The Wonk Room

In Reversal, Boxer Sharply Curbs Clean Air Act Regulation Of Greenhouse Gases »

In a major shift, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has changed the Clean Energy Jobs Act to significantly restrict the use of existing Clean Air Act provisions to regulate greenhouse gases. Unlike the climate bill passed by the House in June, the initial version of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, released by lead sponsor Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Boxer last month, did not strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s existing authority. The new language excludes global warming pollution from several sections of the Clean Air Act, limiting its regulation to operating permits for stationary sources emitting over “25,000 tons per year of any greenhouse gas”:

Notwithstanding any provision of this title or title III, no stationary source shall be required to apply for, or operate pursuant to, a permit under this title solely because the stationary source, including an agricultural source, emits less than 25,000 tons per year of any greenhouse gas or combination of greenhouse gases that are regulated solely because of the effect of those gases on climate change.

The 25,000 ton standard reflects the EPA’s plan for starting global warming regulation under a “tailoring rule” limited to the few thousand stationary sources of more than that amount of carbon dioxide a year — in large part coal-fired power plants. However, Boxer’s text is poorly written, as many greenhouse gases are thousands of times more powerful global warming pollutants than carbon dioxide.

The new text — like that of the House bill — completely forbids the regulation of greenhouse gases under the criteria pollutant, hazardous air pollutant, and international air pollution sections of the Clean Air Act.

Although several progressive and environmental organizations have made the preservation of existing Clean Air Act authority in the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act a key demand, Democratic members of the Committee on Environment and Public Works — which is now beginning to mark up the legislation — are split on this issue. Committee members Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are signatories, with Chris Dodd (D-CT), of a dear colleague letter in favor of allowing greenhouse gas regulation as a pollutant circulated by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). However, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) had questioned the provision, and influential member Max Baucus (D-MT), the Finance Committee chair, strongly opposes EPA regulation.

Organizations that have called on the Senate to “save the Clean Air Act” include Friends of the Earth, 1Sky, and MoveOn, supported by youth and other grassroots activists.

Other changes to the original version of the legislation reflect industry-friendly demands from Democrats on the committee. They include: increasing free allowances to major oil refineries, putting the Secretary of Agriculture in charge of the agriculture offset program, and making owners of abandoned mountaintop removal sites (”private or public abandoned mine land”) eligible for “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Incentives.”

The chairman’s mark also adds some provisions which strengthen the bill: Rep. Doris Matsui’s (D-CA) tree-planting program language, incentives for rapid renewable energy deployment, and a program to reduce black carbon emissions from diesel.

Text in chairman’s mark of Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act restricting Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gases: More »« Less

FLASHBACK: In Bush Era, Inhofe Decried ‘Chilling Effect’ Of Probing White House ‘Regardless Of Administration’ »

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who attacked investigations into the years of interference on global warming regulation by the Bush White House, is now calling for probes into Obama’s “Presidential czars” who are taking action. Yesterday, Inhofe, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) sent a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson “requesting specific information about White House Coordinator of Climate and Energy Policy Carol Browner, and how her office has exercised authority over the Environmental Protection Agency.”

This champion of “transparency,” however, attacked an investigation into the White House’s interference with the EPA last year, saying that “regardless of Administration, the President acting through the entire executive branch is fully entitled to express his policy judgments to the EPA Administrator”:

Instead we are here to politicize the internal deliberative process of the Administration under the guise of an update on the science of global warming hearing. While I welcome the opportunity to discuss the latest science on global warming, doing it in this heavily political setting with a predetermined outcome focused on internal deliberations of the Executive is not the right venue for such discussion. It is my view that regardless of Administration, the President acting through the entire executive branch is fully entitled to express his policy judgments to the EPA Administrator, and to expect his subordinate to carry out the judgment of what the law requires and permits. It can be argued that the “unitary Executive concept” promotes more effective rulemaking by bringing a broader perspective to bear on important regulatory decisions. . . .

Therefore, I consider this debate over censorship within the Administration to be a nonissue. All administrations edit testimony and all documents go through interagency review before any final agency action. I cannot support any investigations that could have a chilling effect within the deliberative process of the Administration, and cause future career and political employees from refraining from an open and honest dialogue.

By some strange miracle, Inhofe has had a complete change of heart on the inviolability of the “unitary executive” during the Obama presidency. In yesterday’s letter, Inhofe requests “all correspondence and records” from “all meetings, discussions and conversations between EPA and Carol Browner,” which “includes but is not limited to the following: letters and other written communications, electronic communications, phone records, meeting notes, documents prepared to summarize meetings and agendas, meeting dates, including attendees of listed meetings, and transcripts and notes from stakeholder briefings.”

