Will-fully Ignorant

We could easily ask: Washington Post editors, are you idiots? In publishing George F. Will’s Carbon Power Brokers, the Post editorial board is complicit in the dissemination of deceptiveness and falsehoods surrounding policy making on what likely will be the most significant issue of the 21st century. The Post published this deceptive drivel the day before the US Senate begins debating the Lieberman-Warner Climate inSecurity Act. While, clearly, I have quite serious problems with the CiSA and do not support its passage, this debate and discussion should be on the basis of fact and truth, rather then deceit and truthiness.

As an example of a direct falsehood, Will writes that John McCain supports the bill. Oops, BUZZ, false.  John McCain has mouthed some strong words on Global Warming but has managed to be AWOL on every vote that matters when it comes to clean technology and environmental issues in the past year. His staff has already announced that this won’t be an exception to that rule.  John McCain doesn’t support Lieberman-Warner (his two biggest Senate supporters) and won’t be there to vote on the bill. McFlip McFlop McSame McCain‘s deceptive sleight of hand continues: listen to what I say, don’t watch what I do when it comes to the reality of Global Warming. That is, unless you’re in the reality-denial world, then ignore what I say and watch what I do. There seems to be an expression for this. What is it? Oh, yeah, “McCain wants to have his cake and eat it too.”  To share that cake with George W Bush no matter what storms hit America’s shores.

Join me for a stroll through Will’s willful ignorance …

Yale study: Green Economy = Growing Economy

Terra Daily reports on a Yale meta study looking at the economic impacts of a carbon-constrained economy.  The results:

“As Congress prepares to debate new legislation to address the threat of climate change, opponents claim that the costs of adopting the leading proposals would be ruinous to the U.S. economy. The world’s leading economists who have studied the issue say that’s wrong – and you can find out for yourself,” said Robert Repetto, professor in the practice of economics and sustainable development at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies …

Check out See For Yourself, an interactive website which enables users to examine studies, their assumptions, and results.

Money talks. Coal walks?

It isn’t too often that I turn to the pages of the Wall Street Journal for good news, but let today be a little different.   As per Wall Street Shows Skepticism over Coal, major banks, working with some environmental organizations (including, the much maligned Environmental Defense),

are imposing new environmental standards that will make it harder for companies to get financing to build coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

Global Warming Impact: An agenda item for 2008 and beyond?

The Lieberman-Warner American Climate InSecurity Act (A-CISA) has, as its core centerpiece, a poorly structured Cap and Trade program, inadequate for achieiving required reductions in US (and Global) GreenHouse Gase (GHG) emissions while giving away $500 billion (and likely more) to serial polluters, making the task of reducing America’s fossil-fuel addiction that much more costly and that much more difficult.

Rather than a Cap and Trade with mass give-away of permits (40% over the first twenty years), a better structure is a Cap-Auction-and-Trade (CAT), with 100% of pollution permits auctioned, with the resources being used to speed pollution reduction and lower the inequities that such a program will inevitably foster.

Another route exists, placing a carbon fee on pollution: directly charging a fee on the polluter.  And, using the raised funds (again) for reducing inequities and speeding reductions in pollution.

A CAT has the benefit of some certainty as to maximum GHG emissions and certainty in reducing emissions.  A carbon fee as the benefit of greater certainty as to financial resources but less certainty as to total emissions.

Truth be told, a better path (one not in consideration in A-CISA) would be a combination of the two: A CAT combined with some based level carbon fee.  This diary discusses a Global Warming Impact Fee.

Energy Bookshelf: From the President’s Desk

Freedom from Oil …

This is an agenda, an objective that all Americans should support. (Okay, maybe not some oil company CEOs …) 

And, this is a good key agenda item for next President, to move past the current occupant of the Oval Office’s identification of our “oil addiction” to actual action to fight the addition.

And, this is the core concept for David Sandalow in his excellent Freedom From Oil:  How the Next President can end the United States’ Oil Addiction.  And, while not perfect, Sandalow’s roadmap merits consideration as we chart a path toward a better future.

Getting Electricity Right: Three key regulatory challenges

We face a perfect storm when it comes to Global Warming and energy issues. There are solution paths that can help us navigate these dangerous seas, yet often the technology seems to be the least of our challenges. On October 30th, the Brookings Institution Hamilton Project had a forum entitled:  A Climate of Change: Economic Approaches to Reforming Energy and Protecting the Environment.   The event was rich, in a number of ways, with the first session focused on comparing strengths and weaknesses of Cap and Trade (or, well, Cap, Auction, Trade) and a Carbon Tax.  In shorthand:

• Cap, Auction, Trade provides some certainty as to carbon reduction levels but less certainty over revenues.
• Carbon Tax provides more certainty over tax revenue with less certainty in terms of degree of carbon reductions.

Now, personally, a CAT (the CAT’s meow, one could say) might be the right prinicipal path, with some lower direct carbon fee for some revenue certainty.  But, this is besides the point of this post.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the morning were the comments by Kathleen McGinty,  Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Environmental Protection and Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and head of the White House Office on Environmental Policy under President Bill Clinton. (See this 2005 Grist interview with her.) McGinty spoke to three “realities of the wholesale and retail electricity markets” and what that mean “in terms of actually seeing cleaner power” generation.  She highlighted these three to point out that a a price on carbon is a necessary, but not sufficient, means to change toward cleaner power generation.   These three regulatory, procedural, policy changes require changing or the move to clean power will be significantly handicapped. And, yet, these occur under the radar scope for nearly all citizens and, probably, most political leaders.

Comments to John Dingell

As noted in Dingell: A dingbat proposal re Global Warming?, Representative John Dingell (D-auto industry?) has put out his thoughts re a potential carbon tax and is asking for comments.   After the fold are the comments that I have submitted (so far) for committee consideration.

Dingell: A dingbat proposal re Global Warming?

Representative John Dingell (D-auto industry?) has put out his thoughts re a potential carbon tax and is asking for comments.  Dingell stated that

Because of the complexity and importance of the issue, this is the right time to open up a public discourse on a carbon emissions fee bill.

Representative Dingell has, well, been far from a friend to sensible energy policy, fighting CAFE standards and many other elements that would move the nation toward a better energy policy.

Yet … yet … let us take Dingell at face value (for a moment) and examine his concepts.

Is Lieberman changing his tune on pollution credit give-away?

Joe Lieberman has become persona non-grata for many liberal, even his name might drive some to hypertension.  For many, it is a name all too often connected with mistaken paths, whether on Iraq or Iraq or Habeas Corpus or …

Is this name about to take a shift and take a leading position in the US Senate on what is, quite likely, the defining issue of the century?

At the moment, there is the Lieberman-Warner bill on Global Warming.  It is, well, marginal and focus on seven years, rather than seven generations.  

Has Joe changed his mind on a critical issue, suggesting that he is placing Americans (and the globe’s) interests before the concerns of special interests?