Climate Politics

Paterson taps green ally to fill Clinton's senate seat

New York Gov. David Paterson (D) today tapped upstate Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) to fill the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Now in her second term in the House, Gillibrand has a mixed record on environmental issues but has received strong support from green groups.

Gillibrand, who has represented New York's 20th district since 2007, is characterized as a centrist Democratic up-and-comer. In the past, she was endorsed by the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, as well as the National Rifle Association.

After pulling a 95 percent score from LCV in her first year in office, she earned just a 69 percent in 2008. That puts her lifetime score at 85 percent, and she got rave reviews from the League in her reelection bid last year.

"Kristin Gillibrand has been a great friend in the House and will be a powerful ally in the Senate," LCV President Gene Karpinski said in a statement Friday shortly after her selection was announced. "In her first year, she voted in favor of clean energy and environmental protection 95 percent of the time. She understands the powerful potential of clean, renewable energy to create American jobs and will be a key vote on clean energy issues."

In her first year in office, Gillibrand helped secure $35,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Program for a project to install a solar energy system at a diary farm in Washington County, N.Y. She also voted for a measure to end tax breaks for oil and gas companies and fund renewable energy.

She also won praise from the New York State chapter of LCV. "Kirsten Gillibrand has proven her mettle on Capitol Hill by fighting for cleaner air, alternative energy and environmental safeguards," said Marcia Bystryn, president of the New York LCV in her endorsement last year. "Now, we urge voters in the 20th District to return her to Washington for another term, to work toward an energy-independent future that confronts the dangers of climate change while protecting New York's economy and growing jobs."

'Climate change,' 'global warming,' 'climate chaos' — what terminology fits best?

The usual scientific term for what I refer to as "climate chaos" is "climate change." Scientific preference is a strong argument in favor of using the latter term, and climate scientists prefer it to the term "global warming" because it encompasses changes besides average surface temperature, such as rising sea levels, increased floods and droughts, and stronger storms.

But in my opinion it encompasses too much. After all, denier blather about a new ice age also describes a (discredited) type of climate change. It is rather like referring to cancer as "cell change." (Cancer certainly is one kind of cell change.) Also a lot of delayers like the term "climate change" because it is emotionally neutral, and it helps them frame the debate they way they want.

What about the term "global warming"?

Americans' climate change doubts aren't hard to understand

As if in response to David Roberts' point that "[t]here is nothing close to the public or political support necessary to pass the kind of sweeping policies necessary to eliminate America's emissions," Pew is out with a new poll saying just that.

Kevin Drum (via Andy Revkin) has the details:

Global warming, once again, ranks as the lowest priority from a list of 20, and the more general category of "protecting the environment" fell 15 percentage points from last year.

And as if that's not bad enough, Revkin also points to a new Rasmussen poll, which finds that 44% of U.S. voters don't believe humans are the cause of global warming, compared to only 41% who do. That's even worse than last year's results.

Somehow, those numbers don't surprise me. Leaving aside the fact that, thanks to the contingencies of history, the developed world has ended up occupying the parts of the planet likely to be affected least by climate change, the whole phenomenon is too vague and amorphous for most Americans to focus on. It just doesn't feel real to many people. After all, the weather is weird. Sometimes it's warm. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it rains.

In fact, I'm willing to bet the poll numbers for global warming will wax and wane in correlation with the temperature in any given year (just like a president's approval rating correlates pretty well with perceptions about the economy). Is it cold this year? Support will fall. A beastly hot summer? Up go the poll numbers.

Meanwhile, we as a society aren't particularly good with the whole science thing in general. Let's look at some numbers from a National Science Foundation poll back in 2004.

• Only 40% of Americans know that the universe began with the Big Bang.
• Fully half don't believe in evolution (with 1 in 5 entirely "unaware" of the concept at all).
• 58% of Americans think lasers focus sound waves rather than light. Lasers! Didn't these people see Star Wars?!
• And capping it all off: 29% of Americans don't know that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

What part of Americans' confusion regarding anthropogenic climate change is hard to understand? Even the concept of the scientific method is understood by only a fraction of our society. This all is why Joe Romm is running a pool on the nature of the near-term catastrophes required to turn Americans' climate change doubts into certainty.

And, tellingly, the partisan split is huge, with 59% of Democrats saying climate change is caused by humans, while only 21% of Republican agree. And why should they? Climate skepticism has been a cornerstone of Bush Republicanism for eight years -- and so far it looks like many in the GOP will continue to use it as a rallying cry.

