Certainly cutting emissions 90 percent overnight is theoretically
possible. Hell, cutting emissions 100 percent instantly is
theoretically possible. What bothers me is the public disconnect
between what the scientific community says is necessary (say, a global
50% emissions reduction relative to 1990 levels by 2050) and what is
politically feasible.
Al Gore puts it concisely when he argues that:
"The outer edge of the politically possible falls short of the inner
edge of the necessary."
Or as Thom Friedman over at the Times says,
"The whole Senate energy effort only reinforced my feelings that we're
in a green bubble - a festival of hot air by the news media, corporate
America and presidential candidates about green this and green that,
but, when it comes to actually doing something hard to bring about a
green revolution at scale - and if you don't have scale on this you
have nothing - we wimp out. Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is
that we are really doing something about it."
A carbon tax of $100 a ton is not going to happen in the foreseeable
future. The only bill in congress I've seen with an actual carbon
price had an escape valve set at $10 a ton (e.g. was a tradable permit
system that limited potential price increases by allowing unlimited
emissions at $10 a ton when permit prices passed $10 a ton). Here in
India, where I am spending the summer researching climate policy and
CDM markets, no one is even willing to entertain the concept that
India itself might be subject to some sort of restrictions on carbon
emissions in the future; everyone thinks that binding restrictions
will be a province only of rich countries till well after 2012, and
are backing this expectation by real investments in projects to sell
emissions reductions to the EU ETS and U.S. voluntary markets.
Similarly, China has balked at the thought of capping emissions,
arguing that it would interfere with the imperatives of development
and poverty alleviation.
Even if, as many people expect, the U.S. passes a climate bill after
the 2008 presidential elections, it will likely be a simple
stabilization at 2000 levels by 2020 or something similarly weak. As
the AR4 WGIII report clearly shows, to achieve a stabilization target
without imposing unacceptably high costs requires a gradual and
accelerating reduction of emissions (a ramping up of policy) starting
with a cap on global emissions. The longer we delay, the less likely
we will be to achieve these targets.
Also, I doubt the U.S. or any country will ever be willing to put
resources on par with a war mobilization to combat climate change.
There is no Pearl Harbor of climate change, no ozone hole to shock us
into action. By the time gradual impacts accumulate to the point where
policymakers and the public begin to truely grasp the scope of the
problem, it will be to late to avoid many unfortunate effects
(especially given the thermal inertia of the Earth's climate). Even
when the scope of the changes to the global economy necessary to solve
the problem are widely recognized, key nations will have little
incentive to do anything early. The U.S., parts of Europe, Canada,
Japan, and other countries all may benefit with moderate (< 2 degrees
C) warming. Its tough to be optimistic when those most responsible for
the problem are among those least effected by its impacts (in
economics, a classic externality).
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