Photo by RJ.

How to explain the Gingrich resurgence in South Carolina? He harnessed anger and showed strength.

In an editorial, The New York Times calls his appeal to anger “the lowest form of campaigning.”

I disagree. I think the lowest form of campaigning — the deadliest poison coursing through the American body politic — is cynicism.

Now, Newt is the most cynical candidate in the race. This guy has a distinct advantage over Mitt Romney, because he doesn’t have enough shame to feel uncomfortable when he’s lying. (At least Mitt squirms.)

But he didn’t win South Carolina with cynicism. He won it by spraying a righteous can of whup-ass all over CNN debate moderator John King.

And, stunningly, when Rick Santorum accused him of grandiosity, Newt gobbled it up. “This is a grandiose country of big people doing big things.” He crushed his opponents by appealing to, of all things, our bigness!

Never mind that “grandiose” means not big, but “pompous,” “overblown.” Newt’s point was that we as a nation have big things to do. And I take heart from the fact that people will vote for a guy who makes that point, in an era when the scale of our collective vision is spiraling down toward the drain in Grover Norquist’s infamous bathtub.

In the debate Thursday night and in the spin room afterwards, Santorum offered a trenchant political argument about why Gingrich’s “grandiosity” is a liability: Newt will make himself the issue. The Republicans are more likely to win, says Santorum, if they make Obama the issue (i.e, if they campaign against government, if they appeal to cynicism). This is a corollary of the modern political truism: Nobody likes negative campaigning, but it works. I suspect most seasoned political professionals would agree with this assessment.

But in offering this cogent political diagnosis, Santorum sounded more like a campaign strategist than a president. The voters, as it turned out, didn’t want shrewd political tactics from a guy who is squeamish about making himself the issue. They wanted the loud guy, the angry guy, the guy who wants to kick some serious butt and do big stuff.

Santorum’s social conservatism should have given him a distinct edge in South Carolina, yet Newt cleaned his clock as the “not-Mitt” favorite because he projected something of size and ambition and determination.

Look, I’m not here to celebrate the politics of anger. And I’m certainly not here to celebrate Newt. Newt is as cynical as they come. But he won the South Carolina primary by hiding that fact. He won by coming up large and mad. He won by tapping into voters’ hunger for boldness and ambition — even in this case if it’s only ambition to thrash Obama and government. He won big!

My point (finally! obliquely!) is this: I find hope in what South Carolina’s Republican voters just did, because there is no way to tackle global warming in a world of hopeless cynicism, a world of radically diminished expectations.

Many individual climate solutions are small. But the idea of “climate solutions” is void unless we can think big — as big as the problem — and believe that we can act collectively at the appropriate scale.

Anger is not inconsistent with that belief. That Newt Gingrich would harness anger at “the Establishment” to propel his campaign is, of course, the height of hypocrisy. And anger can certainly be used to block solutions at least as easily as it can be channeled to advance them.  But anger, unlike cynicism, is consistent with the scale and determination that we must bring to our civilization’s epic confrontation with the climate crisis.

Cynicism is the right hand of smallness and futility. It is the most potent weapon against climate solutions at scale. And our politics generally celebrates and reinforces it. But something different prevailed in South Carolina.

Notwithstanding the puniness of our politics, voters responded to Newt because they are still hungry for something big. Yes, Newt would surely manipulate that hunger for big bad things (like, say, Newt). But when the hunger dies, there is no hope for big good things, like, say, climate solutions.

—–

See also:

• Time to be angry, not cynical, about corporate money in politics
• Gingrich’s views on climate, EPA, and ‘green conservatism’

I reiterate this, at the risk of what David Roberts calls “public flatulism,” because this post is about jobs, and I don’t want anyone to infer that any amount of jobs would justify committing climate suicide.

IEA’s warnings against imminent climate “lock-in” mean that any major investment in long-lived, capital-intensive fossil-fuel infrastructure must now be considered flatly immoral. So we quibble about jobs at the risk of blurring this moral line when we should be sharpening it. I hope I have mitigated that risk by naming it, because we also need to talk about this jobs thing.

The only independent analysis of the jobs impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline concludes:

The construction of KXL will create far fewer jobs in the US than its proponents have claimed and may actually destroy more jobs than it generates.

And yet the Washington Post‘s “Fact Checker” reports:

There is bipartisan consensus: The Keystone XL pipeline means jobs, jobs, jobs.

Put those two together, and you get this: The truth may be found not in between the poles of political partisanship, but completely outside the realm of conventional politics as we know it.

I will concede that I am looking at the facts through my own lens — the lens of someone who believes that the climate impacts are so unconscionable that we must not inflict them for any amount of jobs or treasure. And I am looking through the lens of someone who has a job (though my Dad never saw it that way). So I will understand if you don’t think I’m the final authority on the jobs analysis.

But consider that there may also be a distorting lens so powerful that it causes both sides in the now hyperpoliticized Keystone debate to completely miss the reality of the jobs impact. That lens is one of the most enduring frames in our political culture: jobs vs. environment. This construct, even as it comes unglued in economic reality, is regaining strength in the popular imagination and among political operatives because it helps folks make sense of the Keystone battle. President Obama’s opponents and the political horse-race media (increasingly, all of them) find it particularly irresistible now in the run-up to the 2012 election, because it sets up a nasty internal conflict in the president’s “base”.

The Washington Examiner drools conspicuously: “Obama faces choice on Keystone pipeline: Big Labor or Big Green.” But it’s not just a right-wing message (or, more to the point, it’s such a successful one): virtually all of the reporting follows this theme. So, if the truth were that Keystone is a job-killer (as, I repeat, the only independent analysis to date suggests it could be), well, that would be a total political buzz kill. We can’t have that. Who wants to concede to a reality that so completely undermines the dramatic narrative structure of contemporary politics?

Well, for those who need an alternative juicy plot line into which the facts actually fit before they are willing to contend with the truth (and face it, we all do), try this simple one: Big Oil owns Congress. “Jobs” gives Congress a way to hide that ugly fact. (As I write this, I believe the House Rs are dutifully unraveling the Senate deal to force a decision on Keystone in exchange for the extension of the payroll tax cut, because it will force the State Department to follow through on its threat to deny the permit. As much fun as the House thinks that showdown might be, they will not be allowed to have that fun at Big Oil’s expense.)

