Arguing climate

David Roberts has perhaps the best take I've yet read on framing climate change.

[N]umerical targets are, by and large, politically inert. They aren't inspiring. They aren't sticky. "80% by 2050" isn't a rallying cry, it's a gauge readout, recorded on a ledger. It's a slogan only a wonk could love.

After thinking about this a while, here's my proposed replacement:

Children born today should live to see a U.S. that produces no climate pollution.

In other words, U.S. carbon neutral by 2060 or so. Eliminate net carbon emissions.

Why no carbon emissions rather than an 80% or 90% reduction? For one thing, it's better rhetoric. It's easy to understand, easy to communicate. It's not "less bad." It's "solve the problem." It's not, "like today, but less so." It's "the future." It's a goal as ambitious as winning WWII or landing on the moon. It can inspire.

But is it practical? Can it be done? Obviously that's unknowable to some degree. Me, I believe it's possible.

I think that has a great ring to it. And, what's more, I think it's actually achievable. It seems to me that changing our pollution habits will require significant activation energy but that once our patterns change and green technology has reached a critical momentum, clean energy will ultimately run away with itself. It will become more and more the standard. We won't get to 2050 and say to ourselves, "excellent work selves! Now freeze carbon emissions here. No more no less. Even if the alternatives we've developed in the last 43 years actually render the remaining sources of greenhouse pollution utterly obsolete."

Which is also to say that the leading end is going to be really difficult.

I should add, though, that the one good thing about wonky metrics is that they set non-arbitrary benchmarks by which we can gauge the strengths of other proposals. Eighty percent by 2050 didn't come from nowhere. It came from a rigorous analysis of atmospheric carbon concentrations and their effects on the climate. And so when people put forward plans that don't come anywhere close to meeting the mark... well, then it's good that we have a mark, I guess.