Political Climate Articles
Outrage & Inspire: ALL EFFORTS GREAT AND SMALL
After the passage of the health care bill, doing the big and historic is again possible in politics.
On the international front, the equivalent is President Obama's Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, popularly known as Feeding the Future. Ending hunger through agriculture development, particularly in Africa, would be both very big and supremely historic.
The challenge is enormous: one billion people in our world are chronically hungry. That's an historic high in absolute numbers. And with the population growing and demand for food increasing, we'll have to double food production by 2050 if we're to make any permanent reduction in the ranks of the hungry. The President is asking Congress for $3.5 billion over three years to fund the U.S. commitment to the food security initiative, which is part of a larger $22 billion three-year pledge from the world's rich countries. These sums sound big, but in present-day political spending terms, they're veritable chicken feed. Last summer, Congress came up with $3 billion and spent it in a couple of months on the Cash for Clunkers program. Surely Congress can scratch up the same amount of money to make a big dent in the world hunger problem and stimulate the lives of the bottom billion as it did to get some wheezing gas-guzzling cars off the road and stimulate the auto industry.
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The Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth is a bunch of right-wing pollutocrats
The AEEG is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-managed working group of the trade associations representing America's carbon-pollution industries, founded in 2001. Five of these AEEG representatives sit on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Association Committee of 100, helping shape the organization's policy.
Fourteen men representing the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth (AEEG) are meeting with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kerry (D-MA), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to negotiate the terms of comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. Brad Johnson has the background of this remarkably non-diverse group.
Per Matt Yglesias's note that the "male-dominated nature of Wall Street is a source of dysfunction," meet the AEEG:
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Memo to NY Times: TV weathermen are not climate experts.
In yet another front-page journalistic lapse, the NY Times once again equates non-scientists - Bastardi, Coleman, and Watts (!) - with climate scientists
In fact, Dr. Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech explained to me a few years ago:
Meteorologists are not required to take a course in climate change, this is not part of the NOAA/NWS [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Weather Service] certification requirements, so university programs don't require the course (even if they offer it). So we have been educating generations of meteorologists who know nothing at all about climate change.
The reason I am repeating this basic fact for the umpteenth time - see "Are meteorologists climate experts?" - is that the former paper of record has once again equated people who don't know about climate science with people who do (see "NYT Faces Credibility Siege over Unbalanced Climate Coverage").
In a new, uber-dreadful he-said, she-said piece, "Scientists and Weathercasters at Odds on Warming," the NYT's Leslie Kaufman gives a platform to some of the most uninformed, most widely debunked anti-science weathermen in the country, including Joe Bastardi and, yes, Anthony Watts! Does anybody read Boykoff any more on (see "Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change")?
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Cap and Trade Legislation
The Hill's blog has a post, "Why kill cap-and-trade? Because it's there."
The NYT's John Broder had a piece, " 'Cap and Trade' Loses Its Standing as Energy Policy of Choice."
CBS reports of the forthcoming Graham, Kerry and Lieberman bill, "notably missing from it will likely be the cap-and-trade system that had not long ago been expected to be the centerpiece of any legislation."
Peter Barnes comments on my blog, "If cap-and-trade is politically dead, why not try some version of cap-and-dividend?"
Two points. First, the bipartisan bill will have a cap. And it appears almost certain it will have a trading system. But such is the world we live in that this isn't cap-and-trade.
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JPMorgan's War on Nature
Unlike virtually all of its competitors, JPMorgan Chase steeled itself early for the collapse of the subprime market and emerged from the rubble of the global financial meltdown with both its balance sheet and reputation intact. But the storied firm stands alone among its Wall Street rivals in another area, too. JPMorgan backstops one of the most destructive mining practices in the world: mountaintop removal coal mining. And it continues to do so even as other major banks have cut ties to this practice.
"Chase is the single largest remaining player in this game," says Scott Edwards, advocacy director for the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental advocacy group comprised of lawyers, scientists, and activists, among others. "They just absolutely refuse to take responsibility for their role in this absolutely devastating industry."
Mountaintop removal (MTR) mining, focused in Appalachian states like West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, involves deforesting huge swaths of land and blasting the summits off of mountains to expose the black veins of coal underneath. The waste and rubble from the demolition is then dumped into nearby rivers and streams, burying local water sources in toxic byproducts, choking off tributaries that feed into larger rivers, and wiping out plants and wildlife, according to numerous scientific studies. Despite the mining industry's claims, there are no successful ways to mitigate the effects of MTR, according to Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The effects on the nearby environment, she says, are long lasting and often irreversible.
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Freeing Energy Policy From The Climate Change Debate
Environmentalists have long sought to use the threat of catastrophic global warming to persuade the public to embrace a low-carbon economy. But recent events, including the tainting of some climate research, have shown the risks of trying to link energy policy to climate science.
