Center for Business and Public Policy
at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Welcome to my first posting on the CBPP blog.  I am honored at the invitation to join the list of distinguish contributors and hope to continue the tradition of providing informative and thoughtful content to our readers.  Now on to my post!

The editorial in Tuesday’s Daily Illini titled “Sustainability investment guarantees return” extols the virtues of the newly increased student Sustainability Fee.  Back in 2008, the annual $5 Fee was created by student referendum to fund projects that “help establish a sustainable campus environment by financing initiatives such as green buildings, engagement of the university community, recycling, energy efficiency, and environmentally responsible purchasing.”  This past year another referendum raised the Fee to $14 per student per year.

The Daily Illini’s editorial claims that Fee helped pay for a $450,000 lighting efficiency project at the Krannert Center that would save $70,000 annually for the next 20 years.  Assuming that these figures are correct, the implied 14.5% Internal Rate of Return (IRR), while not overwhelming, is a solid return on a capital investment particularly given current macroeconomic circumstances.

The existence of the Sustainability Fee raises two questions that I want to address.

(1) Why the need for a student Sustainability Fee if the projects it funds provide such good financial returns to the University of Illinois?

For readers of this blog and for general members of the University community, the answer is probably self-evident: budget problems.  The State of Illinois and the University can barely (and sometimes not) cover current operating expenses, leaving no room for projects with large upfront costs that provide future benefits.  That is, there is no money for long-term investments.  I am not saying that all projects funded by the Sustainability Fee will provide at least a 14.5% IRR, but one can envision many other energy efficiency projects on campus that could yield high returns that go wanting for lack seed money.

(2) Why would the current generation of students want to impose costs on themselves when the majority of benefits accrue to future generations of students?

Looking at the 2010 referendum results, the $9 increase in the Sustainability Fee passed with 77.1% of the vote.  While that seems like an impressive margin, only 13% of the student body actually voted on the referendum.  This means that the 3,885 students who voted “Yes” for the Fee increase imposed over $300,000 in costs per year on “No”-vote  and non-voting students.  (To be fair, the Sustainability Fee is refundable upon request; however, the default opt-in and in-person refund process probably leads to high Fee participation.)  Thus, my first point is that not all of the students choose to impose the Fee.

Next, since undergraduate students are only on campus four years, any project with more than a four year payback period will not be financial beneficial to the students.  That is, the generation of students that paid for the Krannert lighting project receives a NEGATIVE rate of return ($450,000 invested with 4 X $70,000 in net savings).

So what is going on here?  It seems true that university students are more concerned with the environment than are the general population, and probably more so for the subset of students that self-selected to participate in the referendum.  Therefore, the students voting “Yes” for the Fee could be gaining non-monetary benefits from the sustainability projects (such as the “warm-glow” of doing the environmentally responsible thing).  However, I have another, potentially more nefarious explanation: their parents’ credit card.  To the extent that parents pay for room, board, and fees for their children, the ability for students to impose the Fee for a cause they feel “good” about is just another way of spending their parents’ money!

I hope you all have a fun and safe Labor Day weekend, see you all next time.

In my last blog, I pointed out the inherent nature of uncertainties in climate projections, and the long list of reasons for particular uncertainties about the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions on the change in future temperature levels, droughts, severe storms, sea level rise, and about measures of economic damages from any such event.  The range of possible outcomes is enormous, but I argued that the uncertainties are not a reason to wait and do more research before enacting legislation to reduce those emissions.  Indeed, the huge range of probability outcomes is a big reason to act now to reduce the possibility of such costly events.

In this blog, I want to expand that point to talk about the various kinds of uncertainties and what to do about them.  I just read an interesting blog by Keith Kloor that lists five kinds of reactions to uncertainty.  I will describe HIS five points, but what they bring to mind for me are the FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF (when a loved one dies, for example).  I’m sure you’ve heard these before:

1-Denial

2-Anger

3-Bargaining

4-Depression

5-Acceptance

Well, those approximately label his five reactions to uncertainty about climate change.  First, one could DENY the uncertainty, which might be done to try to further some political agenda.  Those who want environmental protection might say we KNOW that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will cause significant global warming, and therefore we must act to prevent it.  That’s just wrong; we don’t KNOW that global warming will be significant and highly costly.

