It really doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

We dump billions of tons of carbon pollution into the atmosphere each year. As a result, the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 40 percent. Excess carbon dioxide traps excess heat in the atmosphere. Excess heat causes extreme heat waves, droughts, and storms.

And that’s what we have been seeing. In June alone, 170 all-time high temperature records were broken or tied in the United States, and more than 24,000 daily high temperature records have been broken so far this year. If the climate weren’t changing, we would expect to see about the same number of record highs and record lows set each year due to random fluctuations. That’s what we were seeing 50 years ago, but during the last decade there were twice as many record highs as record lows. So far this year the ratio has been 10 to 1.

This year’s extreme weather follows last year’s. The last 12 months were the hottest on record for the United States. Texas saw its hottest and driest summer on record in 2011 by a wide margin, and research published this week [PDF] shows that carbon pollution dramatically increased the probability of such extreme heat and drought.

Faced with similar information about the carcinogens in cigarette smoke, the mechanism by which these carcinogens cause genetic mutations, and the statistical relationship between smoking and cancer, the Surgeon General says that smoking causes cancer. Of course that doesn’t mean that every individual case of cancer experienced by a smoker can be definitively attributed to smoking. But the Surgeon General does not feel compelled to say that every time she says that smoking causes cancer. And journalists don’t feel compelled to include that caveat every time they write an article about the health toll of smoking.

The Surgeon General’s warning hasn’t always been this clear. In 1966, when cigarette packages were first required to carry a warning, the package said “Cigarette Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health.” A few years ago a similarly tepid warning may have been appropriate for carbon pollution. Not anymore.

The data are in. It’s time for scientists and journalists to just say it: Carbon pollution causes extreme weather.

Willie Sutton is famously supposed to have said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is (apparently this quote is apocryphal but it’s just too good to not keep using it). I have focused a number of recent posts on power plants because that’s where the carbon is (about 40% of the U.S. total). There is certainly no way to prevent even more dangerous changes to our climate without nearly eliminating carbon emissions from the power sector. That’s what makes a new report from the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) so important. It analyzes one promising idea for driving this transition: a “clean energy standard” (CES) as proposed by Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman.

According to EIA, which is hardly known for being optimistic about clean energy technologies, a CES combined with updated energy efficiency standards could reduce CO₂ emissions from power plants 20% by 2020 while electricity prices fall by 7%. By 2035 CO₂ emissions would be cut by almost half (see figure). By then EIA projects that electricity prices would be only 15% higher than in 2010, while per capita income would have increased by 49%. Of course, the cost of electricity 25 years from now depends on the pace of technological innovation and EIA tends to be quite conservative in making these assumptions.  (My point of reference for all these calculations is 2010 levels as reported by EIA’s model. In its report, EIA generally compares a policy scenario with the CES in place to a reference case without it in order to isolate the effect of the policy, but the atmosphere and consumers will respond to actual emissions and prices.)

Before delving a little more deeply into the results of EIA’s analysis here’s some background on the CES policy. As Senator Bingaman specified it, the CES would require 50% of all electricity sales to come from “clean” sources by 2020 and 80% by 2035. As I have noted previously, “low-carbon” would be a far more accurate term than “clean”, and in fact Bingaman specifies that natural gas generation and generation from coal or gas with carbon capture gets partial credit based on its emissions relative to those of a supercritical coal plant. President Obama called on Congress to pass a Clean Energy Standard with these targets in his 2011 State of the Union address, although he never formally proposed detailed specifications. Joe Aldy subsequently proposed a CES with specifications similar to Bingaman’s in a Brookings Institution discussion paper.

One subtle, but important difference is that Aldy proposed allowing all existing low-carbon generation to produce clean energy credits, whereas Bingaman deducts generation from existing hydro and nuclear plants from the CES target. EIA has previously released an analysis of a CES that grants credits to these existing low-carbon sources at the request of Congressman Hall. As I explained in comments on that analysis, granting credits to these existing sources produces a windfall for them, while raising the cost impact of the policy. We now know by how much because EIA performed a sensitivity analysis on Bingaman’s proposal by changing just this feature. National-average electricity prices would increase 23% between 2010 and 2035 if credits are given to all existing hydro and nuclear plants, compared to 15% in the original Bingaman specification. Much bigger differences would occur at the regional level. Under Bingaman’s proposal EIA forecasts that regional electricity prices in 2035 would range from 5.9 cents/kWh (in Eastern Wisconsin) to 21.8 cents/kWh (on Long Island). With existing nuclear and hydro crediting the range would be 4.1-24.3 cents/kWh.

