Climate Politics

RNC chooses as new leader the author of 'drill, baby, drill'

After a contentious and somewhat clownish leadership battle, the Republican National Committee has finally (after six ballots) chosen its next leader: Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele.

Which gives me an excuse to share a little-known factoid: it was actually Steele -- not Sarah Palin, not Newt Gingrich, not Rudy Giuliani -- who coined the slogan "drill, baby, drill," which is likely to go down in history as the apotheosis of Republican intellectual achievement in the early 21st century.

I was there -- it was the third day of the RNC in St. Paul; Steele was one of the introductory speakers. Prior to this the slogan was "drill here, drill now, pay less," which works for a bumper sticker but is too long and complex for the right's base. It was Steele who freestyled the somewhat more digestible and catchy version.

It obviously caught Palin's ear, because she repeated it in her speech, and then it took off.

Congratulations, GOP. You've chosen well. Or at least appropriately.

The Clean Air Act is President Obama's key to triggering cap-and-trade

The following is the third 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. (Part I, Part II)

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A debate has been rumbling over whether it is possible for the EPA to establish a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions under the existing Clean Air Act. We'll discuss that debate in Part IV of this series. Setting aside that debate for a moment, the Act can still serve as an important catalyst for congressional action on climate change, if used effectively by the new Obama administration. Happily, Obama's all-star climate team seems to clearly understand this important truth.

The history here by now qualifies as environmental lore. Back in 1999, a group of concerned organizations, led by the tiny but bold International Center for Technology Assessment, petitioned the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the CAA, arguing that the threat to human populations posed by climate change meant each of these chemicals fell within the Act's definition of an "air pollutant" that "endangers public health or welfare." After several years of legal prodding, and under Bush-appointed leadership, the EPA denied the petition. EPA claimed it did not have the authority to regulate GHGs and that, even if it did, it would defer regulation until climate science and policy, including foreign policy, became better developed.

Several U.S. states and environmental groups then challenged the EPA's decision in federal court, ultimately resulting in a landmark 5-4 Supreme Court ruling against the EPA issued in April 2007. The Court not only held that the EPA had the authority to regulate GHGs under the CAA, but that it was unjustified in delaying its action based on policy considerations not enumerated in the CAA itself.

The Court's ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA [PDF] was an historic moment in the fight against climate change. With federal action at an alarming standstill, the highest court in the land informed former President Bush that his administration already had the power it needed to address GHG emissions on a national level. Specifically, the Court held that the EPA could apply its broad authority under the CAA to regulate CO2 as a pollutant, and therefore did not need to wait for Congress to begin aggressively addressing climate change on a more comprehensive basis.

Kansas legislature reviving last year’s coal fight

The Kansas legislature is once again attempting to pass a bill to get two new coal-fired power plants built in the southwestern part of the state, an attempt to override state environmental officials. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has gone head to head with Sunflower Electric Power and the legislature on this issue. The battle began in […]

President Obama should clear the way for state innovation on climate policy

The following is the second 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. (Part I)

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In a 1932 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote: "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens chose, serve as a laboratory, and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

In the absence of federal action on climate change under the Bush administration, state and local governments have been taking advantage of this "happy incident" by passing measures that will reduce their contribution to global warming. Last September, ten northeastern states began auctioning allowances in the country's first mandatory regional cap-and-trade program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), while several western states began working with Canadian provinces to set up a similar program under the Western Climate Initiative.

Signaling that the nexus of leadership in U.S. climate policy lies currently at the state level, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hosted the Governors' Global Climate Summit in November, ostensibly to facilitate a high-level meeting between international and American leaders that bypassed the federal government. Unsurprisingly, California has led state efforts in advancing climate policy, and is currently in the process of adopting the largest and most comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction program in the country. These initiatives signal that Justice Brandeis's vision of states as "laboratories" of regulation is very much alive in the realm of climate policy.

Of course, state innovation has been most visible (and most contentious) when it comes to auto emissions standards, as seen with this week's blockbuster news that President Barack Obama is ordering the EPA to revisit the California waiver denial. As Grist readers may recall, in 2004 California formally adopted the "Pavley standards," an aggressive enhancement of auto emissions standards that would require a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for new vehicles by 2016. Normally, states aren't allowed to depart from federal auto emissions standards in this way, but under Section 209 of the Clean Air Act, California has special permission to set better-than-federal fuel economy standards, provided it obtains a waiver of preemption from the EPA. Once California gets a waiver, other states are allowed to adjust their own standards to match California's, creating a mechanism in which states gradually bring about a nation-wide reduction in auto emissions.

Washington governor unveils green jobs legislation

Last night, NBC Nightly News aired a short segment on how hard the recession is hitting Seattle. It's quite depressing, especially amid the ever-gray skies ...

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) is not unaware of this fact and, as I've mentioned previously, is trying to boost the state's economy by putting monies toward major building projects and other job-creating ventures.

Yesterday, she announced a legislation package that focuses more concretely on the creation of "green jobs" -- as well as lowering the state's carbon footprint.

The legislation contains House Bill 1819 and its equivalent Senate Bill 5735. Both bills would implement a cap and trade system in partnership with six states and four Canadian provinces, which are part of a coalition called the Western Climate Initiative.

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In addition to the cap and trade bill, a proposed $455 million will be invested for projects that emphasize energy efficiency and clean-energy technology. These investments would help support 2,900 jobs for the next two years, according to the Office of Financial Management.

There will be public hearings on both bills next Tuesday, and if passed, the cap-and trade-program would go into effect in 2012.

This might be my all-time favorite

Certainly in the top five:

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?

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.