Whether it’s 4G cell phones, light-as-a-feather laptops or the latest tablet, Americans are enjoying a wireless revolution. In 2010, Americans typed, tapped, texted, and called on an estimated 300 million mobile devices.
But all this increased connectivity is taking a toll on the nation’s increasingly crowded airwaves. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warns of a “spectrum crunch” that could hit as early as 2013, given how quickly wireless traffic is growing.
Innovative companies are devising new ways to maximize spectrum efficiency so more users can take up less space. But while these advances deserve strong support, they’re also not cost-free. In some cases, existing “legacy” users must retrofit older and less efficient technologies to adjust to these new uses.
This brief proposes a “spectrum management mitigation fund” to help legacy users defray the inadvertent costs of adapting to innovations in the marketplace. This fund would involve no new federal money and instead would be financed from a portion of revenues from “voluntary incentive auctions”—a mechanism endorsed by the FCC to encourage more efficient spectrum allocation between current and prospective licensees.
Creating the fund would reconcile two goals: it would both encourage much-needed innovation while also acknowledging the legitimate concerns of users with older technologies. Moreover, it would obviate the politicization of spectrum management issues currently occurring in part due to the absence of a mitigation mechanism. For example, this fund could help re-solve the current controversy between the legacy GPS community and the wireless broadband start-up LightSquared—it could partially compensate legacy GPS users for the cost of retrofitting existing devices, thereby clearing the path for LightSquared to deploy its network.
With the benefits of spectrum innovation too great pass up, this fund could be an important next step to ensure Americans enjoy the next generation and beyond of new wireless technologies.
President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan includes some constructive – literally – provisions for upgrading America’s economic infrastructure. These shouldn’t be controversial: Who could be against putting people to work rebuilding the rickety foundations of U.S. productivity and competitiveness?
Well, Republicans, that’s who. They have dismissed the president’s call for $50 billion in new infrastructure spending as nothing more than another jolt of fiscal “stimulus” masquerading as investment.
It’s hard to imagine a more myopic example of the right’s determination to impose premature austerity on our frail economy. From Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Eisenhower, the Republicans were once a party dedicated to internal nation building. Today’s GOP is gripped by a raging anti-government fever which fails to draw elementary distinctions between consumption and investment, viewing all public spending as equally wasteful.
But as the White House’s Gene Sperling said yesterday, Republicans can’t claim credit for fiscal discipline by blocking long overdue repairs of in the nation’s transport, energy and water systems. There’s nothing fiscally responsible about “deferring maintenance” on the U.S. economy.
Sperling, chairman of the president’s National Economic Council, spoke at a PPI forum on Capitol Hill on “Infrastructure and Jobs: A Productive Foundation for Economic Growth.” Other featured speakers included Sen. Mark Warner, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Dan DiMicco, CEO of Nucor Corporation, Daryl Dulaney, CEO of Siemens Industry and Ed Smith, CEO of Ullico Inc., a consortium of union pension funds.
Fiscal prudence means foregoing consumption of things you’d like but could do without if you can’t afford them – a cable TV package, in Sperling’s example. But if a water pipe breaks in your home, deferring maintenance can only lead to greater damage and higher repair costs down the road.
As speaker after speaker emphasized during yesterday’s forum, that’s precisely what’s happening to the U.S. economy. Thanks to a generation of underinvestment in roads, bridges, waterways, power grids, ports and railways, the United States faces a $2 trillion repair bill. Our inadequate, worn-out infrastructure costs us time and money, lowering the productivity of workers and firms, and discouraging capital investment in the U.S. economy.
Deficient infrastructure, Dulaney noted, has forced Siemens to build its own rail spurs to get goods to market. That’s something smaller companies can’t afford to do. They will go to countries – like China, India and Brazil – that are investing heavily in building world-class infrastructure.
As Nucor’s DiMicco noted, a large-scale U.S. infrastructure initiative would create lots of jobs while also abetting the revival of manufacturing in America. He urged the Obama administration to think bigger, noting that a $500 billion annual investment in infrastructure (much of the new money would come from private sources rather than government) could generate 15 million jobs.
The enormous opportunities to deploy more private capital were echoed from financial leaders in New York, including Jane Garvey, the North American chairman of Meridiam Infrastructure, a private equity fund specializing in infrastructure investment. Garvey warned that what investors need from government programs is more transparent and consistent decision making, based on clear, merit-based criteria, and noted that an independent national infrastructure bank would be the best way to achieve this. Bryan Grote, former head of the Department of Transportation’s TIFIA financing program, which many describe as a forerunner of the bank approach, added that having a dedicated staff of experts in an independent bank is the key to achieving the more rational, predictable project selection that investors need to see to view any government program as a credible partner.
Tom Osborne, the head of Americas Infrastructure at UBS Investment Bank, agreed that an independent infrastructure bank like the version proposed by Senators Kerry, Hutchison and Warner, would empower private investors to fund more projects. And contrary to arguments that a national bank would centralize more funding decisions in Washington, Osborne explained that states and local governments would also be more empowered by the bank to pursue new projects with flexible financing options, knowing that the bank will evaluate projects based on its economics, not on the politics of the next election cycle.
Adding urgency to the infrastructure push was Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s warning this week that the recovery is “close to faltering.” Unlike short-term stimulus spending, money invested in modernizing infrastructure would create lasting jobs by expanding our economy’s productive base.
