In a new post on his blog, Harvard economist and PPI contributor Robert Stavins surveys the dismal political landscape for cap-and-trade and finds reason to be optimistic. Acknowledging that cap-and-trade as laid out in the Waxman-Markey bill is dead, Stavins surveys the remaining alternatives.
First he looks at the increasingly likely option of a stand-alone energy bill, which as he accurately describes it lops off the best thing about Waxman-Markey (a cap-and-trade scheme) and preserves the worst (a cocktail of standards and subsidies that will do very little at high costs).
Then he takes a look at EPA regulation as mandated by the Supreme Court. Stavins argues that going that route would be “relatively ineffective and terribly costly for what is accomplished.” Moreover, it promises a political backlash, with the EPA’s enforcement becoming the embodiment of regulatory overkill that can be used by the right to defeat sensible climate policies.
But Stavins does like one alternative lurking out there: a so-called “cap-and-divided” system whose appeal lies in its populist politics. Stavins explains:
This could be done with a simple upstream cap-and-trade system in which all of the needed allowances are sold (auctioned) – not given freely – to fossil-fuel producers and importers, and a very large share – say 75% – of the revenue is rebated directly to American households through monthly checks in a progressive scheme through which all individuals receive identical payments.
Such an approach could appeal to the populist sentiments that are increasingly dominating political discourse and judgments in this mid-term election year. Such a system – which would have direct and visible positive financial consequences (i.e., rebate checks larger than energy price increases) for 80% of American households – might not only not be difficult for politicians to support, but it might actually be difficult for politicians to oppose!
Such a system has already been proposed in Congress, with Sen. Maria Cantwell’s (D-WA) Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal (CLEAR) Act. Also sponsored by Republican Sen. Susan Collins (ME), the bill has the advantage of being bipartisan as well as populist. Stavins warns that changes still need to be made. For instance, the bill restricts the creation of a broad market for CO2 allowances, making it less efficient and needlessly driving up costs. (David Roberts at Grist has a more detailed — and I must say persuasive — critique of the CLEAR Act here.)
In actuality, a cap-and-dividend system as Stavins lays it out is little different from a cap-and-trade system. The main difference is optics. Waxman-Markey has now been (unfairly) painted as an unwieldy sausage of backroom deals and industry giveaways. By calling for auction revenues to be returned to consumers, a cap-and-dividend certainly might be more palatable in a populist period.
But one thing that supporters of cap-and-dividend forget is that Waxman-Markey did not give away free allowances because the bill’s authors like industry. Rather, they did it because they needed industry to buy in. Can a bill that withholds those incentives from utilities and other affected companies actually make it through the legislative process? I have my doubts.
Remember cap-and-trade? Progressives now speak of it in hushed, glum tones, the way we do of the recently departed. If the bill was already unlikely to be passed in the wake of a difficult 2009 for Democrats, then Scott Brown’s win all but guaranteed that it wouldn’t be so much as a blip on the Dems’ political agenda in 2010.
Yet there are some out there who continue to hold out hope. Some are even Republicans. Here’s Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) speaking at a D.C. event yesterday:
I don’t think you’ll ever have energy independence the way I want it until you start dealing with carbon pollution and pricing carbon. The two are connected in my view—very much connected. The money to be made in solving the carbon pollution problem can only happen when you price carbon in my view.
So if the approach is to try to pass some half-assed energy bill and say that is moving the ball down the road, forget it with me.
Now, Graham has come out against both the House-passed cap-and-trade bill last year and the bill that passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. But he, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are trying to cobble together a compromise that results in some sort of carbon-pricing scheme and, no less important, can get 60 votes.
It’s indisputable that a system that prices carbon is better at curbing greenhouse gas emissions and spurring clean energy development than a stand-alone energy bill with the usual cocktail of subsidies to energy companies – something that some in Congress are now actively pushing. As Bradford Plumer has pointed out, “without a cap on carbon, such a bill might even end up increasing emissions – especially if the proposed new transmission lines merely gave coal-fired plants access to new markets, allowing them to boost output.”
Where’s the administration in all this? President Obama’s budget pointedly left out revenue that an emissions-trading program would have brought in. (Last year’s budget, by contrast, included a revenue forecast of $646 billion over several years from a cap-and-trade system.) The administration insists that the omission shouldn’t be read as a signal of where things stand on cap-and-trade — but it’s sure hard not to. Then again, the budget also includes a $43 million increase for the EPA’s implementation of its carbon endangerment finding, certainly a signal that it intends to move ahead with a Supreme Court-mandated regulatory effort to confront the carbon problem in the absence of legislation.
For his part, President Obama in a town hall appearance in New Hampshire earlier this week gave a strong defense of the concept of pricing carbon to drive incentives for clean energy investments. But he also acknowledged that the Senate might separate the subsidies for clean energy in an energy bill from a carbon-pricing mechanism – which realistically means no cap-and-trade at all.
I understand that the president can’t throw around words like “half-assed.” But a stronger push would be nice. Graham called out an energy-bill-only route for what it is and stood firm on the issue of carbon pricing. It seems like there’s an opening there for the president to make the same argument and embolden Congress to do what’s really needed to spur a clean energy economy and curb greenhouse gases: pass a cap-and-trade system.
President Obama has delivered on his promise to expand nuclear energy — big time. But can Republicans take “yes” for an answer?
