Adieu, Adieu, to You and You and You

By David Roberts

All right, Nationeers, this is where we say our goodbyes. It's been a pleasure and a privilege -- thanks again to the magazine for extending the invitation.

There are several things I didn't get a chance to write about during my brief month here, things I wish got broader play in the progressive community. Since I won't have a chance to argue them in detail, I'll just baldly state a few, and you'll have to trust me (or better yet, come read Grist!):

• A clean, green world does not mean sacrifice. If we can create a society where we no longer depend on toxic energy sources, where we live in dense, walkable communities served by transit, where we no longer stripmine soil and cover our food crops with toxic chemicals ... that society will be more pleasant to live in, more prosperous, more healthy, more equitable, with a greater sense of community, interconnection, and local self-reliance. It will be a large investment, yes, but the best investment we ever make. We should be pursuing it not out of fear but out of the desire to give our children a better world. Aspiration, not guilt, will get us there.
• We don't need to wait on new technology. Everything we need to reduce this country's greenhouse gas emissions to zero, while retaining a high standard of living, already exists. The barriers are social and political, not technological.
• Renewable energy is ready. It is an unfortunate part of conventional wisdom that renewable energy "just isn't ready," because it's too expensive, or because the sun isn't always shining and the wind isn't always blowing, or because you'd have to cover all over the southwest with solar panels, or blah blah blah. It's just not so. Again, the barriers are political and social. We can meet the energy challenges of the country if we move on four fronts:
  • Use government investment to encourage large-scale renewable deployment. The more power plants are built, the more solar panels and geothermal heat pumps installed, the more materials and operations costs fall. This is already proving true in the solar market.
  • Move aggressively on demand reduction. This can be done through efficiency, conservation, or land-use changes. There is enormous untapped potential. When you hear someone cite a huge figure on energy use and say, "renewable energy can't produce that much," don't accept the frame. Producing energy is only half the goal; the other half is to use it more intelligently.
  • Get serious about energy storage. The answer to intermittency (the sun doesn't always shine, etc.) is storage -- holding energy in reserve so it can be deployed when it's needed. Batteries are part of this, but so are ultracapacitors, compressed air, flywheels, molten salt, pumped hydro, and on and on. Even with the pittance the gov't is spending on it, the private sector is rapidly making progress. But not rapidly enough. We need some space-race type attention to this.
  • Build a smart grid. The U.S. electrical grid is decaying. For the same money it would take to repair it, we could make it smart, adaptable, and responsive, thus enabling far greater penetration for renewables, far more quickly.
• Liquid fuel is a dead end. There are frantic efforts underway to replace oil and gasoline with alternative liquid fuels -- mainly ethanol, but also liquid coal (diesel derived from coal). As two new studies in Science make clear (and they are only the latest of many), biofuels are a net contributor to global warming, not to mention an environmental nightmare of deforestation, chemical-heavy monoculture crops, and third-world exploitation. And as every sane person knows by now, liquid coal is horrendous. The answer is to reserve liquid fuel for niche uses -- some heating, some supplementing of large transport, some local applications -- and otherwise electrify personal transportation.
• In other words, URGE²: Use Renewably Generated Electricity, Efficiently. That's the ticket to a green world. Spread the news.
• Coal is the enemy of the human race. I know I said that already, but it's worth repeating.

All these are discussed in much greater detail, on a daily basis, at my home base, Grist. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or our emails, bookmark the site, and hell (might as well go big), donate to help us keep going. We are, after all, a small, scrappy independent media outlet. The world needs those, right?

I hope this won't be the last time y'all hear from me. Until we meet again: peace.

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March 1, 2008

Climate Policy, Auctions, and Economic Justice: Part Two

By David Roberts

In my last post I described a carbon cap-and-trade system and raised the basic question of who pays and who benefits. Here I'll review some of the arguments in favor of auctioning, rather than giving away, emission permits under such a system.

Economic justice

A cap-and-trade system with no auctions -- call it "cap-and-giveaway" (PDF) -- amounts to a highly regressive tax. Poor and working class families spend a greater portion of their income on energy and will be hardest hit when energy providers raise prices.

The regressivity can be reduced and even eliminated if the feds auction the permits and use the revenue wisely. One way to do so is to straight up buy people off. (A proposal called "cap-and-dividend" would simply divide up the auction revenue equally among every citizen, along the lines of Alaska's oil fund.) Another way is to reduce other regressive taxes (like the payroll tax). There are other options as well.

You might argue, as the coal industry does, that if permits are given away to utilities, they will pass the profits along to consumers in the form of lower prices. You might claim, in that sense, that giving away permits is more progressive.

You would, however, be wrong. The fact is that utilities are going to raise energy prices regardless.

It has to do with features of the electricity market -- for more on this, see Congressional testimony from Ian Bowles, Mass. Secretary of Energy & Environmental Affairs, and Dallas Burtraw, Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future. Said Bowles:

It is tempting to think that, if you make generators pay for the emissions they produce, it will drive electricity prices up, but if you give allowances away for free, it won't. But it's not true. The price impact is the same either way. (my emphasis)

This isn't a theoretical concern -- the experiment has already been run, in the European carbon trading system, and sure enough corporations profited and prices rose anyway.

