Climate Politics

Conventional wisdom declares all candidates equally green

The Wall Street Journal blogs from the ongoing ECO:nomics conference:

The conventional wisdom among the boys on the bus -- including us -- has been that there's essentially no difference among the three presidential contenders on climate-change policy.

Really? I know I live in a bubble, but ... really?

Since there are some rather obvious climate policy differences between the candidates, I'm taking this to mean one of several things:

1. Conventional wisdom relegates the apparent differences between the candidates to the level of rhetoric, not policy. McCain says nice things about nuclear; Obama hearts ethanol; Clinton wants utilities to behave. All of this is just, in the WSJ's words, so much "hot air."
2. Or maybe conventional wisdom holds that the policy differences are so hopelessly wonky as to be irrelevant. Broadly speaking, all three candidates want cap-and-trade, and that's what counts. Airy details around allowance allocations are of concern only to environmentalists and congresscritters.
3. Or maybe the conventional wisdom truly doesn't understand that the candidates differ in any meaningful way on climate policy.

None of these interpretations is particularly heartening, although at least there's a logic to No. 1 and 2. No. 3 is just depressing. In any case, bear in mind that the WSJ reporting on energy issues is generally quite good, so when these reporters casually toss off the opinion that the candidates are indistinguishable, you start to gain some insight into why this issue gets so little play.

(As an aside: I'm a fan of the recent trend in blogs by journalists for just this sort of thing. These sorts of offhand, loosely structured observations would rarely make it into a feature story, and they're damned interesting.)

Shifting military spending to fund green infrastructure

Last Saturday, I spoke at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference. I argued that diverting military spending to green infrastructure is not only good policy but good politics as well. This is a Google presentation version of the PowerPoint slide show I gave.

I gave a second short PowerPoint comparing emissions trading to rule-based regulation, also now a Google presentation.

Please note that, though web-based, Google presentations are not standard web pages. They need as much screen real estate as you can give -- usually including zooming your browser to full-screen mode.

Why this is the last election, and another look at McCain

This is the last U.S. election. Have we taken stock of the implications? There is no room for incremental thinking. The storm will fall on whomever we elect president (and isn't there a case for McCain?). Among the startling implications of breaching the 350 ppm limit is the likelihood that this is the last U.S. presidential election during which there remains a slim opportunity to take decisive global climate action.

All the ordinary rules and habits of elections and campaigning have been summarily and unexpectedly tossed out the window. Building party power, advancing political careers, and addressing climate incrementally are no longer plausible strategies. We must now concern ourselves with electing leaders of character who will rise to the challenge as the crisis begins to unfold and political systems are stressed.

Comparing campaign climate policies, in this context, is not the best measure of candidates. The differences between Clinton, McCain, and Obama on climate are minuscule compared to the gulf between the state of U.S. civic debate and the scale of response required to avert cataclysm. Furthermore, a simple head-to-head comparison of policy takes no account and gives no credit for the key indicators of political grit and integrity: context and history.

John McCain may espouse the weakest platform of the three, but he adopted his position early and at high potential political cost. Both Clinton, who logged more dinner time with Al Gore then almost anyone, and Obama, a N.Y. PIRG college intern who credits LCV with his surprise victory in his first Senate race, were positioned to be strong climate action advocates but did not do so.

President Bush interfered to weaken U.S. ozone standards

President Bush interfered at the last minute to weaken the recently announced U.S. ozone standards, according to EPA documents. On Wednesday, the EPA set both the “public health” standard (how much ozone is in one place at one time) and the “public welfare” standard (consideration of the long-term effect of ozone) at the same level. […]

Alaska senators introduce legislation to open Arctic Refuge to drilling

Photo: Madhav Pai The push to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is back on. Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens have introduced legislation that would allow drilling in the Refuge if oil should hit $125 a barrel for five straight days. (For those keeping track at home, oil prices Thursday hit a […]

The history of the ‘safety valve’ debate

The new publication from E&E News, ClimateWire, ($ub. req'd), has a long article on the "safety valve" debate and its history. I will reprint it in its entirety below because

1. The issue is important and not going away.
2. It is the most thorough piece I've seen.
3. I was interviewed at length for it.
4. One of my quotes they used is not something I would have said in a short interview.

