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Summers doesn't advocate for climate solutions, but Obama's climate team makes up for it

Yes and no.

Larry Summers is widely regarded as a very brilliant economist. I can't dispute that. He was also the lead horse among the economists in the Clinton administration who were using every trick they knew to undermine any serious effort toward negotiating an international agreement on restricting greenhouse gases in Kyoto, Japan (see here and below).

He appears to remain firmly in the camp of most MEOWs (Mainstream Economists who Opine on Weather) in that he

• Doesn't understand climate science enough to realize how dire the situation is
• Doesn't propose remedies that would avert the irreversible catastrophe we face.

That seems clear from his two-part series on climate in the Financial Times in 2007 (Part 1 and Part 2). By his own admission, he proposes polices that are "less dramatic in their immediate claims for emissions reductions" than what the world has been considering. These include more R&D, of course, and an end to energy subsidies, plus:

The US must engage in an energy efficiency programme that takes effect without delay and has meaningful bite. As long as developing countries can point to the US as a free rider there will not be serious dialogue about what they are willing to do. I prefer carbon and/or gasoline tax measures to permit systems or heavy regulatory approaches because the latter are more likely to be economically inefficient and to be regressive

First off, the "and/or" is odd, since the "or" undermines the whole message. A gasoline tax is obviously not going to touch coal, and it is obviously not "economically efficient" if your goal is carbon reductions.

Second, it is odd economics to described an "energy efficiency" program as being driven by price, when high carbon prices primarily drive fuel switching. You would need incredibly high CO2 prices to drive efficiency in transportation (see "Why a carbon cap won't solve our oil addiction"), something Summers has never endorsed as far as I've seen. Also, even his new boss knows a gas tax is a politically dubious strategy for pushing efficiency (see Obama is right: Higher gasoline taxes to boost efficiency would be "a mistake"). Fortunately, his boss also understands that smart regulations make more sense in the transportation sector (see "Obama to push for California waiver that mandates cut in auto CO2 emissions").

In any case, if Summers won't specify a domestic emissions target, let alone a global one -- and won't specify how high a carbon or gasoline tax he has in mind, then it is impossible to view his policies as a serious addition to the debate or know if he is really serious at all. He is just another mainstream economist opining on a subject that he has not bothered to become knowledgeable enough on to make a useful contribution.

But does it matter that a MEOW, in this case a very clever kitty, is the head of the president's powerful National Economic Council? The New York Times says it does matter a lot in "In Obama's Team, Two Camps on Climate," which pits Summers against Carol Browner, who will oversee Obama's energy and climate policy, and which ignores the rest of his amazing Cabinet.

As evidence mounts of deadly bacteria from CAFO pigs, will the FDA and the USDA act?

Last June, Iowa State researcher Tara Smith delivered preliminary results of a study linking the deadly, antibiotic-resistant pathogen MRSA to pigs in concentrated animal feedlot operations. Despite mounting evidence of the link from Canada and Europe, U.S. public-health officials had never formally studied the issue, even though MRSA kills something close to 20,000 Americans every year -- more than AIDS.

In a must-read blog post at the time, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's ace health reporter Andrew Schneider documents the craven inaction of the FDA and the USDA as this public-health menace gained force. (I weighed in here.) As Schneider wrote:

An effective way to say there isn't a problem is never to look. That seems to be precisely what most U.S. government food-safety agencies are doing when it comes to determining whether the livestock in our food supply is contaminated with MRSA and if so, whether the often-fatal bacterium is being passed on to consumers who buy and consume that meat

Now Smith's research has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Examining CAFOs scattered in Iowa and Illinois, Smith and her team found the MRSA strain in 49 percent of pigs and 45 percent of the workers who tend them. The sample size is small; more study must be done. Will the government undertake it?

A real reckoning with the MRSA-CAFO link could deliver a devastating blow to the meat industry. To keep animals alive while stuffed together by the thousands, standing in their own collected waste, it's evidently necessary to dose them with lots of antibiotics. CAFO conditions destroy animal's immune systems; antibiotics pick up the slack. Take them away, and the CAFO model might crumble.