To repeat: Under any system that puts a price on carbon, energy bills are going to go up. The difference is that in a system with auctions, gov't will have the resources to cushion the blow to the most vulnerable.

That is as simple and urgent a question of economic justice as you're likely to find.

Coalition building

Some folks treat permit allocation as if it's a side issue, tangential to the success of the core emission reduction system. That is extremely short-sighted. The success of a climate system depends as much on social support as it does on proper technocratic design.

If people at the low end of the income scale feel like they're getting screwed, the middle class sees their bills go up with no tangible benefit, and big corporations make out like bandits, the public will turn on the program and punish the politicians who passed or supported it.

The only way to build a broad, sustainable base of support for the climate fight is to insure that both the costs and the benefits are distributed equitably. We've got to play the long game.

Macroeconomic impact

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, in a report called "Approaches to Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions" (PDF), not only would auctioning permits serve economic justice, it would also reduce the total aggregate economic cost of meeting emission targets. Here's what CBO head Peter Orszag said in his testimony to Congress:

Selling allowances could also significantly lessen the macroeconomic impact of a CO2 cap. Evidence suggests that the macroeconomic cost of a 15 percent cut in U.S. emissions (not counting any benefits from mitigating climate change) might be more than twice as large if policymakers gave allowances away than if they sold the allowances and used the revenue to lower current taxes on labor or capital that discourage economic activity, such as income or payroll taxes. (my emphasis)

The CBO, along with many energy wonks on the left and right alike (see: Pigou Club), says that a carbon tax would be the most efficient, lowest total cost option for reducing emissions. At least for the time being, a carbon tax is politically impossible, so it's worth noting that a cap-and-trade system with 100% auctions is functionally identical to a carbon tax (at least in a perfect world -- one of the arguments for a tax is its simplicity and transparency, which a complicated system like cap-and-trade is unlikely to match).

In short: Given a cap-and-trade system, 100% auction is the most socially just and economically efficient option.

The political playing field

Now we leave wonkville and enter the grubby, eternally disappointing realm of politics. Let's take a look at the political state of play on the auction question.

Both Obama and Clinton have come out in favor of 100% auctions, and include it in the plans released by their campaigns. This is one of the great and under-acknowledged acts of political chutzpah on the Democratic side of the aisle in this election, thanks largely to the trailblazing courage of John Edwards. (If you'd told me two years ago that every contender for the Democratic nomination would support 80% reductions by 2050 via 100% auctions, I would have laughed. Bitterly. It's worth pausing to note how far, how fast, the debate has moved.)

But campaign plans are not bills. In Congress, Obama and Clinton have been less coherent and less courageous. Both have signed on as co-sponsors, not only of Lieberman & Warner's relatively weak America's Climate Security Act (ACSA), but of the even weaker McCain-Lieberman bill, and simultaneously the much stronger, gold-standard Sanders-Boxer bill. They are sponsoring indiscriminately, playing all the angles.

The bill that actually has a chance of passing is ACSA, and it is at the center of a rather heated dispute in the green community. Congressional Dems, including the presidential candidates, have been virtually unanimous in their support for the bill. Sen. Sanders half-heartedly tried to strengthen the bill in committee, but expressed support for it even when his amendments were rejected. Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment & Public Works Committee, called voting the bill out of committee "the greatest legislative accomplishment of my political career of thirty years." Given the brick wall of obstructionism the Dems have faced in the Senate, they are palpably hungry for a public victory going into campaign season. They want this bill, badly.

Greens aren't so excited, noting several serious flaws in the bill. The targets are on the low-end of acceptable and the bill doesn't cover the full economy, but the main objection is that it is frontloaded with grandfathered permits and would, according to an analysis by Friends of the Earth (PDF), offer some $1 trillion in giveaways to fossil fuel industries between now and 2050.

FoE has launched an ad campaign urging legislators to Fix It or Ditch It. The group was out on its own for a while -- it even got badmouthed by Boxer -- but has recently gotten some support from the Sierra Club. Most green groups are tepid at best on the bill, except for establishment-friendly Environmental Defense, which has staunchly supported the bill (and slagged FoE behind closed doors). As for the green netroots, it's fair to say most folks oppose the bill as currently constituted and expect it to be further weakened during floor debate.

Political tactics

Here are a few key tactical questions:

1. Could a better bill get through next year, when there will likely be a larger Dem majority in Congress and possibly a Dem president (or, failing that, a reasonably climate-friendly Republican)?
2. Would Bush sign anything that gets through Congress this session? (Don't laugh -- lots of his big corporate contributors are getting nervous, thinking this might be the best chance they'll ever have to shape climate legislation.)
3. If a weak bill is passed, what are the chances it will be revisited and revised in coming years?

