Climate Progress

Who do you think will be the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2012?

“If I had to guess, we just saw the opening statement of the 2012 campaign.”

That’s conservative pundit Bill Kristol, calling into Fox News after the only governor who can see Russia when she stands on a really, really tall building announced she is quitting her job in a few weeks.

And why not?  Top GOP contenders for 2012 are dropping like adulterous, love-sick flies — and let’s not forget “Eruptions of know-nothingism from conservative savior Bobby Jindal.”

And let’s certainly not forget this post-election Rassmussen poll about the woman who wears a polar bear pin even though she is working overtime to wipe the species out:  “64% of GOP voters say Palin is their top choice for 2012, 69% say Palin helped McCain.”

So here’s a little Palin primer on energy and climate:

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“… If he is not ready to risk failure by going all out, failure will be the most likely result.“

If Obama wants the Senate to pass Waxman-Markey — preferably strengthened — then he needs to put the same effort into it that he has begun for health care.  And you, the informed public, must get more involved.

The NYT reported lasted month, “Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care“:

After months of insisting he would leave the details to Congress, President Obama has concluded that he must exert greater control over the health care debate and is preparing an intense push for legislation that will include speeches, town-hall-style meetings and much deeper engagement with lawmakers, senior White House officials say.

Terrific.  Awesome.  About time.  That, however, is also what passing strong climate and clean energy legislation will take, as I’ve said many times.  Tom Friedman argues in “Just Do It,” his recent column on House passing Waxman-Markey (despite its many flaws):

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Judging by emails and comments, many progressives and enviros seem to be under the misimpression that a much tougher climate bill was politically possible.  I myself was under that misimpression for a while.

Now, in fairness to myself (and others), one serious scenario does exist for a tougher climate bill being politically possible — but that involves a very hands-on Obama, which so far hasn’t been his style for passing legislation (see “Obama can get a better climate bill in 2010“).  Also, his advisors are almost certainly telling him to soft-pedal climate science — a serious mistake, since it essentially gives the deniers free reign to shape half of the debate.  I will blog on that shortly.

Outside the DC beltway, much of what goes on in this town is seen as some form of crass, enigmatic sausage making.  Well, as someone who has lived here for over 15 years, that’s precisely what it is.  And it always bears repeating that given modern conservative ideology, which is 100% anti-conservation, “the country can only contemplate serious environmental legislation when we have the unique constellation of a Democratic president and [large] Democratic majorities in both houses, an occurrence far rarer than a total eclipse of the sun.”

Even then, you must contend with the fact that a key part of this new Democratic majority is built upon votes from districts that are relatively moderate if not conservative, people who voted Democratic not so much because they endorse the progressive platform, but because they finally saw the ever-shrinking Republican Party for what it is — a rigidly-ideological movement hat has no solutions to offer for the many problems facing the country, problems that in fact stem from the few times the public mistakenly handed them the keys to the Hummer.

I would also add that in my one year as an American Physical Society Congressional science fellow advising a conservative Democrat from Florida in 1987-1988 — a pre-Gingrich time that was in theory much more conducive to bipartisanship — I never once saw a single member cast a vote purely for the national interest, except when that vote had no bearing whatsoever on their district.  And even then, every vote was still primarily a political calculation, and if their support wasn’t needed for passage, members almost automatically asked for a pass on any vote that could conceivably get them in any trouble in their district.

So how did we actually get a majority to vote for the first major environmental bill in two decades, a bill that is easily demagogued against politically — see this misleading but brutal GOP ad already whipped up against one Dem –  but whose major environmental benefit is decades in the future?

The Politico explains in “Chaos, arm-twisting gave Pelosi win,” excerpted below:

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[This post was reprinted from thinkprogress.]

During the floor debate this morning over the historic American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) received a round of applause from GOP colleagues when he claimed that man-made global warming is a “hoax” with “no scientific consensus.” Broun, citing misleading statistics, also claimed that the bill would hurt the poor and “kill jobs:”

BROUN: Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus. … And who’s going to be hurt most [by ACES] the poor, the people on limited income…the people who can least afford to have their energy taxes raised by MIT says $3100 per family. … This bill must be defeated. We need to be good stewards of our environment, but this is not it, it’s a hoax! … [APPLAUSE.]

Watch it:

Broun’s tired hoax claims aside, Broun’s $3,100 talking point is contradicted by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that that the average cost of the legislation would be only 48-cents a day, the price of a postage stamp, and that “households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020.” A report by the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts also found that the bill would create 1.7 million new jobs, including 59,000 new jobs in Broun’s homestate of Georgia.

- Ben Bergmann

… in a decade, the price to the average American will be just about a postage stamp a day….

There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy.  It’s happening.

Memo to Obama speechwriters:  The price to the average American household will be about a postage stamp a day (see Krugman takes on the “fantasists” of the “burn-baby-burn crowd” for opposing climate action that costs Americans 18 cents a day).

This afternoon, President Barack Obama made a special statement on Waxman-Markey, going well beyond what he said at yesterday’s press conference (see Obama: “I believe that this legislation is extraordinarily important for our country.”)

