A Blue View

After All These Years, Massachuestts' Renewable Energy, Wind Project is Still Becalmed

Wash Post:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar journeyed out into Nantucket Sound on a Coast Guard vessel last week to signal the Obama administration's readiness to put some muscle behind wind energy. To do that, Salazar has to resolve a battle over building a wind farm on 25 square miles of open water that has driven a rift between environmentalists, infuriated local Native Americans and threatened one of the administration's cherished priorities.

The nearly decade-long fight over whether to construct a 130-turbine offshore wind farm near Martha's Vineyard has spurred numerous state and federal regulatory reviews. It has cost millions in lobbying fees and has prompted an intense political debate on Cape Cod and in Washington, setting those who back renewable energy against those who want to preserve the natural beauty of Nantucket Sound.

"The worst thing we can do for the country is to be in a state of indecision, and this application has been in a state of indecision for a very long time," said Salazar, who came to see the proposed site of the Cape Wind project and to meet with tribes that oppose it.

With many other obstacles resolved, including the wind farm's potential hindrance to navigation and fishing and harm to birds, the tribes represent the project's latest challenge: They practice a sunrise ritual every morning on the sound and say they may have artifacts buried beneath the seabed. They have managed to qualify the sound for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, which could restrict its commercial use.

Salazar got up before dawn Tuesday to observe a site where the Mashpee Wampanoag's sunrise ceremony takes place before meeting with representatives of the Aquinnah and the Mashpee tribes.

He said that although his department is trying to broker a deal between the tribes and Energy Management, the company seeking to build the farm, "I'm not holding my breath for a consensus." And if the two sides cannot resolve their differences, he said, he will do it himself by April.

The venture stands as a critical test of whether the Obama administration, which views investing in renewable energy as key to reviving the economy and combating climate change, can launch the clean-energy revolution it has promised voters.

Ian Bowles, the Massachusetts energy and environmental affairs secretary, called the Cape Wind project "symbolic of America's struggle with clean energy. Its symbolism has risen above the number of megawatts."

Both sides agree that this offshore wind project, which would be the first in the United States and would furnish about 75 percent of Cape Cod's energy, shows just how hard it will be to construct wind farms off America's coasts.

Obama Announces $8 Billion For Rail Improvements

NY Times:

A day after delivering his State of the Union address, Mr. Obama came to Florida to announce the investment of $8 billion in high-speed rail projects in 13 major corridors, which he said would provide a down payment for the most significant advance in transportation since the Interstate highway system was built more than a half-century ago ...

The administration announced the $8 billion awards to coincide with the president and vice president’s trip here on Thursday. For months, states have been competing for the financing.

Most of the money, officials decided, will go toward improving existing rail service. More than a billion dollars, for instance, will go to speed train travel between Chicago and St. Louis to up to 110 miles per hour — faster than it is now, but a far cry from the kind of bullet trains that zip along at speeds of more than 150 m.p.h. in Japan and Europe. Two of the largest shares of money are being distributed for investments in bullet-train projects.

The administration said that a $2.25 billion award would help California make a small down payment on its ambitious $45 billion plan to build trains that can go 220 miles an hour. The stimulus money will go to buy right-of-way, build track, and do engineering and environmental work.

Another $1.25 billion will go to build 84 miles of track from Tampa to Orlando, which would allow trains to travel at up to 168 m.p.h., the first leg of a corridor that is eventually expected to go to Miami. If the state and federal financing hold, the first phase of the railway is scheduled to be completed by 2015.

“It’s the biggest thing since Walt Disney World for the I-4 Corridor,” said Representative Kendrick B. Meek, Democrat of Florida, who is running for Senate this year.

The president’s trip to Tampa on Thursday marked his third visit to the state since taking office. The high-speed rail project represented a considerable investment into the state, which the Obama-Biden ticket carried in 2008.

Before any suggestions could be made about any potential political benefits of the awards, Mr. Biden told the audience here that both Florida and California have something in common: Republican governors.

“We didn’t pick this based on politics. I mean this sincerely,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re picking the places that make the most sense, have the highest density, are ready to go.”

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

 

Change Comes To Climate Change Monitoring: The CIA Is Now Helping

NY Times:

 

The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests.

The collaboration restarts an effort the Bush administration shut down and has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends, and they have had images of the ice pack declassified to speed the scientific analysis.

The trove of images is “really useful,” said Norbert Untersteiner, a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in polar ice and is a member of the team of spies and scientists behind the effort.

