The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
Solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which recently filed for bankruptcy, got special treatment from the Obama administration, some have alleged, since the company’s $535 million in federally guaranteed loans had much lower interest rates than those of other green energy companies, according to an investigative report.
However, Lewis Milford of the Clean Energy Group argued critics are inconsistent in highlighting Solyndra’s failure, since there are many examples of failure in government projects—and that a high rate of failure is inevitable in innovative fields. Overall, the Loan Guarantee Program has performed well, and Solyndra’s failure is not a reason to abandon it, Forbes argued.
Solyndra is only one of many solar energy companies around the world struggling recently, due in large part to rising costs of materials and weaker-than-expected demand for panels, which have led to a sharp rise in mergers and acquisitions compared with last year.
Germany has long been a solar powerhouse, but one of its companies—SolarWorld—is also having trouble, and is shutting down factories in Germany and the U.S. and consolidating manufacturing. Another German solar company, Solon, is shutting an Arizona plant and laying off workers.
All this activity “is Darwinism at work in business,” said an executive of manufacturer Abound Solar.
Solar at Scale
Nonetheless, large solar projects are moving ahead. The U.S. has offered a loan guarantee for putting solar panels on military housing, which could double the number of residential rooftop arrays in the country.
With solar panel costs falling, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association said, solar could be competitive with conventional energy within a couple of years in some markets, and across Europe by 2020.
Also, a new projection from the International Energy Agency said in 50 years’ time, solar energy could provide more than half the world’s power.
Iran has reportedly tested weapons systems, which some experts said cast doubt on Iran’s claim that its nuclear program is limited to producing electricity. But arms expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said that without proof, it is too soon to jump to the conclusion Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, in discussions at the United Nations, several countries kept pressure on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment until a monitoring deal is worked out.
To test out new energy technologies in conditions between the overly controlled confines of the lab and the all-too-messy real world, a company is planning to erect in New Mexico a 20-square-mile, $200-million “ghost town” outfitted with real buildings—but no people.
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court shot down a global warming lawsuit several states and environmental groups had brought against five of America’s biggest utilities, responsible for about one-tenth of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. The case was aimed at getting the court to rule greenhouse gas emissions a public nuisance and order the defendants to reduce them. But the court said Congress had already authorized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to handle greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, concluding: “We see no room for a parallel track.”
The new decision bolstered the court’s 2007 decision, in which it ruled the EPA does have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as well as traditional pollutants, like smog and particulate matter.
After the new decision, the door is still open for environmental nuisance suits in general, and potentially even for state-level nuisance suits on greenhouse gases, noted Yale law professor Douglas Kysar. And, he pointed out, if Congress strips the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases—as some recent bills attempted to do—then the nuisance suits on a federal level could return.
In the Spotlight
The new ruling “puts the spotlight squarely on EPA,” said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Recently, the agency has issued new rules on emissions from light-duty vehicles and is moving forward on similar rules for larger vehicles. It is also developing its regulations on power plant emissions, which were scheduled to be published in draft form in late July, but have now been pushed back two months in response to complaints from industry and state governments.
Meanwhile, a study by nonprofit group Media Matters found opponents of the EPA dominate TV discussion of the topic, appearing more than four times as often as those in favor of greenhouse regulation by the agency.
Some commentators said the ruling will stoke attempts to hamper the EPA. The Obama administration signaled it may veto any laws that attempt to block the EPA. When asked about attempts to hamstring the EPA, Obama’s chief of staff Bill Daley said, “we’re not going to allow any legislation that impedes the need to improve our health and safety.”
Obama Gets Gored
In a long article in Rolling Stone, former Vice President Al Gore made pointed criticisms of the Obama administration’s work on climate change. “His election was accompanied by intense hope that many things in need of change would change,” Gore wrote. “Some things have, but others have not. Climate policy, unfortunately, is in the second category.”
Big Oil is also in the sights of the cartoon “Cars 2.” In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Director John Lasseter said, “I kept going to big oil” as the villain in the soon-to-be-released film.
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
Natural gas has a reputation as the least environmentally damaging fossil fuel, but a new study from Cornell University paints a slightly different picture. Study leader Robert Howarth told the BBC that, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, gas from shale rocks—undergoing a boom in production in the U.S.—is “quite likely as bad [as] or worse than coal.”
