Global Warming

Climate Change Legislation Must Stimulate Demand, Be Tough On Pollution

Natasha Chart — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:42:26 -0700

Consider these three worrying things: First, there's some risk that putting the wrong type of price signal solely on domestic pollution may transfer both jobs and pollution overseas, while increasing pollution. Second, that prices put on imports, like a recent tariff on imported solar panels, may not withstand the various political pressures brought to bear against it. Third, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proved to have been too optimistic, because climate change is happening much faster than they first thought it would.

Can these problems be solved together? They must.

Preserving Manufacturing

When looking at the state-by-state data for yesterday's post on popular support for the public option, I started off using 2005 census data, but soon found the 2008 data instead. While going through and changing the numbers, which mostly shifted up by some small amount, Michigan's figures were startling just in those three years. But it gets worse.

Between 2001 and 2009, Michigan lost 465,000 residents. It gets worse. The outmigration consists mostly of younger, more educated workers, leaving collapsed home values and eroding the local tax base for essential services and infrastructure maintenance.

Not coincidentally, from 2000 to 2006, Michigan lost 336,000 jobs, mostly in manufacturing. Between 2006 and 2008, the state lost another 74,000 manufacturing jobs. Early this year, Gov. Granholm reported that one in ten residents was unemployed, while talking about retraining efforts the state had implemented to reduce reliance on the auto industry.

If the US continues losing manufacturing jobs, Michigan will have a lot more company in misery.

Nonetheless, international trade agreements and the status of upcoming climate negotiations make it very thorny to implement tariffs. Stiff opposition to trade barriers used to be the bane of developing nations who wanted to protect nascent, homegrown industries from competition with mature manufacturing economies. The same opposition to trade protections the United States and others embedded into the fabric of groups like the World Trade Organization can easily come back to bite us.

Reaping Renewable Jobs

As workers and investors look for new opportunities in the shifting global marketplace, renewable energy seems like an increasingly better choice. Though as Deutsche Bank analysts warn, if the US doesn't have a strong energy policy, investment capital will go elsewhere.

A decent case scenario for solar manufacturing in the US is probably for enough of a tariff to stand to encourage Chinese companies to bring final stage manufacture to the US. A better case would be winning a dumping dispute against China. Yet in a recent reaction to US charges that China was dumping tires in the US, China brought dumping charges against US chicken and auto parts industries. If it works, they'll probably go that route again, and our trade interdependence can make them hard to argue with.

The risk is that any US domestic industry that wants the government to hold back Chinese competition could trigger retaliation against another industry, possibly pitting US industries against each other.

For example, China also has a lock on many of the rare earth minerals, over 90 percent of the available supply of some, used to make wind turbines and many other devices essential to a high-tech green reformation. They've lately been tightening exports. Long-term, the wind industry and the jobs it creates isn't just vulnerable to pressure from China, it's dependent upon them.

For those seeking less conflict, the Deutsche Bank analysis did point to another type of support long provided to the domestic renewable energy sector in Germany, several other European countries, India and a few states here in the US: the feed-in tariff.

Feed-in tariffs establish a base price for renewable energy generation that's paid for across the system, guaranteeing that homeowners and commercial power utilities using less-polluting technologies can sell into the grid.

The local demand support and reliable cash flow makes all sorts of renewable energy attractive, like solar photovoltaic in Germany, a country not known for its abundance of sunny weather. As the Deutsche Bank report pointed out, Germany's seven years of feed-in tariffs created 300,000 jobs, without running afoul of the international community.

Demand support works on another problem, too, the limited availability of clean energy technologies. Last year. demand for PV panels so outstripped supply that customers missed a tax credit window. (If a business misses a tax credit window, I think it can safely be assumed that the situation is serious.) If the global supply chain can't meet the current needs for renewable energy technologies, a steady uptick in demand provided by strong federal energy policy is likely to create a larger window of opportunity for American manufacturers to step through.

And there are a great many other renewable energy technologies, from geothermal to solar thermal, to solar water heating. Congress already showed a willingness to support demand for many of them in the stimulus bill, where business and individual tax credits for renewables were expanded for 2009. Hopefully they can be nudged a few more steps in that direction.

From manufacture to installation and servicing, each of these technologies holds out a chance for a variety of dignified jobs in industries that the recently released Senate climate legislation will already require to pay prevailing wages.