Warning that America stands on the precipice of a “double dip” recession, Sperling said it would be “inexcusable” for Congress to fail to act on the president’s job plan. He cited estimates by independent economic experts that the plan would boost GDP growth in 2012 from 2.4 to 4.2 percent, and generate over three million more jobs.
The political battle over Obama’s jobs plan centers on how it’s paid for. Senate Democrats have proposed a surtax on millionaires. Unlike tax hikes in general, this idea is popular, and Democrats clearly hope to use it to crack the GOP’s monolithic opposition to raising taxes.
However that battle ends, Congress must salvage the plan’s infrastructure provisions, including its call for an independent infrastructure bank.
America has a serious oil deficit. We consume almost three times as much oil as we produce. As a result, we send more than $250 billion a year offshore (mostly to our enemies and other bad guys) to import oil so we can keep our trains, planes, and automobiles running.
On the other hand, America now has a huge surplus of natural gas, enough to last us for 100 years or more. If we replaced the oil we import with domestic gas, we could end our energy dependence and stop enriching U.S. adversaries. But rather than convert from oil to gas, plans are afoot to export the gas!
The economics of importing oil and exporting gas make no sense. We currently pay about $100 to import a barrel of oil. We are exporting natural gas at a price that has the energy equivalence of about $25 a barrel. That’s right, we are buying energy as oil for $100, selling the same amount of energy as gas for $25.
Buying high and selling low – this is what passes for national energy policy today. Our leaders should be embarrassed.
In addition to the economics, the strategic implications of converting from oil to gas are huge.
About two-thirds of the oil we use is for transportation. Converting our transportation fleet to natural gas would almost eliminate the need to import oil. Our trade deficit would be cut in half, petro-despots would be deprived of their largest revenue source, and our economy would get a $250 billion shot in the arm – every year.
So why aren’t we doing it? Converting gasoline and diesel engines to gas is relatively easy and very safe. The challenge is the infrastructure – a national network of filling stations that need to be in place before people will convert their cars and trucks to gas. Building that infrastructure requires such a huge effort and coordination among so many actors that it is unlikely that the private sector can or will make the switch by itself. Among other things, investors will worry that OPEC will defensively collapse the price of oil as they did in the ’70s. Given these market realities, the only way this switch can possibly happen will be if the government steps up to catalyze and help underwrite the effort. 150 years ago the government made a similar commitment to enable the trans-continental railroad – which ushered in America’s great industrial expansion. Converting to natural gas could bring about a similar economic boom.
Installing the required new fueling infrastructure for gas-propelled vehicles would be a tremendous generator of new jobs. There are few other investments the nation could make with as large a payoff across so many areas of national concern.
For those interested in the math:
One barrel of oil = about 5.6 million BTU. One Mcf of natural gas = about 1.02 million BTU. (The actual energy content varies slightly depending on the grade of the oil or gas. These are industry averages.)
Energy equivalence: The BTUs in 1 bbl. oil = The BTUs in 5.6 Mcf natural gas.
1 bbl oil costs $96.75 and the same amount of energy in gas costs $25.59 (5.6Mcf x $4.57),
The energy cost ratio between oil and gas is roughly 4 ($100/$25).
That means we’re paying 4 times as much for an oil BTU as we get when we sell a gas BTU.
It also means that once we have completed the conversion, operating on gas instead of gasoline will reduce our transportation energy costs by almost 75 percent.
During the past few years, the United States has received an unexpected energy windfall: put simply, we have a lot more natural gas than we previously thought. This realization is altering America’s energy future in a fundamental way. For many years, the conventional wisdom was that natural gas would play an important role as a bridge fuel but then fade away as the U.S. and the world turned to renewable sources of energy later in the 21st century.
Recent discoveries of enormous gas reserves in the United States offer a very different vision for the future of natural gas. Expanding domestic production will resolve the primary issue that is presently keeping natural gas from becoming the dominant energy resource in the U.S.: the inadequacy of supplies to guarantee long-term availability at reasonable and predictable prices. Yet a recent report by the MIT Energy Initiative estimates that U.S. reservoirs may contain enough natural gas to meet the demand for 90 to 100 years at current consumption levels with much less price volatility.
New technology enabling the extraction of natural gas from shale has been called the most significant energy innovation this century; this discovery has spurred the expansion of U.S. natural gas production. Technology developed primarily in the United States has made the dramatic expansion of U.S. natural gas resources possible. Further technical improvements may enable an even larger expansion of our natural gas resources. ExxonMobil, a company nearly synonymous with oil, now predicts that natural gas will be the fastest growing major fuel source worldwide through 2030. Clearly, something very significant has happened in the world of energy.
Opening Remarks:
Heather Zichal
Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change
The Honorable Jason Altmire
U.S. Representative (D-Penn.)
David McCurdy
President of the American Gas Association
Roundtable Participants: Roger Cooper
Principal, Cleveland Park Policy Consulting Vello Kuuskraa
President, Advanced Resources Inc. Amy Mall
Senior Policy Analyst, Natural Resources Defense Council Peter Molinaro
Vice President, Federal and State Government Affairs, The Dow Chemical Company Peter Robertson,
Senior Vice President, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, America’s Natural Gas Alliance
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011
10 a.m.