Obama’s new budget calls for a whopping increase in federal loan guarantees for nuclear power, from $18.5 billion to $54 billion. Last week, he also created a blue ribbon panel to explore solutions to the contentious issue of nuclear waste disposal, which many regard as a key roadblock to building new nuclear plants.
The president’s commitment to a nuclear “renaissance” in America signals a major shift among progressives. Although some environmentalists remain adamantly opposed, Obama’s pragmatic stance probably will speed the melting away of taboos on nuclear energy that date back to the 1979 Three Mile Island incident.
Increasing the role nuclear power plays in the nation’s energy portfolio serves our economic, security and environmental interests. It would help America meet rising energy demand as well as the targets it set in Copenhagen for greenhouse gas reduction. As more hybrids and electric cars come onto the market, it would enable us to generate more electricity with zero carbon emissions. And the switch in transportation fuels from gas to electricity will lessen our dependence on foreign oil.
Some progressives, however, balk at expanding federal loan guarantees to underwrite nuclear plant construction. They cite a relatively high risk of default, although such risk is at least in part the result of political obstacles to expeditiously siting, approving and building new facilities.
Critics also object that Obama’s push for nuclear power is a preemptive concession to Republicans. Some GOP leaders, like Sen. John McCain, have demanded more support for nuclear energy in exchange for their support of the president’s “cap-and-trade” proposal to reduce U.S. carbon emissions and spur clean energy development. It’s true that Republicans aren’t lining up now to support the legislation, but it’s also true that the president’s budget is still just a proposal at this point.
Expanding nuclear power is worth doing whether or not some pro-nuke Republicans sign onto the climate bill. But in coming budget negotiations, Obama should offer Republicans a deal: more support for nuclear power in return for a softening of their monolithic, and retrograde, opposition to ensuring that America does its part to stop overheating the planet.
If they refuse, it will bolster the president’s point that “it takes two to tango,” and put the onus of obstructionism squarely on the GOP.
Elections really do have consequences. After years of virtual inaction from the Bush administration on a clean economy, the president’s new budget is a politically savvy, substantively brave, and altogether impressive collection of proposals. Against the dim eight years, the proposals for the Department of Energy are electrifying, and continue to show the administration’s commitment to bringing path-breaking change to energy and environmental policies.
In the critical area of “negawatts,” for instance, the president proposes a sweeping expansion in energy efficiency, with $500 million in credit subsidies to support $3 to $5 billion in loan guarantees for efficiency and renewable energy projects.
On research and innovation, he proposes $5.1 billion for the Office of Science, including $1.8 billion for basic energy sciences to discover novel ways to produce, store, and use energy. He also puts $300 million into the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (DARPA-E).
And he includes goals regular folks can get our arms around. The budget will double renewable energy generating capacity (excluding conventional hydropower) by 2012. It will push out new battery manufacturing for 500,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles a year by 2015. And DOE and HUD will work together to retrofit 1.1 million housing units through 2011.
Renewables, batteries, and retrofits. These are all practical achievements that will make a difference in the lives of millions of people, and that can be easily visualized.
These are progressive measures, to be sure. They’ll be popular in blue states and probably purple ones as well. But the president also includes other measures to ensure the package is taken seriously across the country. The budget includes $36 billion in new loan authority, for a total of $54.5 billion, to support DOE loan guarantees for nuclear power facilities. Specifically, the budget conditionally commits to loan guarantees for two nuclear power facilities for at least 3,800 megawatts during 2010. It’s a move that will help the president sell his budget to pro-nuclear senators.
The budget also proposes $545 million to develop carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies. Substantial support for these exciting technologies is critical to getting support from representatives and senators from states, including the critical Appalachian belt, where coal is, and will continue to be, an important source of energy.
Exciting news to see substance, vision, and strategy coming together in one document and a clear indication that — on the energy front, at least — the change promised in 2008 is resoundingly here.
The squabble over the Cape Wind, an offshore wind farm off Cape Cod, has been raging for years now, with some residents of Nantucket who dearly prize their ocean views battling with pro-wind energy forces who want to establish the nation’s first major offshore wind farm. But after eight years of regulatory review, during which time no regulator has found that the project’s 130 turbines would cause harm to the environment, Cape Wind looked just about ready to be resolved, with one more regulatory hurdle waiting to be cleared.
Alas, the new year brought some bad news for Cape Wind backers:
In a new setback for a controversial wind farm proposed off Cape Cod, the National Park Service announced Monday that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, guaranteeing further delays for the project.
Known as Cape Wind, the project is the nation’s first planned offshore wind farm and would cover 24 square miles in the sound, an area roughly the size of Manhattan. The Park Service decision came in response to a request from two Massachusetts Indian tribes, who said the 130 proposed wind turbines would thwart their spiritual ritual of greeting the sunrise, which requires unobstructed views across the sound, and disturb ancestral burial grounds.
The Park Service’s decision, which caught observers by surprise, no doubt throws the project’s prospects in doubt, and deals another blow to the cause of clean energy.
The ruling certainly caught the Obama administration’s attention. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department oversees the Park Service, issued a statement calling on the principal parties in the dispute to meet next week to hammer out a “common-sense agreement” by March 1. Salazar added that if a deal isn’t reached, “I will be prepared to take the steps necessary to bring the permit process to conclusion.’’
