Climate Politics

What went wrong on Lieberman-Warner?

Ron Brownstein — for my money the best political reporter out there — examines the implosion of the Lieberman-Warner bill in National Journal. Here’s his three-paragraph summary of what went wrong: The bill would have established enough boards and regulations that the chamber [of commerce] was able to distribute a devastating chart, modeled on those […]

Obama talks up energy plans in the Rust Belt

Barack Obama was in Wayne, Pa., on Saturday, where he highlighted energy costs and the need for new energy policy in a town hall meeting. “It isn’t an accident that gas prices are this high,” the presumptive Democratic nominee told the crowd. “It’s because Washington failed to deal with the challenge of alternative energy when […]

RPS distribution

Check out this map (click for a larger version). It shows states with renewable portfolio standards in orange. A swath of white goes from the southeast to the upper midwest. Tells you quite a bit about the political playing field on clean energy and how it maps to party. Taken from Senate EPW cmte. testimony […]

A look back at James Hansen’s seminal testimony on climate, part one

Worldwatch Institute is partnering with Grist to bring you this three-part series commemorating the 20-year anniversary of NASA scientist James Hansen’s groundbreaking testimony on global climate change next week. It is written by Worldwatch staff writer Ben Block. Here follows part one. Part two is here; part three is here.

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The speakers at a Washington, D.C., climate rally this past Earth Day, April 22, showcased the range of the modern environmental movement. They included an activist who engaged in a hunger strike, an outspoken preacher from the Hip Hop Caucus, and a folk duo that performed, "Unsustainable," a parody of Frank Sinatra's "Unforgettable."

Yet it was a comparatively dry, 20-minute scientific presentation that brought the crowd to its feet. The speaker, introduced as a "climate hero," was James Hansen, a long-time scientist with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Hansen is not a revolutionary by character. He is a mild-natured man who speaks with a soft, Midwestern tone. Raised in southwest Iowa, the fifth child of tenant farmers, Hansen would later commit his life to studying computerized climate models. With human-induced climate change now widely regarded as the greatest challenge of this generation, Hansen is considered a visionary pioneer.

Theories of climate change first surfaced more than a century ago. But it was Hansen who forever altered the debate on climate change 20 years ago this month.

Saudis agree with McCain: Cut gasoline taxes!

If anything should put a stake through John McCain's absurd gas tax holiday idea, it's that the Saudi King advocates it, too!

As I have previously noted, the only ones who benefit from the gas tax are the oil companies and the petroleum producers. Case in point, the biggest producer just said:

Next month, the Saudis will be pumping an extra half-a-million barrels of oil a day compared to last month, bringing total Saudi production to 9.7 million barrels a day, their highest ever level. But the world's biggest oil exporters are coupling the increase with an appeal to western Europe to cut fuel taxes to lower the price of petrol to consumers.

Why do they want the West to lower fuel taxes? They want to be able to raise their own prices and/or they want higher demand for their primary product.

Republicans expanding their drill base, at least to other Republicans

While Dick Cheney’s busy cheerleading for increased domestic drilling from the White House, House Republicans have been cooking up yet another bill to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling. The bill, which they’re calling the “American Energy Independence and Price Reduction Act,” would “direct the Secretary of the Interior to establish […]

CEI deniers praise Andy Revkin, diss Tiger Woods

I'd like to thank the Competitive Enterprise Institute for publishing such an unintentionally informative and amusing newsletter. Rarely has the anti-scientific nature of global warming denial been so well stated in a mere two sentences:

A scientist who says that the atmosphere is warming, and cites certain physical processes, is still a scientist. A scientist who argues that people must take certain acts to avoid disaster has become a priest.

In other words, "A doctor who diagnoses your diabetes using medical tests is still a doctor. A doctor who tells you to exercise, change your diet, monitor glucose levels, and/or take insulin to avoid acute complications has become a priest."

Council on Foreign Relations releases new report on climate change and U.S. policy

The Council on Foreign Relations released a new report this week on how the United States should approach foreign policy as it relates to climate change. “Confronting Climate Change: A Strategy for U.S. Foreign Policy,” as one might expect, indicates that the U.S. needs to come up with a mandatory emissions reduction plan if it […]

Boucher and Upton introduce bipartisan legislation to invest in carbon sequestration technology

House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and ranking minority member Fred Upton (R-Mich.) introduced industry-backed legislation on Wednesday to invest billions of dollars in carbon capture-and-sequestration (CCS) technology. The bill [PDF] is intended to “accelerate the development and early deployment of systems for the capture and storage of carbon dioxide emissions […]

Peter Barnes’ carbon policy proposal would not spur the economic changes we need

I should preface by saying that I am a fan of Peter Barnes. He's an emeritus board member of Redefining Progress. He's a smart and thoughtful guy. But I'm not a fan of his cap and dividend idea, mostly from an economic perspective.

First, the idea that a price on carbon would be transformative, and that we should do that first and then come in with other complementary policies later, is dangerously wrong. Transportation and building heating/electricity are the two largest contributors to carbon emissions, accounting for well over half the total. The price elasticity on transportation fuels is very low, as we've seen. With gas prices up $2 per gallon in the last three years, we're now finally seeing small reductions in driving, somewhere in the neighborhood of 4%. $2 per gallon of gas is roughly the equivalent of $200 per ton of carbon, a price impact that the failed Lieberman Warner bill wouldn't have brought until beyond 2040, if then.

Home energy use is not only terribly price inelastic (people light and heat their homes out of habit and necessity, not on the basis of price), so that we'd need very high prices to induce behavior changes, but is also characterized by a terrible market failure in information, where people have no idea what appliance costs them what in terms of electricity. As everyone should now be aware, rental units are subject to other serious energy market failures due to renter/owner split incentives and the liquidity constraints of many renters.