legislation

Gourmet magazine points the way toward a green and smart farm policy

In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, there’s a detailed article about the farm-subsidy mess. It can be summarized as follows: 1) the government-engineered ethanol boom has driven up farm-commodity prices; 2) farm incomes are sharply up; yet 3) the government still makes subsidy payments in the billions per year; and thus 4) it’s time to cut […]

National Hanging Out Day on April 19

Here's a great way to mark Earth Day next month. Each year, the grassroots group Project Laundry List promotes the very picturesque observance of National Hanging Out Day, both to raise awareness about the enormous energy benefits of air-drying laundry and also to draw attention to the fact that, amazingly, this practice is severely restricted in many places around the U.S., especially green ol' California, where 35,000 homeowners' associations have banned the practice.

But electric dryers are inefficient and expensive to run, so the "right to dry" is becoming a new rallying cry around the land. PLL is pushing legislation in a number of states, including its home state of New Hampshire, where the measure recently failed.

So on April 19, consider a colorful clothesline display, plus info from PLL's site to enlighten and amuse. A lot hangs in the balance, you might say.

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.

For fossil fuel fans, bleak is the new black

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is on a barnstorming tour, holding a series of innocuously-named "State Climate Dialogues." While the promotional materials sound forward-looking -- conservation, clean energy, efficient technology -- make no mistake about the purpose of the events. The national chamber is trying to derail the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act or any other legislation that puts a price on greenhouse-gas emissions.

How's the tour being received so far? Not so well:

Claims of dramatic job losses and rising prices for consumers were quickly dismissed by environmentalists, Gov. Brian Schweitzer's office, Montana economists, and others. Those forecasts fail to account for new technology and emerging economies that will reduce carbon emissions and keep Montana's economy humming.

"It's fake and it's not realistic," Eric Stern, senior counselor to Gov. Brian Schweitzer, said of the industry forecast. "There is a clean-energy future, and Montana sits at the center of that."

...

In the audience, former Billings Mayor Chuck Tooley, who began offering public presentations on climate change and the need for action two years ago, said he was taken aback.

"He's from upside-down land," Tooley said of ["Frontiers of Freedom" President George] Landrith. "I wasn't sure if he was serious or not."

As oil prices top $109 a barrel, it's quite an odd time to make the case that climate action will destroy our economy:

Weak brew in Maryland

Maryland climate bill passes state Senate after being severely weakened: The Global Warming Solutions Act would require a 25 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from Maryland businesses by 2020. But under the amendment approved Thursday, the state’s environmental agency would have to get the General Assembly’s approval each time it issued rules to cut […]

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?

Bush administration quietly acknowledges climate plan is doable

Hey, did you notice that new analysis the Environmental Protection Agency just put out? The one on the economic impacts of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act? No? None of this ringing a bell?

That's just the way the EPA wants it. Like it was putting a scandal-ridden aide out to pasture, the administration quietly released the report on Friday afternoon and has tried to bury the important findings.

But while the release may have been stealthy and the presentation was marked by the White House's typical efforts to make everything look bleak, the results speak loudly, showing we can both tackle global warming and grow America's economy.

Don’t hold your breath on Lieberman-Warner passing in 2008

I can't imagine anyone believing we would see 60 Senate votes this year for an unwatered-down climate bill.

The center-right folk want big compromises, like a poison-pill safety valve (see below). But Sen. Boxer (D-Calif.) has little motivation to gut her legislation, since next year will probably bring more Senate Democrats and definitely bring a president who wants to take action, rather than one who has done everything in his power to block action and destroy the climate.

E&E News has a good article on this titled, "Lieberman-Warner floor strategy bothers some Senate swing votes" ($ub. req'd):

The history of the ‘safety valve’ debate

The new publication from E&E News, ClimateWire, ($ub. req'd), has a long article on the "safety valve" debate and its history. I will reprint it in its entirety below because

1. The issue is important and not going away.
2. It is the most thorough piece I've seen.
3. I was interviewed at length for it.
4. One of my quotes they used is not something I would have said in a short interview.

First, some background: I have blogged repeatedly on why a safety valve is a bad idea. However, the reporter called me because he said that a number of people in the Clinton administration said I was a key player in the discussions leading up to Kyoto, in which the administration ultimately rejected a safety valve (or price ceiling on carbon emissions permits).

The No. 1 highlight of my time in the administration was at the October 6, 1997, "White House Conference on Climate Change," during my brief tenure as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy. At 12:40 p.m. [I kept the ticket and wrote the time and the quote on the back], the president said, "I'm convinced the people in my Energy Department labs are absolutely right." He was talking about the 5-Lab study that I oversaw, which found that the United States could return to 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 without raising the nation's overall energy bill -- if we had an aggressive technology deployment effort.

Rather than me giving a solipsistic explanation of what happened, you can read an account by Art Rosenfeld (the first article, his autobiography), now California energy commissioner, then science adviser to the assistant secretary. Or not.

I was certainly proud of my role in the administration. Economic agencies like the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisers rarely lose policy debates. But they did this time. That said, I was hardly the main reason they lost.

In fact, as I recall, President Clinton explained at the Georgetown conference that the main reason he didn't believe his economic agencies' gloomy predictions for the economic impact of Kyoto was this: They had made similarly gloomy predictions about the impact of his balanced budget bill, which, instead of causing an economic slowdown as predicted, created millions of jobs.

That said, the subsequent incident described in the ClimateWire article is the No. 2 highlight of my time in the administration, although I foolishly didn't keep the piece of paper. Anyway, here is the article (for ease of reading, I won't bother indenting it):