I am (slightly) less pessimistic than David Letterman. If, however, it is indeed “too late” as he says, then he has certainly nailed the reason: “We have had no leadership.”
How do you know when an oil company spokesperson is lying? See if her lips are moving.
Last December, when Congress worked on the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Senate Democrats proposed shifting several billions of dollars in tax breaks from the oil industry to pay for an extension of tax credits for wind and solar energy development. The oil industry screamed “tax hike,” President Bush threatened a veto, and the provision was removed before the bill was passed.
Now in Colorado, Gov. Bill Ritter, champion of a new energy economy in that state, is being maligned by the oil and gas industry over an issue on the November ballot.
When we last left GM Vice Chair Bob Lutz, he had dismissed global warming as a “total crock of shit” (see “General Motors is full of crocks“). That would be Vice Chair of Global Product Development, not, say, a finance or sales guy, but somebody who is in charge of scientists, engineers, technicians, and oh, I don’t know, the entire future product line of the largest U.S. automaker.
So this bastion of good judgment goes on cable TV’s leading ridicule-fest, The Colbert Report — justification enough to fire him for cause — to plug the Volt, as it were, and goes Cro-Magnon again:
NUTSLUTZ: I accept that the planet is heated, but like many noted scientists, I don’t believe in the CO2 theory.
COLBERTCOLBERT: … It’s just sunspot activity.
NUTSLUTZ: In the opinion of about 32,000 of the world’s leading scientists, yes.
Well, I accept that Lutz is a human being, but like many noted scientists, I don’t believes he is evidence of the evolution theory.
Anyway, responding to a piece on Huffingtonpost by Josh Nelson, “General Motors Executive Doesn’t Recognize Global Warming as Fact — He Should Be Fired,” GM’s Director of News Relations, Tom Wilkinson, had this helpful comment:
Congressional Quarterly has been suckered by the Greenwasher from Arizona — just like pretty much everyone else, as recently noted.
CQ just ran an article, “McCain Facing Tax vs. Energy Dilemma,” about “The Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008″ (described here) that asserts:
Republican presidential nominee John McCain may have to pick between two of his campaign’s principles next week when the Senate takes up an energy tax bill that would help subsidize new and existing renewable energy incentives with relatively small tax hikes on oil companies.
Then again, maybe he won’t be there to choose.
McCain has campaigned in favor of federal investment in wind power, solar energy, low-emission cars and trucks, and “clean coal” technology, all of which are included in the energy measure. But he also has said repeatedly that he opposes increasing taxes on oil companies.
[With apologies to Jon Stewart] Oh, Congressional Quarterly, why do you mock me?
You might think that a publication with the word “Congressional” in its name would write articles about members of Congress that were based on their Congressional voting records. Well, you wouldn’t think that, because you are readers of Climate Progress and wise in the ways of the world. But some random visitor from outer space would think that. All I can say is, stupid alien.
This is an incredibly easy vote for John McCain, a man of no remaining principles, to go by the last month — he picked a friggin’ global warming denier for is running mate, after all (see “Turns out McCain doesn’t care about global warming“), and he was accused of lying too much by Karl Rove! McCain thinks renewables “dont’ work,” he hates government subsidies for renewables, and his Big Oil buddies who both manage and fund his campaign hate even the tiniest reduction in their pork.
CQ does understand very recent voting history of enough to know what McCain is probably going to do — skip the vote entirely.
I am tough on Andy — precisely because he is the most thorough and high-impact climate reporter. He reports on his blog:
I’ve received quite a nice honor for my sustained examination of the science and politics of global warming, from the North Pole to the White House. It’s the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism….
The award, named for the NBC television correspondent and anchor who died in 1996, is given to journalists operating pretty much below the radar, on stories that simmer instead of explode.
Kudos, Andy. Well deserved.
Deseret News, owned by the Mormon Church and “usually described as moderate to conservative” may have begun the slow march toward climate reality. A story this month titled, “Bark beetles are feasting on Utah forests” begins
A vicious cycle is brewing in Utah: Bark beetles are killing a lot of trees in the state. Dead trees are fuel for wildfires, which experts say contributes to global warming. And climate change is now being blamed for an increased population of bark beetles.
The Dixie National Forest bears one of the most obvious signs in Utah of the mark being left by a tiny tree predator commonly known as the bark beetle, a wood-boring insect that in large enough numbers can decimate an entire forest.
“We’re talking hundreds of thousands of acres they have basically been wiped out — pretty much the entire spruce component in the Dixie National Forest,” said Colleen Keyes, forest-health program manager for Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. “It’s really something to see. You would be very surprised. It’s hard to describe until you see it — it’s just dead trees as far as the eye can see.”
The fact that bark beetles wipe out whole species of trees or are a vicious climate cycle is not suprising to Climate Progress readers (see “Nature on stunning new climate feedback: Beetle tree kill releases more carbon than fires” and “Climate-Driven Pest Devours N. American Forests“) — or to our neighbors to the north.
“The pine beetle infestation is the first major climate change crisis in Canada” notes Doug McArthur, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. The pests are “projected to kill 80 per cent of merchantable and susceptible lodgepole pine” in parts of British Columbia within 10 years — and that’s why the harvest levels in the region have been “increased significantly.”
No surprise, then, that the disaster is even bigger in our most northern state, which just happens to be run by a global warming denier. As Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) explained two years ago:
Why is the ignorance of national conservative pundits on energy and climate issues so important? Why do I spend time debunking the Krauthaumers of the world?
