As of Monday, poorer nations (the G77) continued to stall talks at Copenhagen. Despite pressure from rich, developed, polluting nations, the group of developing countries have stood firm in their resolve to get 350ppm (concentration CO2) as a stated goal of the Copenhagen Summit. 350ppm has been identified by climatologists as the likely value that can exist without sending the climate system into either a more chaotic state or a stable state which consists of a much warmer and acidified world. Current concentrations have reached 387ppm. Good for the poorer nations. I sincerely hope they maintain their stance and force real action.
China, which last month for the first time publicly announced a target for reducing the rate of growth of its greenhouse gas emissions, is refusing to accept any kind of international monitoring of its emissions levels, according to negotiators and observers here. The United States is insisting that without stringent verification of China’s actions, it cannot support any deal.
The Senate version of the 2009 energy and climate bill, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, has made some small progress this week. The draft version of their version of the legislation, largely constructed thanks to Sen. Boxer and Sen. Kerry, is reported to include a 20% reduction of 2005 GHG emissions by 2020, which is slightly better than the 17% goal in the House ACES bill. This version should have been released after a 11:30A EDT press event in D.C. today. Like the House bill, a cap-and-trade system is established. Also, pollution allowances will be generated, but no distribution plan has been laid out yet.
It is well worth noting that GHG emissions are estimated to have been reduced by 6% below 2005 levels thanks to the Republican’s Great Recession. So the 20% reduction is really an additional 14% reduction, according to the Senate version, and an additional 11% reduction according to the House version. Which means it is very, very doable. Energy efficiency measures alone would likely help us achieve those reductions in time for the 2020 goal. Between now and then, as climate change effects continue to take hold, and political willpower to do something about climate change hopefully grows, technologies will be developed and marketed and it will become normal to reduce our greenhouse forcing.
An unbelievably ironic situation could evolve over the Midwestern U.S. during the rest of this century. The states whose Senators are most adamant about derailing any meaningful action on climate change are most likely to experience the worst effects of that climate change.
How will Colorado’s Senators vote when (if?) a climate change/energy bill comes to the Senate floor. To be clear, there is no such bill currently in the Senate today. Unfortunately, all we can conjecture about are generalities at this point. That being said, this general question should be posed to our Senators (even better would be to get a reasonable response): Will you vote for a climate bill that avoids most of the 9.3°F of warming that Colorado can expect to see by 2100?
It would be best, of course, to see a climate bill that would actually do so. The House’s climate and energy bill, H.R. 2454 doesn’t do enough in my opinion, for example. It would lock in some portion of that predicted warming. At this stage, it is up to the Senate to produce a bolder climate bill. Continue Reading →
I expect by now SquareStaters are well aware of the astroturfing efforts that multi-million dollar lobbying firms have sponsored, organized and staffed in response to health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations’ wishes. Recent posts about them can be found here, here and here.
I also expect that most of us have heard or read somewhere that a similar approach to fostering debate fear and hatred is being put together by dirty fuel corporations. They want to set the tone and control the debate over the Senate’s consideration of climate and energy legislation:
An oil-lobby funded rally will come to Greeley on Tuesday to sway residents against upcoming climate change legislation.
That’s correct: the same clowns that profited the most from $4.00 gas last year are trying to scare people into believing that this year’s Climate and Energy legislation (ACES) will bring back $4.00 gas and cost thousands of more jobs. These same folks were involved with forging letters that were sent to Representatives prior to their vote. Let me count the ways to smack this nonsense down…
Actually, I want to point out only two ways in which these actions are immoral. The first is the subversion of small-d democracy that is going to be continued by corporate interests. If constituents in Greeley, CO-04 or Colorado are really against ACES (H.R. 2454), that’s fine. They have that right. But as we’ve seen in the health care mess this month, corporations aren’t about to allow citizens to decide for themselves whether they like legislation. They’re going to spend what seems like a lot of money to most of us to stuff the legislation with things they want. The reason is easy to figure out: if they get their way, they’ll make a huge return on their lobbying investment.
In reality, the planned demonstration, again funded, organized and likely staffed by dirty energy corporations, isn’t about the climate or energy legislation at all. No, this demonstration will really be about profit: will dirty energy and fuel corporations continue to make record profits at our expense or not? It’s actually pathetic that otherwise good people will turn out for this little act of political theatre.
