The Deluge, page 27
Forty years ago, one of the authors, Dr. James Hansen, testified before Congress about the threat posed by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Global warming, as an idea, a threat, and a policy priority, entered the mainstream conversation. In the intervening decades we have seen from politicians, business leaders, and the media equivocation, delay, and denial in confronting the most urgent matter not only of our time but of all human history. All three of the authors have dedicated their lives to warning that a reckoning is near.
Delay has cost the world dearly. The global average temperature is now 1.2 degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels and rising faster than predicted. At just a 0.8–1.2-degree rise we have seen unprecedented weather events strike our planet with increasing regularity: record-setting floods, heat waves, and hurricanes. A decade of extreme heat, drought, and voracious wildfires have tormented California and the Southwest, destroying homes, farms, and lives while rattling the insurance industry and real estate market. In the African Sahel, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Central Asia, water scarcity is killing people by the thousands each month and sparking further refugee flows to Europe. Climate refugees will continue to surge into Western countries in numbers that will make accommodation increasingly difficult. The effects on food security and disease vectors are also frightening. Tropical diseases now thrive in regions where no doctor had ever before seen a case in her lifetime. Having fought back the scourge of Covid-19, the world waits with anxiety as each year new pathogens emerge while the epidemiology of known diseases mutates. Scientists have no clear playbook for when one of these new mass killers may break loose, but Covid-19 may simply be a harbinger of things to come.
As dire as these consequences may be, none of it holds a candle to the threat of sea level rise. This past summer, in the middle of a heated presidential campaign, the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica experienced a partial collapse. Half a Pennsylvania’s worth of ice broke away over a long weekend. Scientists estimate the other half may be lost in the next two years. This is a frightening development not because the Thwaites itself will raise sea levels, but because it buttresses a mountain of ice in West Antarctica. If and when the Thwaites collapses for good, the West Antarctic ice sheet will begin sliding into the ocean. This could raise sea levels by nine to thirteen feet, which is doomsday for every coastal city in the world.
Given the severity of events we’ve witnessed at one degree, one might think the world would mobilize, but delay continues to be the operating principle of our economic and political leaders. We’ve squandered precious years and staying below the 1.5-degree threshold is in all likelihood now impossible. Two degrees looms, and any temperature increase beyond that would likely be the end of global civilization as we understand it today.
Mary Randall’s historic win should rightfully be celebrated as a joyful sign of our country’s progress. However, given the enormity of the challenge, there is no time for a honeymoon. President-elect Randall was elected to office promising action, and she cannot waste even a single day. She and Congress must pass legislation to deal, once and for all, with the coming storm. We urge her to seize the moment.
What would that action look like? At the very least, it should include a zero-carbon electricity standard to finish electrifying the power sector as quickly as possible; the shuttering of all coal plants within three years and a ban on mining to follow; a zero-emissions vehicle mandate for 2035, including trucking, and a cash-for-combustion-engine policy to electrify the transportation sector; standards for heavy industry to begin switching to clean fuels, banning certain refrigerants, eradicating methane leaks, and lowering process emissions; investment in building retrofit and new codes to electrify building stock; targets for increasing aviation efficiency and mandating sustainably produced “drop-in” biofuels, which can work in existing aircraft. Just Transition funds should be targeted at workers in the carbon economy and those people and regions most hurt by polluting practices, which will require major investments in clean electricity deployment, adaptation measures, and afforestation and land management projects. Money must flow to those most affected by the clean energy transition and climate damage. R&D should focus on hard-to-decarbonize sectors with a special emphasis on bringing green hydrogen to scale and carbon sequestration and utilization. Lowering emissions is no longer adequate. We must remediate carbon from the atmosphere or utilize it in cement, polymers, fuels, or create hydrogen via electrolysis to begin tightening the earth’s carbon cycle. Of course, the United States cannot go it alone, which is why the proposal from the organization A Fierce Blue Fire has received so much attention.
