Climate Progress

A couple of commenters here worry that Obama seemed to put energy independence on the “back burner” by suggesting his clean energy plan was the “first thing” he would cut to make room for the $700 billion bail out rescue deal. Significantly, that isn’t the message heard by at least one group of crucial voters — undecideds.

During the debate, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg ran a dial group of 45 undecided voters in St. Louis, Missouri: “These voters had an unmistakably Republican tilt, voting for President Bush by a 2-to-1 margin in 2004 and self-identifying as 33 percent Republican and 27 percent Democrat.” What did they hear?

On one of the most important issues to these voters — who will do a better job achieving energy independence — Obama … more than doubl[ed] an already impressive 20-point lead on the issue to 44 points. Obama scored some of his highest marks on our dials when talking about the need to make America energy independent. Even those who felt [Obama lost] the debate agreed in our follow-up focus groups that Obama was the more persuasive candidate on energy independence.

How is it that some seasoned clean energy folks listening to the debate came away with one message, whereas undecided voters came away with the exact opposite message? Welcome to the real world of political messaging!

Let’s look at what Obama said on clean energy during the debate. First, he made clear that a revolution in energy policies was one of his top priorities. When asked by moderator Jim Lehrer what priorities he might he have to give up as President because of the $700 billion financial rescue plan, he said:

But there’s no doubt that we’re not going to be able to do everything that I think needs to be done. There are some things that I think have to be done.

We have to have energy independence, so I’ve put forward a plan to make sure that, in 10 years’ time, we have freed ourselves from dependence on Middle Eastern oil by increasing production at home, but most importantly by starting to invest in alternative energy, solar, wind, biodiesel, making sure that we’re developing the fuel-efficient cars of the future right here in the United States, in Ohio and Michigan, instead of Japan and South Korea….

And I also think that we’re going to have to rebuild our infrastructure, which is falling behind, our roads, our bridges, but also broadband lines that reach into rural communities.

Also, making sure that we have a new electricity grid to get the alternative energy to population centers that are using them.

That is a strong, thoughtful, and unequivocal message.

Since Obama didn’t really answer the question directly — nor should he have (see below) — Lehrer asked the question again, and here is where Obama made what I would call a tactical debate mistake:

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Installed U.S. capacity of baseload geothermal power is 2958 MW. Our geothermal power is set to double over the next several years, according to “U.S. Geothermal Power Production and Development Update,” by the U.S. Geothermal Energy Association.

The following table gives the power currently on-line, in Phase I (secured rights, exploration drilling), Phase II (confirmation being done), Phase III (final permits), and Phase IV (production drilling underway, facility under construction):

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I had said I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a question on energy tonight. What I should have said is that I wouldn’t be surprised if McCain repeated his big energy lie, that he supports alternative energy, which of course he never has.

Let me briefly hit the big picture on the debate. The two insta polls out, from CBS and CNN, show that McCain lost by a large margin, by 13% or so. That large a gap means independents in particular didn’t like his performance (by 22% in this poll). And that is no big surprise since for independents, who fundamentally don’t like partisan politics — that’s why they aren’t a member of either party — repeatedly showing contempt for one’s opponent is a highly visible and undesirable quality in a potential president, especially someone who is supposed to be a reach-across-the-aisle bipartisan guy.

On the energy front, McCain continues to push a lie that has been so well debunked factually, you simply have to wonder what is going on inside his head:

I have voted for alternate fuel all of my time…

No one can be opposed to alternate energy.

I don’t know which is of those statements is more disturbing. The first is a staggering lie as the voting record demonstrates irrefutably (see “The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma” and below).

The second sentence presumably means “no one in their right mind can be opposed to the obvious energy solution for this country” or, more simple, “support for alternative energy is just plain common sense.”

It is a shockingly delusional line from someone who has one of the longest and strongest records against alternative energy in the Senate. It is also frighteningly similar to the equally earnest but equally delusional defense he offered at the Aspen Institute when asked about the eight straight votes he missed on extending renewable energy tax credits in the past year:

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Sure looks that way. I wasn’t entirely thrilled with everything in the Senate bill. But given how dreadful congressional Democrats and environmentalists are at messaging, it is surely the best anybody could hope for.

