The Research Is In:
Regulations Alone Won’t Save Us From Climate
Disaster
By Wenonah Hauter
January 14, 2015 "ICH"
- "FWW"
- We are convinced that any serious
attempt to address
climate change means that a large
portion of the
natural gas, oil and
coal currently locked underground must
remain unexploited. Unfortunately, rather
than aggressively deploying
renewable energy resources, the Obama
administration has opted to allow polluters
to continue burning these dirty, polluting
fossil fuels. Case in point: The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is due
to soon release rules to regulate methane
leaks from natural gas production and
transportation. But two new reports released
this week underscore the importance of
keeping fossil fuels where they
belong—underground.
This week, Nature published a
peer-reviewed paper estimating the
percentages of
fossil fuels that must remain unburned.
This came on the heels of our own analysis
of how much natural gas, specifically,
should not be exploited.
The Nature
researchers based their numbers on a
scenario prioritizing the cheapest fossil
fuels, weighted (or penalized) by a selected
measure of their contribution to global
warming. The authors found that in order to
have only a 50-50 chance of remaining below
a 2-degree (Celsius) temperature increase
and avoid catastrophic climate change, about
80 percent of coal reserves, 30 percent of
oil reserves and 50 percent of natural gas
reserves must remain underground.
However, these percentages
were calculated before accounting
for “technically recoverable resources,”
meaning, that most of the shale gas the
industry expects to extract by fracking, was
not considered.
Food & Water Watch’s
analysis calculated a more conservative “budget”
that would provide a 75 percent chance of
remaining below the 2 degrees Celsius
warming line. Even with ambitious plans for
ramping down coal and oil use, this budget
is busted by the CO2 emitted from burning
fracked natural gas.
In both studies, there’s
an implicit budget for methane emissions
too, but widespread drilling and fracking
would likewise break that limit. The EPA
plans to issue regulations for methane
leaking due to drilling and fracking, but
this industry cannot be regulated properly.
Simply put, the Obama administration’s
methane regulations are equivalent to
putting lipstick on a pig—they address the
problem, but they don’t exactly fix it.
Policymakers would like to
pretend they can have their cake and eat it
too, appeasing the industry’s desire to
continue producing, while also saving the
climate. But as the research shows, you
can’t have it both ways. Food & Water
Watch’s analysis looked at what the world
can afford in terms of climate change, not
dollars. The U.S. is poised to become a
world leader on curbing climate change, but
for that to happen, we need to implement
real solutions, rather than pandering to
special oil and gas industry interests and
their powerful lobbyists.
In short, both sets of
research demonstrate that policies
encouraging fossil fuel development and
production are bankrupt. The only
responsible path forward is to keep coal,
oil and natural gas underground. The time
has come to aggressively overhaul our
nation’s energy system, incentivizing
renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Rather than supporting conventional fuels
through tax breaks and subsidies, we need
our leaders to have the courage to forge a
real path toward energy security and
independence.
© Food & Water Watch