Hansen to Obama: profound disconnect between politics and science
January 2nd, 2009 by Jim JustProfessor James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s preeminent global warming scientist, has written a personal letter to Barack and Michelle Obama, warning of the “profound disconnect” between the politics of climate change and the magnitude of the problem:
There is a profound disconnect between actions that policy circles are considering and what the science demands for preservation of the planet. . .
Science and policy cannot be divorced. It is still feasible to avert climate disasters, but only if policies are consistent with what science indicates to be required.
Hansen makes three recommendations for action:
- Moratorium and phase-out of coal plants that do not capture and store CO2.
- Rising price on carbon emissions via a “carbon tax and 100% dividend”.
- Urgent R&D on 4th generation nuclear power with international cooperation.
Hansen says focusing on “cap and trade” schemes not only wastes valuable time. Cap and trade generates special interests, lobbyists, and trading schemes, yielding non productive millionaires, all at public expense. He advocates instead a carbon tax with 100% dividend, we he argues “would spur our economy, while aiding the disadvantaged, the climate, and our national security.”
Insisting on a 100% return of carbon tax proceeds is a continuation of the anti-government, free market fundamentalism that has gotten us into the economic and environmental pickle we find ourselves in.
Hansen doesn’t ignore the radioactive waste and proliferation problems with nuclear power, but thinks they can be handled. He fingers cost as the primary hurdle. But nuclear will never be the answer to our energy needs of which cost is indeed primary. Hansen, while acknowledging that “there’s no such thing as clean coal at this time,” also thinks CCS deserves strong R&D support. As the disaster in Tennessee demonstrates, there is and can never be any such thing as clean coal.
While Hansen may be one of the world’s top scientists, that doesn’t mean he’s one of the world’s top economists, philosophers, or historians.
While Hansen has done the world a great service in the realm of climate science, his ideas outside of the realm of science are warped by historicism. He is deeply enmeshed within the myth of progress, wedded to ever-increasing technological complexity which he believes will enable us to overcome the ecological limits that he was among the first to warn were approaching.