Photo: Official Avatar Movie photostream via Flickr

“There is no studio anywhere in the world who would say an environmental message would make $3 billion … I can’t think of any other really commercially successful ones, can you?” he said during an interview at a Santa Monica fundraiser last Monday for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council.

“‘WALL-E’, maybe?” replied his wife, actress Suzy Amis Cameron.

It was Amis Cameron who asked an astonished, grateful NRDC if they would like her husband to appear at a quickly arranged fundraiser starring Cameron and his sci-fi blockbuster, which features a mother tree deity. The film is nominated in nine Oscar categories, after all, including best director and best picture.  Hooking up with NRDC was, if you think about, perfectly natural. 

Talking to a graduate film student at the event, Cameron warmed to his message that he’s the greatest enviro director, comparing his work to “An Inconvenient Truth,” which he called boring with bar charts.  “If it wasn’t Al Gore, nobody would have listened,” he said, but then ruefully admitted he made four semi-successful documentaries about the ocean before plunging into “Avatar.”

“I wanted to do a film that had a deeply embedded environmental message … but do it in the form of a science fiction action adventure,” Cameron told local public radio host Elvis Mitchell. “My feeling was if we have to go four light years away to another planet to appreciate what we have here on earth, that’s okay.”

He wanted, he said, to pack such an emotional wallop that by the time the film’s giant, sheltering tree is felled, everyone in the theater would feel moral outrage. Further, after the triumph of nature’s creatures over evil military contractors, he wanted the audience to feel hopeful enough to do something.

“Avatar” may be the most explicitly environmental film of Cameron’s oeuvre, but he insists he’s been making them all his life, from a high school work entitled “The Extinction Syndrome” to his obsession with nuclear war fears à la the “Terminator” series.

Cameron’s environmental zeal started early. Though he spent his childhood in a Canadian farm town, he earned his scuba certification in a landlocked swimming pool. When he was 17, his family moved to inland southern California, but he homed in on the beach, surfing off Huntington and Laguna, then switching to scuba diving.

In recent years he has done group submersible dives, exploring and noting the slow degradation of coral reefs. Oceanic influences infuse “Avatar’s” phosphorescent lighting and dreamlike landscapes. The giant, whirly creatures that shrivel up when Sully taps them were based on sea worms. He had a team of the planet’s best designers, Cameron said, but every time they invented something spectacular, they found Mother Nature had done something better.

Cameron seems pretty well positioned to take on right-wing climate deniers, having made “The Terminator” for Fox when Rush Limbaugh was a California cow town radio host. At the NRDC event, he refused to debate about Fox News commentators, however, noting he works for a different division, though he confirmed studio executives asked him to “tone down the tree-hugger crap.” He refused, but art imitated studio life when Jake Sully, the contract soldier who is the main character, says he hopes “all the tree-hugger crap” he’s being exposed to “won’t be on the final.”

Tree hugging is not, Cameron acknowledged, in the moviemaking industry’s genetic makeup, it being a carbon-intensive process. But, he insists, his family’s use of hybrid vehicles, fluorescent bulbs, and other sustainable products is his way of making a difference. Okay sure, that should even things out.

It might have been an NRDC event, but the mobs were vintage Hollywood, even if there were high schoolers and Amazon River activists mixed in with the “Aliens” fans and wannabe filmmakers. One man’s daughter had attended a birthday party for one of Cameron’s’ kids and said he’d have his child slip a copy of his documentary on soil to Cameron’s child to pass on to him. Have your girl call my girl. We’ll do lunch.

I joined the mob, testing Cameron’s green chops: Wind power (he’s a huge fan), clean coal (it doesn’t exist), the failure of Obama and other world leaders at Copenhagen (agreed), cap-and-trade, he was acquainted with them all, even a bit directa-torial in his opinions. But he gave as good as he got. When I noted that acid rain was still spreading despite cap-and-trade, he retorted that it’s not spreading as fast as it would have. He asked what a better solution might be. Tough new regulations?

Fine, “I’m willing to engage or indulge real ideas,” he said. “But if we don’t do something, we’re all going to die! What’s it going to take, a big fucking disaster with all kinds of people dying? We need to change our priorities fast.”

Cameron said he has been overwhelmed with requests from environmental groups, and will probably do more events, since his wife told him, “Maybe more than an opportunity, maybe there’s a duty to try to use this film for whatever good can be brought to bear.”

He added, “The environmental message maybe got lost earlier in all the talk about 3-D … It’s time to start having that conversation more.”

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Photo: Peter Grigsby

“We need a lot of muscle to beat this climate change,” said Schwarzenegger in his opening remarks. “That’s why I’m here today, to pump you up … Because while all those national governments are debating over who should go first … we on the regional level are already creating the action … we are where the action is.”

Despite the climate legislation introduced by Sens. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer the day the Summit began, the focus throughout the event was on “sub-nationals;” that is, the cities, states, and provinces that may not enjoy national government status, but have been taking concrete steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions and promote energy efficiency.

Governors from Oregon, New York and Washington State joined the more than 1,000 regulators, environmentalists, and green business types from six different continents.The global networking had some positive results. At the request of the U.S. State Department, California will work with a remote Chinese province to recreate many of the state’s climate programs there.

Some partnerships drew criticism, however. Timber king Sierra Pacific Industries, California’s largest private landowner, announced a deal with the New York-based carbon credit company Equator, LLC that will allow Equator to market credits for “sequestering” 1.5 million tons of carbon in 60,000 acres of forest. Sierra and Equator likened their arrangement to removing 300,000 cars from the road for one year. Schwarzenegger hailed it as the nation’s largest carbon sequestration project. But environmental groups called the deal a sham, made possible by language that was slipped into California’s revised forestry protocols last week and that will allow timber giant Sierra to continue its clear-cutting and other harmful practices. A state official disagreed, saying there was no last minute move, and that clear cutting would in fact be somewhat restricted under the new rules.

Divisions between developed and developing countries were also on display at the Los Angeles Summit. Yannick Glemarec, a United Nations director of environment finance from France, spoke proudly of rigorous new building codes in Paris, while panelists from impoverished small coastal nations described the climate-related droughts, flooding, and rising seas that are already punishing them. “For us, it is a choice between survival and death,” said Dessima Williams, Ambassador of Grenada to United Nations and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States.

According to Mary DeNevers of the World Bank, it could take as much as $100 billion annually to address these and other impacts of climate change. The sum, said DeNevers, is actually quite small compared to the world’s collective wealth. But she said that one of the most contentious negotiating points for Copenhagen delegates in a global climate agreement is whether developed nations should pick up that tab in addition to the poverty assistance already offered to developing nations — or in place of it.

Some speakers took note of the ironies in the way developed and developing nations view the crisis. “You’re worried about your Bordeaux or your Pinot” suffering from rising temperatures, but “these people are worried about how to get protein,” said Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University professor and member of the Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change (IPCC), addressing the French U.N. representative. He also said that if members of the U.S. Congress were willing to spend $750 billion to bail out “greedy bankers,” they should step up to bail out starving nations grappling with drought and crop loss.