Scientists, Dr. Untersteiner said, “have no way to send out 500 people” across the top of the world to match the intelligence gains, adding that the new understandings might one day result in ice forecasts ...

The monitoring program has little or no impact on regular intelligence gathering, federal officials said, but instead releases secret information already collected or takes advantage of opportunities to record environmental data when classified sensors are otherwise idle or passing over wilderness.

Secrecy cloaks the monitoring effort, as well as the nation’s intelligence work, because the United States wants to keep foes and potential enemies in the dark about the abilities of its spy satellites and other sensors. The images that the scientific group has had declassified, for instance, have had their sharpness reduced to hide the abilities of the reconnaissance satellites.

Controversy has often dogged the use of federal intelligence gear for environmental monitoring. In October, days after the C.I.A. opened a small unit to assess the security implications of climate change, Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, said the agency should be fighting terrorists, “not spying on sea lions.”

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

Copenhagen Wont Float (cartoon)

 

Amtrak Carried 63% Of Those Traveling Between NY & Washington and 49% Of NY - Boston Travelers In 2008

NY Times:

Amtrak has been working hard to lure more business travelers to its trains, with advertisements highlighting its advantages over air travel — roomier seats, power outlets on its Acela trains and fewer annoyances.

And its efforts have borne some fruit: the number of riders on its Northeast corridor trains has been rising.

But faster trains are critical to its future. So while Amtrak got some desperately needed financing from the federal government this year, its forecasts suggest that speedier rail travel in the United States remains a daunting challenge.

For the Northeast corridor alone, Amtrak estimates that it will need almost $700 million annually for the next 15 years to maintain the system and to tackle a backlog of maintenance projects and upgrades. Reducing travel times between New York and Washington to two-and-a-half hours and times between New York and Boston to three hours — goals that were established in the 1970s — will require straighter track, improvements to bridges and tunnels, increased capacity through Manhattan and newer trains, among other investments.

Almost all of Amtrak’s lines fail to make money, with a total loss of $1.1 billion in 2008. Even technology enhancements seem to move at a slow pace: developing a new electronic reservation system is expected to take until 2015.

Still, Amtrak officials are more optimistic now than they have been in a long time. “We’re probably in the best position to move forward to get the things done we want to get done and that the government wants us to get done,” said David Lim, Amtrak’s chief marketing officer. “We have an administration that is supportive of rail.”

One of the biggest changes for Amtrak is that after years of bare-bones annual financing that limited the railroad’s ability to make significant upgrades, Congress approved a five-year authorization in 2008 that allocates the system nearly $2 billion a year.

Although the money still needs to be appropriated every year, Mr. Lim said, “the fact that there’s a five-year plan makes a tremendous difference. Asking the government for your annual subsidy obviously makes it difficult to plan and execute capital projects.”

In addition, the economic stimulus package approved by Congress early this year provided $1.3 billion to supplement Amtrak’s capital budget and $8 billion in grants for intercity service and high-speed passenger rail. While those amounts will not go far in developing the bullet trains that operate in Europe and Asia and will probably be distributed among projects throughout the country, Amtrak officials say they view the investment as an important policy shift.

There are also signs that passengers are increasingly embracing trains. The number of Amtrak riders has increased steadily since 2001, surpassing 28 million in 2008, though a dip is expected this year because of the recession.

Amtrak estimates it carried 63 percent of travelers flying or taking the train between New York and Washington in 2008 — an increase from 37 percent before the Acela service began in 2000. Amtrak’s market share between New York and Boston was 49 percent last year, compared with 20 percent before Acela.

Amtrak hopes to push those numbers even higher, Mr. Lim said. The railroad plans to introduce free Wi-Fi service on all Acela trains in the second quarter of 2010, then add Northeast regional trains later in the year.

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

The Apocalypse The Right-Wing Fears With Stupifying Consistency Has Not Come To Pass

The New Republic:

Conservatives have lined up in near-unanimous opposition to any progressive legislation introduced during President Obama’s first year in office. Whether they’ve been railing against health care reform, a climate bill, or financial regulation, their ire has stemmed less from legislative specifics than from a generalized prophecy of doom: Obama’s proposals will move the country toward socialism, bankrupt entire industries and small businesses, and deny Americans their basic freedoms.

