Latest Articles

From Smoke to Sass

Smokin’ hot Does this dress make my butt look recycled? Here’s the scoop Can we rename an old Ben & Jerry’s flavor to honor a new president? Yes Pecan! The full Vermonty At the Miss America Pageant later this month, Miss Vermont will walk the stage in an eco-friendly hemp gown. And perhaps Miss Texas […]

Before we debate gas taxes vs. mileage taxes, Oregonians must pay for roads with those taxes

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski (D) has attracted a lot of attention by calling for an expansion of a pilot program that replaces the gas tax with a per-mile tax which charges the same fee to a Hummer driver as a Prius driver.

The pros and cons of mileage taxes vs. gas taxes are discussed in a post to the political blog BlueOregon, and the same essay was sent out as a query on a transportation activists' listserv. I started several times to respond ...

But I end up stopping, because this whole discussion ignores the elephant -- heck, the blue whale -- in the driveway.

Cheap oil: Be careful what you wish for

This guest essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission.

-----

Only yesterday, it seems, we were bemoaning the high price of oil. Under the headline "Oil's Rapid Rise Stirs Talk of $200 a Barrel This Year," the July 7 issue of the Wall Street Journal warned that prices that high would put "extreme strains on large sectors of the U.S. economy." Today, oil, at over $40 a barrel, costs less than one-third what it did in July, and some economists have predicted that it could fall as low as $25 a barrel in 2009.

Prices that low -- and their equivalents at the gas pump -- will no doubt be viewed as a godsend by many hard-hit American consumers, even if they ensure severe economic hardship in oil-producing countries like Nigeria, Russia, Iran, Kuwait, and Venezuela that depend on energy exports for a large share of their national income. Here, however, is a simple but crucial reality to keep in mind: No matter how much it costs, whether it's rising or falling, oil has a profound impact on the world we inhabit -- and this will be no less true in 2009 than in 2008.

The main reason? In good times and bad, oil will continue to supply the largest share of the world's energy supply. For all the talk of alternatives, petroleum will remain the number one source of energy for at least the next several decades. According to December 2008 projections from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), petroleum products will still make up 38 percent of America's total energy supply in 2015; natural gas and coal only 23 percent each. Oil's overall share is expected to decline slightly as biofuels (and other alternatives) take on a larger percentage of the total, but even in 2030 -- the furthest the DoE is currently willing to project -- it will still remain the dominant fuel.

A similar pattern holds for the planet as a whole: Although biofuels and other renewable sources of energy are expected to play a growing role in the global energy equation, don't expect oil to be anything but the world's leading source of fuel for decades to come.

Keep your eye on the politics of oil and you'll always know a lot about what's actually happening on this planet. Low prices, as at present, are bad for producers, and so will hurt a number of countries that the U.S. government considers hostile, including Venezuela, Iran, and even that natural-gas-and-oil giant Russia. All of them have, in recent years, used their soaring oil income to finance political endeavors considered inimical to U.S. interests. However, dwindling prices could also shake the very foundations of oil allies like Mexico, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia, which could experience internal unrest as oil revenues, and so state expenditures, decline.

No less important, diminished oil prices discourage investment in complex oil ventures like deep-offshore drilling, as well as investment in the development of alternatives to oil like advanced (non-food) biofuels. Perhaps most disastrously, in a cheap oil moment, investment in non-polluting, non-climate-altering alternatives like solar, wind, and tidal energy is also likely to dwindle. In the longer term, what this means is that, once a global economic recovery begins, we can expect a fresh oil price shock as future energy options prove painfully limited.

Clearly, there is no escaping oil's influence. Yet it's hard to know just what forms this influence will take in the year. Nevertheless, here are three provisional observations on oil's fate -- and so ours -- in the year ahead.

Responding to Heritage's staggeringly confused 'rebuttal'

Part 1 presented a new study by power plant cost expert Craig Severance that puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at from 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour -- triple current U.S. electricity rates!

Those ideologically promiscuous folks at the Heritage Foundation have replied with "New Study on Staggering Cost of Nuclear Energy, Staggeringly Pessimistic." Craig's point by point response follows a few of my comments.

Heritage is a leader of the conservative movement stagnation. They have written "the only thing a green 'New Deal' will do is lead us down a Green Road to Serfdom," comparing such a policy to "collectivism in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany," and their Senior Policy Analyst in Energy Economics and Climate Change is quite confused about both of the subjects he analyzes.

The key paragraph in Heritage's new critique is:

'Minimalist' cooking master connects the dots between food, climate, and bad health

The great Mark Bittman -- whose new book I am eager to get my paws on -- delivers a powerful spiel connecting the industrial food system with climate change and the health-care crisis. Watch it.

Obama's Labor pick expected to champion green jobs

President-elect Obama's Labor Secretary nominee, Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), will face a Senate confirmation panel on Friday morning headed by one of her most ardent fans, the ailing but powerful Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee.

Longtime GOP lions Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) could also be on hand to grill her, but the presence of Kennedy at the gavel, who presented Solis with the "Profile in Courage" award in 2000, is tangible proof that after a career spent battling Republican governors, presidents, industry lobbyists and even moderate Democrats, she could now be in the cat bird's seat. [UPDATE: News from the hearing.]

"No one else was even going to fight for the stuff that she's fought for her whole career. Now it's not about fighting, it's about governing, and I've seen Hilda Solis, she's effective at governing," said Ian Kim, director of the Green Collar Jobs Campaign at the Ella Baker Center in Oakland.

As Labor Secretary, Solis would in fact be in charge of implementing the Green Jobs Act she fought to "smuggle through" a hostile Congress and Bush administration in 2007, said green jobs guru and best-selling author Van Jones.