Why? Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a far more powerful—albeit shorter-lived—greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and shale gas production is leaky. For each watt of energy released, the emissions from producing shale gas would cause about 20 percent more warming than the emissions from coal over a 20-year period. This is about the same amount of warming as coal over a 100-year period.
Regardless of the environmental impact, shale gas production could continue growing, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. EIA estimates that there are “vast” quantities of technically recoverable shale gas in 32 countries (besides the U.S.), which amount to nearly 5,800 trillion cubic feet, or the equivalent of 1 trillion barrels of oil—a volume roughly on par with official estimates of proven oil reserves.
Some news articles put these resources in terms of current consumption—with Obama saying U.S. holds “perhaps a century’s worth” of shale gas.
Move Over Hybrids, Electric Vehicles
Many are talking about big boosts in natural gas consumption, including oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who hailed natural gas as “the only resource we have in America that can replace foreign oil.” Plans to replace oil for fueling fleets of trucks may get a boost from the NAT GAS Act, recently introduced in the Senate.
But is there enough of this resource? In areas with abundant shale gas, power plants are using it as a replacement for coal, reports the Centre Daily Times from the shale gas heartland of Pennsylvania. If these plans for increased natural gas consumption pan out, however, the remaining resources could be used up considerably faster than many estimates suggest.
A Little Competition
Meanwhile, efforts to boost domestic energy production may bring another potentially environmentally damaging practice to the United States, since a mining company has qualified for a permit to open the country’s first tar sands mine in Utah.
The latest round of UN climate talks wrapped up in Bangkok, with no major breakthroughs. The World Wildlife Fund said there was “little to show for the weeklong session,” although countries did agree to a roadmap for moving forward. Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, chair of the Africa Group, told Reuters: “Thank god we came up with an agenda. It’s a pity it took so long. What does it say for the rest of the year?”
In other news, a few headlines made it hard to sort fact from fiction this week. One (apparently true) news story reported that, in the U.K., fish were transported by llama to new locales, to help them cope with climate change. And the Associated Press reported that energy giant General Electric decided to return its $3.2 billion tax refund to the U.S. Treasury. (That was a hoax, it turned out, perpetrated by the activist group The Yes Men.)
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
First Things First: Tuesday night Rolling Stone magazine unveiled to a limited audience its new article called “The Runaway General.” But when something “goes viral” in the Internet age, there’s no such thing as a limited audience. In the piece, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, derides and criticizes the president, vice president, and other key senior members of the administration. It caused a media-wide storm and led to McChrystal’s resignation within about 36 hours. President Barack Obama replaced him with General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command. The story has little direct bearing on climate developments, except that in scrambling to defuse the situation, the White House postponed a meeting about climate legislation between Obama and several Democratic and Republican senators. The meeting is likely to be rescheduled for next week, but supporters of action lamented the loss of several working days on what’s already a tight legislative calendar.
Parlor-vous Washington?: A policy approach favored by many environmentalists would set a national limit for greenhouse gas emissions and let the free market find the most efficient ways to meet it. A compromise approach floated this week and not immediately dismissed by the White House and others would limit the cap-and-trade element to the utility sector. (The approach championed by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lieberman would set up a utility-sector program in 2013, followed by heavy manufacturing three years later.) With legislation and the schedule to roll it out still in the works, some environmental and liberal groups are paying $11 million for an ad campaign supporting energy and climate legislation.
What is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) thinking? That’s what Darren Samuelsohn, who recently moved from GreenWire to Politico, asks in a piece about Graham’s evolving position on things energy and climate: “It’s become a bit of a parlor game in Washington to guess at Sen. Lindsey Graham’s true motivation for abandoning negotiations on comprehensive energy and climate legislation.” First, senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s initial decision to fast-track immigration policy before climate and energy first separated Graham from the issue. Second, the BP spill scuttled hopes that expanded offshore drilling, which Graham supports, would quickly bring together pro-climate policy Democrats and pro-domestic energy Republicans. Finally, Graham has suggested that climate be held until the next Congress and the Senate knock out an energy bill this year. Earlier in the week, Politico weighed in on John Kerry’s relationship with his Senate colleagues on the issue. Kerry brings enormous knowledge and passion to the issue, which several other senators interviewed in the story admire but can’t always agree with.