All the attendees got a tiny taste of life without first world amenities on Thursday, when power at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza went out for more than two hours. No working lights or laptops, and worst of all, no air conditioning on a smoggy, 90 degree L.A. afternoon.

“Yeah, everybody’s behaving very sustainably, climbing the stairs instead of using the elevators,” quipped construction lobbyist Tom Carter, who was trolling the summit in for clients for his startup company, which turns captured carbon dioxide into “green cement.”

Carter and other attendees didn’t come to Schwarzenegger’s summit just for the speakers. They were there for the action in the hallways. Carter hadn’t sealed any deals, he said, but he’d met lots of potential new customers.

There was a kerfuffle over the latest “green washing” ads aired in Virginia this week by CO2isgreen.org, a Washington, D.C.-based group. The ads claim there is no cataclysmic, human caused climate change occurring, and that more carbon dioxide should be created because it is good for plants. Jane Goodall called the ads “disgraceful.” Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, believes the ads are intended to persuade Virginia congressmen not to vote for national climate legislation.

For many attendees, including lobbyist Tom Calera, a conference highlight was hearing Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson announce her first potential effort to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants and refineries. “More potential customers for us,” said Calera, noting all those power plant behemoths who might soon need a company like his to take a little carbon off their hands.

Nancy Sutley, Obama’s director of the Council on Environmental Quality, was also on hand. The former deputy mayor of Los Angeles said that while many federal officials thought regional efforts like the Western Climate Initiative — an agreement among U.S. western states and some Canadian provinces — should be superceded by national cap and trade legislation, she thought perhaps they could be integrated.

Schwarzenegger and other conferees would certainly agree. While grateful for any efforts on the part of their respective national governments, they were not about to call it quits on climate. On the last day of the conference delegates planned to sign two joint declarations. One demands that deforestation be addressed at the Copenhagen climate treaty negotiations in December, the other that the mighty sub-nationals be included in the international climate conversation.

“Our experience and our expertise are essential to the climate talks that will begin in just two months in Copenhagen,” said Gov. Schwarzenegger, who said he will travel to the Danish capitol to speak on behalf of the sub-national movement. “We will give the findings from this summit to the U.N. climate change negotiators to help them with their work in December. They will hear our voices in Copenhagen, believe me. We are where the action is.”

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Video: Janet Wilson interviews Stanford’s Stephen Schneider at the Governor’s Global Climate Summit

LOS ANGELES — EPA administrator Lisa Jackson unveiled a modest proposal on Wednesday: If a company wants to build a new power plant or refinery, or fix up a smoky old belcher, it will have to use the best available technology to control greenhouse gases.

That’s it. Oh, and the Dunkin Donuts of the country will be spared.

Depending on who you ask, the proposed regulation is either a bone-headed move that will land her agency back in court, or a shrewd maneuver to quash industry scare tactics and quell rising panic on Main Street about the potential costs of far-reaching climate legislation.

It’s not clear how much the rule would accomplish. At a Wednesday press conference during her stop here at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit, Jackson admitted she had no idea how many tons of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases would actually be reduced if the regulation goes into effect. Ditto on how much the regulation could end up costing affected businesses.

But one thing was absolutely clear, she said: The regulation would not affect your local doughnut shop.

“Very soon, we will hear about doomsday scenarios, with EPA regulating everything from cows to the local Dunkin Donuts. But let’s be clear. That’s not going to happen,” said Jackson in her speech at the gathering organized by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). “We know the corner coffee shop is no place to look for meaningful carbon reductions.”

The regulation would only apply to facilities that emit 25,000 tons or more a year, she said. That’s about 10,000 major businesses all told, of the millions dotting the American strip mall and manufacturing landscape.

Industry groups were quick to point out that the Clean Air Act says that any pollution source over 250 tons must be regulated, not 25,000 tons.

Former Bush-era EPA official Jeff Holmstead, now with the D.C. law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, said the EPA action could face a legal challenge. “Normally, it takes an act of Congress to change the words of a statute enacted by Congress, and many of us are very curious to see EPA’s legal justification for today’s proposal,” he said. “Let’s hope it stands up in court, or anyone who wants to build anything in the U.S. will be facing more litigation and delay.”

Jackson said the agency’s lawyers had studied the issue, and were confident they could proceed.

David Doniger, director of the Natural Resource Defense Council’s climate change policy center, said he’ll be curious to see who actually files a lawsuit saying small businesses should have to face the same regulations as the nation’s biggest polluters.

He said courts had ruled that if regulators had limited resources, they could focus just on big polluters. He said Congress could also easily insert a clause in its climate legislation, saying it only applied to major polluters.

“It’s a simple fix,” he said, ignoring the still formidable task of getting a climate bill through Congress.

Doniger said once new vehicle fuel standards are put in place next March, as already announced by the Obama administration, that would automatically trigger a requirement that other polluters use the best available equipment as well. Jackson’s proposal to increase the threshold for regulation to 25,000 tons would ensure only the biggest would be affected.

“It’s a very smart move,” said Doniger. “It’s supposed to quiet the nerves of the mom and pop shops.”

The Obama administration is facing “a very delicate balance” between taking steps to curb emissions, and “not scaring the hell out of people,” said California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols. “They’re trying to not create panic in the streets … although people may still end up going into freak out mode.”

Nichols pointed out that under California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, also known as AB 32, local air districts were already requiring major utilities and other large emitters to use the best equipment available to reduce emissions.

All sides agree that the EPA’s announcement is one more sign that the Obama administration is moving forward with steps to regulate greenhouse gases, while hoping that Congress will pass legislation that achieves the same goal.

“Today’s proposal is a valiant effort by EPA to fit a square peg into a round hole,” said Holmstead. “The Clean Air Act was not designed or intended to regulate carbon dioxide, but the Obama administration has already announced that it plans to start using the Act to regulate carbon dioxide early next year unless Congress passes climate change legislation before then.”

Jackson, in her speech, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had made it “crystal clear” that her agency must regulate carbon dioxide if the agency concludes it endangers public health. She said that finding would come very soon.

Two weeks ago, she and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the proposed fuel efficiency standards of 35.5 miles per gallon, calling them “the first ever national action to significantly control vehicle’s greenhouse gases.”

She also signaled that trains, ships and other transportation sources could face emissions cuts in coming monthst, and said her agency is exploring further mandates for power plants, refineries, cement plants and other major emitters.

“We are not going to continue business as usual while we wait for Congress to act,” Jackson said.

–

See also: David Roberts looks at what the EPA regulation does (and does not) contain.

Are we there yet?

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has decided she’ll take another look at monitoring of car battery recyclers, concrete kilns and power plants that spew dangerous lead emissions. She did not say she’d toughen up the monitoring, but clean air advocates are hopeful.

“It’s a step in the right direction for public health, and children’s health in particular,” said Avi Kar, staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. His group and several others petitioned the agency in January to reconsider — and tighten — proposed monitoring requirements on lead emitting facilities. On Thursday, Jackson granted their petition, and said a new monitoring proposal would be ready later this summer.