Turning back to Bingaman’s main proposal and assuming updated energy efficiency standards, how would electricity generators achieve the 47% reduction in CO₂ emissions projected by EIA for 2035? First, electricity demand would increase by a total of only 12% between 2010 and 2035, compared to 24% in the reference case, mostly due to the updated standards. (Note that Synapse Energy Economics projects in its Transition Scenario, which has a similar CO₂ emissions trajectory, that feasible energy efficiency measures could actually reduce electricity demand from current levels.) EIA projects that total renewable energy generation would increase by 250%, ending up with about equal contributions from hydro (which increases only 30% compared to 2010), wind, and biomass. (The Synapse scenario has a similar contribution from wind, but substantially more solar and less biomass.) Meanwhile, natural gas generation increases by 80% and coal generation falls by about 50%. (Natural gas generation does not increase nearly as much in the Synapse scenario, primarily due to lower overall electricity demand.)

One very controversial aspect of the CES as proposed by Bingaman (as well as Aldy and Hall) is that new nuclear power plants would count toward achieving the target. Of course that doesn’t mean that nuclear power would actually expand, given that it is much more expensive than other low-carbon options. In fact, with the Bingaman CES specifications and updated efficiency standards EIA projects that nuclear generation in 2035 would be lower than in 2010, although they do project 64 GW of new nuclear plants, offset by retirements and decreased output from the existing fleet. In the sensitivity case that grants credit to existing nuclear plants there is an incentive to keep them online and EIA projects that total nuclear generation would increase by about 40%. EIA has a history of being overly optimistic about nuclear power and that is likely to be the case here. Nonetheless, the analysis clearly shows that it’s possible to achieve the CES targets without expanding nuclear generation, contrary to claims by many nuclear advocates.

As I have discussed previously, the biggest drawback of a CES is that it requires Congress to actually pass legislation, something this Congress, at least, appears nearly incapable of doing. That’s not true of updating air pollution standards to limit carbon, mercury and other pollutants, nor of updating energy efficiency standards, nor of state energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, nor of local communities demanding that aging coal plants be replaced with cleaner options. EIA’s analysis provides a useful benchmark against which all of these efforts can be evaluated.

Cutting CO₂ emissions 20% by 2020 while electricity prices decline would be a pretty good start.

True enough, but it’s not the end of the story. Neither the fate of climate legislation nor Copenhagen was entirely within the president’s control. No doubt Obama could have done more to push the Senate and the international negotiations, but whether that would have changed the outcomes is impossible to determine.

On the other hand, Obama stood up to House Republicans and some Democrats to successfully defend the EPA’s authority to regulate global warming pollution in the April budget deal to fund the government through the end of this fiscal year. The Supreme Court has reiterated that it is the EPA’s job to set standards to limit heat-trapping pollutants. And the president’s chief of staff, Bill Daley, recently reiterated the administration’s determination to veto any legislation that would undermine the EPA’s ability to protect public health.

Now the question is what the Obama administration will do with its authority. The administration is currently developing standards addressing the two biggest sources of global warming pollution: power plants and cars. Together these standards address about 60 percent of U.S. CO2 emissions and they have the potential to reduce overall U.S. emissions significantly. Both of these standards (for power plants under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, and for passenger vehicles under Section 202) are being drafted right now and will be proposed in September and finalized next spring.

When it comes to reducing emissions from power plants and automobiles using the Clean Air Act, the president is master of his own (and our) fate. The climate legacy of his first term can still be very positive if he delivers strong standards and defends them.

Recent reports about the administration’s proposal for vehicle standards, which will increase the fuel efficiency and reduce heat-trapping pollution from model year 2017-2025 vehicles, make my colleague, Roland Hwang, cautiously optimistic that the final rule will continue the significant progress currently being made by the automobile industry and bring the average fuel economy of new cars close to 60 miles per gallon by 2025.

No details have been reported about the administration’s approach to the power plant rule, but during his State of the Union Address this year the president called on Congress to pass a “clean energy standard” to ensure that at least 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from low carbon sources by 2035. There is no evidence that this Congress will heed that call. Fortunately, power plant pollution standards under the Clean Air Act can set us on a path toward that goal, and all Congress has to do is stay out of the way. As with automobiles, the power plant standards simply need to continue the progress we have seen over the last few years: Between 2005 and 2010 emissions from the electric sector declined by 6 percent (this is not primarily due to the recession — GDP is 5 percent higher than it was in 2005 and total electricity generation is 2 percent higher).

Here’s the bottom line: The jury is still out on President Obama’s climate record. The verdict depends on the power plant and automobile standards the administration is writing now.

