Climate Politics

Dueling green galas on the eve of the inauguration

The New York Times reports on the competing green balls that will welcome in the new president tonight. There's Al Gore's green gala and another ball put on by the International Conservation Caucus Foundation. (A third green ball, hosted by Planet Green, already took place on Saturday night.)

Tonight's dueling balls showcase an interesting dichotomy within the green movement. Gore's ball, which has more of an activist bent, is co-hosted by the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice, the Vote Solar Initiative, and Youth for Environmental Sanity, among many other groups and businesses. Wal-Mart, KPMG, and the American Gas Association are also on board, but these and other corporate sponsors have incorporated green practices into their businesses, say the Gore folk. The organizers are decorating with tree seedlings, using recycled-fiber carpet, recycling and composting waste, and offsetting their carbon emissions. The food is going to be organic, and cooked across the street, to lower the carbon footprint, natch. Will.i.am and Maroon 5 will serenade the crowd.

The International Conservation Caucus Foundation's ball is hosted by The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and WWF, among others, and will be just a few blocks down the street. "Roses will be flown in from Ecuador. Marinated beef is being flown in from Texas to Virginia, where it will be grilled and then trucked to the auditorium," reports the Times. "We are not into symbolism," said caucus president David H. Barron. "We are focused on a much bigger impact." As the Times puts it, "the caucus gala sticks to its philosophy that the environment and wildlife are most effectively protected by governments and businesses." To that end, sponsors include ExxonMobil, Chevron, International Paper, and Wal-Mart (which appears to be hedging its bets). Famous anticipated guests include Robert Duvall, Bo Derek, and Ed Norton.

I'll be reporting from the Gore gala this evening, so you'll get the inside scoop. (Don't worry, I'll be taking public transit and recycling my prom dress.)

GOP leader Scrooge Boehner disses weatherizing low-income homes and cutting the deficit

So what part of the economic stimulus plan did House Minority Leader John Boehner single out on PBS's Newshour:

And, if you look at the over $500 billion worth of spending, a lot of it's going to fix up federal buildings, and -- and $6 billion to community action programs to do weatherization programs.

It's just more of the same kind of wasteful spending that we have seen in the past. I was really -- I was shocked.

The Republicans dumped more than $100 billion down the black hole of Iraqi reconstruction, and Bush flushed down the toilet who knows how many tens of billions of dollars of the bailout bill. But Boehner is shocked that Democrats want to spend a few billion dollars to:

1. retrofit federal buildings to make them more energy-efficient, and
2. weatherize the home of poor people.

I actually helped oversee both of those programs when I was at the Department of Energy (DOE) in the mid-1990s. The conservatives hated them then, too. What is so galling about the GOP's ongoing efforts to cut these programs is that not only are they job creators -- they are both deficit reducers:

NRDC responds to criticism of USCAP's Blueprint

This is a guest post from David Hawkins, director of the climate program at NRDC, in response to Joe Romm's post "CAP and degrade," which criticized the U.S. Climate Action Partnership's Blueprint for Legislative Action.

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Joe,

You are and will remain a respected friend. As an author and blogger, you call it as you see it on what needs to happen to emissions and our energy system if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe. And you do a great job at it.

We at NRDC have another job. We must do what has to be done to move this Congress to enact climate protection legislation that will change overnight the kinds of energy and other investments that are made, start the innovation engine spinning, bend our emissions down without further delay, and show the world that the U.S. has emerged from its cave of inaction.

We are buoyed by President-elect Obama's commitment to act but we will need action from Congress as well. The new Congress contains a growing number of climate protection champions but it also contains a core of obstructionists bent on using every tactic to block any action, other members who think global warming is not enough of a problem to warrant any real change, and members who are inclined to be helpful but not if it involves spending much political capital as they see it. We don't have time to change who the members of Congress are; we need to change the way current members think about this issue.

There are a number of ways to move Congress to act and NRDC is pursuing all that we believe will help. One important way is to engage deeper and broader support for action from the U.S. business community -- a community that until recently was dominated by outspoken opponents of any action to cut global warming pollution. The USCAP Blueprint you attack is an effort to get major American business leaders, joined with a number of U.S. NGOs, firmly committed to working to get this Congress to pass climate protection legislation. It is part of a process designed to make good legislation possible.

This past Thursday, the business members of USCAP testified to Congress that action by Congress is urgent, not only to protect the climate but to provide a foundation for economic recovery. Their testimony powerfully challenged those members of Congress whose mindset is still that we cannot afford to act now because they think climate protection means economic sacrifice. The business leaders' testimony was "yes we can" take action to protect the climate and it will help the economy, not hurt it. The members of USCAP will be a strong force and voice for action in the weeks and months ahead. Without those voices NRDC believes action in Congress would be slower and less effective than it has to be to protect the climate.

Does a serious bill need action from China?

I'm not asking whether we should pass a serious climate bill before China acts. The answer to that question is obviously yes, as I've written many times (see The "China Excuse" for inaction and The U.S.-China Suicide Pact on Climate).

