Gristmill

Will a comprehensive climate and energy bill help or hinder global warming action?

It’s looking increasingly likely that Congress is going to move one unified climate and energy bill through both chambers this year, rather than breaking it out into several pieces. But while some are cheering this as a way to expedite the process, others on the Hill are skeptical of the chances of passing one giant […]

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

[Note: Since comments are turned off, if you have thoughts, email me at glipow AT gmail.com. ]

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.

Pickens: 'You don't want to turn it over to the greenies'

The billionaire oilman and Swift-boat-smear funder T. Boone Pickens is a hard man for anyone to like these days.

His traditional political allies -- rabid conservatives, fossil fuel companies -- could not possibly be more opposed to his current agenda of pushing clean energy, especially a massive ramp up of wind power (see here and here).

Yet he really doesn't try that hard to reach out to progressives who might be his allies, as indicated by the headline quote from his talk at the Mayflower Hotel ballroom in DC yesterday, reported in "The Beautiful Wind of T. Boone Pickens," by snarky Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. Still, his general lack of interest in a progressive agenda should be a surprise to no one (see here).

I do take exception with Milbank's brief foray into energy policy:

But while there are quibbles over the particulars, parts of the Pickens Plan are -- or should be -- uncontroversial: a new transmission grid to move renewable power, better energy efficiency, and using natural gas as a "bridge" fuel to power trucks and fleet vehicles until alternatives become more plentiful.

I don't see why using natural gas as a transportation fuel on the scale Pickens wants "should be uncontroversial."

In the interest of fairness and balance, a shout-out for what the WSJ is doing right

The other day, I had some not very complimentary things to say about the Wall Street Journal Eco:nomics conference. (Summary: no booze.) And earlier today I had some even less complimentary things to say about a WSJ editorial. (Summary: propagandistic lies.)

So I want to take this opportunity to point out something at WSJ that most decidedly doesn't suck: the WSJ Environmental Capital blog.

It's not written with the same, um, opinionated flair (hey, you wanna call it some thing else, get your own blog) as this blog, but I don't know of a blog going that is more comprehensive and information-rich on the subjects of energy and the environment. I've come to take it for granted, but really it's somewhat odd that a mainstream paper like WSJ -- especially with its rightward leaning editorial stance -- supports writers like Keith Johnson and Jeffrey Ball who really get into the details of green finance, technology, and policy, and do so with accuracy and understanding (rare enough on any blog!).

When you think about it, it would be much easier for WSJ, and probably get them more traffic, to do something gimmicky and vapid like National Review's Planet Gore. Instead they've created something that's a real value-add for policymakers and other opinion leaders in this space.

So kudos, WSJ! Now don't screw it up.

AEP wants rate increase to make up for revenue loss

Remember when Mike Morris, CEO of American Electric Power, said this?

[he] said "I'm not a decoupler. If my revenues go down, they go down."

The West Virginia arm of his utility is now asking for a series of rapid rate increases: 18.5 percent this year, 14.5 percent next year and 13.2 percent in 2011.

Why, pray tell?

In part, because:

The company had predicted it would sell $248.5 million in power to other electric utilities between July 2008 and this June, but those sales have almost disappeared. Revenue generated from those sales -- electricity unused by AEP customers -- keeps rates down.

So if AEP's revenues go down, they go down. But then they file a three-year, double-digit rate increase to make up for lost ground. "Not a decoupler" indeed.

Brace yourself

"The turnaround will probably come faster than people expect, and the supply won't be there."

-- Deloitte energy adviser Joseph Stanislaw, on what industry analysts expect to be a sharp rise in oil and gas prices

On-message items from the green jobs front

Every year, renewable energy campaigns seem to converge on a theme. Last year, it was energy independence. This year, the theme is -- you guessed it -- jobs.

By cosmic convergence, Tuesday featured three cool new clean-energy-jobs-related items:

Clean Edge released a report which projected that solar and wind industry employment will grow from 600,000 jobs in 2008 to 2.7 million by 2018 (if, of course, we get the enabling policies right).

SEREF released a mind-blowingly cool Google-earth/job estimator mashup. (More from Google.)

And we launched a campaign to highlight the very real job opportunities that solar offers by placing fictitious HELP WANTED ads in Florida, Texas, and Nevada. By bringing levity to this serious issue, we hoped to generate some press for our policy goals. So far, so good; here's the Palm Beach Post's take.

What is the most unsustainable piece of junk you own?

An unusually unsustainable device that I own (see below).

I'm hoping to expand on the Ponzi scheme discussion in my next Salon piece. So I'm gathering examples of unsustainability at every scale.

In asking what is the most unsustainable piece of crap junk you own, I wasn't really thinking private jet or Hummer, not that I think any of you own that uber-unsustainable stuff.

Nor was I thinking of an electric dryer, since most people (in this country) own that laborsaving device. But that does get us closer to the key question, though: How many of the 10 billion people on the planet post-2050 will be using large amounts of electricity for things that are easily done without electricity -- once we have moved beyond desperation and are actually in the midst of the climate catastrophe.

By junk I was thinking of something closer to a relatively superfluous device that symbolizes the Ponzi scheme we have created. What comes to mind at the moderate cost level is a leaf blower and even a Segway (sorry, Dean Kamen -- your genius is really needed urgently for sustainability, not for electrifying human walking, even if many people find some value in that). I don't own either of those, but I do own a treadmill and a 50-inch flat panel TV (but hey it is Energy Star), which are close to what I have in mind in this post.

And I'd also be interested in hearing about any of the truly pointless low-cost stuff you have, like an electric pencil sharpener. Indeed, what really got me thinking about all this yesterday was my use of a gadget (pictured above) whose pointlessness and unsustainability simply staggers the imagination:

Wall Street Journal editors make bone-headed mistake; get called on it; fail to correct

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has been an organ for intellectually dishonest, fanatically ideological douchebaggery for years and years. That they publish something stupid is scarcely worth noting. But recently WSJ editors made a mistake so egregious it crossed the line into malpractice -- and to boot, refused to correct the mistake, or even publish a letter that pointed it out.

In this column, on how cap-and-trade is going to kill ponies impoverish people in energy-intensive states, the WSJ ran this chart:

Wow, people in Wyoming emit 154 tons of CO2 a year! Around seven times the national average! They must fly in private jets and live in castles! They must gargle oil and fart methane! They must drive Hummers to get the mail! That's ... f*cking crazy.

Or, you know, just horribly wrong. You see, the WSJ is showing per-capita numbers based on states' energy production, not energy consumption. They produce lots of coal in Wyoming. That doesn't mean Wyomingans (Wyomingites?) are frantically burning it as fast as they can. They export it for chrissakes. It tells us nothing at all about what the citizens of Wyoming are going to pay in energy costs if cap-and-trade passes.

If you did a similar chart with per-capita energy consumption numbers (very tricky numbers to get, by the way), you'd see that the differences among states are not nearly so stark, and the alleged wealth redistribution from cap-and-trade not nearly so extreme. You'd be more accurate, but you'd lose your pretense for Real America vs. The Coasts faux-populism.

Anyway, Rich Sweeney pointed out this mistake on his blog. Then he talked to some folks at the WSJ. Then he and a colleague sent them a letter, gently pointing out the error.

The WSJ refused to run it.

I guess WSJ editors can live with a little deception in service of the fiction that liberal elitism -- rather than the corporate elitism to which they've devoted their newspaper for decades -- is the real threat to the nation's middle class.