Secondly, the question that needs to be answered is what do the people of Greeley, CO-04 and Colorado have to gain or lose by the passage or failure of ACES? If ACES fails, and the U.S. doesn’t take any meaningful action on energy or the climate this year, gas prices will rise in the future (anybody who doesn’t think so isn’t based in reality) and dirty fuel corporations will continue to chalk up billions of dollars of profit every quarter. That’s bad enough.
That is literally what the corporations are fighting for. Is that what Greeley, CO-04 or Colorado residents really want? Do farmers really not want to be able to farm by the middle of this century when temperatures rise year after year and reliable precipitation decreases year after year? Do Coloradans really want water tables and water flow to disappear? Do we want to have to fight massive, uncontrollable fires for years on end?
Because here is how Coloradans are being manipulated [emphasis mine]:
API President Jack Gerard reported in his memo to other API members that when people hear that the legislation could increase the cost of gasoline to $4 a gallon and lead to significant job losses, audiences changed their opinions of the bill.
Of course they did. But how likely are $4.00 gas or job losses if ACES passes? Not very. Gas won’t shoot up to $4.00 per gallon because of a weak carbon cap being implemented in a few years time. Jobs won’t be shed if we shift from dirty fuels to clean fuels – the result would be quite the opposite.
I have a question for Jack, his minions and his blind supporters: How have petroleum corporations kept the price from reaching $4.00? How many jobs have they created this year? No, Jack, your industry is undergoing a bust right now – and it has nothing at all to do with energy or climate legislation. It has to do with corporations sheltering their obscene profits: they made plenty of money and at the first sign the market was slowing down, thousands of good Coloradans were put out on their butts. Listening to your lies and propaganda isn’t going to get them their jobs back or prevent $4.00 gas.
I read an article from yesterday that provides a good place to bring a number of climate and energy related items together. Controversial deals behind climate bill presents the unfortunate circumstance of some Democrats’ refusal to back the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) unless agriculture intensive areas were largely exempted from paying for the measures included in the legislation. This concession was won despite the fact that farmers and rural areas get a disproportionate amount of their energy from coal plants – the dirtiest and most polluting energy sources in use today. Among those Democrats are Rep. John Salazar (CO-03) and Rep. Betsy Markey (CO-04).
I make this point while holding a good deal of respect for farmers – the actual folks who are out on their land far earlier in the morning than I’m up and who work until later than I do every day – often just to survive, both physically and economically. But the point of any legislation that says it deals with energy and security needs to address the usage of fossil fuels, among many other purposes. By that, I mean that the legislation needs to reduce our bad habits and encourage good habits. Burning coal needs to stop – the sooner the better. By ensuring that rural citizens won’t have to face any temporary cost increases on the way toward phasing out coal burning, Democrats are passing the costs along, which is pretty irresponsible.
Someone, somewhere will eventually have to pay for reducing greenhouse pollution. Will it be urban citizens today? Will it be rural citizens in the near future? Will it be urban and rural citizens at a future date? The answers to those questions seem very relevant to me – and in my opinion, they’re not being addressed by the corporate media in any regularly meaningful way. It’s good for me as a blogger that some recent articles were written that get at these details, which I will share and try to tie together below.
H.R. 2454 (ACES) is coming up for a vote this afternoon in the House. As a quick action item, I’m providing some numbers for Reps. Markey and Salazar, cited as some of the fence-sitting Dems. Give them a quick call and ask them to vote for H.R. 2454.
Rep. Markey:
p. 202.225.4676
f. 202.225.5870
Rep. Salazar:
p. 202.225.4761
f. 202.226.9669
As currently written (to the best of my knowledge), the bill in the House would set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17% of 2005 levels by 2020 and 80%+ by 2050. As someone who has followed the science surrounding greenhouse gases and climate change pretty closely for a few years now, I want to be clear that I don’t think the 2020 goal goes far enough. I certainly hope I’m proven wrong as the measures in the bill are enacted and take effect.
Among the many specific details in this legislation, it worries me that the Dept. of Agriculture and not the Environmental Protection Agency will be responsible for deciding how farms will have to curb their emissions. There is nothing in the Dept. of Ag’s mission that indicates that they have experience with or are interested in monitoring or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That’s not a knock against the agency – it is a straightforward observation. Neither am I saying that the Dept. of Ag won’t seek emissions expertise from other government agencies. However, something that bedevils all government agencies is a tendency to become insular – robust collaboration across agencies with regard to implementing policy isn’t the first characterization of those agencies that comes to mind.