In fact, “uncertainty deniers” have done a great disservice to their own cause.  The claim that global warming is certain just gives the other side the opportunity to point out correctly that it’s NOT certain!  But that whole argument is irrelevant!  The relevant problem is that global warming MIGHT be significant and highly costly!

Second, one could react by trying to REDUCE the uncertainty, such as through herculean research efforts to make better predictions.  Research might well be worthwhile, and it might help reduce some of the uncertainties, but it will not reduce all of them, and it might introduce new uncertainties that we’ve not yet considered!

Third, one could try to SIMPLIFY the uncertainties, such as to explain in simple terms the complex scientific reasons for the inherent uncertainties listed in my previous blog.  It’s not wrong to try to explain complex uncertainties, and even to fit them into a finite set of categories, but the danger is that such simplification be taken as a replacement for consideration of all the complexities.   The problem is that simplification may in effect minimize those uncertainties.  Anyway, this kind of reaction is somewhat like bargaining: “maybe if we make up simple categories for these complex uncertainties then they might not seem so daunting.”

Actually, Kloor’s fourth reaction sounds even more like bargaining, when he says “Uncertainty detectives – well all scientists should work hard to understand, represent, and reason about uncertainty (. . .). The conflict is when political opponents seize on this uncertainty as an excuse for inaction.”  Now that is a cause for depression!

Anyway, of course, the fifth and final reaction to uncertainty is ACCEPTANCE: “include uncertainty information in rational decision support systems and policies.”  We need to know what is known, and what is unknown, to be able to make rational decisions as a society to adopt policies that can insure us against the worst possible outcomes.  We at least need to make the right tradeoffs between the costs of that insurance and the benefits of reducing those risks.  We need to undertake any available low cost measures to reduce fossil-fuel-fired electricity generation, to increase energy efficiency of vehicles and appliances, to increase alternative fuel use, to build water storage that can help deal with a possible increase in the number of droughts, and to build levees that can help deal with a possible increase in the number of severe storms.

Accepting the fact of uncertainty means giving up the idea of building in those protections because we know things will get worse.  Instead, it means building in those protections because things might get worse, and they might get a lot worse.

Nobody has any doubt that climate forecasts are uncertain.  They are uncertain with or without anthropogenic (human caused) effects of greenhouse gas emissions.  Then, when trying to gauge the effects of humans, we have to take the difference between the uncertain climate forecast with extra emissions and the uncertain forecast without extra emissions.  That only compounds the uncertainty!

Suppose for example that without our extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, the temperature in 2050 is predicted to average 50°F plus or minus 5°.  And suppose the temperature with our current rate of emissions is predicted to average 52°F plus or minus 5°F.  Then the difference (the effect of emissions) is not just 52-50 = 2°F.  Rather, it could be anywhere between 57-45 = 12°F, at the high end, or 47-55 = -8°F, at the low end.  We just don’t know.

That simplified example is overstated.  But look at the figure from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report’s “Summary for Policymakers”.  It shows a set of model simulations with a range of results anywhere from no global warming to about 4°C (which is about 7°F).   That is a lot of uncertainty, but that figure does not reflect all possible uncertainties.  Those include (but are not limited to): uncertainties about the amount of GHG emissions in the future, about the effect of those GHG emissions on ambient atmospheric concentrations, about the effect of ambient atmospheric concentrations on air temperature, about the effects of air temperature on ocean water temperature at different depths, about the feedback effects of ocean water temperature back on air temperature, the effects of all those changes on polar ice caps, the effects of polar ice caps on sea level rise, the effects of sea level rise on millions of miles of coastline around the world, and the effect of all those changes on economic damages.

Many have taken this inherent uncertainty as a reason not to act now, but instead to wait, to undertake more research, and to try to reduce that uncertainty.

That may be a natural initial reaction, but it is not a good one.  It assumes that uncertainty reduces the need to act, when in fact increases in uncertainty only increase the need to act!  That is not to say research is unwarranted, or that we have nothing more to learn. We can and should try to find out more and try to reduce uncertainties.  But a lot of that research may raise additional considerations and uncertainties!  Uncertainty is inherent to the problem and will never disappear, so waiting for resolution of the uncertainty means waiting forever and doing nothing forever.