In June, Inhofe even supported a criminal investigation into whether the EPA was “suppressing science.” Inhofe’s newfound love for transparency in the executive branch stands in utter contradiction to his professed outrage last year: More »« Less

GE’s Right-Wing Media Hosts Jim Inhofe: CO2 Is Not A ‘Real Pollutant’ »

Appearing on General Electric’s conservative-skewing business network, CBNC, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) argued that carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, is not a “real pollutant.” In an interview with right-wing economist Larry Kudlow on Thursday, Inhofe repeated lies about the cost of climate legislation. Kudlow, praising Inhofe for telling Americans about this “very scary story,” attacked the prospect of global warming regulation as a “backdoor energy tax” that “can drive stocks into the ground.” Inhofe claimed that President Obama wants to “intimidate Congress” into passing “$300 to $400 billion a year” in taxes, so that the American people will blame Congress instead of him:

The reason why I don’t think they’ll try to do that through regulation is because certainly this president, President Obama knows that once the American people find out that they’re going to pay about $2,000 a year in taxes for something that doesn’t do anything, there’s going to be an outrage. And they want to be able to say, “Oh, no, that was Congress that did it.” My feeling is they’re using this for intimidation purposes and they’re going to try to intimidate Congress to do this.

Watch it:

CNBC’s promotion of right-wing fantasies originating from polluter-funded think tanks and conservative bloggers is nothing new. Energy and media multinational General Electric is often portrayed as a climate-friendly corporation which influences American politics to the left, primarily because of the presence of Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s afternoon programming. On Fox News, Glenn Beck rants that GE is going to get “all kinds of contracts from the government on green energy” because it is “in bed with Obama.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Steve Milloy claims the new Kerry-Boxer clean-energy jobs act is larded with “payoffs to GE.” Bill O’Reilly claims GE “is also pushing for the proposed cap-and-trade program” and “using its power and the airwaves to influence politics” so that it can “reap billions of dollars if the Feds OK the carbon deal.”

Not only does GE attack climate action through its CNBC network, it also supports several national lobbying campaigns against clean-energy legislation, through its membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (GE Energy), the American Petroleum Institute (GE Oil & Gas), and the National Association of Manufacturers (GE Enterprise Solutions). Unlike GE, companies such as Duke Energy have abandoned NAM and ACCCE for their retrograde position on climate change.

Transcript: More »« Less

EPA Will Begin Regulating Industrial Global Warming Pollution In March, 2010

Appearing at a climate summit in Los Angeles today, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson will announce the administration’s plan to regulate industrial global warming pollution, with or without the support of Congress. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed global warming standards for motor vehicles, applauded by the auto industry. Under the rules of the Clean Air Act, when these regulations go into effect in March 2010, all major greenhouse gas polluters — from coal-fired power plants and oil refiners to methane-emitting landfills — are automatically subject to regulation:

Under EPA’s current interpretation of PSD [Prevention of Significant Deterioration] and title V applicability requirements, promulgation of this motor vehicle rule will trigger the applicability of PSD and title V requirements for stationary sources that emit GHGs.

Today’s proposed rule — which allows public comment until December — technically is a “tailoring rule” to limit regulation of global warming pollution to emitters of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, instead of the automatic statutory amount of 250 tons. This 250-ton standard would cover about four million businesses and homes — the “glorious mess” President Bush used as an excuse for his inaction. The EPA plans to raise the pollution limit to 25,000 tons, so that only 14,000 industrial pollution sources nationwide would be covered by the regulations, 11,000 of which are currently covered by the Clean Air Act permitting requirements already. Each stationary source covered would be required to apply for a title V operating permit, and all new sources would require a new source review permit.

Today’s announcement by the EPA comes hours after the introduction of legislation to limit global warming pollution by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) this morning, two-and-a-half years after the U.S. Supreme Court mandated action on global warming pollution, and 17 years after the United States ratified the Rio de Janeiro climate treaty, pledging to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

Lisa Murkowski’s Bid To Become A Climate Outlaw

Our guest blogger is Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch.

Why is Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) behaving like an outlaw? It’s jarring to learn that Sen. Murkowski wants to take away U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries, coal-burning power plants and other smokestack industries. As reported in Environment and Energy Daily, Murkowski has filed a proposed amendment to spending legislation for EPA that would prohibit the agency from regulating greenhouse pollutants except those from cars or other “mobile” sources:

“Senator Murkowski is concerned about the economic consequences of EPA command-and-control regulation of emissions,” said spokesman Robert Dillon. The senator plans to file the amendment, Dillon said, adding that he did not know whether a decision has been made to press for a vote.

