Policy Solutions

Grass roots action is vital for meeting the climate challenge. We already understand the critical need to move away from fossil fuels, and more people than ever are buying electric cars, abandoning gas cooking and heating, and installing solar panels. Every person, every family who adopts a more climate-forward lifestyle is an example for someone else, another normalization of the idea that individuals can create change, and most importantly, another voter bringing a new set of expectations and accountability to political leaders.

But we will only fully solve this through policy decisions at the top. Major industries are going to have to continue to change how they operate. Federal and state policies are needed to level the competitive playing field and create the tax incentives, subsidies, and outright mandates necessary to keep global temperatures under 1.5^o C above preindustrial averages.

Electrifying our lifestyle is key, but the transition won’t work unless we look at each component of the problem and address them all at the same time. One example: for a majority of commuters to move to electric cars, cities must increase residential charging at street parking locations and apartment complexes; to all the various places working people park their cars at night. Businesses must be incentivized to install more chargers. The national patchwork of local electrical grids must be upgraded and coordinated to handle those needs. New sources of clean, renewable electricity must be brought online quickly to meet the demand. These things must be done in concert as a complete package or the various stakeholders won’t risk getting ahead of the others in absorbing investment and debt.

Climate science is not ideological, and shouldn’t ever be political. No matter what other priorities a politician stands for, it’s in everyone’s interest that he or she help craft policies that will protect our children’s quality of life, respecting established science as a starting point. A great example of this, described below, is how The Alliance for Market Solutions, a conservative organization which resists new taxes on industry, supports the idea of a carbon fee and dividend system, also known as Climate Income. The Alliance recognizes the reality of climate change and the need to find solutions. It believes a carbon fee and dividend system is a realistic, effective way to do this which avoids new taxes and reduces other costly regulations. If Climate Income can accomplish what it claims, it could be an extremely powerful, business-friendly piece of the puzzle.

You can think of the rest of this page as a seed, the beginnings of a wider conversation about policy solutions and their ramifications. Please join the conversation in the comments at the bottom. Point out weaknesses or strengths or overlooked perspectives. Pick winners and losers. Major things are going to have to change. Engage the decisions before they’re made instead of simply being carried in their current once it’s too late.

Climate Income (Carbon Fee & Dividend)

This is a proposal which is slowly gaining wider momentum and is supported by many economists. It requires those who contribute to warming to pay into a fund relative to how much warming they’re responsible for. It’s up to them to decide how not to continue being part of the problem. The fund is paid out to the entire population in equal measure to mitigate the effects of warming and to offset the unavoidable price increases as industries modernize and become cleaner. Here’s how it works:

Industries which produce or emit greenhouse gases pay a fee depending on how much they contribute to climate change, encouraging them to reduce emissions and make cleaner decisions. The money is returned in equal shares to the population, allowing families not to suffer due to cost increases.
Governments do not keep the money from the carbon fees.
Carbon pricing is reflected in some form of tariff structure to balance international trade and encourage other countries to adopt similar systems.
Some form of carbon pricing is already a reality in many countries.
This strategy is endorsed by leading economists and organizations across the political spectrum, including:

The Alliance for Market Solutions

Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (established by the World Bank)

Citizens’ Climate Lobby

Climate Leadership Council

Environmental Defense Fund

Electrical Grid / Power Generation

Power generation accounts for around a quarter of all warming in the United States. Increasing our renewable energy sources, like industrial wind and solar installations, is critical. But our antiquated, balkanized power grid isn’t able to take full advantage of new renewables. Increasing renewable energy on the supply side, and more electrification on the public side, will require big changes to the way we distribute power throughout the country. Since power producers and utilities are largely private and for-profit, significant federal intervention will be necessary to bring the grid to the level required to keep global temperatures in check.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 was a good start and begins to address these needs. The work needs to continue.

HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) long distance transmission lines must be installed faster between private regional grids to carry renewable energy where it’s needed. This is critical.
Increase the use of smart grids which will increase efficiency and facilitate faster switching between intermittent availability of renewable sources.
Mandate and subsidize infrastructure upgrades across the entire grid for efficiency.
Deploy advanced analytics and AI to optimize grid operations and predict usage demand.
Require Time-Of-Use pricing. Lower rates during off-peak hours will encourage consumers to reduce the load during the day, adding capacity to existing grids.
Incentivize microgrids and local generation such as rooftop solar, as well as local storage battery systems. California recently disincentivized rooftop solar in the name of promoting residential battery storage, but in fact disincentivized both. These moves go in the wrong direction for solving climate change.
Rethink small-scale nuclear. Yes, this is controversial. Nuclear has a bad habit of contaminating local ground water and affecting the health of nearby — usually low income — communities. And melting down. The new generation of smaller reactors so far costs about the same per kWh as large reactors. If we can find solutions to these very real concerns and site new projects appropriately (and we can), nuclear could be an important partner in the solution.

One note: many of these proposals, like adding new long distance transmission lines and nuclear, are subject to long permit and review processes. Because of the emergency timescale we find ourselves in, this must be streamlined. That will likely require revisiting regulations protecting certain animal habitats. Yes, also controversial, and we don’t recommend that lightly. More and more evidence points to how important wider, interconnected habitats are to all life on earth, including human. But failing to meet the climate challenge will be far worse for those habitats. The endgame of unchecked warming and the devastation humans will wreak on all ecosystems as they frantically try to keep their civilization intact, will be immense. It’s a painful choice, but it’s something to consider as a lessor of two evils.

Electronics Manufacturing

All US manufacturing needs to become carbon neutral. It’s more than simply the sources of electricity to run a plant. Manufacturing releases significant, potent greenhouse gases which have to be accounted for and managed.