Uncertainty itself is a problem we need to face, as it raises additional costs we can reduce.  A single hot summer or drought is a problem with which we have learned to cope.  But now we don’t even know whether we are facing that same level of heat and drought, or perhaps much more heat, reduced rainfall, extreme storms, huge loss of landmass, etc., etc., etc.  It is the unknown possibility of such loss that ought to make us act now to protect ourselves.

To the extent that anthropogenic GHG emissions raise uncertainties about future climate, the more we need policies that are resilient to those uncertainties: policies that increase our abilities to deal with drought, to make it possible to increase crop production with less rainfall, and to protect ourselves against the possibility of storms worse than Katrina.

Which brings us to the key distinction between adaptation and mitigation.  One way to protect ourselves is to adapt to droughts and storms, as just mentioned.  But another way to protect ourselves against those adverse possibilities is to start now to mitigate climate change by reducing GHG emissions.

It’s an old expression.  But, ARE you worth your weight in gold?  New record-high gold prices on Tuesday – along with Nolan Miller’s column on gold – inspired me to take another look.

On the face of it, valuing an average life sounds like a morbid, if not impossible task.  However, governmental agencies at all levels use a concept called the Value of Statistical Life (VSL) when making many different kinds of safety and regulatory decisions.  At its heart, the VSL tells us how much society should be willing to pay to reduce mortality risks over an affected population.   For example, guardrails make highways safer, yet they only appear on curved sections of road, because the extra cost of installing rails along the rest of the highway does not justify the relatively few fatalities averted.  In other words, we have NOT found it worthwhile to spend what would amount to $20 million to save one more life! 

Different agencies and regulatory bodies use different VSL numbers, calculated using different methodologies.  But a new study by Kniesner, Viscusi, and Ziliak (2010) estimates that what we ARE willing to spend to save an average American life is between $7 million to $8 million (2001 dollars).  THEY are not making a moral judgment, they are just reporting the moral judgments that actually get made.  The estimated value of statistical life (VSL) is $7-8 million.

To be clear, when it comes to a specific life, not a statistical one, we often are willing to pay any price.  For instance, when Baby Jessica fell down a well in Midland, TX, no one asked how much it would cost to save her.  The U.S. military takes this principle one step further with their doctrine of “leave no man behind”, which effectively places an infinite price on saving a comrade’s life and retrieving the fallen.

This brings me back to the original question, are you worth your weight in gold?  In short, yes!  An average adult American’s life is valued at more than TWICE his or her weight in gold on the open market.  The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that the average American adult (male and female), ages 20-74, weighs approximately 175 lbs.  At its high nominal price on Tuesday of $1245 per troy ounce, that 175 lbs of gold would sell for about $3.16 million.  (Note: 14.583 troy ounces per pound.)  Compared against Kniesner, Viscusi, and Ziliak (2010)’s VLS estimate, humans seems quite valuable relative to gold!

You probably read about “Cape Wind”, a proposal to build 130 wind turbines off the coast of Massachusetts.  They will be 440 feet tall, covering 24 square miles of Nantucket Sound, with a cost of more than $1 billion. 

Yes, we need to shift from carbon-intensive fossil fuels to other cleaner renewable fuels.  But is this the way to do it?  An article in the NYTimes says “Opponents have argued that the venture is too expensive and would interfere with local fishermen, intrude on the sacred rituals and submerged burial grounds of two local Indian tribes and destroy the view.”

Yes, all those environmental costs need to be taken into account, but I think all those complaints are just a lot of wind.   I could care less about affecting the view of some rich Kennedy’s beachfront property.  No, for me, the problem is in later paragraphs, which say:

“The current price tag for a fully installed offshore wind system is estimated at $4,600 a kilowatt, nearly double the $2,400-a-kilowatt price for a land-based system, … .  By comparison, production tax credits and other incentives have driven the cost of land-based wind power to less than 5 cents a kilowatt-hour in some places, and that’s still more expensive than other sources like coal and hydropower.”

Coal is cheap!  Wind power is extremely expensive by comparison (and solar power is even MORE expensive).  Maybe those renewable alternatives are worthwhile, and maybe they are not.  But how can we ever tell, if policymakers keep trying to decide this issue for us??

