My fellow Coloradans, together we’re responsible for putting 96 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually — or at least we were in 2005, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
Our population in 2005 was nearly 4.7 million.
That means the carbon footprint of the average Coloradan was 20.4 metric tons (roughly the national average, by the way).
Now recall that President Barack Obama, congressional leaders, Gov. Bill Ritter (in his Climate Action Plan) and assorted green activists insist that we must reduce our carbon footprint 80 percent by 2050 in order to effectively combat global warming. Several environmentalists made such a case to The Denver Post editorial board earlier this week in support of the cap-and-trade legislation that Congress is likely to consider this summer.
Supporters say this goal is achievable without economic pain or a radical change in lifestyle. Let’s see.
The Census Bureau projects Colorado’s population through 2030, when it should be 5.7 million. So let’s be conservative and say Colorado adds only 800,000 additional people in the two decades after that, for a total of 6.5 million. That means Coloradans’ per capita carbon footprint would have to drop to less than 3 tons annually to achieve a total reduction of 80 percent from 2005.
Perhaps you consider our society a profligate user of fossil fuels. Fine, but where in the world do right-living people restrict their carbon footprint to less than 3 tons? According to the Energy Information Administration, lots of African nations qualify (uh-oh). So do economic paupers such as Nicaragua, Belize, Cuba and Peru. Meanwhile, however, even nations as poor as Mexico, Argentina and Chile already tip the carbon scales at over 4 tons per person.
Surely the embrace of renewable energy and conservation will provide the answer without our having to regress to a pre-industrial economy. That’s what proponents of the 80 percent goal always say. Yet as Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out last year in The Wall Street Journal, “France and Switzerland, compact nations that generate almost all of their electricity from nonfossil fuel sources (nuclear for France, hydro for Switzerland) emit about 6.5 metric tons of CO2 per capita.”
Even if America could somehow replace virtually all of its fossil-fuel electricity with renewables and nuclear by mid-century while still handling growth in demand (the words “highly unlikely” don’t even begin to convey what a long shot that is absent technology breakthroughs), our per capita footprint would remain markedly higher than those European nations.
Why? As Hayward told me, it’s not because they’re more environmentally virtuous. But they do enjoy shorter transportation distances and a milder climate in many cases (less heating and air conditioning), as well as live in much smaller homes. No wonder that the per-capita footprint of Canada, which gets much of its electricity from hydroelectric sources, is not much lower than that of the United States.
By the way, in his ’08 article, Hayward calculated that for the U.S. overall, “per capita emissions will have to fall to about 2.5 tons in order to meet the goal of 80 percent reduction” — based upon a Census Bureau projection of 420 million Americans at mid-century.
Why does it matter if the official “must achieve” goal for greenhouse gas reduction is fanciful? For starters, because responsible political leaders should treat Americans like adults and not set them up for disappointment. They should endorse a reasonably paced transition to renewable energy but not one based upon illusions.
More importantly, the goal of 80 percent by 2050, if taken seriously, will be used to justify an ever-escalating series of measures that slow economic growth or reduce personal freedom without any genuine prospect of even achieving the promised payback.
In responding to a question while in China recently on how Americans intend to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory . . . of how we are taking responsibility.” Perhaps her comment sounds more ominous than what she meant, but there is a growing lobby for micromanaging nearly “every aspect of our lives” in the crusade to reduce carbon output.
That lobby could get away with it, too, unless we begin to inject some reality into the discussion regarding what we should be trying to achieve.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