Groups like ED think getting the process started is important. Legislative staffs need to study up on this stuff; the details need to be hashed out; supporters and detractors need to be sussed out and put on record. ED has argued that greens shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, that the political situation will be largely the same next year anyway, and that the price of waiting is too high (delaying the start of the program means faster, steeper cuts will be required).

Others emphasize the worst case scenario: the bill gets further weakened on the floor, to the point that Republicans are willing to pass it and Bush is willing to sign it into law. Suffice to say, it's virtually axiomatic that anything Bush would sign would be awful.

Then we'd be stuck with a crappy bill, and once climate is checked off the national priority list, it's going to be extremely difficult to work up the will to revisit it any time soon. That's why FoE and others are willing to hold the line this year and wait until next year to get a bill. It is vitally important that this bill be designed well -- we're rapidly running out of time for second chances.

One thing worth noting: Big Coal is gearing up to launch an enormous PR campaign to defeat climate legislation. The core of the campaign will be Harry & Louise-style fear mongering: a climate bill will raise your energy costs and put you out on the street, not to mention your sweet-faced elderly auntie. Meanwhile, behind closed doors coal executives -- and the legislators they own -- are lobbying heavily against auctions, the one policy mechanism that could prevent the hit to consumers. Classy.

What you should do

Sorry if all this was a little complicated and discursive. To simplify matters, here's your Enviro-Blogger Expert Advice^©:

Support Friends of the Earth.

Call your legislators today and tell them you think 100% of the permits under a cap-and-trade system should be auctioned. If they don't know what that means, explain it (or send them to these posts). Tell them that if they cannot eliminate or at least substantially reduce the giveaways to big polluters in ACSA, they should be willing to let the bill go down to a Republican filibuster or a Bush veto. Congress can return to the issue next session, with a strengthened hand and a supportive president.

Some folks call this approach dippy idealism, willing to sacrifice tangible progress to dreams of the Perfect Bill. I admit this line of criticism confuses me. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture here: 100% auction in a cap-and-trade system is better for the working class, better for the general public, and, in a macroeconomic sense, cheaper. There is no substantive policy rationale for giving away permits. The only reason to do so is to buy the support of fossil fuel industries and the legislators who represent them.

Now, I get it: politics is politics. Some bribing of big corporate players will likely end up being necessary. Compromise is part of the job ... if you're a politician.

But concerned citizens are not politicians. It's not their job to compromise, certainly not before the battle is joined. It is the job of the grassroots to push, and keep pushing -- to speak up for constituencies that have no political voice, to defend those who don't have lobbyists in D.C.

As it stands, the details of climate legislation are being hashed out by lobbyists and legislators behind closed doors. In that unhealthy situation, yes, a lot of horse trading is inevitable.

But if a genuine public groundswell arises and publicizes the issue, pushing a simple message (100% auctions!), the dynamic can change.

This is crunch time -- time to call your friends, your neighbors, your legislators. Time to make noise. It is long past time for the progressive grassroots to take up this fight in earnest.

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February 29, 2008

Climate Policy, Auctions, and Economic Justice: Part One

By David Roberts

Good morning, class! Today we're going to talk about auctioning emission permits under a carbon cap-and-trade system!

[groans, sound of spitball hitting blackboard, shoes scuffling]

Wait, lemme try again:

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February 28, 2008

Mr. Reid, Meet Mr. Godwin

By David Roberts

Oy, this is frustrating.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave an extraordinary speech to open the Renewable Energy World Conference in Las Vegas. He talked up the opportunities of a green economy, laid out concrete policies for getting there, and blasted the coal industry for standing in the way.

Unfortunately, just before the speech he gave an interview to the Las Vegas Sun in which he accused the coal industry of using "the old Hitler lie: when you say things long enough people start believing them."

Oops! A Hitler comparison. There's the headline. There's the story. Everything else gets washed away. And sure enough, his staffers went into full scramble and there he is today in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, apologizing:

"I never said they were as bad as Hitler," the senator said in an interview last week. "I said what they're doing is creating the big lie that coal is clean, and that's not true. That (tactic) goes back to the Nazi era, and I'm not saying they're following anything to do with the Nazis, but that's where it started."

For the record, the "Big Lie" notion started out in Hitler's Mein Kampf (he accused the Jews of it), was later given a slightly different spin by Joseph Goebbels, and turned up several times in George Orwell's 1984. I believe Lenin also gave it his own spin. By now it's fairly well known and accepted by social scientists that something repeated often enough -- even if some of the repetition is done in the course of refutation -- will come to be believed by the public.

In fact, it's so well known that if I were a politician referring to the Big Lie theory, I wouldn't bring Hitler into it at all. I advise Mr. Reid to adopt that same strategy from now on.

Anyway, here's a longer section from Reid's speech (PDF), in which he beats coal about the head and shoulders:

And many thousands of miles from far away China, yes here in Nevada, the Ely Energy Center coal project is over budget and experts say it will wind up costing well over $4 billion -- if the power company even builds it at all.

Once that massive construction bill is paid, the plant would cough and sputter out dirty power that will not only pollute the earth, but cost consumers 12 or 13 cents per kilowatt-hour. More -- much more -- than they are paying now.