Salazar’s statement is the boldest declaration of interest yet by the administration in the Cape Wind project. Perhaps after the frustrations of Copenhagen and cap-and-trade, the administration has a renewed sense of urgency about proving its commitment to clean energy. Certainly the comparison between the U.S. and its peers isn’t flattering to us: just two days ago, Britain announced that it would award £100 billion worth of development contracts for a new generation of offshore wind farms.
We won’t know until the meeting next week what the administration’s plan and next moves are. For now, we stick with a frustrating mantra familiar to followers of the Cape Wind saga: Stay tuned.
Robert Stavins, who wrote us a dispatch from Copenhagen upon President Obama’s arrival there last week, has had a couple of days to mull over the outcome of the talks. His verdict: qualified approval, with a healthy dose of “too soon to tell.”
At the final hour in Copenhagen, the leaders of a small number of key countries worked creatively together to identify a politically feasible path forward. I have previously argued (“Defining Success for Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen”) that the best goal for the Copenhagen climate talks was to make progress on a sound foundation for meaningful, long-term global action, not some notion of immediate, numerical triumph. That has essentially been accomplished with the “Copenhagen Accord,” despite its flaws and despite overt challenges from five of some 193 countries represented (Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Venezuela).
Stavins calls the deal “a potentially very important third step” (the Rio Earth Summit in ’92 and Kyoto in ’97 being the first two), noting the improvement it makes over the Kyoto Protocol. The accord “expand[s] the coalition of the willing” by including rapidly growing developing countries that were left out in the Kyoto agreement, a crucial move if the world really is to make a concerted effort to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
Underscoring the immense difficulty of getting the whole world to sign on to one agreement, Stavins argues that while the Copenhagen accord may fall short of people’s expectations, it nonetheless was much better than what most people anticipated days before the conference’s end, when talks seemed hopelessly stuck in neutral. Stavins singles out President Obama’s late-game intervention as key to hammering out an accord. But as Stavins’ item-by-item breakdown of the deal suggests, there are simply too many details that have yet to be hammered out to fully determine the accord’s merits. The jury is still out.
One point that Stavins does make stands out: pointing the way forward, he suggests that bilateral and multilateral talks might be the more effective path as we proceed from here. I’ve been wondering about this, too. Considering how unwieldy it is to get nearly 200 nations on the same page, and that only 17 countries in the world account for some 90 percent of its emissions, wouldn’t scaling down agreements to the bilateral and multilateral level have a better chance of getting results?
Of course, it will all go for naught if the U.S. doesn’t act. Although China is now the world’s largest GHG emitter, it is still doing more on the renewable energy front than the U.S. And let’s face it: the average Chinese citizen is still nowhere near the polluter the average American is. The fact is that the U.S. needs to now do its part and enact a cap-and-trade bill. Senators, the world is watching — and waiting.
The following is a guest column from PPI friend and sometime contributor Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at Harvard and director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. He is attending the U.N. climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.
First things first: Let’s start with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement today regarding U.S. funding for developing countries. The developing countries are asking for truly huge sums in Copenhagen — more than $100 billion to $200 billion annually to pay for their carbon mitigation and climate change adaptation through 2050. The U.S. can play an important role, and it could do so in a way that will not add to U.S. debt and ought not antagonize more conservative elements in the U.S. Congress, but it will not be through direct payments from the U.S. government to governments of developing countries. Let me explain.
Although it is inconceivable that the governments of the industrialized world, including the U.S. government, will come up with sufficient, sustainable foreign aid to satisfy the demands for financial transfers by the developing countries, they can — through sensible domestic and international policy arrangements — provide key incentives for the private sector to provide the needed financing through foreign direct investments.
For example, if the cap-and-trade systems that are emerging throughout the industrialized world as the favored domestic approach to reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions are linked together through the existing, common emission-reduction-credit system, namely the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), then powerful incentives can be created for carbon-friendly private investment in the developing world. That would not add to U.S. debt; indeed, it would be good for U.S. private industry.
Clearly the CDM, as it currently stands, cannot live up to this promise, but with appropriate reforms there is significant potential. Of course, problems of limited additionality will inevitably remain. Therefore, what is needed is for the key emerging economies — China, India, Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, and Mexico — to take on meaningful emission targets themselves (even if equivalent to business-as-usual in the short term), and then participate directly in international cap-and-trade, not government-government trading as envisioned in Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol (which won’t work), but firm-firm trading through linked national and multinational cap-and-trade systems.
Importantly, the private finance approach stands a much greater chance than government aid of being efficiently employed — that is, targeted to reducing emissions, rather than spent by poor nations on other (possibly meritorious) purposes. So, the job can be done, and governments have an important role, but as facilitators, not providers, of finance. Unfortunately that has not been the focus of the Copenhagen discussions.
Moving Past Kyoto
More broadly, the developing countries have insisted that the Kyoto protocol must be the basis for a new agreement. This is a real problem, because the Kyoto Protocol, in particular its dichotomous distinction between the small set of Annex I countries with quantitative emission-reduction commitments and the majority of countries in the world with no responsibilities, is the “QWERTY keyboard” (that is, unproductive path dependence) of international climate policy — the major stumbling block in negotiations here in Copenhagen.