“We do take it as a good sign that they’re willing to reconsider,” said Kar in an interview.

In an online blog post, he was more effusive.

“Good news today from the EPA! As environmental lawyers, we haven’t had much opportunity to say that in the last eight years. I like saying that. It’s encouraging to see a new era take root at EPA,” he wrote.

The granting of NRDC’s petition for reconsideration, as it’s known in bureaucratic parlance, is one step in a still lengthy process. There will be a proposal, public comment, and, finally, a possible amendment to a huge update of the entire lead regulation. This is the federal government, after all.

“This is just reconsideration, this is just a first step,” said EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn. “NRDC and others asked us to reconsider it, and our answer is yes, we will reconsider it. … We can’t ‘just change the rule’ without going through notice-and-comment rulemaking. We can’t change any final rule without giving the public opportunity to comment on potential changes.”

Many in the environmental movement were astonished last fall when President Bush’s EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson, took his own scientists’ advice over the complaints of industry, and lowered the legally allowable amounts of lead in the air by more than ten times. Lead battery smelters had charged over to the White House a few weeks earlier, as a court deadline neared to update the regulation. It was the first time lead limits had been touched since 1978.

The astonishment turned to familiar groans from environmentalists when it turned out White House budget officials had intervened at the eleventh hour to eliminate required monitoring for facilities emitting less than a ton of lead annually. Being exposed to the heavy metal in even small amounts can damage children’s brain development, heart and kidney functions, among other maladies. Johnson’s own staff had recommended that facilities spewing out half a ton be monitored in geographic areas where emissions exceed the new limits.

The night before Johnson’s announcement, a senior EPA staffer e-mailed a White House Office of Management and Budget staff person saying a technical, rather than a policy explanation, was needed for why there had been a last minute, sharp reduction in monitoring. That explanation was never received, and Johnson followed the White House recommendations in his announcement the next day.

EPA staff reiterated in a conversation this week that proper monitoring is a critical part of protecting public health.

Any proposal by Jackson and her staff will have to be vetted by the White House budget office again, said Milbourn in an e-mail.

“Yes, whatever we propose will have to go back to OMB,” she wrote.

A battery council representative did not return a call for comment Thursday. Industry representatives have argued in the past that they are among the world’s best recyclers, and that the new regulations could drive their business overseas to places with far more lax health and environmental regulations.

President Obama is betting that a cap-and-trade program can help solve the climate crisis. Southern California leaders hoped the same thing when they set up a cap-and-trade program to clean up the region’s air. The results? See above. Photo: jordansmall via Flickr

Nearly 20 years ago, a novel program called “cap and trade” was rolled out by Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The aim was to keep rural Northeastern lakes from being tainted by corrosive “acid rain” created by power plant emissions hundreds of miles to the west.

Under the cap and trade, everybody would win. A whopping half of all the sulfur dioxide-the key ingredient in acid rain-would be cut more quickly and cheaply than if the companies were forced to do it under straight regulation. Lakes, forests and streams, and the fish and people living in and around them, would be spared further ravages.

The program succeeded spectacularly, with emissions targets reached three years ahead of schedule, at an estimated 75 percent in industry savings.

But did it halt acid rain?

Not exactly. In fact, researchers say many lake and stream beds are still highly acidic, and the problem is now spreading to the Southeast. They estimate another 50 percent to 70 percent cut in the remaining sulfur emitted by power plants is needed to really lick the problem.

If the House American Clean Energy and Security Act survives the Senate, what exactly has Congress bought into on behalf of the American public? There is a long, little discussed track record for other cap-and-trade programs. Leaving aside the money, the results are sobering. Not one has definitively cleaned up a major environmental problem. Adding insult to injury, environmental justice advocates say the market programs have allowed power plants and other industry routinely sited in poor, minority neighborhoods to keep spewing out toxic pollution by buying credits from elsewhere.

It’s true that some cap-and-trade programs are still new and others have demonstrably helped reduce pollution. But there is simply no precedent showing that a cap-and-trade system would deliver in time the significant cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists say are critical to prevent catastrophic climate change. To the contrary, past programs have been dogged by start-up challenges and, even more disquieting, surprises from Mother Nature.

It helps to think of existing programs as a family while delving through the acronyms and mind-twisting verbiage of cap-and-trade policy. There’s the founding father patriarch in D.C., the “out there” California uncle people tend to forget about, the globe-trotting European cousin, and Reggi, the new kid on the block in the Northeast, jumping up and down yelling “look at me, Ma!”

Below is an overview of the cap-and-trade family tree based on interviews with staff and online documents. We’ll leave the shouting to others for now.

What is cap and trade?

The “cap” is a legal limit set on one type of air pollution. A coal fired power plant is told it cannot emit more than a certain number of tons of carbon dioxide per year, and is allocated one credit for each ton it is allowed to emit. Each year the cap is lowered, until the pollution is reduced to a level that scientists and regulators deem safe.

The “trade” refers to the market trading of those pollution credits. Polluters who clean up their act so much that they are well below their yearly cap can sell the leftovers for a tidy profit to others that cannot or will not meet their own cap. In some cases the government auctions the allowances instead of allocating them.

Telling it like it is: President Obama meets with auto industry executives Tuesday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House before moving to the Rose Garden to announce new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks.Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

None of the employees at Turlock Auto Plaza in California’s smoggy Central Valley could be reached for comment Tuesday on President Obama’s historic deal with automakers to make cars cleaner and more efficient. The plaza’s Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep and Subaru dealerships all shut in December, victims of declining sales. Forty-two people lost their jobs, a big hit in the little farming town off the 99 freeway.

The dealerships were owned by Tom Field’s Motor Inc., one of the named plaintiffs in a series of costly lawsuits brought by the nation’s automakers against California and other states. Those lawsuits challenged the so-called Pavley law and similar regulations in 14 states mandating that cars be built with higher gas mileage and to produce less greenhouse gas emissions. This week, faced with bankruptcy and sagging revenues themselves, the automakers folded.

Automakers can claim a victory of sorts, in that they secured a single national fuel-economy set of rules. Left in the dust, some said, are the dealers who followed manufacturers’ orders.

“These guys got used as the front men, and it’s the ultimate irony,” said Jim Marston, a senior Environmental Defense Fund attorney who battled the automakers in court in four states.

“Rather than embrace the Pavley regulation, and go out and make cars that people in the 21st century were going to buy, the manufacturers kept building and trying to sell Suburbans and Escalades and Dodge Ram trucks that sold in 1995, but were no longer profitable or marketable in 2005. And their lawsuit against Pavley gave a false sense of security.”

Marston said the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis actively sought dealers in the Central Valley area so the auto industry could file its lawsuit in Fresno, putting them in the position to have a conservative judge appointed by former president Reagan decide the case. But that judge retired, and another federal district court judge ruled against the automakers last year. They promptly appealed to a higher court.

“They (the dealers) didn’t think up this lawsuit, and they didn’t hire the lawyers. They were recruited by the manufacturers and the lawyers who were paid by the manufacturers, who used their names,” said Marston. “They did what the manufacturers told them to do, and they were badly burned. It’s sad.”