The Democrats were somewhat justifiably concerned about potential rising energy costs. I say “somewhat justifiably” for a few reasons. The easiest is their lack of public concern regarding rising energy prices in the past due to other pieces of legislation or especially corporate greed. Energy prices outpaced inflation and real-wage increases (which were actually zero) this entire decade, most of which had Bush and the Cons running the country into the ground. The same Democrats threatening to go home pouting now (not Salazar or Markey, btw) were nowhere to be seen on the energy price front until last summer when they skyrocketed so high so fast that the corporate media’s obsession with infotainment couldn’t mask them anymore. Their concern doesn’t seem to be morally founded, which is disturbing.
There are trustworthy cost estimates available, more so now than before this Congressional session. The latest, by the Congressional Budget Office, estimates that the annual cost by 2020 would be $22 billion on the entire economy; or $175 per household on average (note that averages tend to be skewed by outliers). Cons, as usual, spent yesterday talking about gross costs as well as citing cost estimates that have been thoroughly debunked by climate and energy activists.
As I’ve written about before, groups like the McKinsey Group have shown in a couple of reports that actions taken to reduce our greenhouse forcing can be revenue neutral. By 2030, McKinsey estimates a 0.6-1.4% cost to the global economy. By 2050, McKinsey estimates a 1% rise or a 5% decrease in costs are possible.
Might there be a short-term cost involved? It looks likely. In contrast, what are the costs incurred by doing nothing? That’s a subject the Cons don’t want to go near – and nobody in the corporate media is making them answer that easy question.
For starters, the link between climate change and extreme weather events is by now evident. Extreme weather events such as intense drought and torrential rains when they do come are only going to become more common and intense if action continues to be delayed. Papers like Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate and the Earth Policy Institute’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization give us a clear view of the dangers involved with further delay. The bottom line: climate change will challenge societies worldwide more than any other issue in the 21st century. 1C warming translates to a 10% reduction in staple crop yields. With 2C-10C possible warming in select regions, massive crop failures would be the result, especially in the face of populations that continue to rise. How much would a 10%, 20% or more reduction in yield cost farmers? More than that it’s a short road from crop failure to political instability. Falling governments compared to a couple hundred dollars more on an energy bill – the choice seems pretty clear to me.
The problem, of course, is none of this is being communicated to the interested parties. How many farmers know about the downside of doing nothing about climate? Even if they knew, would they still not support action if it meant higher costs?
The Denver Post front-paged an article about the bill this morning, citing Salazar and Markey as potential swing votes as the bill comes up in the House today. It also notes that the Wildlife Action Fund and the League of Conservation Voters are watching Markey’s vote especially close. I have close to the same sentiment as the LCV – I will have a very hard time supporting a Democrat, no matter the district, if they vote against this bill. It’s not a progressive vs. con issue. It’s a moral issue.
Given the reasons to vote for the bill, as I outlined above, it is disheartening to note that political backers of this bill don’t mention the climate change effects a business-as-usual approach would entail. Economic arguments have taken sway, which is perhaps natural considering the sorry state of the economy. Unfortunately, Rep. Markey’s spokesman Ben Marter was quoted in the Post article pooh-poohing the environmental angle:
Markey will “ultimately make a decision in the best interest of her district, the state and the country, not for any one group.”
That sounds really good as a soundbite, Ben. If the Eastern Plains turn into a desert, as is currently predicted under business-as-usual conditions, I don’t think the 4th district will be particularly happy with that outcome. The environmental ramifications dominate the interests of the district. I hope such short-sightedness doesn’t derail or stall the necessary actions we all must take.
Here are Rep. Markey‘s Washington contact numbers. Please take a moment this morning to give her office a quick call and encourage her to vote for H.R. 2454.
p. 202.225.4676
f. 202.225.5870
Here are Rep. Salazar‘s Washington contact numbers. Please take a moment this morning to give his office a quick call and encourage him to vote for H.R. 2454.
As currently written (to the best of my knowledge), the bill in the House would set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17% of 2005 levels by 2020 and 80%+ by 2050. As someone who has followed the science surrounding greenhouse gases and climate change pretty closely for a few years now, I want to be clear that I don’t think the 2020 goal goes far enough. I certainly hope I’m proven wrong as the measures in the bill are enacted and take effect.