That, presumably, is why the Bush agencies so studiously ignored the problem. Let's hope the Obama FDA and USDA do better.

Update [2009-1-28 8:40:10 by Tom Philpott]:

The Seattle PI's indispensable Schneider reacts to the publication of Smith's findings:

So I called some disease detectives and food safety specialists in agencies responsible for ensuring that our food supply is safe. You could almost hear them cringe over the phone. And, no, to the best of their knowledge, neither the FDA, USDA nor CDC had launched systematic testing of the U.S. meat supply for MRSA. One physician said that a study was being done on the MRSA strain (ST398) that Smith had found on the pigs but added, "I don't think it has anything to do with meat."

NOAA stunner: Climate change 'largely irreversible for 1,000 years'

Important new research led by NOAA scientists, "Irreversible climate change because of carbon dioxide emissions," finds:

... the climate change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop ... Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450-600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the "dust bowl" era and inexorable sea level rise.

I guess this is what President Obama meant when he warned today of "irreversible catastrophe" from climate change. The NOAA press release is here. An excellent video interview of the lead author is here.

The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science paper gives the lie to the notion that it is a moral choice not to do everything humanly possible to prevent this tragedy, a lie to the notion that we can "adapt" to climate change, unless by "adapt" you mean "force the next 50 generations to endure endless misery because we were too damn greedy to give up 0.1 percent of our GDP each year" (see, for instance, McKinsey: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero or the 2007 IPCC report).

The most important finding concerns the irreversible precipitation changes we will be forcing on the next 50 generations in the U.S. Southwest, Southeast Asia, Eastern South America, Western Australia, Southern Europe, Southern Africa, and northern Africa.

Here is the key figure (click to enlarge):

Toymakers bank on kids' love of trash

Announcement: you can now buy toys made from recycled items like water bottles and Styrofoam cups. Or you could ... give your kids water bottles and Styrofoam cups to play with.

Canada's economic recovery plan includes green items

Stephen Harper, the recently reelected prime minister of Canada, is including plenty of environmental items in his government's $40 billion (about $33 billion U.S.) economic stimulus bill, including tax credits and grants to support homeowners fund energy efficiency improvements.

Here's the government's own rundown of the plan's green items:

Action to Build a Greener Canada -- Budget 2009 targets investments that improve Canada's environment. These include:

* $1 billion for green infrastructure projects.
* $1 billion over two years for renovation and energy retrofits to social housing.
* $300 million over two years to the ecoENERGY Retrofit program.
* $1 billion for clean energy research, development and demonstration projects.
* $87 million over two years for key Arctic research facilities.
* $245 million over two years for the cleanup of federal contaminated sites.
* $10 million to improve government environmental reporting. (Unless otherwise noted, all amounts are in Canadian dollars)

Harper's conservative government is also saying the right thing about climate change. According to the CBC, the "government said it's committed to reducing greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2020, pledging over the next five years to give $1 billion in support to projects that encourage sustainable energy."

But cutting those emissions seems to hinge on the successful development of carbon capture and storage technology. Harper's budget would "provide $15-million over five years towards research, and another $850-million over the same period for clean-energy demonstration projects, including large-scale carbon capture," according to the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Standards and public investment — primary means to lower greenhouse gas emissions

More and more climate science seems to imply we need to eliminate most greenhouse emissions over a time frame closer to 20 years than 50. This has a number of important implications:

It strengthens the case for standard-based regulation and public investment as the main drivers of change, with price as secondary reinforcement. As Tom Laskawy points out, price "will certainly help smooth the bumps in the road to a low-carbon economy. But it will be governments -- through mandates, efficiency requirements and infrastructure spending -- that will pave the way."

It implies a strong case for diverting carbon revenue into refunds rather than green investment. If we effectively lower emissions, then emissions will have to begin to drop faster than prices rise about halfway through the process. At that point revenue from auctions or taxes will peak and begin to drop. However, the transition will only be around half-over at that point. We don't want reductions to depend on a declining revenue source before emission drops are complete. At the point where dedicated revenues drop, the pressure is always to be "responsible" and reduce the program to match the declining funds, rather than finding additional sources.

