The Wonk Room

Major U.S. Companies Embrace Progressive Climate Action»

On Wednesday, five major U.S. corporations launched a new business coalition with the investors’ activist group Ceres to call for immediate, muscular, and progressive action to fight global warming. The founding members of Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP) are Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, Starbucks, Sun Microsystems and The Timberland Company. As right-wing business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce pretend that limits on pollution will destroy the economy, the members of BICEP recognize that the true threat is failing to halt catastrophic climate change.

The eight principles embraced by BICEP for national action on global warming reflect recommendations from the Center for American Progress, Green For All, 1Sky, and other progressive organizations, including a moratorium on new coal plants, no subsidies for pollution permits, aggressive efficiency standards, and green-job creation in low-income communities.

In addition, BICEP calls for greenhouse gas emissions to be at least 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, in line with scientific recommendations — and more than double the target set by President-elect Barack Obama.

As Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres said in a press call, tackling global warming is integral to future economic strength:

Rather than ignore risk, address the risk and turn it into an opportunity. We need to send the right and honest market signal. Carbon pollution has a cost.

The full list of recommendations: More »

GM’s Britta Gross Talks The Volt, Smart Grids, And The Future Of Detroit»

Editor’s note: The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson is attending the Los Angeles Auto Show this week. Here is his first dispatch.

In an interview earlier today, Britta Gross, General Motors’ manager of Hydrogen and Electrical Infrastructure Development talks about working with electric utilities to prepare for the widescale deployment of the plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt. As she and the other managers of the Volt project discuss the next-generation vehicle they plan to put into production in 2010, GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner flew down to Washington, D.C. to plead for a bailout for his teetering company.

Watch it:

The mood at the auto show is subdued and uncertain, with mixed messages of machismo, affordability, and environmental responsibility. How the industry handles the great challenges of today will determine its future. As Gross said, “These are tough times for automakers, but a very exciting time.”

New Thinking for the Next Science Adviser»

Our guest blogger is Rick Weiss, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Fund.

Here’s a wild proposition for the transition: Choose a life scientist or a climatologist for the presidential science advisor.

Maybe that doesn’t seem like a radical move to you, but in fact it would be a major break with tradition. The presidential science advisor (who doubles as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) has traditionally been a physicist or nuclear scientist. After all, the biggest science-based threat to the nation has long been the threat of nuclear war. So of course the president needed someone at his side who knew about bombs and fallout and such.

But while atomic physics is still a field with great national security import (think dirty bombs and the suitcase-sized nuclear devices that terrorists are purported to be trying to get their hands on) there is a good case to be made that molecular biology (which has so simplified the tools for making bioterror weapons, for example) or even ordinary earth science (the specialty that best understands global climate change) are the fields that are today most relevant to our national and economic security concerns.

The presidential science advisor (which used to be a cabinet level position until Bush demoted it, but is likely to get elevated again under Obama) is just one of hundreds of science policy-related openings that the new president and his appointees will soon be filling and that officials in the new administration need to think about in new, out-of-the-box ways.

Imagine a surgeon general selected from one of the nation’s gang-busting food activist groups, ready to take on obesity the way C. Everett Koop took on smoking.  Or a Food and Drug Commissioner who’s maybe not a medical doctor (as is usual) but has great expertise in international trade law (trillions of dollars-worth of food and drugs are today imported from abroad with precious little inspection or oversight). Or a Secretary of Energy who has real business experience and expertise in cap-and-trade economics or in solar or wind technology or low-loss transmission lines—the keys to an energy-independent America.

Now multiply that times all the science-based openings in Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior and even Defense. To learn more about what the Obama administration has to think about when filling out its technical ranks, see below, drawn from my recent column on Science Progress, “A Taxonomy of Scientific Appointments:” More »

The U.S. Chamber of Chicken Littles»

Our guest blogger is Peter Altman, Climate Campaign Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Over the last several months, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been holding “State Climate Dialogues” around the country, ostensibly to “stimulate a national discussion on key climate change issues.” These are much more monologue than dialogue though, and the punchline is pretty consistently a prediction of economic disaster if the Congress creates a serious climate policy.

If the Chamber’s Chicken Littles stay on message, anyone attending today’s event in Detroit, Michigan is likely to hear the same old message. But many experts disagree with this view of gloom and doom.

For instance, Dr. Martin Kushler, director of the Utilities Program at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, says:

The claim that taking steps to address climate change would be bad for the economy is simply not true. We know from proven experience that we can save electricity through energy efficiency programs at one-third the cost of a new power plant. With a strong energy efficiency policy we can save money and reduce carbon emissions at the same time.

