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Is The EPA Ignoring Congress with Its Climate Rules?

Last week, shortly before Christmas, the EPA posted a quick item on its website announcing a timetable for new climate regulations on power plants and petroleum refineries. This, in turn, provoked all sorts of outrage and confusion. Industry lobbyists blasted the move. James Inhofe predicted Armageddon and pledged to do whatever it took to thwart the agency. And some commenters framed this as a fresh power grab by the Obama administration. What was harder to find, though, was an explanation of what the EPA was actually doing.

So let's roll tape. Way back in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA was required, by law, to clamp down on carbon-dioxide and other heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act, assuming those gases threatened public health. And, it turns out, most scientists agree that unchecked global warming does harm the public. So it's not as if Barack Obama or EPA head Lisa Jackson have a choice on whether to regulate or not—the EPA would be breaking the law if it stood by and did nothing. (Bush officials fended off this eventuality by simply refusing to open e-mails sent by EPA staff experts.)

Over at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf thinks the EPA is "disregarding [the] separation of powers." But why? How? The Clean Air Act is a law that was passed by Congress and amended several times. The law originally focused on specific toxins like lead and sulfur-dioxide, but it was intended to be updated periodically, as new science on pollution and human health came in. The Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases fit within this framework—and, so, the Obama administration has begun enforcing the relevant laws. Set aside whether you agree with the policy outcome. What about this is constitutionally troubling?

Anyway, on to the rules themselves. As I laid out in a primer earlier this year, the EPA is moving in two directions when it comes to greenhouse gases from stationary sources like power plants or cement factories. First, there's "New Source Review." If anyone wants a permit to build a new facility—say, a manufacturing plant or a solid-waste landfill—or enlarge an existing facility, and that project is expected to emit more than 100,000 tons of CO2 (which is a lot), they have to show the EPA that they're using the best-available pollution controls. These rules are only expected to cover a couple hundred big carbon-dioxide sources in the next few years; mostly the rules will just make it exceedingly difficult to build brand-new coal-fired plants. (That's no small matter: NASA climatologist James Hansen has argued that the world has no hope of averting severe climate change unless it stops building carbon-spewing coal plants, period.)

But what about pollution sources that have already been built? Aren't those a much bigger deal? Yes, and that's where the newly announced rules come in. Jackson is using a section of the Clean Air Act, the New Source Performance Standards, to clean up existing sources of carbon pollution. Power-plant standards will be finalized by May 2012, and oil refineries by November 2012. All told, these two rules will cover about 40 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States. The big uncertainty is over just how strict the standards will be. EPA officials are already hinting that they won't force individual facilities to reduce pollution by specific amounts or percentages—instead, the agency will merely recommend that those plants adopt cleaner technologies.

That's all assuming, of course, that Republicans in Congress don't stop Jackson first. Over at TPM, Brian Beutler details the GOP's plan for thwarting new executive-branch rules via the Congressional Review Act. The EPA will certainly be a prime target, and it's still unclear how hard Obama will fight back on this issue. As Jon Chait noted, the 2012 date for the new EPA rules does suggest that the Obama administration isn't shying away from an election-year tussle over carbon regulations. But in the past month, Jackson has also delayed new standards on ground-level ozone and toxins from boilers—quite possibly in response to Republican grumbling.

Regardless of how forcefully Jackson moves, however, it's worth noting that the EPA still can't do nearly as much as Congress when it comes to curbing carbon pollution. Last year, the House passed a cap-and-trade bill that would have cut greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. By contrast, EPA officials think they can whittle emissions down by only 5 percent in the same timeframe. That's one rationale for handing this issue over to Congress: The Clean Air Act, as written, simply isn't well-designed to handle a massive issue like climate change. Then again, there was a bill in the Senate this fall to have Congress handle carbon, and Senate Republicans (plus a few consevative Democrats) killed it with a filibuster threat. So here we are.

(Flickr photo credit: uspagegov)

The Easiest Way To Make $50 Million

It’s always an exciting opportunity when the federal government can raise revenue and protect the environment while simultaneously increasing profits at private businesses. That’s why a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on waste from the energy production processes is encouraging, even if it’s irritating.

When energy companies like Shell, BP and the hordes of other, smaller firms drill for oil and natural gas, some gas inevitably bubbles to the surface or seeps out through leaky pipes and ineffective storage systems. The companies burn off some of the bubbles. That’s called “flaring.” The rest escapes into the air. That’s called “venting.”

The companies are required to report how much gas they flare and vent. But, according to the GAO, companies wildly underreport the amounts. From 2006 to 2008, for example, companies reported venting or flaring about 0.13 percent of natural gas produced. But the real amount, according to EPA estimates, was actually 30 times higher—approximately 4.2 percent of production or around 126 billion cubic feet of gas.

