The Advocate. February 6, 2022.
Editorial: With sound economics, a climate action plan can work for Louisiana
To be the first Deep South state with a grandly styled “climate action plan” seems a feather in the cap of Gov. John Bel Edwards. But the accomplishment of this plan on such a wide-ranging agenda requires a great deal of deliberation — and a healthy admixture of common sense, because of the economic and social implications of responses to an enormous problem.
And with due respect to the disparate group of drafters, Louisiana’s climate action plan is to be written less by our governor and Legislature, or state agencies. The key decisions are to be made in corporate boardrooms in New York and London, Houston and The Hague — or for that matter, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo.
In the boardrooms, climate action is a priority. Just ask the governor; he hears this all the time from business executives and plant managers.
Because so much of Louisiana’s economy is dependent on multinational investment, particularly in the oil and gas sector, we need a climate action plan — in fact, we need concrete actions — to meet this global demand.
Some contentious proposals are bound to be debated vigorously. There were numerous dissents by task force members about specifics in the final — and unanimous — adoption of the broad report.
The overall goal is “net-zero” emissions by 2050, a metric adopted by many global leaders and corporate executives, as well as President Joe Biden’s administration. What does that mean for Louisiana?
We reject the all-or-nothing rhetoric that has hobbled this discussion for too long. This is not the Vietnam War, where it was thought necessary to destroy villages to save them.
We see, as did the Edwards commission, climate responses embracing innovation and renewable sources of energy like wind and solar. Louisiana’s energy generation mix is much lower in renewables than that of other states.
And despite reservations from some environmentalists, a huge commitment to “carbon-capture” is vital to reduce emissions in our single most critical economic asset, petrochemical manufacturing.
Edwards and the Biden administration, as well as the corporate boardrooms, are highly focused on sequestering carbon instead of emitting it into the atmosphere. A big part of our energy transition will be making that technology work here.
We also have assets in hydrogen pipelines and a geology that could make industry better able to sequester carbon. A $4.5 billion “blue hydrogen” plant proposed in Ascension Parish is a part of the solution — not, as critics of the industry say, only a Band-Aid on the problem.
The market is betting big on this kind of alternative thinking.
Contrary to some industry advocates, we don’t think that leaving all decisions to the market is reasonable. We all want fewer emissions into air and water. And sensible and science-based government regulation has proven necessary to achieve environmental goals that are broadly shared by Americans.
Is there a middle way between the extremes that so often dominate these discussions? In Louisiana, there ought to be. Just ask anybody living now with the effects of Hurricane Laura in 2020, or Hurricane Ida last year. There aren’t many climate “deniers” among families in those FEMA trailers.
We are only a small part of the emissions problem that is contributing to rising sea levels in a warming Gulf of Mexico. But as a worldwide industrial center and U.S. energy state, we owe it to ourselves and our posterity to do our part, so that future generations won’t be faced with piddling hurricanes that can crank up to Cat 5 monsters in a matter of a couple of days.
That’s why we’re for a climate action plan, as much as we can make its many parts work.
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