international politics

Bush administration ignoring environmental laws, building border wall anyway

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced yesterday that he will use authority Congress gave him to waive all environmental laws that will impede construction of 670 miles of border wall between the United States and Mexico.

The wall threatens the rare wildlife of the Southwest like ocelots, jaguars, jaguarundis, and others with extinction because it will prevent animals from reaching breeding populations in Mexico.

Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, released a statement saying,

Thanks to this action by the Bush administration, the border is in a sense more lawless now than when Americans first started moving west. Laws ensuring clean water and clean air for us and our children -- dismissed. Laws protecting wildlife, land, rivers, streams, and places of cultural significance -- just a bother to the Bush administration. Laws giving American citizens a voice in the process -- gone. Clearly this is out of control. It is this kind of absolute disregard for the well-being and concerns of border communities and the welfare of our wildlife and untamed borderlands that has forced Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club to take a stand and say "No more!"

The Bush administration is aiming to complete the wall before it leaves office, likely because all three presidential candidates have expressed some degree of opposition to it.

The only hopes for stopping the wall at this point are a Supreme Court case by the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife challenging the Bush administration's authority to waive environmental laws, a so-far anemic effort sponsored by Congressman Raul Grijalva to get Congress to change the law, or civil disobedience in the border region aimed at stopping or slowing the wall.

William Chandler’s recommendations on how we can cooperate to lower emissions

William Chandler, director of the Carnegie Energy and Climate Program, has borrowed my phrase for the title of his new study: "Breaking the Suicide Pact: U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change." It begins:

Together, China and the United States produce 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Their actions to curb or expand energy consumption will determine whether efforts to stop global climate change succeed or fail. If these two nations act to curb emissions, the rest of the world can more easily coalesce on a global plan. If either fails to act, the mitigation strategies adopted by the rest of the world will fall far short of averting disaster for large parts of the earth.

These two nations are now joined in what energy analyst Joe Romm has aptly called "a mutual suicide pact." American leaders point to emissions growth in China and demand that Chinese leaders take responsibility for climate change. Chinese leaders counter that American per capita greenhouse gas emissions are five times theirs and say, "You created this problem, you do something about it."

Notable quotable(s)

“I am convinced that if we work at it, we will be able to convince India and China that it is in their interest to be part of a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” — John McCain, March 2008 “One of the things I would do if I were President would be to […]

No American-made car meets China’s fuel standards

The Toronto Star reported an alarming factoid earlier this month:

No gasoline-powered car assembled in North America would meet China's current fuel-efficiency standard.

That's mainly because:

1. Currently, their standard is much higher than ours.
2. Their standard is a minimum-allowable efficiency standard rather than a "fleet-average" standard like ours.
3. Our lame car companies don't make their (relatively few) most efficient vehicles in this country.

As for our much-hyped new 35-mpg (average) standard -- in 2020, it will take us to where the Chinese are now (but not even to where Japan and Europe were six years ago). If we don't rescind it, that is.

So whether you believe in human-caused global warming or peak oil, America remains unprepared to capture the huge explosion in jobs this century for clean, fuel-efficient cars.

Oh, and by 2010, China will be the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing and solar photovoltaics manufacturing. No worries, though: our TV and movie sales overseas still kick butt. For now.

To survive, producers wanly import feedstock and export fuel

At this point, serious greens still promoting biofuels are in a tight corner. Global grain stocks are at all-time lows and prices at all-time highs. That means heavy incentives to clear new land to plant crops — in precious rainforest regions in South America and Southeast Asia that sustain indigenous peoples and store titanic amounts […]

As coal prices rise, U.S. coal exports boom

Environmentalists have helped scuttle more than 50 coal-fired power plants in the U.S. in the past year. That’s fantastic. But the movement to stop coal won’t help the climate unless it can globalize; for the climate, coal burned in China traps just as much warmth as coal burned in Texas. Nor will stopping more U.S. […]

Australia’s pivotal Garnaut climate report to back 100 percent permit auctions

The bar for national climate policy just inched up again. In April of last year Australia’s State and Territory Governments commissioned a comprehensive independent study from economics professor Ross Garnaut. The Garnaut Climate Change Review is meant to be Australia’s version of the U.K.’s influential Stern Review: it will examine the economic impacts of climate […]

The world is waiting for us to lead the way

This is the third in a series on why we should push for climate legislation this year. See also Part I and Part II.

Why push for a climate bill in 2008? I've already offered some reasons in my previous posts: the politics will be much the same in 2009 (Okay, David offered that one), we don't want to squander the current momentum, and in any case, we simply can't afford to wait.

But if those aren't reason enough, here's another: The world is waiting for us to act. To solve the global warming problem, China and other developing countries also must cap their emissions, and they won't do this until our own cap is in place.

From a New York Times report:

"China is not going to act in any sort of mandatory-control way until the United States does first," said Joseph Kruger, policy director for the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group in Washington.

Along with India and other large developing countries, China has long maintained that the established industrial powers need to act first because they built their wealth largely by burning fossil fuels and adding to the atmosphere's blanket of greenhouse gases.

If the U.S. -- the wealthiest country on Earth -- won't establish a cap, how can we expect developing countries to do it?

A quick survey of carbon taxes outside of Cascadia

British Columbia's bombshell announcement of a carbon tax shift last month made me want some context. Here's a rundown of other carbon taxes elsewhere in the world. As I noted, none of them is as consistent and comprehensive as B.C.'s, though some do have higher tax rates. In most cases, these levies came in tax shifts that reduced payroll taxes, business taxes, or other energy taxes. B.C.'s starts at $10.10 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent and rises in steps to $30.30 in 2012.

At least nine jurisdictions elsewhere in the world claim to have carbon taxes. (Good starting places for learning about them are the Carbon Tax Center and these dated but informative U.S. EPA sites.)