If you want to know what the best talking points on the bill are, read what he said today.  Not only is this a “jobs bill” (that will create 1.7 million net new jobs across the country) and that “will protect consumers from the costs of this transition” (especially with 7% lower electric bills by 2020), but “the price to the average American [household] will be just about a postage stamp a day,” (as reported by the CBO).

Below is a transcript of Obama’s remarks, and here are some early clips of the actual speech.   Read it, view it, and gain some serious inspiration for the next 48 hours.  There’s no better inspiration than our brilliant and eloquent president. Enough with the Republican falsehoods “misinformation” -– America needs to pass this bill.

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Nobelist Gore is working the phones in his home-state of Tennessee to push for more Waxman-Markey votes.  And Repower America has set up two phone lines that will quickly connect you to your Representative:

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I realize that in the blogging world you get no credit for claiming things after-the-fact.  But what has been obvious to some of us for a while is now I think becoming painfully obvious to the White House and Congressional Democrats:  A serious climate bill is politically easier than a serious health care bill.

The reason is simple.  It comes down to three letters of the alphabet — CBO.  The climate bill always had one big advantage — it pays for itself.  Most of the serious health care reform options on the table, however, add more than $1 trillion to the federal budget deficit according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Making climate action deficit neutral is easy.  Making healthcare deficit neutral ain’t, especially if you want to deal with those 50 million uninsured Americans.

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In the whipsawing environment that is the House of Representatives, the vote for Waxman-Markey is back on for this week, scheduled for Friday.  My sources put the odds of an actual vote at 70-30.

The updated American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) is here (a big PDF).   E&E News (subs. req’d) reports:

House Democratic leaders late last night released a revamped, 1,201-page energy and global warming bill, clearing the way for floor debate Friday even though it remains uncertain if they will have the votes to pass it.

The House bill posted on the Rules Committee Web site has grown from the 946-page version adopted last month in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Sources on and off Capitol Hill said the bulk of the changes largely reflect requests from the eight other committees that also had jurisdiction over the bill, including the Ways and Means Committee and Science and Technology Committee.

Sponsors expect to draft a manager’s amendment later this week that reflects additional deals reached among lawmakers, according to several House Democratic aides.

Perhaps the biggest modification in the new version involves language sought by the nation’s rural electric cooperatives that gives the country’s smallest power utilities a free 0.5 percent slice of the cap-and-trade program’s valuable emission allowances.

So for, nothing terribly shocking has been changed in the bill.  But more changes will be made:

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Climate science denial is in a sorry state when big name deniers screw up the simplest of right-wing talking points. Take Stephen Moore [please!] — the Wall Street Journal editorial board member, Cato Institute senior fellow, National Review contributing editor, and regular CNBC and Fox News commentator.  He was on the Diane Rehm radio show Wednesday about climate change impacts in the United States, with Obama science advisor John Holdren, American Progress president John Podesta, and Bush environmental advisor James Connaughton.  As you’ll see in this post from Wonk Room, Moore has no clue that the “1930s was a warmer decade than the last decade” talking point ain’t about global temperatures (see “Must read from Hansen: Stop the madness about the tiny revision in NASA’s temperature data!“).

Moore argued that the White House’s new climate impacts report is “Stalinistic”:

What I object to about this report is some of the language in this is sort of almost Stalinistic, that there’s an unequivocal conclusion that it’s inarguable that this is happening, that there’s overwhelming agreement among the scientists. None of that is true.

Listen:

Moore also cited the repeatedly debunked Oregon Petition and Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus, arguing it is “highly irresponsible” not to debate the science of man-made climate change. Even though Dianne Rehm admonished Moore for his anti-science outbursts, he continued to pollute the airwaves with Pollyannish complacency . . .

– We’ve talked about global warming as climate improvement.

– The good news is that the bad news is wrong.

. . . an endless stream of discredited lies about global warming and carbon pollution. . .

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Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has arguably done more than any other Governor to promote clean energy and strong climate action.  He certainly has earned the right to be heard on national energy and climate legislation, so I am reprinting this recent op-ed.

California has always been on the front lines of progress in America, leading our country into a healthier, wealthier and more secure future.

From motion pictures at the turn of the 20th century to computer software at the turn of the 21st century, our newest high-tech industries have all been launched here.

We’ve led the way toward a cleaner, greener environment, too. I’m proud that our state needs waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency because our air quality standards are so much better than the national average.

Californians understand better than anyone that we need more jobs and a stronger economy. We need to stop climate change — and our best chance of achieving all three goals is to have Congress put a cap on carbon pollution.

That’s why I’m proud that California has become a leader once again — by championing the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The bill was recently passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, thanks in large part to the strong support of more than half a dozen members of California’s Congressional delegation, including Palm Springs’ Rep. Mary Bono Mack.

A carbon cap is vital because the pollution that causes climate change has risen to dangerously high levels, and that is largely because the environmental costs are hidden. We pay for the fuel we burn but not for the pollution we emit. That pollution causes serious damage to our world, and in the long run, we all pay for it.
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