Location: National Press Club Zenger Room 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC
Governor Chris Christie has decided to pull New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Northeast’s carbon cap-and-trade program. New Hampshire’s legislature has also voted to leave, though the governor may veto the bill. Other states are considering their positions. As states leave RGGI and its market gets smaller, the advantages of linking up diminish, eroding its economic and political viability. Meanwhile, California’s attempt to implement cap and trade is under attack from the left and, as a result, has hit procedural roadblocks. These events have come as a surprise to many who follow this sort of thing—but are they important? Maybe. Three reactions are possible.
1) Despair(Cap and trade gets a knife in the back to match the one in the front)
RGGI and California’s AB32 are reminders that once, not so long ago, climate change was politically relevant and the best policy for avoiding it—pricing carbon—appeared not only possible but inevitable. RGGI and Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) are the only carbon cap-and-trade programs of any size anywhere in the world. (New Zealand also has a nascent scheme.) RGGI, to date, has survived the political tides that turned cap and trade into “cap and tax” and likely make any new carbon policy impossible in this country. In short, the states would carry the torch until, one day, Washington wakes up. It would be depressing irony, this story goes, if those state programs should die not by outside political force but by suicide.
2) Indifference (“Wait…New Jersey had a carbon policy?”)
Another view is that you can talk all you want about “carrying the torch” without changing the fact that RGGI was and is a mere drop in the bucket. Its goals were always modest, and emissions caps were set so high that allowances never had any real value. If it weren’t for price floors, they would have been worthless. The program didn’t result in enough emissions cuts to be regionally relevant, much less have an effect on the climate problem. RGGI hasn’t had political success either. It’s chosen form—cap and trade—has become much less popular since the program started. If RGGI was supposed to show the country that cap and trade could work and wasn’t so scary after all, it’s either failed or nobody was paying attention in the first place. When and if pricing carbon becomes politically plausible again in Washington, it will be because politics and national public opinion have changed, not because New Jersey lit the way. The programs don’t seem to have had any effect internationally, either—they aren’t touted by U.S. climate negotiators and seem to have had no persuasive power during climate talks.
3)Optimism (Playing the long game)
Michael Levi argues that there may be more positives than negatives in Gov. Christie’s announcement:
…in the course of rejecting RGGI, Christie embraced the reality of the climate problem. Last fall, he said he was skeptical that human-caused climate change was a real problem. In his withdrawal announcement, though, he made it pretty clear that he thought climate change was a serious matter. This is no small thing for a rising star in a party that has increasingly made climate denial a litmus test for its leadership.
Christie’s about-face on this issue makes former Minnesota Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty’s recent turn in the opposite direction look like ham-handed pandering.
Just as with every other environmental issue, the U.S. will have a climate policy when the center-right accepts that one is necessary, and not before. RGGI is doing very little to change that. In other words, RGGI matters only if you care more about the tool (cap and trade) more than the problem (climate change). It is odd, though, that a deficit hawk like Christie would spike a revenue generator like RGGI. That does not bode well for those who think that a carbon tax is the key to a grand environmental-fiscal compromise.
Which of these three is right? Perhaps unsurprisingly, all three to some extent. Pricing carbon is the most effective climate policy—so it is troubling to see it lose ground. RGGI itself is largely irrelevant to both the science and politics of climate. And the long view matters most of all. If you want a meaningful federal climate policy, you are looking for one thing: a 60th vote in the Senate. Could that one day be Christie?
Thomasson writes: “If environmentalists, clean energy advocates, and climate hawks of different feathers want voters to judge the president and members of Congress for their record on these issues, like their failure to pass energy and climate legislation, then they should take advantage of the visibility of Earth Day to demand an accounting from our officials. If there is any time when you can get the attention of the media and voters for five minutes to remind them that there is a lot of work left to do, today is the day.”
Richardson writes: “A better way to take stock of environmental progress is to look at the tools we are using. And unfortunately doing that leaves me profoundly depressed. For almost every environmental problem, the best, most cost-effective solutions are rejected in favor of second-bests, hopeful handouts, or inaction.”
Scorse writes: “The bottom line is that people are much more willing to support environmental policies that come with large risks and disruptions to their way of life when other policies are in place to shield them from excessive risk and instability. Progressive environmental policies must rest on a foundation of broader investments in social safety nets. One of the primary reasons that the U.S. has fallen behind the world on environmental policy is because we have fallen behind on virtually all measures of economic security; the two are intimately linked.”
Kilgore writes: “I can’t pinpoint the moment of total devolution of conservative opinion on the environment, although Al Gore’s Nobel Prize might have been the tipping point. Before you knew it, Fox News personalities were regularly greeting every blizzard as definitive proof that global warming was a hoax. A tempest-in-a-teapot leak of emails from a British research institute became “Climategate,” exposing a vast global socialist conspiracy to suppress clear evidence against climate change. And old, fringe arguments against environmentalism generally as “pagan” or anti-Western had a very big renaissance.”
Drutman writes: “It’s Earth Day, but as far as problems go, the environment now ranks last among 15 issues that the public thinks Congress and the President should deal with this year. Only 24 percent of Americans think the environment is an “extremely important” issue. On this score, the environment comes in behind “the situation in Iraq” (27 percent), “taxes” (27 percent), and “illegal immigration” (30 percent) and “gas and home heating prices” (31 percent).”
It’s almost universally understood that the sudden withdrawal of nearly the entire Republican Party from any significant interest in environmental protection has had and will continue to have a calamitous effect on the ability of public institutions to do anything about such challenges as global climate change. The speed with which this has happened, though, can induce whiplash, not least among Republican pols who are being forced to repudiate their own records (notably John McCain in 2008, and in the current presidential cycle, Tim Pawlenty, soon to be followed, I am sure, by Jon Huntsman if he decides to run). My personal favorite example of this phenomenon occurred in 2010, when Rep. Mark Kirk, who had voted for the administration-supported climate change bill in the House, promised to vote against it if elected to the Senate.