These arguments, however, aren’t new. Conservatives—not just Republicans, but various politicians and groups who’ve resisted major social changes—recycled them throughout the twentieth century. They used them to oppose numerous progressive measures that Americans now take for granted, from women’s suffrage to child-labor laws to Medicare. [See "The Republican Party ... [has not and] cannot come to grips with the very nature of the problems of modern American politics"]. Here we’ve collected a few choice predictions about disaster that never came. Conservatives today might prefer they be forgotten.

“It may be impracticable that our distinctively American experiment of individual freedom should go on.”

—Senator David Hill (D-NY), in 1894, bemoaning the creation of a federal income tax

“Woman suffrage would give to the wives and daughters of the poor a new opportunity to gratify their envy and mistrust of the rich. Meantime these new voters would become either the purchased or cajoled victims of plausible political manipulators, or the intimidated and helpless voting vassals of imperious employers.”

—Former President Grover Cleveland, in 1905, on why women shouldn’t be able to vote

“[T]he child will become a very dominant factor in the household and might refuse perhaps to do chores before six a.m. or after seven p.m. or to perform any labor.”

—Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID), in 1908, on why child labor should remain unregulated

“I fear it may end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European. It will furnish delicious food and add great strength to the political demagogue. It will assist in driving worthy and courageous men from public life. It will discourage and defeat the American trait of thrift. It will go a long way toward destroying American initiative and courage.”

—Senator Daniel O. Hastings (R-DE), in 1935, listing the evils of Social Security

“[I]t would make it practically impossible for any publisher in the United States to accept any food, drug, or cosmetic advertising without facing squarely into the doors of a jail.”

—Federal Trade Commission Chair Ewin L. Davis, in 1935, on the dangers of empowering the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the food, drug, and cosmetic industries ...

“[The Act represents] a step in the direction of Communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism.”

—The National Association of Manufacturers, in 1938, condemning a national minimum wage and guaranteed overtime pay

“It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.”

—Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC), Senator Richard Russell (D-GA), and other Southern legislators, in 1956, describing the perils of integrating public schools

“It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.”

—Senator Carl Curtis (R-NE), in 1965, opposing Medicare

“[T]his bill could prevent continued production of automobiles . . . [and] is a threat to the entire American economy and to every person in America.”

—Lee Iacocca, executive vice president of Ford Motor Company, in 1970, on why the government shouldn’t regulate airborne contaminants that are hazardous to human health

“The effects include serious long-term losses in domestic output and employment, heavy cost burdens on manufacturing industries, and a resultant gradual contraction of the entire industrial base. The irony of this bleak scenario is that these economic hardships are borne with no real assurance they would be balanced by a cleaner, healthier environment.”

—The National Association of Manufacturers, in 1987, on the perils of an emissions reduction program to combat acid rain

“The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.”

—Ronald Reagan, in 1961, arguing against the creation of Medicare

Obama Assesses His First Year & Rejects Criticism Of Health-Care Bill

Wash Post:

President Obama outlined Tuesday a first-year legislative record that he said rescued the economy and placed it on a path of long-term growth, even as he acknowledged that some unfinished items would probably be more difficult to achieve heading into a midterm election year.

In an Oval Office interview with The Washington Post, Obama rejected criticism that he has compromised too much to secure health-care reform or turned over too much authority to congressional leaders in pursuing his broad legislative agenda.

But some of Obama's signature initiatives, including cap-and-trade legislation and financial regulatory reform, remain unfulfilled heading into an election year likely to be shaped by what he achieved in Congress this year. Obama personally made the case for his legislative record at a time when his approval ratings are among the lowest of his presidency and as even some of his most ardent supporters are questioning the results of his congressional strategy.

"Overall, if you had a checklist of promises made, a lot of those promises have been kept," Obama said. "When those things are complete, and I think they will be, we will have achieved a fundamental shift in health care, energy, education and our financial regulatory system that will put this economy on a firmer footing to grow over the long term."

As the Senate prepares to pass its version of health-care reform legislation, Obama's advisers have portrayed a highly successful year pushing important bills through Congress, comparing his record to those of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. Presidential scholars offer a more cautious appraisal, even as they note that Obama is operating in a more partisan time in Washington than those Democratic predecessors had.

Obama's legislative record includes the $787 billion stimulus bill passed in February, a mix of tax cuts, infrastructure spending and aid to state and local governments that was the largest of its kind. It also includes a variety of bills addressing issues of particular interest to his political base that had been languishing for years.