We’ve got to clean up our cars, and do away with some clunkers.Photo: Mary Anne Enriquez

President Obama today renewed his call to move America forward by reducing our dependence on imported oil and dirty coal at a Georgetown University speech. Meanwhile at the other end of town, members of Congress are working overtime to move us backward by trying to block the EPA from doing its job of setting standards to clean up our cars and power plants.

President Obama set a new goal to reduce U.S. oil imports by one-third by 2025, primarily by accelerating the move to efficient, hybrid, and electric vehicles, and sustainable biofuels. Although he called for some measures to expand domestic production from existing leases, he recognized that we can’t drill our way to energy independence.

The president also renewed his call to get 80 percent of our electricity from clean sources by 2035. His definition of “clean” needs some work, but one thing is clear: we have to replace our aging fleet of dirty coal plants with better ways to recharge our smartphones.

These may seem like disconnected initiatives given that we hardly use any oil to generate electricity. But there is a crucial connection that will grow as we move to electrify our transportation system in order to end our dependence on oil. Plugging our advanced electric cars into old, dirty coal fired power plants does not get us where we need to go. So it absolutely makes sense for the president to advance his oil dependence reduction and clean electricity goals together.

The rubber will meet the road next week as the president and Congress try to reach agreement on a continuing resolution to keep the government open for the rest of the fiscal year. House Republicans are reportedly insisting that dirty air policy riders from their stunningly irresponsible budget billt be included. Meanwhile, in the Senate there could be votes at any time to block clean air safeguards through one or more amendments to an unrelated small business bill.

While the details differ, these various proposals to prevent the EPA from doing its job would directly interfere with achieving the goals the president laid out today. The most important tools the administration has for reducing our oil dependence are strong vehicle fuel efficiency and pollution standards. The president is rightly proud of the historic standards established jointly by EPA, the Department of Transportation, and the California Air Resources Board covering vehicles produced between now and 2016, and as the White House noted today, the next generation of standards covering 2017-2025 are currently under development. The president must not allow Congress to block any part of the collaboration among those three agencies, which is key to the effectiveness of these standards.

Similarly, the goal of producing 80 percent of our electricity from clean sources can’t be achieved if dirty power plants are allowed to continue indefinitely to emit unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. There just won’t be much of a market for clean energy sources of the future if the dirty energy sources of the past are given free rein to keep on polluting. EPA is finally moving to follow the law and the science by setting carbon dioxide pollution standards for power plants. The president must not allow Congress to block this long overdue effort, which is essential to reduce life-threatening pollution and to create a level playing field for clean energy solutions.

As the president himself noted today, there has been a lot of talk in the past about ending our dependence on oil, but political gridlock has blocked real progress. The president must not allow that to happen this time. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has helpfully noted that the continuing resolution “is a funding bill and a budget bill and it’s not the place for extraneous ideological or political policy to be addressed.” The president must not waver in that stance.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.)

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), and others quickly stood up to defend public health, pledging to ensure that the EPA be allowed to do its job. Certain others, however, are trying to have it both ways, decrying the radical agenda of House leaders while urging a delay in the EPA’s ability to limit dangerous carbon pollution. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told reporters last week that he plans to reintroduce and push his bill to block all work on standards to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and other stationary sources for two years. Rockefeller, however, sought to distance himself from Upton and others, telling E&E News [$ubreq] “What worries me is we’ll get so many votes, but we’ll also get a bill which abolishes EPA, strips them of all funding, and I’m not for that …”

So is there really much daylight between the radical anti-regulatory rhetoric of the new House leadership and the more moderate-sounding stance of Rockefeller?  In a word: No. Delay is just obstruction by another name. It would accomplish nothing other than to ensure that more dangerous pollution is dumped into the atmosphere and that U.S. companies fall behind in the global competition for clean energy markets.

Rockefeller’s arguments for delay simply don’t stand up to scrutiny. Rockefeller has previously said that a delay is needed to give Congress the opportunity to enact comprehensive climate legislation. Congress had its opportunity last year and took a pass. No one expects this Congress to enact that kind of legislation, so it’s only logical to assume that Rockefeller will want to continue blocking the EPA indefinitely until a future Congress eventually steps up to that task. More recently, Rockefeller argued that the two-year delay would allow time for the development of carbon capture and storage technology (CCS). While we can make progress on a few federally-funded CCS projects, the main effect of a two-year delay in setting and enforcing carbon pollution limits would be to stifle the private sector investment essential to commercializing this technology. The climate legislation passed by the House in the last Congress would have accomplished the goals Rockefeller has endorsed, including providing very generous support for deploying CCS technology. But the Senate didn’t even bring the bill up for a vote, in part because of Rockefeller’s objections. The likelihood is that two years from now Rockefeller will still be arguing we need more time for the development of CCS. 

