Climate Progress

The White House put Stephen Johnson in charge of the EPA in 2005, and he has given the U.S. an anti-regulation, anti-science, anti-law approach to the health of our nation and planet. The White House and its fixer at the EPA are increasingly being sued by the states and challenged by Congress for failure to follow the law.

Last week saw Johnson called before Representative Henry Waxman’s committee and grilled on his refusal to follow the Clean Air Act and probed the White House’s role in the decision. CSPAN coverage of an entertaining snippet of the hearing is available at youtube, where Johnson refuses to answer, Waxman pushes back, Representative Darrell Issa objects to Waxman’s question, and Waxman threatens to have Issa physically removed if he does not cease. Waxman’s commitee has amassed extensive documentation of the White House’s involvement in the EPA’s denial of California’s waiver request that would have allowed it to regulation greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

Two days after Waxman’s hearing, Senator Barbara Boxer’s Committee on Environment and Public Works approved S. 2555, “The Reducing Global Warming Pollution from Vehicles Act of 2008,” which would override the EPA’s rejection of California’s waiver request: (more…)

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) will talk about the climate legislation he will be introducing to the House of Representatives today. Markey is Chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and will be speaking at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, introduced by CAPAF CEO John Podesta.

I received a pre-brief on the legislation last night, and while it is not perfect, it is a much better bill than Boxer-Lieberman-Warner.

In particular, it has the single most important item new climate legislation should have — an emissions standard that stops traditional coal plants from being built [see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 4: The most urgent climate policy (and it isn’t a CO2 price)”].

Starting in 2009, I believe, no coal plant can be built that cannot capture and sequester 85% of its carbon dioxide emissions (a grace period of a few years is allowed for plants built after that time to actually find a place to sequestered the carbon). I will post more on this bill as it is put on line.

More details on the briefing below:

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I made a mistake about the Boxer substitute for the Lieberman-Warner bill. Every year, it allows into the market enough offsets to cover 30% of the total quantity of emissions allowances. I had said it was 15% (here), which was a loophole the size of the Gateway Arch. How big a loophole is 30% offsets? Wait and see.

I had said the three offsets — domestic, international, and international forestry — could make up 15% of allowances because the WRI summary (here) says that “The combination of all three of these mechanisms is limited to 15 percent of total emissions allowances” and because when I read the actual bill (here, page 23), that’s what it seemed to say. But in fact we read it wrong. My apologies! What does this all mean?

It means we have now doubled the number of offsets, which would “involve substantial issuance of credits that do not represent real emissions reductions,” according to a recent analysis by Stanford.

Now when I redo the math, it seems the most likely outcome of this bill is that U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in 2025 would we about the same as they are now, and possibly higher. If that’s the best we can do for a piece of legislation that’s deader than a dead parrot — it is a dead parrot whose body has been given to a veterinary anatomy class for dissection and had its heart removed — why bother?

REDOING THE MATH

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[JR: Here is Bill Becker on a favorite CP topic, see “The tar sands — Canada’s version of liquid coal” and “BP greenwashing.”]

I consider Time to be one of the more forward-looking periodicals when it comes to the environment. But the editors messed up in this week’s edition. The June 2 TIME carries a breathless feature about the potential petroleum bonanza in Canada’s tar sands.

The article’s authors are so giddy with the testosterone-rush of big-ass earth-moving machines that they forgot what a multifaceted disaster this “bonanza” would be. The magazine quotes tar-men in Alberta as they marvel at their own ability to move mountains, literally.

At one open-pit mine, a manager brags that his operation moves enough dirt every 48 hours to fill Toronto’s 60,000-seat SkyDome. “A year from now, that mountain won’t be there,” he says, referring to a wall of black soil. Some of the biggest trucks on earth, 20-feet tall, carrying 320 tons of dirt in each load, crawl through the “stark landscape of jack pine, spruce and poplar forests” like Tonka toys built for Paul Bunyan.

How intense is the mining?

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The short, snarky answer is “no — Boxer-Lieberman-Warner is never going to become law.” The longer, analytical answer, which is the primary subject of this post, is “probably not, thanks to the bill’s many cost containment measures, but it would take us off the business-as-usual emissions path.”

Before explaining why, let me make clear that the vote on B-L-W is a purely symbolic one since it as DOA as a bill can be (see here). Most of the media, most of the public, and most of the world are unlikely to get much detail on bill. They will just see whether a greenhouse gas cap & trade bill can get a majority, if not 60 votes, in the U.S. Senate. So, I would recommend any Senator vote for it — after giving a floor statement explaining that it was in fact too weak. I can’t see casting a protest vote against a symbolic bill while asserting it is too weak. The protest would get lost in the noise. Finally, it would be the height of hypocrisy for a conservative senator to cite progressive critiques of the bill, including mine, as a reasons to vote against it. Anyone who votes against this bill should at least have the guts to say whether they themselves think the bill is too weak or too strong.

WHY THE BOXER BILL WOULDN’T CUT U.S. CO2 EMISSIONS BY 2020
This story begins late Friday night, when Deep ‘emissions cut’ Throat sends me the World Resources Institute’s 14-page summary of the Boxer substitute to the Lieberman-Warner bill (here), with a note, “Does this mean no emission reductions until 2028? See bottom of page 6.” Intrigued, I turned to the bottom of page 6 and read this bullet:

• If all cost containment mechanisms in the substitute are applied, the result could be almost no change in U.S. as compared to business as usual.
  