I am not even remotely qualified to comment intelligently on the dark art of jobs analysis. (All I can say is I wish I could just whip out some big fuzzy “multiplier” every time I wanted to sell my stuff.) So I won’t pretend to offer any rigor for this contention, but I will stand by it: the jobs impact of making big, irreversible commitments to deeper fossil fuel dependence and accelerated climate disruption will dwarf whatever temporary relief the oil industry is now offering to people who desperately need it.

This will be dismissed by some as hand-waving, but tucked at the end of the Cornell Labor Institute study of the jobs impact of Keystone is a reference to the Stern Review’s conclusions about the likely impacts to the global economy of our current climate trajectory.

“If emissions continue to rise according to a ‘business as usual’ scenario, climate change is likely to have an impact on the global economy equivalent to the combined effect of the two World Wars of the 20th century and the Great Depression. According to Stern, as much as 20 percent of global GDP could be wiped out.”

I wonder what the “multiplier effect” on that is.

Discussion of “climate” is now considered impolitic, so it is often buried at the end this way, when it is mentioned at all. And yet, as is so often the case, it is likely to dwarf everything else. The cognitive effect is bizarre, acrobatic: “Oh, and by the way, this project will significantly accelerate our progress toward the now-imminent end of civilization as we know it. And that could be bad for jobs too.”

Gaping budget deficits. Record foreclosures. High unemployment. Surely, this would be the perfect time to choose jobs over the environment.

That’s what two Texas oil companies figured when they put Proposition 23 on the California ballot in November. The measure would have “suspended” California’s Global Warming Solutions Act until unemployment fell below 5.5 percent. California voters rejected it overwhelmingly.

Do you think Californians, with 12.4 percent unemployment, were saying, “We want climate solutions, not jobs”? Of course not. They were saying something much more positive: “Climate solutions ARE jobs, and we’ll have both.”

The West Coast clean energy economy is a bright spot on the economic horizon. Renewable energy is a huge job driver. Energy efficiency programs are putting people to work in their communities, while keeping energy dollars circulating through their local economies. Cleaner cars and better transportation choices are reducing our crippling dependence on oil.

California’s business community — from Silicon Valley to small town Chambers of Commerce — united to protect the clean energy job engine against the oil interests who see reduced fossil fuel dependence as a threat to their profits. Oil companies tried to sing the tired old “jobs vs. environment” song, but they were way off key.

Now, the global coal industry wants to play that same obsolete, self-serving noise here in the Northwest. They aim to use Northwest ports to ship mountains of coal from Wyoming and Montana to China.   

The first of these proposals — Australian coal giant Ambre Energy’s bid for a coal port on the Columbia River — would ship nearly 6 million tons of coal annually. That’s enough to put a 1700-pound lump in the stocking of every Washingtonian, every Christmas. Ultimately, coal companies aim to ship 10-20 times that much from Northwest ports.

Proponents say we need the 20 additional jobs this proposal would create. But it’s hard to imagine a weaker jobs strategy. What kind of economic future awaits us if we become an energy resource colony for Asia? Can you imagine standing at the mouth of the Columbia River, watching ships sail in from Asia carrying solar panels and electric car batteries and plasma TVs, passing ships from America carrying coal? Who’s getting the jobs if China does the manufacturing and innovating and investing while we shovel their coal? Is this really the best we can do?

As bad as this deal is for America’s economy, it’s a flat-out catastrophe for our only planet. It’s considered risky for climate advocates to use scary words like “catastrophe.” But the only thing riskier and scarier is failing to say it when it’s true. (Remember what actually happens in The Boy Who Cried Wolf: The wolf eats the sheep, while the villagers congratulate themselves for not being fooled.)

If we burn the rest of the world’s coal (without technology to safely, economically, and permanently dispose of carbon dioxide — technology that doesn’t exist) we’re toast: we will leave our kids a future of, yes, catastrophic climate disruption. This is not an “environmental” thing; it’s not a political thing; it’s not cable news ideological football. It’s a science thing, a reality thing, a moral crossroads — an epic human tragedy that we are well on our way to creating. Opening a mainline from one of the world’s biggest coal deposits to the world’s biggest market would put our fingerprints all over that tragedy. We just shouldn’t do it.

Here’s the ultimate irony: King Coal wants to make the Northwest the transfer station for the Global Warming Express in part because we’re starting to reduce our own coal consumption. West coast states are committed to reducing dependence on fossil fuels — improving efficiency, developing renewable resources, providing transportation choices, and beginning the transition to a clean energy future. We’re deploying information and communication technology to make energy systems smarter and more efficient. With our abundant hydro resources and these new clean energy initiatives, Washington and Oregon could be coal-free within a few years. Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire said recently, “I’d like us to get out of the coal business.”

That’s great for the Northwest, great for the planet, but bad for King Coal. Their domestic market is shrinking as we develop better ways to meet our energy needs and build healthier economies. So they’re saying, “OK, mind if we just use your railroads and rivers and ports to ship our stuff to Asia?”

What happens to our clean energy economy if we go there? Will we keep installing efficient lights and wind turbines while miles of coal trains chug by, carrying the coal we don’t burn to China so they can use it to make things we don’t make anymore and bake the planet anyway? And if the Pacific Northwest trashes its clean energy credentials, where do we expect leadership to come from? Is there any place on Earth that could do more to pioneer a livable future? Could we even hear the sound of that story over the racket of coal trains screeching by?

The Northwest needs a coal export hub about as much as California needed Proposition 23. We can build a clean energy economy that produces far more and better jobs than King Coal offers. And let’s be clear: there’s no good future — for business, people, or the planet — if we keep stoking the climate crisis with more coal.

If we fall for the old “jobs vs. environment” story, we will lose both. We have begun to show that a new, sustainable prosperity is possible. We know it’s necessary. Would we really sell that last, bright hope down the river for a big lump of coal?