The “shock collar” is, at its core, a carbon price with 100 percent of the money rebated to taxpayers in the form of a climate dividend. Starting at $50 a ton, it will have the effect of not only making emissions more expensive but will give every American a quarterly check that will invest them in the process of decarbonization. The “justice” element of this plan should not be overlooked. As research has shown, putting money in people’s pockets will allow a strapped populace financial breathing room while also stimulating the economy. The innovative element of the shock collar is that the price is tied directly to emissions. The price to burn a ton of carbon will rise steadily at 3 percent per year plus inflation unless emissions do not decrease, in which case the price jumps by 7 percent the next year. If emissions decrease but miss the target, the tax will increase 5 percent. This addresses the concern that a tax might not necessarily lower emissions. With this policy we can quickly ramp up emissions reductions to meet the 10–15 percent per year target we must hit in order to avert catastrophe.
Crucially, the policy will levy a border adjustment tariff on goods coming from countries that fail to apply a similarly ambitious carbon price. This will keep heavy industry from fleeing the US and allow us to decarbonize without outsourcing our polluting practices (known as “leakage”). It offers an enormous incentive for recalcitrant countries to pursue deep decarbonization. If we can link carbon price policy with just China and the EU, it will effectively create a World Carbon Price, and the rest of the global economy will have little choice but to embark on its own accelerated timeline.
This, of course, does not in any way abrogate the US and other developed countries from fully financing sustainable development and adaptation measures for the developing countries through the Green Climate Fund. A proposal to levy a global tax on corporations to create a strict and sustainable funding source should be considered. To pay for mitigation and adaptation investments, high-income earners and concentrated wealth must finally pay its fair share. Tax justice is climate justice.
What we have lacked over these past forty years is political will. Nothing in our experience of fighting for the planet has heartened us more than witnessing this generation of young activists take the lead, from Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Kate Morris and newly elected congresswoman Tracy Aamanzaihou. All have been ruthless, resilient, and indomitable in their advocacy. The result has been a new coalition of “climate hawks” in Congress, and now Mary Randall, a candidate who has courageously led her negligent party on the issue.
This is no longer a country for old men, and soon we will fully give way to this new generation—progressive, multiracial, multigendered, talented, and passionate. They have been handed the unenviable task of saving humanity as we know it. We urge these young people to keep the pressure on. We urge Congress to seize this historic opportunity. We urge action.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ON LEGISLATIVE NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE POLLUTION REDUCTION, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND REFUND ACT OF 2029
EYES ONLY:
Sen. Cyrus Fitzpatrick, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Rep. Joy Barry LaFray, Chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Ashir al-Hasan
January 29, 2029
Abstract: As chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and leader of the informal White Paper Group assembled by the new administration to draft legislation aimed at the rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, I initially feared my expertise would fall outside the parameters of this tortured task, yet I now realize my years spent modeling the googolplex’s worth of interactions within various Earth System Models for NOAA was small bore. A joke, apologies. I’ll try to keep my comments focused on the model’s analysis of differing iterations of the Pollution Reduction, Infrastructure, and Refund Act (PRIRA), but will have to occasionally comment on the inanity and profiteering that surrounds the legislative process. I will conclude with the summary of my clandestine meeting with Dr. Anthony Pietrus, formerly of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
The new administration has deemed the chances of success for climate legislation as high due to a Republican president and Senate majority vowing to work with a Democratic House of Representatives. In order to provide an understanding of the institutional obstacles, allow me to use my notes from the third assembly of the White Paper Group, as we attempt to create an outline for so-called grand bargain legislation that advances deep decarbonization schemes, to explain the dynamic. These meetings have primarily consisted of legislative staffers, experts, and low-level aides. I was surprised to learn that representatives and senators rarely draft legislation or even attend the meetings during which provisions are debated. In this early backdoor meeting, the argument centered on whether the bill would include a carbon-pricing scheme. Kaye Martine, the Democratic staff director for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was concerned with the public relations optics of the final legislation. At under five feet, she is always the smallest person in the room and yet the high pitch of her voice allows her to override the conversation whenever she pleases:
“Your party’s leader—the fucking president—wants a carbon price. That’s her idea.”