That’s enough gas to heat 1.7 million homes for an entire year.

Wait a minute—natural gas is really valuable. Venting and flaring it lowers local air quality and contributes to climate change. So why are energy companies releasing so much of it?

The GAO blames several culprits: a lack of technological sophistication, severely outdated regulations and the structure of the energy industry, but it seems that the fundamental problem is ignorance. Until recently, producers assumed the losses were minimal. According to the GAO, however, advances in infrared-camera technology have “helped reveal that losses from storage tanks and fugitive emissions were much higher than they originally thought.” This video provides several examples of how substantial leaks can appear non-existent. But the private sector hasn’t acted alone. Government has also been painfully slow to adapt. It hasn’t updated its venting and flaring regulations since 1980, before the new technologies existed.

Tighter regulation would benefit everybody. The federal government annually misses out on tens of millions of dollars worth of potential royalties. And what we call natural gas is technically known as methane, a greenhouse gas at least 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Limiting the amount that seeps into the atmosphere helps fight climate change. And the private sector? They actually stand to make a lot more money. At least 40 percent of the gas squandered in on-shore production “could be economically captured with currently available control technologies,” according to the GAO.

The payoff for investing in waste-reduction is remarkably high, too. One EPA program’s participants found that within one year, the improvements generally paid for themselves. After that, they generated substantial profits for their owners. Meanwhile, capturing only the “economically recoverable 40 percent” would also make a sizable impact on greenhouse gas emissions—about the same as taking 3.1 million cars off the road.

Some firms are already taking steps to reduce venting and flaring. BP, for example, reportedly installed and retrofitted equipment to minimize the problem, and they saw revenues rise by $5.8 million as a result. But progress is uneven. Smaller companies, the GAO reports, are often “unaware of the economic advantages” in part because “they do not have the time or expertise to undertake the engineering analysis to understand whether and how they can benefit.” The Interior Department, which is responsible for overseeing drilling, agrees with the GAO and is updating its rules. Let’s hope they finish that job soon. There’s money to be made. And cleaner air to be inhaled.

In Cancún, Corporations Are Taking Over The U.N. Climate Talks

Cancún, Mexico—Another year, another round of U.N. climate talks. This year's discussions in Cancún are likely to end much as last year's haggling in Copenhagen did—without a firm global treaty to stop drastic climate change. But the stalemate has led to an intriguing side development: Large, multinational corporations are starting to play an outsized role in the negotiations. If world leaders can't agree on how best to cut carbon emissions (and, so far, it's not clear they can), then the world's CEOs may start taking the lead. But is that really a positive development?

Consider some examples: On the very first day of the Cancún talks, the Consumer Goods Forum, a coalition of more than 400 of the world's largest manufacturers and retailers, pledged to use its market might to help stop deforestation by 2020. The forum also pledged to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons—refrigeration gases that are thousands of times more potent than CO2—by 2015. This week, Wal-Mart came out in support of a major global forest-preservation initiative, REDD, and has announced plans to expand its sustainable palm oil policy. To top it all off, the Mexican government announced that it had secured $55 million in private low-carbon investments since the beginning of the talk—all this while wealthy nations struggle to come up with funds to finance carbon reductions in the developing world.

It's clear that private companies are stepping in to do what the public sector hasn't been able to do—take concrete steps and shell out money to reduce greenhouse gases. Indeed, many officials are starting to treat these firms as major actors akin to governments. "I'm sure in the future [the Cancun conference] is going to be remembered as the moment when you have an additional part of the COP that is related with business,” predicted Bruno Ferrari, Mexico’s secretary of the economy. Last week, hundreds of businesses leaders staged their own climate summit. The message seemed clear: NGOs and non-profits haven't been able to fix the climate problem, so let's see if the private sector can.

Can they? It's clear that private companies can act much more nimbly than governments. The measures taken by the Consumer Goods Forum and Wal-Mart will start taking have real effects on global greenhouse gases immediately, whereas a formal climate treaty won't materialize until at least next year in Durban, South Africa—if that.

But there's also cause for concern. The companies making bold pronouncements about cutting emissions are, after all, the same ones who profited from putting all that carbon in the air in the first place. These companies realize they can attract publicity from bolstering the climate talks. But what happens after all the photo ops have been staged and the easy climate actions have been taken? "Businesses will have plenty of low-hanging fruit for next ten years, but if we don’t agree to a binding treaty to force further mitigation by then, we’re screwed,” says one NGO activist at the conference.