The act authorized $125 million annually to train 30,000 workers in environment-friendly jobs such as installing solar panels or weatherizing homes. But it went unfunded in 2008, due to opposition from manufacturers and other industry groups angered by its mandate to include organized labor.

Fast forward to a year later, with a tanking economy and a new president, and matters look decidedly more green. Obama made clear in his economic policy speech Thursday that such jobs will be a key component of his massive stimulus package. And no one is better qualified to make that happen than Solis, say her fans.

"She is the 21st century, Hilda Solis represents the future of this country both demographically, and in terms of her vision," said Jones, who shrugged off criticism by some that the appointment was minor compared to other Cabinet posts. "We need new, clean, green jobs for the 21st century, and in her we've got somebody who connects both those things."

The real cost is the cost of doing nothing

That's always the mantra: Serious climate policy is too pricey, especially in this economy.

To that I say: Watch this excellent video from King 5 News. (It's almost 16 minutes long, but well worth it.) The impacts of climate change, such as flooding, carry a very steep cost. And judging by the video, the costs aren't mostly borne by the rich -- they're paid for by those who can least afford it.

I want to be perfectly clear.The floods in Western Washington -- this year and in several recent years -- are completely consistent with what the climate science has been predicting for the Northwest. It doesn't really matter whether these particular floods are the direct result of global warming (that's an untestable hypothesis),what matters is that this is exactly what we should expect in the future. If the scientists are right, get ready for more.

So if you think carbon pricing is too expensive, just wait until you see the bill for failing to put a price on carbon.

'Climate change' is climate change by any other name

In his famous essay, "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell wrote: "The English language ... becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." He warns that "Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." The importance of language and rhetoric is a subject near to my heart.

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

-----

Washington, D.C., is to the English language what Paris is to fashion. Every season, perfectly good words go out of style and new ones are trotted out on the national runway of rhetoric. Some words are considered so worn out, politically incorrect, or laden with baggage that they can no longer be used in public discourse. When that happens, people like me find ourselves scrambling for suitable synonyms.

That was the case a few years ago with "sustainable development." I operated the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development at the U.S. Department of Energy, helping communities understand and apply the practice. Before long, signals came down from Capitol Hill that the words "sustainable development" had become the kiss of death for any program that used them. The term "smart growth" was invented to take "sustainability's" place.

More recently, Congress has avoided using the word "climate" in legislation that clearly is meant in part to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions -- legislation such as the "Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007." The Bush people call torture "enhanced interrogation" and call kidnapping "rendition." Healthy Forests and Clear Skies became the titles of the Bush Administration's programs to cut trees and pollute the air, respectively.

Our elected leaders aren't alone in manipulating the English language. Lobbyists and extremists, left and right, regularly play the game too, to obscure facts, incite emotions, insult opponents, or get attention from the media, where conflict is red meat.

Coal executives try to persuade us there's such a thing as "clean coal" and oil executives talk about "energy independence" when they really mean more drilling. In 2003, Orwell protégé Frank Luntz counseled in a confidential memo that the Administration and conservatives should stop using the term "global warming" because it was too frightening. Luntz suggested that Republicans refer to themselves as "conservationists" rather than "environmentalists," since the latter term, in Luntz's view, is associated with tree-hugging and extremism.

Burger King launches film Whopper Virgins, simplifies U.S. to land of fast food

In the past year or so, I have had the opportunity to meet and experience a vast variety of inspiring food, environmental, and agricultural people and places. I met small-farmers in Ethiopia experimenting with pit composting instead of synthetic fertilizers. I shared meals with activists and writers in the sustainable food movement like Tom Philpott and Anna Lappé. Perhaps most exciting has been the increasing interest in sustainable food and agriculture throughout this country and among my family and friends. Helping my parents start composting, sharing books with friends, and watching the enthusiasm for a "Farmer in Chief" left me hopeful and excited at the end of 2008.

My vision came to a screeching halt when I saw a television ad during the holidays that left me laughing: Burger King trounces around the world feeding Whoppers to unsuspecting indigenous peoples in hopes of spreading the gospel of fast food. What a great parody, I thought! Who could have thought up such an ironic idea? And as the website for Whopper Virgins flashed on the screen, I had a sinking feeling that, like those high-fructose corn syrup ads, perhaps this Burger King film was no parody.

It turns out that the ad was actually an excerpt of a longer seven-minute film. The very concept of this idea -- flying around the world, feeding hamburgers to people who have never eaten hamburgers -- is in itself strange. For the first half of the film, the crew travels to Romania where they feed utterly confused people Whoppers and Big Macs from nearby restaurant locations. Strangely enough, it seems like the same number of people has no preference or prefers the Big Mac as compared to the Whopper.

Enviro and labor leaders welcome four new, green House members

The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Blue Green Alliance today hosted a meeting with several newly elected Democratic members of the House, welcoming the "next generation of green leaders."

The four new members the groups touted come to the House with experience working on green issues in their home states: Debbie Halvorson (Ill.), Steve Driehaus (Ohio), Tom Perriello (Va.), and Mark Schauer (Mich.). At the presser, each spoke about likely committee assignments and goals for the first year in Congress.

Perriello has a background in environmental and human rights issues, and previously served as the assistant director of the Center for a Sustainable Economy (which is now part of Redefining Progress) and as a consultant on youth and environmental campaigns. This summer, he could be seen campaigning on a float pulled by a biofuel-powered tractor, as his opponent cruised by in a Hummer. Perriello, who has been assigned to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the economic crisis should fuel the desire for an overhaul of the energy system.

"Now is the time to look for game changers. We have to get people to work right away but we have to get them to work on things that are going to make America competitive again," Perriello told Grist. "We are getting out-competed, and we are being made incredibly vulnerable by our energy dependence."