Brookings: Topics - Las Vegas

Climate Forecast: Balancing Ethics, Politics and Uncertainty

William J. Antholis — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0400

UNLV and Brookings launched our partnership one year ago. We saw in Neal and his team a vision for UNLV to be both a national university, a thought-leader in Southern Nevada's resurgence. I believe that UNLV is taking the lead in helping Las Vegas become not just a global destination, but also a world class city.

UNLV does in Vegas what Brookings aspires to do in D.C. – research defined by its quality, independence and impact, and that goes from the local to the national to the global. Yesterday’s Clean Energy Summit and today’s forum speak to the quality of this university: well-designed, well executed, terrific speakers – scientists, economists, business leaders and policy experts.

As a historian of political ideas, I’d like to suggest that history provides three guideposts for thinking about where we currently stand in seizing control of our energy future. And why the three related issues of job creation, clean energy, and climate change should not be separated from one another.

The first guidepost is ethical. We are the first generation to know we are warming the planet, and probably the last with any chance to stop it.

The second guidepost is political. Transforming the planet’s energy system is probably the most complex political transaction in the history of mankind.

The third guidepost is heuristic. We must embrace uncertainty – scientific uncertainty, economic uncertainty, and political uncertainty. Only if we recapture the humility and hunger that comes with uncertainty are we going to fully tackle this challenge.

First, the ethical imperative.

We are fundamentally altering our climate, and we are the first generation to know this. We may also be the last generation to have any chance of doing something about it. Our forebears had the excuse of ignorance. Our descendants will have the excuse of helplessness. We have no excuse.

If nine out of ten doctors said that we were running a fever, and that we were passing it on to our kids, we surely would ask at least two questions: Can we treat it? How long do we have? The basic answer: we have about a decade to act before the warming reaches an irreversible and truly dangerous stage.

My youngest daughter, Kyri, will turn my age (45) in the year 2049. On our current path, the earth will have warmed by at least 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit -- warming that will be dangerous to Kyri and her kids -- unless we act now.

There is a precedent, of sorts, to this ethical imperative. My dad's generation was the first to be able to destroy the entire planet. Not doing so has simply required us to not push the nuclear button. Still, that has not been a cost-free enterprise. The Cold War demanded dangerous diplomacy, and vibrant domestic debate about how to structure our economy and even our political life. From the interstate system to international trade to the internet, we take for granted Cold War-era investments and innovations. There was also a political cost: the nation’s social fabric was occasionally stretched and torn by McCarthyism and overseas proxy wars.

We persevered, ultimately, because the country united around some core ideas, including that global destruction was too grave to bear.

Today’s ethical imperative does have the potential to unite the nation. Lindsey Graham, the Republican Senator from South Carolina, has urged his GOP colleagues to realize that conservationism and conservatism can go hand in hand. "I have been to enough college campuses to know — if you are 30 or younger, this climate issue is not a debate," he told the New York Times in February. "It's a value ... From a Republican point of view, we should buy into it and embrace it and not belittle them."

Graham was speaking strategically. But the larger point is that, when facing an existential crisis, conservatives and liberals can unite in defense of shared values.

Previous conservatives have built ethical systems around these values.

Edmund Burke saw society and civilization as a “partnership of generations . . .between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” He saw members of any one generation as “temporary possessors and life-renters in” society and in the earth; he feared that citizens might become “unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity,” and therefore run the risk of “leav[ing] to those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation.”

Thomas Jefferson – a favorite of both Tea Parties and progressives – made much the same point. Though he famously argued that “the earth belongs in usufruct [in effect, in trust] to the living,” he went on to argue that “no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.”

Conservation is fundamentally a conservative value. I'm particularly cheered by the growing dialogue across religious faith traditions -- from Orthodox and Catholic leaders, to Episcopalians and Evangelicals, to Jews and Muslims and Buddhists -- that all embrace "creation care" as a common rallying cry, and about turning the world back to our children.

Guidepost 2: The politics

Of course, a huge distance remains between Lindsey Graham’s vision and effective action. Graham’s climate bill never reached the Senate floor. Worse still, he never endorsed his own bill.

The problem is not just the Senate. Former House Speaker Richard Gephardt once described the effort of changing how the planet generates and consumes energy as “the single most difficult political transaction in the history of mankind.”

Here is why. Energy is one sixth of our economy, roughly the same as health care. Senator Reid yesterday said, “If we can pass health care, we can pass anything.” But U.S. action alone is not enough.

To avoid dangerous global warming by the time Kyri turns 45, the world needs to cut global CO2 emissions from about 30 billion tons each year to about 15 billion tons each year.

