Climate Progress

Sen. McCain believes in much bigger government than I do. Who knew?

I don’t mean his endorsement of France’s nuclear strategy — although it is going to take a lot of government subsidies and mandates to get this country to build trillions of dollars worth of new nuclear plants by 2050, and McCain would have to force several states to build Yucca mountains-type storage sites (see “here“). Nor do I mean his embrace of a cap & trade that will subject most sectors of the economy to carbon regulations.

To a minor extent, I mean his embrace of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic offsets that will be “certified, measured, and verifiable” — since that will get the government in the business of measuring and monitoring everything else in the economy that isn’t in the cap, since offsets are, by McCain’s own definition, “credits for reductions made from sectors of the economy outside the trading system.”

But primarily he is a big government conservative because he loves adaptation, maybe more than he loves prevention, since his climate plan certainly won’t avert catastrophe. Adaptatation requires very big government — much bigger government than prevention does.

BIG GOVERNMENT ADAPTATION

In his speech (here), McCain spells out just the very beginnings of big government adaptation:

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The primary goal of the global warming deniers and their disciples is to waste time and delay action, which is why I prefer to call them delayers (see here).

[This post is inspired by the surprising finding that only 27% of conservatives say the earth is warming because of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels, and the surprising response I got on my post (here), especially those defending the deniers and delayers.]

THE DELAYER’S PARADOX

The deniers and delayers are those who argue that failing to embrace strict reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will not lead to serious or catastrophic impacts. The Delayer’s Paradox is — If the world actually were persuaded by the deniers and delayers, it would lead to levels of atmospheric GHG concentrations that ensure the most catastrophic impacts imaginable, proving them (fatally) wrong.

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McCain’s cost-containment strategy for his climate policy is a fraud. It substitutes a huge amount of low cost, phony emissions reductions both here and abroad — called offsets — for actual domestic emissions reductions. Offsets are “credits for reductions made from sectors of the economy outside the trading system.”

Such an offset strategy is little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and would “involve substantial issuance of credits that do not represent real emissions reductions,” according to a recent analysis by Stanford. Ironically, one of the carbon offsets that McCain explicitly cites, no till farming, does not actually offset carbon emissions, according to the latest science.

KEEPING CARBON COSTS LOW

Every major cap & trade bill needs a strategy to keep the cost of the emissions permits as low as possible to minimize economic pain and to stop politicians from trying to undo the entire system, by, say … oh, just hypothetically now … demanding a carbon price holiday whenever prices get too high or the economy starts to slow (see “McCain reveals cynicism, hypocrisy with call for summer gas-tax holiday, energy budget freeze.”)

Progressives like Sen. Obama typically embrace aggressive clean energy deployment strategies as well as smarter regulations that promote efficiency (see “Could a President Obama or Clinton stop global warming?“). Sen. McCain, like most conservatives, does not support such strategies and indeed has routinely oppose them (see Part 1). Unfortunately, without such policies, the price for carbon could easily reach hundreds of dollars per metric ton (as I explain in “No Climate for Old Men“), causing economic harm and a political backlash.

Another strategy for cost containment is a safety valve, a ceiling on the permit price. A safety valid is a terrible idea that undermines the whole point of a cap & trade (see here and here). Fortunately, McCain opposes a safety valve, as he explains in the newly released “Q&A: John McCain’s Climate Platform.” You can also read his new talking points and fact sheet and the speech itself. But the “Q&A” is the most important of all those.

This leaves McCain very few options if he wants a bill that keeps costs low. Sadly, he takes absolutely the worst possible option — unlimited offsets.

A TITANIC EMBRACE OF OFFSETS

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Conservative presidential candidate Sen. John McCain chose a clever, but ultimately hypocritical location for his big climate speech. I hope the media aren’t fooled by his ironic choice of wind turbine company Vestas as the backdrop, but I have little doubt they will run enticing photos and videos of wind turbines. McCain, however, does not deserve to be linked to such images.

I would title the speech “Not the man for the job,” (see “No Climate for Old Men“). [Full text here, further comments in later posts, and other blog critiques here and here. .]

Let’s be clear — conservatives like John McCain, or more accurately, conservatives including John McCain, are the main reason McCain has to go to a Danish wind turbine manufacturer to give a climate speech. With the major government investments in wind in the 1970s, the United States was poised to be a dominant player in what was clearly going to be one of the biggest job creating industries of the next hundred years. But conservatives repeatedly gutted the wind budget, then opposed efforts by progressives to increase it, and repeatedly blocked efforts to extend the wind power tax credit. The sad result can be seen here:

That’s right. The United States is now a bit player in an industry we launched (we had 90% of global installed capacity in the mid-1980s) — thanks to conservatives, including McCain.

In December, McCain himself failed to show up for a key vote that would have extended the wind power production tax credit, which has been a key driver of wind power in this country — allowing it to compete with our better-subsidized power sources (like nuclear) in this country, and to partly offset the much bigger subsidies other countries have for renewables. The vote would have shifted money from subsidies to the oil industry, which hardly needs it given record oil prices and record oil profits (see “How high must oil go before we end subsidies?“)

McCain’s vote could have broken the conservative filibuster blocking the effort to support renewables, since the clean energy tax package failed 59-40, but his spokesperson said that “he would not have supported breaking the filibuster.” This was but one recent example of a series of missed votes or anti-renewable votes McCain has cast in recent years.

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The science is clear about the reality of global warming and the fact that humans are the dominant cause (see “Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report: Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly“). But, sadly, that isn’t clear to most Republicans.