If there's any hope in these recent climate poll numbers, it comes from a figure buried in Rasmussen's poll. They found that 64% of American voters believe climate change, whatever the cause, to be at least a "somewhat serious" problem (41% say it's "very serious"). So we may not rank the issue very high at the moment, and we may not be sure why it's happening, but a solid majority of us are ready to be persuaded.

And President Obama has left little doubt that we'll be hearing a lot about climate change in the months and years ahead. If anyone can move public opinion on the issue, it's going to be him, don't you think?

Sue Tierney for deputy, names for under sec., and stuff I leaned at DOE, part 2

The Environmental and Clean Energy Ball may be a party, a once-in-four-years chance to wear my tux, but it is also a source of news about names. Everybody is buzzing over who is going to fill out the organization chart at the Energy Department under Secretary Chu.

Sue Tierney is widely expected to be nominated for deputy (as WaPo first reported here). Dr. Tierney would be a first rate deputy -- and I can say that with some confidence since not only is Sue a colleague and friend, but also my first job at the department in 1993 was special assistant for policy and planning to then Deputy Secretary Bill White (now mayor of Houston).

Deputy is a very demanding job. You are the DOE's chief operating officer. You have to make the trains run on time, and these are big, messy trains -- the nuclear weapons laboratories, the energy labs, the physics labs, and the "cleanup sites" like Hanford, which are the toxic legacy of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. If the secretary doesn't have prior experience as part of a senior leadership team managing a federal agency, the COO should. Dr. Tierney was assistant secretary of policy at DOE when I worked there.

Tierney has a unique set of qualifications at a time when we must redesign our entire energy system, change utility regulations to foster energy efficiency, and quickly site tens (and then hundreds) of gigawatts of renewable energy, along with a new, smart power grid to enable both the efficiency and the renewables (and plug-in hybrids):

Air Force to announce the fate of a synthetic fuel plant

President Barack Obama gave a powerful call to action on energy and climate, and he has given the order to halt Bush's final rules. But if he really wants to send a quick, strong signal that he intends to preserve a livable climate, he should intervene immediately to stop the Pentagon's toxic dalliance with liquid coal.

As reported by Air Force Times on Tuesday:

The future of a synthetic fuel plant that would power fighters and cargo planes with processed coal will be announced this week.

The Air Force decided on Friday whether to move ahead with a plan to build a synthetic fuel plant at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.

Due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and the inauguration, Air Force spokesman Gary Strasburg said the decision will not be released until Wednesday.

(Note: I can't find any notice of this decision on Google News or Montana newspapers.)

UPDATE: My sources say the decision "has been delayed."

This is simply a terrible idea (see here), especially since clean alternatives are on the way "Boeing: Jet biofuel in three years").

Obama said in his powerful inaugural address: "we will work tirelessly to ... roll back the specter of a warming planet." That can't be done running your Air Force on liquid coal:

Senate confirms Jackson as EPA chief

President Obama's "green team" is nearly complete, as the Senate on Thursday confirmed Lisa Jackson to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Nancy Sutley to head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Senators also approved Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation. All three officials were confirmed by voice vote.

Jackson's appointment had been in limbo, as reports suggested that a Republican senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, was blocking it until he received some clarity about Carol Browner's role as Obama's top adviser on climate and energy issues. Barrasso later consented to allowing the confirmation to proceed after talking to Browner, according to a spokesperson for the Environment and Public Works Committee, which was managing the confirmation. (Barrasso told TPM the same thing).

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate panel, issued a statement immediately after the confirmation praising her colleagues for approving Sutley and Jackson. "I am really pleased that the Senate has taken the first steps toward restoring the EPA and CEQ to their proper role as organizations that fight to protect the health of our families and the safety of our air, our water and our planet," said Boxer. "Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley are well qualified to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality, and they respect and understand that their organizations' mission is to protect public health and the environment."

The Senate has not yet acted on Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) to run the Department of Labor. Solis has said she will use her post to champion the creation of "green jobs."

Salazar taps Clinton's deputy secretary as his own, and other Interior news

Clinton-era deputy interior secretary David Hayes has been tapped to reprise that role in the Obama administration, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced on Thursday. Hayes led Obama's transition efforts for the Interior Department as well as the EPA, USDA, and the Energy Department.