Indeed, some activists point out that if all these companies were as concerned about climate action as they claim to be, they'd be doing more in their own countries to push for change. "We are seeing more and more companies reflecting a broader mix of industries coming to the [U.N. climate talks," says Gary Cook, a policy analyst with Greenpeace. But, he grumbles, "many of them are not talking this talk back in their capitals or using their political influence in a meaningful way to demand greater government action. … In the mean time, they are letting trade associations—like BusinessEurope or the US Chamber Commerce—claim to speak for them.” The Chamber of Commerce, for instance, helped defeat legislation to curb carbon emissions in the United States. (Plus, of course, many of the companies that are currently singing out of the green hymnal have worked hard in previous years to bog down U.N. negotiations.)

What's more, these private-sector climate leaders are, as you'd expect, always self-interested. At a "Green Solutions" event in Cancun, Bruno Ferrari, Mexico's secretary of the economy, shared the stage with Graeme Sweeney, who is Shell's executive vice-president for future fuels and CO2. Sweeney used every opportunity to emphasize the importance of funding R&D for carbon capture and sequestration—a promising but completely unproven technology to reduce emissions from coal plants. While Shell's commitment to climate action is nice, it also seems to be a glorified form of lobbying.

Ultimately, it may not be the case that every action needed to avert global warming will be good for Shell's bottom line—or Wal-Mart's. That's why there should be a role for the public sector, to make painful but necessary decisions about climate change. But seeing as how the diplomats here at Cancun are poised to avoid making any tough decisions at all, it's looking increasingly likely that responsibility for protecting the planet will fall to the private sector.

Corbin Hiar is an associate editor at PBS MediaShift and climate blogger for UN Dispatch.

(Flickr photo credit: tcktcktck)

How the Tax Deal Could Throttle the Green Economy

There have been all sorts of drastic proclamations about the tax deal Obama struck with congressional Republicans earlier this week. Here's another to chuck on the pile: The agreement might end up killing what little momentum the U.S. clean-energy industry has picked up over the past two years.

Some background. Back in 2008, Congress extended (yet again) tax credits for solar and wind producers, which now cover 30 percent of upfront costs. But when the recession made it tougher for firms to get financing, the credits were no longer working as advertised. So, in last year's stimulus bill, Congress converted the credits to flat grants. That seemed to do the trick: According to the Financial Times, two-thirds of all new solar projects and 85 percent of all new wind projects in the United States now rely on these grants. Trouble is, the grant program is going to expire at the end of the year. This frequently happens with tax support for renewables, and Congress usually just extends the program after a brief period of dithering.

But not this time. The tax breaks weren't included anywhere in the Obama deal. And so the solar and wind industries are now freaking out, warning that their companies are about to tumble off a cliff, shed thousands of jobs, etc. What's particularly galling is that the ethanol industry is getting its tax breaks renewed. As a clean-energy source, ethanol is highly dubious: Studies have found that the whole process can produce more heat-trapping CO2 emissions than regular old gasoline. But ethanol has a powerful farm-state constituency, and those subsidies have long been sacrosanct. (That may change in the years ahead, as Tea Party types like Jim DeMint have begun denouncing government support for ethanol, but, until anything actually comes of that, corn is still king.)

Granted, wind and solar aren't doomed yet. In the House, Earl Blumenauer has been calling attention to the situation, and it's possible that all those liberal Democrats who find the broader tax deal so repugnant could end up wheedling this small concession. (A one-year extension would cost $1.3 billion, or about 0.1 percent of the overall tax bill.) And it's not like Republicans are implacably opposed to the renewable tax credit; they've generally been on board ever since the program was first enacted in 1992.

That said, there's a deeper problem here. The renewable industry will have a tough time gaining a firm footing in the market if, every year or two, there's glaring uncertainty about whether Congress will continue to offer support. Wind and solar companies are having a difficult time making investment decisions, which may help explain why wind generation dropped this year, after a boom in 2009. (Oddly enough, this is one "economic uncertainty" argument you rarely hear Republicans make.) An alternative approach would be to extend the tax program for a longer period of time—or go further and pass a bill that requires utilities to get a certain percentage of their power from sources like wind, solar, or biomass. But the latter idea died in the Senate this year, so clean-energy producers are back to fighting for scraps—and now they may not get even that.

Update: Looks like all that pressure may have worked. After 81 House Democrats demanded that the program be extended, two senators have reportedly agreed with the White House on a deal to keep them for an additional year. But it's still unclear whether this new provision will cause any Republicans to bail. And, again, even a temporary extension doesn't address the uncertainty worry—it just means this game of chicken will pick up again at around this time next year.