Neither Barak Obama nor any other politician has the expertise to decide whether wind power is the right alternative, or something else.  They just want to “do something” about global warming.  Okay, fine, but the thing to “do” is to enact a carbon tax, or a permit price per ton of carbon dioxide emissions that reflects the true social cost of those carbon dioxide emissions.  THEN if wind is cheaper, we’ll get wind power!  And if wind power is still too expensive, then the true experts can get on with the business of finding what IS the cost-effective alternative to burning fossil fuel.

So ALL the arguments both for and against wind power are a lot of wind.   Any decision in the political arena will lead to excess costs.  A carbon price will allow the experts and the market to decide.

Who should pay for the cleanup and damages in the Gulf of Mexico?  The rig was owned by Transocean and leased to British Petroleum (BP), while some drilling services were provided by Halliburton.  Here is some information from today’s New York Times, before we do some analysis:

“BP and Transocean have been named by the Coast Guard as “responsible parties,” which means they must cover all cleanup costs, including those incurred by the Coast Guard and other government employees.

“They will also have to compensate people and businesses for things like property damage, lost business revenue and harm to ecosystems. BP’s liability bill is capped at $75 million and Transocean’s probably at $65 million, but those caps could be lifted if the companies were found to have acted with gross negligence or to have broken rules that led to the spills.

“Or the government could rule that the spill involves more than one incident, which would mean higher caps. And three senators have introduced legislation to raise the $75 million cap to $10 billion.”

Economists have long espoused the “Polluter Pays Principle”, which might make you think those companies should pay for the damages.  First of all, however, that principle involves two completely different concepts.  Discussions in the popular press are usually related to issues of fairness, while economists are usually interested in issues of incentives, behavior, and economic efficiency.  Economists would say that the polluters should have to pay, primarily to give them the proper incentives for precaution in the first place.  If the polluter faces all of the potential costs of their actions, and can adequately judge the probabilities of an accident, then the private cost-benefit analysis is the same as the social cost-benefit analysis: the whole project is only worthwhile to the extent that the benefits exceed the cost, maximizing economic efficiency.

By the way, if the polluter might go bankrupt or otherwise avoid paying the cost, then that is a possible justification for earlier government action, in the form of regulation to make sure they take the proper level of precaution in the first place.

The other issue is fairness, which is primarily a personal value judgment.  Economists don’t have any special expertise about what is “fair”, but they do have something to say about how market forces shift around the burden.  Those who actually pay can be quite different from those who write the check, and fairness ought to be about who actually pays!

This oil spill is a great example.  The moment the spill is discovered, we see immediate declines in the value of BP and other companies’ stock, and we see immediate declines in the value of local homes, fishing fleets, and other businesses that might be damaged.  Most likely, some of those homeowners or businesses will sell out now, either because of frustration or because they were already planning to retire and move somewhere else.  Others buy those homes or businesses for cheap.  Then those new owners are physically damaged when the oil hits the coastline and fishing areas.  I use the word “physically” here, because they are NOT damaged economically.  Yes, their home or business is negatively affected by the spill, but they already bought the property for cheap, which makes up for it.  Nonetheless, because of physical damages, they can sue BP and other polluters.

If they are successful, then they reap a net GAIN from the whole fiasco.  Those who really lost but sold out early may never be compensated.

Similarly, some BP stockholders now sell while the stock price is low.  Others buy the stock for cheap, and they may be forced legally to write the check to the “damaged” parties, but they don’t really bear any burden at all!  The fact that they bought the stock for cheap makes up for having to write the check.

Does this system collect from the “responsible parties”?  The owners at the time might be responsible, but if they sold out, then the new owners write the check even though they are not responsible for the spill.

Does this system prevent people from taking “benefits” from imposing pollution on others?  Not a bit!  The BP owners at the time of the spill may be “responsible”, but they may not be getting any benefits at all from having used sloppy and inexpensive precautionary measures.  Their purchase of BP stock just got them the same expected rate of return that they could have earned in any other investment.

Who did “benefit” from the pollution, or from using cheap and inadequate precaution against a spill?  And should those people be made to pay back their ill-gotten gains?  For better or worse, those who got the “benefit” of cheap oil production are you and me!  We’ve been buying cheap gasoline for quite a while now, produced in a way that does not cover the true social cost of production.  We are the culprits, not the oil companies.  Maybe we should be made to pay back our ill-gotten gains.  But again, it can’t happen, as we’ve already sold our 8-cylinder Pontiacs and bought new fuel-efficient hybrids.

