What stops us from acting more boldly on economic and environmental policy

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A lot of energy is expended on Grist showing that good environmental policy is good economic policy -- to show that green pays. But it is just as important to show the same thing from the other direction. Economic policy will only pay if includes strong environmental features. Let's look at the current responses to our economic crisis from that perspective. We'll start by comparing what we are doing as compared to what we should be doing, and then move on to explaining the difference.

Let's start with the economic stimulus package that was just passed. It is not nearly big enough. It was structured on fighting a smaller unemployment rate than we already face, let alone the rate at which unemployment will peak. Those radical leftists in the World Bank are noticing that the recession is worldwide, which would indicate a deeper recession than Obama's stimulus was intended to fight. Though you would not know it from the corporate media, quite a number of respected economists predicted from the beginning that this was too small a stimulus. Even intelligent conservatives are starting to say we need a second, bigger stimulus.

Where to put the money from a second stimulus? Keeping public transit going, which otherwise loses subsidy revenue during downturns, gives a double return in not only saving jobs and demand that would otherwise collapse, but also reducing oil use, greenhouse gas emissions, and traffic congestion. In general, making up for losses in state and local revenues reduces pro-cyclical job losses that otherwise make a recession worse.

But we have good reason to consider long-term investment in infrastructure as well. Much necessary infrastructure spending is "shovel-ready." For example, suppose we decide to put $450 billion into upgrading our freight rail system to move 85 percent of long-haul trucking miles to rail? We can invest immediately into the planning this will entail. And we can stockpile parts and materials we know this upgrade will require. And we can implement already proposed unfunded short-term projects that will be needed components of such an upgrade: new switch yards, new freight yards, and various other log-jam breaking proposals.

Why I'm joining 2,000 people for a global warming mass arrest on Monday

On Monday, I'm going to get arrested just two blocks from the U.S. Capitol building. I'll peacefully block the entrance to an energy plant that burns raw coal to partially power Congress. My motivation is global warming. My colleagues in civil disobedience will include the poet Wendell Berry, country western signer Kathy Mattea, and Yale University dean Gus Speth.

Up to 2,000 other people from across the country will risk arrest, too. We'll all be demanding strong federal action to phase out coal combustion and other fossil fuels nationwide that threaten our vulnerable climate.

This mass arrest might seem symbolic and radical to many Americans. Symbolic because it's purposefully organized amid the iconic images of Washington, D.C. And radical because, well, isn't getting locked up kind of out there? And isn't global warming kind of vague and distant?

But I live five subway stops from the U.S. Capitol. My home is right here. There's nothing symbolic -- for me -- about trying to keep the tidal Potomac River out of my living room and off the National Mall where my son takes school trips. There's nothing symbolic about fighting for homeowner's insurance in a region where Allstate and other insurers have already begun to pull out due to bigger Atlantic hurricanes. And what's vague about the local plant species like deadnettles and Bluebells that now bloom four to six weeks earlier in D.C.-area gardens thanks to dramatic warming.

A tool for the green-collar recovery

In “Retrofits for All,” I described an ingenious plan for extending retrofits to whole neighborhoods of energy-wasting buildings. Today, I...

Wherein I praise the mainstream media from the back of an airborne porcine vehicle

I was bashing on Newsweek the other day, and in general that magazine really is weak on climate/energy issues.

Lest you think I'm just a hater of old media, however, I should point out that Newsweek competitor Time has been doing fantastic stuff on green issues lately, mainly thanks to the tag team of Michael Grunwald and Bryan Walsh.

USDA chief made $100k from an Iowa power company

From an AP report:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's income included $300,000 from the law and lobbying firm Dorsey and Whitney in Des Moines, Iowa; $100,000 consulting for MidAmerican Energy; $63,000 from Iowa State University; and $55,000 from other sources, including honoraria, a fellowship, a director's fee and consulting. In addition, he and his wife have $500,000 to $1 million in farmland that yielded $15,000 to $50,000 in rent, plus $7,552 from a U.S. Agriculture Department Conservation Reserve Program.

I've mentioned before that Vilsack recently stepped down from a partner role at Dorsey & Whitney, a corporate law firm that has represented Cargill, ConAgra, and other agribiz giants.

Some folks want to make a big deal about Vilsack making $7,552 from the Conservation Reserve Program. Not me. I'd rather see him idle land under CRP than drench it with agrichemicals to grow industrial corn.