And that's not all. On top of the high price of coal power, studies show that there are hidden costs of $30 per megawatt hour or more -- like respiratory illness, radiation, and hazardous waste.

A UNLV study found that solar, wind, geothermal and biomass projects would create more than $20 billion in business for Nevada over the next 25 years.

Each new megawatt of geothermal power creates up to ten new jobs.

Each new megawatt of solar-thermal and wind power create at least 6 new jobs.

If just half of Nevada's potential clean energy resources were developed, 22,000 new jobs in the next decade would be created.

Does coal compare? Not even close.

The $30 per megawatt hour of hidden environmental and health costs is just the tip of the dirty iceberg.

Fossil fuels are contributing to global warming. We're experiencing severe and unpredictable weather, our ice caps are melting at a record pace, and as we are seeing in Lake Mead, our water sources are in danger all over America.

Big energy companies see these warning signs as clearly as we, but their solution -- build more coal plants.

If the current proposals for new Western coal plants are built, they would consume Page 9 of 12 114 million gallons of water per day.

That's enough water to meet the needs of 591,000 homes.

The only type of power that uses more water than coal is nuclear.

What is the daily discharge from a coal fired plant? It is waste, contaminated with unsafe levels of arsenic, lead and other toxins -- other poisons.

This foul discharge is in our lakes, streams and water tables. This is the water we drink.

This Nevada coal plan is just one example. The damage caused by fossil fuels, of course, is not limited to Nevada or the West.

Our country burns 1 billion tons of coal every year. That produces 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Coal plants release sixty varieties of hazardous air pollutants, among them lead, chromium, arsenic and mercury.

Is it any wonder that tens of millions of Americans live in areas that fail to meet the EPA's air quality standards?

Is it any wonder that hundreds of thousands of Americans every year suffer from asthma attacks, respiratory problems and heart attacks, all from the dirty air caused by coal plants?

Is today -- is tomorrow -- the time to invest in new coal for electricity plants -- the answer is a resounding no.

We've all seen the advertising campaigns for a mythological substance called "clean coal." We know there's no such thing. There is no clean coal, only cleaner coal. Less dirty coal.

In Congress for more than a quarter of a century, I have supported research for a cleaner coal. After billions of our taxpayer dollars -- limited progress has been Page 10 of 12 made.

I will continue my support -- but if anything good comes from this, it will be many tomorrows from this February day.

Vice President Gore said that -- "We ... need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide."

That means for now, no new coal plants. Let us -- in Nevada -- follow the admonition of the Nobel and Oscar-winning Vice President.

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February 26, 2008

Skeptic Zombie Killed...Again

By David Roberts

Long-time greens are painfully aware that the arguments of global warming skeptics are like zombies in a '70s B movie. They get shot, stabbed, and crushed, over and over again, but they just keep lurching to their feet and staggering forward. That's because -- news flash! -- climate skepticism is an ideological, not a scientific, position, and as such it bears only a tenuous relationship to scientific rules of evidence and inference.

One of the most resilient skeptic tropes is the notion that back in the '60s and '70s the scientific community predicted that the globe would cool in the coming century. "Those scientists ... first it's one trendy theory, then it's the opposite. You just can't trust 'em!"

(Incidentally, this is one of the many skeptic arguments debunked by Coby Beck in our definitive How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide. If you're looking for ammo when talking to your local skeptic, bookmark it.)

Now comes a new study showing, once and for all, that:

• there was no such consensus in the scientific community -- quite the opposite, and
• there was no such consensus in the popular press.

Forthcoming in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the study "surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. [Study co-author Thomas] Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends." Added Peterson, "I was surprised that global warming was so dominant in the peer-reviewed literature of the time."

As for the popular press, says Peterson, "even cursory review of the news media coverage of the issue reveals that, just as there was no consensus at the time among scientists, so was there also no consensus among journalists."

So, that's that. The zombie's dead, right? [Ominous bumping, shuffling sound in background.]

(In addition to Peterson, who works at the National Climatic Data Center, the survey was co-authored by William Connolley, who blogs at Stoat and occasionally at RealClimate, and John Fleck, a science journalist who blogs at InkStain.)

If you care about the scientific issues involved, read on:

Insofar as there were scattered predictions of cooling in the '70s, they had to do with what's called "global dimming" -- the tendency of particulate pollution (soot) to block solar radiation a cool the earth's surface temperature. Since human beings have been pumping more and more pollution up into the atmosphere for centuries now, global dimming has become a significant and measurable phenomenon. It is, for example, largely responsible for the leveling off and even dropping of global temperatures in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. For a while, some scientists thought that the dimming effect would outweigh the greenhouse effect in the long run, leading to aggregate global cooling.

It didn't work out that way. A couple of papers in Science in 2005 showed that dimming had halted and reversed by 1990, mainly due to the reduction in particulate pollution in developed countries. (Ironically, that victory over pollution may now accelerate the effects of greenhouse warming. D'oh!)

