By TODD MYERS
GUEST COLUMNIST
Here's a little known secret. Environmental activists don't care about global warming.
Carbon in the atmosphere is increasing steadily and burning fossil fuels contributes to that trend. Altering that trend apparently is issue No. 1 for environmental activists. Their actions, however, don't always match that goal.
This is surprising, especially because Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels made leadership on climate change a central theme of his administration, including Seattle's plan to meet the Kyoto carbon emission targets in 2012. The mayor promised to spend $37 million in the next two years and millions more to achieve that goal -- about $21 to $42 for every ton of carbon emissions reduced.
The high cost, however, leads one to question if reducing carbon emissions is the mayor's primary goal. The city of Seattle could go to established organizations such as the Oregon Climate Trust, which charges only $10 per ton of CO2 reduced, or the Chicago Climate Exchange, where carbon credits cost $4 per ton.
Those organizations offer programs that reduce carbon emissions elsewhere to offset Seattle's emissions. Buying offsets would reduce carbon far more than funding expensive public works projects.
That's not the only example.
Environmental activists advocate "green building standards" for state buildings. Paying a little more up front on energy systems in new buildings, they say, will reduce energy use later. Many of these "green" buildings such as Seattle City Hall, however, end up using more energy than those they replaced. A "green" Tacoma middle school used 25 percent more energy in its first year than a comparable non-"green" school built at the same time in the same district.
The reaction of environmental activists to such data is illustrative. Instead of demanding improvements, they defend the failed standards. One proponent of such standards admitted that "the certification process doesn't audit actual performance of the building or how much energy it really uses."
Further, market-oriented solutions that successfully reduce carbon emissions often are shunned. That was made obvious recently in Europe. Energy producers who reduce carbon emissions may sell credits to others who exceed the emission cap. In Britain, energy firms earned 1 billion pounds ($1.88 billion) from such trading. Instead of celebrating this confluence of environmental responsibility and profit motive, the World Wildlife Fund called for a "windfall tax" on that profit.
Their discomfort with "profit" outweighed concern about global warming. Taxing the profit serves only to reduce the incentive of companies to reduce carbon emissions.
In Washington state, green power advocates actively oppose our largest source of carbon-free, renewable energy -- hydropower. Although they claim that no new sources of significant hydropower exist, they added additional barriers to potential development by classifying major hydro as non-renewable in Initiative 937.
That same initiative, however, counts other renewable energy sources an extra 20 percent toward required targets if the project is built using union apprentices. Such efforts seem to indicate that they are willing to sacrifice carbon reduction for an economic ideology.
Environmental activists frequently lament we are not taking global warming seriously. The gap between their words and actions undermines their credibility. Until they are willing to support effective market-oriented environmental solutions that preserve consumer choice, we have to wonder whether they really care about reducing carbon emissions, or are just using the issue to achieve other goals.
Todd Myers is director of Washington Policy Center's Center for Environmental Policy. Contact Washington Policy Center at 206-937-9691 or online at washingtonpolicy.org.
