Climate Politics

Boats float, bears don’t

Greenpeace: 27 years of getting arrested in the name of the planet, and still finding new ways to do it:

The next U.S. president will favor a carbon cap. What effect this has on the race is anyone’s guess.

Now that John McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee, the shape of the debate over climate change takes on different contours. Hillary and Obama are offering substantively similar climate plans, so there's no need to wait for the Democratic contest to be decided before we start gaming out a few scenarios.

1) Will climate change take on more or less prominence as an issue in the general election?

Argument for less: with everyone preaching from the same book, the media sees no hay to make. This suits the candidates fine. McCain knows the topic alienates conservatives. Hillbama knows their policy position makes them look liberal and McCain look independent/centrist. Under different circumstances, the Dem could have tried to portray the Republican as reactionary, but no longer. Everyone changes the subject to war and the economy.

Scientists write to Bush and Pelosi asking for biofuel-policy reform

In light of recent studies showing that biofuel production ain’t good for the environment, 10 prominent ecologists and biologists have written to President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking that the U.S. reform its biofuel-boosting policies. Seeing as the Bush administration has a track record of being very responsive to scientists’ entreaties, we have […]

Federal appeals court strikes down pro-industry Bush mercury rule

As Grist readers know, today a federal judge struck down the EPA's controversial mercury cap-and-trade system.

The decision (PDF) is just the latest in a series of successful court challenges to pro-industry Bush environmental rules.

This did not come as a shock. It has been commonly assumed in D.C. that the Bush administration's attempt to pretend that mercury is not toxic when it comes out of a power plant smokestack would be judged illegal.

Despite this decision, however, mercury cleanup will continue to languish, because the Bush crowd will continue foot dragging. Their gambit bought the industry an extra five years, at least.

The decision is a strong argument for Congress to step in and pass the power plant legislation introduced by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware.

Why John McCain isn’t the candidate to stop global warming

McCain's astonishing doubletalk on climate in the Florida GOP debate -- denying that a cap and trade system is a mandate -- made me start rethinking what a McCain presidency would mean for the fight to prevent catastrophic global warming. The more I researched McCain's views, the more I talked to others, the more I felt forced to change my previous view.

Salon has just published my long analysis, which concludes that while he would be vastly superior to Bush on climate ...

... a President McCain would not be the climate leader that America and the world requires. He is a conservative who happens to be on the only intellectually defensible side of the climate change debate. But he is still a conservative, and the vast majority of the solutions to global warming are progressive in nature -- they require strong government action, including major federal efforts to spur clean technology.

Of course, as I argue in my book, it is precisely because they know that the solutions to global warming are mostly progressive in nature that most conservatives are so close-minded on the subject. My basic argument is:

Cities run into roadblocks in attempts to reduce CO2

Announcing an ambitious plan to reduce a city’s greenhouse gases is the easy part; when it comes to putting goals into action, local officials tend to run up against significant roadblocks. To take just a few examples: The subprime mortgage crisis has left taxpayers across the country unable to fund efficiency-minded proposals. Across the country, […]

Researchers find corn ethanol, switchgrass could worsen global warming

Some very respected researchers today have lobbed a real bombshell into the energy public policy world: they have concluded that ethanol produced both by corn and switchgrass could worsen global warming.

In other words, Congress really blew it last year when it mandated a massive increase in biofuels (an action coated with green language but really an effort by both political parties to cater to farm states). This is also a slap at President Bush's effort to paint himself as something other than an oil man.

The new findings, led by separate teams from Princeton University and the University of Minnesota conclude that the land use-based greenhouse gas emissions would overwhelm possible emission reductions.

A second opportunity to make climate pricing fair

Climate policy offers an enormous opportunity not only to undo our fossil-fuel addiction and build a stable energy future, but also to reverse the natural unfairness of climate change itself.

I've said it before: energy prices are going up no matter what, with or without climate policy. But smart policy can turn rising costs into broadly shared benefits. It can shield working families, fund a shift to a clean future of new technologies, compact communities, and a trained, green-collar workforce.

Building economic fairness into climate policy is a no-brainer: there are several viable ways to make it happen. In my last post, I described a means to it called "Cap-and-Dividend," in which most public proceeds from auctioning carbon emissions permits finance a program of payments to each citizen. Another approach that shields working families from high energy prices (PDF) comes from Robert Greenstein, founder and chief of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. CBPP is the Washington, DC-based think tank that bird-dogs the federal budget on behalf of poor families. Greenstein wrote the plan with colleagues Sharon Parrott and Arloc Sherman.

In short, in this plan climate dividends go only to families with very low incomes, to buffer them from cost increases. It's Cap and Dividend, but only families who need it most get a dividend. Call it "Cap and Buffer." Greenstein suggests compensating the poorest fifth of families for energy price increases and also providing some assistance to those in the second fifth of the income ladder. These families, according to Greenstein, stand to pay between $750 and $950 extra each year for fuel and other goods, once climate policy boosts energy prices enough to reduce emissions by an initial 15 percent. (Without climate policy in place, the only dividends from rising prices are going to energy companies.)

The enGorsement, re-reconsidered

I wouldn’t normally post about the latest round of Gore endorsement speculation, since nobody ever has anything new to say about it, but this comes from Steve Clemons, a D.C. insider who knows of what he speaks. He says a source close to the Clinton campaign told him that a rumor is running rampant that […]

Romney out

Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race today, which all but insures that John McCain will be the Republican candidate. I wonder: how will Republicans and industry groups lobby against a carbon bill if their president supports it? That is a strategic dilemma I’m sure they have their finest minds working on as we […]