Articles by Brian Beutler

After delaying action against climate change, Big Coal is now scheming to cash in

For readers out there who understand the climate crisis well (I assume basically all of you), a lot of this will be recap, but today's hearing underscored how desperate the situation really is and how urgently it needs to be addressed. That urgency is a source, at least to me, of tremendous frustration.

To a great extent, we've reached this point precisely because energy industries and their political patrons spent years blocking action, rejecting science, and rhetorically casting "alarmists" as cartoonish hippie-fascists. So successful were their efforts that we now face a crisis of such magnitude that the very same actors are using the urgency they created to bully lawmakers into providing them significant handouts in order to fix the problem.

As my previous post points out (or was meant to point out), the bullying is proving effective. This post is a reminder that it's only effective because things look pretty dire.

The word from today’s hearing of Markey’s climate committee

As I suggested earlier, the crux of today's hearing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change was to suggest that carbon capture and storage is necessary quickly, via enormous government subsidies, or else we're screwed.

Remember, this is Ed Markey's committee. He's the guy who's supposed to advise Congress about upcoming climate-change legislation, and, for all intents and purposes, he's an ally to Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the environmentally minded members of the Democratic caucus.

This we expect from Markey:

There are over 150 new coal-fired power plants on the boards in the United States, and globally, it is predicted that something on the order of 3,000 such plants will be built by 2030. These new plants alone would increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent and global emissions by 30 percent. That would spell disaster for the planet.

But this?

Fortunately, carbon capture and storage -- or 'CCS' -- offers a path forward for coal ... All indications are that CCS is a viable interim solution to the coal problem.

Markey taking this line means that if we're lucky enough to see major action out of Congress on climate change, CCS is going to be a huge part of it. But we already knew that, right?

Reporting from a coal hearing of the House Select Cmte. on Global Warming

If you dream of a near future in which coal mines are abandoned, coal workers are employed in emerging green energy fields, coal executives are feeding at the trough of welfare assistance (and not corporate welfare), and China and India are all too happy to buy our clean technologies at a healthy price ... well, then it's good you didn't attend this morning's hearing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change.

I'll be posting a few entries here detailing the most significant ground Markey's hearing covered. But the nickel version is that, though everybody from the governor of Wyoming to the wonks at the Center for American Progress think a cap-and-trade program is inevitable, they also think that many, many billions of dollars in subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration technology will be crucial to any greenhouse-gas reduction strategy.

Which is to say that I had a rollicking and hilarious morning!

Examining John Dingell’s about-face on climate change

New York Times economics writer David Leonhardt examines a question that David and I have enjoyed disagreeing about (or at least that I've enjoyed disagreeing with David about) for a couple of months now: Is John Dingell sincere about tackling climate change, or is he pulling old tricks?

Leonhardt recounts the tale of Dingell's efforts to block fuel-economy standards introduced by former Sen. Richard Bryan a couple of decades ago by introducing a bill that would have created a nuclear waste dump in Bryan's home state of Nevada. Are we seeing that type of tactic again, albeit in slightly different form?

I still go back and forth on this. On the one hand, Dingell talks a good game to the press. On the other, what's really important is for him to whip up support among his colleagues for his carbon-tax proposal. The congressional aides I've talked to about this take stances ranging from "we don't trust him" to "we never know what he's really thinking" to "we believe he's out to axe real progress" to "it's too early to say." Time, as the kids are fond of saying, will tell.

Leonhardt writes, "If nothing else, it's also enormously useful that Mr. Dingell is no longer suggesting, as he did just eight months ago, that the scientific consensus on global warming may be a 'great error.'" It would be fascinating to figure out how Dingell came around, if he in fact has. And he certainly would like us to believe he has:

After the town hall meeting [which Dingell had called to discuss climate change] was over -- and he had listened to a couple of hours of questions about timed traffic lights, nuclear power and the possibility of impeaching President Bush -- Mr. Dingell sat down in a dark area behind the stage. I asked him whether Mr. Gore, who has been both a Dingell nemesis and ally at various times, had been right for all those years he was pointing out what was happening to the earth's climate.

"I think a cold statement on that point would be yes," Mr. Dingell replied.

And would it have been easier to solve the problem if we had started earlier?

"What's the saying? The saddest words in the English language -- 'might have been.'"