confidence of Republican climate Republicans, who thought that changes in the market alone could reduce unprecedented emissions and necessary to prevent a disaster.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (CNGED), a consortium of researchers from 40 countries, said Sunday that the cuts needed to prevent global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels require "rapid, profound and unprecedented change in all aspects of society. "

"The only strength I know on the planet and able to innovate as quickly as needed is the free enterprise system," he said. former representative Bob Inglis (R-S), who is now Executive Director of RepublicEn, a group urging Republicans to support a carbon tax.

The regulations, he said, would be "just clumsy".

"A revenue-neutral and market-neutral carbon tax is perfectly capable of achieving rapid decarbonization, as demanded by the new IPCC report," said Josiah Neeley, senior researcher at R Street Institute, a Think Tank on Conservative Climate Policy. "Everything is a question of fair price."

The report, based on more than 6,000 scientific references, revealed that global governments were only 12 years old to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 45%, while humanity's carbon footprint is rising rapidly and that fossil fuel emissions reach record levels. By 2050, emissions must reach net zero. Not to do it would be cataclysmic. The IPCC has set the price of damage caused by warming 1.5 degrees to $ 54 trillion, rising to $ 69 trillion at 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

There is a near-universal consensus that it is essential to set a price on carbon dioxide, probably through a tax, to reduce emissions, in the same way that the taxes on tobacco and alcohol are aimed at. to offset the societal costs of these products. Last year Meaning. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) And Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) And David Cicilline (D-R.I.) introduces carbon tax support laws at the congress. In July, representatives Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) And Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) proposed a lower carbon tax, deserving praise for breaking with Republican orthodoxy, challenging the basics of climate change science.

However, climate experts have warned that reducing carbon emissions is essential for reducing emissions, but it is unlikely to be enough to achieve the reductions needed to avert a catastrophe in the decades to come.

"It's totally unrealistic," said Jennifer Francis, a research professor at Rutgers University. "We will have to make a wide range of course corrections to reach the 1.5 threshold and prepare for larger impacts than we already know."

Andrew Dessler, A climatologist at Texas A & M University has expressed doubts about the possibility of stopping man-made temperature from an average global increase of 1 degree Celsius on the planet. Although he said that a "sufficiently high carbon tax" could "reduce emissions in an arbitrary way fast," the result would be a surge in energy prices. "rather than what we want, which is a switch to renewable energy. "

"It would be [lose] political support, "he said by e-mail." So, I think the practical answer is that you can not do it only with a carbon tax. "

Sunday night, at a press conference organized by the IPCC, if carbon pricing could completely transform the global economy over the next decade, two IPCC authors began to laugh. James Skea, co-chair of an IPCC working group, said that it was "one of that portfolio of instruments that could be used," but could not to serve as a panacea.

"There are areas in which carbon pricing may not be the most appropriate approach," he told Incheon, South Korea.

The report comes at a time when political momentum is building for more aggressive policy interventions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

A number of insurgent left-wing Democrats appearing at the mid-point in 2018, including New York City's featured congressional candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are uniting around a Green New Deal, a series of cowardly proposals to spend billions of dollars in federal dollars on renewable energy projects, coastal fortifications and the modernization of weather resistance at home. Poll released last month shows growing support for a federal policy to ensure that those who wish are well-paid jobs in a green industry. Last month, California became the largest state to pass a law requiring 100% clean electricity by 2045. Governor Jerry Brown (D) also signed a decree requiring that changes extend beyond utilities to the entire economy, including vehicles, the largest source of pollution carbon of the country.

Curbelo and Fitzpatrick did not respond to requests for comments on Monday. The oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp., which spent decades funding a climate change disinformation network before announcing support for a carbon tax, and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a consortium of companies that defends what he calls "practical solutions" to climate change.

But for some conservative climate hawks, the reality of the IPCC report is striking. Jerry Taylor, a former climate advocate who has become in recent years the model of Republican climate realism, said that he was sticking to a carbon tax as the best solution, but believes that it's not a good idea. it is unrealistic to keep warming to less than 1.5 degrees, regardless of the policy.

"A sufficiently high carbon price across the global economy could do that, but that is not likely to happen," said Taylor, president of the libertarian center Niskanen. "Therefore, the goal of 1.5 C is a suction, not functional."

For Alex Flint, executive director of the Alliance for Market Solutions, the IPCC report was a shock.

"This report is dark in its forecasts," he said on the phone Monday afternoon. "It's a sobering evaluation, regardless of the people's holiday."

At lunch at a conference last week, Flint highlighted his opposition to the Obama administration's use of executive power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Former head of the Trump transition team, he described himself as a "Sherpa" for the confirmation process of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Now, he says he's "trying to convince politicians to become familiar with science." When asked where critics of criticism from the previous federal government were, and to try to avoid the worst of what the IPCC had predicted, Flint is still you.

"Can you sigh in your story?" He said. "I do not know."