Dr. Andrew Hoffman, associate professor of management & organizations, associate professor of natural resources and associate director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan, said:

Think of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as a market shift, one driven by regulations at the city, state, national and international levels. But one also driven by consumer, investor, insurance and energy markets. Any company executive who ignores these shifts does so at their peril.

This week’s event in Detroit is just the latest stop in the Chamber of Commerce’s Chicken Little Roadshow to gin up worries about efforts to solve our energy and climate problems. Speakers at these events rely on questionable assumptions and even more questionable results to make their case. More »

Global Boiling: In California, It’s ‘Fire Season All Year Round’»

In a weekend interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) talks of the impact of global warming on California’s wildfires. Climate change is lowering snowpack in the Rockies and increasing droughts, heat waves and lightning strikes, stoking more intense fires over a longer season:

Through global warming, we have now fire season all year round. We used to have fire seasons only in the fall, but now the fire seasons start in February already, so this means that we have to really upgrade, have more resources, more fire engines, more manpower and all of this, which does cost extra money.

Watch it:

By May of this year wildfires were raging at levels traditionally seen only in July. After California’s driest spring in 114 years of recordkeeping, 1700 wildfires set a record 840,000 acres ablaze from June to July, costing the state more than $200 million. Fires in the past month, the worst in the Los Angeles area in four decades, have destroyed over 1000 homes. “Through last week, 1.24 million acres burned in California, the most since 1970, when consistent, modern records were first kept.”

Last month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called for the Bush administration to end delays in assistance, saying, “As the climate warms and wildland fires become bigger and more intense, a rapid response is critical to prevent the spread of fires.”

Dingell Pledges His Cooperation To Progressive Climate Principles»

Roll Call reports that senior Congressional Black Caucus members John Lewis (D-GA) and John Conyers (D-MI) have announced their support for John Dingell’s (D-MI) continued chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced he was seeking the chair after the elections, spurring Dingell to wage a highly visible campaign to keep his seat. Dingell’s announced supporters now include seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus, twelve Blue Dogs, two Michigan freshmen, and eight others.

In October, Dingell and Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) released “draft climate legislation after nearly two years of hearings and discussions. In the accompanying letter, they indicated significantly different priorities and emissions goals than those of Sen. Barack Obama or the majority of the Democratic caucus, who signed on to a letter of progressive principles circulated by Waxman, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), and Jay Inslee (D-WA).

Today, following news coverage of recent criticism of the draft plan by Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman, Dingell has released a defense to his fellow members, arguing that his plan “aligns with the principles and goals” of the Waxman-Markey-Inslee letter. Dingell further pledged his cooperation to ensuring any final legislation would embody the letter’s principles.

The text of this letter and accompanying press release follows: More »

Breaking: EPA Appeals Board Strikes Down Construction Of New Coal-Fired Power Plant»

In a landmark action, the Environmental Protection Agency’s final decision-making board has ruled that all new and proposed coal-fired power plants must have their carbon dioxide emissions regulated. The Environmental Appeals Board ruled today that the EPA has no valid reason for refusing to place limits on the global warming emissions from Desert Power’s proposed 110-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Vernal, Utah.

Deseret Power’s Bonanza Generating Station would have emitted 3.37 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. In July 2007, the EPA issued a permit for the plant, ignoring the Clean Air Act’s stipulation that all such permits must include a “best-available control technology” emissions limit for each pollutant “subject to regulation under the Act.” Before the Sierra Club brought suit, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform opened an investigation into the EPA’s decision, saying:

It is reckless to approve a huge coal-fired power plant with no global warming emission controls. This one massive plant will negate the emissions reductions being implemented by the Northeastern states in the first mandatory regional program to cut global warming pollution. The Administration’s shameful decision rewards polluters, flouts the Clean Air Act, and fails the American people.

Joanna Spalding, the Sierra Club attorney who successfully argued the case, delivered this statement:

Today’s decision opens the way for meaningful action to fight global warming and is a major step in bringing about a clean energy economy. This is one more sign that we must begin repowering, refueling and rebuilding America. The EAB rejected every Bush Administration excuse for failing to regulate the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States. This decision gives the Obama Administration a clean slate to begin building our clean energy economy for the 21st century.

The 69-page decision described the Bush administration’s arguments as “weak,” “questionable,” “not sustainable,” and “not sufficient,” and rebuked EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for failing to issue CO2 regulations, repeatedly recommending an “action of nationwide scope.”

