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How Obama can get a better climate bill in 2010

Update: The Center for American Progress has the post "Timeline: A Fight for State Fuel Efficiency Standards, President Obama Moves on Issue After Years of Roadblocks."

My new Salon piece is out: "Real science comes to Washington: Myopic conservatives and the media still don't get global warming. But if anybody can preserve a livable climate, Obama's amazing energy team can."

Besides exploring how the media clearly doesn't get the dire nature of the climate problem (duh) and how Obama's amazing team of radical pragmatists clearly do, I discuss what Obama needs to do in 2009 to justify not passing a major climate bill this year.

I am trying to make lemon out of lemonade here. I can't find a single reporter, staffer, or wonk who thinks we're going to have a climate bill this year. As the NYT reported earlier this month, "advisers and allies have signaled that they may put off ... restricting carbon emissions." Noting that many in Congress "question the pace at which lawmakers will be able to move on a climate legislation," Climate Wire ($ub. req'd) even quoted the uber-progressive Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, Barbara Boxer, as "acknowledging this" and saying, "If that doesn't all come together within a year, I would expect EPA would act."

Boxer's comment gets at one of the two key issues, namely, what does team Obama need to do in 2009 to make up for the fact that there won't be a climate bill? The other issue is, what does team Obama need to do in 2009 to get a better bill next year than they could get this year? I have already blogged on one part of the answer to the second question -- they need to get China onboard with a hard emissions cap (see "Part I, Does a serious bill need action from China?").

Here is my answer to both questions from the Salon piece:

Grist seeks volunteers for top-secret Facebook project

Do you waste untold hours spend time on Facebook? And enjoy a casual obsession with the latest environmental news? Do you like top-secret projects?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, consider volunteering for one of the highly coveted beta tester spots for Grist's top-secret Facebook project. We'll need virtual volunteers during the first two weeks of February. If you want in, shoot an email with your full name and age to abraun@grist.org.

To the curious, non-Facebook folk out there, sorry to leave you hanging for now, but all will be revealed later in February.

And in case you didn't realize how much fun Grist is already having on social networks, fan/friend/follow/Digg us on these sites!

• Become a fan of Grist on Facebook
• Friend Grist on MySpace
• Follow Grist on Twitter
• Subscribe to GristTV on YouTube
• Friend Grist and digg our stories on Digg.com
• Join Grist's Flickr group (for the chance to land your photos in Grist stories!)

What will shift the public's attitudes on climate change?

The greenosphere is in a frenzy about new polls showing that Americans neither understand nor particularly care about climate change -- one from Rasmussen, another from Pew. A few semi-coherent thoughts:

Lots of folks seem to be having exactly the wrong reaction to this, which is that enviros need to try even harder to "raise awareness" of climate change and "educate the public" on climate science. Ugh.

The public is already "aware" of climate change. It's friggin' everywhere. It gets as much as or more publicity than virtually any other sociopolitical problem outside the economic downturn. Pop stars are writing songs about it fer chrissake. Awareness: check.

As for educating the public on the science, guess what? The public's kinda ignorant about science. Have you seen the polls on evolution, or ghosts, or aliens, or telepathy? They're horrifying. There's a lot to know these days, and most people don't know most of it. Changing that is impossible a long-term undertaking we don't have time to wait on.

So, if people are already "aware," and a renaissance of widespread scientific literacy is unlikely in the next few years, what direction to take from these polls?

You have to start with plausible answers for why so many people refuse to believe in or prioritize climate change.

Is U.N. secretary-general planning pre-Copenhagen gathering?

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is set on jump-starting international climate negotiations, according to a Financial Times article (registration required).

The report appears to be based on comments made today by Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the UN climate convention. De Boer's remarks, made at the Globe International meeting in London, were picked up by other news organizations, but the FT's reporters put much greater emphasis on Ban's apparent plans to call a summit in the near term.