Murkowski’s amendment would thwart the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that said EPA does have authority under the Clean Air Act to deal with climate pollution, as long as the agency determines that it is a threat to health and/or the environment. EPA is moving ahead with that determination. Because the judicial branch has spoken so definitively, EPA must follow the law. By trying to block the agency through such a sneaky, back-door approach, Murkowski is bidding to become a climate outlaw.

The weird part here is that Murkowski herself has warned about the impact of global warming on Alaska — where, as Politico put it earlier this year, “the Alaskan tundra thaws and fishing villages disappear into the ocean.” USA Today once called Alaska the “poster state” for climate concerns.

And no wonder: Alaska’s climate has warmed about 4°F since the 1950’s. That has prompted more rain, the melting of two major glaciers and permafrost melting which has caused erosion, landslides and damaged infrastructure. Some coastal towns could be overwhelmed by flooding. Carbon-caused ocean acidification threatens fish populations.

Grotesque evidence of the problem was recently reported as scientists determined the Arctic sea ice had reached the third lowest-level ever recorded: up to 200 walruses, which appear to be mostly new calves and yearlings, were reported dead near Icy Cape on the north coast of Alaska.

We can’t wait to hear Murkowski’s argument should she proceed with this ill-considered idea. Is she going to claim that this is something better handled by Congress? If so, why has she denounced the comprehensive climate legislation approved by the House? We suspect Murkowski is responding to the big campaign contributions she has received from the oil and electric power industries, both of which oppose EPA action. One major contributor is ExxonMobil, which continues to operate in Alaska despite its notoriety over the Exxon Valdez spill.

Several hours after Clean Air Watch alerted reporters by email about the Murkowski plan, a spokesman for Murkowski argued she “is not trying to subvert the process”:

The senator has no interest in trampling on that Supreme Court decision as it relates to mobile sources.

Exactly our point: she does want to trample on the Supreme Court decision as it relates to stationary sources. Murkowski has shown no interest in being constructive on the climate debate, so her defense of waiting for congressional action is obviously a fraud designed only to kill the Clean Air Act. Which is exactly what the big oil companies and her other financial supporters want. Her plan to handcuff the EPA is nothing but duplicitous special-interest pandering that should be rejected out of hand.

‘Monkey Trial’ Petition Tells EPA To ‘Eliminate The Taint’ Or ‘Withdraw The Endangerment Proposal Entirely’

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Petition for EPA to Conduct Its Endangerment Finding Proceeding on the Record, August 25, 2009 (download).

Calling for the “Scopes trial of the 21st century,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has delivered a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a public hearing on the EPA’s proposed global warming endangerment finding. The petition, acquired by the Wonk Room, claims that scientific research demonstrates global warming has stopped, the oceans aren’t acidifying or warming, sea level isn’t rising, extreme weather events aren’t increasing, tropical diseases aren’t spreading, wildfires aren’t increasing — but even if the planet were getting warmer, then U.S. citizens will be healthier, air pollution will decrease, and U.S. agriculture will benefit. The petition, authored by corporate legal titan Kirkland & Ellis LLP, attacks the “insupportable claims about the impacts of climate change on public health and welfare,” and goes on to argue that a show trial must be held to “eliminate the taint“:

Only such a neutral, record-based and science-based process can hope to eliminate the taint that has now infected the proposed endangerment finding process.

The Chamber concludes that if there is not a public proceeding, the EPA must “withdraw the endangerment proposal entirely”:

The current state of the EPA docket presents the Agency with only two choices. One is to grant the Chamber’s petition, and convert this proceeding to one based solely on the record, so that questions of scientific uncertainty can be narrowed, questions of conflicting scientific views can be resolved, and certain scientifically-indefensible assertions can be put to rest, all with transparency and scientific integrity. The other option is for EPA to withdraw the endangerment proposal entirely.

The Chamber argues that “none of the claims that climate change will cause extreme weather events that could injure the population of the United States appear to have any support in peer-reviewed studies that examine issues of causation” and that “there is no scientific basis to link allergic disorders in any significant way to climate change.”

The Chamber’s petition relies on the work of oil-fueled ideologues, little of it published in peer-reviewed form, to challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is damaging the public health. The bloggers Chip Knappenberger and Anthony Watts are cited, as are the oil-funded scientists Pat Michaels, Willie Soon, Roy Spencer, and Richard Lindzen, alongside the docket submissions of the National Mining Association, American Farm Bureau, American Petroleum Institute, American Energy Alliance/Institute for Energy Research, and the North American Coal Corporation.

Download the petition here.