The biggest problem with legislating delays in action on carbon pollution — whether one year or two — is that provisions like these are like roaches: once they get into your house they are nearly impossible to exterminate. Take the case of vehicle fuel efficiency standards. Congress passed a one-year delay in updating passenger car standards in 1995. The delay was extended five times. Because the standard was already overdue for an update and because the delay provision barred the Department of Transportation from doing any work to prepare for future updates, car standards ended up stuck in neutral for a total of 21 years. This stagnation literally bankrupted the U.S. auto industry, which was unprepared to compete when consumers turned away from gas guzzling SUVs as fuel prices started to rise in second half of the last decade. We can expect a similar outcome if this story is repeated with pollution standards for power plants, refineries, and other big polluters. America’s nascent clean energy industry could end up needing a bailout that would make the auto bailout pale by comparison. And no bailout could heal the damage done to our atmosphere.

The bottom line is that our elected representatives have to make a choice. Will they stand up for protecting the health of American families from life-threatening pollution or will they side with big polluters?

Someone at Heritage is walking around with flaming pants.Image: Brad Gillette

The irony here is that Heritage claims that, “We should welcome an objective scientific debate on global warming, but when you mix politics into the equation, having an uninfluenced transparent debate is wishful thinking.” Well then, let’s see how Heritage measures up to its purported own standard. 

In a recent post, Heritage’s Nicolas Loris trumpeted what he erroneously claims is a “UK Global Warming Reversal” when commenting on a report from the Royal Society entitled, “Climate Change:  A Summary of the Science.” Heritage quotes the report as saying this:

There is very strong evidence to indicate that climate change has occurred on a wide range of different timescales from decades to many millions of years; human activity is a relatively recent addition to the list of potential causes of climate change. It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future, but careful estimates of potential changes and associated uncertainties have been made. Scientists continue to work to narrow these areas of uncertainty. Uncertainty can work both ways, since the changes and their impacts may be either smaller or larger than those projected.

Heritage presents this quote as if it was one uninterrupted paragraph.  But that’s not so. An accurate representation is this:

There is very strong evidence to indicate that climate change has occurred on a wide range of different timescales from decades to many millions of years; human activity is a relatively recent addition to the list of potential causes of climate change. [Heritage now edits out 10 pages and 48 paragraphs before it gets to the sentence that follows.] It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future, but careful estimates of potential changes and associated uncertainties have been made. Scientists continue to work to narrow these areas of uncertainty. Uncertainty can work both ways, since the changes and their impacts may be either smaller or larger than those projected.

Obviously, Heritage made this mammoth edit to try to convey far more uncertainty and doubt — as Heritage puts it, “a dramatic reversal,” — than the report actually presents. 

The fact is that when scientists try to be prudent, exacting, objective, and transparent, unscrupulous ideologues like Heritage quickly manipulate scientists’ words to fit the conclusions of anti-science deniers, as is shown above. 

As opposed to Heritage’s cobbled together, cherry-picked Big-Lie editing, here — from the report’s introduction — is a far more accurate picture of the report’s assessment of where the science and the uncertainty is: 

There is strong evidence that the warming of the Earth over the last half-century has been caused largely by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, including agriculture and deforestation. The size of future temperature increases and other aspects of climate change, especially at the regional scale, are still subject to uncertainty. Nevertheless, the risks associated with some of these changes are substantial. It is important that decision makers have access to climate science of the highest quality, and can take account of its findings in formulating appropriate responses.

The second part of Heritage’s cherry-picked paragraph tries to make the case for much broader uncertainty. In assembling the misrepresenting paragraph, Heritage conveniently ignores the paragraph in the report that actually precedes the discussion of uncertainty. Here it is in its entirety:

There is strong evidence that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are the dominant cause of the global warming that has taken place over the last half century. This warming trend is expected to continue as are changes in precipitation over the long term in many regions. Further and more rapid increases in sea level are likely which will have profound implications for coastal communities and ecosystems.

In other words, scientists are telling us what they do know while at the same time expressing the uncertainty and curiosity that is the hallmark of a healthy scientific process. Scientists are being utterly straightforward. Unfortunately, that’s a characteristic that Heritage sees as something to exploit.    

Heritage is as Heritage does, and in this case, Heritage chooses to deliberately misrepresent the science to advance its own ideological agenda. Who’s not being transparent? It’s lamentable that organizations like Heritage aren’t held to the same standards to which they claim to hold scientists. 

Heritage-gate anyone?