(Flickr photo credit: Wayne National Forest)

The End of Automania

In January 1973, William Ruckelhaus, the administrator of the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency, traveled to Los Angeles to break the bad news to residents: They were going to have to drive less. Automobile smog was choking the city, in stark violation of the Clean Air Act, and the EPA had hatched a plan to clear the air, by promoting mass transit, parking fees, high-occupancy lanes, and gasoline rationing. The reaction from car-loving Californians was a combination of shock and outright rage. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," fumed one resident. "Wouldn't it be cheaper," one reporter asked Ruckelhaus at his Biltmore Hotel press conference, "to take the people that have asthma and send them to Arizona?"

The backlash against the transportation plan was the first time that ordinary citizens, rather than big polluters, were attacking the EPA. ("The most searing experience I lived through," one agency staffer later called it.) And in the ensuing years, indignant Angelenos opposed nearly every attempt by local officials to tamp down on driving, from transit to land-use controls. True, the city's air did get cleaned, but only because of the invention of catalytic converters that filtered tailpipe emissions—vehicle miles traveled, meanwhile, continued to soar. And the episode offered a warning to anyone trying to promote walkable urbanism or get people to drive less. Americans adore their cars and clogged freeways, and only a fool would try to change that. (As Josh Patashnik reported for TNR, Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of climate activism has explicitly avoided trying to persuade Californians to alter their motor habits.)

But is that still true today? Are Americans as car crazy as they were in the '70s? There's growing evidence that young people, for one, are less enamored of driving than their parents were. In 1976, three-quarters of all 17-year-olds had drivers' licenses. By 2008, that was down to 49 percent. And, in a recent survey by Zipcar, the car-sharing company, a full 67 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds said they would prefer to drive less, especially if alternatives were available (Zipcar's not a disinterested party here, but other surveys have yielded similar results). The shift in mood partly reflects worries about the environment and the price of gas. But there also seems to be a technological aspect, too. Once upon a time, newly licensed teens would pile all their friends into their new used car and drive around aimlessly. Nowadays, teens can socialize via Facebook or texting instead—in the Zipcar survey, over half of all young adults said they'd rather chat online than drive to meet their friends. 

Now, a lot of these car-free teens will eventually become auto-dependent. After all, it's hard to raise a family in walkable urban areas—housing prices are high, the schools aren't always great, and it's hard to carry groceries for three kids on the bus. But many of these young people might prefer to stay carless. Chris Leinberger of the Brookings Institute has estimated that about 88 percent of household growth through 2040 will be composed of singles or childless couples—and many of those people would be perfectly happy living in urban centers, riding subways. But, he notes, there will only be enough walkable neighborhoods to satisfy about 5 to 10 percent of this demand—which is why rents in transit-accessible areas are so exorbitant.

The natural policy solution would be to focus more on promoting denser neighborhoods—places where people don't even need cars. Yes, that would involve spending public money on things like transit (or, say, tinkering with zoning rules like D.C.'s building-height limit to increase the supply of affordable housing in urban centers). Though, as Matt Yglesias loves pointing out, America's current car-dependent set-up also depended heavily on government subsidies and regulations—everything from trillions of dollars in highway spending to mortgage-interest deductions and zoning rules that promote bigger houses. There's no free market here.

Trouble is, the people who currently benefit from these low-density subsidies like them—a lot. That's why you see Tea Partiers denouncing smart-growth projects as sinister plots to force everyone into "hobbit homes." (Or politicians warning that new bike lanes are a precursor to a UN takeover of America.) These protests, while nutty, are direct descendents of the LA car revolts in the 1970s. And yet, polls like the one above seem to suggest that a newer generation is a lot more willing to embrace alternatives to car-centric suburban living. It's just that young people who theoretically wouldn't mind going car-free are a lot less vocal than suburban dwellers opposed to denser neighborhoods. So it's not yet clear whether this big attitudinal shift will lead to major policy changes.

(Flickr photo credit: mushwu)

Is It Time To Reconsider The Light Bulb Ban?

When, exactly, did light bulbs become a conservative litmus test? Back in 2007, if you'll recall, George W. Bush signed an energy bill that tightened efficiency standards for lighting. It wasn't a big deal at the time. The bill just meant that manufacturers would slowly have to phase out their old, power-hogging incandescent bulbs in favor of something sleeker, like compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, starting in 2012. (This wasn't technically a ban on incandescents—more on that in a sec.) A few disgruntled libertarians complained, but life went on.

