In national conversations, we sometimes hear the term “cognitive dissonance” — the discomfort we feel when our behavior or beliefs conflict with reality, resulting in anxiety, guilt, and efforts to downplay the discrepancy.
When conflicts involve life-threatening situations, the consequences are far more severe. Americans have been in cognitive dissonance about climate change for more than 30 years. As a result, economic and emotional stress increases as climate-related disasters increase. Destroy the house, Threatening the industryand increase both Federal Government Spending and Consumer prices.
Federal Official Goals The goal is to halve carbon emissions by 2030, just five years from now, on the journey to decarbonizing the economy by 2050. But the government still encourages fossil fuel production with public subsidies and incentives, including tax breaks, research grants and access to public lands.
According to the International Monetary Fund, American society's direct and indirect support for fossil fuels: $757 billionThat would mean investing $2,243 per person in 2022, the most recent year the fund analyzed. Inflation Control Law Allocation to clean energy over the next 10 years.
80 percent of America's energy Still comes from fossil fuelsthe United States is the world Second largest source Reduce your carbon footprint, More Oil and Gas More than any other country.
Simply put, the federal government is in a carbon cartel with the fossil fuel sector. Oil companies and their investors have reaped unprecedented profits by fueling the world's dependence on oil and the inequality and misery it causes. Our nation's energy policies are self-defeating, causing climate change even as they seek to end it. And, despite their importance, the IRA's clean energy investments greenwash our far more significant support for fossil fuels.
To end the cognitive dissonance, the United States must take three immediate steps.
First, the subsidies were abolished. 61 percent Fifty percent of Americans support it. Current government policy reverses the “polluter pays” principle. Instead of making big oil pay for the damages of global warming, the government is paying them for producing the fuels that cause the damage. Instead of investing their record profits in the transition to zero-carbon energy, oil companies have boosted executive pay, increased shareholder profits and made investments. Ensuring production until the 2030s.
Now the industry is trying to give us another reason. Anticipating an eventual decline in fossil fuel consumption, big oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell have Increased plastic production — another common product made from petroleum, whose waste is so serious that the United Nations has set a deadline of the end of this year “Legal Binding Document” To end plastic pollution.
Second, we must follow the advice of economists and put a price on carbon, who say that carbon pricing is the most effective policy to combat climate change. New research backs this up. A study published in the journal Nature analyzed the impact of 1,500 climate policies in 41 countries and found that most of them would have little effect on halting climate change. The most effective single policy was the carbon pricing policy implemented by the US House of Representatives. Approved in 2009 But the Senate was unable to take up the bill due to Republican pressure. Threatened filibusterCongress has not considered carbon pricing since then.
13 states Carbon pricing is already in place, but it should be implemented on a national scale.
Third, develop and implement a national energy transition plan. Uncoordinated, voluntary efforts to reduce carbon pollution have proven insufficient. To get back on track as a country to halve our emissions by 2030, we need a detailed national plan with clear targets, a carbon price, a clear strategy for exiting fossil fuels, and sticks as well as carrots.
What evidence does volunteering not work? The 2015 Paris Climate Accords produced voluntary carbon reduction plans for countries around the world, as well as a number of corporate and government coalitions. But Bloomberg has found that companies have responded to pressure from conservatives by Quietly retreat from climate and other environmental goals.
A year ago, World Resources Institute The report assessed 93 intergovernmental initiatives to combat climate change and found “an urgent need for greater cooperation between governments, in policy, finance, technology and other areas,” as well as within countries.
McKinsey & Company survey While great strides have been made in the deployment of clean energy technologies in the nine years since the Paris Agreement, “the large-scale deployment of all these technologies is not progressing at the rate needed to reach the 2030 targets,” the report noted. Global Progress Report It identifies a number of areas where countries are moving too slowly or failing. In the United States, McKinsey cites delays in permitting, uncertain economic benefits, hesitation in capital markets, and the fact that many announced projects have not yet been given the “green light” for final approval as barriers.
There is precedent for a national energy plan. In 1977, the United States Arab Oil EmbargoParliament Establishing the Department of Energy It also directed the president to submit a “National Energy Policy Plan” every two years. The act required the federal government to work with state and local governments, the private sector, and the public to develop the plan. The last plan was produced by the Clinton Administration. 1999.
By 2012, Bipartisan Policy Center The report noted that U.S. energy policy again “lacks long-term vision, is dominated by special interests, is poorly implemented and coordinated, and is sometimes internally inconsistent.”
There is plenty of research to draw on. Last fall, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Comprehensive Planning The United States needs to achieve a “just and equitable transition” to net-zero carbon by mid-century, and many public and private organizations are developing transition roadmaps on topics ranging from buildings and transportation to nature-based carbon sequestration. Presidential Climate Action Project The company has laid out some roadmaps on its website. McKinsey & Company evaluation Recommendations are also included.
But America's most troubling cognitive dissonance is 31 percent Fifty percent of Americans believe our democracy is working well, and we're struggling to get it right in many areas, including climate change. 80 percent 70% of Americans acknowledge that climate change is happening, Current parliament: 123 members The Republican presidential candidate still denies it.
The November election is a chance for voters to bring the nation's energy policy back into line with reality. We'll see if that happens.
William S. Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project and a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy.
