Political Climate Articles
Governor of Katrina-Ravaged Louisiana Tries to Block Climate Change Regulation
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finally moving to regulate global warming pollution. One of the leading opponents to the EPA's proposed regulations, slated to go into effect in March, 2010, is Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA). On Monday, Jindal "and the secretaries of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Louisiana Economic Development filed objections with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson," claiming the Supreme-Court-mandated standards "will certainly have profound negative economic impacts":
There is no doubt this change will certainly have profound negative economic impacts on the state of Louisiana, as well as the entire country.
Bobby JindalIn reality, regulations to limit greenhouse gases would reward business investment in labor instead of pollution, in new technology and development instead of reliance on 19th-century fuel sources. An analysis by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute found that strong regulation and standards would create billions in revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs:
Louisiana could see a net increase of about $2.2 billion in investment revenue and 29,000 jobs based on its share of a total of $150 billion in clean-energy investments annually across the country. This is even after assuming a reduction in fossil fuel spending equivalent to the increase in clean-energy investments.
Whereas regulation of pollution will likely benefit Louisiana's economy, there is actually "no doubt" that unmitigated climate change "will certainly have profound negative economic impacts" on the state of Louisiana. "The letters say nothing about the cost of inaction," the New Orleans Times-Picayune notes, "as Louisiana's coastline is ravaged by rising sea levels, jeopardizing business investment in the state's most populated areas":
In 2005, the global-warming-fueled Hurricane Katrina devastated Jindal's state, costing this nation $80 billion, killing thousands, and displacing a million people. Katrina and Rita caused $1.6 billion in agriculture damage in Louisiana alone.
In 2008, Hurricane Gustav "was the largest agricultural disaster in Louisiana history," according to Jindal, as he announced the distribution of $54.8 million in federal taxpayer aid this month.
In 2009, this summer's "record-setting heat wave and simultaneous dry spell," followed by extreme "late-season rains," buckled roads and further damaged crops, driving even more farmers into bankruptcy.
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Green Giant: Beijing's crash program for clean energy
"China is going to eat our lunch and take our jobs on clean energy - an industry that we largely invented - and they are going to do it with a managed economy we don't have and don't want," as I've said. Our only chance of matching them is to pass the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill.
Two new articles underscore America's challenge. The first is a short Reuters piece on China's new renewables law, and the second is a long New Yorker piece. Reuters reported Sunday:
A new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.
The amendment to the 2006 renewable energy law was adopted on Saturday by the standing committee of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, the Xinhua news agency said.
The amendment also gives authority to the State Council energy department, together with the State Council finance department and the state power authority, to "determine the proportion of renewable energy power generation to the overall generating capacity for a certain period."
Such legislation is not how we do business, which is why, I repeat, "The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill."
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Chinese Law Aims to Increase the Use of Renewable Energy
BEIJING -- China announced new regulations to increase the use of renewable energy such as wind and hydropower by forcing electricity-grid operators to prioritize their use, in a bid by the world's top greenhouse-gas emitter to reduce its reliance on coal.
The new measures were passed Saturday by the standing committee of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, as an amendment to the 2006 renewable-energy law, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. The amendment will force powerful state-owned electric grid companies, responsible for distributing electricity from power plants, to buy all the electricity generated from renewable sources even when it is more expensive and more complicated to use than electricity from coal-fired plants.
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NASA Outlines Recent Greenhouse Gas Research
PASADENA, Calif. -- Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft.
Moustafa Chahine, the instrument's science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., unveiled the new product at a briefing on recent breakthroughs in greenhouse gas, weather and climate research from AIRS at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. The new data have been extensively validated against both aircraft and ground-based observations. They give users daily and monthly measurements of the concentration and distribution of carbon dioxide in the mid-troposphere--the region of the atmosphere located between 5 and 12 kilometers, or 3 to 7 miles, above Earth's surface, and track its global transport. Users can also access historical AIRS carbon dioxide data spanning the mission's entire seven-plus years in orbit. The product represents the first-ever release of global daily carbon dioxide data that are based solely on observations.