Climate Deadline

The 2007 IPCC report wasn't able to include papers like this 2007 report, showing that the American southwest was on the edge of entering a permanent drought, because the studies came in after their deadline. In the subsequent two years, some environmental indicators, like ice that's melting 30 years ahead of IPCC projections, has shown the IPCC to have been much too optimistic.

Scientists think we may have already locked in a dangerous degree of warming but there are still some hopes remaining if we act quickly.

One thing the US almost certainly can't for is every other nation on earth agreeing to help us solve this problem in a way satisfactory to us. The ensuing standoff could last, has lasted, far too long. Not only will it prevent our using this period of calm before the storm to grow and attract new industries, it may mean we can't even act in time to mitigate the damage that will be caused by worsening droughts and increasingly unpredictable, violent weather events.

Now is the time to address the climate crisis.

So while I admire Sen. Sherrod Brown's commitment to preserving manufacturing jobs, I hope he'll bring all his creativity to bear on helping Senate colleagues open up new avenues of demand for our nation's talented workers, ones that still allow us to move forward in meeting the challenge of preserving our species' global habitat. We'll only meet that challenge if a large portion of the US' labor pool is working hard at fixing it.

Putting A Cap On A Lie About Cap-And-Trade Cost

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 07:05:54 -0700

2007 Was Second Warmest Year on Record

Armand Biroonak — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:00:00 -0700

2007 was Earth's second warmest year on record, tied with 1998. The eight warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years have all occurred since 1990.

Chamber of Commerce continues its clean-air SCARE campaign

Frank ODonnell — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:48:06 -0700

As you may be aware, Senator Boxer’s Committee on Environment and Public Works plans a hearing tomorrow on the topic of “regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.”

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Heari...

As you know, both the majority Democrats and minority Republicans get to call witnesses. We want to focus on the organization represented by one of the minority witnesses, the United States Chamber of Commerce. (Less needs to be said about another minority witness, Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Marlo’s a nice fellow and not that many years ago – after we finished debating on CNN – he was privately bemoaning the lack of a threat of government regulation on global warming. After all, what good is an anti-government rabble-rousing organization without the looming presence of the federal bogey-man?)

Now, on to the Chamber of Commerce. You may have heard of its most recent scare campaign about greenhouse gases. In an effort to frighten Congress into taking away Environmental Protection Agency authority over greenhouse gases (in other words, to reverse the big Supreme Court decision) the Chamber has been running about contending the EPA could soon be cracking down on churches, donut shops and melon farms!

How credible are these dire predictions? Is the donut really about to become an endangered species? Perhaps here is where history should be our guide.

For the Chamber has a proud legacy of hyperbole, hysteria – and downright inaccuracy – when it comes to clean air requirements. In fact, the Chamber has been waging rhetorical war against the Clean Air Act for almost four decades. A couple of examples perhaps should suffice to enable us to evaluate the current scare campaign.

In 1971, a year after passage of the landmark Clean Air Act, the Chamber predicted the law would lead to “collapse of entire industries” – including oil and automotive. http://www.earthportal.org/?p=80#1970AD

This was later seen as a classic example of industry hyperbole – especially because the Clean Air Act has actually led to the creation of scores of thousands of highly skilled jobs. (See, for example, at http://www.meca.org/galleries/default-file/motorvehicleindustryfact%2001... )

But the Chamber was only warming up. In the mid-1970s, it opposed the entire concept of limiting air pollution in already-clean areas.

Yes, under the Chamber’s approach, areas such as the Grand Canyon would have been left completely unprotected from air pollution.

As Time Magazine noted, the Chamber claimed that clean-air restrictions would "mandate undeveloped areas into eternal poverty." (Time Magazine, Monday, Jul. 11, 1977 )http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:nuE_g7RmCKcJ:www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919086,00.html+%22chamber+of+commerce%22+clean+air+and+muskie&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=18&gl=us

Boy, doesn’t this silly rhetoric sound familiar? Once again, the Chamber was left with egg on its face.