Hayes is a partner at the law firm and lobby shop Latham & Watkins, where he is the "global chair" of the Environment, Land & Resources Department. From that post, he lobbied on behalf of Sempra Energy in 2006.

He is currently a senior fellow at the World Wildlife Fund, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and vice chair of the board at American Rivers. Hayes has also served as chair of the board of the Environmental Law Institute.

In other Interior news, Salazar met with department employees on Thursday to talk about his plans for the agency. "We will ensure Interior Department decisions are based on sound science and the public interest and not special interests," he said.

Sen. Corker criticizes USCAP climate plan

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has circulated a letter critical of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (see here) [PDF]:

It appears their blueprint promotes many of the same problematic provisions that have plagued cap-and-trade bills in the past.

Duh! He writes:

I believe that we should auction a vast majority -- if not all -- of the allowances and send 100 percent of those revenues back to consumers

Well, I'd probably send 60 percent to 80 percent back, at least at first, rising eventually to 80 percent to 90 percent. No need to give money back to the Warren Buffets, whereas you do need some money, at least in the first decade, for heavily impacted industries, worker transition, cleantech R&D, and the like.

I am also opposed to the inclusion of international and domestic offsets as proposed by various cap-and-trade proponents and last year's legislation. Such provisions compromise the strength of the market system and call into question the integrity of emission reductions. Offsets are created when projects or activities reduce emissions from a source not regulated under a cap-and-trade program (e.g. capturing methane from a landfill). The use of offset projects is another big problem with the EU system that we should avoid. There are serious questions about the integrity of many of these projects, and it is difficult to determine whether these projects would have occurred anyway, regardless of the project developers' incentive to make money off their reductions. A workable cap-and-trade system must be simple and direct. International and domestic offsets with complicated diminish the effectiveness of such a program.

Can't argue with that! Nor is this new stuff from him (see here) -- so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he isn't saying this as a way to set up the bill for failure or at least for him to vote against the final bill, which will inevitably have some rip-offsets.

Greenwire printed that letter in its article on "Pelosi sees cap-and-trade floor debate this year" ($ub. req'd, reprinted below). I think it would be a mistake to have the House floor debate prematurely since we can almost certainly get a stronger bill next year -- but only if the Administration does the necessary foundation-building this year (see here -- Parts 2 and 3 will elaborate on this next week).

Pelosi does leave open the possibility of a floor vote at the end of the year, before Copenhagen, which may be the best compromise, since the House can probably pass a stronger bill than the Senate:

Barrasso reportedly abandons opposition to Jackson appointment

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) has consented to forward movement on the confirmation of Lisa Jackson, Obama's nominee for EPA administrator, a spokesperson for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee tells Grist. The Senate is now likely to confirm Jackson this evening.

"It's our understanding that she has cleared any objections and she should be able to be confirmed later today," said the spokesperson. "It should not be a further problem."

Barrasso had been holding up the process over concerns that White House energy and climate adviser Carol Browner might interfere with the EPA's work. Barrasso has now spoken with about Browner about her role in the new administration, according to the committee spokesperson, and apparently his concerns have been resolved.

UPDATE: TPM is reporting that it may be some other Senate Republican holding up the confirmation, not Barrasso or climate change skeptic James Inhofe (R-Okla.). We're keeping an eye on Senate action to see what transpires tonight.

House speaker now says she wants a climate bill passed by December

Backtracking on comments made earlier this month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) now says she intends to schedule a vote on a climate bill before December, when world leaders are slated to meet in Copenhagen to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto climate pact.

Speaking to Bay Area reporters on Wednesday, Pelosi said she intends to have a cap-and-trade bill passed before the U.N.-sponsored summit, according to a report in today's San Francisco Chronicle. The legislation, she said, would help bring in funds to support other green initiatives.

"I believe we have to because we see that as a source of revenue," she said. "Cap-and-trade is there for a reason. You cap and you trade so you can pay for some of these investments in energy independence and renewables."

The collective environmental movement nearly had a melt down a few weeks ago when Pelosi said that while she has the votes to pass a climate bill in the House, it might not happen in 2009.

"I'm not sure this year, because I don't know if we'll be ready," Pelosi said in a press conference on Jan. 6. "We won't go before we're ready."

Henry Waxman (D-Calif), whose Energy and Commerce Committee is likely to lead any House action on climate legislation, said last week that he intends to have a climate bill ready by Memorial Day.