F-gases. Fluorinated gases such as hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride are the most potent greenhouse gases humans create, and they’re commonly used and released when we manufacture microchips and other electronics. Alternatives must replace the F-gases used in industrial processes, and the greenhouse gases released as a byproduct of manufacturing must be contained.
Likewise, in addition to the greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels, coal mining and oil refining and processing release large amounts of methane and CO₂ as well. This increases the urgency with which we must transition away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

Agriculture

Agriculture, including the raising of livestock, is a significant piece of the warming puzzle, and it must be on the table. In the United States, agriculture is the second largest source of methane emissions after the natural gas and petroleum industry, and methane traps a significantly higher amount of heat in the atmosphere than CO₂.

We have to consider reducing the amount of livestock we’re allowed to raise. In some cases, this will also increase the amount of land available for feeding people instead of animals, something that will become more important as the population increases and warming makes farmland less productive.
Livestock methane capture. This is already being done in the dairy industry with digesters, which unfortunately also appear to increase ammonia emissions in the process. Other research is looking at food additives. These methods must continue to be refined and expanded. The dairy industry releases far more methane than beef cattle, and they’ve been aggressively working to curb emissions, but more certainly needs to be done.
Climate-Smart Agricultural practices must be expanded, as well as the use of techniques such as cover cropping and conservation tillage. This should guide new standards in how we grow crops and raise livestock in the US.
Healthy Soils Healthy Climate Act: this act would provide funds for research and incentives for farming techniques that contain more carbon in the soil. This is a good step in the right direction, but hasn’t passed in the three years it’s been introduced in the US Senate.
The production and use of pesticides and fertilizers must release fewer greenhouse gases. Both made an enormous contribution to the agricultural revolution of the 20th century, in which we solved what was shaping up to be a real crisis in food scarcity. As the population increases, the need to make farmland more efficient is ever-present. This is a fundamental paradox of the climate solutions conversation. We need more food, and we need the ways we grow it to be cleaner.

Groundwater

Across the US, groundwater levels are falling consistently. The lack of regulation, monitoring, and reporting of wells makes it hard to know how long we have before those levels become critically low. Most groundwater use goes toward farming, and the reimagining of agriculture mentioned above must take place in the same conversation as groundwater management. In order to pull a sustainable amount of water from our aquifers, we have to rethink the kinds of crops it feeds and how it’s delivered.

Require reporting of all new and current wells and flow rates. This is imperative for accurate metrics.
New wells approved based on local aquifer levels.
Disincentivize water-intensive crops in areas with low aquifers. Nut trees and avocados grow well in California’s Central Valley. They draw a disproportionate amount of groundwater for the food yield in a region that experiences near-perpetual drought. This must be revisited and regulated.
Require drop irrigation on farms. Expensive, but in many farming regions we simply can’t afford to keep spraying water into the air. It’s estimated that nearly half of the water subject to spray irrigation is lost to evaporation.
Urban recharging: decrease nonporous urban hardscape to reclaim rainwater.
Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM): manages groundwater in the context of the entire water cycle.

Direct Air Carbon Capture (DAC)

It’s hard to imagine fixing future anthropomorphic heating without some degree of Direct Air Capture. currently it’s inefficient and energy-intensive, but like all new technologies this will improve with time, investment and research.

For DAC to make any sense, all processing of the captured CO₂ must be powered 100% renewably. Otherwise we’re adding carbon back to the atmosphere and defeating the purpose.
Incentivize markets for captured carbon. What we pull from the air can be used in building materials, which is a win-win. The carbon is locked away, and other building materials which might have required other carbon emissions to produce are avoided. Captured carbon can be used in fuels and for other purposes as well.

Desalinization

Climate change and the water supply are interrelated. The more urban drinking water we can preserve, the more groundwater can go toward farming, whose importance can’t be overlooked as the population increases. Desalinization is a puzzle piece we have to consider. It’s already in use around the world, but it’s energy intensive and environmentally problematic. Both issues can be addressed with money and commitment.

Desalinization plants must be powered renewably.
New ways must be found to protect marine life from intakes, chemicals, brine, and re-introduction of warmer water.
Incentivize industrial uses for brine.
Incentivize Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) Systems. This approach has many industrial uses, including: reusing recovered salts & minerals, and chemicals such as potassium and bromine, construction materials such as gypsum, and heat, which can reduce energy consumption for cold-weather plants.

Air Travel

Currently air travel contributes 2-3% of global CO2 emissions. But water vapor is also an important greenhouse gas, and the vapor produced by jet engines adds another percentage point of warming. These are small numbers, but if keeping the average global temperature below 1.5^o C above preindustrial temperatures is expected to require a 50% cut in global carbon emissions by 2030, we have to shave off every percentage we can.

CORCIA: At last count, 126 countries, including the US, have signed on to the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. This is a market-based measure adopted in October 2016 by the countries of the International Civil Aviation Organization. The goal is to make air travel more sustainable, through measures such as the continued development of lower-carbon fuels and redrawing flight plans to make them more fuel efficient. Its provisions are voluntary until 2027, then would become mandatory through 2035. This convention requires evaluation of compliance and effectiveness every three years. The commitments of so many nations are promising, but stronger regulation may be required if targets are not being met voluntarily.

Summary

We have a lot to do. We have to get serious about working together to find solutions faster and in good faith. This conversation is political in nature, but the science isn’t. People representing all ideological positions should recognize the reality of the scientific consensus and the need to work together to solve climate change. Then we can reasonably, rationally discuss which solutions will best protect our economy and quality of life while still mitigating warming enough to get the job done. Things are going to have to change, but if we approach this right, we can and will succeed in making our lifestyle sustainable.