Let’s jump ahead to 1997, when the Clinton EPA under Carol Browner was seeking to update and strengthen clean air standards for smog and soot. The Chamber was a leading voice in opposition, asserting that tougher clean air standards amounted to a “travesty” and were “about selling a political agenda in an empty green bag.'' http://pubs.bna.com/NWSSTND/IP/BNA/den.nsf/SearchAllView/A74305CF0D2F714... (As the late comedian Anna Russell used to tell her audiences while describing the plot of a Wagnerian opera , “I’m not making this up you know.” )

Ah, but the Chamber wasn’t done with that issue. You may recall that in the litigation over those clean air standards, the Chamber asserted the Clean Air Act was unconstitutional! Justice Scalia, never to be confused with some left-leading judge, wrote a unanimous opinion slapping down the Chamber’s whacko assertions. http://www.blm.gov/nstc/air/pdf/010227A.PDF

Yes, unfortunately the Chamber has assailed other clean-air controls in the most recent decade. It opposed limits on toxic mercury from power plants, claiming that was simply an “attempt by extreme environmental groups to hinder economic growth and force jobs overseas.” www.progressiveregulation.org/articles/ELR_Mercury.pdf

Even more recently, the Chamber has opposed new smog and soot standards. You may recall that Chamber Vice President Bill Kovacs vowed a “royal fight” against tougher smog standards. http://blogforcleanair.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

You may note that the Chamber did win at least a partial victory in that “royal fight” because the Bush administration ignored science and covertly considered costs when setting those standards. And so now the Chamber would have us believe the EPA would run wild, putting limits on donuts?! Please.

Of course, the Chamber also ran silly knockoff Harry-and-Louise style commercials against the ill-fated Lieberman-Warner climate legislation. http://www.uschamber.com/press/ads/advocate_climatechange.htm

Well, we could probably find other examples, but these should suffice. After all, how many times can you get away with crying wolf? These guys don’t exactly have the Bracewell Giuliani level of sophistication.

When it comes to clean-air controls, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce always seems to favor hysteria over fact. Its current campaign should be dismissed as just one most scare tactic aimed at keeping those membership dues rolling in.

Stonewall Steve's War on the Planet

Frank ODonnell — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:50:01 -0700

It's been an item of debate in D.C. circles for some time: who was really the worst head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?

Was it Anne Gorsuch Burford, who resigned from the EPA in disgrace after being cited for contempt of Congress?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3418-2004Jul21.html

Or is it EPA’s current head, Stephen Johnson, known as “Stonewall” for his rocklike refusal to answer questions from Congress about White House interference in crucial EPA decisions. http://blogforcleanair.blogspot.com/2008/06/stonewall-steve-johnson.html

Well, the verdict is in. Thanks to his utterly disgraceful behavior last week, the winner – really the biggest loser -- is Stonewall Steve. In an effort to continue currying favor with a dying regime, this disgusting pseudo-religious hypocrite http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2008/01/03/epas_holy_roller.php
has declared war not only on his own agency, but on the planet.

Yes, we’ve all read the stories of how Johnson caved in to White House pressure on such issues as rejecting California’s effort to enforce greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles and EPA’s national standards for smog. (In both cases, the White House has invoked “Executive Privilege” to hide exactly what happened from Congress. http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?id=2030 )

But it is worth taking a moment to examine Johnson’s most recent act of sycophantic duplicity, which happened last Friday afternoon, the typical time for newsmakers to dump out “bad news.” Johnson’s bad news – at least for the planet -- was EPA’s formal alleged response to the Supreme Court decision which held that EPA did indeed have legal authority under the Clean Air Act to deal with global warming, unless the agency determined that global warming posed no public health or the environment.

Yes, that decision should have been a no-brainer. And last year, EPA’s professional staff drafted not only the declaration that global warming was a threat (the so-called “endangerment” finding), but tough new greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles. The White House sent both to the circular file, and Johnson declared last December that EPA would continue to examine the issue.

Once again, EPA’s dedicated professionals went to work – preparing a detailed “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking” which noted that the Clean Air Act could indeed be used to reduce global warming emissions – and that tougher vehicle standards could actually save consumers up to $2 trillion by prompting use of more fuel efficient cars that would waste less gasoline. (By the way, aren’t we supposed to favor ideas that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Apparently not, if the car companies go whining to the White House.)

Once again, the White House stepped in – and actually turned the EPA finding upside down. It issued a document http://www.epa.gov/epahome/pdf/anpr20080711.pdf
which showcases attacks on EPA by the White House Office of Management and Budget and other cabinet agencies (Commerce, Transportation, Agriculture, and Energy) oriented towards protecting special interests rather than the environment. They declared -- contrary to EPA's staff views -- that nothing constructive could be done about global warming without action by Congress.

As my friend Vickie Patton of the Environmental Defense Fund points out:

"In a move unprecedented in the history of the Clean Air Act, EPA chief Stephen Johnson published a series of denunciations from current White House officials and adopted them as the basis for his own views. Johnson begins the [advanced notice] by noting that the Clean Air Act is "an outdated law" "ill-suited for the task of regulating global greenhouse gases" repeating comments he made to national press earlier today.