California State Sen. Fran Pavley (D), a former schoolteacher who thought up the idea of an emissions law after seeing her students suffer from asthma, agreed with Marston.

“They chose to send in their lawyers instead of their engineers, and the lost time they’ve spent fighting this is almost as costly as the dollars they’ve spent in attorneys’ fees,” she said.

The lead attorney for Kirkland & Ellis on the cases said he was in a meeting Tuesday and could not immediately comment. Asked about the venue shopping allegation, Charles Territo of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said, “We don’t comment on legal strategy.”

Territo said it was completely wrong to blame the manufacturers and their investment and design decisions for contributing to the closure of dealers in the Central Valley or elsewhere. He said automakers had spent $79 billion last year on research and development, more than any other industry, and that more than 120 models achieving 30 mpg or more were already available in showrooms.

The financial difficulties being faced by the auto industry today are not a reuslt of a lack of fuel efficient products,” said Territo. “California is facing an economic crisis of its own unlike any it’s ever seen. The reasons for those dealerships closing have a lot more to do with the current economic situation nationwide than with any decisions those dealers made. The vehicles that those manufacturers sold were vehicles that were used to build homes, and to farm, and as the housing bubble burst, so did the fate of those dealers.”

He acknowledged the automakers had long fought more stringent national as well as state fuel efficiency standards, but said that the deal reached with Obama was fundamentally structurally different than what California and each other state had proposed, allowing automakers to average sales nationwide for instance. He said whatever their past concerns, the automakers were firmly committed to the new federal standards proposed by Obama.

In reality, automakers are very close to meeting the fuel efficiency standards that were required under the law for the 2009 model year because of voluntary design changes after gasoline prices soared and concerns grew about global warming. Automaker alliance chief Dave McCurdy in a statement said the industry had been ahead of the curve in developing more fuel efficient technologies, and got what they were seeking all along with one national standard rather than a patchwork of different state standards. President Obama and White House officials echoed that as they strove to maintain the peace, politely dismissing statements by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and others that a deal was struck because of GM’s and Chrysler’s woes.

State Sen. Fran Pavley (right), author of the emissions law that ultimately led to Tuesday’s White House announcement, is pictured with former California Gov. Gray Davis and actor/environmentalist Robert Redford (left) celebrating the 2002 enactment of her proposal.Courtesy Sen. Fran PavleyOn Tuesday, Pavley was in the front row in the White House Rose Garden next to staunch auto industry defender Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), watching as the nation’s ten largest automakers, the UAW and leading environmental groups all buried the hatchet, agreeing to adopt her standards as the law of the land.

“It was an amazing day,” she said. “Almost as good as the bill signing overlooking the Golden Gate bridge back in July 2002 with Robert Redford. It was like Cinderella at the ball.”

She had a special moment with Obama when he shook her hand quizzically after his remarks, and she told him that she was the author of the original bill. She said the president told her he wished he had known, that he would have acknowledged her in his remarks. He also told her that based on his own political career, “I have a special fondness for state legislators.”

Others were equally thrilled about the deal, but were skeptical of any notion that the industry could claim it is getting what it wanted all along with the tough national standard announced by the White House.

“They’re lying sacks of shit,” said David Bookbinder, Sierra Club’s chief climate counsel. Bookbinder said in addition to venue shopping, the automakers’ attorneys had “forced all those nice engineers to perjure themselves in court” by testifying that there was no way that the fuel-efficient cars ordered by Pavley could be built. “They put a whole bunch of people from Chrysler and GM on the stand, saying it’s impossible to do this, it’s not humanly possible, they could never build these cars.”

“Look they’re going to say whatever they’re going to say,” the Auto alliance’s Territo said when asked about Bookbinder’s comment. “But there are no facts to support their claims, and their comments are misleading and disingenuous at best, and reckless at worst.”

Bookbinder said he had done rough calculations of the automakers’ attorneys’ fees and concluded they exceeded $25 million. The environmental groups spent about $2 million combined defending regulations in different states, Marston said. California spent more than $4 million, said deputy attorney general Kate Kenealy, and Vermont, New Mexico and other states were forced to spend significant resources as well because of the automakers’ lawsuits.

Pavley and Kenealy said California’s signing on to the federal deal was absolutely contingent on the state finally being granted a waiver to administer its own emissions program if the federal deal falls apart. Both said they expected the waiver to be granted within the month, and all of the costly lawsuits to be dropped by summer. Federal transportation and environmental protection officials must complete a joint rulemaking process that could take until next year.

“I don’t believe that’s part of the agreement. That may be their understanding,” Territo said about the waiver being part of the deal announced Tuesday. But he added that no matter what, “I don’t think we’re thinking that this deal is going to fall apart. We’re committed. We’re not in the business of making promises to the president of the United States of America and backing away from them. That may be something that they’re considering, but for us, we’ve given our word.”

Bookbinder was equally sanguine. “It’s wired. There’s a deal. This little side show is over, and now we can move on to coal.”

But Kenealy was more cautious in her assessment. “I don’t know if it’s ever going to be completely done,” she said. “We will continue to be vigilant to get this deal implemented.”

–

Video: President Obama announces new fuel-economy standards (May 19):

California is planning to invest millions to support the rollout of new hydrogen fueling stations. Pictured here is a station near Los Angeles Int’l Airport that was built by a partnership that included BP, Praxair and LAX.Courtesy Hydrogen Assn.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu may want to slam the brakes on future hydrogen funding, but California will continue to pay its own way down the Hydrogen Highway, infuriating electric vehicle advocates in particular.

Obama’s top energy official cut more than $100 million slated for hydrogen fuel-cell research from next year’s federal budget, arguing that in tough times, tough choices had to be made. His department will allocate nearly $800 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for advanced biofuels research and commercial-scale biorefinery projects, part of his area of expertise at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before he joined the Obama administration.

In California, however, state lawmakers and regulators are handing out more money for hydrogen projects. Shell Oil, for example, will receive nearly $2 million in state funds to help build a hydrogen pump at a gas station near a swank Newport Beach country club and high end shopping mall. The pump will service a few dozen cars. State officials and hydrogen backers say it is a small but key step forward in solving the nation’s energy and environmental woes. An additional $5 million in tax dollars will help build hydrogen fueling pumps near UCLA’s campus, San Francisco Airport, and at the foot of wealthy southern California coastal communities.

Despite the state’s massive budget woes, officials also approved another $120 million in alternative fuel expenditures, paid for with revenue generated from fees of about $10 recently tacked onto the costs of renewing a driver’s registration. Hydrogen and electric plug-in technologies will both fare well, getting an estimated $40 million and $46 million respectively from the state.

But electric vehicle advocates said even those expenditures prove their point: According to the California Energy Commission, it will cost $40 million to build 11 hydrogen fueling stations, compared to just $12 million cost to build 6,500 EV charging stations.

