Climate Politics

Our command-and-control air-pollution regulations are working against our climate policy

With the climate policy discussion now settling into lines of cap & trade vs. carbon tax, and allocation vs. auction, it has implicitly moved beyond the top-down, command-and-control models favored by early plans (and in particular the multi-pollutant, "4P" bills).

This market focus is a good thing, on balance. What isn't good is that it's only being applied to greenhouse gas pollution. Our existing air pollution laws create disincentives to GHG reduction. Modernization of these (non-carbon) pollution laws may be the single most important thing the federal government can do to lower GHG emissions. As we head out of the harbor, it's time to haul up the anchor.

Relevant history

The Clean Air Act, coupled with New Source Review, has dramatically lowered SOx, NOx, and particulate emissions. It has also substantially increased GHG emissions. The reasons why are three-fold:

1. The rules were set on a so-called "input basis." Come under a certain parts-per-million of exhaust and you are OK. Exceed it and you're in violation.

This has the perverse effect of discouraging energy efficiency: if I lower absolute pollution (tons/yr) by 40% and cut fuel use by 50%, I have reduced the flow of fuel and combustion air by more than I've reduced pollution (e.g., the "millions" in the parts-per-million formulation). Thus my ppm actually increases and I can't get a permit anymore.

Obama Super Bowl ad

Far as I know, Obama was the only candidate to buy an ad during the Super Bowl today, one that ran in 24 states, to the tune of $250,000. It’s interesting to me that in perhaps the highest profile, highest stakes ad the Obama campaign has ever run, the focus is on two strongly progressive […]

A Gore-aphobia

The OMFG WILL GORE ENDORSE NOW?! stories are getting almost as tiresome as the OMFG WILL GORE RUN NOW?! stories got. One of the sillier aspects of the Silly Season, I guess. Noam Scheiber speculates why Gore might keep waiting, despite the many people begging him to enter the fray.

Dipdive

This has been making the rounds. Pretty damn effective, I’d say:

The state of play on green incentives in the stimulus bill

The following is a guest essay from Josh Dorner, deputy press secretary of the Sierra Club.

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Greens were heartbroken last year when a package of tax incentives for clean energy and renewables fell short in a 59-40 vote during December's energy bill battle royale in the Senate. Greens, renewables folks, and the Democratic leadership have been looking for a clear path forward ever since. As these particular incentives actually do stimulate the economy, attaching them to the economic stimulus package now being debated is attractive both on the merits (more on that below) and for political reasons.

First, some stimulus package is all but guaranteed to pass and be signed by the President (an increasingly rare outcome for legislation these days). As the Democrats have been pretty strict about offsetting new spending with cuts somewhere else, attaching green initiatives to this package sidesteps the issue of the finding the money to pay for them.

(For reasons unclear to anyone of sound mind, taking the money out of Big Oil's hide bedeviled the energy bill's clean energy tax package. Only in Washington could the idea of shifting tax breaks and subsidies away from Big Oil toward renewables -- even as ExxonMobil reports a record $41 billion profit -- not be a shoo-in.)

After the economic stimulus package negotiated between the White House and House leadership failed to include the energy incentives, the fight moved to the Senate. Sen. Maria Cantwell deserves major kudos for leading the charge. Though Senator Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, initially expressed skepticism about including the incentives in the stimulus package, Cantwell marshaled the support of nearly 40 other Senators -- including key Republicans.

In addition to the support she pulled together, key players like Bingaman, Domenici, and Grassley, the Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, also weighed in favorably. Support became so strong that instead of offering the incentives as an amendment, a bipartisan deal was struck to simply incorporate them into the package prior to Wednesday's markup. In the end, it was approved by the Finance Committee 14-7.

The $5.7 billion package includes quite a few goodies:

Clean-energy credits likely to be stripped from Senate economic stimulus bill

Renewable-energy incentives and green-job boosts are likely to be stripped out of the current Senate version of the much-hyped economic stimulus bill when it goes before the full chamber next week. But hey, if the Senate gives in to pressure to quickly pass a pared-down version, at least you’ll get your check sooner. Consumerism will […]

Tapper: still a hack; Clinton: still smart

Andy Revkin has a Dot Earth post today that reflects on Jake Tapper’s hackery and, in my humble opinion, lets Tapper off way too easily. Look at this: For his part, Mr. Tapper posted a series of updates through Thursday clarifying his intent, saying he found Mr. Clinton’s speech confusing and was posing questions more […]

Idiot protest or brilliant parody?

I got a strange PR release today that sent me to this. I’ve read it over pretty closely and I still can’t tell whether it’s intended to be parody. If it is parody, it’s quite clever — really nails the self-righteousness arms race underway in the eat-your-own faction of the green movement. If it is […]

Green groups sue over delay in polar-bear endangered-species decision

Environmental and native groups have sued — as they are wont to do — in an attempt to force the Interior Department to rethink its decision to sell oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, which is prime polar bear habitat. The lease sale by the department’s Minerals Management Service is scheduled to go […]

Kansas Republicans against global warming

A prominent Republican Kansas legislator comes out in support of Sebelius and against his ideological brethren on the subject of Kansas coal plants: When every Academy of Science in every developed, industrialized nation agrees, and when the overwhelming number of scientists throughout the world state man-made global warming is a reality, then I would ask […]