Sens. Kerry (D-Mass) and Lieberman (I-Conn) finally released the American Power Act (APA) on Wednesday, May 11, after months of internal negotiations, and nearly a year after the House passed its comprehensive climate and energy bill, (the American Clean Energy and Security Act or ACES). Climate Solutions is still reviewing its nearly 1000 pages, and will be developing more detailed responses and priorities for our advocacy work. But we wanted to provide some high level reactions to our friends and supporters, and highlight some of the areas that we will be working on to strengthen and improve. We will be updating you on our thoughts, and would appreciate hearing yours.

At the end of this memo, we have included a list of sources we have used for our initial analysis which includes good resources for those who would like more details on the APA’s provisions. We want to single out the great work by Eric De Place at Sightline, who also helped us with our briefing call for key business and community leaders.

We will continue working for the strongest possible bill that limits global warming pollution, reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, and accelerates innovation and investment in clean and efficient energy.  Our advocacy focuses on mobilizing our efforts and friends to fight for the best policy possible, incorporating the strongest provisions from a number of bills and policy proposals into the final product. We are particularly appreciative of the tremendous contributions of Sens. Cantwell and Collins in the CLEAR Act, and believe their focus on a simple, fair approach is having a positive influence as the Senate moves forward. 

A note on the spirit of these comments, and the difficult situation we face as advocates for real climate solutions:  Like every piece of major legislation in our somewhat dysfunctional political system, this one will bear the scars of fear-based special interest politics and insufficient ambition. We will keep fighting hard for what’s right and necessary, while understanding (at the risk of echoing Sec. Rumsfeld) that we have to go to the policy field with the Congress we’ve got. In every major climate bill that sees the light of day, we can expect (without condoning) big problems; but there are few problems bigger than continuing to fail to respond to the climate crisis. If we can find a way to move in a positive direction, we need to move. This may well include provisions of the APA as well as other bills, including the CLEAR Act. We’re focused on the destination more than the vehicles.

Our first cut on the American Power Act’s provisions:

• Limiting global warming pollution

  Our top priority for comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation is that it puts us firmly on the path to rapidly reducing fossil fuel dependence and building a strong clean energy economy. Science-based limits on global warming pollution are an essential foundation for that policy. We need a declining cap on emissions to send clear market signals that accelerate deployment and unlock innovation in clean and efficient energy solutions and to responsibly address the climate crisis. 

  The APA establishes reduction targets for covered sources of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. While these reductions are not steep enough, especially in the near-term, they do track with President Obama’s commitments in Copenhagen, ACES, and other proposals considered in Congress. The bill includes provisions which allow adjustment of the targets to the best available science. What is scientifically necessary may not yet be politically possible. We will continue to advocate for doing the whole job.

  Because of the central importance of the emissions cap, we elaborate on it more than other features:

• Structure of the cap

  The bill takes a somewhat different approach than ACES (or other legislative proposals) — a “sectoral” approach rather than an economy-wide cap or trading system. It establishes caps that are phased in for four primary sectors — electricity generation, industrial sources, natural gas, and petroleum-based fuels. Together, these sectors account for approximately 85 percent of national emissions. Electrical utilities and petroleum based transportation fuels are covered starting in 2013, and the largest industrial emitters and natural gas companies are phased in beginning in 2016.

  For transportation, the bill requires the petroleum companies to purchase allowances for the carbon emissions caused by their fuels at a price set by the market for other sources. The transportation sector is directly subject to the declining cap on carbon emissions, and oil companies will pay a price set by the market for these permits.

  Eric De Place at Sightline has a good description of how this works. 

• Offsets

  Our biggest concern with the emissions reduction provisions in the bill relates to the excessive amount of offsets that are available (2 billion tons annually). This is not new or unique to this bill — these provisions are largely unchanged from the ACES bill — but they do pose a significant threat to the integrity of the cap. The bill does establish oversight and accountability provisions that generally improve on the international standards and ACES. International offsets would be limited and discounted (1.25 tons of international offsets are required for every ton of emissions covered). 

  We strongly support projects that reliably store carbon or reduce emissions in uncapped sectors like agriculture. But they should not be used to excuse or “offset” a large proportion of the energy sector emissions within the cap. And two billion tons is just too much — enough to substantially undermine the incentives for technology innovation and deployment in the core energy sectors. We’ll be advocating a reduced scope for offsets and strong oversight to ensure they are legitimate and effective.

• Market protections

  The bill contains extensive provisions that limit the ability of traders to manipulate the market. It limits auction participation to the companies that are required to have permits. It also protects against synthetic derivatives. The bill incorporates some of the strong market protection provisions of Sen. Cantwell’s CLEAR Act as well as other efforts to better regulate markets. Again, Eric DePlace has a very good description of the market protection provisions and his opinion that they constitute an improvement over previous bills.

• Price collars

  As a method to reduce price volatility, the bill contains both a ceiling and floor on the price of carbon credits (which both escalate over the period of the reductions) and establishes a strategic reserve to reduce the likelihood that hitting the ceiling will “break the bank” by requiring EPA to issue additional permits above the levels allowed by the cap. We oppose a price ceiling, because it could allow emissions in excess of the cap. At minimum, we believe the ceiling should be higher and should escalate more rapidly to minimize the likelihood of exceeding the emission limits in the bill.  

• Allocation of allowances

  As in ACES, many of the emission allowances are distributed without charge in the early years to electric and natural gas utilities, with provisions requiring the value to be distributed to ratepayers to reduce rate impacts and promote energy efficiency (note:  the efficiency provisions are a bit unclear yet, and may not have the intended effect). 75 percent of the allowances would be distributed based on historical emissions and 25 percent based on the load served (ACES had a 50/50 split). The bill also follows ACES in allowing free distribution in the initial years to trade-sensitive industries. A substantial percentage of allowances are allocated for public purposes, such as support for state programs, deficit reduction, protection of low income consumers, and transit projects that reduce GHGS (this transit and other “smart growth” funding is new and welcome in the APA — the kind of legitimate, carbon-reducing public purpose that merits public investment much more than, say, provisions that shift financial risk from nuclear operators to taxpayers.)

