World leaders gathered in Paris last week to discuss ways to reduce the effects of climate change. Here in Northwest Indiana, we should be thinking about ways this might affect us.
The UN Climate Change Conference is scheduled to end Friday. But this discussion should be ongoing.
We could argue until the cows come home about whether cows are a significant contributor to climate change, or whether the primary culprit behind the change is man-made or natural, but that's not productive. The facts are that the planet's temperatures, overall, are increasing.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information reported that October temperatures followed the same trend as previous months, and that 2015 is likely to be one of the hottest, if not the hottest, years on record. Looking at the global temperature maps makes this very clear.
The use of coal is widely regarded by scientists as a contributor to those rising temperatures. We've all heard the horror stories about shrinking polar ice caps, rising sea levels and other impacts on the environment.
Whether you believe them on not, it's hard to argue about the health effects of pollution from burning coal. NIPSCO and other utilities have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to scrub the smoke of various pollutants, but in an ideal world we'd be burning a cleaner fuel to generate electricity.
We do not live in an ideal world, however. Hoosiers rely heavily on coal. Burning it supplies about 80 percent of their electricity. Coal is a cheap source of power, and cleaner fuel sources are more costly.
NIPSCO has aging coal-fired power plants that will need to be replaced, most likely by natural gas-fired generators. That’s going to hurt financially when it comes about.
That brings us back to the Paris talks. In 2014, President Barack Obama announced the United States would chip in $3 billion for the Green Climate Fund to help developing economies switch to cleaner technology. China is contributing $3.1 billion. Other nations' donations bring that fund to $10 billion.
If the U.S. is concerned enough about climate change that it’s offering to help developing countries pay to convert to clean energy, it should look to its heartland.
Congress should pour significant money into states that rely heavily on coal as an incentive to switch to cleaner fuels.
Indiana officials have fought federal climate rules, but that has been because of the cost to ratepayers and economic development that a quick shift from coal would entail. Providing a federal cushion to reduce the financial pain, and speed the transition, would address those objections.
Invest in coal states, not just in developing countries.