So take the politics of health care. Multiply those politics by the world’s 192 nations. Do that all at the same time. That is what did NOT happen at the world climate talks in Copenhagen. The meeting turned from Hopenhagen to Nopeinhagen.

In Fast Forward, Strobe Talbott and I argued that the global challenge is manageable. We focus on four key players – the Big Four of the United States, EU, China and India. We were immediately and loudly reminded by friends in Japan and Brazil (among others) that, they too, were critical to the solution.

So extend the focus to six and you have a Rubik’s Cube. You remember the toy -- six faces, nine squares on each of the faces. Move one square in one country, and it moves five similar faces in other countries. That is the political challenge of climate change. Call it the Gephardt Cube.

U.S. leadership is one face of the cube. It is not sufficient, but it is necessary. The U.S. alone is responsible for one-fifth of annual emissions – about 6 billion tons a year, just behind China.

We must eventually cut our emissions by well more than half. The U.S. has been by far the world’s largest historic contributor of CO2. Developing countries such as China and India are far behind us in how much they have emitted historically, and only have a fraction of what they emit per capita. They won’t act unless and until we do.

By mid-century, the U.S. probably needs to cut our emissions to about one billion tons a year if the planet has any chance of getting global emissions down to 15 billion.

In that context, how are we doing?

Considering that Lindsey Graham was in favor of his own bill before he was against it, it seems to have gone from bad to worse. But it is easy to ignore progress. A little over a year ago, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act that would have begun cutting United States emissions to roughly the one billion ton target by 2050.

That bill has now died in the Senate. Most Republicans opposed any action. Some still deny the science. Others still see any Democratic victory as a Republican defeat. A handful have been waiting on the wings, watching to see what Democrats would do.

Many Senate Democrats were ready to act. But those from states such as coal-rich West Virginia and the manufacturing communities of the Midwest or oil-oriented states such as Louisiana feared that they would bear a disproportionate share of the costs of going green.

Senator Reid and President Obama hoped to convince five or more Democrats to support the bill by giving them valuable emissions permits or off-shore drilling concessions. They hoped to gain five or more Republican supporters out of concern for energy security. If Mary Landreau Democrats could be convinced to act, then Lindsey Graham Republicans might be convinced to go along as well.

This fragile coalition-making ended up being another casualty of the Gulf Oil spill. Off-shore drilling was now off the table. The nation focused on near-term disaster, and lost sight of the long-term crisis.

Climate change and clean energy activists are now distraught. The House bill will expire at the end of this Congressional session. New legislation next Congress must start from scratch. That will be harder, since Democrats are predicted to lose seats in both houses of Congress on November 2.

It is important not to lose sight of the big picture. We have to assume that the unforgiving math of carbon emissions will continue to grind forward -- much as nuclear weapons shaped my dad’s generation.

The public gets this. Despite so-called "climate-gate", the public continues to largely believe the science. There has been little decline in the same core 50% of the public who are either “alarmed” or “concerned” enough to take action. Some decline in support has taken place among “cautious” segments of the public who believe something is happening, but are cautious about the costs of action. But that is hardly an irrational response coming out of the Great Recession.

And opinion polls have shown between 60 and 75 percent of the general public, including a majority of Republicans, believe that the EPA can and should regulate carbon emissions.

Eight GOP House members supported Waxman-Markey last summer. While that was hardly a mass defection, it was a meaningful one -- a high-water-mark of bipartisanship over the past two years. Mike Castle of Delaware and Mary Bono Mack of California are from districts with active environmental constituents. Leonard Lance of New Jersey hoped his constituents would benefit from the creation of “green jobs.” John McHugh of New York—now secretary of the Army—wanted to cut our dependence on imported oil.

This is not to overstate support, or underestimate the opposition to action. President Obama won many of those districts two years ago, and he might not win many of those districts today.

But support continues to build. A decade ago, the Global Climate Coalition successful lobbied on behalf of most energy companies to stop global warming legislation. In 1997, Al Gore held a meeting in the Roosevelt Room with green groups to discuss the prospects of cap and trade legislation. He asked them how many votes they could bring in the Senate. An activist responded, “We’ve got Wellstone”. Gore shot back: “Who else?” The response was silence.

We live in a far different world. The GCC disbanded in 2002. The most prominent and effective corporate lobbying group has been Climate Action Partnership – including General Electric, Duke Energy, Alcoa, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Ford Motor, NRG, and Honeywell – which worked with lawmakers in the House to create the framework for the Waxman-Markey bill.

These businesses see big opportunities in clean-energy – nuclear, natural gas, and other clean fuel production sources, more efficient homes, buildings, trains, and automobiles.