The 20-year effort by environmentalists to establish climate science as the primary basis for far-reaching action to decarbonize the global energy economy today lies in ruins. Backlash in reaction to "Climategate" and recent controversies involving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s 2007 assessment report are but the latest evidence that such efforts have evidently failed.
While the urge to blame fossil-fuel-funded skeptics for this recent bad turn of events has proven irresistible for most environmental leaders and pundits, forward-looking greens wishing to ascertain what might be salvaged from the wreckage would be well advised to look closer to home. Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.
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American profession complains of "bottleneck" in stimulus funding
The American Institute of Architects has reported a 'modest rebound' in architecture billings, saying that a bottleneck of stimulus funding is hampering recovery.
The AIA's billings index, a monthly report that measure architectural billings and is seen as a thermometer for the health of the American construction industry, rose by two points to 44.8 in February.
However, the index still shows a month-on-month decline in the amount of money architectural practices are billing for, with any score below 50 indicating a decrease.
The index had tumbled by three points to 42.5 in January, dashing tentative hopes of a recovery for the architecture sector.
AIA chief economist Kermit Baker said: "We continue to hear that funding dedicated for construction projects in the stimulus package has not yet been awarded, resulting in a bottleneck of potential projects that could help jumpstart the economy.
"That, coupled with a persistently rigid credit market for private sector projects, is a key reason why the design and construction industry continue to suffer at near historic levels in terms of job losses."
Last week the AIA issued an open appeal to the American government urging bipartisan support for initiatives that would help the design and construction industries recover from the downturn.
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UN official expects no climate deal until 2011
AMSTERDAM - A new legal agreement committing nations around the world to curb greenhouse gas emissions is unlikely to be completed before the end of 2011, two years later than originally envisioned, the top U.N. climate official said Wednesday.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. climate change secretariat, said countries need to restore confidence in U.N. negotiations following the dismal results of the Copenhagen summit in December, which ended in a vague agreement of principles and a pledge of finances for poor countries most threatened by climate change.
"There was a great deal of frustration at the end of the Copenhagen conference in terms of process," de Boer said in a conference call with reporters from his office in Bonn, Germany.
The next annual conference in Cancun, Mexico, beginning in November should get negotiations "back on track" among the 194 participating nations, with the aim of agreeing on the main elements that could be enshrined in a binding agreement a year later in South Africa, de Boer said.
"My hope is that Cancun will deliver what I had hoped Copenhagen would deliver," said de Boer, who is resigning July 1 after nearly three years in office.
Negotiators will convene in Bonn next week for the first time since 120 heads of state and government met in the Danish capital. The weekend conference was expected to do little more than set a timetable for several more preparatory conferences leading up to the Cancun conference.
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Obama's Coastal Drilling Plan
President Obama has made comprehensive energy reform a key issue of his presidency, with massive investments in clean energy, initial efforts to confront climate change, and a commitment to "ending our addiction to foreign oil." Our nation's dependence on oil -- the United States consumes over 20 percent of world production -- causes 10,000 deaths a year from air pollution, acidifies the oceans, and disrupts our climate, while sending billions of dollars to unfriendly regimes. Yesterday, Obama announced a sweeping new offshore drilling policy, opening "vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling" for the first time in 25 years.
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Report Examines Hidden Health and Environmental Costs Of Energy Production and Consumption In U.S.
WASHINGTON -- A new report from the National Research Council examines and, when possible, estimates "hidden" costs of energy production and use -- such as the damage air pollution imposes on human health -- that are not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, other energy sources, or the electricity and gasoline produced from them. The report estimates dollar values for several major components of these costs. The damages the committee was able to quantify were an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, a number that reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation. The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security, which the report examines but does not monetize.
Requested by Congress, the report assesses what economists call external effects caused by various energy sources over their entire life cycle -- for example, not only the pollution generated when gasoline is used to run a car but also the pollution created by extracting and refining oil and transporting fuel to gas stations.
Because these effects are not reflected in energy prices, government, businesses and consumers may not realize the full impact of their choices. When such market failures occur, a case can be made for government interventions -- such as regulations, taxes or tradable permits -- to address these external costs, the report says.
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A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy
A Center for American Progress study has found that money invested in offshore oil drilling would create three times as many jobs if the same amount of money were instead invested in renewables, but Big Oil refuses to make serious investments in clean energy.