The BBC piece makes no mention of a summit, while Reuters buried the summit mention further down, suggesting that the U.N. chief isn't as far along in planning as the FT piece would make it seem. From the Reuters piece: "De Boer said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hoped to convene a 'small but representative' group of governments and heads of state in the spring to identify key political issues. 'What I would like to see come out of a process like that is first of all a shared vision that politically has to be delivered and agreed in Copenhagen,' he said."

Ban certainly did talk climate change with two high-level U.S. officials today, as made clear in this bit of the transcript from the daily U.N. press briefing:

Question: What did Secretary-General Ban say to Susan Rice when he met with her this morning?

Deputy Spokesperson: As you probably heard, Susan Rice came out at the stakeout this morning, and I certainly can confirm that the subjects that she mentioned and the way forward that she laid out is in line with the readout that I received. Just to recap, for those of you who may have missed the readout of the Secretary-General's conversation with President Obama on Friday afternoon:

The Secretary-General received a call early on Friday afternoon from President Barack Obama. The two leaders discussed a range of issues of common concern and interest. The Secretary-General underlined the importance of the US-UN partnership and stressed the need for the two to work closely together on major issues like the global economic crisis, climate change, food security and in the resolution of regional crises, particularly those in the Middle East and Africa.

The Secretary-General and the US President discussed ongoing efforts at UN reforms and the Organization's need for adequate political support and funding. The Secretary-General was encouraged by the US President's assurance of strong support as the Organization makes further progress in this direction. They also looked forward to mutual visits.

The Secretary-General also had a very cordial conversation with United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, at which they discussed issues of multilateral interest and importance such as food security, the Darfur peace process, climate change and management reform in the UN. The Secretary of State emphasized the importance of working together with the UN in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq. And the two leaders discussed greater cooperation in UN reform and budgetary issues as well as mutual visits.

Based on this readout and Susan Rice's readout at the stakeout, I think you have some idea of where we are going on this.

Will the U.S. Postal Service permit a practically indestructible material to be reused?

The U.S. Postal Service demands that I discard perfectly good, used Tyvek Priority and Express Mail envelopes, and I am tired of it.

Their concern seems to be that people will grab these envelopes, turn them inside-out, and use them for regular first-class or media rate mailings, which effectively costs the Post Office money. In fact, they have threatened dire consequences if I try to reuse them for media mail.

But my theory is that it is both environmentally unsound and illegitimate for the Post Office to forbid this reuse as the envelope is no longer USPS property once it is delivered to me with proper Priority or Express mail postage -- the sender paid the Express or Priority postage. Once the carrier gives me the delivery, that Tyvek envelope -- which is nearly indestructible and should be reused scores of times -- it is mine to use as I wish, which includes the noblest reuse of this very sturdy material: mailing books at the media rate.

Media's 'decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress'

One of the country's leading journalists has written a searing critique of the media's coverage of global warming, especially climate economics.

How Much Would You Pay to Save the Planet? The American Press and the Economics of Climate Change [PDF] is by Eric Pooley for Harvard's prestigious Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Pooley has been managing editor of Fortune, national editor of Time, Time's chief political correspondent, and Time's White House correspondent, where he won the Gerald Ford Prize for Excellence in Reporting. Before that, he was a senior editor of New York magazine.

In short, Pooley has earned the right to be heard. Journalists and senior editors need to pay heed to Pooley's three tough conclusions abut how "damaging" the recent media of the climate debate has been:

1. The press misrepresented the economic debate over cap and trade. It failed to recognize the emerging consensus ... that cap and trade would have a marginal effect on economic growth and gave doomsday forecasts coequal status with nonpartisan ones ... The press allowed opponents of climate action to replicate the false debate over climate science in the realm of climate economics.
2. The press failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader and allowed opponents of climate action to set the terms of the cost debate. The argument centered on the short-term costs of taking action -- i.e., higher electricity and gasoline prices -- and sometimes assumed that doing nothing about climate change carried no cost.
3. Editors failed to devote sufficient resources to the climate story. In general, global warming is still being shoved into the "environment" pigeonhole, along with the spotted owls and delta smelt, when it is clearly to society's detriment to think about the subject that way. It is time for editors to treat climate policy as a permanent, important beat: tracking a mobilization for the moral equivalent of war.