In part this development can be understood as simply a subset of the final conquest of the GOP by a conservative movement that’s been struggling to regain control ever since it briefly held it in 1964. It’s also, as many commentators have noted, a byproduct of partisan and ideological polarization: if Barack Obama is for climate change legislation, then, by God, no respectable conservative can come within miles of supporting it!
But something else is going on, too. Even within the conservative movement, hostility to environmentalism has recently morphed from a prejudice to a core belief. Until quite recently, conservative pols and opinion-leaders gave grudging lip service to environmental protection. EPA was viewed as a bureaucratic nuisance, but not as a fundamentally illegitimate menace to free enterprise. Conservatives favored “balanced” energy development, including nuclear energy and expanded exploitation of domestic oil and coal, but didn’t, until 2008, become the “drill baby drill!” fossil-fuel-o-maniacs they appear to be today. They were climate-change “skeptics,” but not, by and large, climate-change deniers.
I can’t pinpoint the moment of total devolution of conservative opinion on the environment, although Al Gore’s Nobel Prize might have been the tipping point. Before you knew it, Fox News personalities were regularly greeting every blizzard as definitive proof that global warming was a hoax. A tempest-in-a-teapot leak of emails from a British research institute became “Climategate,” exposing a vast global socialist conspiracy to suppress clear evidence against climate change. And old, fringe arguments against environmentalism generally as “pagan” or anti-Western had a very big renaissance.
On this last note, it’s almost been forgotten that just a few years ago “creation care” was the hottest topic around for evangelical theologians. And this was an ecumenical trend, too, and not just within Protestantism: Pope Benedict XVI sponsored a Vatican Conference on Climate Change in 2007. Even outspoken critics of “creation care” activism (e.g., the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land) were urging caution in the advocacy of climate change action, not abandonment of the environment altogether.
More recently, though, the idea of environmentalism representing fundamentally anti-Christian values is back with a vengeance. A Washington Timeseditorial yesterday mocked Earth Day as “The Hippie Holiday” celebrated by “humanity haters” who were defying God’s direct command to subdue and exploit nature. And here’s what was posted at the top of the influential Red State blog site this morning:
This year, the anniversary of our Lord’s crucifixion falls on the anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, which is also Earth Day. Some will choose to worship creation today. We choose to worship our Creator.
Wow. I hadn’t read the Earth Day = Lenin’s Birthday meme since the original Earth Day, when a Republican candidate for governor of my home of Georgia used it and then had to backtrack in considerable embarrassment.
The greatest irony of Earth Day is that it has become a yearly event that is almost ignored by environmentalists and celebrated mostly by politicians and businesses with green products or PR campaigns. The reason for this is probably best understood by florists, card shops, and restaurants on Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day: it is a day for symbolic gestures, taken most advantage of by those who aren’t doing enough the rest of the year but know they should be.
Boycotting the empty gestures is certainly understandable for those who “make every day Earth Day.” A quick visit to a half dozen or so websites of environmental groups this morning found almost no mention whatsoever of Earth Day, but there was a consistent focus on the one-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill. That’s probably for the best, because if people who normally wouldn’t visit these sites are inspired to do so today, they are better off being met with substance than feel-good window dressing.
On the other hand, I’m not sure any of our politicians deserve to get a pass for running silent on environmental symbolism today. Just because it’s okay that Greenpeace chooses not to acknowledge Earth Day on its homepage today doesn’t make it okay for President Obama, Harry Reid, and John Boehner to do the same (they did, by the way—no mention of it whatsoever as of 9:30 am this morning, even on Obama’s now famous Facebook page).
Here’s why: for a lot of Americans, Earth Day may be the one day of the year when they decide to go hunting for information about what kind of progress we have made as a nation on environmental and energy issues, and elected officials ought to be accountable at exactly that moment for their positions on those issues. The White House gets this concept for taxes: Tax Day was this past Monday, and whitehouse.gov still has the new “taxpayer receipt” feature splashed across its main page so people can see where their money went while the question is fresh in their mind. Voters deserve a similar accounting for the environment on the day when they are most likely to be looking for it.
I understand the cynicism about what Earth Day has become, but the problem with that cynicism is one that has all-too-often plagued the environmental movement: it allows condescending moralism to undermine efforts for political accountability. If environmentalists, clean energy advocates, and climate hawks of different feathers want voters to judge the president and members of Congress for their record on these issues, like their failure to pass energy and climate legislation, then they should take advantage of the visibility of Earth Day to demand an accounting from our officials. If there is any time when you can get the attention of the media and voters for five minutes to remind them that there is a lot of work left to do, today is the day.
Whatever you read today, you’ll find writers marking Earth Day by taking stock of environmental progress. Some will celebrate how far we have come in the last 41 years: no burning rivers, bald eagles are back, etc. Others will stress how far we have to go, citing biodiversity loss, water crises, and above all climate change. (And if your reading habits are sufficiently diverse, others will argue we’ve gone too far, and that environmental rules are hurting our economy). All of these (yes, even sometimes the third) are partly right, but arguing over which frame is “right,” if any can be, is not that illuminating.