The world has changed dramatically since the 1997 Protocol divided the world in two. More than 50 non-Annex I countries (with no legally binding commitments) now have greater per capita income than the poorest of the Annex I countries (with commitments). So, even if this distinction was appropriate in 1997, it surely no longer is. But updating the list is impossible. Mexico and South Korea, for example, joined the OECD just six months after Kyoto, but they are unwilling to join the set of Annex I parties. Furthermore, updating the list would be insufficient. It is the very notion of a dichotomous distinction between countries with stringent targets and countries with no targets whatsoever that is at the heart of the problem. A more subtle, more sophisticated interpretation of “common but differentiated responsibilities” is needed. More about this below.
The industrialized (Annex I) countries have emitted most of the stock of manmade carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, so shouldn’t they reduce emissions before developing countries are asked to contribute? While this may seem to make sense, here are four reasons why a new climate agreement must engage all major emitting countries — both industrialized and developing:
Emissions from developing countries are significant and growing rapidly. China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest CO2 emitter in 2006, and developing countries may account for more than half of global emissions within the next decade.
Developing countries provide the best opportunities for low-cost emissions reduction; their participation could dramatically reduce total costs.
The U.S. and several other industrialized countries may not commit to significant emissions reductions without developing country participation.
If developing countries are excluded, up to one-third of carbon emissions reductions by participating countries may migrate to non-participating economies through international trade, reducing environmental gains and pushing developing nations onto more carbon-intensive growth paths (so-called “carbon leakage’’).
How can developing countries participate in an international effort to reduce emissions without incurring costs that derail their economic development? Their emissions targets could start at business-as-usual levels, becoming more stringent over time as countries become wealthier. If such “growth targets’’ were combined with an international emission trading program, developing countries could fully participate without incurring prohibitive costs (or even any costs in the short term). This approach — described in a recent Discussion Paper by Harvard Professor Jeffrey Frankel and Valentina Bosetti of the University of Venice for the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements — could provide a progressive route forward, breaking the logjam between developed and developing countries, if only the two sides would begin to talk to each other, rather than past each other.
Obama in Denmark
Now that President Obama is on his way to Copenhagen, will his presence and that of so many heads of state provide the needed push for success? Unquestionably the presence of some 100 heads of state and government increases the likelihood that a climate change deal will be reached by the close of business on Friday, but the key question is whether it increases the likelihood that a “meaningful climate change deal” will be achieved. I am of mixed views on this.
On the one hand, the presence of the leaders surely provide impetus to the process in the sense that many of the key countries — including the U.S. — will not want their leaders to fly home without a “success” in hand. For President Obama, two flights home from Copenhagen within a few weeks without success in either would be a substantial political embarrassment. (The international press and Republicans in Congress have not forgotten the failed Chicago bid for the Olympics). Furthermore, as I explained in a Financial Timesblog post last week, the very fact that the White House decided to shift President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen from the first week of the conference to its final day suggests that they had good reason to anticipate a successful outcome.
On the other hand, the political incentive that is provided for achieving “success” by the leaders’ presence may be to accept a deal that is less than meaningful (if a meaningful deal cannot be achieved), but one that has the appearance of success. So, with the heads of state and government present, the incentives could be strong to agree to a climate change deal that is less than meaningful. The key, outstanding question is whether the outcome will be one that provides a sound foundation for meaningful, long-term global action, as opposed to some notion of immediate, albeit highly visible triumph.
It would be unfortunate if the outcome were no more than a signed international agreement per se, glowing press releases, and related photo opportunities for national leaders, because such an agreement would most likely be the Kyoto Protocol on steroids: more stringent targets for the industrialized countries and the absence of real commitments by the key, rapidly growing emerging economies of China, India, Brazil, Korea, Mexico, and South Africa (let alone by the numerous developing countries of the world). With the promise of $100 billion now on the table in Copenhagen, such an agreement could — in principle — be signed, but it would not reduce global emissions and it would not be ratified by the U.S. Senate (just like Kyoto). Hence, there would be no real progress on climate change.
The Need for a New Mindset
At the heart of the matter is the reality that eventually the negotiations must get beyond what has become the “QWERTY keyboard” of international climate policy: the distinction in the Kyoto Protocol between the small set of Annex I countries with quantitative targets, and the majority of countries in the world with no responsibilities. Various meaningful policy architectures could begin to bridge the massive political divide that exists between the industrialized and the developing world, as we’ve found in the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements.
For example, it remains possible that a midterm agreement could be reached on an approach involving an international portfolio of domestic commitments, whereby each nation would commit and register to abide by its domestic climate commitments, whether those are in the form of laws and regulations or multi-year development plans. Support for such an approach has been voiced by a remarkably diverse set of countries, including Australia, India, and the U.S. And comments yesterday from the Chinese delegation suggest that support is increasing for this approach.
Consistent with this portfolio approach, President Obama recently announced that the U.S. would put a target on the table in Copenhagen to reduce emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 (in line with climate legislation in the U.S. Congress). In response, China announced that it would reduce its carbon intensity (emissions per unit of economic activity) 40 percent below 2005 levels over the same period of time. Subsequently, India announced similar targets. Given these countries rapid rates of economic growth, the announced targets won’t cut emissions in absolute terms, but they are promising starting points for negotiations. The key question is not what this approach would accomplish in the short term, but whether it would put the world in a better position two, five, and ten years from now in regard to a long-term path of more aggressive action.