Precisely.

Pooley is one of the few major journalists in the country who understands that global warming is the story of the century -- if we don't reverse our emissions path soon, it will tragically be the story of the millennium, with irreversible impacts lasting for many, many centuries (see here).

In a conversation Saturday, Pooley told me, "I think this is the only story going forward." That's why, although he remains a contributor to Time magazine, he is devoting most of his time now to researching and writing a book on the politics and economics of climate change.

The first step for Pooley was an analysis of media coverage over the past 15 months. In a long introduction to the different roles reporters can play, Pooley notes:

On 'mitigating' coal damage

This NYT editorial on the mythiness of "clean coal" is most welcome, but the conclusion rubs me the wrong way:

But coal remains an inherently dirty fuel, and a huge contributor to not only ground-level pollution -- including acid rain and smog -- but also global warming. The sooner the country understands that, the closer it will be to mitigating the damage.

If coal is inherently dirty, why should we confine our ambitions to "mitigating the damage"? Why not try to stop using it?

You never see this when people talk about oil. When people rehearse the damage oil is doing to our atmosphere, our land, and our geopolitical posture, they do not finish by meekly calling on Americans to clean up the messes. They say we should reduce and eventually eliminate our use of oil.

Why is coal different?

I know, I know, it's domestic, but domestic poison still kills. It's got to be more than that, no?

We need to cut emissions faster than 80 percent by 2050, but how fast?

For a long time, the climate science consensus suggested that to avoid increased average surface temperatures beyond those to which our civilization could adapt, we need to reduce emissions 80 percent by 2050. (No one suggested we stop there, but that goal was advocated as a way to avoid tipping points.)

There were voices from the beginning arguing that this was too slow a phase-out. But as Joe Romm has argued, the consensus-seeking nature of the IPCC process tends to downplay and ignore real dangers. It has become obvious that we need to reduce emissions faster than the conventional wisdom of a few years ago suggested.

For example, the rate at which the oceans absorb CO2 has slowed drastically as they become saturated. This suggests another tipping point looms: when the oceans begin to release the CO2 they contain, they'll become a source rather than a sink. At any rate, if the ability of nature to absorb our emissions has dropped, we have to cut emissions more than we would have.

Similarly, the ice caps are melting at a much faster rate than mainstream predictions suggested. Because water reflects less heat than ice, this is another cooling mechanism that has been reduced. Again, we have to cut those emissions faster than we planned.

How fast do we need to cut emissions?

Cataloging the unintended consequences and effects of gene tinkering

Here's a new database, Nontarget.org, that catalogs the unintended (nontarget) effects of the uncontrolled experiment being conducted with all life on earth: that is, GMOs.

When foreign genes are introduced into an organism, creating a transgenic organism or GMO, the results are almost always unpredictable. As the site says, "The intended result may or may not be achieved in any given case, but the one almost sure thing is that unintended results -- nontarget effects -- will also be achieved ... These facts have been, and are being, widely reported in the scientific literature. While they are correcting our understanding in important ways, they are not at all controversial."

New kids' book teaches about climate science without being scary

Ms. Frizzle is nowhere in sight, but this kids' book about climate science is doing just fine. How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming, by Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch, has netted a slew of awards, including being deemed one of the best middle-grade science books of the year by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The book, which features Braasch's photography, encourages kids to observe their surroundings and participate in climate science research -- without drenching them in doom. It offers upbeat real-life tales of students in three U.S. states and Puerto Rico tracking their local weather and connecting that to the Earth's atmosphere, as well as tips on how to live more greenly, like avoiding bottled water and eating less meat. Grist board member Bill McKibben called it "empowering!" -- and the man doesn't lie.

Peek inside the book here. And keep your eyes out for a series of related short videos, being produced by Lynne Cherry, that put the spotlight on kids shrinking the carbon footprint of their communities.