“The president has her priorities, and so do Senate Republicans.” This was from Joe Otero. President-elect Randall has deputized Senate leader Ryan Doup with the burden of persuading obstinate conservatives to vote for climate legislation. However, it would be Doup’s top energy and climate advisor, Otero, who would be doing the bargaining. Otero and Martine are garrulous, profane characters, often at odds in a near-flirtatious way. Martine tends to wear more mascara and blush at these meetings, while Otero will roll up his sleeves to expose tattoos that begin at the wrist, a legacy of his aborted punk-rock career. He has the physique of a former bodybuilder gone soft and an oily black ponytail that gives him a certain air of rebellion in the staid circles of the GOP.
Though this meeting included seven of us, this exchange was approaching ten minutes. As Martine drew a breath to respond, Dr. Jane Tufariello gratefully interrupted: “Would you mind if we returned to the pricing mechanism? That’s all we’re debating right now.”
As you know, when she is reconfirmed, Tufariello will be the longest-serving undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and administrator of NOAA. In addition to being a key mentor during my time at MIT and encouraging me to join the committee staff so that I might work on this legislation, we sometimes watch WNBA basketball together. Dr. Tufariello is one of the most competent and dedicated scientists working in the government, and I wish she’d interrupt more.
“Christ, Jane, how do you not get that the pricing mechanism is a bait and switch?” Martine pointed to Martin Rathbone, the Harvard economist, expected to head the president’s National Economic Council. “The scientists and economists keep telling us we don’t understand the science or the economics. But eat shit, because you don’t understand the politics. None of this matters if the bill can’t pass.”
“And the way we do that is we broaden the appeal body,” said Otero.
“I love that term,” Dr. Rathbone mused, slouching so far back he appeared to be close to napping. “An ‘appealing body’ has nothing to do with this. This bill is a paper hangover. But I do love an appealing body.”
Rathbone scanned Kaye Martine when he said this, and Martine gave a perfunctory roll of her eyes, though this appeared to be a routine long worked out between them. That the highest levels of government seem to spend so much time behaving like it’s seventh grade never fails to astonish me. I wrote all this down because I found it as fascinating as I did obnoxious.
Dr. Tufariello, who loathes Rathbone, once remarked to me that it never pays to lose your temper at a white man in Washington, as they would find a way to weaponize it against you. Instead of acknowledging his comment, she focused on Otero: “Yes, but the legislation has to actually work.” The last word snapped out of her mouth, and I pictured it crackling above her head like a dissipating spark.
No offense, Senator Fitzpatrick and Congresswoman LaFray, but of the 535 members of the US Congress, those who have a sophisticated understanding of climate and energy policy would not fill an NBA roster. People luxuriate in the comforts bestowed by science without any interest in the empirical mechanisms that make those comforts possible. This leaves much of the lobbying to the likes of Tom Levine, representing the gadfly climate organization A Fierce Blue Fire, who felt entitled to interrupt next:
“Question is, who are you negotiating for here, Joe? If this is just about pleasing the literal pig-fuckers from rural Missouri who think the earth is six thousand years old, then why waste the time?”
Laughter ensued, and Alice McCowen slapped the table to cut it off:
“Enough. The Republican Study Committee can wag its limp QAnon dick all it wants; it doesn’t mean they have the votes to block anything.”
