Stowell: Poor communication by scientists caused bill's failure
When a cap-and-trade bill was proposed in 2009 to combat climate change, it, like other recent legislation, was mired in political debate.
But as the battle lines emerged, seemingly strange bedfellows came with them.
Environmental groups and a smattering of major corporations backed the bill and encouraged congressional Democrats and a handful of Republicans to support it through the House of Representatives.
Those congressmen did, and the Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill eked out a narrow seven-vote margin in the House before floundering in the Senate.
So why did companies like Dow Chemical and General Electric that would be affected by climate change legislation, align themselves with the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy and others of the sort?
"We would like to have regulatory clarity," said John Stowell, vice president for energy and environmental policy at Duke Energy, which also supported the bill. "That is done best by a legislative process, rather than by bureaucrats at the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)."
The company, he said, especially favored the bill's cap-and-trade component, which would have allowed Duke to count carbon offsets like planting trees or promoting no-till farming against its carbon limit in both American and international projects.
"A reduction made in carbon dioxide in Brazil has the same environmental effect as it does in South Carolina," Stowell said Tuesday afternoon in the USC School of Law Auditorium. "We spent an awful lot of time working on the offset issue, because it was going to mean such great savings to our customers and shareholders."
Waxman-Markey didn't pass, which emphasizes the need for effective communication about climate change, Stowell argued in the latest installment of USC's Duke Energy Executive-in-Residence lecture series. Behind its failure, he posited, were ideological divides, regional differences, its bulky 1,100 pages and pervasive climate change skepticism.
Stowell focused on the latter explanation, arguing that the issue stemmed from members in the scientific community.
"Scientists walked into a big trap where ... they didn't know how to talk to the American people and Congress in terms they could understand," he said. "Because they weren't able to do that, they simply said, 'The science is solid.' ... To members of Congress and the American people, it was sort of a belittling statement."
"The scientists are essentially saying, 'Because of my multisyllable explanation and my chemical formula, I'm going to change your lifestyle,'" Stowell continued later in his lecture. "That's not good enough for the average person."
Even after the bill was halted and the EPA began regulating greenhouse gases, how scientists and others present the case for curbing climate change is still worth discussion. Stowell speculated this is because a similar bill will emerge in about six years.
His suggestions for the next round? Write a cleaner, more concise bill; emphasize the potential to create jobs; find champions for the cause and win the support of moderate constituents with a more moderate bill.
His advice to scientists was more blunt.
"Either ... be quiet, or get a PR firm."