  Over time, the percentage of free allowances will decline and the amount auctioned will increase. After 2026, an increasing percentage of allowances will go to a trust fund which will rebate 75 percent directly to households and allocate 25 percent to deficit reduction.

  Climate Solutions has always advocated an auction-based system and will continue to push for transparency, equity, and efficiency. The sky is a public resource, and any proceeds from the private use of that resource belong to the public. It is important to remember, however, that the allocation system does not directly affect the market signals or emission limits that are established by the declining cap.

• Consumer protection

  As noted above, the bill provides significant protections through utility rebates and (in the later years) direct refunds. It also provides direct refunds for low-income consumers who would be disproportionately affected by any cost increases and have done the least to cause global warming. We strongly support having good provisions that ensure that basic energy service is affordable to all.

• The Clean Air Act and EPA authority

  One of the areas of intense debate and concern is how new climate policy would affect EPA’s existing authorities to regulate climate pollution. The carbon reduction provisions of APA are a title of the Clean Air Act and would mark the first significant expansion of that Act since the 1990 Amendments (which established the Acid Rain Program). EPA would be the entity primarily responsible for implementation of the program. 

  However, APA would reduce CAA authority in one key area: major stationary sources. This is essentially the same approach taken in the 1990 Amendments — when Congress replaced individual source permitting approaches with a sectoral cap. The APA also establishes performance standards for coal-fired power plants built after 2020, and allows EPA to set performance standards for older power plants. It would preserve existing Clean Air Act authority over mobile-source emissions of global warming pollution and other types of air pollution.   

  We will be advocating for stronger preservation of EPA’s existing authority, especially for the largest and dirtiest sources. Some changes to existing authority are likely given the scope of new authorities in the legislation, but it’s imperative that we emerge overall with a much more effective national commitment to regulate climate pollution.

• State authorities

  The APA appropriately allows states to retain most of their authority to regulate global warming pollution and promote clean and efficient energy. The one major exception involves state cap-and-trade programs, like the one implemented in the Northeast States and proposed in the Western States under the Western Climate Initiative, which would be preempted. States that have implemented caps will get financial compensation for their lost revenues. In the House bill, these programs were suspended. While we prefer the House approach (or no preemption at all) we will likely be focusing our efforts on preserving the Bill’s broad retention of state authority and pushing for better funding and support for state programs. This is likely to be an area of continuing contention, and maintaining the ability for leading states to serve as pioneers and innovators is vital to our continuing progress.

• Renewable energy and energy efficiency

  APA’s energy efficiency and renewable energy provisions (standards and funding) are substantially weaker than ACES. In part, the reason is jurisdictional. In the House, a single committee developed the energy and climate portions of the bill. In the Senate, by contrast, different committees have jurisdiction. The Senate Energy committee reported a bill (the American Clean Energy Leadership Act or ACELA) last June, that contains provisions on these issues, but they are generally much weaker than the comparable provisions of ACES. For example, ACELA contains a national Renewable Power Standard that is weaker than what many experts predict will be achieved in a business as usual scenario, without any new policy. 

  We do note the addition of a Rural Energy Savings Program, authored by Sen. Merkley, that will provide substantial efficiency benefits in rural communities. Energy efficiency and renewable energy standards remain a critical piece of any successful emission reduction and clean energy job creation strategy; strengthening provisions will be a major focus for us.

  The APA also contains far less financial support for state programs that promote energy efficiency and renewables than ACES. According to the American Council For An Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), APA only provides one quarter of the state funding for efficiency programs as ACES and much less funding for gas utility programs to benefit consumers. ACEEE has estimated that the House bill would save the average American consumer $200 on their energy bills. One issue that we will have to look at more closely, though, is the potential trade-offs between these funding mechanisms for state programs and consumer protection. For a variety of reasons, the Senate Bill allocates less public funding overall, so the tradeoffs become somewhat more difficult. Since we strongly support both clean energy and consumer protection, we need to advocate for solutions that provide adequate funding without “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” One obvious place to look for this funding is the extensive giveaways to dirty energy, discussed below.  

  In addition to these examples, there are many important policies that will promote energy efficiency and renewables that should be amended into this bill or adopted separately. These include nationwide building codes, appliance and equipment efficiency standards, provisions to accelerate home and building efficiency (such as HOME STAR and BUILDING STAR), research and development support, renewal and expansion of incentive programs established under ARRA, and clean energy financing. Many of these provisions were contained in the House bill, and should be considered as part of a final package. A number of the leading associations representing renewable and energy efficiency businesses issued a joint statement last month highlighting a number of areas that they believe should be included in a comprehensive climate and energy bill. 

• Dirty energy giveaways

  Presumably in an effort to find a path to 60 votes, the APA contains unwarranted and inefficient subsidies to dirty, risky, and expensive energy sources. Nuclear power gets more than $50 billion in federal loan guarantees, along with risk protection, cost recovery and streamlining/elimination of critical environmental and regulatory reviews. Taxpayers should not be asked to shoulder huge financial and other risks for a well-established technology like nuclear. And Senators who support fiscal discipline and oppose big government should be the last to insist on such provisions.

  The APA contains a large program to demonstrate carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants. While we support research into CCS, the amounts of money involved perpetuate a huge investment in coal fired generation, well in advance of any solid evidence that a cost-effective solution for disposing of carbon emissions is at hand. We will advocate redirection of these subsidies to clean energy sources that entail less risk and greater public benefit.

• Offshore drilling

  The recent disaster in the Gulf graphically illustrates the costs of our addiction to fossil fuels. The APA provisions on this issue are clearly a work in progress, and are being amended to respond to the enormous public sentiment and concerns from coastal state senators. On the one hand, the bill provides a financial incentive (revenue sharing) for states that open their coastline to offshore drilling. On the other hand, the bill provides veto opportunities for states that would be affected by spills, and institutes some other protections. 

