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DeFazio says Summers should be canned for cutting mass transit funds

"Harvard had it right."

-- Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Ore.), referring to the university's jettisoning of Larry Summers, who is now director of Obama's National Economic Council and who DeFazio has accused of axing mass transit funding from the stimulus bill

A chat with Obama's green-leaning liaison to the states, Boulder Mayor Shaun McGrath

As we reported on Thursday, the Obama administration has scooped up Shaun McGrath, the green mayor of Boulder, Colo., to serve as the deputy director of intergovernmental affairs within the White House.

McGrath has been mayor of Boulder since 2007 and a city council member since 2003. He has also worked on environmental issues for the Western Governors' Association since 1995. It was under his leadership that Boulder set out to become the first smart-grid city in the country. Voters there also approved the country's first carbon tax in 2006, and the city has been recognized with a platinum-level "bicycle-friendly community" award from the League of American Bicyclists. Pretty frickin' green, eh?

We tracked McGrath down to find out what he'll be doing in his new gig, which starts on Feb. 9.

Grist: What exactly will your role be in the White House?

Shaun McGrath: It's in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. The office is the president's liaison to state and local elected officials, and I will be the deputy director responsible for liaising between the president and the nation's governors.

Grist: You've been active on green issues in Boulder. What do you hope to be able to do with that experience in your new role at the White House?

'Monaco Declaration' sounds alarm about ocean acidification

If the idea of acidic oceans sounds problematic, it should. The carbon emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere also wind up in the ocean, where they dissolve and turn the water acidic. This lowering of the pH of seawater -- already underway -- threatens coral reefs, shellfish, and the vast food chains to which they belong.

Today 155 scientists issued a report on the rising danger of ocean acidification, saying swift and drastic emissions cuts are needed to curb the problem. The Monaco Declaration [PDF] is based on the work of the Second International Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World, held in Monaco last October. It's not the first warning scientists have issued about ocean acidification, though the call to action from scientists from 26 countries is unusually strongly worded:

Ocean acidification could affect marine food webs and lead to substantial changes in commercial fish stocks, threatening protein supply and food security for millions of people as well as the multi-billion dollar fishing industry by mid-century, ocean acidification may render most regions chemically inhospitable to coral reefs. These and other acidification-related changes could affect a wealth of marine goods and services, such as our ability to use the ocean to manage waste, to provide chemicals to make new medicines, and to benefit from its natural capacity to regulate climate.

The report aims to reposition ocean acidification from a peripheral environmental issue to "the other CO2 problem that must be grappled with alongside climate change." Additionally, as the pH of seawater falls, the process reduces the ocean's ability to absorb more carbon. Oceans currently absorb one quarter of the CO2 emitted by human activities, the report says.

The solution to acidification is essentially the same as that for climate change -- reduce carbon emissions. The declaration's action points are quite predictable: More research, bring policymakers and economists on board, and enact a global carbon emissions plan. Acidification doesn't require a separate plan as much as it provides another reason for an aggressive global climate treaty. From the declaration:

Solving this problem will require a monumental worldwide effort. All countries must contribute, and developed countries must lead by example and by engineering new technologies to help solve the problem. Promoting these technologies will be rewarded economically, and prevention of severe environmental degradation will be far less costly for all nations than would be trying to live with the consequences of the present approach where CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to increase, year after year.

The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, which helped organize the October summit, didn't explain its timing on the declaration, though it's a safe bet the release is designed to build on the momentum of new U.S. leadership. Not only has President Obama declared a return of science to the executive branch, he's also a bodysurfer from Hawaii who may be inclined to pay attention to oceanic issues. He's nominated ocean-protection superstar (at least in marine biology circles) Jane Lubchenco to lead the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, though she won't be confirmed until a commerce secretary is first nominated and confirmed (thank you very much, Bill Richardson).

It's not clear how scientists involved in acidification research intend to make a broader public-message push this year, though the declaration acknowledges the issue has a lot riding on the COP-15 climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

Why the rush to defend this not-so-embattled style of legislation?

Recently the green blogosphere has been engaged in an oddly vigorous defense of command and control style legislation. I'm not sure whether this trendlet grows out of environmentalists' unfortunate habit of ranking and re-ranking and arguing over the ranking of various solutions to climate change; or out of pique that odious people like Charles Krauthammer are pretending to be proponents of carbon pricing; or, as I suspect, out of something else entirely, but I have some good news for supporters of mandates: Both the public and public officials love command and control style legislation.

To be sure, the term "command and control" is pejorative, but no congressperson ever introduced the 2008 Command and Control Environmental Protection Act. Nevertheless, virtually every single piece of environmental legislation ever enacted takes the form of a mandate. From renewable portfolio standards to CAFE to wilderness protection to the quality of our air and water to species protection to waste management to an endless stream of subsidies and tax credits (good, bad, and ugly) -- they don't call it environmental regulation for nothing.

The new administration holds the incentives for a strong federal climate bill

The following is the first in a series of guest posts from the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive legal think tank that works on constitutional and environmental issues. It is written by online communications director Hannah McCrea and president Doug Kendall, who also help maintain CAC's blog, Warming Law.

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There can be little doubt that the U.S. needs a strong carbon-pricing system, such as a cap-and-trade program, to help combat global warming. Politicians have proposed a range of alternative policy measures that avoid carbon-pricing (e.g. traditional "command-and-control" regulations on emissions, renewable portfolio standards, massive investments in renewable energy infrastructure and technologies, etc.), but economists widely agree [PDF] that none of these approaches will, on their own, be swift or strong enough to reduce the risk of irreversible climate change. The better approach to mitigating this risk is to attach a price to carbon emissions -- one high enough to ensure that greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels are more expensive to consume, per unit, than are clean and renewable alternatives.