Although Obama noted in the interview that "the most important thing we did this year was to ensure that the financial system did not collapse," health-care reform dominated his agenda and will stand as at least one pillar of the legacy he leaves behind. He has come under sharp criticism for the size and shape of the legislation, including from former Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean ...

In the interview, Obama vigorously defended the legislation, saying he is "not just grudgingly supporting the bill. I am very enthusiastic about what we have achieved."

"Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill," Obama said. "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill."

In listing those priorities, he cited the 30 million uninsured Americans projected to receive coverage, estimated savings of more than $1 trillion over the next two decades, a "patients' bill of rights on steroids," and tax breaks to help small businesses pay for employee coverage.

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

Not Surprising: There Are More Red Than Blue Denialists

Sharon Begley:

The fact that Republicans and Democrats differ on whether health-care reform should include a public option is no surprise. That they differ on setting a date for exiting Afghanistan, sure. On Sarah Palin, of course. But on physics? And biology? That the growing list of issues where there is a partisan divide now includes the accuracy of scientific findings may be lamentable for a democracy (if we can't agree on facts, how can we agree on policy?), but it's a gold mine for research on how personality and other psychological factors influence political ideology.

The red-blue split on mammograms is particularly striking. In a recent poll, the Pew Research Center asked 1,002 American adults about a preventive-health task force's conclusion that most women can safely begin mammograms at age 50, not 40, and have one every two years, not annually. (Large studies have found that earlier mammograms save almost no lives; since the radiation can cause cancer, it therefore makes sense to minimize them.) Among Republicans, 15 percent agreed with that. Among Democrats? Twice as many.

One reason, of course, is that the mammogram wars have become entangled in health-care reform, with accusations that the advice is part of a dastardly plot to ration care. Some of the partisan split therefore reflects red-blue views of what John Jost of New York University, who studies the psychological basis of political ideology, calls "a softer version of the 'death panel' claim." But something else is going on, something that speaks to how traits of personality affect political leanings. Since people do not pore over oncology studies and reach their own conclusion on the credibility of the science, they have to trust experts—or not. And thus the partisan divide: Republicans tend to distrust "elites," especially now that the GOP is more Palin than George H.W. Bush or other scion of the white-shoe establishment. In the mammogram debate, that distrust encompasses pointy-headed scientists and makes those who disdain "the reality-based community," as an aide to George W. Bush called scientists, go with the "common sense" view that mammograms save lives.

There is a long list of personality differences between liberals or Democrats and conservatives or Republicans. The former are generally more open to new experiences and ideas, Jost and colleagues found in a 2003 study. The latter tend to be more conscientious, more energetic, and more emotionally stable, Jost later found, as did a 2007 study of 5,623 voters led by Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The differences are significant: the personality traits predict voting decisions more strongly than age or gender, Fraley found.

The partisan divide on another empirical question—whether Earth is warming, and if so whether that is due to human activities—may reflect something similar.

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

 

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

On Climate Change & Health Reform, Obama Is Willing To Take What He Can Get

NY Times:

President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, likes to say that the only thing that is not negotiable is success. The last 48 hours offered a case study in how the president applies that maxim to governing.

After weeks of frustrating delays and falling poll numbers, Mr. Obama decided to take what he could get, declare victory and claim momentum on some of the administration’s biggest priorities, even if the details did not always match the lofty vision that underlined them.

From Copenhagen to Capitol Hill, the president determined the outer limits of what he could accomplish on climate change and health care and decided that was enough, at least for now. He brokered a nonbinding agreement with other world powers to fight global warming, averting the collapse of an international summit meeting. And he blessed a compromise on health care to guarantee the votes needed to pass the Senate.

Neither deal represented a final victory, and in fact some on the left in his own party argued that both of them amounted to sellouts on principle in favor of expediency. But both agreements served the purpose of keeping the process moving forward, inching ever closer toward Mr. Obama’s goals and providing a jolt of adrenaline for a White House eager to validate its first year in office.

Mr. Obama seemed encouraged by the progress ... After landing in a Washington-area snowstorm and retiring for a few hours of rest, Mr. Obama appeared in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on a snowy Saturday. He called the health care deal “a major step forward” and the climate change agreement an “important breakthrough.”

Still, he acknowledged that neither was exactly what he had set out to achieve. On climate change, he said that the Copenhagen pact “is not enough” and that “we have a long way to go.” On health care, he noted that “as with any legislation, compromise is part of the process.”