Change For America: The National Energy Advisor»

In Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President, a work now in publication, two top members of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team recommend the creation of a “new National Energy Council to drive the transformation to a low-carbon economy.” The Wonk Room offers this exclusive preview of their recommendations. Todd Stern and David Hayes write:

Transforming the energy base of the economy will demand top-level participation across the executive branch. It will require the concerted engagement of the president, and the kind of single-minded attention that only a fully empowered national energy advisor and council can bring. The National Energy Council would serve as the new president’s agent in driving both policy and strategic options with respect to energy and climate change. At the first cabinet meeting, the president should make clear the centrality of this issue and the authority of his new national energy advisor.

The national energy advisor, an idea talked about in the press as a “climate czar” or “energy czar,” would have “stature comparable to the national security advisor and the national economic advisor.” Stern and Hayes recommend that the Council involve most of the Cabinet as well as the chairs of the National Security Council (NSC), National Economic Council (NEC), and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The advisor should have a “lean staff” shared with other White House offices, including the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Here’s how the council could be constructed: More »

Dingell’s Climate Plan Is A Good Start, but Not Good Enough»

Our guest blogger is Robert M. Sussman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and former Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Sussman is now overseeing EPA transition planning for President-elect Barack Obama.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairmen John Dingell (D-MI) and Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) unveiled their long-awaited draft of climate change legislation early last month. Longtime allies of the auto and coal industries, Dingell and Boucher have nevertheless produced a thoughtful and serious effort to grapple with the complexities of creating a cap-and-trade system. As they say in their memo to the full Energy and Commerce Committee, “politically, scientifically, legally and morally, the question has been settled: regulation of greenhouse gases in the U.S. is coming.”

The draft bill has a number of strengths for which Dingell and Boucher deserve credit. It is economy-wide, covering 87 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. It sets a long-term target of reducing emissions by 80 percent of 2005 levels by 2050 that corresponds with prevailing scientific consensus. It contains strong energy efficiency programs. It uses the allowance allocation process both to stimulate low-carbon energy technologies and provide consumers relief from high energy prices. It provides for strict oversight of the carbon markets to prevent manipulation and assure transparency. And it creates a “strategic reserve” of allowances that would be auctioned if allowance prices are too high, but avoids a “safety valve” that would suspend the emission cap if allowance prices exceed a predetermined level.

Despite these positive features, two aspects of the bill—the absence of allowance auctioning in the cap-and-trade program and weak emission reduction targets for 2020—raise serious concerns and should not be the starting point for legislative action in the new Congress. More »

Dingell’s Supporters Backed By Pollution Industry»

On Friday, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) announced his whip team, the members of the Democratic caucus who will attempt to wrangle the votes needed to maintain his chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee when the Democrats make leadership decisions on November 17 and 18. In addition to the 26-member whip team, Dingell has received the support of House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY). Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who is challenging Dingell for the post, has not made the names of his whip team public, although Reps. Howard Berman (CA), Jim Cooper (TN), and George Miller (CA) have announced their support for his candidacy.

The oil and coal industries have overwhelmingly supported Dingell’s team, and the members’ voting records reflect that. On average, Dingell and his supporters have received nearly six times as much money from Big Oil as Waxman’s team, and nine times as much money from King Coal. Dingell’s supporters have voted with Big Oil’s agenda 2.7 times as often as Waxman’s people, according to Oil Change International’s vote tracker.

Twelve of the 26 members of Dingell’s whip team are Blue Dogs, the self-described conservatives of the caucus. Seven Dingell backers signed the Waxman-Markey-Inslee statement of climate principles last month: Robert Andrews (NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Jesse Jackson Jr. (IL), Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX), Charlie Rangel (NY), Bobby Rush (IL), and Ellen Tauscher (CA).

UPDATE: Gristmill’s Kate Sheppard notes that yet another industry representative has weighed in to support Dingell. “Dingell really has a very good understanding of the industry,” David Cole, chair of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, MI, told Bloomberg. Cole said a Waxman chairmanship would be “very unfortunate” and “the fur would really fly.”

Coal and oil industry donations from 2000 to 2008 to Dingell, Waxman, and their supporters: More »

Pollution Industry Says ‘It’s Scary’ To Think Of Waxman In Charge Of Climate Legislation»

This week, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced his intent to replace Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) as chair of the House Energy Commerce & Committee, which has jurisdiction over global warming legislation. On Thursday, Dingell told WJR Radio’s Frank Beckmann that Waxman is an “anti-manufacturing left-wing Democrat” with a “serious lack of understanding of people in the auto industry and manufacturing generally.”