Until we see the final outcome in Copenhagen, I will remain cautiously optimistic, because at least some of the key nations, including the U.S., appear to be more interested in real progress than in symbolic action.
If you’ve been following the Copenhagen process this week, you may have noticed that the “debate” over climate change and what to do about it has regressed. Whereas, just a few years ago, George W. Bush acknowledged the human role in global warming and John McCain was a leading proponent of climate-change legislation, know-nothingism is now resurgent. The GOP pins its electoral hopes on slogans like “drill, baby drill” and “cap-and-tax”; McCain has soured on cap-and-trade; and on the nation’s airwaves and op-ed pages, climate-change deniers (and their more circumspect brethren, the “skeptics”) crow triumphantly at every snowstorm and every controversy, real or imagined, that puts climate scientists on the defensive.
Worse yet, many years of painstaking efforts to explain climate change to the American people and get them concerned about it seem to be gradually unraveling. As Chris Mooney notes in a piece on the ‘disastrous’ turn in the narrative, an October 2009 Pew report shows that, since April 2008, the number of Americans who believe there is “solid evidence the earth is warming” has dropped from 71 percent to 57 percent. During that same period, the proportion who accept the existence of climate change and attribute it to human activity has dropped from 47 percent to 36 percent–not exactly a robust constituency for immediate action. (There is a brand new poll from the World Bank that suggests more robust support among Americans for carbon emissions limits; I hope–but don’t believe, in the absence of more details–that it’s accurate.)
What is causing this apparent unraveling? There are three competing theories as to its source:
(1) The first and most obvious is that support for allegedly expensive or growth-threatening environmental action always declines during economic downturns. Gallupperiodically asks Americans which they value more: environmental protection or economic growth. Interestingly, from 1984–2008, a plurality (and usually a strong majority) of Americans always prioritized the environment over growth (even when their voting behavior indicated otherwise). But this tendency to prioritize environmental action does flag during recessions, as was evidenced by a steep slide in the “top priority environment” / “top priority growth” ratio from 70 percent / 23 percent in 2000 to 47 percent / 42 percent in 2003. After an uptick in support for the environment as a priority over the economy from 2004–2007, the ratio nose-dived during the most recent economic crisis, to the point where an actual majoritysaid the economy is more important in March 2009 (51 percent / 42 percent), the first time that has happened in Gallup’s polling.
(2) A second possibility is that the change in public opinion is largely a byproduct of the radicalization of the Republican Party. There’s certainly some support for that proposition in the Pew surveys. As recently as 2007, 62 percent of self-identified Republicans told Pew they believed there was solid evidence for global warming. That percentage dropped to 49 percent in 2008 and then to 35 percent this year. (There’s also been a similarly large drop in belief about global warming among self-identified independents—a group that includes a lot of people who are objectively Republicans. The drop among Democrats has been less than half as large.) It’s probably no accident that this change of opinion occurred during the 2008 campaign, when Republicans suddenly made offshore drilling their top energy-policy priority, and this year, when virtually anything embraced by the Obama administration has drawn the collective wrath of the GOP.
(3) Then, there’s the third factor that might explain the changes in public opinion: a determined effort by the hard-core anti-environmental right to dominate the discussion and change its terms. This is the main subject of Mooney’s essay, which focuses on the “statistical liars” like columnist George Will who have distorted climate data to raise doubts about the scientific consensus, and on the continuing brouhaha in the conservative media about “Climategate.” Matt Yglesias has gone further, arguing that climate-change deniers have scored a coup by convincing the mainstream media (most notably the Washington Post, which regularly publishes Will’s columns, and recently published a predictably shrill op-ed by Sarah Palin on the subject) to treat the existence of climate change as scientifically debatable.
I have no compelling evidence to demonstrate which of these factors has contributed most to the gradual ungreening of America, but there are ways to mitigate the negative impacts from all three. Fears that environmental protection is “unaffordable” in a poor economy are obviously cyclical, so unless we are in a recession that will endure for many years, this problem should at some point recede. What’s more, there’s some evidence that suggests efforts to sell action on climate change as “pro-growth” via investments in green technologies can help cushion the public’s skepticism.
Meanwhile, the second and third causes—GOP radicalization and the revival of a powerful denialist media presence—are clearly interrelated. Self-identified Republicans who spend a lot of time watching Fox News are obviously influenced by the torrent of “information” about the “hoax” of global climate change; while both conservative opinion leaders and GOP politicians are invested in promoting polarization on a historic scale. But this toxic environment would be largely self-contained if misinformation weren’t bleeding over into the broader discourse that includes Americans who don’t think Obama is a committed socialist or that environmentalists want to take the country back to the Stone Age.
And that’s why Yglesias is right: This is one area of public policy where “respect for contrary views” and “editorial balance” are misplaced. Sure, there are many aspects of the climate-change challenge that ought to be debated, and not just between those at the ideological and partisan extremes. But we shouldn’t be “debating” whether or not the scientific consensus on climate change actually represents a vast conspiracy to destroy capitalism and enslave the human race, any more than we should be debating whether “death panels” are a key element of health care reform.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Last week saw the release of a new report (PDF) from Kansas State University that compares and summarizes the findings of several cost-benefit studies of cap-and-trade’s impact on the agriculture sector. The report confirms what we’ve written in the past: that the farm industry is actually going to come out well if cap-and-trade as currently designed is implemented.