Many states and cities have made clean energy central to their strategic planning. Forty U.S. states have adopted climate change action plans. Cities from Seattle to Boston to Las Vegas are seeking to lower their carbon footprints by promoting energy efficiency, light rail, and “smart metering”.

And then there’s the Feds. The Obama Administration is investing about $90 billion on energy efficiency, renewable energy, smart-grid technology, and public transportation.

Let’s pause on that for a second. In any other time period, that commitment of resources would be considered revolutionary. But in a time when the government spent $700 billion to repair the financial system, and another $700 billion on the recovery act, the final $90 billion seems small. But it is really extraordinary, and its benefits are only now being felt.

Considerable stimulus money remains to be spent. Next year, a possible energy bill might be fashioned around a renewable energy standard. Republicans, such as Senator Sam Brownback, seem willing to support a standard, particularly if “renewable” includes nuclear energy or clean coal or electric vehicles.

And last, but not least, the President still has a very blunt but powerful tool in his kit. Thanks to activist state governments -- such as Mitt Romney's Massachusetts -- the Supreme Court ruled that EPA should treat CO2 as a pollutant, subject to the Agency’s responsibility to regulate any air pollutant that endangers human health and safety. EPA has since ruled that CO2 is indeed such a pollutant, and that climate change does indeed pose such a threat.

EPA authority only applies to power plants. If the President uses it, he could run into charges that this is undermining needed economic growth. Congress could choose to pass legislation that limited EPA's authority. Even if the President were to veto such a move, and EPA were to act, it would set back the idea of the country coming together around climate change.

Internationally, progress is being made. As I noted above, at Copenhagen the G-192 proved that the UN is not an effective place to negotiate. A small group of countries refused to block the unanimous consent required in the UN to embrace a new global deal.

But Copenhagen marked real progress as well. For the first time, the heads of state of the most important nations of the world sat down and hammered out an agreement. China, India and Brazil – one third of humanity, listed a set of emissions cuts that they were prepared to take, right alongside the United States, European Union, and Japan. And that general political agreement now has 100 national pledges. While it short of a legally binding treaty, it is the outline of how the world is going to tackle this problem.

Embrace uncertainty

So the ethical challenge is unique. The political challenge is daunting.

One thing that both have in common is that no outcomes are certain. That applies to science, as well as to economics and politics.

To tackle the problem, we need to let the science speak for itself. That includes being honest about what we do not know.

We know that the planet is warming, but we don’t know exactly how fast or how much. We know that humans are causing some or much of this, but we don’t know exactly what that contribution is or will be. We know that places from Southern Nevada to sub-Saharan Africa will likely feel the impacts, but we don’t know the magnitude.

Our society has long been divided between “know it alls” and "know-nothings." But we are not a binary nation. In the middle those two groups sit most Americans. They are dismissive of "know-nothings," but they don’t necessarily trust “know it alls.” The following quote, from a leading foreign policy thinker Walter Russell Mead, captures a reality about how these Americans view climate change:

“… the environmental movement has gotten itself on the wrong side of doubt. It has become the voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of the technocrats. It proposes big economic and social interventions and denies that unintended consequences and new information could vitiate the power of its recommendations. It knows what is good for us, and its knowledge is backed up by the awesome power and majesty of the peer-review process.”

Mead has seen this in other foreign policy challenges, and it worries him. Lesson to all of us: it is important to embrace and not silence those who question the science of climate change. Skeptics are what move the scientific process forward.

But it is also important to acknowledge not only those who are skeptical that the planet is warming or that humans are causing it, but also those who find the current projections to be way too cautious.

This scientific uncertainty may actually be the most important reason that countries such as China and India have come to the table. There is a growing awareness that negative impacts of climate change could be worse than are being projected – or could be taking place right now. It is uncertainty about exactly how dramatic those changes will be that suddenly have China and India worried.

We often talk of greenhouse gases, but for me, the greater uncertainties have to do with greenhouse liquids and solids. This won't be news to anyone who lives in Southern Nevada, but water is as critical -- and as difficult to understand -- as any part of the climate equation. Recent floods in Pakistan remind us that climate change leads to intense storms and droughts, as well as to the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers. We can never know with certainty when the next hurricane or drought will hit. China and India both live in the shadow of the same Himalayan Mountains as Pakistan.

We also are only beginning to understand how water can help cut greenhouse gas emissions. That doesn't just mean our friends down past Boulder City at the Hoover Dam. It also refers to the considerable water needed in natural gas exploration.

Likewise, we need to have a better understanding of the “solids” out there that contribute to climate change – especially “black carbon” or “soot”. While we have largely addressed black carbon in the United States, it is underexplored in developing countries.

