A lively crowd of Fletcher students, faculty, and undergraduates crammed into one of Cabot's auditoriums last night for a highly charged discussion of climate change and U.S. energy policy.
Two well-known Fletcher professors espoused diametrically opposing views to draw the crowd.
Bill Moomaw, who is educated as a chemist and has been deeply involved in international negotiation on energy issues, expressed the view that climate change should impact energy policy.
Bruce Everett is a former Exxon executive who asserts that governments should not risk extreme economic damage in case "still-inconclusive" research on climate change proves that global warming is not linked to energy use.
Both men agreed that global temperatures and atmospheric carbon concentrations are increasing. They disagreed, however, on whether fossil fuels have contributed to this increase and whether drastic action to wean the world off oil consumption is warranted.
"In reality, there's still not a sufficient understanding of what's going to happen [as a result of global warming]," Everett said, calling attention to the fact that scientific predictions or extrapolations often turn out to be wrong.
Enacting policy that drastically changes society's energy consumption is unjust and unreasonable unless scientists are absolutely sure of the facts, Everett said. If such policies were adopted, "this era of high living standards, freedom, and democracy would be over," he said.
In response, Moomaw acknowledged that natural fluctuations in climate do exist, but showed graphs suggesting that carbon dioxide concentrations have mirrored global temperature change.
The shrinking of glaciers is another indicator of global temperature increase, Moomaw said. He said human-induced climate change is a profoundly long-term problem that will continue to affect sea level and temperature for thousands of years to come.
"The basic irreversibility is so perilous," Moomaw said. "If we [the government and its lack of response to climate change] are wrong, the world is going to have a big problem for a very, very long time."
Moomaw also said some steps toward worldwide reductions in carbon emissions could come at low cost, no cost, or actually save money. But Everett countered that such initiatives did not need government support. "You don't need policies to go after high rates of return," he said. "It will happen anyway."
Moomaw agreed, but said the United States has subsidized fossil fuel industries to the point of creating a fundamentally inefficient energy system. "Wind power is barely more expensive than [natural] gas," he said, describing how the cumbersome reauthorization process for wind power had inhibited its development in Florida in the early 1990s.
Moomaw called for a "level playing field," or economic climate without excessive subsidies, as a framework for examining energy policy.
Everett agreed about the need for economic opportunity, but said the government role in energy policy should be "very conceptual." As fossil fuel prices rise, markets will "phase in" of other alternative energy possibilities, he said.
"I don't believe that consumers make bad choices," Everett said. Rather, they make important, logical decisions when "signals change."
Moomaw disagreed, saying that the harmful long-term externalities created by global warming extended far beyond the view of the everyday consumer.