Representatives of major greenhouse gas-emitting industries have also recoiled at the prospect of Waxman being in charge instead of Dingell.

R. Bruce Josten, the top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “took issue with the idea of a Waxman-led committee given the Californian’s support for far more aggressive greenhouse emission limits compared with Dingell,” telling E&E News, “It’s scary, isn’t it?”

The Chamber’s public comments reinforce the anonymous “refining industry insider” who told E&E News “all hell will break loose legislatively” if Waxman won.

The coal lobby has also weighed in on this dispute. Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, told Bloomberg News that Waxman likely would be “a very slow learner on the importance of coal for affordable energy. It would have been problematic in the best of times to have Mr. Waxman’s views prevail.”

Climate Progress’s Joe Romm responds, “If actually trying to prevent catastrophic global warming is ’scary’ then all I can say is ‘Boo!‘”

Digg it!

UPDATE: Josten and Popovich are the top figures in the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, the front group formed in 2001 to promote the Cheney energy bill.

UPDATE 2: In 2006, the New Republic’s Bradford Plumer wrote this review of Dingell’s impact on clean-air legislation during his 50-year tenure: More »

Heritage’s Broken Conclusions On A Green Recovery»

Our guest blogger is Dr. Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

In a November 5 blog post, Dr. David Kreutzer, Senior Policy Analyst for Energy Economics and Climate Change in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, claims that policy initiatives to advance a green investment agenda necessarily hurt economic growth and employment. In particular, Kreutzer claims the report I co-authored, Green Recovery, suffers from a “broken windows” fallacy:

The authors of this study fall prey to the classic “broken windows” fallacy whereby spending money creates jobs as the expenditure multiplies throughout the economy. The fallacy comes from ignoring the equally large destruction of jobs (actually larger because of something called “deadweight loss”) from taxing the $100 billion, which eliminates a similar cascade of job creation elsewhere.

Kreutzer reaches this broken conclusion by ignoring all the findings in Green Recovery. Contrary to Kreutzer’s claim that green jobs require the “equally large destruction of jobs” in other sectors, green investments are all potent sources of net job creation relative to spending on traditional fossil fuels, including oil, coal and natural gas. Our research found that green infrastructure investment program would create nearly four times more jobs than spending the same amount of money on oil energy resources. For each $1 million of green investments paid for by cutting oil subsidies, a net 12.5 jobs are created. Green investments produce net job creation because their labor intensity and domestic content are significantly higher than investments in fossil fuels.

Labor Intensity: With green investments, more money is being spent on hiring people and less on machines, supplies, and consuming energy. Imagine hiring construction workers to retrofit buildings or install solar panels, or bus drivers to expand public transportation offerings, as opposed to drilling for oil off the coasts of Florida, California, and Alaska.

Domestic Content: When we retrofit public buildings and private homes to raise their energy efficiency, or improve our public transportation systems, virtually every dollar is spent within the U.S. economy. By contrast, only 80 cents of every dollar spent within the oil industry remains within the U.S.

Through public investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy, we overturn the long-held conventional wisdom reflected in Kreutzer’s critique — that we can have a green economy or a growing economy, but we can’t have both. In fact, not only can we have both, but green public investments to fight global warming are, at once, a powerful engine of job creation and a necessary instrument for achieving environmental sustainability.

Read an extended response from Dr. Pollin, in which he also discusses the question of energy costs and how Kreutzer overlooked the economic impact of global warming.

UPDATE: At Climate Progress, Joe Romm offers a detailed critique of Kreutzer’s blog post, writing that it is a “truly bizarre disanalysis that conflates greenhouse gas regulations with a green recovery or green economic stimulus.”

Waxman ‘Has The Votes’ To Replace Dingell»

John Dingell (D-MI) and Henry Waxman (D-CA)

According to a report in National Journal’s CongressDaily, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has sufficient votes in the Democratic caucus to win a vote to replace Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman announced his intent to take the chairmanship yesterday, telling reporters, “I think I have a good chance of winning.”

A likely measure of the depth of Waxman’s support is last month’s statement of climate principles, signed by 152 members, or two-thirds of the Democratic caucus, on October 2. The letter, led by Waxman, Ed Markey (D-MA), and Jay Inslee (D-WA), details much stronger standards than were found in the draft legislation Dingell produced the following week.

