Climate Politics

U.K.’s Labor Party embraces nuclear but is slow to move on the big climate challenge

Ben Tuxworth, communications director at Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

The British press swooned over the visit of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni to the U.K. late last month. We're suckers for the idea of French romance, particularly mixed with wealth, sophistication, and the sort of impetuosity we "rosbifs" can seldom muster. Apparently, Bruni saw Sarkozy on TV and said to a friend, "I want to have a man with nuclear power." And what Bruni wants, Bruni gets.

It's unclear whether Sarkozy knew it was his big machinery that attracted Bruni, but a man who is willing to wear high heels to appear as tall as his glamorous spouse clearly has security issues high on his agenda. As it happens, the new entente cordiale between Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is based, amongst other things, on a shared passion for the atom.

Together, Britain and France will supply the world with nuclear technology, simultaneously saving the industry, creating thousands of jobs, and sorting our energy security issues. I've already explored why these arguments don't really stack up. The Labor Party's newfound zeal for nuclear power -- and Business Secretary John Hutton's recent speech in which he said expanded nuclear power could be akin to North Sea oil for the British economy -- make these interesting times to ask what the legacy of New Labor will be for the environment. It still seems as if, at some fundamental level, they just don't get it.

Climate Security Act could be worse than the 2007 energy bill

Last year the Energy Independence and Security Act put into place mandates that will in all likelihood increase GHG emissions. The Lieberman-Warner act (critiqued by Sean here) could turn out to be just as ineffective.

From an analysis [PDF] of the Energy Independence and Security Act by the NRDC:

... the requirement for renewable fuels, such as ethanol and biogasoline, will grow from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons in 2022.

So far, so good, but keep in mind that biogasoline, green diesel, algae derived biodiesel, and cellulosic ethanol have yet to be proven commercially or environmentally viable. Less than a month ago, the NRDC and our government were under the mistaken impression that our conventional biofuels produced fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. And it gets worse:

Coal still has no place in clean development

You knew it had to happen: the World Bank now has the same climate sensibility as ... the Kansas House.

Scientist Jim Hansen, on the other hand, has requested a meeting with Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, arguing for a moratorium on coal plants until carbon capture and storage technology is available. Even Wall Street looks on coal skeptically. Last Friday, the Kansas House failed to override Sebelius' veto of two new plants by only one vote. And the World Bank is considering funding a massive coal plant in India in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.

Yes, you read that correctly: a larger-than-ever coal plant in a developing giant is considered a mechanism for clean development. Why? Because it will burn more efficiently than other coal plants in India. In fact, it boasts 'supercritical' technology.

Take care of Earth before ruining other planets

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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One of the great ironies of our time is this: We have learned to walk on the Moon, but we haven't yet learned to walk on the earth. It is an irony that is fast devolving into a tragedy.

Since the first man landed on the Moon in 1969, we have continued dumping greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere and making our planet less habitable.

Meantime, under the direction of the Bush administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is working toward the goal of settling the moon and Mars.

If we could do both -- put human beings on other planets while practicing good stewardship of Earth -- all would be well. But the next missions to the moon and Mars are being prepared at the expense of life at home.

Greenpeace and FOE call Climate Security Act too limited; too slow

It's time to call the Lieberman-Warner love train back to the station. This is not to say that we don't urgently need to immediately start reducing atmospheric GHG concentrations and get policies in place that price carbon. It is instead simply the observation that as L-W morphs into ever greater complexity, it becomes an ever-worse way to meet that goal. Like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, I rather doubt that L-W will go anywhere close to far enough to cure AGW. But I am quite certain that the side effects of this purported cure are worse than the disease.

Herewith, a few rather simple distinctions to prove the point. Consider each of the following either/or propositions, and ask yourself which would be a hallmark of good GHG policy.

(Hint 1: the right answer is always A. Hint 2: the Lieberman-Warner answer is always B.)

We’ve run out of time to wait for an unknown techno-fix to save us

Andy Revkin wrote in The New York Times last weekend about what I believe is the climate debate of the decade.

This post will serve as an introduction to this crucial topic for readers new and old. I will devote many posts this week to laying out the "solution" to global warming, and a few to debunking the "technology breakthrough" crowd.

Carmakers take anti-Cali talking points to ‘Blue Dog’ House Democrats

It’s no secret that American auto companies are working overtime to impede California’s ability to set its own tailpipe emission standards. They’ve had a few setbacks in court, but they’ve got the U.S. EPA in their back pocket — witness Johnson’s refusal to grant Cali’s waiver. There’s been some talk recently about Congress overriding Johnson, […]

Dem delegates will compete to be most eco-friendly at convention

As if the Democratic convention wasn’t fun enough on its own, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced an exciting “Green Delegate Challenge” for the August rendezvous in Denver. State delegations are encouraged to buy carbon credits to support clean-energy projects in Colorado, and the delegation that offsets the most of its travel will reportedly get […]

Ten reasons NYC’s congestion pricing plan went belly up

Albany strikes again: congestion pricing -- the smartest urban-transportation idea since the subway -- has been buried by the professional morticians of the New York State legislature, led by Chief Ghoul Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

As previously reported, the pricing plan, proposed a year ago by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and subsequently improved by a 17-member state-mandated commission, would have charged an $8 entry fee on cars driven into Manhattan's central business district (CBD) during 6 a.m. - 6 p.m. on weekdays. Benefits included an annual $500 million revenue stream for mass transit (sufficient to bond at least $5 billion in capital improvements), a solid if unspectacular drop in traffic gridlock and pollution, and, perhaps most significantly, a first step toward knocking the automobile off its privileged perch atop the New York street pyramid. Not to mention establishing the principle that safeguarding "the commons" -- our air, water and public space -- requires that we exact from ourselves a commensurate price for uses that damage or deplete it.

Congestion pricing was backed by an unusually broad coalition of labor, business, enviros (the full spectrum from EJ to Big Green) and civic associations. Yet neither this broad-spectrum support nor the plan's extraordinary vetting over the past 12 months deterred legislators from both parties from citing "unanswered questions" and assailing bogus inequities.

Calling today "a sad day for New Yorkers and New York City" and noting federal support for congestion pricing, Mayor Bloomberg blasted the legislature, stating that, "Even Washington, which most Americans agree is completely dysfunctional, is more willing to try new approaches to longstanding problems than our elected officials in the State Assembly."

With so much going for it, what killed the plan? There will be time later for sober postmortems, but for now, here's my shoot-from-the-hip Top 10 list of what felled congestion pricing in NYC:

Three non-tech essentials for combating climate change

Of course not. We need at least three other things:

1. Major political change, to deploy the technologies fast enough. My first take on this is here ("Is 450 ppm [or less] politically possible? Part 1").
2. Major price change, to add a cost to emitting greenhouse gases that approximates the terrible damage done by them. All of the technology advances in renewables (or nuclear, or coal with carbon capture) that you can plausibly imagine in the next decade won't make coal cost-uneffective -- this is a critical point to understand.
3. Major behavior change; most people need to understand at a visceral level that unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions are the gravest threat to the health and well-being of future generations that we face, by far. If we get the needed political and price change, much of the behavior change will follow. But not all. Climate change is probably going to have to get much more visibly worse before we see widespread and significant behavior change -- much as few people make a dramatic change in their diet and exercise before the heart trouble occurs.

I'll be blogging more on these three points in the coming week(s).

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.