The ‘Voice Of Business’ Calls For ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ On Science Of Climate Change

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the 97-year-old organization that bills itself as the “voice of business” — wants to put climate science on trial. As the Environmental Protection Agency nears a final ruling that manmade global warming endangers the public health and welfare, “the chamber will tell the EPA in a filing today that a trial-style public hearing” on the science of climate change is needed to “make a fully informed, transparent decision with scientific integrity based on the actual record of the science.” William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, told the Los Angeles Times this hearing would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century“:

It would be evolution versus creationism. It would be the science of climate change on trial.

In 1925, Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was indicted for teaching evolution against state law. His trial, intended as a test of the law, became a national phenomenon when as the World Christian Fundamentals Association and the American Civil Liberties Union brought the famed lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow into battle. Scopes was found guilty. Even though the state supreme court overturned the verdict of the “bizarre case” on a technicality, the public fallout was intense. The anti-evolution movement lost steam (before being reborn as “intelligent design“) and science textbooks with biblical quotations were phased out.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is taking a similarly bizarre approach here, calling for a show trial of climate science. Perhaps Kovacs and other officials at the U.S. Chamber believe that the rest of the business world shares their extremist views. After all, U.S. corporations continue to fund their multi-million-dollar lobbying against health care and energy reform.

It’s also possible this is an attempt to disrupt the effort to fight global warming with a culture war, tying the science of climate change to fundamentalists’ unease with evolution. Conservative activists have already made the connection. “It’s still a theory,” a town hall protester confronted Rep. Mike Castle (D-DE) after he supported climate legislation in June. “So is Darwin’s theory of evolution! And yet we have the audacity to say global warming is accurate, it’s more than a theory?”

There aren’t many natural parallels between the physics of greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels and the biology of natural selection, but the American conservative movement depends on the cozy relationship between oil and the Christian right. It seems like a high-risk strategy to convince Americans that God means for us to pollute His creation on behalf of oil and coal tycoons. But when reality is not on your side, there’s not much else left.

Chamber Of Commerce SVP Bill Kovacs Accuses EPA Of ‘Cherry-Picking’ Global Warming Science

Chamber of Commerce senior vice president Bill Kovacs, under fire for his opposition to the regulation of global warming pollution, has claimed that the Obama administration is suppressing evidence that climate change isn’t really a threat. In a debate with Ceres CEO Mindy Lubber about the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, Kovacs argued that any debate of “the consequences” of greenhouse gas pollution is “ridiculed” by “those who have already decided on a course of action and fear any discussion which may cast doubt on their decision“:

No better example of this can be found than the Environmental Protection Agency’s April finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. It turns out that when the EPA issued their finding about the impact of greenhouse gases, they didn’t tell the whole story. They routinely ignored relevant, credible scientific information that contradicted their findings, including information generated by the agency’s own staff. Cherry-picking only the evidence that bolsters your claim is the opposite of scientific integrity, transparency, and openness. . . The wrong way would be to impose barely debated, ineffective, and burdensome new regulations based on shaky, selective data.

Kovacs is alluding to work of Alan Carlin, an economist for EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics. Carlin had plagiarized arguments from right-wing blogs that the world’s climate scientists are wrong about global warming. The right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute promoted Carlin’s report and the false story that his work was being unfairly suppressed. CBS News and Fox News then pushed Carlin’s tale of woe.

By asserting that the ravings of oil-funded climate deniers like Ken Gregory, Pat Michaels, and Chip Knappenberger are “relevant, credible scientific information,” Kovacs is embarassing himself and the Chamber, supposedly “the world’s largest business federation” and the “voice of business.” This reactionary behavior is leading forward-thinking corporations like Nike and Johnson & Johnson to break with the Chamber, and support Mindy Lubber’s attempt to bring American business into the 21st century.

Inhofe Calls For Criminal Investigation Into Why EPA ‘Suppressed’ A Global Warming Denier

This morning, Fox News Channel’s Gregg Jarrett introduced a “very big story” that the Environmental Protection Agency “intentionally buried a study challenging some of Uncle Sam’s global warming research.” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) claimed the report, written by economist Alan Carlin of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, vindicates his belief that man-made global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”:

The thing is phony. I feel so good about being redeemed after all of these years, because they have been throwing this thing in my face since 1998 when we realized that all of those scientists that Al Gore had lined up — and I’m talking about Claude Allegre in France, David Bellamy in UK, and Nir Shaviv in Israel — all of them used to be on his side. They all said, “Wait a minute, this science is not right.” That’s exactly what Allen Carlin said. We’ve already started a investigation.