The National Journal reports:

Dingell is expected to win support from Majority Leader Hoyer, Midwestern Democrats, members of the Congressional Black Caucus — who typically back the seniority — and Blue Dog Coalition members.

The Blue Dogs are self-identified “conservative Democrats,” many of whom disproportionately supported Bush’s agenda. Dingell, it should be noted, is not a Blue Dog and is a strongly progressive voice on many issues.

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), the coal-country chairman of the Energy & Commerce subcommittee that controls greenhouse pollution legislation, echoed the conservative mantra that this election provided no mandate for change. Supporting Dingell, Boucher warned that it would be problematic “if the first action of the new majority … is a dramatic move to the left.”

However, this is not an ideological battle. For example, Waxman has secured the support of senior Blue Dog Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN), who told reporters he is “on Henry’s whip team.” Both Waxman and Dingell have made economic justice and public health central planks of their careers. Their differences are strategic, not ideological. Dingell’s work on climate change has emphasized the approach of protecting industry from economic harm, whereas Waxman believes that robust economic health will come from the transition to a clean energy economy.

UPDATE: National Journal’s Dan Friedman has updated his report with details of a call with Dingell supporters who “forcefully rejected” the claim Waxman has sufficient support to oust Dingell:

“These claims that Mr. Waxman has the votes are just not true,” said Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak, D-Mich. “There is no doubt in my mind at the end of the day that Chairman Dingell will still be referred to as Chairman Dingell.” Stupak and Reps. John Barrow, D-Ga., and Mike Doyle, D-Pa. said Waxman has not made a clear case for why he should replace Dingell. “I asked [Waxman] quite pointedly what his basis for challenging Mr. Dingell was,” Doyle said. “He was unable to give me a single reason why he thought Mr. Dingell shouldn’t be chairman other than the fact that he [Waxman] would be a better chairman.”

A Letter To Obama: Build A 21st Century Transportation System»

Our guest blogger is David Goldberg, Communications Director at Transportation For America.

Congratulations! Your election, and results from down-ballot votes around the country, represents a resounding call for a new direction.

The Transportation for America campaign, representing more than 100 organizations and thousands of energized citizens around the country, salutes you. And we join you in seeking infrastructure investment that will stimulate the economy now and lay the groundwork for a clean-energy future that is less dependent on oil.

Americans are ready for this bold vision. Even in this tattered economy, citizens in California, Washington, Hawaii, Colorado and at least 10 other states voted themselves a tax increase so they could jumpstart construction of light rail, commuter train service, high-speed rail and other clean transportation options. Now they, and dozens of other communities, need a federal partner that can step up and do its part.

We call on you to follow through on the vision you offered in the campaign by acting rapidly, starting with the transition and during the first 100 days, to urge Congress to pass a smart package of stimulus investments as well as a new national transportation program. Appoint a Secretary of Transportation with a proven record of understanding both urban and rural needs, as well as how transportation, growth and development, the economy and the environment interact.

By fixing our highways, bridges and transit systems, and pushing ahead with ready-to-go rail projects, we can create millions of jobs that can’t be outsourced, launch a clean, green economic recovery, and get started on building a 21st century transportation system.

To quote our next president: “Yes, we can!”

Join Transportation for America in sending this letter with your own thoughts to the President-elect.

Obama Plans Green Economy ‘Listening Tour’ Before Inauguration»

Dan Kammen, the director of the Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley and a top adviser to President-elect Barack Obama (D-IL), has told E&E News that Obama may conduct a nationwide “listening tour” to allow his team to hit the ground running for a green recovery:

The incoming Obama team is considering a “listening tour” around the country on energy and environmental issues before Inauguration Day in an attempt to build momentum for its policies and legislative plans.

Last month, Obama told Time’s Joe Klein that an “Apollo project” for a “new energy economy” is his top priority:

That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.

In yesterday’s victory speech before a crowd of 125,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park, Obama indicated that listening to all people of this nation will be central to his administration:

There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

In the 75 days before Obama takes office, he will also have to weigh in on major events already on the calendar: More »

Waxman Plans To Challenge Dingell For Control Of Energy And Commerce»

John Dingell (D-MI) and Henry Waxman (D-CA)

Roll Call reports that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) plans to challenge Rep John Dingell (D-MI) “for chairmanship of the influential Energy and Commerce Committee.” The Committee has jurisdiction over a wide array of issues, including energy policy, health care, and interstate commerce.