In an interview, Mr. Emanuel said the developments showed that Mr. Obama “sets out the North Stars for us” in terms of broad and ambitious goals, but is willing to let his staff and allies haggle over the specifics. “He doesn’t negotiate the ends,” Mr. Emanuel said. “He’s very open to discussing alternative routes.”

Critics cautioned against making too much of the agreements. “They are pyrrhic victories,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former Capitol Hill aide. “Neither deal will necessarily improve his poll ratings with swing voters, nor will they energize his base. And neither take the necessary steps to put the American economy back on track, which should be the only thing he is thinking about right now.”

The climate deal in particular may seem more than it is. With the Copenhagen conference unable to agree on binding limits on greenhouse gases linked to climate change, Mr. Obama settled for a three-page agreement with no short or midterm goals but a long-term commitment to prevent world temperatures from rising by more than two degrees by midcentury.

The health care legislation is much further along, and while it compromised on abortion and abandoned a government-run health plan, it still includes many changes long favored by Democrats. If it passes the Senate this week as now appears probable, it stands a much better chance of actually becoming law, culminating decades of largely failed efforts to revamp the nation’s health care system.

Mr. Obama has put a high value on process and keeping things moving, recognizing that history generally does not remember the to and fro, only the big sweep of presidential accomplishments. He may not get the health care plan he envisioned but, if the legislation passes, he will insure 30 million more people, stop insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and at least try to rein in costs. He will not end climate change in his presidency, and may not get the market-based emission caps he wants, but he may move the country, and the world, toward meaningful action.

Of course, to many on both sides of the aisle, there is a less sympathetic narrative.

The Politics of Avatar Are Not Going To Make The Right Happy

People always say Rupert Murdoch really only cares about getting audiences and making money: the same movie that he's counting on to break box office records is one that will give his "News" division apoplexy:

High-Speed Rail Stimulus Money Wont Be Going To Northeast Corridor

Boston Globe:

The railroad tracks from Boston to Washington - the busiest rail artery in the nation, and one that also carries America’s only high-speed train, the Acela - have been virtually shut out of $8 billion worth of federal stimulus money set aside for high-speed rail projects because of a strict environmental review required by the Obama administration.

Because such a review would take years, states along the Northeast rail corridor are not able to pursue stimulus money for a variety of crucial upgrades.

The projects, aimed at increasing speeds, range from bridge replacements in Connecticut to new overhead wires in New Jersey. They would cut the Acela’s travel time from Boston to New York by almost 30 minutes, and from Boston to Washington by a full hour.

When the first grants are announced in January, most of the money - and accompanying jobs - is expected to go to railroad projects in California and the Midwest, which currently have no high-speed trains but are trying to establish service for the first time.

“It’s frustrating,’’ said Yoav Hagler, a planner at the Regional Plan Association in New York, a nonprofit regional planning group in New York. “We have a thriving intercity passenger market between our major cities and we need major investment in the corridor, so it’s a little strange to put that need in the same category as these new programs that are just applying and trying to build a market now,’’ he said.

Northeastern states are seeking some stimulus money for separate rail projects within their borders, such as the Massachusetts proposal to add commuter rail from Fall River and New Bedford to Boston. But travelers on the Acela will miss out on the promise of a faster train and will have to continue waiting for the day when the Northeast route matches the performance of European and Japanese lines.

The obstacle was a decision this year by the Federal Railroad Administration that, before any major upgrades could proceed, a comprehensive environmental review would have to be conducted on the entire 457-mile railroad ...

The FRA itself would be in charge of conducting the review. Although there is no timetable for completing it, similar studies in the past have taken years ...

Amtrak has identified $11.8 billion in upgrades to reduce travel times on the corridor. In addition to better overhead electric supplies and stronger bridges, it includes straightening sections of curvy track and upgrading signaling systems. Without the review mandated by FRA, those plans will sit on the shelf for now, although states were able to apply for a few smaller grants under a separate part of the high-speed program.

The Obama administration, which has embraced high-speed rail as a flagship effort in the stimulus and boasts of Vice President Joe Biden’s long history as an Amtrak commuter, has framed the $8 billion as only the first step in the creation of a nationwide network.

Congress voted recently to provide another $2.5 billion for high-speed rail next year, meaning states that miss out in January will have at least one more chance to apply. But it may be difficult to complete a full environmental review of the Northeast railroad corridor in time for that money, either. A spokesman for Amtrak, Cliff Black, said the last such review for the Corridor took about three years in the mid-1990s, and covered only the stretch between New Haven and Boston ...