Watch it:

When asked if there should be a criminal investigation, Inhofe replied, “There could be and there probably should be.” Continuing his attack, he claimed that the EPA “have been suppressing science and coming out with what they want people to say. You might remember — I talked to you about it on this station. When I first realized that this thing was a hoax and I made the statement that the notion that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2 cause global warming, it is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated.”

In reality, what Fox News, Inhofe, and right-wing bloggers are promoting as a suppressed EPA report is nothing of the kind. Carlin’s paper, released by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (”CO2: they call it pollution, we call it Life“), is a hodgepodge of widely discredited pseudoscience. Carlin was given permission by the NCEE to cobble the paper together even though he is not a climate researcher, and “the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists.”

The Carlin document cites the usual array of global warming deniers, including Joe D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, William Gray, Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer — all of whom worked with Sen. Inhofe’s former aide Marc Morano to disseminate denials of climate science. Carlin’s references come from denier blogs such as ICECAP.us and Watts Up With That, as well as publications from the Heartland Institute, the Science & Environmental Policy Project, and the Friends of Science Society, all conservative front groups. RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt summarizes the paper as “a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at.”

Similarly, although the 76-year-old botanist David Bellamy, 72-year-old geochemist Claude Allegre, and 32-year-old astrophysicist Nir Shaviv publicly question man-made global warming, they represent a steadily dwindling number of scientists, few of any of which actively study climate change, that argue fossil fuel emissions are not warming the planet.

What’s really shocking, however, is that “the CEI press release was reported with a more or less straight face by at least two media outlets, CBS News and New York Times Greenwire, without any questioning of CEI’s own motivations or role in the affair.” Both stories show the effect of the collapsing of the mainstream media industry — the CBS story is crossposted by CNet.com reporter Declan McCullagh, the libertarian who fabricated the “Al Gore invented the Internet” story. And the New York Times story is crossposted from E&E News, an independent subscription news service.

EPA: Waxman-Markey Will Lower Electricity Bills

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The main argument conservatives and big oil and coal companies use against the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is that it would cripple American households with a crushing energy tax. To make that claim, they have distorted cost estimates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and conducted their own biased studies. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency obliterated these phony numbers with the release of its economic analysis of H.R. 2454. The EPA estimated the bill would actually lower household electricity bills:

As a result of energy efficiency measures, consumer spending on utility bills would be roughly 7% lower in 2020 as a result of the legislation.

That’s right — lower bills. In 2007, this would have saved the average residential user $84, or 23 cents per day. EPA’s analysis also found:

The overall impact on the average household, including the benefit of many of the energy efficiency provisions in the legislation, would be 22 to 30 cents per day ($80 to $111 per year).

We don’t have to just wish we were there — we can have a clean energy economy for the cost of a postcard stamp a day. And the EPA’s analysis does not “take into account the benefits of reducing global warming.”

EPA’s findings are consistent with the independent Congressional Budget Office analysis released on June 19th. CBO determined “that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion—or about $175 per household.” CBO did not evaluate the impact of the energy efficiency measures on consumer spending on utilities.

The bottom line is that independent analyses found that ACES would cut spending on utilities, as well as have minimal overall costs to the average household – somewhere between 22 to 48 cents a day. Hopefully, representatives will pay heed to these government studies and ignore conservatives’ counterfeit estimates when they vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act this Friday.

Norm Dicks Is Considering Outlawing Science On Behalf Of Big Ag

E&E News reports that Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) will offer an amendment to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appropriations bill on Thursday “that would bar the agency from considering the effects of ‘indirect’ land-use changes when calculating the carbon footprint of biofuels.” Emerson’s plan to outlaw climate science for agribusiness is no surprise — she has received $952,084 from the sector, far more than any other, and has attacked the regulation of greenhouse gases before. However, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), the powerful chair of the Appropriations Interior and Environment subcommittee, is merely “leaning against” the amendment:

We think that they ought to at least be able to evaluate indirect land use, but I’m still thinking about this one,” he said, noting he had just learned about it.

This is the same biofuel-industry loophole for which Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) has been holding up comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. By replacing petroleum, biofuels have the potential to dramatically reduce global warming pollution. But scientists have found biofuels can also worsen global warming by encouraging farmers to cut down the diversity-rich tropical forests that soak up carbon dioxide. It is critical that the federal government’s mandate for billions of gallons of ethanol production be coupled with regulations that take into account the science of indirect land use change.

Dicks, an environmental champion, should know this.

EPA: Markup Of Clean Energy Act Has Lower Compliance Costs »

Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Sean Pool.

As the House Energy and Commerce Committee deliberations continue on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454, opponents have made a number of wild charges about the cost of the bill. These claims are false. A new EPA analysis found that “compared to the draft bill, H.R. 2454 would likely result in lower allowance prices, a smaller impact on energy bills, and a smaller impact on household consumption.”