To this end, members of the 110th Congress, including then-Senator Barack Obama, focused on trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill. Last June, they pushed the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, an ultimately doomed effort that attracted harsh criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. As Grist readers will surely recall, progressives condemned the bill for being dangerously weak because it failed to meet the IPCC-established target of an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, while conservatives claimed the bill would ensure the U.S.'s economic ruin.

After the bill's death, leaders in Congress -- indeed Barack Obama himself -- promised a stronger follow-up to Lieberman-Warner. However, with the economic climate dramatically altered in the last six months, political support for such an ambitious program may be in doubt. As the severity of the recession came into greater focus in the weeks leading up to the November elections, candidates made a notable shift in their rhetoric on climate policy, subtly replacing the focus on cap-and-trade with one on clean energy investments and "green" recovery measures. Outside of Washington, state and local governments continued to demonstrate their lack of faith that federal climate action will be forthcoming, as evidenced by further development of regional cap-and-trade schemes, namely New England's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Western Climate Initiative, and the Midwestern Governors Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord. These initiatives are motivated by the widely-shared sentiment that even with hope of meaningful federal action on climate change in 2009, dramatic reductions in carbon emissions simply cannot wait a moment longer.

Recent food safety struggles suggest the limits of regulation

It's been a bad week for food safety. First it was the peanut butter, then it was the high fructose corn syrup, and now it's deadly antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria (MRSA) in CAFO pigs (and their minders). And of course, as Bill Marler -- litigious scourge of the food industry -- reminds us, we're continuing to lose the fight against E. coli.

Much has been written about the efforts to track down the sources of contamination.  And invariably the companies involved quickly close the their doors (which is how we lost one of the largest ground beef distributors in the country virtually overnight and why the Peanut Corporation of America is no more). But what's truly worrisome is that in each case, the USDA and the FDA (who have joint responsibility for food safety) had information at hand about all of these problems.

In the case of the peanut butter outbreak, the plant in question had a long-documented history of health violations -- discovered, not by the FDA, but by local Georgia authorities to whom the FDA had contracted out inspection services. In essence, short of allowing self-regulation, the FDA managed to find an entity that enjoys even cozier relationships with industry than the FDA itself has. In theory, the Georgia Agriculture Department should have forwarded on reports of violations to federal officials. There's no word yet on where in the lines of communication the breakdown occurred.

Obama's new middle class task force to focus first on green jobs

The Obama administration today announced the creation of a Middle Class Task Force that will work on "raising the living standards of middle-class, working families in America."

Notably, the group's first meeting, slated for Feb. 27 in Philadelphia, will be on the subject of "Green Jobs: A Pathway to a Strong Middle Class."

The task force will be chaired by Vice President Joe Biden. Other members include the secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Commerce, and the directors of the National Economic Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

"Quite simply, a strong middle class equals a strong America. We can't have one without the other," said Biden in a statement today. "This Task Force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across the board and determine if they are helping or hurting the middle class. It is our charge to get the middle class - the backbone of this country - up and running again."

Grist hearts a certain congressman from Brooklyn

Big green shout outs this week to some folks who’ve tried to do something about the damage America’s cars are doing to the atmosphere, our foreign policy, oceans, urban air quality, open space, pedestrian and bike safety, settlement patterns, commutes … wait, where were we? Oh, right, green shouts outs! The first goes to Rep. […]

Significant turning points in the rise of the domestic wind industry

"The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States," reports Todd Woody.

Jerome a Paris notes another portentous development:

For the fourth consecutive year, the US set records in 2008 for the construction of new wind farms, with more than 8,300MW installed in the year, making the country the leader for both yearly installations and, for the first time in many years, overall installed capacity (nudging out Germany which has long been the world leader).

(Despite that, he thinks 2009 will be a rough year for wind, thanks to the late renewal of the PTC and the credit crisis. He recommends a few ways the feds could support wind over the speed bump and help its long-term growth, namely stable, predictable federal rules, preferably a feed-in tariff.)

And finally, in Salon, Jeff Biggers writes about the battle over Coal River Mountain -- the cosmically evil Massey mining subsidiary that wants to blow the mountain up to get at coal vs. the scrappy grassroots coalition that wants to build a wind farm instead. Could this be another turning point in the making?

I'm having a cow over beef-tallow biodiesel

I heard about this on the radio this morning, and couldn't believe the uncritical reporting on it:

The City of Calgary's entire fleet of trucks and buses may soon be partly fueled by biodiesel produced from Alberta beef tallow.

Tallow is all that's left over after an animal has been processed. The city has been experimenting with tallow from the meat-packing plant in High River, Alta., as part efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

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Not only is the tallow in ready supply locally, turning it into biofuel recycles a product that would normally be thrown away, he said.

Tallow-waste biofuel is also more ethical than other alternative fuels, since it does not displace food crops such as corn, which is used in the production of ethanol, he said.

That's a neat trick of sunk-cost accounting. Sure, beef production is ridiculously carbon-intensive, making this biodiesel probably more climate-hostile than even corn ethanol, but hey, we've already got all this surplus cow fat to get rid of. I'm all for waste recycling, but reducing the production of waste is the first step, right?

I'll confess this is a first-blush impression, and welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong. But doesn't this sound like a poor excuse to support beef prices?