The bad news for the Northeast is expected to translate to a windfall for other parts of the country. In the past, critics of rail spending have argued that the Northeast corridor soaked up too much federal transportation funding; the Government Accountability Office estimated in March that since 1990, the corridor had received $3.1 billion - about 75 percent of all federal funds for high-speed rail related projects in that period.

Rob McCulloch, a transportation advocate for Environment America, said that ending that imbalance might have the effect of broadening the political constituency for rail, which would ultimately benefit the region.

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

This one is from Germany:

Obama Brokers "American-led Copenhagen Accord"

It's weird how similar this sounds to what's happened with the health reform. From the  London Times:

The UN climate conference in Copenhagen today approved a deal to tackle global warming proposed by world leaders, after an accord Barack Obama brokered with China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

But the UN Secretary General today admitted the non-binding agreement at the conclusion of the conference was not "everything everyone had hoped for", as he confirmed a deal had finally been done.

Delegates have agreed to "take note" of the American-led Copenhagen Accord, despite criticism that there are no long-term targets to cut emissions and it is not a legally-binding treaty.

Obama had brokered the agreement with China, India, Brazil and South Africa to tackle global warming, which included a reference to keeping the global temperature rise to just 2C - but the plan does not specify greenhouse gas cuts needed to achieve the 2C goal.

Prime minister Gordon Brown said the Accord was a "necessary first step" but those in opposition to it described it as "weak" and "meaningless" .

The document setting out the deal will specify a list of countries which agreed with it, as some of the 192 nations which have taken part in the talks are understood not to have accepted it.

In stormy overnight talks Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia all denounced the plan after about 120 world leaders left following a summit yesterday. Sudan’s delegate, Lumumba Di-Aping, said the accord would condemn Africa to many deaths from global warming and compared it with the Holocaust.

But this morning UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said: "We have a deal" and described the agreement as an "important beginning" in the fight against climate change. It will allow a provision for $30 billion of climate aid for poorer countries over the next three years to become operational. There will also be a further $100 billion a year from 2020.

Mr Ban said: "The Copenhagen Accord may not be everything everyone had hoped for, but this decision...is an important beginning.”

Under the accord, countries will be able to set out their pledges for the action they plan to take to tackle climate change, in an appendix to the document, and will provide information to other nations on their progress.

UK Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband, who spent the night in talks after Gordon Brown had left the conference, said the failure to secure a stronger agreement showed the difficulty world leaders faced in tackling climate change ...

“I wanted a stronger agreement. Today’s events show the difficulty we face. We are dealing with incredibly complex issues and trying to get 192 countries signed up is not an easy task.”

Further talks are expected at conferences in Germany and Mexico next year and Mr Obama admitted there was "much further to go" ...

Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, echoed Mr Brown's comments adding: “This accord is better than no accord. This is a positive step but it’s clearly below our ambitions.

The agreement, which follows two weeks of high-level debate, has been roundly criticised by environment campaigners and charities.

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

This first one is from China Daily:

China As The GOP, Obama As Obama, Copenhagen As Congress

Read this NY Times article about the Copenhagen climate change conference, what Obama said and what China is doing and tell me it doesn't remind you of the health care debate in Congress, what Obama has said and what the GOP has done.

Here's Obama's speech:

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

 

Jobs AND Environment: Administration To Triple The Clearn Energy Tax Credit Program

NY Times:

The White House is proposing to expand by $5 billion a clean energy tax credit, as part of a push to spur job growth.

The proposal, unveiled Wednesday by the office of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., is the latest Obama administration effort to tackle the high level of joblessness, while also encouraging investment in wind, geothermal and solar projects in the United States.

Senior administration officials said that they expected to move the proposal through Congress quickly. The $5 billion would raise the cap of the present program, enacted last February, to $7.3 billion from $2.3 billion.

Administration officials and their Democratic allies on Capitol Hill said that the expansion was necessary because the initial program was successful. The administration received more than 1,000 applications. Of these, 600 were deemed acceptable, but a smaller number were approved because of the cap on the amount of money available.

The companies receiving the initial $2.3 billion in tax credits will be announced in January, one administration official said.

The credit, which administration officials say could create tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, would provide tax breaks to manufacturers who invest in clean energy technology. The money for the tax credit would come from $200 billion in savings from the bank bailout fund, which the administration has extended until next year.