It implies a strong case for deploying the technology we have rather than waiting for breakthroughs. If we have to massively reduce emissions over the next 20 years, a five-year delay loses a quarter of our transition time.

What if the U.N. held a climate summit and no one knew about it?

As the Financial Times reported (and Grist noted), U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon seems to want to convene a meeting of 30 to 40 heads of state in the next few months to address climate change.

But it's unclear exactly what's afoot. Ban's press office in New York said it has nothing to announce yet -- no date, location, or list of attendees for the summit. Nor would it say what the U.N. chief and his climate chief, Yvo de Boer, hope to accomplish by calling a summit months in advance of the big international climate conference scheduled to take place in Copenhagen this December.

"We just don't have anything to announce as of now," Alex Cerniglia, a spokesperson for the secretary-general, said today. "But he's definitely strongly engaged in the current negotiations and in reaching a deal in Copenhagen at the end of the year."

The U.S. State Department had nothing to say on the supposed meeting either, a spokesperson said.

De Boer, the executive secretary of the U.N. climate convention, first mentioned the plans in London yesterday. He said Ban wanted to build on the momentum of Barack Obama's inauguration as U.S. president.

Perhaps De Boer and Ban hope to piggy-back onto the Group of 20 summit scheduled to take place in London in April. The summit is already expected to focus on spurring carbon-free energy sources.

What are you hearing, dear readers?

Seattle man invents rooftop wind turbine

Seattle inventor Chad Maglaque has a dream. A dream that he will one day be able to walk into a big-box store and purchase a rooftop wind turbine along with his giant jar of mayonnaise.

And surprisingly, his dream may not be so far off. Maglaque has actually put together just such a wind turbine, which he's named The Jellyfish, and he could soon be cashing a $10 million check to make many, many more. How? Maglaque submitted the design to Google's "Project 10 to the 100th" contest, which honors the company's 10th birthday by offering five innovators $10 million for simple ideas that could change the world. The categories for the contest range from energy and environment to health and education, and even a catch-all category for "everything else."

Of course, hundreds of thousands of other ideas have also been submitted, and Google folks are still narrowing down the top picks. But starting March 17, the public will be able to vote for their favorite idea out of the 20 semi-finalists. You can even ask Google to remind you to vote.

Obama's quick regulatory actions ring louder than markets

This post originally appeared on Ezra Klein's blog at The American Prospect, where I am guest-blogging this week with a promise "to keep the doom and gloom to a minimum."

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Speaking of doom and gloom, I was pleased to see the environmental policy-related dark cloud over Matt Yglesias lift somewhat over the weekend. The reason? First the EPA halted two new coal-fired power plants that were on the verge of construction -- plants that had been opposed for years by environmentalists -- and then President Barack Obama announced that California (along with 13 other states) could start regulating tailpipe emissions. In his glee, Matt observed:

Cap and trade or carbon tax legislation will, I'm convinced, be an integral element to any serious climate policy. But ... there's quite a lot that responsible regulatory policy can do.

No kidding. It's true that this question of the relative role of cap-and-trade vs. regulation has been bouncing around the enviro blogosphere for a while now. And believe it or not, as necessary as a robust, functioning cap-and-trade system is to addressing climate change, the opinion among many environmentalists is very much that government regulation, i.e. emissions cuts by decree, holds the key to a low-carbon future. The reason? The emissions cuts are going to have to be really, really, really big and markets, while very good at the trading part, don't do such a good job with the capping part.

Did NBC squash PETA corn-porn?

This bit of "news" may or may not be another brilliant PETA stunt (damn, they're good) -- but supposedly NBC nixed a luscious Super Bowl ad claiming that "vegetarians have better sex." I was going to write another poem, but then I came across PETA's list of NBC's purported editing requests -- pure poetry of its own:

• licking pumpkin
• touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli
• pumpkin from behind between legs
• rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin
• screwing herself with broccoli (fuzzy)
• asparagus on her lap appearing as if it is ready to be inserted into vagina
• licking eggplant
• rubbing asparagus on breast.

Keats couldn't have said it better. Yeah, go ahead, watch it:

'Veggie Love': PETA's Banned Super Bowl Ad