In the 110th Congress, Dingell and Waxman took very different stances on global warming issues. In stark contrast, Dingell opposed California’s petition to set automotive emission standards for greenhouse gases, while Waxman led hearings to investigate why the EPA denied the California waiver.

The two also took different paths after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called in January, 2007, for rapid action on legislation that would limit greenhouse emissions. Waxman introduced the Safe Climate Act in March to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Dingell, a longtime defender of the auto industry, instead worked through a series of hearings and white papers on this complex issue to introduce draft legislation this October.

Dingell “put aside” the global warming legislation to push a provision in the 2007 energy bill that increased fuel economy standards for the first time in decades. When signed by President Bush in December, it marked a major achievement for the environment and the economy — but has since been used by the Bush administration for an excuse for inaction on mandatory global warming regulations.

As Roll Call writes, “The move marks a major showdown between two Democratic powerhouses.”

UPDATE: E&E News reports:

“This is a fight for all the marbles,” said one refining industry lobbyist. “If Henry gets this, my god, given the scope of jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee, all hell will break loose legislatively if Waxman chairs this thing.”

On Election Day, King Coal Celebrates Public Relations ‘Landslide’»

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), the coal industry’s propaganda front group, is upbeat about this election day, as indicated by their press release today. ACCCE VP Joe Lucas claimed:

If “support for the use of coal for generating electricity” were on the ballot today, it would win by a landslide.

His choice of words is unfortunate, as landslides are only one of the many deadly hazards of coal mining, especially under the lax safety enforcement of the Bush administration.

ACCCE is celebrating a poll that showed their $50 million propaganda campaign influenced “adults with $80,000 or more in household income and a four-year college degree or more and a professional or managerial job title or a business owner and a high degree of involvement in politics and policy matters.”

However, all the PR spin in the world can’t affect scientific reality. America’s coal plants produce about 49 percent of U.S. electricity but account for 83 percent of power-sector emissions. And we need to reduce net emissions to zero as fast as humanly possible to preserve our civilization from catastrophic global warming.

The tobacco industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars to obscure the scientific fact that their product is an addictive, deadly drug. After decades of debate, after millions of Americans had their lives unnecessarily shortened, our government crafted policies that protected tobacco farmers and reduced the tobacco industry’s grip. Even so, the needless deaths continue, all to protect the profits of a very powerful few.

Our current situation with the coal industry is similar, but the stakes are even more grave. No matter what actions Washington D.C. takes, the 80,000 people in the coal mining industry — 0.02% of the U.S. population — should be taken care of. These workers deserve better than they are getting today, as the union-busting coal barons ignore safety regulations and cut benefits. But make no mistake — the burning of coal is burning up the planet.

The world is not going to stop using coal for decades, even if the United States were to move entirely to a fossil-free power grid. If we can develop the technology needed to economically capture the emissions of coal plants, and I hope we can, then the coal industry will have the opportunity to rake in billions of dollars in profits for a few more generations.

The saddest thing about the ACCCE campaign is not its facile dishonesty, but that we continue to have a political discourse that places more weight on perception than reality.

Gingrich: ‘People Don’t Elect Presidents Who Tell Them To Sacrifice’»

In a November 1st interview with Newsweek, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was asked, “Obama said in one of the debates that Americans need to sacrifice and cut back their energy usage. How do you think that’ll fly as part of the solution?” [Note: Obama didn’t actually say that.] Gingrich responded:

Just as well as it did with Jimmy Carter. People don’t elect presidents who tell them to sacrifice. They elect presidents who solve problems so they don’t have to sacrifice.

If Gingrich is right, it looks like we won’t have a president for the next four years.

On June 21, 2005, McCain said of his global warming legislation:

Does it involve some sacrifice on the part of the American people? Yes. I have to tell you, every time I talk to young Americans and say, Are you willing to make some sacrifice to prevent the occurrences that we see are happening now, these young Americans are more than willing to do so.

On August 8, 2005, McCain said of the American troops serving in the Iraq war:

We must win. We must prevail. And it may require additional service and sacrifice, tragically.

On April 11, 2007, McCain said of the American troops serving in the Iraq war:

In Iraq, hope is a fragile thing, but all the more admirable for the courage and sacrifice necessary to nurture it.

On July 27, 2008, McCain again said of the American troops involved in the Iraq “surge”:

When the crucial time came as to whether we were going to leave Iraq and lose, or stay and do the very unpopular thing of 30,000 additional troops — asking young Americans to make the sacrifice — he was wrong, I was right.