Alas, that was then. Nowadays, it's cause for bloodshed. Consider: Three Republicans are jockeying to chair the House energy and commerce committee. At a broad level, it shouldn't matter whether Fred Upton, Joe Barton, or John Shimkus chairs the committee. All three of them want to stop the EPA from curbing carbon emissions, repeal Obamacare, and prevent the FCC from regulating broadband. Which means that each of the contenders has had to dig deep for denunciations. Recently, Barton's allies have accused the front-runner, Fred Upton, of committing a grievous sin—Upton, you see, sponsored that 2007 light bulb bill. (Mind you, Barton didn't object to the bill at the time, but no matter.) The charge has spurred Glenn Beck to call Upton "all socialist" and led Rush Limbaugh to say, "No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism, can be rewarded this way." In the days since, Upton has had to backtrack and promise to "reexamine" the bulb law if he becomes chairman.

But why the uproar now? Has there been any evidence since 2007 that the new light standards are a bad idea? Not really. The case for the law is still straightforward: CFLs and other more-efficeint bulbs help reduce power-plant emissions and, over the long run, save consumers money—the EPA estimates that if every household in America swapped out one incandescent for a more efficient bulb, it'd be the same as taking 800,000 cars off the road. True, there are more economically elegant ways to reduce emissions, but Republicans are opposed to carbon taxes and the like, which means that clumsy regulations are the only things that attract political support.

Conservative think tanks like Heritage have tried to drum up a variety of objections to the bulb law, but none of them are persuasive. Yes, CFLs contain trace amounts of mercury, but it's not hard to sweep up a broken bulb safely (and the electricity savings help reduce mercury pollution from coal plants by an even greater amount). And yes, the glare from CFLs is annoying for some people. At the same time, the looming standards have spurred new advances in light-bulb technology: Some companies are developing mercury- and glare-free CFLs; others are tinkering with new hyperefficient incandescent bulbs; and still others are nudging down the cost of long-lasting LED bulbs. The market seems to be adjusting nicely, just as markets do.

The newest talking point among Republicans is that the "bulb ban" is helping to outsource jobs. Exhibit A: GE's last major incandescent factory, in Winchester, Virginia, closed down earlier this year, laying off some 200 workers—and the company was going to start importing CFLs from China. The wages of rampant nannyism? Nope. GE had been planning to trim its lighting division long before Bush ever signed the 2007 bill, because the market for incandescents had been declining for years. And GE is now adding new jobs in efficient lighting elsewhere, including 135 positions in a factory in Bucyrus, Ohio. (Fun footnote: GE actually invented the spiral-tube CFL back in 1973, in response to the oil crisis, but decided not to invest in factories—eventually the design was copied by others and China took the lead in manufacturing them.)

Most of the opposition to the light-bulb law just seems to be cultural: Conservatives don't like the government telling them what to do (unless, of course, it's bedroom-related), and the only benefits of this law are to solve a problem (global warming) that the right doesn't even think exists. That's not a promising sign for energy policy. Cap-and-trade may be dead, but there are still a lot of smaller, relatively non-intrusive measures that could help curb power use, save money, and make the economy more efficient, such as stronger building codes. This isn't some wild-eyed liberal idea; even Ronald Reagan signed a big appliance-standard bill back in 1987. But the odds of small-bore compromise seem low now that even efficient light bulbs are considered unacceptably socialist.

(Flickr photo credit: Marjolein K.)

Salazar Lifts the Drilling Moratorium—Is That A Good Idea?

So much for the deepwater-drilling ban. Earlier today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that he was lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling early, well ahead of the original November 30 deadline. The reason? "There will always be risks associated with deepwater drilling," Salazar explained, "but we have now reached the point where we have, in my view, reduced those risks."

It's too early to tell whether he's right about that. What is clear, however, is that Salazar was under plenty of political pressure to lift the ban as early as possible. In the wake of the BP oil spill, the moratorium was intended to allow the oil industry and regulators time to revamp drilling regulations, safety equipment, and contingency plans for deepwater drilling. But the oil companies and Louisiana representatives complained that the costs of the ban outweighed the necessity, and it should be lifted as soon as possible. Mary Landrieu even went so far as to block the confirmation of Jack Lew to head the White House budget office in protest.

Did the moratorium really deserve the backlash? Oil industry advocates argue that it had a massive effect on jobs. According to Richard Metcalf, the director of environmental affairs at the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, five oil rigs have already left the Gulf and moved operations to other countries, which, he estimates, means about 1,200 lost jobs. And eight other rigs may be on their way out as well. The problem, Metcalf says, is that the ban didn't just affect deepwater drilling (as intended); the delay in permits put a cramp on shallow-water drilling as well.

