Climate Progress

First John McCain and now Newt Gingrich turn out to love the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Better start checking them both for U.S. flag lapel pins!

On the Hugh Hewitt show (see here), Gingrich dissed the new ad he made with Speaker Pelosi on climate and offered “real solutions:”

HH: Now can I ping you a little bit, Mr. Speaker? You made the ad with Nancy Pelosi, and I think that campaign is asking Americans to suspend critical thinking, not that I’m on one side or the other.

NG: Well…

HH: I just think thirty second ads on something that complicated asks…it’s not the way to debate this, because it almost makes it impregnable to debate. Did you consider the downside of doing the ad with her?

NG: Yeah, we spent six weeks thinking about that decision, and I do a newsletter every week. You can go to xxx.xxxx.xxx [sorry, for some reason, my PC just refused to copy that link], my first name, and sign up for it. It comes out for free. Over 700,000 people get it. And next week will be on energy policy and environmental policy. And I’m going to outline a stunningly different view than Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. But my message to conservatives is you’ve got to get on the stage and debate. You can’t stand off-stage and scream no. And I’m perfectly happy, if you’ll look at the ad carefully, we said this was a topic we disagree on a lot of issue. But we agree we should try to solve this. And I’m perfectly happy to offer real solutions, and I’ll give you one example.

HH: Go ahead.

NG: If the United States produced the same percent of electricity from nuclear power as France, we would take two billion, two hundred million tons of carbon a year out of the atmosphere. And by that one step, we would be 15% better than the Kyoto goals.

Now, we’ve already seen that if we did what France does — and yes, it boggles the mind that two leading Freedom-fry eating conservatives are publicly advocating doing just that — we’d need, say 600 to 700 nukes by 2050, depending on whether we embrace electricity as a transportation fuel [See “McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants (and seven Yucca mountains) costing $4 trillion“].

But Gingrich’s final statement suggests

1. He wants to build 1400 nukes and shut down every last coal plant, every gas plant, and every refinery or (more likely)
2. He wants 400 nukes, he wants to shut down every coal plant, and he made a classic climate error and a classic energy mistake.

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Goldman Sachs’ Arjun N. Murti said in a May 5 report:

The possibility of $150-$200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next six-24 months, though predicting the ultimate peak in oil prices as well as the remaining duration of the upcycle remains a major uncertainty.

That would mean gasoline prices of $5 to $6 a gallon. Unless of course we permanently suspend the gasoline tax, in which case gasoline prices would only be $5 to $6 a gallon.

Why should we listen to Murti? Well, back in 2005, when prices averaged under $60 a barrel, he was one of the few Wall Street analysts who predicted oil could soon hit $105 a barrel — or higher if we don’t take the right actions quickly:

There will be a peak in production earlier than expected, and that post-peak decline will be more dramatic than currently assumed unless there is a sustained increase in investment in oil and gas production, greater consumer efficiency and alternative energy.

That may all seem obvious, but it has come as a big shock to Detroit, DC policymakers, truckers, and apparently most of the American public. Certainly the fundamentals of oil supply and demand have changed, probably forever, as I have repeatedly written (see below). And as Bloomberg reports, Murti is not alone

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So here is the unbelievable full post yesterday from the National Review’s anti-climate-action website, Planet Gore:

The Nuclear Option [Drew Thornley]
In his Sunday interview on Meet the Press, host Tim Russert asked Sen. Barack Obama about his position on nuclear energy:

Russert: In terms of climate change, global warming, you’ve talked about wind and solar and biofuels. What about nuclear? All — in all realistic assessment, don’t we need more nuclear power in order to wean ourselves off of those same fuels that are contaminating the world?

Obama: I think we do have to look at nuclear, and what we’ve got to figure out is can we store the material properly? Can we make sure that they’re secure? Can we deal with the expense? Because the problem is, is that a lot of our nuclear industry, it reinvents the wheel. Each nuclear power plant that is proposed has a new design, has — it, it has all kinds of changes, there are all sorts of cost overruns. So it has not been an effective option. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be an effective option, but we’re going to have to figure out storage and safety issues. And my attitude when it comes to energy is there’s no silver bullet. We’ve got to be — we’ve, we’ve got to look at every possible option.

Hmm . . . So does Obama feel every energy option is on the table (like, say, extracting known but currently off-limits domestic oil reserves) or just non-fossil fuel options?

First off, Obama’s comments on nukes are exceedingly well-informed, unlike, say, John McCain’s (See “McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants (and seven Yucca mountains) costing $4 trillion.”).

Second, what closing comment by Planet Gore could possibly be more inane?