A new entrant to these meetings from the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, McCowen became a household name during the 2028 campaign as Mary Randall’s Svengali in the mode of other political pseudo-celebrities (with each administration comes a new one: Carville, Rove, Axelrod, Bannon). She seems to me a master of self-styling. On the campaign trail, she received criticism for referring to herself as a “hard-charging Texas bull dyke” and seems to be performing that character at all times. The media called it a gaffe, but it seemed much more a calculated move to demonstrate her candidate’s moderate social views. McCowen is taller and larger than most of the men in the room and swings the White House bat with ferocity.
“Now, my boss sent me here because, frankly, she heard the first meetings were coming up with fuck-all. From now on, the administration will have its hands deep in this cow, delivering this thing, so hear me: Speed is of the essence. We want a bill ready for Leg Counsel by the time Congress convenes.”
An argument erupted, with enough cross-talk that I lost the ability to record it all. Levine demanded the FBF’s “shock collar” while Martine argued the Democrats wanted Republican buy-in for any kind of pricing mechanism, and Otero interrupted to push the Republicans’ preferred policy of an extremely weak cap-and-trade scheme. This led to Dr. Tufariello saying what was obvious but politically intolerable:
“The primary thing the bill has to do immediately is shut down coal forever.”
Leading Ms. McCowen to bark at her: “Jesus Christ, Jane, don’t say that outside of this room ever. The Sinclair Broadcast–Jennifer Braden–Renaissance Media kook machine will come for Madam President before she even puts her hand on the Bible.”
Perhaps it was the volatile cul-de-sac in which the discussion had bottomed out or just the brittle sound of all those voices fighting to be heard that created a sensation on my skin like someone pelting me with rocks. My frustration neared a tipping point, so I chose this moment to speak up:
“It seems rather idiotic to begin this discussion by trying to form a consensus about what has the most political viability.” This quieted everyone, so I continued. “Any policy designed to achieve the goal of lowering emissions will necessarily inflict some economic pain, and therefore the policy must also alleviate that pain. We can simply run those numbers and decide what’s best, empirically speaking. To spend our time dawdling about political constituencies seems to me rather fruitless.”
I left my pen poised over my notepad in case anyone had an interesting response.
Ms. McCowen stared at me as silence took hold: “Who in the sweet brandy fuck is this guy?”
Dr. Tufariello volunteered that information: “This is Dr. Ashir al-Hasan.”
I added: “Chief of Staff for the Senate Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and advisor to Senator Cyrus Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania,” while also favoring Ms. McCowen with what my brother-in-law, Peter, calls a fuck you gaze. Mostly I was just happy they all stopped speaking over one another.
Dr. Tufariello said: “Ash was also one of NOAA’s top Earth System modelers. We listen when he talks.”
Ms. McCowen glared at me. “Yeah? Well, let me tell you something, Doctor Dicksucker: On my daddy’s farm we used to do rectal palpitations on cows, and if you call me an idiot again, I’ll come for you with two fists.”
Hopefully this example gives you some idea of the tenor of these meetings. They are also too often catered with the same bland turkey and portobello wraps.
* * *
In college, I discovered that running was an excellent way of alleviating anxiety. When I moved to Georgetown, I found a running club online, the project of a man named Seth Young, who was “a recovering political operative.”
Young had worked in the Obama administration and quit politics after burnout from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 race. Instead, he formed a fitness and wellness business, one aspect of which was taking moribund, desk-shackled Washingtonians on runs around the capital. I found the experience enjoyable, and it eased my transition from Tennessee, where my home was proximate to many excellent paths. As you may recall, I took the Senate Select Committee’s offer with a bit of trepidation. After my years consulting with the New England Complex Systems Institute, I moved on to NOAA’s Oak Ridge facility. This was powerful, cutting-edge modeling. Working under Dr. Tufariello, I helped pioneer an integrated assessment model (IAM) that broke new ground with its accounting of biospheric inputs, population, economic activity, national and international policies, and technological options available on decadal and century timescales. That’s largely why I’m here: because Dr. Tufariello wants to put each draft of the PRIRA legislation through our IAM to show how it might affect the climate under ideal circumstances of implementation.