Critics of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R) much ballyhooed “Hydrogen Highway” program, unveiled in 2004, say the hydrogen funding is the latest outrage in a doomed and costly effort to convert drivers in the nation’s most populous state to a still unproven replacement for gasoline. California is reeling from a potential $20 billion budget shortfall, but critics say oil companies and car manufacturers will continue to be prime beneficiaries of costly, state-funded hydrogen boondoggles.

By contrast, Chu’s announcement left them dancing metaphorically on hydrogen’s grave.

“California is pouring good money after bad down the hydrogen rat hole, at a time when we can least afford it. They’re spending taxpayer dollars for a technology that doesn’t work, and I object,” said Paul Scott, vice president of Plug In America, an electric vehicle advocacy group. He was far happier with Chu’s decision to cut off funding for hydrogen fuel research in next year’s federal budget. “Listen closely … that sound you hear is the banging of the final nail in the fuel cell coffin. Sweet music to our ears,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Jay Friedland, also of Plug In America, said studies had shown it takes four times as much funding to build and fuel a hydrogen vehicle as an EV car. Chu appeared to echo that sentiment, joining fellow scientists, engineers and policymakers in questioning the commercial viability of creating clean hydrogen fuel on a broad scale any time soon.

But boosters retort that Chu erred, and they will look to Congress to rectify that error.

California air board staff and hydrogen advocates said the latest state spending was a critical long-term investment. Hydrogen is the least polluting vehicle fuel on earth, they say, and continued funding now will pay off by 2050 in sharply reduced greenhouse gases and other air pollution, as well as new jobs. Most important, it is vital to keep funding a mixture of possible fuel options until it becomes clear which is truly commercially viable.

They insist other studies have shown that hydrogen has as good a chance as battery powered cars.

“Steve is making a major mistake on several fronts,” said Schwarzenegger’s longtime environment adviser Terry Tamminen in an email. “First, many automakers that are heavily invested in hydrogen … were not consulted on this decision, showing that our new Secretary could use some help with stakeholder outreach and diplomacy at the very least.”

As for California’s spending, he wrote, “I think taxpayer dollars earmarked for developing new/clean technologies are very appropriate… in bad times, we see even more clearly the cost of failure to invest in this important infrastructure. GM is dying at great cost to taxpayers; hundreds of billions of subsidies…to oil companies are essentially wasted. By contrast, when we supported development of high tech, we ended up with Silicon Valley and the trillions of dollars that has delivered to CA and the US in terms of jobs and taxes. You be the judge!”

California air board chair Mary Nichols, who has repeatedly sought to defuse competition between competing alternative fuel advocates, wrote to Chu on April 1 and copied the letter to Obama environmental adviser Carol Browner, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and White House Council on Environmental Quality chair Nancy Sutley, begging for continued hydrogen fuel cell funding as part of broad-range backing.

“Today it is not possible to know which technologies will be the market winners, but given that our global climate and future mobility are at stake, we must pursue all promising options. Fuel cell vehicles, with their potential to provide the range, high efficiency, rapid refueling, and performance consumers expect while achieving zero tailpipe emissions and dramatically reduced greenhouse gas emissions, are one of these options,” she wrote.

Nichols noted hydrogen fuel cells were also “unique in their ability” to potentially power other current high polluters such as ships, locomotives and scooters. In a statement, she praised the state’s latest expenditures.

“Hydrogen is one of the many fuels in California’s future. But we need to cultivate the industry’s early growth. This grant money will nurture a burgeoning technology that will provide jobs, invigorate our economy, and provide the state with clean power.”

Anthony Eggert, Nichols’ science and technology adviser, said late Tuesday that state officials were “puzzled’ by Chu’s decision, and that it would “obviously be a blow” to continued hydrogen technology development. He said the agency and a consortium of state fuel cell backers would push Congress to restore hydrogen funding in the energy department’s final budget.

Asked for comment about Californians’ pleas and criticisms, Chu’s deputy press secretary, Tiffany Edwards, said in an email, “The President’s 2010 Budget seeks to usher in a new era of responsibility — an era in which we not only do what we must to save and create new jobs and lift our economy out of recession, but in which we also lay a new foundation for long-term growth and prosperity. The President and Secretary Chu are focused on investing in renewable sources of energy so that we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and become the world leader in the new clean energy economy. Change is never easy, but we must use our resources wisely in the short term if we are to transform the way we use and produce energy in the long term.”

As for California’s expenditures during tough times, Gerhard Achtelik, manager of the air board’s Zero Emissions Vehicle program, noted that it took a century and lots of money to build gas stations, as well. Explaining the latest round of California funding, he said in many cases it was matching money.

Shell was the highest bidder in an open process, he said, and will spend more of its own money than any other applicant. Shell’s project could also create hydrogen onsite, using a promising natural gas steam reformation system.

Achtelik said it was crucial to continue to fund a broad range of alternative fuel technologies, because while electric plug-ins and hybrid vehicles might be market-ready sooner, hydrogen-fueled vehicles would emit no pollutants, a giant step in helping the state meet its mandate to slash greenhouse gases and clear Los Angeles and the Central Valley’s still polluted air in coming decades. Critics of EVs note that plug in vehicles, by contrast, have a long way to go as well, because much electric power still comes from highly polluting coal plants.

Electric vehicle advocates dispute that, saying their cars can be plugged in at night in homeowners’ garages, to take advantage of burgeoning solar, wind and other renewable sources during off hours.

Part of the debate, like an old-fashioned schoolyard fight, reflects intensely personal differences about whose car is better. That schism has erupted repeatedly over the years between hydrogen and EV fans, with each side arguing their fuel is the one that will win out. Of late, EVs have been winning key laps. In addition to Chu’s decision, President Obama toured an EV test site in Southern California this spring, and has pledged to get a million plug-in cars on the road. But others say the wheels are not off hydrogen yet.

Tamminen, who drives a hydrogen-fueled Honda Clarity, said in an email that contrary to press reports, hydrogen fueled cars are “real and here right now … I refuel at the Shell station on Santa Monica Blvd…and have driven the car all over CA with no problem.”

Noting that there are now 30 hydrogen stations in the state, he boasted, “I drive 250 miles and spend 5 minutes to refuel, while my friends with Teslas drive 120 miles and spend 4 hours recharging.”

He added that EVs “suffer from lugging around half a ton of batteries,” making the vehicles less efficient, and concluded, “May the best car win!”

But Scott, who drives one of the original Toyota electric vehicles featured in “Who Killed The Electric Car?” documentary, countered that he plugs his car into his solar powered Santa Monica home each night, and goes an effortless 150 miles or more on a single charge.

He said compressed hydrogen fuel, by contrast, is often trucked in by diesel spewing trucks to the few stations that do exist wiping out any clean air gains. He said that new, lighter batteries are being tested for EV cars, and that tens of thousands of electric vehicles could quickly be on the street. In fact, he noted, the filmmakers who shot the original documentary about how California’s air board decimated the original EV fleets are hard at work on a sequel: “The Revenge of the Electric Car.”