But there is no basis for this bald and radical assertion in the document put forward by EPA's own staff. So, to prop up this outlandish claim, Johnson turned to the White House. Indeed, he promulgated the views of White House officials as a preface to disparage the work of EPA's own staff.

Here's the kicker: The senior EPA staff long involved in the development of the ANPR never saw the White House denunciations that Johnson put forward to justify his own utter failure to address the global warming crisis. Indeed, they are all dated within the last 2 days."

So for Johnson, it doesn’t matter if the planet keeps heating up or if he flips the bird to his own agency workers. What matters is sucking up to the little man in the White House.

As Margie Kriz reported earlier this year in the National Journal “Johnson enjoys telling his staff and visitors about his travels on Air Force One, his invitations to Camp David, and his wife's friendship with Laura Bush.”

Stonewall, my boy, you’d better enjoy the perks before you and your boss are both run out of town.

For these heinous misdeeds, the poet Dante would likely send Johnson to the eight rung of his Inferno – a place reserved for charlatans and corrupt politicians. By contrast, Burford, who died four years ago this week, rueful of her days of fronting for another vile, environment-hating White House, would probably only have made it to the third rung, reserved for gluttons.

Climate Kidnappers

Frank ODonnell — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:59:31 -0700

In case there was any doubt about it, the White House has officially said President Bush would veto the so-called Lieberman-Warner climate bill, which the Senate took up yesterday.

Here is a link to the White House "Statement of Administration Principles." (In this case, it might be more aptly named "statement of lack of principles.")

If you parse this diatribe, you will note that it cites the worst-case projections about the potential cost impacts of prior versions of this legislation, without acknowledging that the bill has been tuned up to keep the costs under control—and that most studies have shown the costs would probably be relatively modest anyway. It also employs an old Republican trick: Just brand this a "tax and spend" bill. I thought we were beyond that type of demagoguery, but I guess not.

It is interesting to note that the White House is actually slamming not only Republican John Warner, but turncoat former Democrat Joe Lieberman, who, as the wonderful Kevin Spacey HBO movie "Recount" vividly reminds us, helped get Bush into office in the first place. So much for loyalty. And the White House is blasting Scott McClellan because...?

In all the moaning and groaning about potential costs, the White House never talks about the costs of doing nothing. But, as reporter Chris Holly astutely notes in today's The Energy Daily:

"Ironically [he could have said pathetically], the White House last week issued a congressionally mandated report—four years late and under a court order—that concludes global warming will exacerbate water shortages for agriculture and urban use across the United States; sharply increase heat-related deaths in metro areas; cause billions of dollars in damages from hurricanes, storms and wildfires; and increase the spread of disease from insect infestations and food- and waterborne microbes."

One real irony here is that the bill isn't going anywhere, in large part due to the demagoguery of some big corporate polluters, such as Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, who recently branded the bill a "Mafia" creation. (Sons of Italy, where are you?) Rogers did this because the bill would steer some (though not enough) of the proceeds derived from carbon permits to socially beneficial purposes.

What Rogers wants is that ALL of the carbon permits should be given, free of charge, to polluters such as his company. In effect he is like a kidnapper demanding ransom. In this case, he's demanding that we pay his company to ransom our air!

Even though Bush will be gone soon, Rogers and his ilk will remain to taint future debates on global warming.

Rockefeller Family Joins the Uprising

David Sirota — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:52:41 -0700

In my upcoming book, The Uprising, I report a whole chapter on the increasingly brilliant use of shareholder resolutions as an instrument of powerful political populism. Specifically, I sneak into an ExxonMobil shareholder meeting with a group of activists who deliver a blow to the company on the issue of greenhouse gas emissions. Now, it looks like those efforts are getting a huge boost from none other than the Rockefellers.

Here's Forbes:

Even though Exxon Mobil is posting record profits, some shareholders aren't happy. A group of them said Wednesday the company is overlooking its effect on the environment and the future of alternative energy. But these aren't just any shareholders. They're Rockefellers, the first family of American oil.

They proposed four shareholder resolutions Wednesday to be voted on at Exxon Mobil's annual meeting May 28. The family is calling for the company to reduce greenhouse gases from operations and products, to establish a task force to study the effects of global warming and to adopt of a renewable energy policy.