For a while, a few (not most) scientists thought that one set of factors would outweigh another. We now know that they were badly wrong. This isn't some sort of embarrassing gotcha. It's progress. It's how human beings figure stuff out. It's how science works.

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February 21, 2008

Conservationists Give McCain a Big Fat Zero

By David Roberts

Today, the League of Conservation Voters released its annual scorecard, which rates legislators based on their votes on issues of environmental significance. The LCV scorecard has its critics, but it's nonetheless become something of a gold standard when measuring how "green" a lawmaker is.

A couple of big stories emerge from this year's scorecard.

The first speaks for itself:

• Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.): 67%
• Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY): 73%
• Sen. John McCain (D-Ariz.): 0%

No, that's not a typo. McCain scored a big fat zilch, mainly because missed every single vote LCV scored, including the big votes around the energy bill. (For more on that, see my post on McCain's phantom climate credibility.) McCain was the only Senator to miss every LCV vote -- he was outvoted by legislators who were out sick most of the year, even some who died this year.

If you're dead silent, is it still straight talk?

The other story is that, in LCV's words, "elections have consequences." In 2006 LCV targeted a "dirty dozen" lawmakers. Nine of those lawmakers were defeated. How do their replacements rate? This is from LCV's press release:

• Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA), who scored 90 percent in 2007, replaced Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), whose lifetime score was 7 percent.
• Sen. John Tester (D-MT), who scored 80 percent, replaced Sen. Conrad Burns, (R-MT), whose lifetime score was 5 percent.
• Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-AZ), who scored 100 percent, replaced Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), whose lifetime score was 7 percent.
• Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who scored 100 percent, defeated Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), whose lifetime score was 15 percent.
• Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who scored 73 percent, replaced Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO), whose lifetime score was 15 percent.
• Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), who scored 75 percent, replaced Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC), whose lifetime score was 5 percent.
• Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), who scored 100 percent, replaced Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), whose lifetime score was 10 percent.
• Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), who scored 87 percent, replaced Sen. George Allen (R-VA), whose lifetime score was 1 percent.

Congrats to LCV for their tireless work on this stuff.

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February 21, 2008

Another Bad Week for Coal

By David Roberts

Regular readers of Grist know that coal is the enemy of the human race. They may also know that coal is on the ropes and, despite its recent PR blitz, in something of panic. Let's take a look at some news from just the past week or so.

A new report from gas, coal, and power consulting firm Wood MacKensie says that "the rate of coal plant cancellations accelerated during 2007 to the point that more than 50% of the new coal capacity announced since 2000 has now been canceled." That the trend will likely continue, especially given that fact that the cost of building a power plant has gone up by 130% since 2000.

Among the blocked coal plants is the infamous Sunflower plant in Kansas, which had its air permit denied late last year based on its projected CO2 emissions. Since then, Sunflower has done everything it can to get around the decision, including jingoistic attacks on Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius and a laughable coal-friendly "compromise" offered by its buddies in the legislature. (That bill passed today, but Sebelius says she'll veto and there aren't enough votes to override her.) Now, it appears, they've resorted to outright bribery: Sunflower says it will give $2.5 million over 10 years to Kansas State University ... but only if the plant is approved. Classy.

Then there's the dirty coal plant planned for Ohio by American Municipal Power. The NRDC made a public records request and got a hold of an internal AMP report (PDF) which is, to put it lightly, embarrassing. According to AMP's own numbers, the cost of construction has risen 180% in just over two years. The initial estimate put it at $1.2 billion -- it's now at $3.3 billion and rising.

Thanks to the 50-year contract AMP will sign with the state, Ohio ratepayers will be on the hook for any costs that arise from dealing with CO2 -- costs that are all but inevitable given pending legislation. AMP estimates the costs at $73 million a year, but a report (PDF) from independent research firm Synapse Energy Economics puts the costs at between $287 and $500 million a year. Oops!

In short: ratepayers in Ohio are going to get screwed 10 ways to Sunday by politically connected coal barons who haven't bothered to assess the renewable alternatives. Think Ohioans will sit still for it?

(If you'd like to read much, much more about coal plant cancellations, check this Sourcewatch article or Coal Moratorium Now.)

Maybe coal can survive if it's "clean"? Maybe. But an official at Royal Dutch Shell said last week that carbon prices would have to reach about $100/tonne -- three times current levels -- before investment in carbon capture and storage would make economic sense. Ah well.

Does all this churn amount to a necessary and laudable transition? No sir ... it's a crisis! At least that's what the CEO of American Electric Power -- a coal-heavy utility -- says. Other utilities, however, are getting on the energy-efficiency stick. And it's a good thing: Internationally renowned environmental analyst Lester Brown says that coal's time is up and that Wall Street will increasingly turn against it. (In this he agrees with notorious lefty enviro rag the Wall Street Journal.)

Coal disagrees:

The coal industry shot back, accusing Brown of exaggerating coal's contribution to climate change and ignoring the economic necessity of power generation.