Next Page: Watch two videos about California’s hydrogen dreams >>>

Eighteen months ago, I watched the head of the Environmental Protection Administration shake hands with Mickey Mouse after the two had hoisted a compact fluorescent light bulb for a Disneyland photo op. I’d been promised a sit-down interview with Stephen Johnson, the career EPA staffer tapped by George W. Bush in 2005 to run the agency, but his handlers evidently thought better of it, and reneged.

Instead, they gave me a few minutes to sprint alongside Johnson as he headed out of the Magic Kingdom. I asked him when he would respond to an April 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that compelled the EPA to decide whether greenhouse gases were endangering the public, and ordering the agency to act if there was a risk. That could include allowing California and other states to move forward on tough laws requiring recalcitrant automakers to slash greenhouse gas emissions. All that was needed was his signature waiving the states from having to wait for national action. Similar waivers on air pollution regulations have been granted for decades.

Johnson, a genial, unfailingly polite man (whether shaking hands with an oversized mouse or being accosted by a Los Angeles Times reporter), said he had ordered his staff to respond to the Supreme Court with an national emission plan that was even better than the states’ by the end of 2007. He said he was extremely proud of how hard they were working to get it done. Then he was off for the first leg of a Sony-funded, cross-country tour promoting the aforementioned light bulbs as a bright idea for slowing global warming.

Back in D.C., EPA career staffers were indeed pulling long nights and weekends to finish a comprehensive plan. That December they presented it to their boss and the White House. The report concluded that greenhouse gases were in fact a danger, that a national plan was needed, and that California and the other states should be allowed to act.

Johnson’s response? “He froze us out,” said one exhausted, frustrated staffer I tracked down in a late night phone call at the time. In an Orwellian series of phone calls and e-mails, White House staffers also refused to acknowledge to me that they’d received any such document from the EPA. If they had confirmed it publicly, it would have set in motion the process requiring the federal government to act. Weeks later, Johnson denied California’s waiver request.

Last July Johnson went further, saying that despite the high court’s order, the Clean Air Act was “the wrong tool for addressing greenhouse gases” because it would be too costly for the American public, and that Congress should pass legislation to tackle the issue.

By engaging in such Mickey Mouse stunts, Johnson broke his word to his own staff and the American public.

Today, his successor, Lisa Jackson, partly reversed course, announcing that the EPA had in fact concluded that mounting greenhouse gases pose a serious threat. In the accompanying report, agency staff again laid out a frightening litany of possible dangers: increased heat waves that would likely fell the elderly, the very young and the chronically ill, increases in ozone smog that would add to respiratory infection, asthma and premature death, more severe coastal hurricanes, and other devastating impacts.

The report also explicitly tied motor vehicle emissions to climate change. But there was no mention of allowing California or more than a dozen other states to move forward promptly with their long languishing laws. Quite the opposite.

In a briefing with Senate staff Friday before the announcement, Jackson’s new climate change adviser, who led the charge for Massachusetts in the Supreme Court case, said the legal underpinning for granting the states’ waivers had nothing to do with finding a danger from greenhouse gases. Sierra Club attorney David Bookbinder and California Air Resources Board chair Mary Nichols both said the same thing. “We are delighted” by Jackson’s decision, said Nichols. “And it has no bearing on the California waiver decision, there’s no connection.”

That doesn’t quite jibe with what environmental attorneys and California regulators were saying a year ago, and it’s not clear why. Possibly Jackson intends to finally approve California’s waiver and let it and other states proceed with concrete action to tackle greenhouse gases, and she doesn’t want some new legal finding to delay that. In fact Congress slipped a little noticed June 30 deadline for her to either grant or deny California’s waiver request into this year’s omnibus budget act.

But perhaps there’s no public mention of the states’ emissions laws because she and the new president don’t want to face the heat from irate automakers and business interests, preferring to leave it to Congress to do the dirty work on climate change. Indeed, Jackson and Obama are sounding curiously like their predecessors, Bush and Johnson, wanting to punt to Congress to take action.

As today’s EPA press release concluded, in classic government verbosity, “Notwithstanding this required regulatory process, both President Obama and Administrator Jackson have repeatedly indicated their preference for comprehensive legislation to address this issue.”

Furious jockeying will begin in earnest next week over climate change legislation proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has promised the House will pass a bill by Memorial Day. But even the most optimistic observers say it will be a steep climb to meet that deadline.

This afternoon, there is Beltway chatter about harmonizing states’ climate laws creatively with a national automobile regulation, with both included in the Waxman-Markey bill. There is also brave talk of the regulatory process marching onward no matter what happens in Congress.

There is no talk of promptly granting the states’ waivers.

In the meantime, an estimated 7 billion tons of greenhouse gases continue to pour annually from U.S. automobiles and smokestacks into the atmosphere. Hopefully, Obama and Jackson will move forward quickly to address the looming perils laid out in today’s report. Otherwise, they risk looking like Mickey’s pals, Goofy and Minnie.

—

Related Stories

• EPA says greenhouse-gas emissions a threat to public health
• EPA’s climate finding ticks off industry, energizes enviros and congressional leaders

Hilda Solis.

Photo: Ron Edmonds / AP

Longtime GOP lions Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) could also be on hand to grill her, but the presence of Kennedy at the gavel, who presented Solis with the “Profile in Courage” award in 2000, is tangible proof that after a career spent battling Republican governors, presidents, industry lobbyists and even moderate Democrats, she could now be in the cat bird’s seat. [UPDATE: News from the hearing.]

“No one else was even going to fight for the stuff that she’s fought for her whole career. Now it’s not about fighting, it’s about governing, and I’ve seen Hilda Solis, she’s effective at governing,” said Ian Kim, director of the Green Collar Jobs Campaign at the Ella Baker Center in Oakland.

As Labor Secretary, Solis would in fact be in charge of implementing the Green Jobs Act she fought to “smuggle through” a hostile Congress and Bush administration in 2007, said green jobs guru and best-selling author Van Jones.

The act authorized $125 million annually to train 30,000 workers in environment-friendly jobs such as installing solar panels or weatherizing homes. But it went unfunded in 2008, due to opposition from manufacturers and other industry groups angered by its mandate to include organized labor.

Fast forward to a year later, with a tanking economy and a new president, and matters look decidedly more green. Obama made clear in his economic policy speech Thursday that such jobs will be a key component of his massive stimulus package. And no one is better qualified to make that happen than Solis, say her fans.

“She is the 21st century, Hilda Solis represents the future of this country both demographically, and in terms of her vision,” said Jones, who shrugged off criticism by some that the appointment was minor compared to other Cabinet posts. “We need new, clean, green jobs for the 21st century, and in her we’ve got somebody who connects both those things.”

“I think the world of Hilda,” agreed Bracken Hendricks of the Center for American Progress, the group founded by Obama transition team leader John Podesta and whose affiliated experts have been heavily involved in advising him on many of his appointments and initial policies. “She has been … one of the people on Capitol Hill who has been at the forefront of defining environmental justice … and understands very clearly the economic opportunity that can come from investing in solutions to global warming.”