A better way to take stock of environmental progress is to look at the tools we are using. And unfortunately doing that leaves me profoundly depressed. For almost every environmental problem, the best, most cost-effective solutions are rejected in favor of second-bests, hopeful handouts, or inaction. To give just a few examples:
Transportation: With vehicle emissions dirtying city air and contributing to climate change, inadequate investment in road infrastructure, and a strategically costly dependence on foreign oil, the US could increase gas taxes, which are lower than those in almost every other developed economy. Instead, we use some policies that give no incentive to reduce driving while at the same time restricting consumers’ choice of cars (CAFE standards) and others that cost billions while driving up global food prices (ethanol subsidies).
Smog and Acid Rain: For a beautiful moment, from 1990 through 2010, we did it right: we had a nationwide cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide emissions that caused smog and acid rain. The program resulted in huge health benefits at far less cost than even EPA estimated. But that program is or will soon be dead. New EPA rules are set to end interstate trading for most of the country and will impose other restrictions that mean allowances now have almost no value. EPA doesn’t deserve all the blame—courts rejection of flexible tools and Congress’ failure to act are the true sources of this problem. But it’s just crazy to kill the best environmental program this country has ever had.
Climate: Despite the Senate’s failure to even consider a single climate bill last year, we do (to the surprise of some) have an American climate policy. States and EPA are leading the way, but even if they are both bold and smart, the patchwork of carbon markets, emissions standards, and energy subsidies that emerges will surely be less efficient overall. Emissions reductions will be less, and those we do get will cost more. How is that a good deal?
I could go on. Everywhere you look, even when we deal with environmental problems, we consistently choose ways to deal with them that are costly, ineffective, or even counterproductive. It would be one thing if the best ways to solve these problems—cap-and-trade, taxing externalities—were untested ideas. But of course they are not. They are well understood, and as close to dogma as is possible among economists. Most damning of all, we used to understand this, across the political spectrum. As the sulfur dioxide story illustrates, even if we are making some environmental progress we are getting worse as a country at dealing with these issues effectively.
There is a political story here, of course. There was a time when many on the left rejected efficiency as a goal of environmental policy. The right pushed for a role for markets, and eventually a grand compromise emerged in the 1990s. Efficiency was understood to be a universally valuable goal: more effective policies meant lower costs or more environmental benefits at the same cost. Politics was about making this tradeoff, as it should be.
But somehow cap-and-trade became cap-and-tax, and a large section of the right seems opposed to any environmental policy, whether efficient or not. They’ve moved the goalposts. This about-face is particularly ironic since it leaves government handouts like nuclear subsidies and inflexible restrictions like renewable portfolio standards as the only politically plausible energy policies. How is that pro-market or anti-big government? (The left is not without some blame too: to see that, just look at how fringe groups have recently derailed California’s cap-and-trade program).
But there’s more to this story than just party politics. Efficient environmental policy simply has not caught on with the American public. Sticker shock (like gas taxes) trumps long-term efficiency every time. Hiding costs through subsidies (like ethanol or nuclear) is always more popular than showing them up front by pricing externalities. Defending or securing benefits to the few is always easier than minimizing costs to the many. With environmental problems, costs are often distant in time or diffuse, or benefits are small but widespread. This exacerbates all these problems—that’s what makes them hard.
To some extent our failure to make good policy is a failure of leadership: hiding costs is classic politics, and tearing down those who ask us to make hard choices is easy. We see this in almost all issues, not just environmental policy. But leaders can’t carry all the blame, not least because we choose them.
So is there anything to be hopeful about on Earth Day? If so, it’s hard to find. The trend is in the wrong direction—it is as if we are forgetting everything we’ve learned about dealing with environmental problems. But eventually the biggest such problems—among them water, energy, and climate—will become too large to ignore (arguably, they are already there). When they do, efficient policies for dealing with them will be available. When we are ready, we can do this.
The past decade has been extremely depressing for the U.S. environmental community. Rather than lead the world on climate and energy policy, the U.S. has fallen further behind our developed-world allies, and now even lags behind rising powers such as China and Brazil.
The question arises: Why has America not been able to muster the political will to usher in a clean energy future and join forces with the other rich (and not so rich) nations of the world to combat climate change?
The answer is, of course, complex. Institutional barriers in the American political system favor rural states over urban ones and demand super-majorities that are almost impossible to muster; powerful industrial interests continue to disproportionately sway politicians while funding vast networks of misinformation; and one of our two major parties has embraced a virulently anti-science position that is unprecedented in modern history.
But there is something even more fundamental that the environmental community has failed to grasp. It’s not that Germans, Canadians, Norwegians, and French have a greater love for the environment, or that these countries lack parochial and special interests and powerful corporations. Above all else, what differentiates Americans from these other wealthy nations is our much greater degree of economic insecurity.
The reality is that a bold new energy and climate change policy would inevitably result in dislocations in certain industries and upset long-established ways of life in many regions; in addition, it would lead to higher prices for basic commodities such as gas, home heating oil, and food.
In societies where there are strong social safety nets―universal healthcare, universal preschool, strong support for new parents, significant investments in public transportation, and sustained support for higher education ―the changes wrought by a paradigm shift in energy will tend not to result in hugely destabilizing effects across whole towns and communities. In fact, with good planning and investments in critical infrastructure, strong environmental policies can result in overall improvements in the quality of life for nearly everyone.
