legislation

Short-term targets key to long-term stabilization

Ken Ward takes a worthwhile look at the goalposts for U.S. climate policy in his argument for making 350 parts per million the new bright line for success. We agree that we need to aim lower than 450 ppm -- the world is at roughly 380 ppm now, and we're already witnessing adverse climate impacts.

But we part ways when it comes to how we're going to get there. Ward suggests that EDF's support for the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act can't be reconciled with a stabilization target below 450 ppm, because the bill as written wouldn't drive sufficient emissions reductions. In fact, there's nothing incompatible about the two. Here's why:

Thoughts on the 20th anniversary of James Hansen’s historic Congressional testimony

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy -- of seeing the future. But she was also cursed to have no one believe her. For far too many years, Dr. James Hansen has been a modern-day Cassandra. Gifted with a scientific training that allowed him to see the forces at work that are warming the planet, for too many years he was also not believed by many who chose to ignore or deny the scientific reality of global warming.

Today, it is my pleasure to welcome Dr. James Hansen back to Capitol Hill on this 23rd of June 2008. It was twenty years ago today in 1988 that Dr. Hansen first came to Congress to deliver his message about global warming. He stated: "The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."

Dr. Hansen, who currently serves as the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and a professor of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at Columbia University, is a pioneer in modeling research and showed rising greenhouse gas levels would cause "temperature changes sufficiently large to have major impacts on people and other parts of the biosphere."

Dr. Hansen has been more than just a leader within the global warming research community. He has served as a spokesperson communicating the global warming science to the public. Dr. Hansen has stood up to pressure to change the tone of his scientific research for political reasons in order to ensure that the pubic receives the most accurate information possible about climate change.

Over the past twenty years, the body of evidence Dr. Hansen and his colleagues began has only continued to grow. It recently resulted in the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showing how rising concentrations of man made pollutants are changing the climate of our planet. The debate is over. Global warming is here. Dr. Hansen was right.

Will California’s climate change regulations mandate maximum emission reductions?

[This post is follow-up to a David Roberts post from Jan. '08: "What does California's climate bill mandate?"]

Sometime later this month, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) will release its draft "Scoping Plan" on implementation of the state's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32), which requires that statewide GHG emissions be reduced to or below 1990-level emissions by 2020.

AB 32 also requires that the regulations "achieve the maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective greenhouse gas emission reductions." Furthermore, the regulations must be designed "in a manner that is equitable, seeks to minimize costs and maximize the total benefits to California, and encourages early action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions".

The law authorizes a variety of regulatory measures, but CARB's Scoping Plan effort has focused primarily on cap-and-trade, following the precedent set by the U.S. Acid Rain program. Cap-and-trade can be effective at achieving a specific emission target at minimum cost -- but how does the requirement for maximum emission reductions fit in with this approach?

A UN Dispatch-Grist collaboration

This week marks the twentieth anniversary of NASA Scientist James Hansen's groundbreaking Congressional testimony on global warming, an event that put climate change squarely on the political agenda. In honor of the anniversary, UN Dispatch, On Day One, and Grist are partnering to discuss ideas the next president can adopt to take on climate change. We are joined by a panel of experts who will weigh in on ideas submitted to On Day One by everyday users concerned about the climate crisis.

Our first idea comes from On Day One user wise old owl, who suggests we decentralize energy production.

Decentralized energy production through use of renewables (roof-top solar as well as solar farms, together with geothermal, tidal, and wind) can be transferred across our national grid to areas where it is needed from areas with higher productivity and/or lower need, which would change on a dynamic basis. This would eliminate centralized generating facilities as "targets" for terrorists, and eliminate the "control mentality" of large, centralized for-profit utilities.

Grist writers Kate Sheppard and David Roberts; President of Climate Advisers Nigel Purvis; and Timothy B. Hurst of Red, Green and Blue and EcoPolitology, each respond below the fold.

NYT Magazine’s fawning piece on Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers

There's no doubt about it: Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers is the most adept figure in corporate America at making himself look better than he is.

He's proven it again in an extremely flattering profile in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

The piece refers to Rogers as "one of the electricity industry's most vocal environmentalists." Indeed, the piece reports that many "prominent environmentalists" are his "friends" and quotes in particular Eileen Claussen, head of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, saying, "It's fair to say that we wouldn't be where we are in Congress if it weren't for him," and that "he helped put carbon legislation on the map."

That legislation, the Lieberman-Warner bill, sputtered apart when the Senate took it up. (Even though we're told Barbara Boxer staged a post-failure victory celebration. Never underestimate the power of self delusion in Washington.) And one reason for its demise was the active opposition of Rogers, who mobilized numerous businesses to complain about the costs.

Solar proponents in the Empire State eagerly await new legislation

My colleague, Shaun Chapman, of our New York City office, offers this update on solar policy progress in the Empire State:

Bush invokes executive privilege to shield EPA administrator from subpoena

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was set to vote today to hold U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and Susan Dudley of the White House Office of Management and Budget in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents related to recent controversial decisions on smog and California’s request for an emissions waiver. […]

Nature publishes my climate analysis and solution

Here is perhaps my most succinct and citable explanation of why "Both national and global climate policy (PDF) must redirect its focus from setting a price on carbon to promoting the rapid deployment of clean technologies" (online here).

True, I didn't think I would appear in Nature again. But Nature online asked me for my critique of the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner Bill bill, and they were open to a big-picture commentary based on the latest climate science. They even ran with a modified version of my proposed wedges solution (see below, longer version here). The central conclusion of the paper is the major theme of my work:

The latest science suggests that national and global climate policy is seriously misdirected. We must aim at achieving average annual carbon dioxide emissions of less than 5 GtC [5 billion metric tons of carbon] this century or risk the catastrophe of reaching atmospheric concentrations of 1,000 p.p.m. A carbon price set by a cap-and-trade system is a useful component of a longer-term climate strategy. Implementing such a system, however, is secondary to adopting a national and global strategy to stop building new traditional coal-fired plants while starting to deploy existing and near-term low-carbon technologies as fast as is humanly possible.

What are the "series of aggressive strategies for technology deployment" we need?

... tax credits, loan guarantees or other incentives for low-carbon technology, demonstration projects of technologies such as carbon capture and storage, a standard for electricity generation involving renewable or low-carbon options, a low-carbon fuel standard, tougher standards for fuel economy and appliances, and utility regulations that create a profit for investments in efficiency. These are all features of the climate plan of the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama (PDF), but are not part of the announced climate strategy of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, whose plan starts by allowing unlimited offsets.

I am especially delighted that they created a figure for me of the wedges (click for larger version):

Draft copy of EPA rulemaking on fuel efficiency suggests higher standards are possible

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal teased that they’d gotten ahold of an advance draft of the EPA’s regulatory proposals for automobile fuel efficiency. According to the WSJ, EPA staffers found that cars and trucks could be even more fuel-efficient by 2020 than the 35 miles per gallon required by the latest update to […]