How to judge a climate-action plan

There is good news and bad news in the Republican climate-action framework that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy issued last week. The good news is that Republican leadership is finally ready to admit publicly that climate change is a real problem with real impacts that require real responses by the federal government.

That’s progress, although long delayed. It comes minutes before midnight on the climate doomsday clock.

The bad news is the GOP’s climate plan is not a plan, and it clearly is not a sincere effort to find common ground with Democrats. Instead, it’s an election-year attempt to:

1) inoculate Republicans against criticism that they are ignoring this unprecedented crisis

2) give the false impression we can avoid global warming even as we keep burning fossil fuels

In other words, it attempts to greenwash the political party that has obstructed federal climate action since 1992, when the United States promised to help end “dangerous human interference with the climate system.”

A more welcome contribution would contain constructive ideas on finding common ground in President Biden’s climate-action plan, the Build Back Better bill. The House has passed it, but it is dying in the Senate. It could become law with the support of a dozen of the Senate’s 50 Republicans.

However, it’s unclear how many Republicans support the document McCarthy issued. Last year, an analysis found more than half of Republicans in the House and 60 percent of those in the Senate qualified as “climate-change deniers,” according to the Center for American Progress.

The all-of-the-above fantasy

The major flaw in the GOP’s climate strategy is its insistence that we can stabilize the climate even while burning fossil fuels. That business-as-usual fantasy relies on a technical fix that would snatch carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust and bury it. That technology has been in the research pipeline for at least 24 years, kept alive with billions of dollars in taxpayer funding. But it remains too expensive for commercial use, and it does not eliminate the pollution the industry produces as it extracts, processes and transports fossil fuels, not to mention the hazards involved in storing their wastes.

In short, the fossil energy industry and its supporters claim we can have our cake and eat it, too. But the only full-proof way to eliminate climate-altering pollution is not to produce it in the first place and to power the economy with carbon-free energy.

However, rather than a line-by-line critique of the new Republican climate strategy, it may be more helpful to describe what an actual climate-action plan should contain.

First, it should be honest about the reality that we must make choices that involve disruption. We must use the “best of the above” energy resources that are renewable, ubiquitous, domestic and free of greenhouse gas pollution.

This shift must happen rapidly because we have waited so long. Congress was briefed about climate change in 1988, but it has failed to take meaningful action to stop it. Now, the consensus among climate scientists is that most of the world’s underground reserves of oil, gas and coal must remain unused.

Second, a truthful energy strategy does not claim consumers will suffer skyrocketing energy prices in a decarbonized economy. Solar and wind energy are less expensive than extracted fossil fuels for a very simple reason: These energy sources are free. Also, the price of fossil fuels is not only what consumers pay; it’s also the costs they impose on public health, the environment, the economy and everything affected by weather.

What would be expensive are unproven technical fixes and risky efforts to keep global warming in check by manipulating the planet’s natural cycles and systems.

Where the jobs are

Third, an honest climate-action plan does not claim the transition to carbon-free energy will kill millions of jobs. The correct statement is that the transition to clean energy will replace millions of fossil-fuel jobs with renewable-energy jobs. Labor Department data show parity between wages in fossil energy and renewable energy jobs, but clean energy jobs offer more security.

Last year, researchers concluded that if we held global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, renewable energy jobs would grow fivefold from 4.4 million to 22 million in 2050. Fossil-energy jobs would drop from 12.6 million to 3.1 million, with about 80 percent of the losses related to oil, gas and coal extraction.

Every serious climate-action plan includes transition help for displaced workers and the communities whose economies depend on fossil energy production.

Fourth, a credible plan will show that addressing climate change is considerably less costly than ignoring it. The White House Office of Management and Budget reports that unmitigated global warming would cause the federal government to lose $2 trillion annually by the end of the century, while the annual cost of federal disaster assistance could rise as much as $128 billion. Public health and business costs would increase, too.

Fifth, a realistic climate-action plan does not rely on unproven technical fixes. We already have the basic renewable energy technologies we need for decarbonization. Instead, research should focus on enabling technologies, such as long-term energy storage, improved batteries and electric system security.

Sixth, action plans should include specific goals, milestones and performance measures to track and report progress.

Seventh, plans should show how to reduce economic and environmental stresses on low- and middle-income as well as traditionally underserved families and communities.

Eighth, transition plans should be driven by a combination of market forces and government interventions. Both are necessary.

Ninth, legitimate transition plans do not politicize these issues. Deadly wildfires, mega-storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, freshwater shortages, forced migrations, declining property values and higher insurance rates will not favor one political party, religion, race, gender or creed over another.

Finally, realistic action plans start now. The longer we keep delaying, the worse climate change will be. We have debated global warming for an entire generation, like arguing about who will fight the fire or whether the fire is even real, as the house burns down.

Shouldn’t we finally work together to put out the fire?

William S. Becker is a former U.S. Department of Energy central regional director who administered energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies programs, and he also served as special assistant to the department’s assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy. Becker is also executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations for the White House as well as House and Senate committees on climate and energy policies. The project is not affiliated with the White House. Follow him on Twitter at: @sustainabill

This piece has been updated.