The blame game began even before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) made the official announcement that he would not bring a comprehensive climate and energy bill to the Senate floor. Reid himself placed the blame where it primarily belongs — obstructionism by the Republican Leadership, as a result of which not a single Republican senator had stood up to commit to work with Democrats to pass carbon pollution limits (Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) did commit to work with John Kerry (D-Mass.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) but backed out after months of negotiations; Susan Collins (R-Maine) cosponsored a bill with Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) but did nothing to work with her Senate colleagues to craft a bill that could actually pass; Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) expressed openness to a limit on power plant carbon pollution but never committed to a specific proposal; every Senate Republican voted to overturn EPA’s science-based finding that carbon pollution endangers public health and the environment).

Advocates for effective climate legislation are all angry and frustrated, and many have not been so targeted in apportioning blame. I will add my thoughts on lessons learned later in this post, but first let’s review the bidding: Some environmentalists blamed the White House for not doing enough; one White House official anonymously blamed environmentalists for not delivering any Republican votes; some liberals blamed Kerry and Lieberman for negotiating with oil companies and developing a proposal that didn’t excite the environmental base; some moderates blamed the basic idea of carbon pollution limits or blamed Kerry and Lieberman for overreaching and taking too long to scale back their proposal to focus just on power plants.

There may be grains of truth in each of these perspectives, but the bottom line is simpler and has nothing to do with the particulars of legislative proposals or the campaigns waged by proponents or the opposition: The Republican leadership has concluded that “no” is working for them regardless of public opinion about any individual policy, let alone the public interest.

Something else has been lost in the rush to point fingers — recognition of the broad support that was assembled for climate legislation and how far it got in this Congress. A majority of the public consistently supports comprehensive energy and climate legislation despite the opponents’ relentless misinformation campaign; many unions and thousands of businesses also recognized the need for legislation to drive job-creating clean energy investments and came out in support; a majority of the House voted for the ACES bill last year; a majority of the Senate affirmed EPA’s finding that carbon pollution endangers public health and the environment by voting to defeat the Murkowski Resolution; and a majority of the Senate was prepared to vote for a firm limit on carbon pollution. Nothing in the Constitution says that a supermajority is required to enact legislation, but the 60 vote barrier is the one obstacle that could not be overcome so far.

None of this means that advocates for climate legislation didn’t make any mistakes. Would different strategies or tactics have led to a different outcome? I honestly don’t know, but here are some lessons learned from the perspective of someone who spent the last few years trying to push a real bill through the real Congress. I make no claim to objectivity, but I hope this perspective adds some light to the heated discussion of what went wrong.

Lesson 1: Be careful in translating campaign positions into budget documents

The Obama administration got off to a rough start on climate policy when it put a revenue assumption from a carbon cap into its first budget based on Obama’s campaign platform. Opponents immediately attacked this as a tax that would transfer wealth from the industrial Midwest to the coasts. Many potential supporters were wary because the administration had not done the necessary political groundwork to reassure them that regional differences in carbon intensity and the competitiveness of energy intensive industries would be addressed (a footnote to this effect in the budget was not sufficient). Regional differences among Democrats may have prevented them from including climate legislation in the Congressional budget resolution in any case, but this misstep made it impossible, closing off the budget reconciliation pathway which could have allowed climate legislation to pass the Senate with a simple majority (this procedure proved crucial to enacting healthcare reform).

Lesson 2: Political capital is not necessarily a renewable resource

Perhaps the most fateful decision the Obama administration made early on was to move healthcare reform before energy and climate legislation. I’m sure this seemed like a good idea at the time. Healthcare reform was popular, was seen as an issue that the public cared about on a personal level, and was expected to unite Democrats from all regions. White House officials and Congressional leaders reassured environmentalists with their theory that success breeds success. A quick victory on healthcare reform would renew Obama’s political capital, some of which had to be spent early on to push the economic stimulus bill through Congress with no Republican help. Healthcare reform was eventually enacted, but only after an exhausting battle that eroded public support, drained political capital, and created the Tea Party movement. Public support for healthcare reform is slowly rebounding as some of the early benefits kick in and people realize that the forecasted Armageddon is not happening. But this is occurring too slowly to rebuild Obama’s political capital in time to help push climate legislation across the finish line.

Lesson 3: Winning the recess is as important as winning the vote

Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) surprised almost everyone when he met his self-imposed deadlines for steering the American Clean Energy and Security act (ACES) through the House of Representatives last June. The environmental community mobilized to help secure the last few votes needed to eke out a 219-212 victory. Unfortunately, while we celebrated that victory the opposition mobilized a vicious counter attack. By the time we organized a response the Tea Party movement had branded the very moderate Waxman-Markey bill as a radical government takeover of the energy industry alongside the supposedly radical takeover of the healthcare system that Waxman also steered through the House. The unified Clean Energy Works campaign was organized to prevent that from happening again in the Senate, but we were starting from a hole that we never fully dug out of.