"We're economically necessary." Is that the kind of argument people should have to make? Shouldn't it be self-evident if it's true? Isn't it contradicted by coal's ongoing economic failures?

And should it really come coupled with a request for massive government subsidies?

So there you have it: just in the past week, elite opinion against coal has accelerated, two major coal projects have run into embarrassments, and an independent report has confirmed that things are only going to get worse. Now you know why Big Coal has been sponsoring presidential debates, putting Santas on corners around D.C., and pouring millions of dollars into a PR campaign. It knows its time has passed.

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February 20, 2008

Mountaintop Removal Mining: Like a Third-World Autocracy

By David Roberts

Mountaintop-removal mining -- known rather antiseptically as "MTR mining," or by the industry itself as "mountaintop mining" -- is the kind of thing most people think only happens in dystopic Third World autocracies. I can't count the number of times I've described it to people only to be told they "can't believe it happens in America."

Well, it does -- the resource curse is just as true domestically. Here's how it works:

Mountain ridges and peaks are clear-cut, stripped of all trees and other flora. Explosives are buried underground, and enormous blasts dislodge millions of tons of rock, dirt, soil, and animal and plant life. That "overburden" is then carted away or dumped into the stream and creek beds in the mountain hollows below, destroying or polluting thousands of miles of running water. Huge 20-story-tall draglines pull away the rock to expose coal seams. Similarly huge machines then yank the coal out and dump the remaining waste down into those streams.

This has all, unsurprisingly, been accelerated by President Bush, who received enormous contributions from the coal industry in his 2000 race and has fought unstintingly for it every since. After judges smacked down the notion that hundreds of tons of waste counts as "fill," the Bush administration issued a new rule (in violation of the Clean Water Act) to redefine it. The legal issues are up in the air now, but Bush got what he wanted: eight more years of mining.

So, yeah: we are literally blowing up the Smoky Mountains -- the oldest mountain range in the US.

We're also destroying some of the US's oldest indigenous communities in rural Appalachians where families have been on the same patch of land for generations. They are showered with toxic dust. Their water is polluted. Occasionally, "slurry ponds" -- standing pools of toxic sludge produced when the coal is cleaned -- break out of their walls and flood towns below. Here's one such slurry pond, perched precariously above Marsh Fork Elementary School (you can see it in the lower left):

(photo: Vivian Stockman)

Their houses shake as huge coal trucks careen up and down narrow mining roads. If they protest, they are bullied and intimidated by coal companies and often their own neighbors. Mining execs, like the loathsome Don Blankenship, buy off state judges and politicians.

And despite coal company rhetoric, residents of rural Appalachia are not compensated with jobs or economic development. The heavy use of explosives and large machinery has steadily reduced the number of jobs in the mining sector, and every community that's hosted it has been left poorer, not richer, when the coal is gone.

This is all done in the name of cheap electricity. Your cheap electricity. Feel good about that?

Anyway, I could go on (and on and on). If you're interested in learning more, here are some resources:

• Erik Reece wrote the definitive, heartbreaking piece on MTR.
• Here's a series of reports on indigenous resistance to MTR.
• Here's a photo essay on MTR's victims.
• ILoveMountains.org is a great hub for info and activism.
• The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OHVEC) does great work fighting MTR led by folks on the ground.
• Check Appalachian Voices on some common myths about MTR.
• Mountain Justice Summer trains activists to fight MTR, as does the Southern Energy Network.

And -- finally! -- for your amusement, I bring you some commercials aired recently in rural West Virginia by Walker/Cat, a company that makes heavy machinery for coal mining operations.

Here, Miss Bug explains that heavens no, blowing up mountains, dumping the rubble in streams, and covering the result with a thin layer of soil and grass monoculture doesn't "bug" her at all, ha ha!

In fact, life fairly blossoms in the wake of MTR!

Miss Bug's husband Mr. Bug is "bugged out" about activist judges. After all, he doesn't need electricity. Do you?

Miners are almost artistic in their use of equipment to blow up mountains and dump the rubble in streams.

After all, you dirty hippies don't even know where your electricity comes from!

That's only scratching the surface. There are more.

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February 19, 2008

John McCain and the Environment

By David Roberts

This is part 2 of my post on John McCain's easy ride from the media on climate change.

Conservative solutions

Perhaps you think that McCain has gone AWOL on Congressional green votes simply because he's a conservative. After all, most recent climate and energy legislation has been put forward by progressives (despite all of it garnering Republican votes, sometimes a lot of them).

Nope. There are plenty of things a libertarian-leaning leader could do on climate: meaningfully reduce counterproductive energy subsidies; reform utility regulation to introduce competition, incentivize efficiency, and reduce the traditional utility bias toward large, capital-intensive centralized power projects; change or eliminate outdated environmental regulations that hamper energy innovation and the growth of the solar and wind industries; reduce trade barriers to encourage the flow of advanced energy technologies to developing countries.

McCain rarely opposes any of that stuff, particularly in his rhetoric. But he hasn't done anything about it, or shown signs of having put much thought into it.