Anybody who thinks the public debate is over — anybody who thinks the Big Lie doesn’t work — should look at the latest poll results from the Pew Research Center (here):

The proportion of Americans who say that the earth is getting warmer has decreased modestly since January 2007, mostly because of a decline among Republicans.

Only 49% of Republican now even believe that the earth is warming! Thank you so much deniers, delayers, and mainstream media (see “Media enable denier spin 1: A (sort of) cold January doesn’t mean climate stopped warming” and other links at the end).

Even more worrisome is just how many people don’t believe humans are the cause of warming:

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Once your power source has reached, say 10% of the electricity grid, let alone 20%, it should be time to cut the cord to government funding.

Yet after more than $70 billion dollars in direct subsidies, billions more in insurance subsidies, plus another $13 billion available through the energy policy act of 2005 — Sen. McCain and others still feel that climate legislation must not merely create a price for carbon dioxide that would advantage all carbon free sources of energy, but that we must also throw billions of dollars of more pork at the industry. At some point, infatuation has turned to obsession (see “McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants (and seven Yucca mountains) costing $4 trillion).

I am not against building new nuclear power plants, far from it (see “Is 450 ppm (or less) politically possible? Part 2: The Solution.”) But when is enough enough in terms of massive taxpayer support for a mature industry? We had such an incredible clamor for welfare reform in the 1990s, to change “government’s social welfare policy with aims at reducing recipient dependence on the government.” If we reduced the poor’s dependence on government, why not the super-duper rich?

TOTAL SUBSIDIES TO NUCLEAR APPROACHING $100 BILLION

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The fading hopes for the Lieberman-Warner climate bill have all but ended (see E&E News, “Sponsors lower expectations for Lieberman-Warner bill,” subs. req’d, reprinted below).

Serious climate legislation had been in critical condition for some months (see “Boucher lets conservatives block House climate bill” and “Don’t hold your breath on Lieberman-Warner passing in 2008.”). Doctors and family members finally pulled the plug this week, and the patient appeared to lose all vital signs. The coroner listed the cause of death as “apathy.”

The only hope for revival now rests in the faint possibility that Lieberman-Warner turns out to be either an immortal cop, a vampire private detective or possibly a relentless, indestructible killing machine from the future that had taken on the guise of so-so climate legislation in an effort to fulfill its mission of ruining life on this planet for homo “sapiens.” [Note to self: That was a bit harsh.]

More seriously, too many Senators simply wanted to do too much watering down of L-W, plus we have the little-known provision of the Constitution that says all pieces of legislation aimed at sparing billions of people from unimaginable misery must receive 60 votes. The messy details are below:

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The fact that our country has a National Environmental Policy Act means we should have a national environmental policy, and any national environmental policy is bound to take into consideration global warming, right?

Wrong. On two counts.

The U.S. is sorely lacking an updated environmental policy. It’s been over a decade and counting. With the EPA as example, and based on its condition as of late (see here, here and here), the climate’s looking grim.

As for a cohesive national policy that takes into account global warming’s causes and impacts? Think again. States have been infinitely more active than our federal government (and we thank them).

Presented with this gaping problem, Christopher Pyke and Kit Batten co-authored and released a paper yesterday entitled “Full Disclosure,” calling for an Executive Order by the next president to require consideration of global warming into federal policy decisions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). They argue the government has this ability and is already authorized under NEPA to exercise it. (more…)

For nearly 2 months now, Senator Clinton has been outperforming the closing polls in primary state after primary state. And no one can possibly say that Senator Obama had a good past three weeks, with the reemergence of Reverend Wright. Yet this time he outperformed the recent polls in both states.

This suggests that in the only other big issue to rise in the last week of the campaign — the gas tax holiday — Obama did not lose votes taking the principled position. As I (and many, many others) have blogged, a gas tax holiday would most likely benefit the oil companies more than the the average consumer. Also, it sends a terrible message about future climate policies (namely that some weak-kneed president might roll back carbon prices the first time the economy hit a rough patch after a cap-and-trade system was passed) — see “Gas tax holiday, Part 3: It is cynical and indefensible no matter who proposes it.”

Clinton proposed the gas tax holiday Monday April 28, eight days before the two primaries. So what happened among late-deciding voters? Here is the answer, based on CBS’s exit poll numbers (overview here, Indiana here, North Carolina here):

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“A nuke in every garage” is the GOP nominee’s energy and climate plan.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) made a stunning statement on the radio show of climate change denier Glenn Beck this week:

… the French are able to generate 80% of their electricity with nuclear power. There’s no reason why America shouldn’t.

The Wonk Room, which has the audio, writes of the interview, “McCain Seemingly Agrees With Glenn Beck That Solutions To Climate Change Can Be Delayed. That is lame all by itself. But the statement quoted above is even more radical. McCain is repeating his little-noticed uber-Francophile statement from his big April 2007 speech on energy policy, “If France can produce 80% of its electricity with nuclear power, why can’t we?”

Why can’t we? Wrong question, Senator. The right question is — Why would we? Let’s do the math.

The U.S. has some one hundred nuclear reactors providing about nearly 100 Gigawatts of capacity (see here) and nearly 800,000 Gigawatt-hours of electricity, roughly 20% of total U.S. power. For the record, France has only 59 reactors, capacity of about 63 GW, generating 550,000 GW-hr (some of which is exported), covering nearly 80% of their usage (see here). [Note to Sen. McCain: France is a much smaller country than ours.]

WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR US TO BE 80% NUCLEAR?

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