Lesson 4: Never underestimate the allure of denial

Last November, thousands of emails stolen from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit were posted online. A handful of these emails, out of context, were widely disseminated by the Merchants of Doubt. Aft
er the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Prize, I had assumed that the debate about climate science was effectively over and, along with the rest of the environmental community, turned my attention to advancing solutions. A handful of emails couldn’t possibly undermine confidence in a body of peer reviewed scientific literature built up over two decades, could it? Rather than blow over quickly, however, the mainstream media went along for the ride in what came to be called Climategate. A new Project on Climate Science was launched to get the facts about climate change out to the media, five independent investigations have completely cleared the scientists who were attacked, and the National Academy of Sciences reaffirmed that there is overwhelming evidence that atmospheric pollution is causing global climate change. But all of this has come too late to alter the perception that public concern about climate change was diminished by the so-called scandal.

Lesson 5: Too much patience is as bad as too little

The environmental community was patient when President Obama decided to push healthcare reform before energy and climate legislation; we were patient when the administration turned to financial reform next; and we were patient while Kerry and Lieberman’s negotiations with Graham dragged on. By the time we lost our patience in July the Senate calendar was seriously stacked against us along with the unwavering opposition of the Republican leadership. It’s not clear whether it would have been possible to force action any quicker given how long it ended up taking to actually deliver the healthcare and financial reform bills to the president’s desk, but we could have done more to demand action prior to the December 2009 Copenhagen climate summit.

Lesson 6: Getting interest groups on board is not sufficient

The USCAP Blueprint for Legislative Action, released in January 2009, provided a consensus set of recommendations for how to craft carbon pollution limits from a diverse set of companies and non-governmental organizations, including NRDC. The idea was to accelerate the legislative process by surfacing and trying to resolve disputes about many of the policy details that would inevitably arise in writing and moving a bill through Congress. This strategy worked in the House, where the Blueprint served as the basis for much of the ACES bill. But the Blueprint did not address every issue and USCAP does not include all important interests. Kerry and Lieberman spent months negotiating with utilities, oil companies, and other businesses over legislative details left unresolved in the Blueprint. These negotiations were largely successful in broadening industry support for the proposal, in some cases at the expense of environmental interests, but in many cases by tweaking provisions in ways that only mattered to the companies who would be directly affected. The problem is that broader support by business trade associations did not translate into broader support by U.S. senators. The hardcore business opposition was unmoved and neither was the political and ideological opposition of the Republican leadership. These special interests were all too happy to cynically attack the bill for including special interest concessions. In the meantime there was never an effective process to engage enough senators themselves to resolve the issues essential to garnering 60 votes.

Lesson 7: Never, never, never give up — Winston Churchill

As the New York Times put it, “The danger of global warming is not going away just because Washington’s politicians don’t want to deal with it.” We will continue fighting to make the most of every opportunity to curb carbon pollution, whether that is through national legislation, Department of Energy efficiency standards, EPA pollution standards, or state and local action. We can afford to do no less.

Just another balmy day on the East Coast.Photo courtesy of Tomas Fano via flickr

The oppressive heat wave gripping the eastern United States, by itself, shouldn’t have any influence on what policymakers think about global warming.

But after the ridiculous spectacle of climate science deniers claiming that last winter’s blizzard disproves global warming, I hope that the record heat we are experiencing now will help focus their minds on the underlying science. A string of recent authoritative reports unequivocally reaffirming the science and rejecting the malicious allegations against climate scientists provides plenty of material to focus on.

Last winter was the perfect storm for climate science deniers. They scoured thousands of stolen emails to cherry pick a handful that appeared to cast doubt on the integrity of climate scientists, a few mistakes were found in the IPCC report on climate change impacts, and a cold and snowy winter blanketed the East Coast. As I said at the time, none of this changed the facts on the ground, in the air, or in the ocean.

That’s true of an isolated heat wave also, but this heat wave is part of a clear trend of increasingly severe and frequent heat. In fact, the last 12 months was the hottest 12 month period on record, and the last decade was the hottest decade on record. As Tom Peterson, Chief Scientist for NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center said recently:

We’re getting a dramatic taste of the kind of weather we are on course to bequeath to our grandchildren.

The record heat of the last few weeks has been matched by a record string of reports reaffirming the underlying science.