We also need to understand, and even embrace, economic uncertainty – both in the US, and overseas.

Yesterday we heard a lot about where businesses see opportunities for profitable investment and job creation in clean energy. Clean energy is also an effective strategy for facing uncertainty about regulations in fossil fuels. The prospect of EPA regulating greenhouse gas emissions is creating considerable uncertainty in the business community -- which for the time-being may not be a bad thing. Investors in traditional power generation are either holding back from those investments, or are choosing ones least likely to run afoul of regulation.

There at least two more important sources of economic uncertainty -- geopolitics and global competition. The fact that nearly all transportation fuels depend on a global market that fluctuates wildly based on the latest crisis in the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela, or sub-Saharan Africa. Likewise, China and India are as dependent on those places as we are, and they have begun to notice that these are not the most stable regions of the world.

Whether solids, liquids or gases are the driving concern, leaders around the world recognize that clean energy technology is a key hedge against both climactic uncertainty, and the uncertainty of the economics and politics of fossil fuels.

China hopes to spend $738 billion, and India will spend $110 billion, on green technology. Along with Europe’s continued leadership, that should be a cause for some optimism.

It is also a cause for concern for American efforts to stay globally competitive. Even if the threat of climate change does not spur us to action, economic competition may be enough.

As we heard yesterday, a price on carbon and a long-term target for emissions would be the most effective way to do this. By providing a bit more certainty to investors, it would spawn the greatest public-private partnership in our history, letting a thousand flowers bloom in response to the promising uncertainty of new opportunities.

Lastly, we need to embrace political uncertainty. Not that we have much choice, two months before the midterm elections. It is hard to predict what narrow Democratic majorities or narrow GOP majorities will do – whether climate and energy will be a priority, and if so, whether the White House or Congress will choose to lead.

But we can plan for that uncertainty now. What would a grand compromise on energy reform look like that would reflect a national consensus for change? A true, bipartisan effort would attract support from moderates in both parties who have been reluctant to take a stand during this election season. But there are not likely to be enough moderates, so we need to stretch ourselves to think about what unites environmentalists and Tea Party members.

As the world’s leading democracy, we should embrace that debate. Debate and uncertainty are not an excuse for paralysis. Instead, they are a call to prudent action. We must embrace politics as the art of the possible in the face of what we must hope is only a nearly impossible problem.

Downloads

Download the Speech

Authors

William J. Antholis

Publication: UNLV Clean Energy Forum

Revitalizing Southern Nevada for the Next Economy

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 5, 2010
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT

Greenspun Hall Auditorium
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Las Vegas, NV

The outlines of the next American economy are coming into focus, yet the future remains uncertain in America’s metropolises. On April 5, Brookings Mountain West and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, hosted a forum to discuss ways the region can emerge as a competitive force in the global economy.

Bruce Katz, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, advanced a bold vision of the next American economy as it might take shape in southern Nevada.

Katz sketched a wide-ranging agenda for helping Las Vegas reclaim prosperity in the new era. Brian Greenspun, Brookings trustee and chairman of the Greenspun Corporation, opened the program and Robert Lang, Brookings Mountain West co-director, moderated a response discussion among local leaders.

Watch Video from the UNLV Event »

MEDIA COVERAGE

Six Questions: A Vision for a New Economy
April 5, 2010 – Las Vegas Sun
A Q&A with Bruce Katz, where he describes his vision for southern Nevada's next economy
Bruce Katz Interview (Audio)
April 5, 2010 – Nevada Public Radio’s "State of Nevada"
Katz appears on KNPR to give details on how Nevada can use existing economic strengths to help jumpstart a rebound
Innovation Touted as a Way Out of Recession
April 6, 2010 – Las Vegas Sun
An overview of the event at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
A Taxing Problem
April 7, 2010 – Las Vegas Sun Editorial
A look at the challenges and constraints of potentially executing a shift to the next economy
Low-Carbon Exports Would Suit Nevada, Official Says
April 8, 2010 – Las Vegas Review-Journal
More coverage of the event


Bruce Katz, vice president and director, Metropolitan Policy Program

From left: Rob Lang (director, Brookings Mountain West), Jim Murren (CEO of MGM Mirage), Rose McKinney-James (managing editor, Energy Works Consulting), The Honorable Allison Copening (Nevada State Senate)	Jim Murren, President, Chairman of the Board, and CEO, MGM Mirage, Inc.

Event Materials

What Happens in Vegas … Stimulates the Economy

Robert E. Lang and Mark Muro — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Washington — You know times have gotten really bad when a convention trip to Las Vegas becomes an object of scorn.