Blood and Gore and Sustainability: These are perilous times for climate policy. California will vote in November on whether to suspend its 2006 climate law. The G20 meets this week in Toronto, but with many issues considered more urgent than sustainability and climate change on the agenda. Still, many eyes remain on Washington. As Al Gore told Eric Pooley in Copenhagen last December: “If the Senate defeats the bill, that is an event horizon beyond which it is difficult to see.” Gore and his co-founder of Generation Investment Management, David Blood—a memorable byline if there ever was one—use real estate on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to make a case for sustainable capitalism, and the promise and peril of free markets. “For these reasons and others, markets lie at the foundation of every successful economy… At the very least, the last decade has clearly demonstrated that free and unfettered markets, as they are currently operating, have simply not been delivering optimal long-term results.”
The National Enquirer made a splash across scandal sheets and beyond about sexual misconduct allegations against Gore from 2006.
The U.N. Global Compact and Accenture have found a noteworthy increase since 2007 in the number of CEOs who believe sustainability should be built into the core of their businesses. Their report surveys 766 executives, 80 percent of whom claimed that the economic downturn increased their commitment to efficiencies, cost-saving, and new products that are believed to emerge with sustainable business. European executives make up more than half of the pool (439 people), followed by the Americas (156), Asia/Pacific (113), and Africa/Middle East (58). The broad goals, however, are tempered by the complexity of implementing them across business units, competing priorities, and the rest of the market lagging in its valuing of sustainability.
Ford, et al, and the Electric Car: The White House and electrically powered vehicles have a long, uneven history, going back at least to Sept. 1902, when Theodore Roosevelt’s carriage was accidentally rammed by one. (He escaped with slight injuries.) In 1976 both houses of Congress approved a $160 million plan to develop an electric car within five years, over President Gerald Ford’s veto. The president called the proposed effort “premature and wasteful.” I don’t know what happened to that program but personal observations and anecdotal evidence suggest it didn’t take off. The Gulf oil spill has led to renewed interest in some parts in a transportation sector fueled on something other than petroleum. The Obama administration this week agreed to support a bipartisan Senate bill that would spend $6 billion on new infrastructure and supporting programs in 15 test cities. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said the measure could end up as an amendment to an energy (or energy-and-climate) bill this year.
American Climate Idol?: There must be a way to shrink the vast pool of climate-related sciences and scientists, so that non-specialists of any ideological stripe can agree on the expert thinking and information available… right? A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences digs through scientific literature to compile a portfolio of researchers who publish frequently about climate change and whose work is frequently cited—metrics for climate credibility. Of 1,372 scientists whose work qualified them as leading and active climate experts, 97 percent to 98 percent support the basic understanding of manmade global warming. Doubters have lower levels of “climate expertise and scientific prominence.” In the climatic blogosphere, fireworks ensued over whether the paper amounts to some kind of Bravo-style reality show, like Top Chef, to determine who is… “Top Climatologist!” Kidding aside, the paper is a methodical approach to a challenging issue: How to assign credibility and expertise in a culture that too frequently equates it with page hits.
Something to consider: Pictures of pelicans stained and paralyzed with oil have made the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and circulated around the Web. These protected animals have quickly become poster birds for the Gulf oil spill, iconic as they were already in coastal habitats. Their ecological value is matched by their evolutionary history. The struggle to prevent harm to pelicans in particular is brought home by a study in the Journal of Ornithology (via New Scientist). Research on a 30-million-year-old fossil pelican shows that their beaks virtually haven’t changed in that time. It suggests they reached an “evolutionary optimum”—but one not optimized toward living in a hydrocarbon stew.
Eric Roston is Senior Associate at theNicholas Instituteand author ofThe Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available atGrist. Chapter about Ginkgo biloba and climate change available atConservation.
Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions
First Things First: The Obama administration today finalized greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and light trucks first proposed last May. The practical upshot of the rules is a roughly 40 percent rise in fuel economy, to 35.5 miles per gallon, by 2016. The government said the measures would save owners about $3,000 in fuel over a vehicles lifetime, but add a grand on average to sticker prices.
Of Drills and Bills: Energy independence has attracted bipartisan support and high-level media interest at least since 1948, when the U.S. first became a net importer of oil. Calls for freedom from foreign energy sources (or for “energy security” among the more sober-minded) have grown particularly acute in recent years. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin popularized the chant, “Drill, baby, drill!” during the 2008 presidential campaign. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich contributed “Drill here. Drill now. Pay Less.” Democrats have weakened in their rhetorical opposition to domestic offshore oil exploration as these slogans took off.
