By Henry Robertson, Energy Chair
On October 24, I went down to the Gateway Arch to be part of the Climate Day of Action, an international event spearheaded by Bill McKibben and 350.org to show world and national leaders that there's popular demand for action on global warming. I met a dozen Sierra Club members I know amid a crowd of 300 or 400 - not the mass outpouring we wanted to see but far from a contemptible crowd.
Last summer I sneaked into an “Energy Citizens” rally in a downtown hotel. The Energy Citizens are a classic Astroturf movement - fake grassroots. It was put on by the American Petroleum Institute, whose name was not in evidence. They bussed people in, fed them lunch, gave them yellow t-shirts with slogans like “$4 a gallon gas” (sorry, folks, but you'll see $4 gas again even without climate legislation), and treated them to a program of propaganda. The basic message was, “Sure, we all want to protect the environment BUT…” But immediate concern for jobs and income dictates that we stick with the status quo. We are forewarned. The fossil fuel industries will deploy the same kind of Tea Party tactics that held up health care reform to try and stop climate legislation. By the time you get this, Copenhagen will be upon us, but we already know there will be no treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, and there will be no bill coming out of Congress this year.
Crap and trade?
The House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES, or Waxman- Markey) 219-212. Now the Senate has before it the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (Kerry-Boxer). Both are comprehensive, but their centerpiece is cap and trade - put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and let industry trade pollution allowances, creating market incentives to reduce emissions so as to be able to sell, not have to buy, allowances. Hold your nose, for there's a lot not to like about these bills.We won't get everything we want; we have to stop the fossil fuel interests from getting everything they want. For one thing, the value of cap and trade depends on an auction of pollution permits.
That way, polluters have to pay, and the proceeds can go back to consumers, or to fund research on clean technologies, job training and other ways of adapting to climate change. Kerry-Boxer would only auction about 23% of allowances. The rest will be given away to utilities and other industries so they can go into a new line of business - profiting from the markets in carbon, the latest commodity. The environmental community is divided over cap 'n' trade. Many people would prefer a straightforward carbon tax. Slap a tax on fossil fuels near the point of origin (wellhead or refinery, for example). It will be passed on to us consumers, of course, but most proponents envision a full tax rebate. With the money back in our pockets, we'll look for lowerpriced, non-carbon-intensive goods. This will level the playing field more in favor of clean energy, allowing wind, solar and the rest to come into their own.
The carbon tax isn't perfect either. It won't create funds for research and development or public projects like an auction of emission allowances would. But it's less vulnerable to industry lobbying efforts to weaken bills like Kerry-Boxer, and it wouldn't create the new financial market in allowances that many justifiably fear will result in the same shenanigans that got us into the economic crisis. For now, however, cap and trade is what we've got. This poses a dilemma. Do we take what Congress offers, however flawed, or hold out for something better? Personally, I'm prepared to swallow a lot of compromises before I jump ship. I fear that if we get nothing out of Congress, the issue will be dead for years - years we can't afford to lose.We could take a tougher line if we were in a stronger bargaining position, but the general public is preoccupied with health care and financial worries. Global warming seems like a mirage in the distance.
Kerry-Boxer
Kerry-Boxer leaves a lot to be desired. It would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions 28.5% by 2020, 20% through the cap and the rest from other programs. But that's below 2005 levels; Kyoto's baseline year was 1990. They moved the goalposts. Compared to 1990, Kerry-Boxer would only reduce emissions by 17%. The target should be twice as high.