  Climate Solutions has joined with other groups in calling for a ban on new offshore drilling, at least until a full review of the Gulf disaster has been completed. We also support the efforts of the Senators in Washington, Oregon, and California to ban drilling off our states, as well as a stop to drilling in the sensitive and extremely hazardous environments of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off arctic Alaska.  Expanded fossil fuel exploration has no place in a climate bill, since it demonstrably promotes increased emissions. And in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster, these provisions may well cost the bill more votes than it attracts.

Conclusion and recommendations for strengthening

The American Power Act is much less than we need and much more than we currently have for a national climate policy. It would, for the first time, establish a flawed but significant national commitment to climate solutions. Given the ticking clocks of climate change, the threats to our national security, and the race to compete in the global clean energy economy, we must do everything possible to get the best possible bill enacted now. And there are few signs that our dysfunctional political system is going to make meaningful change easier in the next session or near future.

We urge the Senate to pass the strongest possible climate and clean energy bill this year. Initial priorities for strengthening the APA include:

• Stronger and more certain emission limits, including stronger near-term targets, provisions to limit the quantity and quality of offsets, and a price collar that preserves the integrity of the cap.
• Stronger energy efficiency and renewable energy standards and funding, with a significant change in the balance of investment from higher cost, dirtier technologies to cleaner ones with greater public benefit and less risk.
• Preserving and enhancing key regulatory authorities of EPA and the states. 

So the APA is clearly a mixed bag. But we’re going to keep fighting — creating the political space for what we need, and pushing the Senate to do more than it appears to believe it can. We hope you’ll join us.

“There is no time to waste. America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say.” — President Obama, speaking to world leaders in Copenhagen December 18

“Kan Han?” (Can He?) So implored the headline and full-page picture of President Obama on the front of the Copenhagen MetroXpress on December 18, the day the President flew in to rescue the climate summit.

With negotiations on the verge of collapse, Obama narrowly averted a total disaster with a strong show of determination and some deft eleventh-hour negotiating. The talks failed to produce a formal and comprehensive commitment to climate solutions, but they did deliver some important pieces of the puzzle. Top-level engagement from the world’s two largest emitters, the U.S. and China, is new and essential. And negotiators took a real step forward on financing adaptation and clean development in the global South, the moral and practical imperative at the heart of any fair global deal.

President Obama was dealt a weak hand by the Senate’s failure to adopt comprehensive climate and energy legislation before the negotiations. Other factors contributed, but the Senate’s punt set the stage for the tepid result in Copenhagen. The world will not move forward decisively until the U.S. is in with both feet – and both houses of Congress.

Understanding the U.S.’s pivotal role, Obama leaned forward and made a definitive-sounding pledge: “We have made our commitments, and we will do what we say.” But he can’t make it stick until Congress finishes its work. The window is short: scientific, diplomatic, and political imperatives demand immediate action.

The President is clearly engaged — a huge step one on America’s road to recovering its credibility in the international process, after having walked away from Kyoto. Six of his cabinet Secretaries came to the summit and impressed the world with their focus and administrative actions to date. But the inconvenient truth about our weak standing in the negotiations remains naked: The nation that has contributed the most to global warming still has no national climate policy.

I went to Copenhagen in part to demonstrate the breadth of action and commitment to climate solutions in the U.S., especially at the state and local level. But international colleagues and delegates cross-examined me about our broken legislative process, and why it has been so slow to deliver. I have a lot of theories, but no remotely adequate excuse. The U.S. must step up — and in a stark, defiant, powerful sentence, the President promised we would: “We will do what we say.”

To be clear, “what we say” — the emission reduction target the President put on the table — is not nearly enough to do our part in staving off catastrophic climate disruption. It’s far less than other developed nations have pledged. We will need to do much more. But it was the effective constraint that Congress imposed and the President accepted on the U.S.’s ambition in Copenhagen.

So the immediate question is, “How?” How will the President make good on his commitment? Will he rely on existing executive authority? Partly. EPA Secretary Lisa Jackson was in Copenhagen a day after the agency’s landmark “Endangerment finding” to affirm that the Administration will use the Clean Air Act to reduce climate pollution. But Jackson and the President have also made it clear they don’t think current executive authority is enough. And they’re right.

We know what the problem is: the Senate’s paralysis — a symptom of the polarized, dysfunctional politics that has turned this urgent global imperative into a political football in Washington. The only really meaningful test of whether “we will do what we say” is whether the Senate gets cracking on it immediately after health care. But they won’t do it unless the President leads the charge with a lot more gusto.

Senate leadership is afraid of this issue. They’re afraid of losing seats in the midterms. They’re afraid that opponents will successfully frame the climate and energy policy as a job killer. They’re afraid of another bruising political battle after health care.

This is where FDR (and some WWII-like urgency) would come in handy: fear itself is what’s killing them. While they cower, they are squandering the opportunity to frame this as what it really is: the most effective, politically galvanizing strategy for job creation and economic renewal available to them. Opponents of climate policy are rushing to fill the void with all manner of lies about climate science and energy economics. The nay-sayers’ arguments are weak, but their resolve is firm. The opposite is true of the proponents (if we can even really call them that yet).

A short term jobs package won’t deliver a fraction of the economic punch that a real climate and energy policy packs. A cap on carbon emissions will yield a lot more “cash for caulkers” than a one-time, near-term public outlay. Instead of pushing a jobs bill out ahead of the climate and energy bill, Congress should do them together. The climate and energy package – with short-term job stimulators and long-term job drivers – can be the main engine of economic and political recovery. The President has argued for a systematic transition to a clean energy economy repeatedly and eloquently, but he hasn’t broken through yet. Pushing jobs, energy, and climate together instead of sequentially would make his case much more persuasive.

Americans know that fossil fuel dependence is a dead end street, and they’re ready for leaders to get real about what it takes to turn onto a clean energy path. The President has demonstrated the winning politics of this: Democratic and Republican rivals offered campaign lollipops last summer — gas tax holidays and drilling binges – while candidate Obama called for a bold energy transformation. He won.

It is certainly possible to lose this fight. The best way to lose it is to recoil from having it — the strategy Senate leaders and Democratic political operatives seem to be pursuing now. This only emboldens opponents and demoralizes supporters.