“That frees up lots of space both to address the deficit problem and to invest in accelerating job growth,” one administration official said.

Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and a backer of the program, said that the expansion of the credit would ensure that clean energy jobs were created in the United States.

“While the public and private sectors are creating a demand for new industries like wind, solar, high-speed rail and medical I.T., we need to do more to ensure that we make these products in America,” he said in a statement.

Poll: Majority Wants Lieberman Thrown Out Of Democratic Caucus. Cap-and-Trade A Reason To Keep Him?

Marc Ambinder:

A Research 2000 poll confirms what we assumed to be true: Democrats are not happy with Joe Lieberman.

In fact, 81 percent of Democrats want Lieberman stripped of his Senate Homeland Security Committee chairmanship if he joins with Republicans to block health care reform, compared to only 10 percent who think he should retain it. See the full results here.

Independents agree, 43 percent to 30 percent; all voters also agree, 47 percent to 32 percent. 802 voters were polled by Research 2000 for the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, which has commissioned polling on moderate Democratic senators averse to ambitious health care reform since the debate heated up over the summer.
Lieberman came close to having his chairman's gavel stripped after the election, and it was assumed that he retained it because of 1) the conciliatory signals sent by then-President-elect Obama, and 2) the fact that Democrats needed his vote on critical pieces of President Obama's agenda--like, for instance health care reform ...

If Lieberman is a solid "no" on health care, the only thing preventing the caucus from removing him as chairman is his vote on climate change legislation. He's working on cap-and-trade legislation with Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC); the three released a general framework for legislation last week, but The Washington Post noted that it showed they hadn't agreed to much yet. Lieberman's stance on cap-and-trade appears aggressive: in releasing that framework, Lieberman stressed that the bill will be intended to "punish" polluters, and he took the lead on cap-and-trade legislation in the last Congress.

Whether that's enough to keep him in Democrats' good graces--or whether he'd stop working on cap-and-trade if his removed as chairman--is anyone's guess.

For Greentech, The D.O.E. Is The New Venture Capital Kingpin

Wall St Journal (See all of this year's D.O.E. energy project awards):

When tiny Fisker Automotive Inc. hit a financing glitch last year, threatening its plan to build a fancy gasoline-electric hybrid car in Finland, it turned to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The DOE had a bolder idea. Why not also step up the company's plans to develop a less-expensive model, and assemble it in a closed U.S. auto plant?

Within months, Vice President Joe Biden, the former senator from Delaware, was helping lure the embryonic car company to a shuttered General Motors Co. factory four miles from his house in Wilmington, right across the tracks from Biden Park. Soon, Fisker Automotive, a two-year-old business that has yet to sell a car, won loans from the federal government totaling $528 million.

Fisker had joined a flock of other businesses seeking cash from the biggest venture capitalist of all, the U.S. government.

The DOE hopes to lend or give out more than $40 billion to businesses working on "clean technology," everything from electric cars and novel batteries to wind turbines and solar panels. In the first nine months of 2009, the DOE doled out $13 billion in loans and grants to such firms. By contrast, venture-capital firms -- which have long been the chief funders of fledgling tech firms, taking equity stakes in the start-ups that will pay off if they go public -- poured just $2.68 billion into the sector in that time, according to data tracker Cleantech Group.

Thus, while much attention has been focused on the federal government's involvement in banking, Washington also is gaining sway in another swath of the economy. By financing clean-tech ventures on a large scale, the government has become a kingmaker in one of technology's hottest sectors.

Some young companies are tailoring their business plans to win DOE cash. Private investors, meanwhile, are often pulling back, waiting to see which projects the government blesses. Success in winning federal funds can attract a flood of private capital, companies say, while conversely, bad luck in Washington can sour their chances with private investors. The result is an intertwining of public and private-sector interests in an arena where politics is never far from the surface ...

At the DOE, Matthew Rogers, who helps oversee the department's loans, said proposals are vetted by "deal teams" insulated as much as possible from outside pressure. "Lots of people can call the [energy] secretary, but that doesn't mean that any of that necessarily flows down to the deal-team level," he said.

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

Great Insight Into Obama's Morals & Foreign Policy: His Nobel "Lecture"

Definitely worth watching and a fitting complement to Obama's Post-Imperial Presidency:

Read the transcript.

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

A Refreshing Change: Europe Praises US For Climate Change Action

NY Times:

The European Commission Tuesday applauded a decision by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to pave the way for federal limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, saying it should give further impetus to negotiations underway here aimed at crafting a new global agreement to curb greenhouse gases. 