In a memo to Obama’s team last month, Hendricks laid out a huge energy and environment stimulus package that included many of the elements the president-elect mentioned in his speech, including funding to train workers in green jobs. Not only should the green jobs legislation be funded, Hendricks said, but the original $125 million authorization should be at least doubled over the next two years, if not quadrupled to half a billion dollars.

Obama has not spelled out funding for specific programs, and details need to be ironed out in a Congress where lawmakers are already jockeying feverishly over pet projects in the stimulus package. A congressional staffer said mid-week that no decision has been made on funding levels for the Green Jobs Act, or even whether it will stay in place as currently enacted, or be superseded by another package.

But Jones said he is confident “it will be funded” because Obama and his allies in Congress, including Solis’ friend and ally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), are eager to find existing programs into which they could quickly pour funds without extended battles with industry or labor groups.

Overseeing green jobs funding would be sweet victory for Solis, daughter of immigrant parents who has at times seen cherished environmental justice programs weakened if not dismembered in the face of strong industry opposition. Those battles are not necessarily over.

A spokeswoman for the National Association of Manufacturers said the group looks forward to working with Solis in a constructive fashion on workforce retraining, but have not taken a position on the current, very fluid green jobs and stimulus proposals. The issue of organized labor is a sore point.

“This is something that should broadly benefit everybody out there who lacks the skills, not just the union folks,” said NAM spokeswoman Laura Narvaiz. “A lot of our member companies aren’t unionized, they are smaller companies who have fewer resources…they’re the ones who need this kind of assistance most.”

NAM president John Engler said in a statement, “As Secretary of Labor, Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) will bear great responsibility helping the Obama Administration strengthen our competitiveness. We look forward to providing detailed analysis of the impact of labor legislation and proposals on American business’ ability to create and retain jobs. We appreciate her work … and we will work with her to improve educational and training opportunities for the next generation workforce.”

Obama staffers have muzzled Solis and her staff for now, but in a speech accepting the Profile in Courage award in 2000, she made clear her views on environmental justice issues and industrial opponents as she described a bitter fight to pass the nation’s first environmental justice bill. It would have required planning officials to account for commutative impacts of approving a new polluting refinery or landfill in an already heavily industrialized community like her district. She got the legislation passed, but “the influence of industry was so powerful that the legislation was vetoed by California’s former Governor (Pete Wilson).”

Solis went on to describe how she learned to compromise with industry groups.

“Two years later, California elected a new Governor (Gray Davis) and I saw a new opportunity to reintroduce new environmental justice legislation… The oil companies, mining companies, and other business organizations had a sophisticated and well-financed lobbying campaign against my bill. They argued that my proposal would hit at the core of our state’s economy and drive jobs out of the state. The opposition was creative in their arguments … They called it a ‘Job Killer.’ But the most original slogan was ‘The Inner City Job Killer.’ I reluctantly decided to wait another year.”

But, Solis said, “As I returned to my district, I saw again the immediate need for environmental justice. I asked, why should these communities have to wait another year?”

“My district is home to five major landfills, including the largest landfill in the Western USA; our water basin has been a Superfund site for over two decades; and there are over 17 mining pits in the region that contribute to high levels of air pollution. The environmental hazards are devastating and create real health hazards to the residents of these communities,” she said. “If you were to take an aerial tour, it looks like a war zone. The mining industry has created enormous gaping holes, including a 500 acre pit, which from the air, makes the cities I represent look like Swiss cheese.”

Solis told her astonished staff they would be moving the bill forward that year.

“Uh oh,” one staffer recalled thinking this week, a feeling quickly followed by “great, let’s do it.”

To get it passed, though, Solis compromised, stripping out the strong zoning language and settling for general language defining for the first time the term “environmental justice” as “the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

The bill, largely symbolic, was nonetheless hailed as a key first step that has served as a model for state and local agencies nationwide, supporters said.

Solis has honed her skills since, shepherding through the Green Jobs Act in 2007 by teaming up with Pelosi and powerful Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to slip it into a much larger energy package, while refusing to budge on a requirement that 20 percent of the funds be set aside for the lowest income workers.

Friends and opponents alike say that Solis, 51, is a courteous but determined advocate who has learned not to back down easily.

Solis is “a very nice person, a thoughtful person, she still says thank you,” said V. John White, head of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies in Sacramento. “There’s a class in the basement of the capitol in Sacramento that legislators go to the first day in office to learn how to be assholes. She never took that class. She remembers the little people. But she’s also tough, she’s rough, and she’s fought to overcome the established powerbrokers. … She’s a progressive Latina who has prevailed in all of her elections against the boys, the bosses on the east side of L.A. and everywhere since.”

David Allgood, southern California director of the state’s League of Conservation Voters, remembers meeting Solis, then an extremely smart but shy young woman when she first ran for state office in 1992. He worried about her ability to survive hardball politics. “I thought they’d eat her alive,” he said. He laughs when he recalls her first visit back from the state capitol.

“She was transformed,” he said. “She was an aggressive, passionate reformer.”

When she couldn’t persuade fellow legislators to raise the state’s minimum wage, she took her own campaign funds and paid to have an initiative placed on the ballot that the state’s voters went on to handily approve. To win a seat in Congress, she successfully challenged a longtime Democratic incumbent, even though party leaders told her it couldn’t be done.

Her staff took their victories where they could, recalled then chief of staff Dolores Duran-Flores, now an education lobbyist, rejoicing when Gov. Wilson’s staff misplaced paperwork for an environmental bill, meaning it was in effect for two days before he vetoed it. They weren’t surprised when she fought power brokers. As a high school student in a poor, immigrant neighborhood of Los Angeles, guidance counselors had advised her to pick a vocation, that college was not the path for her, recalled Duran-Flores. She ignored them, and won grants and loans to earn her bachelor’s degree from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California.

As a girl, she played with friends in the open space around Santa Fe dam, one of the few open space areas in her neighborhood, said another former staffer. As a state legislator, she won designation for California’s first urban conservancy, protecting remaining swaths of river and mountain in east Los Angeles’s heavily industrialized communities.

She is still extremely close to her parents and six siblings. “When she’s around them she is the perfect daughter, taking care of them. She is not working the room looking for attention for herself,” said the former staffer.

For those who have worked with her through the years, rejoicing in even small accomplishments, it is a thrill to see Solis given the chance to manage national labor and environmental policy.

“I couldn’t be happier for her, she’s been in the forefront of these causes for so many years” said Duran-Flores. “She never lost her integrity, she never backed down…There’s hope, there is hope, there’s truly a light at the end of the tunnel!”

Janet Wilson is a veteran journalist based in southern California, who reported on air quality and other environmental issues for the Los Angeles Times. She can be reached at janetwilson66 AT gmail DOT com.

Washington wags may wonder who will be top green dog in the Obama White House — flashy “energy czarina” Carol Browner or shy, retiring Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley — but folks who know Sutley say there’s nothing to worry about.

