Climate Politics

Australia tries to distract from Kyoto

Looks like somebody’s been taking lessons from Bush. Get this: “The Kyoto model — top-down, prescriptive, legalistic and Euro-centric — simply won’t fly in a rising Asia-Pacific region,” Howard told an Asia Society Australasia dinner. Gag.

A guide to their positions

I keep meaning to mention this incredibly useful guide to the presidential candidates’ positions on global warming, hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. Why didn’t we think of that?

The U.S. outmaneuvered European leaders, yet again

All right, the more I read about this G8 climate agreement the more it becomes clear that the Bush administration completely outplayed the other developed countries on this. That, at least, they’re good at. Blair, Merkel, and Sarkozy all went into the summit staking their credibility on forcing an agreement: mandatory emissions cuts based on […]

Students keep up momentum with a pre-election Climate Summer

A scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, the first book for a general audience on climate change, and, most recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He serves on Grist’s board of directors. Thursday, 7 Jun 2007 LEBANON, New Hampshire If you’re worried […]

Progress … we think

I confess I haven’t had the intestinal fortitude to closely follow the negotiations at the G8, but it looks like they’ve come up with something being billed as a "breakthrough." This phrasing in the Washington Post story is curious: The goal is to agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, Merkel said, […]

Witness the verbal mangling at today’s press conference

The White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair showed off his legendary verbal skills at a G8 press briefing yesterday (PDF). Here are the two best bits.

Yoda Connaughton was enumerating the President's "domestic agenda on climate" when he said:

The President has set out his support at the state level for renewable power mandates, and we now have the United States of America, 80% [sic] of our power under state renewable power requirements.

Packed in a lot of doubletalk in one sentence, he has. The president opposes a federal renewable power mandate (even though he signed one into law in Texas). Second, 80 percent is just plain wrong. The 20 states with renewable mandates (plus D.C.) account for 42 percent of electricity sales. Can anyone can explain what he meant?

The second example is even more garbled:

Getting carbon cap and trade right for renewables

For the 110th Congress, this is not just a question for Saturday night.

One of the reasons why federal carbon cap and trade legislation is so slow in coming -- besides coal state mendacity -- is because it is damn complicated. Of the critical design choices, there is insufficient common understanding of implications, to say nothing of agreement.

We will only be successful in fighting global warming via a transition to renewable energy. Carbon capture and sequestration is not going to save us. In contrast to renewables, no one is doing it now and the technology is not game time. At best it's years out; at worst it's a trojan horse, locking us into a path of further dependence on coal.

The danger with carbon cap and trade is that the wrong design could seriously hurt -- hurt, not help -- renewable energy markets. Robert Harmon and Michelle Hirschhorn of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation have written an important paper (PDF) on the dangers of making the wrong choice. If carbon legislation is modeled on the current SO2 scheme, the markets for renewables will be severely undercut.

To their arguments I'd add that the best structure will allow people who make investments in renewables (distributed generation or wholesale) or energy efficiency to be able to monetize their carbon-free contribution. An output-based approach would not provide an obvious way for this to happen. Under a load-based cap and trade system, utilities would clearly be incentivized to encourage their customers to do both.

For the 110th Congress, it is more important to get it right than to get it right now.

Clean Water Is Highly Overrated

Bush administration limits reach of Clean Water Act If you assumed the federal Clean Water Act should apply to all bodies of water in the U.S., well, you have made an ass out of u and me. The Bush administration unveiled guidelines this week that say only bodies of water large enough to float a […]

Use this one to win every argument

Today’s Wicked Awesome Comeback comes from Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. Doesn’t matter whom he said it to, or why (OK, it was to Big Auto because they’re raising a stink about fuel efficiency) — it’s applicable in all kinds of situations: “I think your position is yesterday forever.”

Ultimatum to the rest of the world

In response to intense pressure from indigenous and environmental organizations opposed to drilling for oil in an Amazon rainforest, this May Ecuador asked the world for financial help, according to the Environmental News Service.

The oil fields under Yasuni National Park are estimated to contain 900 million to 1 billion barrels of oil, about one-quarter of Ecuador's total reserves. In about a year, international oil companies will be allowed to bid for the right to drill.

To avoid this fate, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is asking the international community for about $350 million a year.