Committee opponents made a range of histrionic claims about cost, often citing partisan studies such as Heritage Foundation analyses, or a discredited study by a right-wing think tank in Spain, neither of which actually model the specific provisions of the bill. The Heritage Foundation, for example claimed that the bill would destroy over a million net jobs, impose over $1,500 in energy costs on families, and slash GDP by $9.6 trillion by 2030.

But the EPA’s nonpartisan analysis of the original bill’s more stringent environmental targets found that these outlandish predictions were wrong by a factor of eight or more. Indeed, according to the EPA, GDP would increase by more than $5.1 trillion by 2030, and costs to families would be no more than $140 per year, without even counting the reduced energy costs from efficiency and greater use of renewable energy from the sun and wind.

The EPA’s new analysis of the revised version of the bill, released on Sunday, found that recent changes to the bill would reduce its cost even further.

H.R. 2454 would bring clean energy to American families at even lower cost, while simultaneously achieving greater utilization of carbon capture and sequestration technology.

New cost-saving provisions of H.R. 2454: More »« Less

EPA Analysis: Clean Energy Act Will ‘Play A Critical Role In The American Economic Recovery And Job Growth’ »

EPA’s Waxman-Markey Discussion Draft Preliminary Analysis: Executive Summary, Full Analysis

As Congressional hearings on draft green economy legislation begin, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that the bill will “play a critical role in the American economic recovery and job growth.” The initial EPA analysis, based on the draft of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) released by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), looks only at the effects of the cap-and-trade “market-based emissions program,” without modeling the effects of the complementary renewable energy and energy efficiency standards in this comprehensive legislation. Despite the limited review, the EPA has found that Waxman-Markey would “enable American workers to serve in a central role in our clean energy transformation”:

The draft bill would establish a wide range of policies to promote the development and deployment of new clean energy technologies that would fundamentally change the way we produce, deliver, and use energy. The bill would: (1) advance energy efficiency and reduce reliance on oil; (2) stimulate innovation in clean coal technology to ensure that coal remains an important part of the U.S. energy portfolio by capturing harmful greenhouse gas emissions before they enter the atmosphere; (3) accelerate the use of renewable sources of energy, including biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal; (4) create strong demand for a domestic manufacturing market for these next generation technologies that will enable American workers to serve in a central role in our clean energy transformation; and (5) play a critical role in the American economic recovery and job growth – from retooling shuttered manufacturing plants to make wind turbines, to using equipment and expertise in drilling for oil to develop clean energy from underground geothermal sources, to tapping into American ingenuity to engineer coal-fired power plants that do not contribute to climate change.

The ACES Act does not address the question of how allocate the revenues of a carbon market auction. Industry executives and conservative allies like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are calling for free giveaways to polluters. However, the EPA analysis finds that polluter giveaways are “highly regressive.” A full auction of permits and equitable returns, however, allows for working families to come out ahead:

Assuming that the bulk of the revenues from the program are returned to households, the cap-and-trade policy has a relatively modest impact on U.S. consumers. . . . Returning the revenues in this fashion could make the median household, and those living at lower ends of the income distribution, better off than they would be without the program.

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After Years Of Delay, EPA Recognizes Global Warming Pollution Endangers ‘Health And Welfare’ Of American Public

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is officially confirming today that greenhouse gas pollution endangers the health and welfare of the American public, finally obeying the mandate set down by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 2, 2007. Following a review from the White House and agencies across the administration, Jackson is announcing this morning that she has signed the Clean Air Act endangerment finding for six greenhouse gases. By the time the decision is finalized after two months of public comment, it will have been nearly two years since the EPA was blocked by the Bush White House from issuing such a finding.

The definition of “welfare” in Section 302(h) of the Clean Air Act states:

All language referring to effects on welfare includes, but is not limited to, effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, manmade materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and climate, damage to and deterioration of property, and hazards to transportation, as well as effects on economic values and on personal comfort and well-being, whether caused by transformation, conversion, or combination with other pollutants.

From soils and water to weather, economic values and, of course, climate — all of these elements of our welfare have been unequivocally damaged by manmade global warming already, with much worse to come if the pollution is not arrested.