Understanding

Ultimately what a president needs more than anything is an understanding of the issue: the highest benefit and lowest costs solutions, and the way to tweak American economic rules and institutions to encourage those solutions.

McCain doesn't even seem to understand the one solution he has offered, cap-and-trade. In the Republican debate in Florida, he denied that his cap-and-trade program included a mandatory cap on carbon. (One wonders what he thought that first word was doing in there.) He has said he won't support a cap-and-trade bill unless it includes extra support for nuclear power (because nuclear power is low-carbon), not seeming to grok the fact that the whole point of a cap-and-trade program is to raise prices on carbon, offering a de facto subsidy to all low-carbon options.

More broadly, as has now become conventional wisdom, McCain just doesn't seem all that interested or invested in domestic policy. He himself has admitted that he doesn't understand economic issues very well. In an area of policymaking where the president will be beset with industries rent-seeking and think tankers offering every flavor of bogus miracle cure, that is a recipe for wasted effort and ineffective leadership.

International solutions

To his credit, McCain has said that one of his international priorities would be working with other countries to fight climate change. Unfortunately, he also parrots the conservative line that he'll sign no treaty unless China and India are involved. But the brute fact of the matter is that the U.S. bears the lion's share of the responsibility for the climate change that's already occurred and, thanks to the time lag of the atmospheric system, the climate change that will occur for the next 20 years. America is also the richest and most dynamic country on the planet, the one best positioned to create solutions. Pulling China and India into the fold is an important goal, but it will happen through bold U.S. leadership or not at all. Playing a game of chicken with developing countries hasn't worked yet.

This is perhaps the greatest challenge for a president who's serious about climate. He's going to have to help Americans come to terms with the fact that they will pay more than other countries, and sacrifice some measure of the unilateral sovereignty Bush convinced them is a transcendent good. Whether it's technology transfer or development aid, the richest and most responsible country on the planet is going to pick up a disproportionate share of the bill.

He's also going to have to coax other countries into joining us. It will require careful, persistent, delicate diplomacy, which isn't something one generally associates with a man of McCain's temper and penchant for starting wars.

Republican mavericks are Republicans

On balance, the evidence indicates that while McCain may be sincere about the need to fight climate change, there's no indication that he has a particularly firm understanding of the policy or a particularly deep commitment to following through on it.

To be crude (but, I think, accurate), these qualities wouldn't be so worrisome if McCain were a Democrat. As a Democrat, he would have members of his own party in Congress pushing him to act; he would have policy advisers with long experience and knowledge of the issue; he would seed the federal bureaucracy with officials committed to climate action, and do the same with judges on the federal bench; he would be pushed to action by his base. This is not to say that the Democratic coalition is monolithically supportive of strong climate policy, but on balance, a Democratic president will have his nominal commitment strengthened through positive reinforcement.

As a Republican, on the other hand, President McCain will be surrounded by a political infrastructure that is actively working against him on climate. In passive terms, his policy advisers and Congressional brethren simply won't show much interest in the issue. In active terms, they will be pushing him to weaken his position, water down his legislation, and moderate his rhetoric. His bureaucracy will be filled with functionaries shaped by a party that believes climate change is a lefty conspiracy. His judges will be friendly to big industry and hostile to environmental litigation. His State Dept. will be staffed with people schooled in the neoconservative doctrine of belligerent unilateralism. He will have allies at the state level -- Schwarzenegger in Calif., Crist in Fla. -- but they have only so much sway in D.C. He will, in short, be sailing against the wind.

Will McCain have the dogged persistence to push through that kind of institutional resistance and implement bold climate solutions? Is this issue meaningful enough, personal enough for him to expend political capital on it? Will he have the appetite for fighting with a Republican establishment that already views him with open suspicion?

As should be clear by now, I have strong doubts. I do not want to deny McCain his due -- he deserves credit for genuine political courage on climate change in a party that is actively hostile to even a modicum of sanity on the issue. But that courage is admirable only relative to that party.

Judged on its own merits, McCain's climate commitment -- relative to what's offered on the other side of the political aisle, and more importantly, relative to the increasing alarm we hear from climate scientists -- is simply and unmistakably inadequate.

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February 11, 2008

John McCain and Climate Change

By David Roberts

Though recession and war are probably higher on the public's immediate priority list, there is no challenge of greater historical consequence facing the next US president than the climate crisis. It is vitally important that the next chief executive enter the Oval Office committed to decisive and sustained action. He or she will need a firm grasp of the developing science, the political obstacles, the economic trade-offs, and the technological opportunities.

Does John McCain have that kind of deep understanding and commitment? If elected, will he be the climate champion we so desperately need?

Conventional wisdom says yes. The media touts McCain's stance on climate as evidence of his straight talkin' maverickosity. Conservative stalwarts assail McCain for his heresy (Romney attacked McCain's climate bill in Michigan and Florida). The public hails him for reaching across the aisle. Even Democrats and greens seem inclined to give him a grade of Good Enough on climate.

