George Will Take Note: 1910 ≠2050

Originally published at www.TheGreenGrok.com.

You can always count on George Will's take on climate to be entertaining.

Is the conservative columnist erudite? Absolutely. Buttoned-up and bow-tied? Always. On message? Without a doubt. On the right side of history? Well, definitely on the right, but as for the history part? Not so much.

A case in point -- his recent Newsweek piece titled "An Ivy League Huey Long?" It starts out as a critique of President Barack Obama and the health care thing and then not very subtly pivots about halfway through into a full-frontal attack on proposals to cap greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. So let's take a look at what the hubbub is all about.

Will's Impossible Target

Using data from an American Enterprise Institute report, Will argues that cutting U.S. emissions 83 percent by 2050 -- the goal of the Waxman-Markey bill the House passed in June -- is impossible. How definitive is his pronouncement? You be the judge: He says: "That. Will. Not. Happen." (Punctuation is Will's.)

The Logic Behind the Pronouncement

These are the stats that form the basis for the Will argument:

U.S. Annual CO2 Emissions:
In 1910: 1 billion tons
In 2005: 6 billion tons
Proposed for 2050 in Waxman-Markey: ~ 1 billion tons

Annual U.S. CO2 Emissions Per Capita:
In 1910: 11 tons
In 2005: 20 tons
Proposed for 2050 in Waxman-Markey: ~ 2.5 tons

So, Will points out, meeting the target would be the equivalent of going back to 1910 in terms of our nation's greenhouse gas emissions, and in terms of per capita emissions going back beyond 1910 to somewhere around 1875. He contends that this is a ridiculous notion, and, quoting from the American Enterprise Institute report, he concludes that "meeting the 2.4-ton goal 'is not going to be seriously attempted.'"

And Now the Fallacy: 'Can't Do' Equals 'Can't Imagine'

Perhaps someone needs to remind Mr. Will as he taps away on his PC, while texting his wife and monitoring CNN headlines and checking for weather updates courtesy of a downlink from a NOAA satellite, that the world changes, that technological innovation happens. What has 1910 to do with what might be possible in 2050?

	1910	2005
Number of registered passenger cars	458,000 [pdf]	136,568,083
Number of households with a TV	0	110 million [pdf]
Number of cell phone subscribers	0	208 million [pdf]

Over that same period, between 1910 and 2005, the carbon intensity of our emissions, the tons of CO2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product, has fallen by a factor of 4:

In 1910: 2.11 tons CO2 per $1,000 (USD 2000)
In 2005: 0.55 tons CO2 per $1,000 (USD 2000)

Could Anyone from 1910 Have Foreseen Today's High Tech?

Imagine George Will being back in 1910 when the day's most popular car -- the Model T -- topped out at 45 miles per hour, the only movies around were black and white and silent, and listening to music on a cutting-edge Victrola meant giving it a crank after every few songs.

If Will were back then and told that in less than 100 years Americans would be routinely driving automobiles, watching television, and talking with people almost anywhere in the world on a small, personal phone, would he have taken such ideas "seriously?" Could any of us, living back in 1910, have foreseen the technological innovations of the last century?

The state of the world today is no more a measure of what is technologically possible in 2050 than the state of the world in 1910 was a marker of possibility for our time.

To use the state of the world in 1910 to rule out the range of technological possibilities in 2050 is ... well let's just say a wee bit conservative.

Notes and Sources

Population in 1910 was 92,228,496. GDP in 1910 was 472.7 billion (2000) dollars.

Passenger cars in 1910: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1999, Table 1439 [pdf]

Passenger cars in 2005: Bureau of Transportation Statistics

Households with TVs: 2009 Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 1090 [pdf]

Cellphone subscribers: 2009 Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 1112 [pdf]

 

 

Follow Bill Chameides on Twitter: www.twitter.com/theGreenGrok

Comments

[realpolitic]

Great point! Will and other conservatives always talk about how great the country is and then in the next breath say we can't do this or that! They lack imagination. We now have a hundred or so cable channels instead of the four or five channels when I was a kid. Is it progress? Yes, does it sometimes serve to isolate us? Maybe. If we suddenly developed afforable technology to operate battery powered cars much of our carbon footprint would be eliminated. Unlike Will, I am very optimistic, but then I don't wear a bow tie and am not as smart as he. I guess I could always put one on, though. It would be a clip-on.

[JScott]

American Enterprise Institute-giveaway right there-not exactly an unbiased source.

[realpolitic]

Funny how conservatives can not stomach anything but conservative sources. They should occasionally be exposed to the real world of real information.

[HeevenSteven]

I cannot call George Will Erudite.

[topgunna]

I thought the remarkable technological advances over the past 100 years have turned the Earth into an environmental wasteland. Maybe life were rougher in 1910, but the world was still half a degree cooler than today - totally worth it.

[mamacat]

It isn't just technology that is to blame. The population in 1910, about 1.75 billion. The population in late 2009, over 6.5 billion souls.

Reducing our pollution per person is crucial, but if we do not get a handle on the population explosion, we are only delaying the destruction of the biosphere, not avoiding it. Of course, I wouldn't try explaining that to anyone over at the "American Enterprise Institure"; they are more interested in right-wing dogma than in science and logic.

[Bill Chameides - Huffpost Blogger]

topgunna - set the market incentives correctly, and those innovations will go toward environmentally sound technologies.