Politics can do funny things to strident partisan positions. Obama’s announcement this week on off-shore drilling might not be any more surprising than President George W. Bush’s re-purchase of oil-and-gas-leases off the Florida coast, during his brother’s, Gov. Jeb Bush, re-election bid. (“At the time, Bush’s decision was hailed by some environmental groups.”) Blood and electoral politics run thicker than oil.
The question, squarely framed by the New York Times, is, Will Obama’s political jujitsu work? Howard Kurtz, media critic of the Washington Post, runs amused through the top papers’ takes, from the NYT’s “nobody-much-likes-it” to the Los Angeles Times’ “this-won’t-accomplish-much” to right-wing pundit Don Surber’s observation that “Still, it is an admission by Obama that Sarah Palin was right.” He repeats the last four words about 125 times over a full browser page.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a key architect of the climate-and-energy bill expected in mid-April, said yesterday that Obama’s drilling proposal is a “good first step,” echoing other calls from Senate Republicans that the sale of drilling leases be expanded to include the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the West Coast, and Alaska. Graham and Lieberman at the end of last week chatted with reporters about two elements of their developing climate bill. Utilities would participate in a market for carbon-emission permits, and the oil industry would have to pay a “fixed fee” for their carbon emissions. Last week 10 coastal Democratic senators sent a letter to Obama admonishing the administration against “unfettered” drilling. Watch to see if Obama’s drilling announcement this week is sufficiently fettered.
Traders to the Cause: The 2009 results of the EU’s Emissions Trading System are drawing scrutiny. Analysts attribute to reduced economic activity an 11.2 percent drop in EU industrial greenhouse gas emissions, a number that falls at the high end of expectations. Critics say industrial firms that receive pollution credits for free are benefitting from cyclical market dynamics, instead of permanently reducing emissions by deploying clean energy technologies. The decline in carbon prices, reflecting the recession and diminished outlook for a global treaty, have led to carbon trading firms’ disappearance from HSBC’s index of companies involved in climate solutions.
EU authorities have stepped up enforcement of about $6.75 billion in tax fraud they suspect within the trading system. Spanish police arrested nine people suspected of running a “carousel fraud.” In this scheme, traders buy credits in one EU country without paying a value-added tax, and sell them in another country at a price that includes the price of a tax.
It’s confusing enough without the outright accusations of fraud. An executive board that oversees a carbon-finance program set up by the Kyoto Protocol has suspended four auditors in a year and a three monts. The most recent companies penalized are carbon-market auditors in Germany and South Korea, who may now seek clarification on the market’s rules.
Against the backdrop of sagging carbon credit prices in Europe, a group of economists led by the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth Stanton in the U.S., suggests that target costs of greenhouse gas pollution are too low to effect the scale of change that many scientists call for.
More ‘Sunlight’ in Climate Science: The U.K. Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee issued findings from its investigation into climatologists’ behavior as documented in emails hacked out of University of East Anglia servers last fall. The Members of Parliament, as many others before them, found little or nothing in the episode to weaken the evidence that suggests industrialization waste is transforming the global climate. But they slammed the climate scientists as a group for secretive handling of data. The MPs heavily faulted the university itself for the scientists’ poor responsiveness to Freedom of Information Act requests. Phil Jones, who stepped down temporarily under fire as director of the UEA’s Climate Research Unit, was exonerated by the committee. Newspapers, such as the Guardian, tack on garden-variety “he-said, she-said” evaluations of the report.
Data’s Gotta Come from Somewhere: Obama’s 2011 budget proposes increased funding for NASA’s aging Earth observation infrastructure—62 percent more by the end of 2015. The investments would shore up data streams on ocean temperature, ice extent, ozone, and anthropogenic carbon emissions.
Satellite monitoring would be much easier if the risks of launching tin cans to space weren’t so high. NASA expects to rebuild its Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), after the initial model fell into far-southern waters. The OCO may be the best-named satellite ever. A triple pun, OCO is a normal acronym, a chemical diagram (carbon dioxide is a linear molecule, O=C=O), and a homophone of the Polish word for “eye.” This week Europe will launch its CryoSat-2, a device precise enough to measure changes in ice thickness within “a few centimeters” accuracy. The first iteration, CryoSat, was destroyed in a launch failure five years ago. This week’s most thought-provoking statement from a scientist occurs in the Nature story (see previous link) about CryoSat-2:
Technical problems with the rocket have already delayed the launch, which was originally scheduled for February. “I hope this time around probability is on our side,” says Duncan Wingham, CryoSat-2’s principal scientist, who will watch the launch from the European Space Operations Centre of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Darmstadt, Germany.