The bill has some good efficiency provisions - energy efficiency codes for new buildings, retrofit programs for existing buildings, block grants to the states for efficiency work, worker training programs for green jobs. There is no Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) like Missouri's Proposition C, but that's in another Senate bill and will probably be added to Kerry-Boxer. The same goes for an Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS). An EERS is the efficiency equivalent of an RES. An RES requires utilities to get more of their power from renewables. An EERS requires them to sell less power by helping their customers use less energy by operating their homes and businesses with more efficient equipment. For customers who can't make the up-front investment in new appliances or retrofits to the house, the utility will provide the money and earn it back in rates. Kerry-Boxer isn't strong on transportation, but it does offer the states funds for public transit, and we've already got higher vehicle fuel efficiency standards. Parts of the bill are downright bad. It continues the unsustainable romance with ethanol by making R&D grants for biofuels. And it declares a policy of promoting nuclear power. The atomic lobby is beating down the doors to get their usual billions in taxpayer subsidies for their outrageously expensive non-solution to global warming. Conservation, efficiency and renewables are so much cheaper than nuclear, and they don't generate radioactive waste. Carbon and the EPA
In 2007 the Supreme Court held that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. This power was taken away in the House by ACES; Kerry-Boxer would restore it.Well and good, but the Clean Air Act isn't the best way to deal with climate change. It works by setting maximum pollution levels and imposing technological fixes on the industrial processes that generate those pollutants. Unfortunately, there aren't any effective technological fixes for carbon-dioxide. The coal interests are relying on carbon capture and storage (CCS). This means capturing the CO2 before it goes up the stack, liquefying it, piping it to a suitable geologic formation, and pumping it underground, there to stay forever, or at least for a long time. CCS is still in the experimental stage, and it's very expensive. It also creates what's called a “parasitic load.” A parasitic load is the portion of a power plant's output that's needed to run the plant itself. With CCS, depending on which technology you use, it takes 10-40% of the plant's output just to run the carbon capture equipment. That's a lot of extra coal you have to burn to get rid of the CO2 from the coal you were burning in the first place. CCS is another forlorn attempt to preserve the fossil fuel way of doing business. It's another form of denial. Like nuclear, it would divert resources from the true solutions.We'd do better to move beyond it.
Offsets
Kerry-Boxer relies heavily on carbon offsets to reduce emissions - from everywhere except where they should be reduced, like the electricity and transportation sectors. The idea is that reducing emissions somewhere else is just as good. Carbon can be sequestered from the atmosphere at home through practices like notill farming or abroad through tree-planting projects. Supposedly that's just as good as building wind farms to replace coal-burning power plants -except that it does nothing to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Kerry-Boxer allows offsets to account for 2 billion tons per year of greenhouse gas reductions. Total US emissions are 7 billion tons per year, so that's a big piece of the pie. Domestic offsets would account for three-fourths of the total unless there weren't enough, in which case international offsets could go up to 1.25 billion tons.
International offsets are things like hydro electricplants and reforestation projects that we pay Third World countries to do so that we don't have to change our ways. It's another form of outsourcing. It's hard to verify. It's too often based on a prospect of something happening in the future that may or may not come to pass while we go on our merry way. In theory, it spurs economic development, but there's no guarantee that offsets will help developing nations to a sustainable, clean energy future. They will just as likely mire them in a new version of the colonial past, only this time the plantations will grow trees - crops of temporarily sequestered carbon. Converting the masses - and McCaskill
If you take global warming seriously, it's clear what you have to do. Denial is rampant, both outright denial that global warming is real, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus, and the implicit denial of those who turn their heads away and do nothing because it is, as someone said, such an inconvenient truth.Talk to such people.Write letters to the editor contradicting the denialists. Global warming is real, and it's happening now. Point out the evidence - droughts and floods, melting icecaps and glaciers.
We in Missouri have a more specific task - getting Senator Claire McCaskill off the fence. She admits global warming is a reality we have to deal with, but she says climate legislation must not “punish” coal-dependent states like ours; Missouri gets 85% of its electricity from burning coal.
Wallowing in the slagheap of coal is the real punishment. We need to get beyond coal or we'll get left behind. Remind her that 66% of the state's electorate voted for clean energy with Proposition C last year, carrying every county but one.
Contact her at 202-224-6154;
Hart Senate Office Building, SH-717
Washington, DC, 20510.