This is a classic case of what our president calls the soft bigotry of low expectations. Judged against his fellow Republicans, McCain is a paragon of atmospheric wisdom. Judged against the climate and energy legislation afoot in Congress, he falls short. Judged against the two leading Democratic presidential candidates, he is a pale shadow. Judged against the imperatives of climate science -- that is to say, judged against brute physical reality -- he isn't even in the ballpark.

It's time to stop grading McCain on a curve.

McCain's green bona fides, as far as I can tell, boil down to three things:

• He voted against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has sponsored or cosponsored the occasional, modest environmental protection bill (protecting whales; awarding tax credits for energy efficiency; boosting fuel efficiency). (Note, however, that his lifetime rating from LCV is a measly 29%.)
• In 2003, he and Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced the first-ever climate bill to the Senate: the Climate Stewardship Act, which would establish a carbon cap-and-trade system to reduce US emissions. It was introduced and voted down in 2003 and again in 2005.
• He acknowledges, without hedging, that anthropogenic climate change is real, and speaks eloquently about the need to address it. He has frequently criticized the Bush administration for inaction.

These aren't chopped liver. All were acts of courage undertaken in a time of Republican majority, when they offered little political reward (other than the undying love of cable news talkshow hosts). The second, in particular, was a beacon of hope for greens in a time when there were very few.

Nonetheless, we must assess these acts in light of what has come after, and the political environment we find ourselves in today.

Cap-and-trade

Relative to what's offered by other Senate cap-and-trade bills (and the plans of his Democratic rivals), the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act -- even in its 2007 incarnation -- is weak. Unlike other such bills, McCain's specifically sets aside massive and unnecessary subsidies for the nuclear industry. Its emissions targets are exceeded even by the lowest-common-denominator bill now heading to the Senate floor, the Lieberman-Warner America's Climate Security Act.

This is to say nothing of the Sanders-Boxer bill, the strongest extant climate legislation, which now boasts both Clinton and Obama as co-sponsors and includes even more aggressive targets. Beyond that, we have the plans offered by the leading Democratic campaigns, which offer bold targets, 100% auctioning of pollution permits (a crucial feature I'll return to in a subsequent post), and detailed plans for how to allocate the auction revenue to boost the green economy.

McCain has never updated his position on cap-and-trade legislation, despite the steady advance in public opinion and climate science since he introduced his bill in 2003. He has not discussed, much less matched, the ambitious targets of his Dem rivals. He has not signed onto the Sanders legislation, or even Lieberman's new bill. He has not said whether he'll vote for it, and has hinted (sub rqd) that he'll vote Nay unless big buckets of nuclear pork are added.

In short, McCain's take on cap-and-trade legislation is now anachronistic, lagging well behind what's current, what's possible, and what's needed.

Beyond cap-and-trade

As anyone familiar with the issue -- e.g., Goldman Sachs -- will tell you, a mandatory, declining cap on carbon is only the first step toward effective climate policy. It is necessary but not sufficient. That's why Democrats in Congress are pushing a number of supplemental bills, attempting to raise vehicle fuel-economy standards, remove tax breaks from fossil fuel industries, change utility regulation to encourage efficiency, boost basic research funding, extend production tax credits for renewable industries, and establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard to boost the amount of renewable energy in the U.S. mix.

Voting against these measures would boost McCain's cred with the conservative base, but damage his green credibility. Voting for them would do the reverse. So what has Mr. Straight Talk done?

He has gone AWOL:

• On June 21, 2007, the Senate voted on the Baucus amendment to the energy bill, which would have removed some oil company subsidies in order to fund renewable energy. The amendment failed to pass. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On the same day, the Senate held a cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill. The vote succeeded. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On Dec. 7, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat on the energy bill, which had become substantially bolder after being aligned with the House version. The vote failed. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On Dec. 13, 2007, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill, which had the Renewable Portfolio Standard stripped out of it but retained a measure that would shift oil company subsidies to renewables. The vote failed -- by one vote, 59-40. Where was McCain? He didn't vote -- the only Senator not to do so.
• On Feb. 6, 2008, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass a stimulus bill containing a number of green energy incentives. The cloture motion failed, by one vote. Where was McCain? He didn't vote -- again, the only Senator not to do so.

You get the idea. The Democrats in Congress have been struggling to change US energy policy, to raise standards and shift some federal expenditures from fossil to renewable energy. In several cases, McCain could have made the difference between success and failure. In some cases -- as with regard to, e.g., the stimulus bill -- McCain's campaign has claimed that he would have voted against it anyway, so the result wouldn't have changed. In this way, McCain gets to signal to political insiders on the right that he's with them, without putting himself on record where the public can see it. That's a funny sort of straight talk.

On the campaign trail, McCain said: "Of course we want renewable energy. Of course we want better standards. I want to do everything I can to see that wind, solar, hydrogen, ethanol ... and all of these, including nuclear power, [are put to better use]." Everything he can? Well, one of the things Senators can do is vote on legislation. So maybe not everything.

Watch for my next post for more on McCain's easy ride from the press on climate change.

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February 11, 2008