The Climate and BP's Energy Outlook to 2030

Mark Finley, the General Manager for Markets and Economics at BP, spoke on the recently released "Long-Term Outlook for Energy to the Year 2030" yesterday at the monthly meeting of the National Capital Area Chapter of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics. He made it clear from the beginning that this report is not what BP wants, but what their best rational projections are for the future of world energy given what they know right now. I, of course, was listening as someone concerned about our climate and our future, and that was a scary way to hear Mark Finley's news.

Right now they are taking into account a higher price on carbon in "some" countries. They projected climate policy action to be a lot less than 2 years ago and that it was unlikely that there would be an effective "international climate regime." In the Q & A someone asked Mark if BP predicted any type of policy that raises the price of carbon emissions in America, and Mark responded that though some type of carbon tax or market mechanism was possible, it wasn't as probable as it was two years ago because the "policy momentum" was "going our way" and so the BP augurs had accounted for very little change in policy despite acknowledging at the end of the report that our emissions are "too high" for our climate.

Yet, there was hope even in BP's projections: a major caveat that accounted for our unknown future entitled "What Can Bend the Trend." Their reason number two (after their number one: a slower global economic growth rate), was stronger policy action on climate change.
 
Sitting among the economist, I thought: what do these lines mean to me, my generation, and my grandkids based upon the scientific consensus upon global warming? The blue one is for my grandkids growing up in a future where most people can get enough food, where coastlines begin to recede, where severe weather routinely threatens lives, where ecosystems and economies collapse, and where hundreds of millions of malnourished climate refugees make the world a much less stable place as the climate spirals out of any human control. Below, the situation gets better until we hit the 400,000 year average of around 275 parts per million of CO2.

More importantly to us now, these lines mean that we all have a choice: that if we organize ourselves to articulate that democratic power is stronger than vested economic power, then we CAN transform our economy to sustainably meet our needs and ensure that our actions do not ruin the livelihoods of the generations to come.

Right now, BP thinks they're in a cozy position. When asked what kind of rise BP expected for the price of carbon emissions due to policy changes over the next few years, Mark Finley chucked and said with a smile, "pretty modest."

It is time that we as democratic citizens take our future into our own hands, apply sound science to define our energy growth path, and teach laughing fossil fuel executives what modesty means in the 21st century: applying rational, science-based policy to encourage technological innovation and clean energy growth for the benefit of the people who will be living through the other half of this century.