Gingrich is speaking flat nonsense. The American public are not children who require false coddling and empty promises, but are proud adults who elect people who lead by example. As John F. Kennedy concluded his inaugural address:

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

McCain And Obama Criticize New Coal Plants — Right Wing Goes Insane»

Both presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) have called for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions in the United States. Coal-fired power plants, which produce about 49 percent of U.S. electricity, account for 83 percent of power-sector emissions. Because of the global warming footprint, the cheapness of coal-fired electricity is illusory. Under a cap-and-trade system, the cost of those emissions — now a market externality — would have a dollar cost. In a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama used blunt language to describe how a cap and trade system would change the future of the power sector:

That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

The right wing has gone insane over these remarks, falsely claiming that Obama said he “will bankrupt the coal industry.” This false claim is the headline of a Newsbusters story — the same right-wing front group that falsely attacked Al Gore using doctored audio clips. This time, the piece is based on an anonymous YouTube video. After being pumped by a top link on the Drudge Report, the right-wing — including the Weekly Standard, Michelle Malkin, and Power Line — went wild and repeated the lie that Obama talked about “bankrupting” the “coal industry.”

In reality, Obama’s statements, while blunt, are neither revelatory nor controversial. At a September 15 townhall meeting in Orlando, FL, McCain warned against building new coal plants:

We’re going to build new plants that generate energy, my friends, we’re going to build them. We’ve got to. There’s an increased demand for it. And it seems to me, it’s going to be coal, which I believe will increase greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, or it’s going to be nuclear, or it’s going to be clean coal technology.

In the San Francisco Chronicle interview , Obama similarly stated that the future of power involves coal:

But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives.

Under either candidate’s cap and trade program, constructing new coal plants that do not employ “clean coal technology” — that is, carbon capture and sequestration technology — would raise costs “dramatically.” Independent analysts have found that new coal plants would “create significant financial risks for shareholders and ratepayers” because of the likely cost of their greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, energy providers will have a financial incentive to pursue alternative energy and energy efficiency. McCain explained the market signal of a cap and trade program in his May 12 speech on climate change:

And the same approach that brought a decline in sulfur dioxide emissions can have an equally dramatic and permanent effect on carbon emissions. Instantly, automakers, coal companies, power plants, and every other enterprise in America would have an incentive to reduce carbon emissions, because when they go under those limits they can sell the balance of permitted emissions for cash. As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy. . . A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy. Those who want clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels will have their opportunity through a new market that rewards those and other innovations in clean energy.

McCain emphasized who the winners under a carbon cap-and-trade system are: “clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels.” The market “incentive,” “reward,” or “signal” is a euphemism that the winners will make money because the losers will pay more. And the losers, above all, are traditional coal plants — no matter who is elected president.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll calls Obama’s quotes a “blockbuster story,” the Corner’s Mark Steyn hyperventilates that this was a “****-me story,” and Hugh Hewitt’s Bill Dyer calls it “madness masquerading as policy.” This video from Jed Lewison puts matters into perspective:

The First Dude, Snowmobilin’ Mainers, And The Divisive Politics Of Karl Rove»

Our guest blogger is Todd Darling, director of the documentary “A Snow Mobile for George,” a tour of deregulation in America. He owns a snow mobile.

As Politico’s Jonathan Martin tells us, “Iron Dog champ Todd Palin makes his direct mail debut in a piece aimed straight at the gut of a rural Mainers.” The letter warns snowmobiling Mainers, “Obama’s Extreme Environmental Policies” could make this “The Last Winter To Ride In Our National Parks?” The Maine Republican Party flier includes this edited quote from a Sierra Club blogger Pat Joseph:

In the end, the point that snowmobiles are loud and obnoxious and polluting seems obvious to everyone save perhaps the person actually astraddle the beast. . . . They just don’t have any business in our national parks.

Todd Palin’s flier dives straight into a barrel of red herrings.

In this flier, Palin is attempting to stoke a culture war between freedom-loving snowmobilers and tree-hugging environmentalists. But snowmobilers care about pollution and preserving the outdoors. And environmentalists love having fun. See how the flier edits the Sierra Club quote? Here’s what that dot-dot-dot eliminated from Pat Joseph’s criticism of snowmobiles in National Parks:

They are also fun. No doubt about it, they’re an absolute blast.

Mr. Palin says his wife and Senator McCain will protect snowmobile access with “practical standards.” But they don’t believe in regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, even though global warming has meant the Iron Dog competitors have raced in the rain — and in 2003, the race was even totally cancelled because of the extreme heat. It’s sure hard to protect the fun of snowmobiling if your “standards” mean the end to snow. More »

Is Palin Using Cheney’s Climate Change Playbook?»