Throughout much of the developed world, citizens are willing to pay prices for gasoline that would lead to riots in American streets, because they know that the government revenue raised by high gas taxes is used for programs that directly benefit them. In other words, ten-dollar a gallon gas isn’t such a big deal when everyone has great healthcare, great public transportation, and free high-quality schooling.
Many environmentalists criticized President Obama for using virtually all of his political capital to pass healthcare legislation before a comprehensive energy bill. Though many of the benefits of that healthcare bill won’t go into effect until years from now, and support for the legislation still suffers from the copious amounts of misinformation peddled by the bill’s detractors, the goal of universal healthcare will ultimately serve the environmental community. The question is whether it will be too late to matter.
The bottom line is that people are much more willing to support environmental policies that come with large risks and disruptions to their way of life when other policies are in place to shield them from excessive risk and instability. Progressive environmental policies must rest on a foundation of broader investments in social safety nets. One of the primary reasons that the U.S. has fallen behind the world on environmental policy is because we have fallen behind on virtually all measures of economic security; the two are intimately linked.
It’s Earth Day, but as far as problems go, the environment now ranks last among 15 issues that the public thinks Congress and the President should deal with this year. Only 24 percent of Americans think the environment is an “extremely important” issue. On this score, the environment comes in behind “the situation in Iraq” (27 percent), “taxes” (27 percent), and “illegal immigration” (30 percent) and “gas and home heating prices” (31 percent).
Moreover, when it comes to the trade-off between the economy and the environment, meanwhile, the economy now wins hands down: 54 percent to 36 percent. This is actually a relatively new development. Prior to 2008, the public had never prioritized the economy over the environment. As recently as 2007, the public supported giving the environment priority over the economy 55 percent to 37 percent, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s public opinion was consistently 65-to-25 in favor of environment over the economy, with slight dips in environmental friendliness during recessions.
Not surprisingly, the changes have been most pronounced among Republicans and conservatives. In 2000, conservatives prioritized the environment over the economy 62-to-33 percent; Now they prioritize the economy 70-to-22 percent – a remarkable 38 point shift. Similarly, Republicans overall went from 60-to-34 percent environment first to 55-to-35 economy first.
But even liberals have become less environment first. In 2000, they supported the environment over the economy 74 percent to 22 percent; now it’s 55 percent to 35 percent economy over environment. Same with Democrats overall: In 2000, they favored the environment 69 percent to 27 percent; now it’s just barely: 46 percent to 42 percent.
Certainly, a sluggish economy has something to do with things. When unemployment flirts with double-digits and the economy is in recession, it’s much easier to see the top priority as creating jobs. Moreover, the visible environment is in pretty decent shape these days. The skies and rivers are not brown, thanks to environmental regulations passed in the 1970s. Whatever environmental disasters might exist lurk in the hypotheticals of global warming.
As for the environmental problems that people care about, drinking water comes out first (51 percent care a great deal about it), followed closely by soil (48 percent), and rivers, lakes and reservoirs (46 percent).
But even on the these issues, the public is a lot less worried. In 1989, 72 percent of Americans cared a great deal about the pollution of rivers lakes and reservoirs, as opposed to 46 percent today. Similarly, in 1989, 63 percent cared a great deal about air pollution; today it’s 36 percent. This is a success story, because public opinion reflects the fact that these issues just aren’t the big deal they used to be.
What’s troubling, however, is the extent to which public opinion is becoming less concerned about global warming. Only one quarter of respondents care a great deal about global warming, ranking it last among eight environmental issues. That’s down from 41 percent as recently as 2007.
Similarly, as recently as July 2006, 79 percent of respondents thought that there was solid evidence that the earth is warming, and 50 percent believed it was because of human activity. Now only 59 percent believe the earth is warming, and just 32 percent think it’s because of human activity.
What’s emerged is a partisan divide on the issue. Whereas Democrats have been largely consistent in believing the earth is warming, Republicans have increasingly become convinced that global warming is not a problem.
All of this, however, is too bad for Obama, because environmental stewardship is one of the issues the President polls best on: 55 percent of Americans think he is doing a good job “protecting the nation’s environment” as compared to 33 percent who think he is doing a poor job.
Would that allow you to sue all those farmers . . . cow by cow, or at least farm by farm? – Justice Scalia
You’re going to put a $20 a ton tax on carbon, and lo and behold, you will discover that nuisance will be abated. And we bring in 15 economists. – Justice Breyer
In oral arguments for AEP v. Connecticut today the Supreme Court today seemed skeptical of Connecticut and other states’ argument that they should be allowed to pursue nuisance suits against major power companies for their GHG emissions. The transcript is available, and SCOTUSblog has a good overview of the arguments. Though making predictions based on oral arguments is dangerous, I will be very surprised if the court allows this case to proceed. But it is much less clear which of the available reasons for halting the case the court will choose. That decision will have implications that extend well beyond the legal details, and choosing one of the reasons—displacement—could even be beneficial for climate policy.
To recap for those of you that haven’t been following the case, the court has four separate plausible justifications for dismissing it. Very briefly but (hopefully) in plain English, the court could rule that the states can’t sue because:
a) any injury from climate change can’t be traced to the power companies, or courts can’t craft a remedy (Article III standing),
b) the harms of climate change are too generalized and better addressed by Congress (prudential standing),
c) climate change is a “political question” that courts can’t decide; or
d) the Clean Air Act and EPA “displace” federal common law suits like this one.