The President ran on this issue. He believes in it. He understands its transformative economic power and the moral imperative to tackle it. He mined the rich political ore of our frustration with Washington’s chronic failure to address our fossil fuel addiction. The question now is whether he will forge that raw material into the steely resolve he’ll need to get an effective climate and energy bill done.

Losing this fight because he won’t have it would undermine the President. He was elected in part because he picked it. Now he needs to have it and win.

The Accord will include some positive developments: serious engagement by the U.S. and China, progress toward better accounting and verification, and real movement on climate finance – a critical issue that goes to the moral heart of the impasse. But it lacks legal and scientific integrity. It is not a solid foundation for concerted global action at the scale of the problem. It’s not even in the ballpark.

But if all you read is the formal text, you’re missing most of what happened in (and because of) Copenhagen. Hopenhagen is a lot more than the Accord.

It was a massive convergence of public will. Powerful campaign networks and strategic north-south ties were forged. Millions engaged. The huge, diverse, connected mobilization of global civil society, and particularly young people, is growing into an irresistible force. They are on fire.

It was an unprecedented gathering of world leaders to forge climate solutions. Over 120 heads of state convened to negotiate a pact to save the world. They worked hard at it and came up well short this time. But Hopenhagen marks a new level of commitment to the cause.

It was a spectacular showcase for the emergence of the clean economies and healthy communities of the future. From the electric cars shuttling delegates to the wind turbine towering over the Bella Center to the bicycling, transit-hopping masses of Copenhagen, a brighter future is being born. Business leaders are ready. Investors are ready. Local governments are ready. People are ready, hungry, itching.

It was a galvanizing moment for Americans’ growing commitment to solutions, while it laid bare the failure of our broken politics to honor that commitment. It’s a sobering measure of how deep a hole we’ve dug that both these statements are true: The U.S. offered much more than ever before. And it must deliver still an order of magnitude more if we are to have a real shot at averting catastrophic climate disruption. The President wouldn’t go further because he’s already at the ceiling of the Senate’s appetite. He needs to shatter that ceiling with much stronger leadership, not tiptoe under it. And the Senate needs to MOVE.

For many, it was a moral awakening. 112 nations — the most vulnerable ones, the ones least able to afford intellectual dishonesty about the climate crisis — made a valiant stand for science and justice. Their moral authority grew. I hope what they did here will stir humanity’s conscience as deeply as it did mine.

The Accord is weak. But the Hopenhagen imperative is strong and growing. People are riled and connected, a clean economy is emerging, the costs of fossil fuel dependence are growing unbearable, and the climate disaster bears down on us. The drivers will only grow stronger until we do something much, much different. On we go.

The collective forehead of humanity wrinkles at the prospect. Who are these people? A couple of them from North Dakota, representing 600,000 people (about 9% of the population of Mumbai’s slums), can prevent the world from rising to an emergency? A thought bubble floats above the Bella Center: “U.S. Senate: Huh?”

A Japanese woman grilled me last night in broken but feisty English about the intricacies of the U.S. Congress: How do you elect them? Why do some of them represent so many and some so few? Does it really take 6 months for them to do anything? Where IS North Dakota?

The Obama team has been here in force, with Cabinet Secretaries speaking every day to demonstrate American resolve. Mayors and Governors and NGOs and businesses from the U.S. are all over Copenhagen, showing the world a genuine, engaged face of America. Senator Kerry gave a good speech yesterday, full of resolve. But the world knows that the U.S. Senate stands in the way. Their eyes say to the Americans in the building “How could you let this go on?”

As frustrated as the world may be about Congress’ failure to deliver a real American commitment here, those of us who worked our butts off to get a bill done before we got here are among the most agitated. We feel like idiots. We are soooo sophisticated about American politics, but we’re sitting here scratching our heads with the rest of the world. And added to the injury of being clueless, we bear the insult of being responsible.

But enough of this wallowing! Lookit, we could waste the next 2 days bemoaning the failings of the U.S. Senate, but we’ll have plenty of time for that. I am as certain of this as I have ever been of anything: It will not be Harry Reid who musters “the fierce urgency of now” to save the world this week.

Blaming the Senate right now diverts attention from the one thing that could salvage a good outcome in Copenhagen and unlock our domestic politics. The Nobel Committee prospectively awarded the Peace Prize last week, so hungry is the world for that one thing. We Americans set the stage for that one thing last November when we responded to a transformational call — a challenge to rise above our broken politics and do what is right and necessary. We elected Barack Obama. We elected him to lead.

We did this for a very good reason — our collective instinct that the “game” as we know it is unwinnable, even if we play it very well. We have to change the game.

Mind you, we weren’t naïve enough to think the game would change overnight, or that the blockade that is the U.S. Senate would part like the Red Sea before Obama. We weren’t just smoking Hope.

But we did believe that when these moments arise — these big, pivotal, scary moments when the chips are down and the stakes are infinite — Obama would rise to them, and call us to follow. Tomorrow is such a moment.

Something will come out of Copenhagen, you can be sure of that. 110 Heads of State aren’t going leave here saying “Oh well, maybe next time.” The question is, in the prevailing sloganese, will they just “seal a deal,” any old deal, so they can get out of here celebrating much and delivering little?

Or will it be a “real deal,” one that sets the world on a course toward solutions as big as the problem? To be real, it has to do the two absolutely necessary and interdependent things:

Genuinely embrace the imperative to prevent catastrophic climate disruption, and reduce emissions accordingly.

Open a clean pathway out of poverty for the global South, including major investments from the developed world in adaptation, low-carbon development, and forest protection. ($10 billion per year is NOT “major;” it’s short by two orders of magnitude.)

The U.S. Senate cannot answer these questions, and if it could, it would answer them wrong. Only Obama has a shot at saying Yes We Can and making it stick.

If he does, he could crash through the appallingly low ceiling of Congress’ vision.

His domestic political opponents would squeal. Political insiders in D.C., including his closest advisors, would wring their hands about the prospect of a Kyoto redux — another deal that the U.S. can’t deliver on. His negotiators have been cowering before that specter all week.

