legislation

How awful does a bill have to get to lose your support?

Here is a question for cap-and-trade supporters. Nancy Pelosi has already said she wants to wait until 2010 (she later changed this to late 2009) to get a cap-and-trade bill through. Now maybe you can push one sooner. But to get one through soon (even by the revised late 2009 schedule) you are probably going to have to allow for substantial giveaways (grandfathering) rather than 100% (or anything like 100%) auctioning. You will probably have to give up any certainty claimed for a cap-and-trade by agreeing to a price ceiling (off-ramp/escape clause). You will probably have to allow counterfeit emissions reductions (offsets).

Right now it looks like this will be in any bill, but it will almost certainly be a condition of getting anything through in 2009. And even if you agree to all this, odds are you won't get anything through this year.

So let me ask you: what is your limit for this sort of thing? Is there any point at which you will say, "this is not acceptable, I'll oppose the current bill and try again later"?

[Update] Every cap-and-trade supporter I've run into who considers themselves "practical" about the politics says that 100% auctioning is out of the question, that no off-ramp (price ceiling) is out of the question, that no offsets are out of the question. The above assumes my experience represents the views of "players" on this issue in general. So let me modify this. Is there anyone who considers themselves knowledgeable about the practical politics, who supports cap-and-trade who disagrees with these premises?

Let's get a little something in exchange for our biogas

Here's something someone should run with. Via Green Inc. I learned that Sen. Ben Nelson just introduced a bill that would encourage development of the agricultural biogas industry with hopes of including it in the stimulus package. Biogas is a renewable form of natural gas derived from any methane source, like, say, manure. While burning biogas does create carbon emissions, it's more than offset by its effect in eliminating methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas (Marc from the Ethicurean explains how much of an offset in this comment).

In many ways, it's not a particularly high-tech approach and it's currently in common use in China and India - although unlike with the digesters in use in the developing world, the US biogas industry is attempting to significantly increase biogas content to almost pure methane. Because biogas can be produced and used on site as well as shipped via pipeline to power stations, it's theoretically possible for farms to become energy self-sufficient AND deal with excess manure. This isn't a magic bullet, of course, and in the future, farms are likely to use a lot more manure as fertilizer (remember Peak Phosphorus?). But, even in the post-CAFO world we all dream about, there will continue to be excess manure around. Indeed, this is exactly the sort of thing USDA chief Tom Vilsack means when he talks about developing "new technologies and expanded opportunities in biofuels and renewable energy."

President Obama should clear the way for state innovation on climate policy

The following is the second in a series of guest posts from the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive legal think tank that works on constitutional and environmental issues. It is written by online communications director Hannah McCrea and president Doug Kendall, who also help maintain CAC's blog, Warming Law. (Part I)

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In a 1932 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote: "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens chose, serve as a laboratory, and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

In the absence of federal action on climate change under the Bush administration, state and local governments have been taking advantage of this "happy incident" by passing measures that will reduce their contribution to global warming. Last September, ten northeastern states began auctioning allowances in the country's first mandatory regional cap-and-trade program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), while several western states began working with Canadian provinces to set up a similar program under the Western Climate Initiative.

Signaling that the nexus of leadership in U.S. climate policy lies currently at the state level, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hosted the Governors' Global Climate Summit in November, ostensibly to facilitate a high-level meeting between international and American leaders that bypassed the federal government. Unsurprisingly, California has led state efforts in advancing climate policy, and is currently in the process of adopting the largest and most comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction program in the country. These initiatives signal that Justice Brandeis's vision of states as "laboratories" of regulation is very much alive in the realm of climate policy.

Of course, state innovation has been most visible (and most contentious) when it comes to auto emissions standards, as seen with this week's blockbuster news that President Barack Obama is ordering the EPA to revisit the California waiver denial. As Grist readers may recall, in 2004 California formally adopted the "Pavley standards," an aggressive enhancement of auto emissions standards that would require a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for new vehicles by 2016. Normally, states aren't allowed to depart from federal auto emissions standards in this way, but under Section 209 of the Clean Air Act, California has special permission to set better-than-federal fuel economy standards, provided it obtains a waiver of preemption from the EPA. Once California gets a waiver, other states are allowed to adjust their own standards to match California's, creating a mechanism in which states gradually bring about a nation-wide reduction in auto emissions.

Why the rush to defend this not-so-embattled style of legislation?

Recently the green blogosphere has been engaged in an oddly vigorous defense of command and control style legislation. I'm not sure whether this trendlet grows out of environmentalists' unfortunate habit of ranking and re-ranking and arguing over the ranking of various solutions to climate change; or out of pique that odious people like Charles Krauthammer are pretending to be proponents of carbon pricing; or, as I suspect, out of something else entirely, but I have some good news for supporters of mandates: Both the public and public officials love command and control style legislation.

To be sure, the term "command and control" is pejorative, but no congressperson ever introduced the 2008 Command and Control Environmental Protection Act. Nevertheless, virtually every single piece of environmental legislation ever enacted takes the form of a mandate. From renewable portfolio standards to CAFE to wilderness protection to the quality of our air and water to species protection to waste management to an endless stream of subsidies and tax credits (good, bad, and ugly) -- they don't call it environmental regulation for nothing.

The new administration holds the incentives for a strong federal climate bill

The following is the first in a series of guest posts from the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive legal think tank that works on constitutional and environmental issues. It is written by online communications director Hannah McCrea and president Doug Kendall, who also help maintain CAC's blog, Warming Law.