So how big is this effect in total? Back in September, the Obama administration released a report on the moratorium's impact and found that it would cost no more than 8,000 to 12,000 jobs. The report noted that many rigs have chosen to hold onto their workers and wait out the ban. But critics like Metcalf argue that there have been plenty of jobs indirectly affected—such as cooks on a rig who can't be retained when the rig is not operating. Some outside estimates pegged the potential losses to the local economy as high as $3 billion.

Still, that's only one side of the ledger. Other experts point out that it's inaccurate to only look at drilling jobs that are being lost—it's also important to note the potential losses that could result if the moratorium is lifted prematurely. Oliver Houck, a law professor at Tulane, notes that the Gulf's fishing industry was severely affected by the BP oil spill—and another accident could finish it off for good. “The big hit in this region has not been to the oil and gas industry, they’re making billions of dollars. The big hit is to the fishing industry that has a big chance of not coming back,” said Houck. “It is a cultural loss, not just an economic loss.”

That's the big question: was the moratorium lifted prematurely? Under the new regulations, oil and gas companies will not be allowed to start drilling again until they've come up with comprehensive plans to deal with emergencies. Some industry backers, like Landrieu, worry that the permitting process will be to sluggish—that the drilling won't resume fast enough. (Landrieu is still blocking Lew for now.) Other experts, though, are skeptical that the new regulations will go far enough: "One thing we have learned is the oil companies really do have talented engineers," says Jeffrey Rachlinski, a law professor at Cornell. "They can come up with good plans but they're not going to do it unless they have to because it’s costly." It remains to be seen whether the Interior Department is acting more prudently this time around than it did before the BP spill.

(Flickr photo credit: Skytruth)

Did The White House Kill The Climate Bill?

In this week's New Yorker, Ryan Lizza has a long, truly excellent reported piece on how the climate bill died in the Senate. The big question is to what extent the White House deserves the blame:

“I believe Barack Obama understands that fifty years from now no one’s going to know about health care,” the lobbyist said. “Economic historians will know that we had a recession at this time. Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James Buchanan of climate change.”

Now, as Jonathan Zasloff notes, this isn't the most precise historical analogy of all time. Buchanan took paralysis and incompetence to a whole different level. And Obama is hardly the only (or even the main) person at fault for the collapse of the climate bill. Still, as Lizza's piece details, the White House did make a number of serious blunders during the climate-bill fight. Perhaps the biggest was when Obama announced that he would open up new coastal areas for offshore drilling and issue new loan guarantees for nuclear power. Both were seen as moves to placate conservatives. Trouble was, it was a terrible negotiating tactic—Lindsey Graham, John Kerry, and Joe Lieberman were trying to dangle those provisions to lure Republicans votes for their climate bill. Instead, Obama just gave them away for free. Worse, the White House didn't even consult with the three senators before undercutting them.

On top of that, there was the mysterious episode when unnamed White House officials suggested to Fox News that Lindsey Graham supported a gas tax. It wasn't true and the rumor caused political heartburn for the one Republican who was sticking his neck out to pass a climate bill. Finally, when Harry Reid frazzled the whole climate push by announcing that he wanted to do immigration first, the White House never stepped in to resolve the dispute. Part of this appears to be David Axelrod's doing:

The long and brutal health-care fight had caused a rift in the White House over legislative strategy. One camp, led by Phil Schiliro, Obama’s top congressional liaison, was composed of former congressional aides who argued that Obama needed to insert himself in the legislative process if he was going to pass the ambitious agenda that he had campaigned on. The other group, led by David Axelrod, believed that being closely associated with the messiness of congressional horse-trading was destroying Obama’s reputation.

Granted, it's hard to say whether more White House involvement would have gotten the bill passed. My own sense is that Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman had a decent legislative strategy, but one that relied on a whole bunch of long-shot events going their way. And that's always a dubious prospect. Cap-and-trade, for instance, needed support from Olympia Snowe, who comes across in the piece as someone enamored of her own role as a Senate swing vote who can extract lots of concessions but who doesn't have much interest in actually passing worthwhile legislation.

More broadly, there's a case to be made that major climate policy will never pass so long as it hinges on this or that senator or legislative tactic. Instead, there has to be a major sea change in public opinion before anything will pass. As Dave Roberts noted a few weeks ago, global warming has long been seen as a mere environmental concern: "It needs to take its place alongside the economy and national security as a priority concern of American elites across ideological and organizational lines. It needs to become a shared concern of every American citizen regardless of ideological orientation or level of political engagement. That is the only way we can ever hope to bring about the urgent necessary changes."

