I am a bit of a fossil when it comes to the media. I still subscribe to the print edition of the New York Times. Thus, when something appears online, I often have to wait a couple of days to read it. On June 1, an opinion piece by climate scientist Andrew Dressler dropped entitled, “Oil and Gas Companies are Trying to Rig the Marketplace.” It is available here.
Two days later, it appeared in print entitled “Big Oil is Hampering Growth of Green Energy.” (Page A 21). The article details how because the actual cost of producing energy from wind and solar is now competitive with fossil fuels, the panoply of organizations that support oil and natural gas industries --- think tanks, trade associations, “dark money groups” – has mobilized to prevent the free market from working.
Decades ago, when it became clear that continued reliance on fossil fuels was raising global temperatures the argument against green technology was that it was too expensive. If the government were to force businesses and individuals to adopt those “greener” technologies to generate energy it would ruin the economy. Economists argued (usually in vain) that the true cost of generating energy using fossil fuels --- the externalities that were the focus of my most recent commentary --- that the prices people paid in the free market drastically understated the REAL cost to society of using “cheap” fossil fuels.
But those costs are real. Today and years into the future we are paying (and will continue to pay) those costs as global temperatures rise. Here are a few examples: hurricanes are increasing in intensity, wildfires start earlier and last longer, drought conditions are getting worse and worse, killing heat waves are becoming more frequent and lasting longer, sea levels are rising which in the medium-term future will probably force the abandonment of some coastal settlements.
And things will continue get worse because all the carbon we have already put into the atmosphere will continue to raise global temperature. There is of course, hope that policy-makers will make drastic changes --- sooner rather than later. One specific hope is based on the fact that it is economically possible to make a very rapid transformation from fossil fuels to wind and solar in the generation of energy. The Dressler article makes clear that the fossil fuel industries and their allies are spending tons of money to spread falsehoods in order to stop the market from showing its clear preference for green technologies.
“… [A]s renewables have become a more formidable competitor, we are now seeing … a large-scale effort to deceive the public into thinking that the alternative products are harmful, unreliable and worse for consumers … What appear to be ordinary concerned citizens or groups making good faith arguments about renewable energy are actually a well-funded effort to disseminate a lie. …. Fossil fuel interests also donate piles of money to sympathetic politicians who then make false claims about renewable energy and push oil and gas on their constituents even when renewable energy is cheaper. … One of the most pervasive pieces of misinformation being spread by fossil fuel interests is that we cannot run our society on renewable energy. It is true that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. However, we could deal with this by expanding our existing electrical grid to allow us to move clean energy from regions with excess to those with shortfalls. … In the current U.S. grid, natural gas provides the primary balance for intermittent wind and solar, and we can keep using it that way --- in very limited quantities --- when we need it. One study published in 2020 showed that we could operate a grid that is 90 percent clean energy and 10 percent natural gas by 2035, which would produce energy for a cost similar to that of a grid with a continuation of current policies. Alarmingly, fossil fuel interests are also looking to dictate how schoolchildren learn about the environment. Children are some of the most powerful messengers when it comes to climate awareness, so fossil fuel promoters are keen to shape their understanding from the start. They have succeeded in getting the Texas State Board of Education to reject textbooks that accurately depict the effects of climate change and extreme weather.”
As someone who has had OP-ED pieces published in the New York Times I can assure you that the editors of this opinion piece demanded documentation to support EVERY ASSERTION made by Mr. Dressler. When he accuses the fossil fuel enablers of making false claims, he has the evidence to back that up.
What is standing in the way of making the changes that are both necessary and economically cost effective is the power of the fossil fuel industry to gaslight us with fake research and seemingly grass roots citizens’ movements. As the excellent book Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway showed, generations of smokers were denied factual information about the connection between smoking and fatal diseases for decades due to misinformation bought and paid for by tobacco companies. Needless to say, that misinformation led to many preventable deaths.
But smoking mostly kills individual smokers (some people get sick from second hand smoke as well). When it comes to climate change the consequences are much more dire. It is not an exaggeration to claim that the rising global temperature and the changes in the world’s ecology will create so much disruption and destruction that literally millions of our grandchildren will die prematurely. To minimize both the disruption, destruction and death it is essential that we take steps right now to let the free market actually work its magic so that competitive green technologies can beat out fossil fuels without government intervention to stall that change.
In my last commentary when I gave praise to the young people of the SUNRISE MOVEMENT. I noted that they recognize the need to organize politically to counter the efforts of fossil fuel trade associations, lobbying groups and intellectuals for hire.
Forty years ago, when NASA scientist James Hansen warned of the dangers of global warming, the free market (because it ignored externalities) was signaling that green technologies were too expensive. Now that green technologies are competitive, the fossil fuel protection racket is erecting barriers to the market.
Dressler concludes with this very important admonition: “Policymakers must now call out the fact that an industry facing obsolescence is distorting the market to try to shut out a superior competitor, clean energy.”
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
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