The $63,000 from Iowa State University must be a reference to his role at that institution's Biosafety Institute for Genetically Modified Agricultural Products, where until recently he sat on the advisory board with representatives of Monsanto, Dupont's Pioneer Hi-Bred, and the World Bank. But I already knew about that.

What gets me is the $100K in consulting for MidAmerican Energy. MidAmerican Energy Holdings describes itself like this:

Can Congress be trusted to get necessary GHG legislation right?

We need an economy-wide greenhouse gas bill that puts a price on GHG emissions and allows reallocation of capital in response. Congress increasingly appears unable to produce such a bill.

First came the fiasco of Lieberman-Warner, wherein it became quite apparent that the route to Congressional approval was paved with district-directed pork, stealing money out of CO2-reduction efforts and distributing it to any number of pet projects. Thankfully, that failed.

Then last week, Speaker Pelosi suggested that the great thing about cap-and-trade is that it gives Congress money to dole out to favored interests:

I believe we have to [implement cap and trade] because we see that as a source of revenue ...

Again, the idea that the purpose of a GHG bill is to reduce CO2 emissions is completely subsumed by salivation over the potential grab bag.

Now comes this, from E&E Daily ($ub. req'd), noting that given the choice between a California waiver and cap-and-trade, legislators from the rust belt prefer cap-and-trade. Why? Because it might give them a chance to throw some money back at their districts:

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), for example, pointed to the large new revenue stream often linked to a cap-and-trade system, saying that the money would help domestic automakers retool their plants to meet a tighter suite of emission standards.

"I think that ultimately this gets addressed in the energy bill to slash cap and trade," Stabenow said. "It's not enough just to talk about the regulations. If we want to have a domestic auto industry, we have to be provided support, particularly in the middle of this global credit crisis where we have to invest massive amounts of money and aren't able to get credit."

Is the purpose of a cap-and-trade bill really to provide bailout dollars to the auto industry?

Responding to Heritage's staggeringly confused 'rebuttal'

Part 1 presented a new study by power plant cost expert Craig Severance that puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at from 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour -- triple current U.S. electricity rates!

Those ideologically promiscuous folks at the Heritage Foundation have replied with "New Study on Staggering Cost of Nuclear Energy, Staggeringly Pessimistic." Craig's point by point response follows a few of my comments.

Heritage is a leader of the conservative movement stagnation. They have written "the only thing a green 'New Deal' will do is lead us down a Green Road to Serfdom," comparing such a policy to "collectivism in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany," and their Senior Policy Analyst in Energy Economics and Climate Change is quite confused about both of the subjects he analyzes.

The key paragraph in Heritage's new critique is:

Big is beautiful if it breaks our dead-dinosaur addiction

I've heard arguments lately for local photovoltaic solar power (PV) from rooftops, roadways, and parking lots as a primary source of electric energy, mostly accompanied by arguments against long distance high-voltage transmission lines (HVDC). I keep picturing a revised Treasure of the Sierra Madre with bandits telling Humphrey Bogart: "Transmission lines? We don't need no stinking transmission lines!"

I think the key to this argument is whether you are satisfied with slow incremental growth in renewable energy that gradually rises to providing 20 percent of electricity use, or if you want renewable electricity use to grow large enough to displace coal, natural gas for electricity, and even natural gas for heating and oil for transport (via ground source heat pumps and electrified transport).

Let's look at data from the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center for one [PDF] PV system for one day in Prescott Arizona.

click image to zoom

Marc Morano's secret list of climate deniers

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

Marc Morano, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)'s environmental aide, sits at the center of the right-wing global warming denier propaganda machine -- of fifty-two people. Conservative columnist Fred Barnes recently refused to tell TPM Muckraker who's informed him "the case for global warming" is falling apart, but all signs point to Marc Morano. Morano's "entire job," David Roberts explains, "is to aggregate every misleading factoid, every attack on climate science or scientists, every crank skeptical statement from anyone in the world and send it all out periodically in email blasts" to the right-wing echo chamber. The Wonk Room has acquired Morano's email list, and we can now reveal the pack of climate skeptics, conservative bloggers, and corporate hacks who feed the misinformation machine.

Promoted on the Drudge Report and Fox News, Morano's moronic misinformation enters mainstream discourse through columns by Barnes, George Will, Robert Samuelson, and others. Many in the Morano gang are funded by right-wing think tanks, though a few are committed activists, conspiracy theorists who believe their home-brew interpretations of climate data. Others are aging scientists with strong conservative beliefs, motivating them to challenge action on global warming not because they disbelieve its existence, but because they are ideologically opposed to regulation of pollution: