Guest Editorial: A Carbon Tax Would Be Good for the E&P Industry

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Guest editorial A few weeks ago, a very passionate discussion took place within the SPE reservoir online community about climate change and global warming. The issues were, not surprisingly, about the reality of global warming and about the role of human activity. This was certainly the most passionate debate this online community has had for the past few years, with a lot of people denying either the concept of global warming, or the role of an anthropogenic (i.e., man-induced) effect on greenhouse gas emissions. As I am not a climate scientist, I did not join the discussion. However, I have learned a few things on this subject by reading a lot of literature: Climate analysis and modeling is extremely complex due to the number of parameters playing a role, and the importance of interactions between parameters (including higher-order interactions, i.e., interactions between interactions). Climate behavior is not intuitive and sometimes is counterintuitive. This makes simple “good sense” analysis very unreliable and often misleading. And there is some confusion between climate forecasting and weather forecasting. SPE produces high-quality technical literature through our peer-review process. In the domain of climate science, there are dozens of peer-reviewed papers/articles stating that there is likely a man-induced impact on climate change, and not a single one stating the opposite. I mean peer-reviewed by reference organizations, not a group of friends peer reviewing each other. For these reasons, it appears to me that climate change caused by an increasing greenhouse gas effect, mostly the result of carbon dioxide emissions, is likely, even if I have no absolute factual evidence for that. Most important is the fact that, globally, a growing and already important number of people, including the general public and decision makers, have the same opinion and related concerns. Also, this opinion is very widely shared within the younger generations. I had the opportunity as SPE president a few years ago to meet a large number of university students all around the world, and I have been very impressed to see the concern about climate change by the vast majority of these students. And the discussion in the SPE online community I mentioned earlier was joined mostly by experienced members and included few (if any) younger members. For those who want to persuade people and politicians that this is not an issue, it looks like the battle is already lost, and the policy of the current US administration cannot change long-term trends, although it may delay things a bit. A consequence of all this is the development of “green” alternatives. I note that the meaning of “green” is unclear for many people: does it mean decreasing emissions of polluting agents, such as sulfur compounds, nitrogen oxides (NOx), fine particles, etc., all detrimental to human health? Or does it mean decreasing emission of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide? Or does it mean both?