Is coal the answer in climate change?

When our economy tanked last year, politicians told us that our nation’s financial institutions were “too big to fail,” and the federal government immediately proceeded to bail out the banks. Now, as world leaders are gathered for a critically important climate summit in Copenhagen, we need to ask: Is Earth too big to fail? And if the collapse of our planet’s life support systems is unacceptable to us, then how do we shatter the climate change policy logjam once and for all?
One answer is to stop seeing the fossil fuel industries as the enemy, and start seeing them as part of the solution.
This radical approach may be the only way to achieve a viable global climate change treaty in time to do any good for the planet and the human race. We must move together as a nation and as a world. Otherwise the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists are likely to wrestle each other impotently for more precious years atop the runaway train of climate change, as we rush headlong toward oblivion.
To reach compromise, both sides must surrender their rants and spin. We must realize that both have valid points, and fairly seek common ground between the realities of climate science and the realities of our fossil fuel driven economy.
The astounding truth is that this common ground does exist, and that the two sides have a world to gain from sitting down at the negotiating table.
Here are four bold measures for breaking the climate debate deadlock:
* Put tens of billions into clean coal. Coal largely powers our nation. That is current reality. And clean coal is still a fantasy, but not long ago so was a trip to the moon. Money is the answer. It is already technologically possible to remove 90 percent of the carbon from coal emissions. However, according to a July 2009 Harvard study, this thorough carbon-cleansing nearly doubles the cost of making electricity. So why not offer federal loans to energy producers to cover the difference? A carbon tax would pay back that loan. It can be done: Norway is already sequestering carbon beneath the North Sea, and sequestration sites are being identified across America. This is no permanent solution, but triage. It’s a stopgap measure to buy us some time: At a cost roughly equal to current U.S. corn subsidies, sequestering coal carbon emissions underground would give us a few decades to transition into a renewable-energy world, and give coal companies time to transform into 21st Century energy companies.
* Repurpose petroleum. Oil isn’t renewable. Every barrel we burn for energy is wasted. It’s like burning money. Rather, let’s transition from using oil as fuel and turn it into high-quality plastics and other durable goods. Let’s fund research into next-generation plastics and other petrochemically-based materials designed for reuse in an endless loop – rather than discarding them. Already, scientists at the University of Washington are using petroleum-based plastics to make solar cells; other researchers are using them in high-quality building materials. Following the “cradle to cradle” ideas of architect William McDonough, manufacturers are inventing ways to design shoes, cars – even factories – to be dismantled and reused. Such change could take decades, but an infusion of investment will quicken it.
* Institute a global Marshall Plan. Current economic and climate realities dictate that we bail out the developing world. Unless we bring the poor out of poverty through clean energy, all of the developed world’s carbon emission reduction efforts will go for naught. Exporting sustainable-energy technologies to the developing world will help end poverty and dramatically boost our economy. When the U.S. rebuilt Europe and Japan after World War II, skeptics called it economic suicide. Today the U.S.-European-Japanese trading partnership is the strongest, freest economic engine the world has known. Likewise, investment in Africa today will create thriving free markets there tomorrow.
* Adapt now. No matter how successfully we implement the first three steps, too much greenhouse gas is already aloft. We must prepare for some climate-caused upheaval. Intensive cooperative public-private planning is needed to anticipate the extreme weather, sea rise, wildfire, insect, disease and other damage done by climate change.
This proposed compromise will likely cause entrenched environmentalists and fiscal conservatives to fall out of their chairs. But it could break the logjam, dealing decisively and honestly with the climate change threat, while also allowing the fossil fuel industry and the rest of the U.S. and world economy to thrive.
Sticking with the current crop of platitudes is getting us nowhere. And we’ve run out of time. Hear this recent warning from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: “Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss.” We are speeding headlong into climate and economic chaos.
A change in approach must come now. Impossible? Not in the America we know.

Glenn Scherer and David Lillard are the editors of Blue Ridge Press, a syndicated environmental commentary service that has reached more than 20 million newspaper readers in the United States.