Let’s start with the most comprehensive and authoritative. The National Academy of Science released the three primary components of its America’s Climate Choices report in May, addressing the fundamental science, limiting the magnitude, and adapting to the impacts of climate change.

The Acadamy’s conclusions are as definitive as science gets:

Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for — and in many cases is already affecting — a broad range of human and natural systems.

Most of the warming over the last several decades can be attributed to human activities that release carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas — for energy is the single largest human driver of climate change, but agriculture, forest clearing, and certain industrial activities also make significant contributions.

Individually and collectively, these changes pose risks for a wide range of human and environmental systems, including freshwater resources, the coastal environment, ecosystems, agriculture, fisheries, human health, and national security, among others.

Shamefully, this authoritative report has received far less media coverage than the unsubstantiated, and now disproven, allegations against individual climate scientists. Sure, hacked emails and innuendo about wrongdoing are sexier than the solid clear conclusions of an institution such as the National Academy of Sciences. But are they more newsworthy? Journalists have a responsibility to evaluate the meaning and significance of allegations before spreading them. In the case of the so-called “climate gate” episode they mostly failed at that responsibility.

Now journalists have an opportunity to set the record straight, as Media Matters, NRDC, and others urged them to do yesterday. The Project on Climate Science summarized the conclusion of the latest report, which also came out yesterday, to find baseless the allegations arising from the hacked emails:

The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review, also known as the Muir Russell report, declared today that it “did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments.” Regarding the actions of the scientists of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, the report stated that “their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt.”

This report is the last in a series of three investigations in the United Kingdom into the alleged wrong-doing by climate scientists. It also comes on the heels of the exoneration of Professor Michael Mann from investigations at Penn State University.

Here are three additional examples as summarized in the Media Matters letter:

Responding to allegations that Dr. Michael Mann tampered with scientific evidence, Pennsylvania State University conducted a thorough investigation. It concluded, “The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University. More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.”

London’s Sunday Times retracted its story, echoed by dozens of outlets, that the IPCC issued an unsubstantiated report claiming 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest was endangered due to changing rainfall patterns. The Times wrote, “In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) report, the figure had, in error, not been referenced, but was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change.”

After analyzing 32 summary conclusions on the regional impacts of climate change in the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency concluded that “no significant errors” had been made.

This swarm of data and reports should close this chapter in the long-running saga written by the Merchants of Doubt. Ideologically-driven climate science deniers will doubtless come up with new arguments, but next time let’s hope that the media won’t go along for the ride.

As expected, there was not a consensus in the room on the best way to proceed and most Republicans continued to oppose any limits at all. One breakthrough came from Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who issued a statement after the meeting calling for Congress “to develop legislation that is pragmatic, reduces uncertainty, and creates business opportunities for a carbon-free economy of the future, without further harming our economy of today” by capping emissions from the power sector. Sen. John Kerry indicated that he was open to a compromise that would scale back the scope of his proposal. In an online “Open for Questions” session after the meeting, Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, reiterated the president’s commitment to a comprehensive approach that treats energy and climate as two sides of the same coin and puts a price on carbon emissions. She noted that there was a lot of discussion about how to do that during the White House meeting including discussion of a “stationary source only” cap.

Given all these signals the buzz in the Senate in recent days has focused on the idea of including in a comprehensive energy bill a cap that has a more limited scope than the 85 percent coverage of the Kerry-Lieberman proposal. So if it’s not possible to get 60 votes with the coverage of the House-passed bill and the Kerry-Lieberman proposal, is it possible to get started on the road to the emission reductions we need by starting with a cap on stationary sources?

My answer is a definite maybe.

There is no question that a broader cap is better and that all significant sources of global warming pollution must be subject to strict regulations in order to get to the 80 percent or more reductions we need by mid-Century. But a “stationary sources first” approach could work if it is structured properly, designed to become broader over time, and part of a comprehensive bill that includes strong measures to reduce emissions from the transportation sector.

Before considering the key issues in designing an effective stationary sources cap, let’s quickly review where the emissions come from: Power plants are the largest single source at 33 percent of the total emissions inventory, other large stationary sources that would be directly covered under Kerry-Lieberman contribute another 16 percent, natural gas use in homes and commercial buildings adds 6 percent, while oil use for transportation accounts for 26 percent. Those sources sum to 81 percent. That leaves HFCs at 3 percent and various miscellaneous sources, mostly from agriculture, which generally wouldn’t be covered directly in any of the proposals.

So covering only stationary sources gets us to nearly half of the total inventory. But there is no reason to leave out natural gas distribution companies (who would be responsible for the emissions from their customers, mostly homes and commercial buildings) or HFCs (which would be subject to a separate production phase-down), which have not been a major source of controversy. This would boost coverage to 57 percent of the total inventory or about two-thirds of the coverage under Kerry-Lieberman.