First, some background: I have blogged repeatedly on why a safety valve is a bad idea. However, the reporter called me because he said that a number of people in the Clinton administration said I was a key player in the discussions leading up to Kyoto, in which the administration ultimately rejected a safety valve (or price ceiling on carbon emissions permits).

The No. 1 highlight of my time in the administration was at the October 6, 1997, "White House Conference on Climate Change," during my brief tenure as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy. At 12:40 p.m. [I kept the ticket and wrote the time and the quote on the back], the president said, "I'm convinced the people in my Energy Department labs are absolutely right." He was talking about the 5-Lab study that I oversaw, which found that the United States could return to 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 without raising the nation's overall energy bill -- if we had an aggressive technology deployment effort.

Rather than me giving a solipsistic explanation of what happened, you can read an account by Art Rosenfeld (the first article, his autobiography), now California energy commissioner, then science adviser to the assistant secretary. Or not.

I was certainly proud of my role in the administration. Economic agencies like the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisers rarely lose policy debates. But they did this time. That said, I was hardly the main reason they lost.

In fact, as I recall, President Clinton explained at the Georgetown conference that the main reason he didn't believe his economic agencies' gloomy predictions for the economic impact of Kyoto was this: They had made similarly gloomy predictions about the impact of his balanced budget bill, which, instead of causing an economic slowdown as predicted, created millions of jobs.

That said, the subsequent incident described in the ClimateWire article is the No. 2 highlight of my time in the administration, although I foolishly didn't keep the piece of paper. Anyway, here is the article (for ease of reading, I won't bother indenting it):

E.U. likely to cut subsidies for farmers

With crop prices through the roof and scientific concerns being raised about the greenness of biofuels, various European countries have cut back tax breaks and subsidies for farmers — and now the European Union as a whole is planning to follow suit.

A quick history of N.Y.’s incoming governor David Paterson and his environmental record

It's official. Spitzer's splitting because of his loose zipper. Lt. Gov. David Paterson has been given an unexpected promotion. Now that we know what is going to happen with the personnel shift, people are scrambling to gauge how this new governor will deal with ongoing issues in the Empire State, a state that is third largest in both population and economy.

I was born and raised in New York state, and pretty much all of my family still lives there -- so I have been particularly riveted by all this, running up and down the Grist office like a gossiping hen. But now my interest is focused on Paterson, the accidental history-maker (first African-American governor in state history, first legally blind governor in U.S. history -- New Yorkers know how to do it big), and his environmental record. After a quick LexisNexis search, I found some hits that I would like to share. (Sorry, the Daily News does not have links for the articles I reference.)

Spitzer’s successor may continue doing good for green

Snark aside, the ascension of the former Lt. Gov. David Paterson could very well mean good things for environmental progress. He recently chaired the state's Renewable Energy Task Force, which recently recommended an increase in the state's Renewable Portfolio Standard. As he comes in without a direct voter mandate and has to deal with a fairly acrimonious legislative environment, what better way to establish a popular mandate than adopt something super popular -- say, solar energy, which polls in the 90th percentile and makes a lot of jobs at the same time -- as a signature issue?

And if you want to play out this fantasy strategy further, the new Guv (who started, what, a few hours ago?) has to start thinking about getting reelected. And his potential challenger has already laid out a fairly ambitious solar agenda. So, in order to undercut his opponent's strength, Paterson really has no choice but to double down and announce a world-class solar program for the state. It's pretty much his only chance to be successful.

Lemonade!

A quick survey of carbon taxes outside of Cascadia

British Columbia's bombshell announcement of a carbon tax shift last month made me want some context. Here's a rundown of other carbon taxes elsewhere in the world. As I noted, none of them is as consistent and comprehensive as B.C.'s, though some do have higher tax rates. In most cases, these levies came in tax shifts that reduced payroll taxes, business taxes, or other energy taxes. B.C.'s starts at $10.10 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent and rises in steps to $30.30 in 2012.

At least nine jurisdictions elsewhere in the world claim to have carbon taxes. (Good starting places for learning about them are the Carbon Tax Center and these dated but informative U.S. EPA sites.)