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The oil industry has borrowed the (laughable) tagline of presidential candidate John McCain? As FoxBusiness reported on Friday:

The American Petroleum Institute took out a full-page ad in USA Today, and other major media were tapped this week to provide “straight talk on earnings.” The earnings that need “straight talk” : ExxonMobil’s $11 billion quarterly profit, and Chevron’s $5.2 billion quarterly profit.

[Note to big oil: When Fox doesn’t give your spin favorable coverage, you’ve definitely become the Britney Spears of industries.]

Apparently the oil companies think that people will ignore their bloated profits once they see a chart showing earnings in “cents per dollar of sales,” claiming

In fact, first quarter 2006 earnings for oil and natural gas companies were slightly less than the average for other U.S. industries.

[Cue the violins, cut to a small starving child in Nigeria shedding a tear for the below-average earnings of the world’s fattest fat cats.]

Well, I suppose you can fool some of the people all the time. After all, straight talker McCain denies his cap & trade system is “mandatory.” And he claims his gas tax holiday will actually benefit consumers — presumably because oil companies will generously lower their prices rather than, say, simply charging people the pre-holiday price because they know people will pay that price. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And you have millions of dollars waiting for you in the Central Bank of Nigeria…

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A livable climate can (probably) survive the burning of almost all of the world’s conventional oil and gas — but not if we also burn even half the coal (see here and figure below).

So the top priority for any climate policy must be to stop the building of traditional coal plants — which is why that has become the top priority of NASA’s James Hansen (see here). The next priority is to replace existing coal plants with carbon free power, which could include coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS), as fast as possible. And that means a related priority is to encourage the introduction of CCS as quickly as possible, to see if that is a viable large-scale solution.

A climate policy that does not start by achieving at least the first goal, a moratorium on coal without CCS, must be labeled a failure. By that measure, the cap and trade system currently being employed by the Europeans looks to be a failure, as we’ll see.

So that means the first major climate policy we should adopt is not a cap & trade, but

Requiring all new coal power plants to meet an “emission performance” standard that limits CO2 emissions to levels achievable with CCS systems.

This is the 2007 recommendation of Ken Berlin and Robert M. Sussman in a Center for American Progress Report, Global Warming and the Future of Coal: The Path to Carbon Capture and Storage (summary here). It is also the goal of a bill introduced last month by Waxman and Markey, “Moratorium on Uncontrolled Power Plants Act” (see here).

[Yes, regular readers will note that this does represent a bit of a shift in my thinking — I once thought the most urgent climate policy was getting a price for carbon dioxide — but the recent news from Europe about the possible resurgence of coal power should change everyone’s thinking.]

NYT: “Despite Climate Worry, Europe Turns to Coal“

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So an industry CEO tells E&E News (here) that nuclear is the only non-carbon baseload power [not!] and that therefore nuclear is our only future and since the United States does such a great job of dealing with low-level radioactive waste, we should become the world’s repository.

That would be the logic of one Steve Creamer, CEO of EnergySolutions, “a full-service nuclear fuel cycle company” [in contrast to all of those “partial-service nuclear fuel cycle companies,” sometimes called electric utilities]. One of his website’s many warm-hearted front-page images is above (more here).

Why shouldn’t we take the world’s low-level radioactive waste, says Creamer, other countries take our recycled computers [!!], so it’s the perfect division of global labor:

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The Washington Post has a story on several communities in the U.S. that are including climate impact in their decision making. This is welcome news indeed. The story looks at King county in Washington applying emissions tests to public works projects, Massachusetts developer disclosure laws, and California’s attorney general suing companies for increasing emissions. The article goes on to point the finger at sprawl as something that must be reigned in, saying:

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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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The California Energy Commission (CEC) last week adopted stricter energy efficiency standards for new construction. Known as Title 24, California’s standards seek to reduce heating, cooling, and electricity bills for consumers. Title 24 dates from the 1970s, but has been updated continuously since. Concern about natural gas availability and price has been one spur driving the standards (natural gas is heavily used for both heating and electricity generation in California).

Here are a few examples of changes. Because the standards are complex, changes cannot be reduced to a single number. For example, Air Conditioning standards get changed with the size of the unit, and window U-factors (rate of heat loss) vary with climate zone.

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The Kansas House has again failed to override Gov. Sebelius’ veto of two coal-fired power plants for western Kansas. Short just one vote last time, proponents of the override were short four votes in yesterday’s count (which was 80 in favor of an override and 45 against).

Still, we know the coal company and advocates won’t stop yet. In the legislation that just failed, they tried to lure support with ‘green’ provisions, but clearly nothing substantial enough to negate the two huge coal-plants whose looming silhouettes sort of define the skyline at this point.

In any case, kudos to Kansas.

For more coverage of the events in Kansas, see the Climate and Energy Project live blogging as well as this long list of related posts, mostly from our very own intrepid Lois Lane:

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