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There can be little doubt that the U.S. needs a strong carbon-pricing system, such as a cap-and-trade program, to help combat global warming. Politicians have proposed a range of alternative policy measures that avoid carbon-pricing (e.g. traditional "command-and-control" regulations on emissions, renewable portfolio standards, massive investments in renewable energy infrastructure and technologies, etc.), but economists widely agree [PDF] that none of these approaches will, on their own, be swift or strong enough to reduce the risk of irreversible climate change. The better approach to mitigating this risk is to attach a price to carbon emissions -- one high enough to ensure that greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels are more expensive to consume, per unit, than are clean and renewable alternatives.

To this end, members of the 110th Congress, including then-Senator Barack Obama, focused on trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill. Last June, they pushed the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, an ultimately doomed effort that attracted harsh criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. As Grist readers will surely recall, progressives condemned the bill for being dangerously weak because it failed to meet the IPCC-established target of an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, while conservatives claimed the bill would ensure the U.S.'s economic ruin.

After the bill's death, leaders in Congress -- indeed Barack Obama himself -- promised a stronger follow-up to Lieberman-Warner. However, with the economic climate dramatically altered in the last six months, political support for such an ambitious program may be in doubt. As the severity of the recession came into greater focus in the weeks leading up to the November elections, candidates made a notable shift in their rhetoric on climate policy, subtly replacing the focus on cap-and-trade with one on clean energy investments and "green" recovery measures. Outside of Washington, state and local governments continued to demonstrate their lack of faith that federal climate action will be forthcoming, as evidenced by further development of regional cap-and-trade schemes, namely New England's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Western Climate Initiative, and the Midwestern Governors Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord. These initiatives are motivated by the widely-shared sentiment that even with hope of meaningful federal action on climate change in 2009, dramatic reductions in carbon emissions simply cannot wait a moment longer.

A $4.6 billion coal gift in stimulus package, record profits for FutureGen members

While Peabody Coal, one of the prime sponsors of the FutureGen boondoggle in Illinois, announced an eightfold increase in profits in their fourth quarter reports for 2008, the Senate Appropriations Committee just approved legislation for an additional $4.6 billion in handouts to the coal industry as part of the stimulus package, in the guise of "clean coal."

There's a new detail on this "clean coal" money: $2 billion are no longer slated for zero emissions plants, but "near-zero emissions" power plants -- so much for all of those TV ads about zero emissions.

What are near-zero emissions? Sorta like near-zero coal ash ponds and accidents, near-zero 10,000 black lung cases, near-zero workplace mining accidents, near-zero 1 million acres of strip mining and mountaintop removal, near-zero watershed contamination, and near-zero coal truck accidents?

This is on top of $2.8 billion the coal industry picked up in the last bailout.

In the meantime, check out the dream team sponsors of FutureGen, the much ballyhooed poster child of the "clean coal" proponents who somehow like us to forget that before coal will ever be burned with near-zero mercury and carbon dioxide emissions, coal first needs to be extracted, processed, transported, and burned with ash piles.

FutureGen Alliance Members include:

Senate stimulus plan looking even better for clean energy investments

Dan Weiss and Alexandra Kougentakis at the Center for American Progress take a look at the Senate's version of the stimulus plan and conclude that, on the whole, it's better in terms of clean energy investments and incentives than the House version.

While several not-so-green programs would get funding in the Senate plan -- including $50 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry and $4.6 billion for the coal industry -- green projects overall would get approximately $7 billion more in spending.

The Senate's American Investment and Recovery Plan (not to be confused with the House's "American Reinvestment and Recover Act") includes $78 billion in clean energy spending as part of their $365 billion recovery package. The tax package also has $31 billion in tax incentives for renewables and energy efficiency, compared to $20 billion in the House plan.

Grid improvement funds are higher in the Senate version -- $21 billion compared with the House's $19 billion. Same with funds for renewables -- $7.6 billion, to the House's $5.1 billion.

We mistakenly wrote yesterday that mass transit fares worse in the Senate version of the bill when compared with the House's $14.6 billion. But transit gets a better deal in the Senate overall, at $17 billion. Amtrak especially fares better -- $3.1 billion to the House's $1.1 billion.

Investments in building and appliance efficiency, meanwhile, did better in the House version -- $5 billion more than the Senate plan.

Of course, the Senate's version could still change when it moves to floor for debate next week, and any differences between the bills the two chambers pass would have to be worked out in a conference committee.

Rep. Mike Pence protests climate research funding in stimulus bill

"What is $400 million for climate change research going to do to put people back to work in Indiana?"

-- Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), speaking on the floor of the House against the stimulus package that he and every other Republican voted against

Oregon rep pens befuddling op-ed on climate legislation

Today's WTF moment sponsored by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who writes in the Oregonian that lawmakers should abandon cap-and-trade. He says:

Despite these obvious problems, federal and state lawmakers are poised to move forward with a cap-and-trade system. I'm working in Washington to oppose this proposal and to find an alternative. One option that needs further exploration is to establish a emissions cap and to direct polluters to either reduce emissions or to purchase certified offsets (reductions from other entities) to meet emission targets.

But given the devastating impact of past deregulation on U.S. energy and financial markets, I have serious concerns about using a "market-based approach" to solve serious problems. My colleagues in Congress, and Oregon legislators, would be wise to do their homework on a cap-and-trade system before moving forward with more deregulation.

So, instead of a cap-and-trade system he wants ... a cap, and emissions credits, that can be traded. Huh.

Even more confusing? DeFazio co-sponsored the Safe Climate Act last Congress, a cap-and-trade proposal from Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).