This decision comes more than 16 years after the United States ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. As Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman — now the EPA senior policy counsel — explained last year, the EPA will be able to move forward with regulations to limit greenhouse gas pollution to build a clean-energy economy:

The Clean Air Act, for example, imposes emission performance standards on new major sources of pollution and modifications of existing sources with emission increases over a set threshold. It should be possible to limit these standards to large power plants and other facilities that are significant emitters of CO2, and to exclude smaller sources, such as the hospitals, schools, stores, and apartment buildings of concern to the president. And it should be possible to implement a trading system for large sources that provides flexibility and reduces compliance costs. That is not to say, of course, that large sources would be off the hook from controlling their CO2 emissions — why should they be? — but it does mean that meaningless requirements with no climate change payoff can be avoided.

The Obama administration is finally removing one of the great blots of the George W. Bush legacy with this action.

Right-Wing Climate Denier Attacks Carol Browner As Having ‘Little Respect For The Law’ And ‘Less For Science’

National Center for Public Policy Research president Amy Ridenour explains to Congress why she laundered $2.5 million for Jack Abramoff.

In a widely reprinted column, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s (NCPPR) David Ridenour attacks White House energy and climate change adviser Carol Browner as a “socialist” and “zealot” with “so much baggage she could be an airline”:

As little respect as she has shown for the law, she has shown even less for science.

Ridenour’s arguments include the bizarre Drudge Report attack that Browner is a socialist, accusing Browner of complicity in an EPA case for which she was fully acquitted, and the repetition of a 1995 claim of “illegal lobbying” by then-Congressman David McIntosh (R-IN), which the New York Times explained then involved “doing things that have long been routine functions of officials in the executive branch, practices that lawyers in Republican and Democratic administrations alike have declared legal.”

In fact, it is the National Center for Public Policy Research that has little respect for the law, and even less for science:

Little Respect For The Law: Laundering $2.5 million for Jack Abramoff. Jack Abramoff was a member of NCPPR’s Board of Directors; he resigned in October 2004. From 1999 to 2001, NCPPR wrote “repeated articles that aligned with the positions of the lobbyist’s clients.” In October 2002, Abramoff directed the Mississippi Band of Choctaws to give $1 million to NCPPR, and then told Amy Ridenour to distribute the funds to front organizations he controlled. In June 2003, Greenberg Traurig, the firm that employed Abramoff, sent $1.5 million to NCPPR, which Ridenour again distributed to front organizations controlled by Abramoff. Amy Ridenour later testified to Congress that she was an unwitting dupe. [Raw Story, 3/8/06]

Less Respect For Science: NCPPR Is Part Of The Right-Wing Climate-Denier Machine. The National Center for Public Policy Research was founded in 1982 by Amy Ridenour, David’s wife and a compatriot of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist in the leadership of the College Republicans in 1981. NCPPR is a member organization of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Cooler Heads Coalition and the right-wing State Policy Network. In 25 years of operation, NCPPR has received about $280,000 from Exxon Mobil, in part to fund its “Envirotruth” climate denial website. [ExxonSecrets, SourceWatch]

Less Respect For Science: NCPPR Uses African Poverty to Attack Climate Change Action. Using its Project 21 front group, NCPPR put out a press release supporting CEI’s Third-World vs. Gore campaign on Amy Ridenour’s blog. It attacked “Gore and his celebrity friends” for “living opulent lifestyles” while “many in the Third World – particularly those in Africa – are literally dying due to a lack of adequate power, and the catastrophe that could result from imposing anti-global warming emissions regulations on power generation in these areas.” In fact, Africa is “one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability,” with between 75 and 250 million Africans facing increasing water scarcity by 2020, potential food shortages and a rise in disease. [Project 21, 3/10/2008] [IPCC, 2007]

This hit piece was published in several right-wing publications, including Investor’s Business Daily, Robert Decherd’s Providence Journal, and Rev. Sung Yun Moon’s Washington Times.

EPA Sends Greenhouse Endangerment Finding To White House

Following the schedule leaked to the public earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency has sent a global warming endangerment finding to the White House, nearly two years after the Supreme Court mandated action. The finding that “global warming is endangering the public’s health and welfare” will be signed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on April 16th after interagency review, for publication in the Federal Register on April 30th. By the time the decision is finalized after two months of public comment, it will have been nearly two years since the EPA was blocked by the Bush White House from issuing such a finding.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce responded with dismay. Bill Kovacs, the Chamber’s vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, complained:

By moving forward with the endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, EPA is putting in motion a set of decisions that may have far-reaching unintended consequences. Specifically, once the finding is made, no matter how limited, some environmental groups will sue to make sure it is applied to all aspects of the Clean Air Act. This will mean that all infrastructure projects, including those under the president’s stimulus initiative, will be subject to environmental review for greenhouse gases. Since not one of the projects has been subjected to that review, it is possible that the projects under the stimulus initiative will cease. This will be devastating to the economy.