Sutley is supposed to be the president’s principal environmental advisor, according to the job description laid out by Congress when it created the CEQ, playing environmental sheriff over federal agencies, and taking the lead role on major environmental policy initiatives. But under President George W. Bush, the council offices were moved out of the White House executive offices to a warren of nearby townhouses, staff and funding were slashed, and many say its current chair, James Connaughton, has been hamstrung in attempts to combat climate change and negotiate international agreements.

“It’s been death by 1,000 cuts,” said Sharon Buccino of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who has watched other federal agencies win “categorical exclusions” from CEQ regulations, allowing them to streamline oil and gas drilling and power-line corridor siting on pristine public lands. “CEQ’s hands have really been tied under this administration … We’re looking forward to the next administration. Hopefully CEQ will now be given the space it needs.”

Two dozen environmental groups pressed Obama to restore CEQ to its historic stature as part of a mammoth, 391-page report submitted to his transition team recently. But Obama transition leader John Podesta co-authored a different report last year at the Center for American Progress, envisioning a powerful new energy czar in the White House who would address climate and energy issues. So far, it appears that vision is prevailing. While Browner was at the table with Obama and his top economic advisors the day after the president-elect announced his “green” team, Sutley was on a plane back to Los Angeles, where she is deputy mayor for energy and environment.

Colleagues and friends say they don’t expect that dynamic to be a problem for Sutley, a skilled, behind-the-scenes bureaucrat who prefers to keep a low profile, and who has served as deputy to many powerful officials in the past decade, including Browner when she was EPA administrator under President Clinton.

“Because of her own personal demeanor, she’s not the one to be in front of the camera. But she knows the issues so well that she’ll get the job done, even if she’s not the one whose name is on the press release,” said Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza, Los Angeles policy director for Environmental Defense Fund, who also serves with Sutley on the city’s harbor commission.

“It’s still to be worked out … In terms of who’s boss, Carol Browner has probably the stronger position in terms of being a czar. A czar is in charge of everything, right?” said Warner Chabot of the Ocean Conservancy, who is a friend of Sutley. “But the good news is [Obama's] not bringing in two people with two different power bases and turf wars. He’s bringing in two people who have worked together, who see the greater aspects of things.”

“It’s a great two-fer,” said Chabot’s wife, Felicia Marcus, western director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who worked with both Browner and Sutley at EPA. “It’s going to work perfectly, I think.”

Marcus said Browner could be a great “commander who herds the cats and the flying monkeys in the White House and the agencies … on the broader meshing of economy, environment, and energy.” Sutley could handle the large menu of environmental issues not related to climate change, while playing a valuable background role on energy and climate as well, said Marcus.

Marcus and others described Sutley as a tough, smart deputy who brings all parties together on a thorny issue, listens, does her own research, then makes a recommendation to the executive in charge on what should be done. Along with that finding, she provides input on who would be upset, but what could be accomplished.

While working at EPA during the Clinton administration, Sutley helped craft stronger public health regulations for air pollutants, battling industry opposition and entrenched D.C. politics, said Marcus. When California Gov. Pete Wilson refused to come up with a federally required plan for how California would clean up its badly polluted air, Sutley was flown out to San Francisco to help Marcus, then EPA’s regional administrator, write the plan. She has also worked on California’s water board, deciphering byzantine allocation policies.

When California was hit with rolling blackouts and skyrocketing energy prices in the early part of this decade, Gov. Gray Davis made Sutley his energy adviser, where she questioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s oversight of California’s electricity markets, and worked to keep dirty diesel generators from being used as substitute power.

“When you have a major problem, it’s like, ‘Who you gonna call? Sutley,’” said Marcus.

Sutley’s work in L.A.

In her current job, Sutley has been in charge of trying to implement Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s promises to make Los Angeles the greenest city in America, and to ensure that 20 percent of its power is renewable by 2010.

The mayor praised her work in a statement last week, saying, “The President-elect will be lucky to have Nancy on his team … With Nancy on my team, we have made tremendous progress — from quadrupling our renewable energy portfolio to exceeding the targets set out by the Kyoto Protocol four years ahead of schedule.”

The city’s renewable power portfolio has grown to about 11 percent under Sutley’s watch, and greenhouse-gas emissions have dropped more than 7 percent below 1990 levels, officials said.

But it hasn’t been all roses. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce has fought the city’s ambitious solar initiative, which is supposed to create “green collar” factory jobs while generating power, but could carry a price tag as high as $3 billion. The city’s million-tree program faltered at first under Sutley’s control, with critics complaining that it relied on giveaways of high-mortality seedlings.

Sutley was integral to getting a clean-air plan signed for the region’s ports, the nation’s busiest, to slash air pollution by nearly half in just five years. But a lawsuit by trucking companies and attempts by the Federal Maritime Commission to block it have slowed the plan.

The city’s much vaunted “Green Path” transmission-line project, which would help meet its aim to bring in 20 percent of its power from sources like geothermal, solar and wind, has stalled because of fierce opposition from desert conservationists, who say the massive transmission lines could cut right through carefully cobbled-together wildlife preserves.

Sutley would face similarly daunting challenges as head of CEQ, which is charged with enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act. The act monitors the environmental impacts of all federal projects, including power-line corridors, military-base expansions, oil and gas drilling, and the type of major infrastructure construction that Obama has indicated he may ramp up.

Will she get the job done?

Some California environmentalists and renewable-energy producers say it can be frustrating to deal with Sutley, because she will convene lengthy meetings, then fail to take action.

“We were all ready to tear our hair out” after a non-productive, hours-long meeting convened by Sutley on a solar initiative, said one activist.

“The problem with Nancy is she’s a nice person, she has a record of being around the ball, but never really does anything with it,” said another veteran California environmentalist. “She’s taciturn, secretive … she’s a very safe choice, but the question is, how effective will she be?”

Others disagreed.

“I would see it differently,” said Mendoza of EDF. “She is the one who is putting everything together behind the scenes.”

Mendoza said that while Sutley may bide her time, she is perfect at finding “green” people in every government agency, be it public works or the water department, and coaching them on how environmental policy can be incorporated into their work. Meanwhile, she listens, makes recommendations to her boss, and lets whoever that person is take the limelight.

“Which is why this CEQ position is so perfect for her, because she’s not the executive making the decision,” said Mendoza. “It’s hard to be an institutional activist. It takes a certain level of experience, patience, and skills to deal with the frustrating level of government obstacles.”

Sutley, 46, a Queens, N.Y, native who is the daughter of Argentinean immigrants, “never considered herself a Californian completely,” said Mendoza. Sutley earned an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She still roots for the Mets rather than the Dodgers, prefers public transportation, and, true to her Argentinean heritage, “loves meat,” says Mendoza. “She eats short ribs for an appetizer the way most people eat chips and dip.”

Sutley, who is gay, served on the southern California lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender steering committee for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, and on Obama’s transition team on environmental appointments.

Mendoza said Sutley’s best work is long-term, not overnight.

“It’s only been three years since she’s been part of the [L.A.] mayor’s leadership team. Frankly, it takes about this long to get … action plans in place … Nancy’s legacy to the city won’t truly be felt for a few more years, and by then, she’ll hopefully be building one with President-elect Obama.”