With four separate grounds available, all of them arguably applicable, the states were always on shaky ground. In fact, the only way I can see the court allowing the case to proceed is if the justices cannot agree on which rationale to choose. If there is no majority, the lower court decision (which favored the states) would stand. This is slightly more likely than normal since Justice Sotomayor has recused herself, making a 4-4 split possible. But this outcome is unlikely. The court will probably choose one (or more) of the rationales and dismiss the case.
The justices spent some time at arguments on each of the four rationales. The political question doctrine was discussed the least, but I can’t rule out any of the four. But it is interesting that two of the justices most likely to rule in the states’ favor—Justice Kagan and Justice Ginsburg—focused on the displacement issue. Each seemed to feel EPA moves to regulate GHGs were significant, and in tension with a nuisance suit: Ginsburg suggested that the suit would require courts to become a “super EPA” without the expertise for that role. If these justices favor dismissing on displacement grounds, that may be the compromise that emerges from the Court.
It helps that an opinion citing displacement almost writes itself—this case was filed, decided, and appealed at a time when EPA never looked like regulating GHGs. A lot has happened since then: Massachusetts v. EPA, the 2009 GHG endangerment finding, new vehicle emissions rules, and the late-2010 settlement agreement under which EPA committed to regulating emissions from exactly those facilities the states are pursuing: the electric power sector.
The states point out that these regulations aren’t in place yet, and though I don’t think that helps them avoid legal displacement, it illustrates why a court decision based on displacement would be so important. If you’ve been following Congress this year, you know EPA authority over GHGs is under threat. It narrowly survived the 2011 budget process, and is likely to be targeted again. But if this authority is all that stands between emitters and federal nuisance suits, it becomes much harder to get rid of. The power companies already acknowledge in their brief that EPA does have the authority to regulate GHGs from their plants (which should, by the way, finally end attempts to rhetorically relitigate Massachusetts v. EPA). If the Supreme Court rules that Congress displaced suits like Connecticut when it gave broad authority to the EPA under the Clean Air Act, legislators are much less likely to take that power away, at least not without putting something new in its place.
So while a loss for the states on displacement grounds might seem like an anti-environmental result, it would be just as accurate to view it as pro-EPA. Dismissal of the case on standing or political question grounds does not have this effect. This also illustrates why displacement is the narrowest grounds for dismissal—if the EPA fails to act or is disarmed by Congress, the Court can revisit the issue, and only then would it need to draw sweeping conclusions about the scope of broad legal doctrines.
The EPA, armed only with its current powers, is not the ideal architect for climate policy—but it is a far better venue than the courts, for both practical and philosophical reasons. The justices today seemed acutely aware of these limitations. Assuming my prediction is correct and this case is dismissed, I agree with others who argue that is the right result regardless of our views on climate policy. But it’s possible that in dismissing the case the Court will strengthen the EPA. If so, that’s good news for the climate too.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in AEP v. Connecticut, a case that will decide whether eight states have the right to sue American Electric Power (AEP) Co. and several other utilities for greenhouse gas emissions. The states have argued that carbon dioxide emissions are a “public nuisance” because they contribute to climate change. They’re hoping to force the companies to reduce their emissions through litigation. The power companies have argued that because of the complexity of climate change, it’s impossible to draw a causal link between any specific emissions and any unwelcome changes in the weather.
Progressives should … not reflexively support climate change litigation, no matter how passionately one might favor emission reductions. We should adhere to our principles and protect due process rights of defendants, even when those defendants are large corporations. The David and Goliath analogy may score political points, but it only works in litigation when Goliath does something objectively wrong. Otherwise, any group that fails to get its way in the political arena will turn to the courts. Such an act would be an affront to democratic proceduralism that has long defined our progressive philosophy.
Brinksmanship is the name of the game in Washington this week. GOP leaders are publicly shifting away from negotiation tactics and turning to endgame spin strategy in advance of a government shutdown, while President Obama continues working to secure a deal without staking out an early position in the blame game that’s soon to follow.
A perfect example of the GOP’s unanswered offense in this game is the timing of votes in both houses this week to strip the EPA of its ability to move forward with new greenhouse-gas regulations. There has been no shortage of Republican proposals in both houses of Congress to do this for months, plus a handful of Senate Democrats who also support some version of stopping or delaying the EPA climate rules. But what better time to bring up a divisive issue with no hopes for compromise than in the last hours of an overheated budget standoff? Tactically speaking, it’s a reminder of why Republicans are always so much better at strategy and spin than Democrats, but it could also prove to be another example of how their ideological extremism eventually undermines their strategic successes.
Already the White House is playing defense, trying to calm environmentalists after rumors that the administration has been using the EPA’s authority as a bargaining chip to secure a budget deal and avoid a shutdown. On Tuesday, OMB issued a policy statement warning that if the House measure ever reaches the President’s desk, “his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
That’s fairly strong language for OMB bureaucrats to use, but it’s pretty pathetic as the only public response of the White House to direct attacks one of the most significant regulations issued by this administration. Much of the media coverage has interpreted the statement as a promise to veto the House bill, but it includes no such promise. As veto threats go, this one is half-hearted at best.
With the budget fight reaching a fever pitch and GOP leaders raising the stakes by bringing climate change into the game, it’s time for the President to take a side on this fight before votes are cast, not after.
President Obama should announce clearly and unequivocally that he will not sign any bill that delays, repeals, or compromises the EPA’s greenhouse-gas regulations, until Congress has passed legislation adopting some form of long-term national energy and climate strategy.
