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Vilsack glides through Senate Ag Committee confirmation hearing

Tom Vilsack, Obama's pick for USDA chief, made pleasant conversation Wednesday with his new (and old) best friends on the Senate Agriculture, Forestry, and Nutrition Committee. As a confirmation hearing, the event had about as much drama as a John Deere combine gliding through a vast field, harvesting corn. The process was smooth and efficient, and no one seemed to break a sweat.

I watched much of the hearing live via a stream on the committee website. About the closest thing to genuine tension I saw came from Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), who seemed worried that Vilsack might support limits on subsidies to his beloved cotton farmers. (Chambliss worships free markets -- unless and until they interfere with the flow of government cash to his cotton cronies.)

Vilsack did say some encouraging stuff, including (from Congressional Quarterly):

Lou Dobbs works to make CNN viewers less informed

Will you look at the monumental, paleolithic, mind-boggling idiocy that's appearing on CNN in prime time?

Amazing. But there's more:

"Advocates of global warming." They're called scientists, you neanderthal. Christ. What year is it?

Illinois leg. and gov. hoodwinked by 'clean coal'; will Obama be as susceptible?

Impeachment notwithstanding, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) signed a bill this week that will send another $18 million down the "clean coal" rabbit hole in Illinois.

The delusional symbolism couldn't be more obvious. In fact, the Chicago Tribune captured the carbon truth of the story:

Conservative touts gas tax as cure to all ills, alternative to other climate/energy policies

The Weekly Standard cover story last week was by Charles Krauthammer: "The Case for a Net-Zero Gas Tax." Joe Klein calls it "an absolutely compelling, and completely unexpected, argument" and the tax itself "without doubt, the most elegant way to lower carbon emissions and dependence on foreign oil."

Your honor, I object.

First off, it isn't unexpected -- Krauthammer has argued for a gas tax before. And you'll notice that more and more conservatives are popping up in favor of refunded gas or carbon taxes. (See, e.g., here.)

Second of all, it isn't particularly compelling. In fact, it's full of howlers. More on that later.

Third of all, re: "elegant," I can't speak to its aesthetic appeal, but a gas tax is most certainly not the fastest or cheapest way to lower carbon emissions and dependence on foreign oil.

Fourth of all, if you find yourself agreeing with Charles Krauthammer, one of the most vicious, mendacious soldiers in the right-wing chickenhawk brigade (see, e.g., here for his argument for torture), it's time for some soul searching.

After all, Krauthammer is quite clear that he views a gas tax as an alternative, not a compliment, to government investments or regulations. Indeed, he seems to think a $1 gas tax would single-handedly drop U.S. oil use, cut world oil prices, cripple hostile regimes, and make the U.S. energy independent. And maybe increase your sex appeal. And it could do all this while obviating or eliminating other environmental policies.

On regulation:

Lolcats go green!

(More animals)

Paulson brags on his delayer boss

This 'graph on the WSJ blog just about made me choke:

Of course, the obsession over what do to with developing countries -- especially China -- is one of President Bush's biggest environmental legacies, Secretary Paulson said, continuing the administration's week-long farewell tour. By relentlessly focusing on the role of developing-world emissions, President Bush "changed the debate," Sec. Paulson said.

Two points. First, the strategy of delaying U.S. action on climate change by recourse to fear-mongering about China and India is not a Bush invention. Conservatives (and, er, Democrats) have been pulling that crap since the '90s. That was the basis for the Senate rejecting Kyoto via the Byrd-Hagel Resolution.

Second, it is true that Bush has kept this delaying tactic at the center of the national debate. What is truly mystifying is why a Bush administration official who purports to be concerned about climate change would boast about it.

ZapRoot takes on 'clean coal'

The anti-coal bandwagon grows ever larger:

The U.S. needs a tougher 2020 GHG emissions target

A U.S. climate bill should set a target of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That conclusion is based on the latest science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and NASA, among others, but it also involves matters of timing and U.S. cap-and-trade design. To achieve its goals, domestic climate legislation should limit the use of both international and domestic offsets.

The United States has the technology and resources to reduce its emissions levels substantially below 1990 levels by 2020, and having already lost much of its credibility in the international community by failing to act, there is no time to lose in adoption of binding targets to avoid the risks of dangerous impacts of global warming.

That is the executive summary of a new report I have written for the Center for American Progress (Full report here [PDF]). I have changed my thinking on the 2020 target a bit in the past year for three reasons:

1. Scientific observations and analysis in 2007 and 2008 make clear the pace and threat of climate change has accelerated (see Nos. 8, 7, and 3 here).
2. We must try to keep open the option of going much lower than 450.
3. Politicians insist on effectively watering down their 2020 targets with rip-offsets.

The full report is reprinted below:

No leaky

From a story on Congressional tensions with Obama comes the news that the transition team apparently didn't tell anyone in that body about its upcoming cabinet choices:

Upgrade freight rail: Save 12 percent of oil, 4 percent of emissions, and jumpstart renewable grid

On the theory that many people who encounter Alan Drake's own words on greening freight end up overwhelmed by the details, I have presented a very simplified version of Drake's proposal with my own opinions. This is a deliberate attempt to focus on the most important points, and then steer people to read the whole thing. [Update: The Washington Monthly has a long article on this as well.] Obviously the disagreement with Drake, as well as the political analysis at the end, is my own judgment. In addition Drake does not know me, though we've corresponded briefly, and he has no responsibility for anything I wrote.

Grist has discussed Alan Drake's proposal for greening freight before, but somehow it's always mentioned in passing and without real recognition that it's such a game changer. By switching 85 percent of long-haul trucking to rail, we could reduce U.S. oil use by about 12 percent and total U.S. emissions by about 4 percent.

In addition, it would add long-distance power transmission across the lines of regional grids, creating a true U.S. national grid to share power from coast to coast and from north to south, and it would add-high speed passenger travel. Since it would depend almost entirely on existing rail rights-of-way, the environmental impact is small compared to transmission projects and transit projects that use new rights-of-way.

Drake starts with the fact that long-distance freight trucking consumes about half as much oil as passenger transport, and that unlike passenger transport, we have an existing heavy rail system that can move goods with about eight times the energy efficiency of trucking. That system already reaches most destinations where we want to move goods. If we switched to rail, we would still need to use trucks to move goods to and from freight yards, but containerization makes that simple.

That is the good news. The bad news is that our existing rail system won't let us make this switch on a large scale. Today's freight rail operates near capacity now, and existing rail freight is slow and unreliable as compared to trucking.

Drake proposes that we upgrade our system, add various new controls and infrastructure, build second tracks besides existing rail runs, and electrify the most heavily trafficked routes, which allows trains to run at higher speeds, giving a capacity boost over and above that provided by additional tracks. These modifications provide vastly improved capacity, speed, and reliability, and they reduce energy requirements per freight-ton. Moreover, this transformation requires only standard technology in use today throughout the world.