According to the study:
Overall, the research suggests U.S. agriculture has more to gain than lose with the passage of H.R. 2454. The bill specifically exempts production agriculture from emissions caps, provides provisions to ease the transition to higher fertilizer prices and fosters the development of carbon offset markets which likely will enhance agricultural revenues.
The report acknowledges that costs will rise as a result of setting a cap on emissions. But the size of the increase for farmers would be relatively small. Moreover, much of the cost would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. In the short-run, per-acre profitability would see a dip, but the researchers claim it will be modest. And – a particularly important point with Copenhagen going on – if other countries adopt similar legislation, American farmers would not lose their competitive advantage, the market for agricultural commodities will adjust, and producer profits would return to pre-cap-and-trade levels in the long run.
That’s the cost side of the ledger. The benefits for farmers are potentially enormous. Income from carbon offsets (these could include methane capture, bioenergy crop production, and grassland sequestration) would more than compensate for the higher input costs under a cap-and-trade system. In addition, the increased demand for biofuels under cap-and-trade would also bring benefits, as the agriculture and forestry sectors are the main sources of stocks for bioenergy.
In other words, the creation of a new market brings new incentives and revenue opportunities. It’s the lesson that people who oppose cap-and-trade always seem to forget: as with any market, there will be losers and winners.
Whatever else happened politically in 2009 — and a lot obviously happened — one development that couldn’t quite have been anticipated was the erosion of public confidence in the case for doing something about global climate change.
Yes, recessions always diminish interest in environmental action, on the theory that it’s something we can only “afford” in prosperous times. But that’s not the half of it, as Chris Mooney explains at Science Progress:
Back in 2006, the year of the release of An Inconvenient Truth, it felt as though serious and irreversible progress had finally been made on the climate issue. The feeling continued in 2007, when Al Gore won the Nobel and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that global warming was “unequivocal” and “very likely” human caused. Mega-companies like General Electric were burnishing new green identities, and the Prius was an icon. The Bush administration was widely suspected of having deceived the public about the urgency of the climate issue, and journalists were backing away from their previous penchant for writing “on the one hand, on the other hand” stories about the increasingly indisputable science.Then came the election of Barack Obama, boasting a forward-looking policy agenda to address global warming and a stellar team of scientists and environmentalists in his cabinet and circle of advisers, including climate and energy expert John Holdren and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu. The United States, it seemed, would finally deal with global warming—and just in the nick of time.
Who could have known, at the time, that the climate deniers and contrarians had not yet launched their greatest and most devastating attack?
The “story” on this subject changed, says Mooney, thanks to two separate lines of argument from conservatives that exploited public doubts on climate science. The first was the hammer-headed approach of pointing to cold temperatures here or there as “proof” there was no global warming:
The new skeptic strategy began with a ploy that initially seemed so foolish, so petty, that it was unworthy of dignifying with a response. The contrarians seized upon the hottest year in some temperature records, 1998—which happens to have been an El Nino year, hence its striking warmth—and began to hammer the message that there had been “no warming in a decade” since then.It was, in truth, little more than a damn lie with statistics. Those in the science community eventually pointed out that global warming doesn’t mean every successive year will be hotter than the last one—global temperatures be on the rise without a new record being set every year. All climate theory predicts is that we will see a warming trend, and we certainly have. Or as the U.S. EPA recently put it, “Eight of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.” But none of them beat 1998; and so the statistical liars, like George Will of the Washington Post, continued their charade.
The second prong of the backlash against a climate change consensus among Americans was all about the incident that delighted conservatives call “ClimateGate.” If you’ve somehow missed it, emails hacked and linked from the bowels of a British climate change institute allegedly show coverups of inconvenient data and other un-kosher practices. It’s not clear why this is supposed to make us all assume that climate science is a vast cesspool of conspiracy, but that’s how it has been used by climate change deniers, notes Mooney:
“ClimateGate” generated a massive wave of media attention, blending together the skeptics’ longstanding focus on undercutting climate science with a new overwhelming message of scandal and wrongdoing on the part of the climate research establishment. This story was not going to go away, and even as scientists put out statements (most of them several days late) explaining that the science of climate remains unchanged and unaffected by whatever went on at East Anglia, the case for human-caused global warming was dealt a blow the likes of which we have perhaps never before seen.
The timing of the ClimateGate furor, on the eve of international discussions on global climate change, isn’t coincidental, and has obviously been as destructive as it was intended to be.
It may well be that increasing public doubts about climate change in this country are just rationalizations for the normal fear that saving the planet is in conflict with saving jobs, and is thus a challenge best consigned to mañana.
But the aggressive campaign of denialists and skeptics, skillfully exploiting every bit of evidence and pseudo-evidence that the consensus on climate change is unravelling, is a factor too large to ignore.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
As expected, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally issued its “endangerment finding” on carbon dioxide. Everyone has known for months that the EPA would be issuing the ruling.