These market responses combine to make proper compensation impossible.  You can’t collect from those who really took advantage of others, and you can’t find all the people who really lost from the spill.

Nobody likes new taxes.   When policy wonks like me talk about addressing the problem of global warming by introducing a carbon tax, nobody listens (even though all of the tax revenue could be returned by cutting OTHER distorting taxes on labor or on investment!).  Instead, policymakers like to use the Manhattan Project analogy, essentially saying that we can solve the whole global warming problem just by research and development (R&D), innovation and diffusion of new technology.  We’ll just throw money at the scientists, and they will solve the problem for us.  Policymakers want to subsidize or require wind power, solar power, and other low-carbon technologies.

Here is why that idea will not work, for reasons based on some new research in a book called “Accelerating Innovation in Energy: Insights from Multiple Sectors”, edited by Rebecca Henderson and Richard G. Newell.     To see what might work for energy, they look at technology innovation in all the other sectors where R&D has been successful (the internet, chemicals, agriculture, and semiconductors).  They find that three elements were key in ALL of those success stories: “(1) the substantial, differentiated, end-user demand that enables private firms commercializing the technology to anticipate healthy returns; (2) the sustained funding and effective management of fundamental research; and (3) the development of an institutional environment that includes robust mechanisms to promote the widespread diffusion of both knowledge and technology and that favors vigorous private-sector competition.”

My point is all about #1: there has to be demand in the market for the technology.  No matter how much money Congress throws at the problem of research into new energy technologies, the program will not be successful unless people want to USE those new technologies.  And people will not particularly want to use those new low-carbon technologies, unless they face a carbon tax!  The researchers and developers of new low-carbon technologies might have great ideas, but those ideas will not come to fruition unless people are chomping at the bit to get those new technologies and use them to increase their profits or reduce their carbon tax burden.

My own thinking about this problem relates to the fundamental reasoning for any government policy intervention: the private market works fine unless you can point to a fundamental market failure.  One market failure is the pollution externality from carbon emissions, and that can be addressed by a carbon tax.  A different market failure is that any private firm might not have sufficient incentive to undertake R&D if they don’t capture all the benefits from it.  Patents only last for 17 years, not all ideas can be patented, other firms can see those ideas, and other firms can get similar patents for similar technologies.  These “knowledge spillovers” are a possible justification for government intervention to subsidize basic research, the kind of research that private firms would not undertake sufficiently.

But we still have two different market failures!  Two different market failures require two different policies to address them.  Subsidies for research might help address the knowledge spillover problem, but we still need a carbon tax to get people to want to use those technologies.

That is why we can’t solve the global warming problem by just throwing money into research.

I spent a good chunk of last week working with US and Mexican colleagues, looking at data from a forest conservation program in Mexico. This “Payment for Environmental Services” (PES) program is in the highly threatened area where Monarch butterflies stay over winter. The program pays producers and communities not to log their forestland, as a means to halt the rapid deforestation that has threatened the area for years. While in many cases, PES programs have been placed in regions with little initial threat of logging, this region is at the opposite end of the spectrum. The program operates in an area with a very high threat of logging, and the real worry is that the most tempting lands left are those with the relatively pristine, dense forests – the ones in the core of the Monarch butterfly area.

At first glance, one might think the program looks like a great success. The land inside the program area is much more heavily forested than the land outside, so a quick comparison of average forest cover argues that the program is working. At a second glance, the program looks like an abject failure. Comparing deforestation rates, we see more logging inside the core region than outside, so clearly the payments aren’t working. The real problem of course is twofold: first, the core land was selected to be in the program because it was more forested. Second, as other lands are deforested, the core zone becomes increasingly attractive to loggers, and it becomes harder and harder to keep the illegal loggers out.