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Stabilizing Climate: Beyond International Agreements
Lester R. Brown
Note: the following was written in July 2009, before the Copenhagen climate change conference.
From my pre-Copenhagen vantage point, internationally negotiated climate agreements are fast becoming obsolete for two reasons. First, since no government wants to concede too much compared with other governments, the negotiated goals for cutting carbon emissions will almost certainly be minimalist, not remotely approaching the bold cuts that are needed.
And second, since it takes years to negotiate and ratify these agreements, we may simply run out of time. This is not to say that we should not participate in the negotiations and work hard to get the best possible result. But we should not rely on these agreements to save civilization.
Some of the most impressive climate stabilization advances, such as the powerful U.S. grassroots movement that has led to a de facto moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, had little to do with international negotiations. At no point did the leaders of this movement say that they wanted to ban new coal-fired power plants only if Europe does, if China does, or if the rest of the world does. They moved ahead unilaterally knowing that if the United States does not quickly cut carbon emissions, the world will be in trouble.
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113 Wisconsin scientists write to Senators Kohl and Fiengold urging 'aye' votes on bipartisan climate and clean energy legislation
"The science now convinces us that calls for immediate action are warranted to avoid the worst consequences of global warming on Wisconsin's economy and environment, including the Great Lakes."
This month, 113 Wisconsin scientists joined together to urge Wisconsin's senators to enact strong federal policies to combat climate change. A letter signed by the scientists was delivered December 8 to Senators Kohl and Feingold. It explains the specific ways that climate change threatens Wisconsin's economy and public health and how Wisconsin stands to benefit from climate change solutions:
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Global warming at heart of political debate
The pending federal effort to lessen carbon emissions, especially from coal-fired power plants - called the "cap-and-trade program" - has one single goal: To improve air quality and slow down global warming - if, that is, global warming actually exists.
As environmentalists favor cap-and-trade as an incentive to decrease harmful emissions, while the bill moves from the House of Representatives to the U.S. Senate, opponents say it will cause nothing but an economic disaster, especially for Pennsylvania's coal industries.
And there are two extreme views on global warming.
From the National Geographic:
"Glaciers are melting."
"Sea levels are rising. Cloud forests are dying and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It's becoming clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives.
"Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than in the last 650,000 years."
From the Global Warming Petition Project:
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
A more local view, from Pennsylvania's conservative activist Peg Luksik, who is challenging Arlen Specter for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate next year: "It's called weather."
In an interview at The Tribune-Democrat, Luksik explained why the cap-and-trade bill has become a personal issue with her.
"Global warming is not real.
"The premise is that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that causes global warming. It is not," she said.
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Outsourcing American Climate Skepticism
Writing two weeks ago in Poland's most popular tabloid, the Super Express, an economic analyst named Tomasz Teluk claimed that a potential climate agreement in Copenhagen might double Poles' electricity bills, hobble his coal-dependent country, and even lead to one-world government.
Fortunately, he wrote, the "'global warming' scare" has been hugely overblown: "As each of us learned in elementary school, carbon dioxide is a gas essential to the development of life, not a poison, so you do not have to eliminate it at any price."
Teluk, the founder of the Globalization Institute, a libertarian think tank, is Poland's most prominent climate change skeptic. He has become a hero to Polish conservatives, who have convinced their government to resist strong emissions cuts and block the European Union from giving climate change assistance to developing nations. A leading Polish financial newspaper recently named his institute the country's best think tank. But Teluk is hardly a homegrown climate skeptic. Much of his rhetoric, such as his claim that CO2 is good for you, echoes the well-worn claims of American skeptics. And much of Teluk's newfound visibility can be traced back to his long-standing ties with conservative patrons and energy interests in the United States.
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