The concept of the Rockefellers - the cultural image of the Establishment and a family whose companies have often degraded the environment - joining the uprising against the Establishment is difficult to fathom. But it is real - and goes to an important uprising axiom that I discuss in the book: The ability to form seemingly impossible coalitions. Getting the Rockefellers into the forgotten corner of the uprising that uses shareholder resolutions is huge news.

No lung left behind

Frank ODonnell — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:15:43 -0700

What we can learn from the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” report

It has become part of the rites of Spring, along with television’s May “sweeps,” the Kentucky Derby, and Cinco de Mayo.

But unlike these vernal pleasures, the American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report, released May 1 at the start of the traditional “smog” season, teaches some important lessons about the quality of the air we breathe. http://www.stateoftheair.org/

Lesson number one: We can make progress. This report card on the state of our nation’s air does show that we have made progress in dealing with the most common air pollutants, ozone (or smog) and fine particle soot. This is perhaps a counter-intuitive finding given seven years of reactionary Bush policies.

Progress has been especially evident in states such as California that have taken aggressive action – through cleaner cars, tougher smokestack requirements, etc. – that have reduced the number of dirty-air days compared to prior eras.

Take, for example, Riverside, California, one of the smoggiest parts of the nation. In 1998, it had 57 days of dirty air for smog, with levels above the national health standard. By 2006, the number of dirty-air days had been cut almost in half – to 30.

Lesson number two: We still have major problems. Despite the progress, the Lung Association report documents the continuing threat that air pollution poses to the health of Americans. Indeed, two of every five people in the nation live in counties that have unhealthful levels of either smog or fine particle soot.

The poster child for this year’s report is Pittsburgh – admitted cleaner than in days gone by, when the odiferous city was described as “hell with the lid lifted off” – but a somewhat surprising first place as the dirtiest city in American for short-term exposure to deadly particle soot. (It’s the first time in the nine-year history of this annual report that California was bumped from the top spot for one of the major pollutants under scrutiny.)

Lesson number three: Progress appears stalled. And this is where the Bush policies come in. One of things you have to know when it comes to air pollution control is that it takes a fairly long time between adoption of a policy choice and real-world results. For example, in 1997, the Clinton EPA demanded that states in the eastern half of the country reduce summer-time smog-forming emissions from electric power plants.

But the Clinton team gave the states about seven years to put the new plans in place (in order to permit an orderly transition which involved the manufacturer and installation of appropriate pollution control equipment). And so the air in 2004 started to be noticeably better than before – a fact which the Bush administration has milked as if it had something to do with the improvement. Unfortunately, the Bush policies appear to have shown up in what the lung association found was a general stall towards progress in the past few years. Some of that stall, no doubt, has been the general failure of the Bush administration to enforce clean air requirements for electric power plants and to suggest – through various attempts to create new loopholes – that coal burning power producers could continue skirting the law.

Lesson number four: we need new legal cleanup protections. Ironically, one of the few Bush positive steps towards cleaner air – a rule EPA issued in 2005 designed to require further electric power cleanup http://www.epa.gov/cair/ -- appears to be in legal jeopardy.

Despite the relatively leisurely projected pace (in this case, industry had a full decade or more to comply), corporate miscreants led by coal-happy Duke Energy have sued and may win in court on a legal technicality. If that happens (we should know within the next three months) we may need Congress to step in and write these new cleanup requirements into law. Senator Tom Carper, D-DE, has drafted legislation that would do the trick.

At least one other new protection is crucial: accelerated cleanup of existing diesel engines which generally have been grandfathered from control requirements that apply to new engines. My friends at the Clean Air Task Force http://www.catf.us/projects/diesel/background.php
report that as many as 13 million of these engines are still in service, spewing soot that cause both lung cancer and global warming. As the Task Force notes, it’s entirely possible to clean up these engines today with modern technology.

Congress needs to appropriate more money to help clean up school buses and other diesel engines. And the EPA (probably after Bush leaves town) should consider requiring that all these engines clean up.

Human warming hobbles ancient climate cycle

Michael Kwiatkowski — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:38:58 -0700

Before humans began burning fossil fuels, there was an eons-long balance between carbon dioxide emissions and Earth's ability to absorb them, but now the planet can't keep up, scientists said on Sunday.

Global warming neglected by media

Anita Chariw2 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:02:35 -0700

Of the 3,201 questions the major TV networks directly asked the presidential candidates in 2007, only eight were about global warming.