Far from being “devastating to the economy,” a global warming endangerment finding is needed to allow the government and businesses to rationally guide future economic policy. As Robert Sussman wrote in the Wonk Room last year, responding to the same doom and gloom scenario painted that time by the Wall Street Journal, this fear is without merit:

The specter of bureaucrats running amok and strangling the economy — by intruding into small businesses and individual households and banning fuels on which millions of Americans depend — is a fantasy of die-hard free-market zealots. In fact, a new administration could enforce new global warming regulations with common sense, focusing on large emitters of greenhouse gases to achieve reasonable reductions while spurring trillions of dollars worth of economic growth and green-collar jobs.

Sussman is now the EPA Senior Policy Counsel.

Robert Sussman To Oversee Dow Dioxin Cleanup

EPA administrator “Lisa Jackson has ordered the Great Lakes office of EPA to stop negotiations with the Dow Chemical company — begun in the last days of the Bush administration — over controversial dioxin cleanup in the Saginaw Bay watershed.” The Wonk Room reported in May 2008 how regional EPA administrator Mary Gade, in a scandal reminiscent of Alberto Gonzales’s firing of U.S. Attorneys, was pushed out by Bush appointees for her efforts to make Dow Chemical clean up its century-old toxic waste. Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman called her firing “highly irregular“:

If her only sin was zeal in protecting the public, firing her was wrong and will send a troubling message to EPA employees all across the country who are trying to do their jobs. Clearly, it’s up to Steve Johnson to explain why he fired Mary and up to Congress to investigate the circumstances.

Despite Congressional inquiries, Administrator Johnson never explained the firing, and only left his post when Bush left office. Now, however, Sussman — who supervised Obama’s EPA transition team — is the EPA’s senior policy counsel. According to the Michigan Messenger’s Eartha Jane Melzer, “Jackson also stated that newly appointed advisor, Robert Sussman, would provide oversight on the matter.”

Cleaning up the toxic Bush legacy will take years, but this is an welcome start, especially for the residents of Saginaw Bay.

Wonk Room’s Robert Sussman To Be EPA Senior Policy Counsel

The Wonk Room would like to congratulate Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman, who the Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports “is returning to the Environmental Protection Agency” as “senior policy counsel to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, advising her on climate and environmental issues across the agency.” An official announcement is expected shortly. Before joining the Center for American Progress, Sussman was the Deputy Administrator during the Clinton administration, serving under Carol Browner, now President Obama’s White House energy and environment adviser.

Sussman was a Wonk Room regular, writing on the Mary Gade scandal, the Bush administration, and climate legislation. In particular, he explained in clear language why Bush’s disdain for environmental regulation was flawed. Sussman demolished the argument that laws like the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act are not applicable to the threat of global warming:

The truth is that our environmental laws were not written to be static. They are flexible tools to address unanticipated or emerging problems that science identifies over time.

Sussman’s work for the Center for American Progress highlighted that practical approach. He crafted recommendations for regulatory and funding mechanisms to spur the development of carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal plants, “to reconcile reliance on coal for electricity with the need to reduce the threat of global warming.”

His knowledge, experience, and passion will be invaluable in restoring the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency.

New EPA Admin: Science, Transparency And The Rule Of Law ‘Will Shape Everything I Do’ »

Following her late-night Senate confirmation on Thursday, incoming Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson issued a memorandum to all EPA staff Friday laying out her mission:

With his election and with my appointment, President Obama has dramatically changed the face of American environmentalism. With your help, we can now change the face of the environment as well.

In her memo, Jackson said, “I will uphold the values of scientific integrity, rule of law and transparency every day.” Her pledges for action indict the record of the Bush administration EPA:

– “scientific judgments . . . suppressed, misrepresented or distorted by political agendas”
– “policy decisions should not be disguised as scientific findings”
– “EPA cannot misinterpret or ignore the language Congress has used”
– “EPA cannot turn a blind eye to the court’s decision or procrastinate in complying”
– “we are not doing an adequate job of assessing and managing the risks of chemicals”

Jackson also called on her staff “to connect with those who have been historically underrepresented in EPA decision making,” from the minorities and poor to small businesses and towns.

She also signaled that the clock for Congress to act on climate legislation will soon start ticking: “As Congress does its work, we will move ahead to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision recognizing EPA’s obligation to address climate change under the Clean Air Act.”

The only notable omission from the memorandum was a call for the EPA to restore its independence from the White House. Under Bush, the Environmental Protection Agency effectively became a servant of White House Office of Management and Budget officials, who corrupted the EPA’s work with the help of compliant EPA administrator Stephen Johnson. EPA must regain its authority as the independent watchdog of our nation’s environmental health.

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