But as I noted in my post on Steven Chu's confirmation hearing for energy secretary, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) made some worrisome remarks on the subject. Our very own David Lewis transcribed the exchange in the comments (here). I'm going to repost it below because Bayh is a thoughtful moderate who certainly understands the climate issue.

First, however, let me make a few comments. We have no chance to stabilize CO2 concentrations at 450 ppm (let alone 350), if China does not agree to cap its carbon emissions by 2020 (see "Must-read IEA report explains what must be done to avoid 6°C warming"). Right now, however, China seems to be willfully pursuing planetary self-destruction (see "China announces plan to single-handedly finish off the climate").

The international negotiation process that led to the Kyoto Protocol -- and that is supposed to culminate in another deal in Copenhagen at the end of this year -- is for all intents and purposes in a deep coma, even if most of the participants don't realize that (see "Obama can't get a global climate treaty ratified, so what should he do instead? Part 1"). Indeed, the only thing that could possibly revive it is China agreeing to a cap by no later than 2020. That alone means Obama's top international priority this year must not be Copenhagen, but rather China. Whether or not Obama needs some action by China to get a U.S. bill passed, his entire presidency and the fate of the planet rest on whether he can in fact get a China deal (see "What will make Obama a great president, Part 2: A climate deal with China").

Let me go further here, based in part on Bayh's remarks. I think it is rather obvious that if China simply refuses to agree to any strong emissions constraints sometime during Obama's (hopefully) two terms in office, than even if we had passed a climate bill in this country, the political support for the kind of carbon dioxide prices needed to achieve meaningful reductions by 2020 would just fade away. Second, I think it is even more obvious that the climate bill we could pass in this country would be considerably stronger if we could in fact negotiate a strong, bilateral GHG agreement with China (or trilateral with China and the E.U.) -- though presumably the Chinese side of things would be contingent on a U.S. bill passing.

I do not want to be misunderstood here: It is more than reasonable to argue, as I have repeatedly, that the U.S. should try to pass a bill first -- and such a bill may be the key to unlocking Chinese action. But Bayh's comments in his exchange with Chu suggest that may not work politically:

WaPo interviews Obama energy adviser Carol Browner

The Washington Post sat down for an interview with Carol Browner, Obama's energy adviser. For you videophobes, there's a transcript here.

Here's part one:

Here's part two:

What Obama's green team has to say about coal

Here at Grist, we like to say that coal is the enemy of the human race. But what do Obama's environmental nominees have to say about the dirtiest of all fossil fuels? Here's what we heard at their confirmation hearings:

Steven Chu, nominee for secretary of energy: "I am optimistic we can figure out how to use those resources in a clean way. I'm very hopeful that this will occur and I think that we will be using that great natural resource."

Lisa Jackson, nominee for EPA administrator: "Coal is a vital resource in this country. It is right now the source of generation of about 50 percent of our power. And I think that it is also important for us to say in the same sentence that it is -- the emissions from coal-fired power plants are -- the largest contributor to global warming emissions. So we have to face square-shouldered the future and the issues of coal and then move American ingenuity towards addressing them."

Ken Salazar, nominee for secretary of the interior: "Coal is a controversial subject. The fact of the matter is it powers today much of America, and there are lots of jobs it creates ... The challenge is how we create clean coal ... I believe that we will move forward with the funding of some of those demonstration projects so we can find ways to burn coal that don't contribute to climate change. I will certainly be an advocate of making that happen."

Grist pulled no punches in covering all of George Bush's dirt

  A movie no one would make.   Imagine that back in 1999 you were a Hollywood studio executive and a movie producer brought you the following pitch: A bumbling, incurious child of privilege wastes his youth on Oedipal rebellion. After stumbling through a series of failed business ventures and an undistinguished stint as governor […]

Eight years of Bush’s environmental actions — the good, the bad, and the ugly

Grist came of age over the past eight years, so it seems only fitting to compile George W. Bush’s environmental legacy in one place. From abandoning Kyoto to censoring climate science, all the bad (and, wherever we could find it, the good) is here. Note: This timeline is based on Grist’s extensive coverage of the […]

IPCC chief challenges Obama to further cut U.S. emission targets

Worldwatch just released its State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World, which finds:

The world will have to reduce emissions more drastically than has been widely predicted, essentially ending the emission of carbon dioxide by 2050 to avoid catastrophic disruption to the world's climate.

At a kick-off event, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said

President-elect Obama's goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of climate change.

Told ya! (see "The U.S. needs a tougher 2020 GHG emissions target.")

Pachauri was the guy handpicked by Bush to replace the "alarmist" Bob Watson. But facts make scientists alarmists, not their politics, as I've said many times (see "Desperate times, desperate scientists"). At the end of 2007, Pachauri famously said:

Eight years of Bush inaction leave Obama with a near-impossible challenge

Given the sheer number of candidates for “worst legacy of the Bush years,” it may seem perverse to pick the hundreds of coal-fired power plants that have opened across China during his administration. But given their cumulative effect — quite possibly the concrete block that broke the climate-camel’s already straining back — I think they […]