Our guest blogger is Jason Burnett. Burnett was most recently the Associate Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he coordinated energy and climate change policy across the EPA and led the development of greenhouse gases regulations.

As head of climate and energy policy for the Environmental Protection Agency, I witnessed first-hand the dangers of a Vice President who has a disregard for the balance of powers in our Constitution and a disdain for inconvenient facts.

Vice President Cheney has worked hard to cast doubt on the science of climate change. The Vice President’s office wanted my help censoring the Congressional testimony from the Centers for Disease Control to eliminate any references to how climate change endangers human health. I refused. The Vice President’s office later wanted me to water down congressional testimony on the strength of the science by not acknowledging that greenhouse gases “harm” the environment by causing climate change. Again I refused.

Having heard the words “the Vice President’s office is on the phone” many times over the past few years I could not agree more when Senator Joe Biden called them “the eight most dreaded words in the English language” for those trying to uphold our nation’s laws and respect our Constitution.

Given my experience with the dangers of an unaccountable Vice President, it sent shivers down my spine during the Vice Presidential debate when I heard Governor Palin say she’s “thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the Vice President also, if that Vice President so chose to exert it, in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.” A bit more authority than our current Vice President has wrestled away from the President and Congress?

A strong Vice President is a great thing, but that strength should primarily come from being a trusted advisor to the President, not a separate power center somewhere between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch. Governor Palin is fortunate her smile and wink won’t remind voters of Vice President Cheney’s smirk and grimace; maybe people won’t notice that her dismissal of science and views on the power of the office are quite similar to Vice President Cheney’s? More »

The Prepared Text For Sarah Palin’s Love Letter To Big Oil [Updated]»

UPDATE: At Climate Progress, Joe Romm notes that Palin’s prepared remarks make it unambiguous that McCain won’t regulate global warming pollution.

UPDATE II: We’ve updated the text with her speech as delivered. Jed Lewison notes one of her more amusing revisions. Gristmill’s David Roberts calls the speech “bizarre.” Ana Marie Cox describes the travails of the teleprompter operator.

UPDATE III: Former vice president Al Gore will be delivering a true energy policy speech tonight, in a live webcast at 8:30 PM as part of the Energy Action Coalition’s Power Vote campaign for youth climate activism.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) just completed a “major” speech on energy policy, in which she offered no new policy, nor recognized the existence of global warming. She delivered her speech at the headquarters of the Xunlight Corporation in Toledo, Ohio, a producer of flexible thin-film photovoltaic solar panels — despite her earlier mockery of such technology:

Alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.

This hypocritical choice is just following the lead of her running mate. In May, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a speech on global warming at the U.S. headquarters of a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, after decades of opposition to the domestic renewable energy industry.

Below is the text of her prepared remarks — a half-hour love letter to Big Oil. Please note, however, that Palin went off-script repeatedly, throwing in such catchphrases from the campaign as “Drill, baby, drill,” “He’s got the scars to prove it,” “Maverick of the Senate,” and several digs at journalists.

UPDATE: Palin’s off-script remarks are in red.

Thank you all very much. I appreciate the hospitality of Xunlight Energy, and all the people of Toledo. The folks at Xunlight are doing great work for this community and our country. I’m so excited about this, Thank you for your hospitality, again doctor, thank you. Good, good things being said about this corporation as you’re progressing with the solar panels and understanding alternative energy sources. So necessary as a piece of the puzzle that we’re working on. I know my state of Alaska is certainly working on this. All that we can do to put the pieces together to allow our nation to become energy secure.

More »

Heritage Foundation Compares New Deal To Nazi-Soviet ‘Collectivism’»

The Heritage Foundation, a once proud bastion of conservative thought, is now resorting to absurd historical revisionism and mentions of “Nazi Germany” to attack needed progressive policies. Heritage blogger Nick Loris responds to the United Nations Environmental Program’s Green Economy Initiative and the Center for American Progress’s Green Recovery program with this absurd rant:

The United Nations is proposing an environmental ‘New Deal’ that would “be similar to Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal which helped the US recover from the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

First, the reality is that FDR’s New Deal did not help the U.S. recover from the Great Depression but simply made things worse. Second, the only thing a green ‘New Deal’ will do is lead us down a Green Road to Serfdom. (Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is a telling portrayal of what collectivism in the Soviet Unio