It was prompted by a 2007 Supreme Court decision that found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. Since the Obama administration took power, it was only a matter of time when the EPA would act to comply with the Supreme Court ruling. Certainly doing it before Copenhagen, as my colleague Mike Signer pointed out, hands President Obama a big stick as he prepares to attend the summit next week.
Just as expected was the reaction of certain industry actors to the EPA’s move. The EPA finding “could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project,” said U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue.
Donohue’s right that the EPA ruling could lead to command-and-control regulation of carbon emissions. Which leads one to ask – why has the Chamber of Commerce been stonewalling against cap-and-trade legislation? Knowing that the EPA would have to act on emissions, why did the Chamber and other industry players sit out the cap-and-trade process?
Cap-and-trade is a far more flexible process by which the economy can curb carbon emissions. Moreover, it’s a process that’s been open to industry stakeholders – note the gnashing of teeth over the giveaways in the Waxman-Markey bill. Even EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson yesterday said that legislation is still the best way to confront the challenge of climate change.
Yet despite all that and the looming threat of the EPA ruling, the Chamber of Commerce and other industry rejectionists have refused to come and sit at the table to discuss cap-and-trade. And something tells me that even with the EPA finding, the Chamber is still not going to be joining the discussion on cap-and-trade. Instead, they’ll resort to the one thing we know for certain we’ll see in this process: lawsuits.
As the Copenhagen summit on climate change gets under way, we’re going to hear a lot from naysayers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck about the alleged hoax that is climate change. But Operation: Free, a group I’ve written about before, is cutting across ideological lines by using veterans to frame the issue of energy independence as one of national security. It’s a solid idea, and one that’s gaining momentum.
They just wrapped up a bus tour promoting their mission, and even got a shout-out from President Obama on live TV. Check out the video:
Among some members of the chattering class, it’s become something of a meme to assert that the Obama administration is too deferential to its opponents — whether Tea Partiers arguing about health care or Senate Republicans attacking on Afghanistan. The charge has especially been taken up by his critics, who seem to delight in attacking the president they’re beating up as a president whom, well, they can beat up. In September, for instance, Fred Barnes wrote in the Weekly Standard, “There’s the Obama who defers, the one who dithers, and the one who’s out of touch. The Obama presidencies have one thing in common. They’re all weak.”
These critics should be silenced, at least for a while, by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement today formally declaring that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant, paving the way for its regulation under the Clean Air Act.
On the cusp of meetings in Copenhagen to discuss an international climate treaty, the announcement has huge significance. It essentially enables the administration to circumvent climate obstructionists in Congress. Under the rules announced today, the administration can not only directly regulate carbon — it can exceed the limits contemplated by current Senate and House bills that would cap carbon dioxide emissions by 17 to 20 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.
It seems unlikely that the EPA will actually act unilaterally to regulate carbon; the most administrable policy will probably remain market-based solutions such as cap-and-trade and similar proposals, rather than a command-and-control approach. However, the announcement today has political and strategic significance beyond its legal effect — and shows that the administration has just opened a brand new offensive playbook on carbon.
Two things are clear from the announcement today. First, the EPA decision puts the president on an unequivocal and strong footing for his visit to Copenhagen in a little over a week. The president will now be able to assert leadership on the issue on the basis of a clear authority to act.
Second, with today’s announcement, Barack Obama has placed a big stick on his desk in the Oval Office. His opponents in Congress and in industry will be pounding their own desks in outrage. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-OH) immediately released a statement today, for instance, saying, “The EPA claims its process is dictated by science, however, it’s conveniently timed to push its politics.” Yes, that is a plaintive note you detected in Sensenbrenner’s statement. That’s because the president’s opponents will now have no option but to play on the president’s turf on carbon.
Cap-and-trade passed the U.S. House earlier this year. As it stands, cap and trade — originally a market-based, Republican-friendly program — faces a very uncertain fate next spring in the U.S. Senate. But with his move today, the president has told Senate opposition that he has the upper hand, and that if they do not act to cut carbon, he will. On climate change, where the president will certainly be faced with Tea Party-ish opposition every day of his administration, the Incredible Hulk-like transformation (green meeting muscle) comes just in time.
Two interesting dispatches from the electric-car front. The first comes from Denmark, which just announced a $40,000 tax break on each electric car, with free parking in downtown Copenhagen.
The announcement by the Danish government is certainly a splashy prelude to the climate change conference it’s hosting this month. Denmark is putting forth a $100 million plan to push electric cars to the masses and — with the help of Silicon Valley start-up Better Place — build an infrastructure of charging poles and service stations that can change out batteries in minutes. Better Place is working with Dong Energy, the biggest utility in Denmark, to modernize Denmark’s grid to allow cars to be charged overnight via wind power, when winds are blowing and power demand is low.
For all of the promise of the Danish effort, some challenges remain. Other than Renault, no automakers have yet to agree to make cars that are compatible with Better Place’s recharging stations. And there are doubts about the infrastructure, with questions still remaining about the standards for batteries. To help get the project over the hump, Danish local and national governments will be the first in line to buy the new cars.
From one of the world’s most eco-conscious cities, we go to one of the world’s most car-choked – in Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa just announced that the city plans to update 400 existing charging stations while adding another 100. Moreover, electric vehicle owners are set to receive tax rebates to construct home chargers and have access to high-occupancy vehicle lanes.
