Global Ed Day Speaker: Fossil Fuel Costs Exacerbate Climate Challenges

The cheap price of fossil fuels will continue to stymie efforts to combat climate change and reduce air pollution, according to Professor Michael Greenstone, an economist and director of the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute. He delivered an all-school lecture on Groton’s Global Education Day, November 12.

 

Several factors affect the climate change equation, including that energy is critical for growth—in fact, no country with a high standard of living has low energy consumption, Professor Greenstone said. Developing countries strive for greater energy access, which inevitably leads to greater pollution because cleaner, renewable energy sources remain significantly more expensive than fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas).

 

Fossil fuels, once thought to be finite, are now considered abundant, he explained, in part due to fracking. Today fossil fuels supply 81 percent of total energy in the U.S.; in two decades, he predicts that will fall only slightly, to 74 percent. And the road to renewables is a much steeper climb in developing countries.

 
The speaker, who was chief economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, demonstrated the quantifiable health costs of fossil fuels through a study on China's Huai River Policy, which provided heat to residents north of the river, but not to those living south. Residents who had the heat, and therefore the associated fossil fuel particulate pollution, had a lower life expectancy of three years. “Particulate matter air pollution is the greatest threat to human health globally,” Professor Greenstone said.

 

Solutions do exist, he assured the audience in the Campbell Performing Arts Center, but they rely on incorporating the cost of fossil fuels' damage—to human health and to climate change—into the market price via a carbon tax, as well as investing in innovation, particularly around lower-cost, high-efficiency batteries to store power.

 

Students peppered the speaker with questions after his lecture. “Our speaker went a long way in giving our students something to think about with respect to their responsibility to the environment,” said Director of Global Education Nishad Das. "The more we do now, the less future generations will need to do . . . to meet their own needs for a clean environment."