Closing the Climate Change Accounting Loophole -- With a Billboard

Flashy billboards are usually not my thing, but it's hard not to be grabbed by the 67-by-32-foot billboard unveiled today outside New York City's Penn Station. Deutsche Bank has launched the world's first "Carbon Counter," an electronic display that digitally shows the real-time, cumulative pollution - the tons added to the atmosphere every tenth of a second - we are emitting that is causing the planet to heat up. Half a million people will see the billboard daily and millions more can do so on the web at know-the-number.com

The Carbon Counter vividly drives home a vital point not only about climate change -- 800 tons of carbon pollution is going into the atmosphere every second -- but a short-sighted economic system that is burdening our planet like never before: We haven't been honestly accounting for the environmental costs of everything we do. When there were no controls - and costs - for sooty particles belching from our power plants, we literally choked on the results. When companies did not have to pay for controls to stop raw sewage and chemicals pouring into our streams, our fish died. In those instances, we tallied the societal costs, realized they were too high, and put a stop to it.

Now we're facing a less-than-honest tally of our carbon dioxide costs - an accounting mistake that is already having enormous impacts in every corner of the U.S. and world.

The market price of emitting this pollution has long and, quite irrationally, been zero. Those costs have not figured into what we pay to power our factories, drive our cars or heat our homes.

So guess what? We end up using a lot more energy - and polluting a lot more - than we (rationally) ought to, since we don't pay the price of polluting when we buy fuel or turn on our lights. Bad cost accounting distorts decision-making -- I can assure you we'd all be eating more steak if the cost of cattle feed wasn't included in beef prices.

The Carbon Counter places this contradiction out in the open, where everyone can see it: It exposes in plain sight the hidden environmental cost of our energy use by tallying in plain sight the accumulating gases destabilizing our climate.

By doing so it also exploits a key insight about human behavior that's been documented by behavioral economists: When the price of costly activities is no longer hidden from humans we're more likely to pursue those activities prudently. That's why the simple act of placing an electricity consumption meter in plain view can substantially cut a home's energy use, or why installing real-time miles-per-gallon meters in cars changes the way we drive.

So let's ensure honest accounting of our environmental impacts, but let's not stop there. Let's also set new standards for the business world, not just environmentally but in apportioning financial risk. Because durably strong economies are built on the idea that everyone can clearly see the costs and risks of a given path. And that hasn't been happening.

After all, it was wildly overpriced - and miscalculated - employee compensation from Wall Street to Main Street that helped ignite our financial mess. Too many people were reaping rich payoffs up front while offloading all the risks from mortgages and securities they were selling onto society. Heads I win, tails you lose: what incentive was there to NOT be reckless?

That's why the new Carbon Counter's not just a gimmick. By showing us all the day-to-day environmental toll of our actions it will, in one small way, help move decision-makers from Washington to your kitchen table to attach real, honestly-measured prices to those actions. And that type of transparency in turn will inspire a wave of change and innovation that will change the rules of the game, environmentally and economically.

Honest accounting, out in the open - that's what we need. With accurate pricing of risks in place, we can build tomorrow's strong, clean, healthy economy while simultaneously slaying today's scariest environmental and economic threats.

Just because we counted right.

Comments

[ProOxygen]

Climate change and the rapid rise of carbon emissions are important issues. The attention and awareness that Deutsche Bank is bringing to them is a helpful development.
Always keep in mind the ultimate objective behind the growing efforts to reduce emissions: to stabilize the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases at a safe level in the atmosphere. World-leading climate scientists tell us that means getting atmospheric CO2 down to 350 parts per million.
To see the world’s most recent data for atmospheric CO2, visit Earth’s CO2 Home Page at http://co2now.org (hosted from servers powered directly by solar panels). Or add one of the free CO2Now widgets to your site – the world's first and only source for widgets that keeps current CO2 on display far and wide.
Atmospheric CO2 was 390.18 ppm in May 2009, the latest data available when the Deutsche Bank “carbon counter” widget was launched. Based on this almost-real time data, measured by NOAA scientists directly from the atmosphere, we can see that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 continues to accelerate upward from decade to decade.
Consider placing an emissions widget and an atmospheric CO2 widget side-by-side. The emissions level needs to be seen together with the atmospheric concentration, not in isolation.

[Overtone]

CONSUMERS MAY DRIVE NEEDED CHANGE!

Future cars will need no fuel and can become power plants when parked.

Breakthroughs include the MagGen. These magnetic generators will initially make it possible to cut the cord on a plug-in hybrid so it no longer needs to plug-in. Later, they can replace the batteries in an electric car. Then, the MagGen can run when the car is parked and sell power to the utility. Prototypes are under development.

Next is a Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine - SPICE, which can power a hybrid. It will need no fuel and is another path to ending the need to plug-in. The engine can run when parked. Both systems can wirelessly transmit and sell power to the local utility.

The SPICE will be powered by hydrinos - which let a barrel of water equal hundreds of barrels of oil.

Scientists and engineers will doubt these technologies are possible until they have been validated by Independent Laboratories. That is an important step on the agenda.

Until now, car ownership has been an expense. Payments to car owners driving a hybrid with a SPICE, or powered by MagGen, are likely to be substantial.

The cost of many vehicles might be paid for by utilities, as they purchase power.

Parked cars each become decentralized power plants - a cost-effective path to reducing fossil fuels - and a rebirth of both the automobile industry.

And these vehicles will not produce Carbon Dioxide!