The truth is out there. Ernst & Young probes the renewables market in greater detail. A third of the jump in U.S. climate spending came from last year’s stimulus bill, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.
There’s Something up There… What do people think about climate change who rarely think about climate change? A minor indication came this week in a Washington Post book review of Ian McEwan’s new novel Solar (NB: The first paragraph of the review has an adult theme). The third paragraph addresses global warming:
The subject, though, is hot. Whether or not carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere, there’s no denying that novelists are warming up to the subject.
Perhaps I’m over-thinking this, but how is it intelligible to pose the question, even in a dependent clause, “whether or not carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere”? Certainly, there is carbon dioxide coming out of our tailpipes, smoke stacks, and melting permafrost. Maybe what’s accumulating in the air is something that has the same spectral and biochemical properties as carbon dioxide, but isn’t actually carbon dioxide.
At any rate, something that behaves identically to carbon dioxide is doing this. “Should” the author of the review (an editor) know that, even as a cute framing device, this dependent clause has negative communicative value?
Eric Roston is Senior Associate at theNicholas Instituteand author ofThe Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available atGrist. Chapter about Ginkgo biloba and climate change available atConservation.
Lately, every week is the most consequential in the history of climate change. This week was no exception. A House of Representatives committee slogged through its potentially game-changing climate bill. The White House struck a deal with auto manufacturers and California to raise fuel efficiency — and consequently reduce carbon emissions. Uneven signals from China promise hope for some kind of agreement but foreshadow a tough road to achieve it. These are all simultaneous episodes in a larger story of transformation.
The House at the Center of the World: The House of Representatives now sits at the epicenter. Rep. Henry Waxman’s Energy and Commerce Committee last Friday unveiled a full draft of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, cogently and quickly summarized by the Washington Post and Reuters. Democrats came to initial agreement on some of the thorniest issues, including how to allocate carbon credits to heavy polluters and other market participants, according to Greenwire. Among the major recipients of help, power companies will receive 35 percent of the allowances, natural gas distributors 9 percent, and energy-intensive, trade-sensitive industries 15 percent.
The committee is voting the bill Waxman co-sponsored with Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) to the full House at this very writing. Through these minute-by-minute details, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture.
Jargon Watch: Now and then, a word or phrase escapes the rarified journals and policy discussions where it was born, and greets an unsuspecting public. Such is the case with “cap and trade,” memorably deployed to mean “vague thing I’m supposed to understand but don’t” by the New York Times‘ Maureen Dowd in a March column. ClimateWire has had fun with variations of it.
Whatever you call it, it’s the centerpiece of the Waxman-Markey bill.
In the last week or two, commentators and columnists have taken to op-ed pages with arguments against cap-and-trade, for it, and, well, mostly against it. (Policy op-eds frequently challenge the dominant trend.) Remember that a national climate policy, be it cap-‘n-trade, or a carbon tax, or Cap’n-America, is not an end in itself, but a way to help us help ourselves. Climate policy is designed to fix “the carbon problem” in our markets: Polluting is free but eventually could have seriously undesirable consequences.
What “cap-and-trade” means, and where it could carry us, hasn’t yet penetrated the chatter. E&E News reported this week that “[O]verall support for cap and trade trails far behind backing for increased investment in renewable energy, improved fuel efficiency for vehicles, implementation of a renewable electricity standard and even increased offshore drilling.” A cap and trade system is supposed to nudge the market toward increasing demand for new energy sources. Climate policy is a lever that increases investment in renewables, fuel efficiency, and may or may not affect the economics of oil drilling at home. The relationship between a national climate policy and these desirable goals isn’t “either-or” but “if-then.”
White House firing on all cylinders (now with greater efficiency): While the Energy and Commerce Committee worked over the Waxman-Markey bill, the administration announced the first major climate rule in U.S. history. Much to the administration’s delight, no one leaked news about new auto fuel efficiency standards before President Barack Obama’s announcement on Tuesday. That means official sources were willing to play along, as reporters captured rich chronologies (called “tick-tock” in the biz) of the secret negotiations, particularly the Los Angeles Times (LAT) and ClimateWire. The LAT pins down insider details, such as Ford’s 3 p.m. Sunday call to the White House saying the deal was off, and the subsequent impromptu cell-phone negotiations, with participants phoning from the bathroom at a Washington National’s game and a birthday party in New York. The new Corporate Auto Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules will establish a nationwide standard by 2016 that should reduce carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. cars and light-trucks by 30 percent.