These PES programs, where villagers are paid for providing an environmental service, are notoriously hard to evaluate. First is the problem that many such programs are put in places where people would likely have never cut down the forest in the first place. So the program may be only paying people for doing something they would have already done anyway (“additionality”). To determine the true opportunity cost of preserving this land – i.e. to determine whether these communities would have kept their forests intact without the payment – it’s helpful to have a control group to compare them to. But finding true control groups is tricky. For example, in places where there is a lot of logging pressure, by taking some land out of production, other neighboring land becomes more valuable, and therefore subject to higher logging pressure (“spillover effect”).
If this second effect is in place, just comparing the land use of those receiving the payment to those who are not will give a biased result. Since the program is driving increased logging into the control group, it’s going to look like the program is working amazingly well, even though overall deforestation hasn’t changed.

After trying to explain the pressure for logging using physical characteristics of the land and transportation cost, I found that when one looks at the map of deforestation, deforestation follows community boundaries amazingly well. So, for all that one would expect the high-value forest to get cut first, or land close to roads to be particularly at risk, deforestation, at least in part, seems to come down to community governance. Some communities have not only ceased logging, they are patrolling their forest to keep their trees safe. Other communities are not being so diligent. In some cases the illegal logging is spilling over from neighboring logged regions. In other cases, the community itself is split, and the faction that didn’t agree with the decision to participate in the conservation program just went ahead and logged anyway. We also observe some communities who refused to take the money even though they were formally losing the right to log. Rumors are that leaders in these communities did not want to give up the opaque payments they receive from the forestry companies in exchange for the very transparent payments they would receive from the conservation fund. Besides, illegal logging is rarely prosecuted, so losing the right to log was not apparently as great a threat as one might hope.

Why do we care? One reason we might is that a number of countries are looking at imposing these PES programs to pay for carbon sequestration (often referred to as “reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries, or REDD).   The point is that when we consider any form of payment for environmental service, we need to consider the community institutions needed for such a program to be successful. Now, the situation in this conservation program in Mexico is complicated by the fact that land is often managed communally, but even if one is relying on a group or institution to organize private property owners, one could see similar problems. Second, much land in developing countries, particularly land that might be the target of a carbon-based reforestation program, is owned collectively. If all we are interested in is preserving carbon, we may just want to target well governed communities, to ensure that PES actually produce what was purchased. If we want to deliver development goals, we may need for some thought to go into designing PES programs that not only pay communities, but also help them establish the institutional structure needed to deliver the services purchased.

This week, I’ve been travelling in Paris, to make a presentation at an OECD meeting on “encouraging low-carbon vehicle technologies”.  Now I’ve moved on to Barcelona, and in a few days fly to Istanbul.  I’ve been sightseeing “old Europe”, with very narrow city streets that are really just alleys at best, where walkers share the space with intermittent bicycles and mopeds.  The occasional delivery van is the only four wheeled vehicle that must venture down some of these alleys, just to reach the shops where they have to deliver their goods.

It is all very quaint, and picturesque.  Anybody who really needs to get somewhere just rides the metro.  Perhaps the dense grid of subway stops is not surprising in a city the size of Paris, but Barcelona has a similar number of stops on many routes, all around the city.  The population is about 3 million.  I don’t think that any city of 3 million in the United States has dug so many subway lines for convenient public transportation.

The narrow streets and convenient subways reflect the culture and history of the place.  Given the topic of my presentation, however, I have to wonder if it reflects the current policies in place.   Has the high tax on gasoline (“petrol”) encouraged these citizens to buy mopeds instead of cars, and to vote more funding for public transportation?  Or has the number of mopeds and subways induced the people to vote for high taxes on petrol?

I don’t know, and it would be very difficult to sort out the direction of causation.  But I do know that “old” Europe is a long way ahead of the U.S. in terms of low carbon footprint.  We in the U.S. see congested highways as an indication that we need to spend more money on highways!  That kind of reaction will never get any of us out of our cars and into public transportation.  For that we need infrastructure, which requires exactly the wording I used above: “culture and history”.  It cannot be built overnight.  The existing trajectory for building of highway infrastructure will put us on the path to future emissions, which sow the seeds of future global warming.

I’m easily as patriotic as the next American.  Last night I cheered when Bode Miller won the gold metal in the men’s “super combined event” at the Vancouver Olympics.  But I really have to wonder if the rest of the world is right that the United States has already caused more than its share of what will be a huge global warming problem, and we’re just not doing enough about it.  It’s not much warmer yet, but CO2 concentrations have already increased enough to guarantee another 5 degrees warmer climate.  If we don’t change our culture of driving, our way of life could be history.