Because a large number of conservatives rely on them in forming their opinions on complex issues like global warming. After all, who among us has time to be expert on every subject? The role of conservative pundits is doubly dangerous because they don’t merely spread misinformation to the conservative base, they tell them it is not an important or first-tier issue worthy of their attention. They preach malign neglect.
A good example of how this plays out is an interview my brother Dave did with a Melinda Fredericks, a delegate to the Republican National Convention — see here or use the new widget:
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The whole interview is rather long, but the climate stuff is relatively early on:
Slate magazine is seen as liberal, but is in fact just another status quo publication promoting a do-nothing policy on clean energy and global warming (see, for instance, “Slate and the Post are suckered by anti-environmentalist Newt Gingrich“).
Why else ask for a review of Tom Friedman’s new call to action, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, from the American Bjørn Lomborg? And I don’t mean that in a good way (see “Lomborg skewers the facts, again” and links therein).
I’m speaking about Gregg Easterbrook, well-known fountain of climate and energy misinformation (see, for instance, “People Who Just Don’t Get Global Warming: Gregg Easterbrook and the Editors of the Atlantic“). I’ve already commented on Friedman’s must-read book here. This post will focus on the three biggest energy and climate whoppers in the Slate review.
WHOPPERS #1 and #2: Wherein Easterbrook reveals he knows absolutely nothing whatsoever about renewable energy, energy efficiency, government technology programs, or commercialization:
Hot, Flat, and Crowded is wise to say that American innovation is the best hope for a clean-energy future. The book is wrong to advocate a government-subsidized crash program of energy research–just as Barack Obama calls for $150 billion in alternative-energy subsidies. Government should regulate greenhouse emissions, then let the free market sort out the details, including by funding the research. Government’s track record at setting goals is good; its track record at commercialization is awful. Wind-turbine application went nowhere in the 1970s and 1980s when federally subsidized; actual use has come since the 1990s, when the government bowed out and the private sector took over. Friedman extols various energy-saving gizmos about to become practical, such as inexpensive black boxes for home power management. They sound great–but no government-subsidized research ever would have produced them.
First off, the government has been unbelievably successful at commercializing “various energy-saving gizmos” as I detailed in “Energy efficiency, Part 5: The highest documented rate of return of any federal program.” Indeed, the illustrious National Academy of Sciences verified that a handful of energy-saving gizmos developed by my old office at the Department of Energy have returned a staggering $30 billion on an R&D investment of about $400 million.
Second, the government never “bowed out” of the wind turbine busines. Well, the U.S. government did under Reagan and Bush’s father, but not the rest of the world. Reagan gutted Carter’s large renewable energy R&D program and eliminated the tax credit for wind. But governments in the rest of the industrialized world significantly increased their research and subsidies, and wind-turbine applications steadily improved in the 1980s and 1990s. The U.S. wind industry soared “since the 1990s” because we put in place a tax credit in 1992 (and because we made use of advances funded partly by the Clinton administration but also by other countries) — although growth has been intermittent in this country because conservatives began working hard to cut wind R&D and cut off the tax credit after 2001 (see “Anti-wind McCain delivers climate remarks at foreign wind company“).
But “since the 1990s” was too late. Thanks to the Gregg Easterbrooks of the country — otherwise known as Reagan, Gingrich, Bush and McCain — the United States became only a bit player in a global industry it helped create and once dominated, a bit player in what will certainly be one of the largest job-creating industries in the world. Government R&D and deployment programs not only advance the technology, they advance U.S. manufacturers and market share.
Gregg Easterbrook typifies why this country has no serious energy policy — he seems to be a moderate, independent thinker of a kind that a liberal-seeming publication like Slate should turn to, but in fact he is a reactionary know-nothing, which I suppose is redundant.
[As an aside, Friedman’s book doesn’t advocate a government crash program of energy research. It advocates a government crash program of R&D and one for deployment. I know that because Friedman interviewed me and that entire discussion can be found on pages 187-189 of the book.]
WHOPPERS #3: Wherein Easterbrook pooh-poohs those who are concerned about global warming and reveals he is Lomborg’s less-informed twin:
“Like it or not, we need Tom Friedman.”
So begins Joseph Nye’s cover review in Washington Post Book World on Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — And How It Can Renew America.
Friedman deserves attention because he is the only “big media” columnist in the country who regularly writes on energy and global warming issues. His book is already #59 on Amazon, and will no doubt jump higher after he appears on Meet the Press Sunday, which I would certainly urge everyone to watch. After all, he is not only the most high-profile columnist on this issue, he is the most thoughtful.
And I’m not just saying that because he interviewed me several times. I am quite confident that most ClimateProgress readers will be impressed by this book, even those who may not agree with every foreign policy position that Friedman has espoused. Or perhaps especially those progressives. Why?
Wow, on the single most important issue facing America today, global warming, a fictional character is more knowledgeable than the new GOP VP choice (see “McCain VP Palin is a global-warming-denying, polar-bear-dissing, Pat Buchanan acolyte“):
Okay, Miley Cyrus shares one thing in common with Palin — she talks about global warming even though she doesn’t know what it means. Listen to the latest song by the influential 15-year-old singer who has the title role in the Disney Channel TV series Hannah Montana.
Here are the lyrics:
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