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PLAN SPLITS THE RIGHT:
Most conservatives have thus far indicated that they are unwilling to compromise in exchange for the administration's lifting of offshore oil drilling bans. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) immediately "dismissed the president's plan as not going far enough in opening up U.S. waters for exploration," going so far as to accuse Obama of defying "the will of the American people." Chairman of the House Republican Conference and the American Energy Solutions Group Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) derided the plan as a "smokescreen" and a "feeble attempt to gain votes" for comprehensive energy legislation. David Koch's Americans for Prosperity Vice President Phil Kerpen said "the idea that this is a big concession in exchange for which Congress should jumpstart climate legislation is ridiculous." Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin mocked the plan as "Stall, Baby, Stall," saying it's "an effort to shore up fading support for the Democrats' job-killing cap-and-trade (a.k.a. cap-and-tax) proposals." However, the "oil industry, business groups and some Republicans offered muted support for the proposal." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called it a "step in the right direction," Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) "welcome[s] the President's decision," and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) agreed that it was a "good first step," but all said there should be fewer restrictions and more subsidies for drilling than the president proposed.
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The Most Effective Tax Ever?
Washington DC's 5 cent tax on plastic bags, instated just this past January, has already proven to have a phenomenal impact: the number of plastic bags handed out by supermarkets and other establishments dropped from the 2009 monthly average of 22.5 million to just 3 million in January. While significantly reducing plastic waste, the tax simultaneously generated $150,000 in revenue, which will be used to clean up the Anacostia River.
The Washington Post reports:
Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), sponsor of the bag tax bill, said the new figures show that city residents are adapting to the law far more quickly than he or other city officials had expected.
The tax, one of the first of its kind in the nation, is designed to change consumer behavior and limit pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Under regulations created by the D.C. Department of the Environment, bakeries, delicatessens, grocery stores, drugstores, convenience stores, department stores and any other "business that sells food items" must charge the tax on paper or plastic bags.
I love this--I really do. A simple 5 cent tax--with revenues going towards an environmental cause voters rallied around--and consumer behavior is changed for the better in a truly big way. I love that 5 cents, which makes up a tiny percentage of total cost of your purchase even if you were just buying a bag of chips and a beverage, was enough to make consumers reconsider taking a plastic bag.
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Chart of the Day: Voting Your Pocketbook
We've seen this before, but why not see it again? Jeff Frankel shows graphically today the disconnect between how much net money the various states get from the federal government vs. how those states' residents feel about government spending. Long story short, the ones who say they hate government the most are also the ones who are sucking the hardest at the federal teat.
Now, there are enough problems with calculating state shares of federal spending that you have to take this with a grain of salt. Still, it's a solid point. If you want to kvetch about federal spending, that's fine. But if you're going to do it, how about first giving back some of your federal largesse to the states that provided it to you in the first place?
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Where the Money Went
Top CEOs make millions, but top hedge fund managers make billions, apparently. NPR lays out a quick comparison of the top five earners for each, using data from The Wall Street Journal and trade publication Absolute Return+Alpha ($):
CEOs:
* Ray Irani, Occidental Petroleum: $52 million
* Robert Iger, Disney: $21 million
* Samuel Palmisano, IBM: $20 million
* William Weldon, Johnson & Johnson: $20 million
* Jay Fishman, Travelers: $20 million
Hedge fund managers:
* David Tepper, Appaloosa Management: $4 billion
* George Soros, Soros Fund Management: $3.3 billion
* James Simons, Renaissance Technologies: $2.5 billion
* John Paulson, Paulson & Company: $2.3 billion
* Steve Cohen, SAC Capital Advisors: $1.3 billion
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What Is the Right Price for Carbon?
Some economists charge that the U.S. government is lowballing the cost of greenhouse gases in new regulations
Carbon prices will be applied to car exhaust for the first time under the Obama administration's new tailpipe rule, launched yesterday. But while environmentalists were celebrating, some economists were quietly concerned that U.S. EPA's carbon calculation is too low.
The agency incorporated a preliminary price of $21 for every ton of carbon dioxide expelled from vehicles to help reach its new standard of 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016. That amounts to about 20 cents per gallon or, as two economists claim, a level that's "far too small a price incentive to prompt substantive mitigation measures."
"If widely adopted, this low estimate of the [social cost of carbon] could result in ineffectual regulations that would barely reduce U.S. emissions, if at all," Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth Stanton of the Stockholm Environment Institute say in a new white paper.
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Global Warming's Six Americas
There are six unique segments of the American public that each engage with the issue of global warming in their own distinct way. Just over half of American adults (51 percent) are either Alarmed or Concerned about global warming, and these individuals are poised to vote on the issue with their pocket books and at the ballot box.
The Alarmed (18 percent of the U.S. adult population) are the segment most engaged in the issue of global warming. They are very convinced it is happening, human-caused, and a serious and urgent threat. The Alarmed are already making changes in their own lives and support an aggressive national response (see graphs below).