The city said it would streamline the regulatory processes for the charging stations, and suggested that it might revise standards and building codes to encourage more plug-in options. The city will also spend $6 million to purchase a fleet of electric vehicles.
Two takeaways from these reports: One is the idea that the electric-car future is predicated not so much on the automobile but on an infrastructure system that can support it. As Bernard Avishai wrote in Inc. magazine recently, the ecosystem that springs from the rise of the electric car, rather than the car itself, is what’s really going to revolutionize the economy.
The second is the very fact of these developments. There’s a concreteness to these advancements that gives one hope that when it comes to electric cars, we are no longer in the realm of fantasy. It may all still come to naught, but at the very least we are seeing encouraging signs of public commitment and private initiative coming together to help make innovative ideas into reality.
It sure sounds bad, right? Conservatives are crowing that this is the result of President Obama’s weak-kneed, liberal “appeasement policy.” But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how exerting real pressure on Iran (with Russian and Chinese support no less) somehow amounts to appeasement.
Don’t get too upset by Iran’s brinksmanship just yet. Dr. Rebecca Johnson, editor of Disarmament Diplomacy, brings us all down a notch:
The idea that they have the economic wherewithal to build and get these [plants] functioning in a short space of time is nonsense. It’s bravado; it’s braggadocio.
That’s why this is all part of the negotiating dance. Its steps are something like this: The international community, stronger now than ever with Moscow and Beijing on board, squeezes Iran. Iran, beginning to sense that it has been backed into a corner, lashes out with wide-ranging threats. Then, everyone calms down and the real talk begins.
The Iranians know the score, too. Buried beneath the headlines was this revealing quote from Kazem Jalali, spokesman for the parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, who left the door open for more talks: “We have options ranging from complete and full cooperation to leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty on our table.”
Of course, negotiations may ultimately bear little fruit, but that judgment certainly can’t be made yet. Until the diplomatic shimmy-shake really gets swinging, cool resolve and patience are in order.
In today’s Washington Post comes a good piece on the growing role of nuclear energy in the discussion over what to do about climate change:
Nuclear power — long considered environmentally hazardous — is emerging as perhaps the world’s most unlikely weapon against climate change, with the backing of even some green activists who once campaigned against it.
[…]
To be sure, many green groups remain opposed to nuclear energy, and some, such as Greenpeace, have refused to back U.S. climate change legislation. Groups that support the bills, such as the Sierra Club, say they are doing so because the legislation would also usher in the increased use of renewable energies like wind and solar as well as billions of dollars in investment for new technologies. They do not say they think nuclear energy is the solution in and of itself.
“Our base is as opposed to nuclear as ever,” said David Hamilton, director of the Global Warming and Energy Program for the Sierra Club in Washington. “You have to recognize that nuclear is only one small part of this.”
But Steve Cochran, director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund — a group that opposed new nuclear plants in the United States as recently as 2005 — also described a new and evolving “pragmatic” approach coming from environmental camps. “I guess you could call it ‘grudging acceptance,’ ” he said.
“If we are really serious about dealing with climate change, we are going to have to be willing to look at a range of options and not just rule things off the table,” he said. “We may not like it, but that’s the way it is.”
That position, observers say, marks a significant departure. “Because of global warming, most of the big groups have become less active on their nuclear campaign, and almost all of us are taking another look at our internal policies,” said Mike Childs, head of climate change issues for Friends of the Earth in Britain. “We’ve decided not to officially endorse it, in part because we feel the nuclear lobby is already strong enough. But we are also no longer focusing our energies on opposing it.”
The change in sentiment among progressives on nuclear energy is a welcome sign. As PPI has written in the past, supporting nuclear isn’t just smart policy, it’s also smart politics.
Last week, we published a policy memo by Andrew C. Klein, a professor of nuclear engineering at Oregon State University, on “Why Progressives Should Be More Open to Nuclear Energy.” Read the whole thing here.
In a new post on his blog, Harvard economist and PPI contributor Robert Stavins surveys the dismal political landscape for cap-and-trade and finds reason to be optimistic. Acknowledging that cap-and-trade as laid out in the Waxman-Markey bill is dead, Stavins surveys the remaining alternatives.
Remember cap-and-trade? Progressives now speak of it in hushed, glum tones, the way we do of the recently departed. If the bill was already unlikely to be passed in the wake of a difficult 2009 for Democrats, then Scott Brown’s win all but guaranteed that it wouldn’t be so much as a blip on the Dems’ political agenda in 2010.
President Obama has delivered on his promise to expand nuclear energy — big time. But can Republicans take “yes” for an answer?
Elections really do have consequences. After years of virtual inaction from the Bush administration on a clean economy, the president’s 
The squabble over the Cape Wind, an offshore wind farm off Cape Cod, has been raging for years now, with some residents of Nantucket who dearly prize their ocean views battling with pro-wind energy forces who want to establish the nation’s first major offshore wind farm. But after eight years of regulatory review, during which time no regulator has found that the project’s 130 turbines would cause harm to the environment, Cape Wind looked just about ready to be resolved, with one more regulatory hurdle waiting to be cleared.
Whatever else happened politically in 2009 — and a lot obviously happened — one development that couldn’t quite have been anticipated was the erosion of public confidence in the case for doing something about global climate change.
Two interesting dispatches from the electric-car front. The first comes from Denmark, which just