Uh-oh. When the solid analysts at WRI issue a warning, you can take it to the permit bank. I remember Deep ec Throat’s advice to me many years ago, “Follow the cost-containment money.” That’s what led to my post on McCain’s climate plan, “McCain speech, Part 2: Relying on offsets = Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Now WRI cryptically says, “WRI intends to explore these issues further in forthcoming analyses.” But why wait for WRI’s solid detailed analysis, when I have Boxer’s full text here and my own dependable abacus? I’ll post this as a draft analysis and if any of you out there can find holes in it, let me know.

My rough calculations say that if every cost containment measure were fully used, then U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020 could be about the same as if there were no bill. Needless to say, that’s not a good thing.

Needful to say, however, some of the cost containment measures are not super-cheap (although they are probably all much cheaper than the current cost of European Union’s emissions allowances) — and a lot of auction money is used to promote energy efficiency and low carbon technologies. So if this bill were to become law — which, of course, it won’t because last week it was moved from the “morgue to anatomy class” — then I very much doubt emissions would actually follow business as usual (BAU) trends.

I do believe, though, that emissions in 2020 would probably not be much different than they are today, which is still not a good thing.

So what could happen and what would happen? And should a Senator who is concerned about human-caused global warming vote for or against the bill on this basis?

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I don’t think we do a good job of remembering those who have fallen in service to this country or taking actions now that will reduce the need for such sacrifice in the future.

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I cannot imagine what possessed the New York Review of Books to have theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson review two books on human-caused global warming (see here). It is a subject completely outside of his expertise and one that he has repeatedly said is bunk.

Dyson has previously said stuff directly at odds with the actual scientific evidence, like “There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global” (see “Freeman Dyson, Climate Crackpot“).

Then again, while he was once a brilliant theoretical physicist, he’s never been strong on the applied side of science. He was, after all, one of the “geniuses” pushing Project Orion — the absurdly impractical idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs.

The new article is critiqued by RealClimate (here). But I did want to highlight one amazing assertion by Dyson on how he believes the issue of carbon emissions will be solved soon, which makes all too clear why he should stick with theoretical physics:

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Yes, I recently had a (lame) letter in Nature. Yes, I haven’t blogged on it because of its lameness. But since nothing escapes the blogosphere, I will explain this sorry episode.

I think it safe to say that with this post I won’t be appearing in Nature again. No great loss, actually, as will become clear.

Once upon a time I received an e-mail out of the blue:

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Suntech Profit Doubles–Sales Up 76% - Investor’s Business Daily. “China-based Suntech — one of the world’s 10 largest solar companies — reported first-quarter earnings per share of 33 cents, more than double year-ago earnings of 16 cents. The company pointed to broad global strength and rising prices for its solar products, as governments dole out more incentives to fuel clean energy.” As of 2008, Chinese probably the top manufacturer of PV, a technology that Americans invented.

Governor: Alaska to challenge polar bear listing - AP News. Alaska Governor Sue Palin announced that the state will sue to challenge the listing of polar bears as threatened species. She argued that there is not sufficient evidence to support the listing, claiming that polar bear numbers have increased over the last 30 years. “Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, said Palin, a Republican.” Alaska is the state most painfully being transformed by climate change today — how sad that the governor is in such a state of denial.

G8 Greenhouse Gases Down in 2006, Only Russia Up - Reuters. “Greenhouse gas emissions by all the Group of Eight industrial nations except Russia fell in 2006 in the broadest dip since the world started trying to slow climate change in 1990, a Reuters survey showed”…but the ‘dip’ was only 0.6%. Experts are skeptical of any real policy changes, but rather attribute the dip to higher oil prices and a mild winter.

Toyota building $192M green-car battery plant - AP News. The plant will produce nickel-metal hydride batteries for gas-electric hybrid vehicles, including Toyota’s best-selling Prius. Toyota is currently Japan’s top automaker and the industry leader in hybrids.

Italy Embraces Nuclear Power - NY Times. Within five years, Italy plans to “resume building nuclear energy plants, two decades after a public referendum resoundingly banned nuclear power and deactivated all its reactors.” The change reflects a “growing concern in many European countries over the skyrocketing price of oil and energy security, as well as the warming effects of carbon emissions from fossil fuels.” This is certainly a better idea than building new coal plants!

Carbon Market Could be Worth 2 Trillion Euros in 2020 - Physorg.com. “The global market in CO2 emission rights could be worth two trillion euros (3.14 trillion dollars) by 2020 if the United States joins the scheme, analysis group Point Carbon said.” Carbon reductions are the place to make money this century.

The Sacramento Bee ran an article this week on how, “Plug-in hybrids promise more power, greater efficiency.”

This may not seem like a big deal, but remember this is a state led by hydrogen-Hummer-driving Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised the first statewide “Hydrogen Highway. ” That dream has all but died, as expected, killed largely by the reality of plug-in hybrids (see here).

After many interviews with the newspaper over the years about hydrogen, this was my first one where I wasn’t the one to bring up plug ins. As I told the newspaper:

“Plug-in hybrids are going to be the vehicle story of the next few years,” said Joseph Romm, an energy policy expert with the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

The full Sac Bee article is below:

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