Here’s why: the EPA regulations are the last leverage he has left at this point to get any energy bill through Congress, and they may be one of the only political defenses he has post-shutdown for not reaching a budget deal with Republicans. Even entertaining the possibility of trading away EPA’s regulations for a budget deal is not only a loser’s hand in the short term, but it would be the end of any hopes he might have to move any meaningful energy agenda during his first term, and possibly his second.
For some presidents, calling for this type of statement and strong positioning might not be a big thing to ask for. But President Obama has shown consistently he prefers to lead from the rear, leaving the bloodshed to members on the front lines in Congress, many of whom are no longer around to fight after casting tough votes for last year’s energy bill. The administration’s reluctance to lead on climate and energy in 2010 gives congressional Democrats facing tough races little reason to think they will get any cover in 2012 for defending the EPA this year.
What’s more, President Obama faces two problems if he chooses to stand up more forcefully for the EPA’s regulations. His first problem is the perception Republicans are promoting that this is more simply more “job-killing” regulation heaped onto an already weak economy. That thinking has a number of vulnerable Democrats spooked, especially in the Senate, where a handful of moderates already co-sponsored a bill to delay the regulation for two years.
Obama’s second problem with trying to defend the EPA rules is that he has never strongly supported them up until now. The administration has soft-pedaled its commitment to the EPA rules from the beginning, presumably to use them for leverage to motivate industry opponents and their many representatives in Congress to support a less painful alternative, such as cap-and-trade. The fact that they did such a poor job of using that leverage to actually enact an alternative now leaves them stuck with regulations they have said they don’t want, and a Congress that doesn’t want them either, but also doesn’t want to give him a better alternative.
Anyone who thinks Obama will fall on his sword to protect the EPA rules in addition to passing an energy bill hasn’t listened to what he and his advisors have said about the rules for the last two years. You just need to look at the EPA’s official press release for its initial endangerment finding in December, 2009, which was supposed to explain why the regulations were so critical and necessary to mitigate the threat that greenhouse gases pose to public health and welfare. Instead, EPA pitched it as an unavoidable Plan B forced by a Supreme Court decision and Congress’s failure to act first:
President Obama and Administrator Jackson have publicly stated that they support a legislative solution to the problem of climate change and Congress’ efforts to pass comprehensive climate legislation. However, climate change is threatening public health and welfare, and it is critical that EPA fulfill its obligation to respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants. (link here)
If anything, the administration seems even less committed now to greenhouse gas regulations than it did then. Carbon emissions aren’t exactly at the top of President Obama’s list of talking points these days. In fact, his recent signals on energy policy appear deliberately calculated to move away from climate change positions altogether in favor of arguments for energy innovation, job growth in clean energy industries, and (as of last week’s speech at Georgetown) energy independence.
Obama made a bold attempt to reframe the energy debate in his State of the Union address, but not once in that speech did he reference climate change, cap-and-trade, the environment, or the EPA. His proposal for a new “clean energy standard” that moves us away from older fossil-fuel resources over the next 25 years has not picked up much energy of its own in Congress, and the President has yet to fill in the details of the proposal, leaving congressional leaders struggling to make sense of it on their own.
It is still unclear whether President Obama believes his clean energy standard or any of the proposals he mentioned last week would be sufficient steps toward carbon reduction to justify trading away the EPA’s regulatory authority over greenhouse gases. It’s even less clear whether all of those things together would be enough for environmentalists to even entertain the thought such a trade might happen.
Presumably, the comprehensive energy bill that passed the House last year would have been a strong enough substitute, but Waxman and Markey are not committee chairmen anymore. GOP members in the House have turned back time and aggressively attacked the science behind global warming, forcing advocates to invest more in defending the EPA’s actions, which may make it harder for the President to make a deal that undermines those actions.
Regardless of what hopes environmental groups may have for moving forward on clean energy while defending the EPA at the same time, it may be necessary to put everything on the table if we want any forward movement on energy policy in the foreseeable future.
But for now, what’s important is there is no such movement to be seen yet. So whatever type of climate or energy bill might justify regulatory horse trading, now is the time for talking about it. Given the state of the budget mess and the absence of political will to tackle energy legislation, now is the time for backing up bold speeches with firm conviction.
Whether it’s 4G cell phones, light-as-a-feather laptops or the latest tablet, Americans are enjoying a wireless revolution. In 2010, Americans typed, tapped, texted, and called on an estimated 300 million mobile devices.
President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan includes some constructive – literally – provisions for upgrading America’s economic infrastructure. These shouldn’t be controversial: Who could be against putting people to work rebuilding the rickety foundations of U.S. productivity and competitiveness?
America has a serious oil deficit. We consume almost three times as much oil as we produce. As a result, we send more than $250 billion a year offshore (mostly to our enemies and other bad guys) to import oil so we can keep our trains, planes, and automobiles running.
It’s been a bad month for cap and trade.
Friday, April 22 was Earth Day. We put together five great pieces to celebrate:
In oral arguments for AEP v. Connecticut today the Supreme Court today seemed skeptical of Connecticut and other states’ argument that they should be allowed to pursue nuisance suits against major power companies for their GHG emissions. The 
Brinksmanship is the name of the game in Washington this week. GOP leaders are publicly shifting away from negotiation tactics and turning to endgame spin strategy in advance of a government shutdown, while President Obama continues working to secure a deal without staking out an early position in the blame game that’s soon to follow.