Scaling the Great Wall that divides us: Secret negotiations were a motif this week. U.S. and Chinese negotiators began meeting last July trying to bridge their differences on emissions reductions, symbolically at the Great Wall. The Guardianbroke news of the meetings on Monday, reporting that senior Bush administration advisers and several current Obama advisers met with Chinese officials. The back-channel talks led in March to an unsigned memorandum of understanding, which participants hope will embolden the world’s two largest national emitters to find a common ground in addressing the causes of climate change. The news comes at a time when the international climate community is gearing up for negotiations in December in Copenhagen.
Obama on Monday picked Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as his ambassador to China. A savvy selection, Huntsman is an up-and-comer in the Republican party, has served as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, and speaks fluent Mandarin. The Nicholas Institute, which operates The Climate Post, has conducted modeling studies of Utah’s policy options on climate change, under Huntsman’s administration. Obama has indicated he expects climate change to hold a prominent spot in Huntsman’s portfolio.
Talks between developed and developing nations will continue to shape international climate politics (witness the Indo-Asian News Service’s interest in an amendment to a bill moving through a House committee). The secret talks reported by the Guardian are only one item of interest in a complicated U.S.-Chinese relationship. Chinese officials confirmed for the Alliance France Presse earlier today their negotiating position for the end-of-the-year Copenhagen talks: China will ask that industrialized nations commit to emissions targets 40 percent below the amount they emitted in 1990 by 2020. The European Union has resigned itself to 20 percent reductions, and the House climate bill would reduce pollution 20 percent below 2005 levels.
Any unified global action must consider and guide international trade. The Washington Post showed just how complicated these relationships can be, in a front-page story Monday about the rise of China as a car-maker. Chinese companies have grown quickly, which means that their firms lack the technical expertise that can only emerge with time. “What they still lack is… being able to design new vehicles from scratch and get them to a manufacturing line,” Kelly Sims Gallagher of Harvard’s Kennedy School told the Post. A probable result: Chinese firms will try and buy ailing U.S. car companies — and their valuable human capital. Don’t miss Business Week‘s in-depth package on greening China.
Reporting? We don’t need no stinkin’ reporting!: Fortune magazine recently held its second Brainstorm Green conference, a star-studded event that brought together luminaries from the politics and business worlds. But editors undermined their expertise in climate issues — in business, politics, policy, and science — by publishing an article lacking the rigor and seriousness characteristic to the publication.
“What if global warming fears are overblown?” — the headline — is an important question to ask. Climate fears might be overblown. They might be “underblown.” But the risk of climate change — the consequences of catastrophic change times its probability — is serious enough to prompt global and quick action, a point the article fails to make. Instead, a financial writer, Jon Birger, asks “softball” questions of a University of Alabama, Huntsville, scientist, whose skepticism about the potential for severe global warming is out of step with the work of scientists who have re-examined his work in peer-reviewed journals (here, for example). Climate science is a vast body of physical, evidence, assembled by thousands of people, worldwide, over several decades. Putting eight questions to a scientist whose ideas were challenged professionally at least four years ago fails to communicate the preponderance of evidence that is driving the world to reduce the (rising) climate risk.
Everyone suffers from time-poverty, these days. Many areas of expertise have become deeply entwined with other disciplines and professions, even as we all have less time to explore them. That’s particularly true in climate change, where politics, business, Earth and life sciences, policy, and culture are all interdependent – yet no one can keep up on everything.
People close to energy-and-climate work in the U.S. Congress might not have time to read about new businesses that are bringing clean technologies to market, or a controversial article in a science journal, or events in far-flung corners of the world. People working on clean-tech start-ups might not have time to keep track of Congress. Readers interested in but not knowledgeable about energy-and-climate issues might get to just one or two articles a week on a subject outside their immediate spheres. The Web offers us boundless information, but limited context.
That’s why the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University is pleased to introduce The Climate Post, a weekly (for starters) narrative overview of news, trends, and events that shape the evolving climate mosaic. The Institute is an independent center charged with identifying and helping remove “sticking points” to progress in addressing our many environmental challenges.