Maybe so. Though it's worth adding that the White House—and Democrats in general—rarely fought a public battle for the climate bill. Polling showed that the phrase "cap-and-trade" was unpopular (or confused voters), so liberals stopped saying it. In the end, Republicans owned the phrase, and were able to convince a decent portion of the public that "cap-and-trade" is this horrible device that will leave you lampless surrounded by piles of dead puppies. There was a strange reluctance by Obama to even try to make the public case that a) global warming is an enormous problem and b) tackling it will be a lot easier than we think, and will bring associated benefits like cleaner air.

Now, in its defense, the Obama administration has taken what unilateral steps it can on energy and climate: The EPA has been drawing up greenhouse-gas regulations and setting sweeping new fuel-economy standards, while the stimulus bill had billions of dollars for clean energy projects. There's still a good case that those EPA regulations could be more impactful than commonly thought—once the agency starts cracking down on polluters, the coal and utility industries are going to demand congressional action. Of course, it remains to be seen whether that entails a more flexible cap on carbon pollution or just a repeal of EPA regulations, in which case we're back at square one.

(Flickr photo credit: Sean Posey)

Who's to Blame for the Superweed Invasion?

On Thursday, the House oversight committee held the second of two hearings on a critical question: “Are ‘Superweeds’ an Outgrowth of USDA Biotech Policy?” Evidently, farmers are up against a Superweed invasion, and it’s not pretty. These mutant, herbicide-resistant plants are choking up to 10 million acres—and growing—of U.S. farmland, and farms have struggled to adapt. Here’s CropLife America’s Jay Vroom: “There is nothing particularly ‘super’ about the weeds that have developed resistance to any particular herbicide.”

So who’s to blame? A key suspect is Monsanto’s Roundup, one of the most widely used weed-killers in the country. In the 1990s, Monsanto developed genetically engineered seeds—such as soybean and corn—that were resistant to Roundup. Farmers started buying the seeds and herbicide en masse and spraying with abandon. The result? A new wave of weeds evolved that were resistant to glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup.

As the congressional hearing explored, the problem may have lay with a glitch in regulatory oversight. USDA regulates the Roundup-resistant crop, while the EPA regulates the herbicide itself. But no one was looking at the unintended effects of the combo becoming so widespread—namely, superweeds. Back in a July hearing, the USDA got hammered by scientists and watchdog groups for being “too quick to approve” biotech products.

Agribusiness representatives proposed at least two solutions to the superweed crisis. There’s the low-tech road: Farmers could go back older tillage techniques to remove weeds. These techniques were replaced by herbicide because they produced a lot of run-off—in hindsight, though, that tradeoff doesn’t seem so bad. But, on the other hand, the industry could develop crops that are resistant to even stronger chemical pesticides than Round-up—chemicals like dicamba and 2,4-D. In other words, create new biotech crops that are essentially resistant to Agent Orange. What could go wrong?

(Flickr photo credit: Ski Le Mono)

Welcome to the Age of Seawalls

Over on the main site, Steve Nash has a great piece about how cities in the United States are preparing for sea-level rise. The picture's pretty bleak. Most states and localities aren't doing much planning at all. And when they are taking action, they're actually making things worse. Here's a snippet:

There are three broad options for dealing with sea-level rise. We can build walls to ward off the sea. We can put our coastal buildings and infrastructure up on stilts. Or we can plan a slow retreat and move our built environment farther inland. All of these options would take a long time to implement, and many of them would be absurdly expensive. Jim Titus, chief sea-level-rise expert at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), estimates that shore protection for the lower 48 states could cost around $1 trillion.

And seawalls—a necessity to protect places like Manhattan—could create as many problems as they solve. Dikes, levees, and bulkheads will destroy many coastal wetlands by preventing them from migrating inland as the seas advance. Most of the coastal wetlands in the mid-Atlantic could disappear by the end of the century if they have no place to go and the seas rise three feet or more. These wetlands are highly valuable, reducing the impact of floods, protecting against storms, and shielding freshwater supplies from the ocean. They’re also key nurseries for fish: About two-thirds of the commercial fisheries off the Atlantic depend on wetlands, where invertebrates and small fish that feed on decomposing matter support rockfish, menhaden, blue crab, and other large species.

Definitely worth reading the rest.

Floating Nukes Of The Day

It's hard to find a news story that better encapsulates the future of energy/environmental politics than this one. Russia's currently building eight floating nuclear power stations along its north coast so that it can keep drilling for oil and gas under the ever-melting Arctic.

Last Chance For A Renewable Energy Bill?

