Climate talks in Paris should focus on natural gas

President Barack Obama and other world leaders are gathered in Paris this week for what is billed as urgent discussions to save the planet from man-made warming.

They are working toward an agreement that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions on an aggressive timetable.

Obama, who has made combatting climate change the cornerstone of his presidential legacy, opened the United Nations conference with a passionate speech that claimed the world has already proven it can have both strong economic growth and a steep reduction in greenhouse gases.

Not yet it hasn’t. Growth globally, and particularly in the United States, has been tepid during the recovery from the Great Recession. Concerns about the reliability of the energy supply factor into growth-creating investment decisions.

But Obama is right that growth is possible even while fighting the global warming war. It’s already happening in the U.S., and without the sort of government orchestrated master plans on the table in Paris.

Between 2005 and 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that greenhouse gas emissions fell by 9 percent, even while the nation’s population and economic output increased. The largest decline was in carbon dioxide, the focus of Obama’s new rules on power plants.

In April, carbon dioxide emissions reached a 27-year low in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The primary factor in the rollback of emissions is the natural gas boom made possible by hydraulic fracking.

Surging natural gas production has dramatically lowered the price of the commodity and made it economically feasible for utility companies to convert dirtier coal-fired power plants to cleaner-burning gas-powered facilities.

That trend is expected to continue.

The most positive aspect of the switch to natural gas is that it is market driven. Unlike windmills and solar panels, gas-powered plants can deliver base-load supplies of electricity at a cost customers can afford. And the technology is available today.

Expanding natural gas exploration and use, particularly in coal dependent emerging economies such as China and India, should be a primary theme of the Paris confab.

Rather than concentrating on schemes to limit fracking and restrict fossil fuel energy production and thus economic activity, Obama and his fellow world leaders should embrace the breathing room natural gas could provide. Moving heavily to natural gas would bring down greenhouse gas emissions substantially while alternative energy technologies are improved to make them practical for large scale power production.

That approach would be less disruptive to world economies, far less expensive and more realistic.

An independent study released in June by experts from the Harvard Business School concluded that exploiting the vast natural gas reserves available through fracking could support 3.8 million jobs by 2030 while meeting the greenhouse gas targets desired by the Paris conference.

Shifting the conference conversation heavily toward natural gas as an interim solution would minimize the real likelihood that what will come out of Paris is a plan to shift resources from the United States and other developed economies to the Third World, without having much impact on global warming.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/12/01/climate-talk-natural-gas/76591838/