But he would reignite the spirit that got him elected, the hope that maybe we could escape the straightjacket of our dysfunctional politics and face our future squarely, before it’s too late.

Then he would have to push for a domestic climate and energy bill stronger than the one that’s stalled in the Senate right now.

Instead of whittling the bill down to nothing in the quest for 60 votes, he’d have to build it back up to something real.

Instead of squabbling over details of climate policy design and swallowing our tongues (or bolting) as the Senate administers the death of a thousand cuts to the carbon cap, his supporters could get all the way behind him and push with as much unity and ferocity as his opponents do.

Instead of defusing and disarming ourselves with clever but substantively lethal ploys to get from here to 60 votes, we could stand up and fight for what’s right.

Instead of pushing a jobs package in the short term and deferring action on the climate and energy bill, the Congress could make the climate and energy bill the centerpiece of the jobs push, the engine of economic and political recovery. Americans know that fossil fuel dependence is a dead end street, and they’re ready for leaders to turn sharply and boldly to a clean energy future. The President has demonstrated the winning politics of this: Democratic and Republican rivals called for a gas tax holiday last summer while he called for a bold energy transformation. He won.

I’m not asking the President to come here tomorrow to pick a fight with Congress. We already have the fight and we’re losing. I’m asking him to fight to win. A weak deal in Copenhagen — constrained by the limits of Congress’ vision — won’t unlock the politics in the Senate. It will only embolden the opponents, who already smell blood. Worse, it will deflate public will. It’s just too damned hard to galvanize a movement behind legislation that dices the baby to bits.

We could lose this fight. We need to get over that. Obama needs to get over that. We sure can’t win it if we won’t have it.

Clean energy reform is hard enough, swimming against the killer tides of free carbon dumping, car-centered development, and oil-soaked politics.  Can we pleeze stop adding insult to injury by targeting scarce public money toward making it worse?

Steve Kretzmann’s the man on oil subsidies. Steve’s formula is catching on here in Copenhagen:  End fossil fuel subsidies in the developed world and use the proceeds to open a pathway to clean development in the global South.  It’s a potent two-fer, with big climate benefits at both ends of the deal. Stop hurting, start helping.

This idea has genuine breakthrough potential in Copenhagen:  it could seriously scale up the climate finance discussion, which is hovering around the short-term number of $10 billion a year – at least an order of magnitude too low.  UNFCCC Chair Yvo de Boer’s working objective for this meeting is $100 billion a year by 2020.  (Lord Stern estimates the need is another order higher: more than $1 trillion a year.  Sounds like a lot, but it’s 1-2% of global economic output.)  

The developed countries are already committed to create the funding source by ending the subsidies – G-20 leaders agreed to do this in the “medium term” at their last meeting in Pittsburgh.  They just need to get the show on the road (or, er, rail) and steer it to clean development and adaptation to climate change impacts.

The politics are juicy.  The constituency for continuing subsidies to big oil is powerful but small.  And while overseas investment is always a hard political sell in the U.S., a global Marshall Plan for clean development beats the hell out of just forking over money to Exxon. 

Other big climate finance ideas are on the table:  revenues from capping carbon in aviation and shipping fuels; George Soros’ proposal to tap $100 billion in special drawing rights; and a tax on the enormous volume of international financial transactions as France has proposed.  U.S. negotiators have pointed to flaws in each idea, but they need to find a way forward, scaled to the pressing need for a clean pathway out of global poverty. The financial crisis demonstrated amply that developed nations can mobilize a lot of money – lots of trillions – in a hurry if they need to. 

In the next 4 days, they need to.  Developed countries can’t very well pull up the drawbridge on the global South and say “Sorry, the atmosphere is already full of the emissions that created our prosperity, so there’s no room for yours.”  But we can and must pioneer a new prosperity, based on efficient use of clean energy.  Americans may bridle at the prospect of financing international development, but it’s not a zero-sum game.  Unlike fossil fuels, clean energy will generally get cheaper for everyone as global markets grow. 

And since we all share the same atmosphere, in the famous words of Argentine climate negotiator Raul Estrada-Oyuela, “We’re all adrift in the same boat, and there’s no way half the boat is going to sink.”

The Copenhagen talks can move a lot closer to success in one big, elegant step:  stop funding the problem and start funding the solution.  Go to 1Sky to help push this over the top.

And since at least one more of us will be here – the one who stoked your hopes; the one who just earned the first prospective Nobel Peace Prize in affirmation of the world’s urgent need for American leadership – I address this request to him. 

Mr. President, please come early.  Arrive incognito.  You need to see this before you decide what you will say on Friday. 

Just wander around the Bella Center.  See if you can grab coffee with Ian Fry, lead negotiator for tiny Tuvalu, which electrified the first week of the negotiations with its courageous stand for a binding, science-based agreement.  By raising the oceans over small island nations, the developed world is throwing them overboard.  (See the Maldives’ underwater press conference.) But they aren’t just asking you to toss them a life preserver.  They want to be full partners in the global rescue plan. (See Maldives President Nasheed Mohamed’s unforgettable speech.)

Today, you missed the Bright Green Expo which showcased the emergence of an “entirely new model of economic growth” – as your Commerce Secretary envisioned in his speech last week.  That new economy is bursting out all over Copehagen – bikes, windmills, solar panels, electric cars, great transit, technology exhibits everywhere - and many of its pioneers are on hand in the Bella Center.  They are so ready.

You also missed the church service that brought Bill McKibben, briefly, to tears. But Bill went to back to work quickly; he’ll be here too, and you really should make it a point to talk with him and his relentless crew, which helped organize the huge march and rally here yesterday. 

And if you only have time for one thing, go to a planning meeting of the youth organizers here in Copenhagen.  Soak up their determination.  Work with them as they come up with a thousand plucky and creative ways to make their appeal to the real you later in the week.  Imagine Sasha and Malia among them.

Then on Thursday, re-emerge as you – the candidate who called us to higher ground, the world leader we elected you to be — and change the game on the two big issues at the core of this conference and on which the fate of the world rests:

1. Science-based emission reductions.  Legal, political, economic, institutional, psychological and other complexities and obstacles abound.  But all of those things are our creations.  They can be changed by humans.  The climate’s response just is what it is – not perfectly understood, but non-negotiable.  350 parts per million is where – in the best approximation of our best minds – nature has drawn the line.  Counter-offers will not move her. 