The limits of media are a sticking point to dealing with climate change. Even before the wheels came off the traditional media, on average, climate coverage has been lacking in centralization and comprehensiveness. The Climate Post is our drop in the bucket, a way to make sense of what’s reported and how, what isn’t reported, and how the vast sweep of politics, policy, science, business, and culture all vie for our attention on the “story of the century.” We’re here to try and blend many stories into a single weekly narrative – delivered to you each Thursday afternoon at 3 p.m..
The Climate Post
Thursday, May 14, 2009
This week’s climate headlines are reminiscent of an old joke that touted “newspaper headlines the day after nuclear war.”
The New York Times: “Nuclear War, Third World Hit Hardest.”
The Wall Street Journal: “Nuclear War, Effect on Markets Uncertain.”
The Boston Globe: “Tip O’Neill Safe After Nuclear Blast.”
USA Today: “We’re Dead! Full AFC-NFC Box Scores, p. 11.”
You can tell it’s an old joke because concern about “newspapers” and “nuclear war” is very 20th century. Yet when you track this week’s headlines as climate legislation makes its way through the U.S. House, it’s clear not much has changed.
This morning’s Times and yesterday’s Washington Post headlines about the situation emphasize a near-deal among previously sparring Democrats. The Journal eyes new potential breaks for the auto industry and utilities in the bill. The Globe stays local, and writes that a national plan would supplant Massachusetts’ participation in a Northeast climate program.
The USA Today ran an Associated Press story on its Web site, and last week printed an article with the headline, “Celebs use star power to spotlight pet causes; Environmental issues rate high on activist actors’ list.” (The paper reports that Prince Charles, Harrison Ford, Robin Williams and Pele teamed for a MySpace.com video about rainforests.)
Here’s our snapshot, this week: Waxman and his co-sponsor, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), are pressing the House Energy and Commerce Committee to pass their American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The bill would set a nationwide “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions – a limit – that would decline over time, as well as set a Renewable Electricity Standard. After two weeks of hearings in April and intense back-door negotiations with Committee members and their constituents back home, signs of a deal have begun to leak out. We should see a revised version of the bill, called the Manager’s Amendment, within the next few days.
Meanwhile, down Pennsylvania Avenue, the administration in recent weeks has issued new guidelines for biofuels (enflaming parts of industry), set in motion potential EPA regulations of carbon emissions from tailpipes, and backed a Bush administration decision on the inadequacy of the Endangered Species Act to address climate change indirectly, through the declining habitat for polar bears. [See this for biofuels and this for polar bears.]
These headlines have dominated in the Washington environmental world – but just as Americans are not the only people fighting information overload and time-poverty, Washington is not the only capital struggling with climate issues this week:
Citing the recession, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd put off plans to create a national market for industrial firms seeking to buy or sell credits to emit greenhouse gases. His government’s proposal had failed to garner support among environmentalists, who saw the targets as too thin, and industry, which hopes for more concessions.
This conversation plays out against a background of increasing concern about the effects of climate change already being witnessed down-under. The Economist reported this week that the volume of water reaching the Murray River in South Australia is lower than any other time in 117 years. The article is bluntly titled, “In need of a miracle.”
Local capitals are getting in on the action, too. Voters in British Columbia went to the polls and re-elected the Liberal party, giving a vote of confidence in the province’s carbon tax – the first law of its kind in North America. In the U.S., Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, has supported measures that would encourage the development of clean technology. Observers partially credit (or blame) her influence and new laws on Mid-Michigan Energy’s recent scuttling of a coal-fired power plant in Midland. But job-starved regions of the state welcome the work that would come from plant construction – and several remain in the pipeline. An energy company in Washington state pulled plans for a $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant, because it has no way of capturing the emissions.
A paper local to former President George W. Bush’s ranch, the Waco Tribune-Herald, editorialized today, “Dismiss talk of global warming and environmentalism if you must. But these times are changing fast and, along with them, the very way we heat and cool our homes and businesses.” That’s just one take in a state simultaneously encouraging its potential for solar energy while elected representatives to Washington fight the Waxman-Markey bill. When the Bushes visit family in Maine, they’ll encounter a new law in Kennebunkport that prevents cars and trucks from idling at banks, fast food restaurants, and at the beach (The Secret Service probably has pull).
Legislation and rules, scientific predictions and industry product lines are shaping the international response to global warming on a daily basis. We’ll bring you highlights weekly. A thousand words now and then can provide a pretty good picture. See you next week.