Hey, look: Environmentalists are suddenly getting excited again. Remember the old renewable electricity standard? The one that would force utilities to get 15 percent of their power from sources like wind, biomass, and solar by 2021? It wasn't the greatest clean-energy policy of all time, but it was something. And it's slowly creeping back into the Senate conversation: Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) is trying to resurrect it, and he's already snagged four Republican co-sponsors—Sam Brownback, Chuck Grassley, Susan Collins, and John Ensign. So does this thing actually have a chance?

It's possible, but the odds are still extremely long. And four Republican co-sponsors won't be enough. "Realistically, this bill will need at least a half-dozen Republicans actively supporting it," says Dan Weiss of the Center for American Progress. For one, a bunch of Senate Democrats flatly oppose an RES, including Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln. Second, if this bill doesn't come up until the lame duck session after the midterms, there's going to be enormous pressure on Republicans from the Senate leadership not to cooperate on anything. Which means it'll need an even bigger critical mass of support.

Are there other potential Republican co-sponsors lurking out there? The names most commonly kicked around are Olympia Snowe of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and, as a long shot, maybe even John Thune (South Dakota has a lot of wind-power potential, and the state already has a voluntary goal of 10 percent renewable by 2015). One complication, though, is that the bill's strongest GOP advocate, Sam Brownback, is almost certainly going to get elected governor of Kansas in November, and he'll be busy with the transition during the Senate's lame-duck session. Also note that two states, Illinois and West Virginia, would seat their senators immediately after the election, so if Republicans win either of those seats, the lame-duck vote gets tougher.

So the bill's not there yet. Granted, Jeff Bingaman has a decent track record of charming Republicans and corralling votes. Against that, however, it's now looking like Democrats are going to spend their time after the midterms figuring out whether and how to extend the Bush tax cuts, which leaves a lot less time for energy issues.

Substantive question: Would the RES still be worth doing? I've written before about how Bingaman's renewable electricity standard is pretty weak—according to a Union of Concerned Scientists analysis, it wouldn't do all that much over and beyond what the 30 states with their own standards already require. But when I asked Marchant Wentworth of UCS about this, he pointed out that simply getting a federal standard in place is also important: It would open up new markets for clean energy in the Southeast, and it would give more regulatory certainty to the wind and solar industries. The historical pattern with most states is that they pass an RES, find out that it's far easier to meet than expected, and then strengthen it. Taking that initial plunge is usually the most difficult step.

Newsflash: Hockey Stick Reaffirmed; No One Cares

Via Joe Romm, two new scientific studies reaffirm the infamous hockey stick graph. The first study appeared in Geophysical Research Letters: "We conclude that the 20th century warming of the incoming intermediate North Atlantic water has had no equivalent during the last thousand years."

And the second study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: "The last decades of the past millennium are characterized again by warm temperatures that seem to be unprecedented in the context of the last 1600 years.”

The dreaded Michael Mann wasn't involved in either of these papers, but the results are the same—the Earth's currently warming at a rate that's unprecedented over the last millennium. Think this will change anyone's minds? Yeah, me neither. (By the way, one of Romm's commenters makes a fair point: The climate skeptics who obsess over the hockey stick always insist that the Medieval Warm Period was much warmer, and more widespread, than scientists think. But if this was true, it would mean that the Earth's climate is more sensitive to radiative forcings than the consensus estimate, which would mean that all those greenhouse gases we're putting in the air are even more dangerous than we thought. But eh, details...)

Think Copenhagen Was Messy? Just Wait for the Geoengineering Talks.

Trying to convince the countries of the world to reduce their carbon emissions is one hell of a coordination problem. It's no surprise that UN climate talks always descend into bickering and in-fighting. But what if we decided to cool the Earth through geo-engineering means instead? True, that would be far from a perfect solution—we probably couldn't stave off most sea level rise, and the oceans would continue to acidify—but mightn't it be easier to get a global deal?

Not necessarily. A new study from climate scientists at the University of Bristol looks at a variety of geoengineering schemes (like shooting sulfate particles into the air to deflect sunlight) and finds that they'd all have widely varying effects on different regions of the Earth:

Their analysis revealed that with increasing geoengineering strength, most regions become drier while others buck the trend and become increasingly wet. For example, the USA became drier with increasing geoengineering, and returned to normal conditions under half-strength geoengineering, whereas Australia became wetter, returning to normal conditions only for full strength geoengineering

Pete Irvine, lead author on the paper, points out there are likely to be disagreements over any future geoengineering schemes: "If there is a large amount of global warming in the future there would be no strength of geoengineering that would be best for everyone: some may be better off without any geoengineering while others may do better with a large amount."

Those UN talks are likely to be just as contentious. Like it or not, there's still no easy answer here.