The Tap and The Tub

According to economist Ralph Chami, it was his colleague Dinah Nieburg who came up with "The Tap and the Tub."

For the more action-oriented among us (I am one) it can seem that adopting a new way of framing things is an extra step, and extra steps are an error. Isn't this slowing things down, when speed is of the essence? But an emergency — say a fire in a building — has a sequence that must be understood before it is acted on ("Save the People. Then put out the Fire").

Most of us understand what must be done when a building is on fire. But we strain to grasp the full scope of climate change, and how we can usefully respond.

What is "The Tap and the Tub?" How does it help us with this emergency?

The Tap

The Tap is a metaphor for the open faucet that is adding atmospheric carbon to our atmosphere, primarily from human activity, from the burning of fossil fuels.

The tap has been running for a long time. It opened wide during the industrial revolution.

Suspended in the atmosphere of our planet, there is CO2 generated by exhaust from the tailpipe of the Chevy BelAir I drove in high school. Fumes from Bill McKibben's Plymouth Fury made a contribution, too. It was McKibben that reminded us of this as he gave a talk at UC Berkeley last summer, on the hottest day of 2024.

We are surrounded, in a ghostly way, by the side effects of all our carbon generating activity. The driving. The jet we took to Hong Kong last year. The carrier ship, bringing us oranges, bringing us laptops. And phones. And sneakers. The manufacturing. The cattle raised for our dinner table. The concrete poured for the foundation to our house. Over time, all this has its impact, and the results have mingled — and lingered — in the very air we breathe. The tap is open. As long as it stays open, more and more atmospheric carbon is being added to the already robust accumulation, trapping heat, changing our world.

The Tub

And the Tub? It is a metaphor for the atmospheric carbon already in our environment. And what is just now arriving. Some of this carbon — not all, unfortunately — is stored by trees and plant growth, and by the ocean.

About 25 percent of global carbon emissions are captured by plant-rich landscapes such as forests, grasslands and rangelands, according to the UC Davis CLEAR Center. Our oceans absorb roughly 25 percent of additional carbon dioxide emitted from human activities, annually.

These are are hardworking systems.

Turning Off the Tap. Draining the Tub.

Like our response to a building on fire ("save the People, put out the Fire"), Dinah Nieburg's way of breaking down this catastrophe is binary. For me, this has been fantastically useful. She has taken the problem of climate change, which is often described as "Too big to get your arms around," and she has cleaved it into two halves.

An example of Turning Off the Tap is what California has done during Gavin Newsom's administration. With solar and wind replacing gas-fired power plants, bolstering these energy sources with batteries, we are generating more than 50% of our power in California from clean energy sources. Obviously, more needs to be done, and the administration that just arrived in Washington will create impediments. We need to be clear-eyed, hard-working, and tenacious. But we are on the path, and that path is one of reduction.

That's turning off the tap. It is a constellation of initiatives, non profit organizations, companies, governmental agencies, university programs, philanthropists and investors, all working, collectively, to wean us from fossil fuels.

Draining the Tub is less well understood. But recognizing what we are already doing in this area is critical to our doing more of it.

Some of the essential work of Draining the Tub is done (as mentioned) with natural systems. These are the most effective ways we have of removing and storing emitted carbon, which will otherwise wreak havoc, as it has already started to do. We cannot wait for Greenland's ice to melt, for new shipping lanes to open up in the arctic, and for all the permafrost of Siberia to become a bubbling bog.

A Real Deal

The European Green Deal, approved in 2020, set in motion directives and regulations that established (or expanded) clean energy investment. Some of this investment has been in the form of controversial "carbon credits," which have attracted accusations of being a shell game. In fact, there has been Greenwashing, as it is called. And a polluting company that purchases carbon credits is still a polluting company.

But are we aiding the process of Draining the Tub with these mechanisms? The answer is "Yes, and." I believe the critical points we need to understand and to work with are:

1. Reforms are being made, but we do not have time to revolutionize our economic system.

2. Enormous amounts of capital are needed to bolster existing carbon sinks, and to protect them (our forests and oceans, but also seagrass and mangrove).

3. We now have improved mechanisms that direct millions of corporate dollars to proven carbon mitigation. And this includes natural systems.

What are these "Improved Mechanisms? What do they accomplish?

An example that economist Ralph Chami likes to give is Microsoft. If Microsoft is going to be doing business in the EU at all in the year 2050, they will need to be carbon neutral. Which is (not to put too fine a point on it) impossible, unless they change utterly their business model. What they can do, however, to avoid being walled out of the EU, is to invest — and invest heavily — in carbon offsets, providing the robust capital needed for other companies contributing to the new, green economy.

In California, the GreenHouse Gas (GHG) Protocol is addressed by the Air Resources Board, who certify offset credits, which may be purchased, transferring needed dollars to Green companies. Andrea Neal of Blue Capital phrases it this way: financing GHG reductions "helps generate Blue Capital to drive circular carbon recovery and transitional fuel developments."

If you'd like to see how we're speeding up the process of Draining the Tub — and get a glimpse of an improved future — look to work being done by Blue Green Future. In New Zealand, the Hinemoana Halo initiative provides for indigenous protection, care, and management and monitoring of New Zealand rivers, coastal waters, and of the ocean.

Dinah Nieburg, who coined the phrase "The Tap and the Tub," is part of the team that helped secure four million dollars for this program.