The Concerned (33 percent) are also convinced that global warming is a serious problem and support a vigorous national response. Members of this group have signaled their intention to at least engage in consumer action on global warming in the near term, but they are less personally involved in the issue and have taken fewer actions than the Alarmed.
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A Hard Look at the Perils and Potential of Geoengineering
The Asilomar conference on geoengineering had been touted as a potentially historic event. What emerged, however, were some unexpected lessons about the possibilities and pitfalls of manipulating the Earth's climate to offset global warming.
In the beginning, I had my doubts. The Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies, held last week at the Asilomar conference grounds near Monterey, Calif., was touted as an "unprecedented" gathering of 175 scientists, environmental groups, philosophers, and public policy wonks to discuss the governance of geoengineering - that is, large-scale, intentional manipulation of the Earth's climate to offset rising temperatures. The meeting was obviously set up to channel the spirit of the first Asilomar conference in 1975, during which biologists drew up voluntary guidelines to help reassure the public that genetically modified organisms would not be released into the world. Asilomar 1.0 is remembered as a landmark event in the evolution of scientific ethics and a turning point in the public acceptance of biotechnology.
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This interactive map shows each country's current policy on the accord.
The agreement that emerged from December's U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen continues to attract support from a growing number of nations despite naysayers who still insist that the meeting ended in failure. A recent Reuters article shows that there are now 110 countries on board, including the world's major carbon emitters, representing more than 80 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
These countries' collective commitments will not yet achieve the accord's stated goal of holding temperature rise over pre-industrial levels at 2 degrees Celsius, but achieving these commitments could hold us to a 3-degree increase rather than the 4.8 degree rise we would see by 2010 under a business as usual scenario. These commitments also represent a vital first step toward achieving the 2-degree goal.
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UK 'Climategate' inquiry largely clears scientists
LONDON -- The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved.
The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that they'd seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming - two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.
In their report, the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact," adding that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity."
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"Below" 2C opens new rift in U.N. climate battle
(Reuters) - A goal to limit global warming to "below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) is opening a new rift for 2010 talks on a U.N. climate treaty as developing nations say it means the rich must deepen cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
An alliance of 101 developing nations and island states says the temperature target, endorsed by major emitters since the Copenhagen summit in December, is tougher than a previous goal by industrialized nations of 2 degrees as a maximum rise.
"2.0 degrees is unacceptable," said Dessima Williams, Grenada's ambassador to the United Nations who represents the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) which wants to limit temperatures to below 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial times.
But rich nations and some researchers say the Copenhagen Accord's "below" 2 is vague -- it can mean 1.999 degrees and so be indistinguishable for policy purposes from 2. The Accord does not lay down how the temperature goal will be reached.
"It can mean anything until we may agree on what it means concretely," European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said of the temperature target.
"The good thing about saying 'below 2C' is that you then have a ceiling. A number of countries say 1.5 C and this has not been taken off the table," she said.
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Climategate: An Autopsy
How did emails stolen from climate scientists snowball into a global news story in less than 48 hours?
"A lot is happening behind the scenes. It is not being ignored. Much is being coordinated among major players and the media. Thank you very much. You will notice the beginnings of activity on other sites now. Here soon to follow. ~ ctm [Charles Rotter, moderator on WattsUpWithThat.com]"
'Climategate', or 'Swifthack' was a media story about a set of hacked emails that was pushed by a group of avid climate skeptics, including bloggers Steven Mosher, Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Patrick Condon, Lucia Liljegren, Charles Rotter and Anthony Watts. Collectively, they took a mountain of stolen material, condensed it into a well-packaged pitch, and sparked a scandalous story that reached virtually every major news outlet in the world.
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CREW files complaints against Sean Hannity and the Freedom Alliance
CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) today filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), calling out the deceptive and shameful practices of Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts and Lt. Col. Oliver North's Freedom Alliance. CREW's complaints, which were filed with the support of VoteVets.org, come the day before the release of Mr. Hannity's new book Conservative Victory.
These groups claim to send "every penny... 100 percent" of revenue from ticket sales from Freedom Concerts events to the children of killed and wounded service members. In reality, however, an unknown portion of concert proceeds is donated to the Freedom Alliance's scholarship fund from the concerts' organizer, Premiere Marketing. Curiously, Premiere Marketing is run by the same man – Duane Ward – who represents Mr. Hannity and Lt. Col. North as the head of the Premiere Speakers Bureau.
CREW's complaint also allege that the Freedom Alliance operates in violation of its 501(c)(3) tax status by continually engaging in partisan political activities. The Alliance often links to Lt. Col. North's clearly conservative political columns, has rented its mailing list to a blatantly Republican-linked communications firm, and hosts a yearly "Freedom Cruise" with exclusively Republican and conservative guests.
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