The world is getting warmer. The weather is getting weirder. Climate change is here. So are climate deniers.

Soundbites and tweets are replacing reason and analysis.

Are some people being confused about progress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

The simplest way for a state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions sounds absurd. Export all industries that generate high-level of emissions. Outsource the emissions. Export the accompanying jobs. Buy the consumer products from the exported industries.

Crazy as it sounds, that is the legacy of the Kyoto Protocol and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Developed countries have increased their consumption of consumer goods while exporting manufacturing to less developed countries. The less-developed countries are more interested in local jobs and foreign trade revenue than environmental and greenhouse gas emission controls.

The Kyoto Protocol developed the concept that accounting for emissions should be based on where the product is produced.

In the last 20 years, outsourced emissions from developed countries account for more than all reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries.

Thus, a Hawaii resident who buys a cell phone is causing emissions to rise in several countries. The total emissions associated with the phone is totally hidden. The buyer can’t compare the life cycle emissions associated with different phones.

There are other ways of hiding emissions. The Kyoto Protocol assumed all agricultural operations to be net zero.

Thus, using diesel-powered farm equipment to chop down the entire Amazon rainforest, to pulverize the trees into wood chips, to ship the product to Europe, to be burned to create energy, was assumed to have zero impact on the climate.

Creating Silos

A decade ago the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill. To gain support from the agricultural sector, the EPA was forbidden to analyze how U.S. ethanol mandates would convert American farms from growing soybeans to corn, and how this would result in the expansion of soybean operations in the Amazon and other less developed areas.

It’s all about creating silos, establishing artificial boundaries, and relying on fact-less assumptions to make it appear that we are making progress.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals No. 12 is titled, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” Target 12.8 states, “By 2030, ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature.”

This goal supports switching from a production-based accounting system to a consumption-based accounting system.

In essence, life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of a product are assigned to the consumer of the product.

The Gas Company, dba Hawaii Gas, has a problem with this approach. The gas company buys methane from North American. The methane is called natural gas and is shipped to Hawaii by converting it into liquefied natural gas.

Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. On top of that, the methane is extracted using fracking. The technique generates high-amounts of fugitive emissions, that is, emissions which impact the planet, but which escape current regulation.

The Gas Company should not be rewarded for denying climate change.

By contrast, practically most of the petroleum used by the Hawaiian Electric does not come from fracked wells.

This means that for each unit of energy that is purchased by Hawaii residents, those that purchase the fuel from the Gas Company are doing far more damage to planetary survival, than those who get electricity from HECO or Kauai Island Utility Cooperative.

Hawaii Gas argues that they are producing clean energy — energy that burns cleaner than petroleum — and that the extraction emissions are not their problem.

During the NextEra-HECO merger proceeding, Alicia Moy, CEO of Hawaii Gas, explained the complex ownership model of her company. She reports to a local board and to Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation which owns Hawaii Gas. MIC is externally managed by the Macquarie Group. The Chairman of the Macquarie Group is a climate denier who addressed climate change at the 2016 Macquarie Group annual shareholders meeting. (“There are two sides to this debate.”)

There are two sides: those who will destroy the planet for profit and hide behind hidden unavailable emission data, and those who want a world fit for their grandkids.

The Gas Company filed a rate case with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission.

The commission granted participant status to three groups to discuss climate change impacts.

The three groups — 350 Hawaii, Life of the Land, and Hui Aloha Aina o Ka Lei Maile Alii — filed joint testimony on March 21 aimed at getting the commission to adopt a customer-based greenhouse gas emission accounting system.

The Gas Company should not be rewarded for denying climate change.

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