President Barack Obama might not have intended to knock Las Vegas by admonishing Wall Streeters recently that “you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime,” but Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman sure took it that way when he branded the comment “outrageous.”

Why the sensitivity to what in the past might have seemed a pretty bland observation? The main reason is a simple one: According to Steve Friess, who writes for The New York Times, some 30,000 hotel room nights booked for conferences have been canceled in the past month at an estimated loss of $20 million to Las Vegas.

But there is also at work here the play of cultural signifiers and subtexts. In our new age of austerity, Sin City “appears” to be too fun and superficial a place for businesses to gather.

And yet we find this is a serious misreading of the essential role that Las Vegas plays as the leading venue for face-to-face business exchanges in the United States, given our research for a recent major report on the major Intermountain West megalopolises called “Mountain Megas.”

Part of the city’s problem may be its recent reimaging, as epitomized by its now-famous slogan, “What happens here, stays here.” The inward-turning line comes from a Las Vegas ad campaign signaling that the city was returning to its roots by emphasizing sin after having tried to lure families.

But Las Vegas’ most recent Rat Pack-inspired image as an inward-focused party town masks the major outward effect Las Vegas has on the U.S. and world economies.

Las Vegas, best known for its gambling and entertainment, has also emerged as a deal-making center of world importance. Because Las Vegas is such a “fun” place and has a large tourist capacity in terms of hotel rooms and meeting space, it attracts the nation’s largest trade shows.

These shows form ad hoc market exchanges that gather whole industries to a common space to make deals. The irony is that what happens in Las Vegas arguably reaches well beyond the city in terms of business activity. The city’s reputation for discretion in personal matters has enhanced its attractiveness as a public space.

As a place for business networking, Las Vegas is, in this sense, a leading world city of great importance to the American economy. The city has not reached this status by traditional means, and conventional data measuring economic activity do not easily capture its form of exchange.

In a world where face-to-face interaction still matters — and may be even more important than ever — Las Vegas offers world-class venues for people to meet and do business. To get a sense of this, consider the variety and size of some of the trade shows that have recently convened in Las Vegas, including the National Association of Broadcasters (110,000 attendees), the World of Concrete Exposition (85,000 attendees), and International Consumer Electronics Show (150,000 attendees).

Some organizations now have annual meetings that have grown so large that Las Vegas is the only venue big enough to hold their major annual trade shows. A good example is CTIA — The Wireless Association. This Washington, D.C.-based trade group could hold its largest exhibition in Orange County, Calif., as recently as 2007.

But as the cell phone industry took off, attendance shot up and future annual conventions are now scheduled for Las Vegas. Although to outsiders a trade show can seem trivial for a rapidly evolving technology such as wireless, these are make-or-break events for many start-up firms. Their ability to have access to the entire industry — if just for several days a year — can provide the basis for key contacts that lead to everything from patent licensing to venture capital deals.

Ironically, wireless is one of the most space liberating technologies ever devised. Give many high-end white collar workers a 3G iPhone or BlackBerry and they can pretty much do their entire job from anywhere in the world. But in the end, business is all about trust, and that still requires face-to-face encounters.

Las Vegas now plays the highly critical role of gathering all the firms in key industries in one place where they can exchange ideas in person. The fact that Las Vegas is especially fun and frivolous — an adult Disneyland — creates even more incentive for people to attend its conferences, which is how it became the nation’s preeminent convention destination in the first place.

To all the killjoys who now want to shame people out of a Las Vegas convention visit, we say that a major stimulus for the country remains the social lubricant that Sin City provides business contacts.

As for the moral of the story, yes, there is one. Sure, we need a new era of responsibility, but we shouldn’t push austerity so hard that it is ultimately self-defeating. Sometimes junkets are junkets, but sometimes they are assemblies that make the world go ’round and provide the truest form of economic stimulus.

Authors

Publication: The Las Vegas Sun

Las Vegas, Global Suburb?: Migration to and from an Emerging Immigrant Gateway

Audrey Singer — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The stereotypical image of a glittering Las Vegas is one that lures visitors with the promise of 'winning the jackpot' with nothing more than a little cash investment. However, hyperfast population growth rates in the 1990s revealed that Las Vegas is luring more than just the temporary visitor. In this presentation, Audrey Singer discussed Las Vegas' late 20th century development and examined the pace, composition, and sources of population growth.

The metro program hosts and participates in a variety of public forums. To view a complete list of these events, please visit the metro program's Speeches and Events page which provides copies of major speeches, PowerPoint presentations, event transcripts, and event summaries.

Downloads

Download

Authors

Audrey Singer

Publication: Global Immigrant Gateways Workshop