So, what can you do, Mr. President, to lead the world to nature’s bottom line?  Commit America to the cause.  Yes, you must deliver Congress in order to follow through on this commitment.  But don’t try to deliver them by staying under the low ceiling that our broken politics imposes on their vision, because that ceiling is way below nature’s best and final offer.  Don’t deliver them by accepting Mr. Sensenbrenner’s revisionist history of Kyoto; the problem wasn’t that Gore went too far, it was – and still is – that Congress never stepped up. 

Don’t go down to them.  Lead them up.  Deliver them by reaching higher and inspiring us to follow, as you did when you were campaigning for our votes.  If you do, we will hold Congress, and you, accountable for getting it done.

I’m not going to lay down an emission reduction timetable or a gameplan here – my point is not to stake out an interest group position.  I’m appealing to you — the guy who was in Oslo last week for a good reason — to do what is right and necessary this week, before it’s too late. 

2.  Long-term financing.  This may be the piece of this complex puzzle that could unlock the rest, the issue with the greatest potential for a breakthrough.  Your negotiators have acknowledged our responsibility to support the developing world in adapting to climate changes we have caused and building a low-carbon path to greater prosperity.  But they have bared their teeth at the concept of “climate debt” and deferred serious discussion of specific long-term financial commitments, for fear of the domestic politics. Their public push for “fast-track” financing is a start, but it can’t be the end of this week’s progress.  Since they are negotiating long-term emission reduction commitments, short-term financing alone won’t wash. 

There are signs of movement.  Your team is working hard to build the institutional infrastructure to manage this financing effectively.  We hope they are laying the groundwork for a serious financial commitment, because nothing less will do.  Intriguing ideas about major new sources of such financing are incubating in the Bella Center:  George Soros’ proposal to tap $100 billion in special drawing rights; allowance revenues from bunker fuels for shipping; and a tax on the enormous volume of international financial transactions as France has proposed. 

Another intriguing source of climate finance could bring in about $57 billion annually (according to this 2004 WRI paper written by Jonathan Pershing, your chief climate negotiator):  ending fossil fuel subsidies in developed countries and using the savings to finance low-carbon development. This one’s a potent climate twofer:  we’d get very significant results both by removing the subsidies and by investing the proceeds in clean development.  

The International Energy Agency and OECD estimate the emission reductions from removing fossil fuel subsidies at about 10% by 2050.  If you use the proceeds from eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in the developed world to finance clean development, the money would do double-duty:  Stop funding the problem; start funding solutions. 

$57 billion annually would go a long way toward meeting the need, which is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually (in, for example, the Stern Review).  $100 billion per year by 2020 is the working objective for Copenhagen set by UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer.

The scale of climate finance is critical – the $10 billion a year or so on the table now is an order of magnitude too low.  But it’s also important to ensure that it is fairly and faithfully delivered.  The World Bank – which stubbornly continues to finance fossil-fueled development – is not qualified for the job.  The global South must have a substantial role in the governance of climate finance, and it must occur under the auspices of the climate treaty.  

I’m sure your team is coming up with other great ideas for funding sources.  But it’s up to you to seal the deal late next week – not every last detail, but the scale of the commitment, and the promise to deliver on it. 

Yes, domestic political opponents will squeal.  But Americans understand fairness.  And our most generous moments on the international stage – like the Marshall Plan, which ushered in decades of security – have been among our strongest moments.

Mr. President, if you could come tomorrow as I suggest, I believe you would be inspired to do this.  I’ll look at each person I pass in the Bella Center and wonder if that’s you in your disguise….walking in the shoes of one of the thousands of hopeful, desperate, determined faces in this building.  

Even if you don’t come, I’ll see you in their eyes.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has a well-earned reputation as a sharp, level-headed, practical leader. Most people wouldn’t describe him as a visionary.

But in his excellent speech yesterday in Copenhagen, he laid out the case for profound transformation, and the explosive economic opportunities that come with it. Check out this passage (emphasis in bold is mine):

Think for a moment about the long-term emissions targets we are all considering. President Obama is calling for an 83 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. You’re not going to meet those targets with a wind or solar farm here and there. What’s required is nothing less than completely rethinking the way we produce and consume energy.

For well over a hundred years, much of the world has enjoyed two luxuries that helped propel the greatest burst of sustained economic growth in human history.

Number one: fossil fuels were cheap and abundant. And number two: we either didn’t know about or didn’t care about the greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning those fuels. Those days are over.

The cost of fuel has risen, while the cost of those emissions is ferociously high. If we don’t curb the carbon, we imperil the planet.

In the next few decades, we need to rebuild and reinvent virtually every industrial activity; from power generation and transportation to manufacturing and construction, to run efficiently and economically in a carbon constrained world.

So when we talk about the potential of job creation arising from clean energy investments, we’re not just talking about someone working for a solar or wind company.

We’re talking about creating an entirely new model of economic growth…. The potential new business and new job creation is astounding.”

Given the late hour, I am going to take the liberty of putting words into his mouth here. I choose to infer: The Commerce Secretary is saying is that if we focus on science, and head for 350 (parts per million), we unlock transformational potential and unlimited economic opportunity. (Yes I know that 83% reductions from a 2005 baseline in the U.S is not a path to 350. Just work with me here.) But if we take our broken politics as a ceiling, and limit our aspiration to 60 (votes), we expose ourselves to the “ferociously high” cost of climate disruption.

I know we have to get through 60 to get to 350. But I worry deeply about the obsessive focus on 60 when we talk about our goals for U.S. climate policy.

Sure, our political minds need to plot the course to 60 in the coming months. And yes, what happens here is part of that course. But seriously, it’s late, and the whole world is here, not just Senator Inhofe.

Right now, in Copenhagen, when we have arguably the last opportunity for the world to affirm its intent to save itself, what’s the most important number? At what point does vision become the only practical alternative?

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