The industrial sector is worth considering in more detail because some critics have charged that limiting emissions from manufacturing would be complicated and could put U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage. The House bill and the Kerry-Lieberman proposal, however, have provisions that would nullify the competitiveness concern as my colleague David Doniger has discussed here. As for complexity, this could be addressed by phasing in coverage starting with the highest-emitting industrial subsectors. Just the top five subsectors-led by oil refineries-account for over 40 percent of the total emissions from the industrial sector. Additional sectors may well conclude that they would prefer the regulatory certainty and flexibility that comes from being part of a multi-sector cap and petition to be included sooner, rather than later.

This brings us to the transportation sector, which must be addressed in any comprehensive energy and climate bill. As I have argued previously, covering transportation fuels in the cap is essential to end our addiction to oil and achieve the long-term emission reductions we need. But I also noted that in the near term, more targeted policies will have the largest impact, such as increasing efficiency standards for cars, setting standards for trucks, and building infrastructure to transition from gasoline and diesel to electricity, natural gas, and sustainable biofuels. The stationary source cap also plays a key role because it ensures that electrifying the transportation system will decrease, not increase, emissions and because carbon dioxide captured from smokestacks can increase domestic oil production from existing onshore fields, reducing our reliance on imports and more dangerous offshore drilling.

We should have no illusions that a stationary sources only approach will achieve the overall emission reductions we need. That’s why this approach must be stationary sources first, not stationary sources only. The solution is to set ambitious overall national targets, both for reducing emissions and for reducing oil dependence, and ensure that they are met by adopting strong complementary policies and by expanding the scope of the cap over time to stay on track.

Not so when it comes to ending our dangerous dependence on oil and other fossil fuels, which inevitably leads to more disasters like the one in the Gulf of Mexico, chains our fate to that of dictators in the Gulf of Arabia, and disrupts the stability of the climate on which our civilization was built. Congress has enacted seven major energy bills since 1974, most of which promised to make America energy independent and none of which have delivered. Some in Congress want to repeat this junk shot approach, hoping for a different result.

Others want Congress to focus narrowly on cleaning up the oil spill and reforming drilling regulations. They make two wildly contradictory arguments against a comprehensive response that includes limits on carbon pollution. First they say that an energy and climate bill is not a response to the oil spill because it won’t significantly reduce America’s insatiable oil appetite. Simultaneously they argue that any bill that limits carbon pollution is a giant gasoline tax that will force Americans out of their cars. These arguments can’t both be right. In fact, neither is.

The first line of argument suggests that carbon pollution limits won’t change the price of gasoline enough to significantly affect consumer behavior so they won’t meaningfully reduce oil demand. The premise is right (contradicting the second argument), but the conclusion is wrong. The carbon limits in a bill like the American Power Act hold oil companies, power producers, and heavy industry responsible for their pollution, but these limits tighten gradually to give polluters time to clean up their act. According to EPA’s recent analysis, the oil pollution limits in the American Power Act would change gasoline prices by only ten cents per gallon in 2020, less than normal price fluctuations from month to month.  

How then would comprehensive climate and energy legislation end our dependence on dirty and dangerous sources of oil? In the near term the primary effect of the pollution limits will be to direct investment toward carbon cutting technologies by making it clear that failing to do so would be an increasingly expensive mistake as the pollution limits ratchet down. Equally important, complementary measures will directly reduce demand for oil by ratcheting up efficiency standards for cars, establishing the first-ever standards for heavy trucks, and investing in the infrastructure to replace petroleum fuels with electricity, natural gas, and sustainable biofuels (see sections 4111-4141 of the APA). Finally, the emission limits in a comprehensive bill will promote the capture of millions of tons of CO2 from power plants and industrial smokestacks. This CO2 can be injected into aging onshore oil fields in the United States to boost recovery of otherwise trapped oil, displacing imports and the need to drill in ever deeper and more dangerous waters.

Let’s do the numbers.  As I have described in more detail before, EPA has shown that we could cut oil demand by almost 7 million barrels per day by 2030. Meanwhile, CO2 enhanced oil recovery could increase domestic onshore production by 3 million barrels per day. In comparison, current offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico is 1.6 million barrels per day. The net effect would be to increase domestic production by ten times as much as would expanded offshore drilling, cut imports by at least half, and put us on a path to finally end our dependence on oil once and for all.

Passing a comprehensive energy and climate plan is not an instant fix for the mess we are in. But unlike another junk shot, it will provide real relief if we start now.