The House Dems threw out elements of the tax package that were crucial to get the support of Senate Republicans and the White — and that apparently is going to kill the tax credits for the year. If so, shame on them.

Here is the Greenwire story:

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There is no final deal on the financial bailout, which been a precondition for the GOP nominee showing up in Mississippi tonight. But in the real world of presidential politics, he never had a choice.

I have been blogging elsewhere on how one applies rhetoric to winning one-on-one debates. Next week I will convert some of those posts into a discussion of how rhetoric can apply to winning one-on-one debates on climate and energy. But for those who are interested, here are my pre-debate thoughts:

• Why Smart Talkers Lose Debates
• A Can’t-Lose Debate Strategy

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a question on energy tonight. But there simply may not be time, given that this is a foreign-policy debate with a bunch of economy and bail out questions thrown in. Still, I will try to blog tonight on anything energy or climate related that comes up.

Iceland has long been touted as a hydrogen economy pioneer. So it is quite shocking that electric vehicles — both plug-in hybrids and pure battery electric cars — crowded out hydrogen at a recent Reykjavík conference.

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[Climate Progress has covered the Pickens Plan many times since Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your energy plan is half-brilliant, half-dumb. Here Earl Killian makes a strong analytical case that the “half-dumb” part of the plan is in fact a wasteful, wildly impractical — if not outright absurd — distraction.]

Thomas Boone Pickens is a billionaire who made his money in oil and corporate takeovers. He began investing in natural gas in 1997, and in wind power in 2007. In 2008, he went public with the Pickens Plan via a website and a well funded advertising campaign. Here we analyze the Pickens Plan, as presented here, which begins by correctly observing:

America is addicted to foreign oil. It’s an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security.

The Pickens Plan as presented consists of two parts:

1. Take the natural gas that we currently use to generate electricity in the U.S., and use it to fuel transportation instead, and
2. Build wind power to produce the electricity lost in step 1.

The Plan As Presented — CNG vs. Electricity

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The Global Carbon Project released its “Carbon Budget 2007” [big PDF] today. The report shows a continuation of the grossly unsustainable growth rate in CO2 emissions since 2000, which is nearly four times the growth rate of the 1990s:

As reported by AP:

… it was large increases in China, India and other developing countries that spurred the growth of carbon dioxide pollution [3%] to a record high of 9.34 billion tons of carbon (8.47 billion metric tons)….

Scientists were surprised and dismayed because the increase “exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities” projected by the IPCC and because the increase occurred despite rising fossil fuel prices:

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If you are in DC, don’t miss Friday’s American Meteorological Society seminar. For those who can’t attend, a video is usually put online days later (I’ll post it should that happen). Here is a program summary and the bios of the very impressive speaker list:

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Reuters reports:

“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,” Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.

I’m a big fan of the Veep, but there is something young people can do that is vastly more important right now — and that is to get politically involved immediately. If you are too young to vote, you can still knock on doors.

Yes, the CGI is nominally nonpolitical. Fine, don’t mention which candidate is most committed to solving the problem. Everybody already knows — well, almost everybody (see “Clinton Global Initiative jumps the shark, invites McCain to keynote on Energy Solutions“). Okay, so Gore will have to spell out exactly who in another speech. Fine.

I am all for civil disobedience. But this isn’t the civil rights movement or the struggle for India’s independence, where you are appealing to a general populace that will be impressed by the nonviolence of a mass of marchers and shocked by the response of a brutal establishment. Thus, the scale and nature of the problem makes civil disobedience at best a weak solution to the climate crisis — with one possible exception.

Civil rights had Dr. King and India had Gandhi to create a mass movement. If Gore really believes that civil disobedience is an important strategy — then he needs to lead the effort and go chain himself to some fences and sit in front of some bulldozers with thousands of others. If he won’t, then this is all just talk. Gandhi and King certainly never sat around with a bunch of world leaders in a big, fancy hotel and urged others to do that which they were not prepared to do any time or any place, over and over again, until the cause was won.

Gore made some other interesting statements, including a reference to Martin Luthor King. It’s Getting Hot in Here live blogged Gore’s CGI session with Bill Clinton:

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