Climate Politics

Give away rights or sell them?

Joseph Romm in his post on Dingell's carbon tax proposal says:

Politically, you can't raise carbon prices high enough to raise gasoline prices since even $1 a gallon -- probably the minimum to significantly change fuel economy if Europe is any evidence -- would require a carbon charge of $400 per tonne of carbon -- which would be very harsh to coal, adding more than 10 cents per kilowatt-hour to coal electricity, and politically impossible (I'll post more on this later).

Also, the reason cap-and-trade has not worked well in Europe is that the Europeans didn't have a lot of experience with it and during their trial period they issued too many permits.

I don't know If Romm noticed, but paragraph two represents exactly the same weakness for caps as paragraph one represents for a carbon tax: it is politically difficult to get a high-enough tax or a low-enough cap through. Romm also notes that the Clinton administration could not get through even a weak carbon tax. True enough, but the Clinton administration also could not get through ratification of the Kyoto treaty -- which would have included a really easily met cap, much weaker than most (though not all) of the cap-and-trade proposals now before Congress.

Scurry Up and Wait

With August recess looming, Congress pushes energy, climate, water bills Know how, when you’re about to go on vacation, you suddenly realize you have a ton of work to do, so you scramble to finish it all, and you do kind of a half-assed job, but you promise yourself you’ll deal with the loose ends […]

An interview with Chris Dodd about his presidential platform on energy and the environment

This is part of a series of interviews with presidential candidates produced jointly by Grist and Outside. Update: Chris Dodd dropped out of the presidential race on Jan. 3, 2008. Chris Dodd. Photo: Michael Millhollin via flickr Chris Dodd hasn’t been out front on environmental issues during his 32 years in Congress, but he’s clearly […]

Sadly

E&E Daily (subs. req'd) confirms earlier press reports:

Markey [D-MA] said in a statement yesterday that he decided to pull his amendment after consulting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), even though he believed he had the votes to move the legislation. While Pelosi personally favored a CAFE standard of 35 miles per gallon, industry lobbyists said she did not whip votes on the legislation and it appeared Markey was not assured of the votes needed to pass the bill.

A look at Chris Dodd’s environmental platform and record

Update: Chris Dodd dropped out of the presidential race on Jan. 3, 2008. Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd, who has represented Connecticut in the U.S. Senate for 26 years, racked up a 93 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters in the last Congress and a 77 percent score for his whole career. He […]

The energy policy that kicks ass and gets too little support

As this story in the WaPo makes clear, one of the more controversial measures in the House energy bill is a national renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which would require that utilities produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Legislators in Southern states — where, it is conventionally thought, there is little […]

Oy

Witness as the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee discusses clean coal: how awesome is it? Should we give it a gazillion dollars, or alternatively, a fajillion? Tough questions! Note: 9:32 [Carl] Bauer [director, National Energy Technology Laboratory, Energy Department] Given current technology and coal consumption, the US has about 250 years of coal use. […]

Do your part

It's game time for renewable energy in the House. First up is the federal renewable portfolio standard. HR 969, known as the Udall-Platts Amendment, would require utilities nationwide to increase the amount of renewables in their portfolio to 20 percent by 2020. It will be voted on in the House on Friday. Take action here.

Are we a nation permanently at war?

In his interview with Grist, Dennis Kucinich urged us all to recognize the connection between global warming and global warring. In that spirit, I thought I’d pass along an astute observation from Glenn Greenwald, who on matters of media and war/terrorism is without peer. About this quote from Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), a conservative member […]

Pelosi’s plan to save the polar bears — and poor kids, too …

There has been a lot of discussion about the energy package that is set to pass the U.S. House this week. But the media so far has missed one of the most interesting and innovative proposals that will be voted on: the Green Jobs Act of 2007. This ground-breaking legislation will make $120 million a year available across the country to begin training workers (and would-be workers) for jobs in the clean-energy sector. When the bill becomes law, 35,000 people a year will benefit from cutting-edge, vocational education in fields that could literally save the Earth.