The so-called endangerment finding by the E.P.A. was “an important signal by the Obama administration that they are serious about tackling climate change and are demonstrating leadership,” a spokesman from the European Commission said. The finding “gives new momentum following their announcement of cuts,” he said.

Political leaders in Copenhagen welcomed the ruling, but they were quick to press the Obama administration to do more now to sweeten its offer.

Andreas Carlgren, the environment minister of Sweden, the country that currently holds the rotating presidency of the E.U., said in an e-mail message on Tuesday morning that the ruling “shows that the United States can do more than they have put on the table.”

Connie Hedegaard, the Danish politician who was elected on Monday as president of the conference, said in an e-mail message on Tuesday morning that the ruling in the United States “is a helpful step, as it could provide a larger degree of flexibility in the negotiations.” So far President Barack Obama has signaled a cut emissions by about 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. The White House also has indicated that the United States would contribute to a fund to tackle climate change.

The announcement by the E.P.A. came after more than 190 nations began a crucial climate meeting here on Monday. The gathering opened with appeals for urgent action from the United Nations and from officials of countries endangered by warmer temperatures, rising sea levels and other damage such as melting glaciers ...

A major reason that hopes have risen in recent weeks is the expectation that President Obama — who plans to attend closing days of the conference next week — will formally commit the United States to making cuts in greenhouse gases. The United States declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a previous agreement on curbing greenhouse gases, because of strong opposition in the Senate and from the Bush administration.

The refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol has left a lingering mistrust of the United States in other parts of the world. The finding by the E.P.A. is expected to allow President Obama to tell delegates in Copenhagen that the United States is moving aggressively to address the problem even while Congress remains stalled on broader legislation to curb global warming legislation.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said that in light of the ruling, “the president’s appearance in Copenhagen will carry even more weight, because it shows that America is taking this issue very seriously and is moving forward.”

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

EPA Issues Final Ruling That "greenhouse gases posed a danger to human health and the environment"

As posted about last Spring (see, for instance, April's Obama's Brilliant Strategy To Get His Transformative Policies Enacted), the EPA has made it official. Here's the NY Times:

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday issued a final ruling that greenhouse gases posed a danger to human health and the environment, paving the way for regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, power plants, factories, refineries and other major sources.

The announcement was timed to coincide with the opening of the United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen, strengthening President Obama’s hand as more than 190 nations struggle to reach a global accord.

The E.P.A.’s administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said that a 2007 decision by the Supreme Court required the agency to weigh whether carbon dioxide and five other climate-altering gases threatened human health and welfare and, if so, to take steps to regulate them.

She said Monday that the finding was driven by the weight of scientific evidence that the planet was warming and that human activity was largely responsible.

“There have and continue to be debates about how and how quickly climate change will happen if we fail to act,” Ms. Jackson said at a news conference at the E.P.A.’s headquarters. “But the overwhelming amounts of scientific study show that the threat is real.”

Industry groups quickly criticized the decision, saying that the regulation of carbon dioxide, a near-ubiquitous substance, would be legally and technically complex and would impose huge costs across the economy.

In her prepared remarks and in response to questions, Ms. Jackson waded into the current dispute over leaked e-mail messages from a British climate research group that have stirred doubts among a number of people about the integrity of some climate science.

Several Republicans in Congress had asked the E.P.A. to delay the so-called endangerment finding because of questions about the underlying science. Ms. Jackson rejected their plea.

“We know that skeptics have and will continue to try to sow doubts about the science,” she said. “It’s no wonder that many people are confused. But raising doubts — even in the face of overwhelming evidence — is a tactic that has been used by defenders of the status quo for years.”

She said that the agency had reviewed the arguments of some of those skeptics during months of public comment but that none of them had raised significant new issues.

Leaked Emails Fuel Revive "attacks on the basic science of climate change"

NY Times:

Just two years ago, a United Nations panel that synthesizes the work of hundreds of climatologists around the world called the evidence for global warming “unequivocal.”

But as representatives of about 200 nations began talks Monday in Copenhagen on a new international climate accord, they were doing so against a background of renewed attacks on the basic science of climate change.

The debate, set off by the circulation of several thousand files and e-mail messages stolen from one of the world’s foremost climate research institutes, has led some who oppose limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and at least one influential country, Saudi Arabia, to question the scientific basis for the Copenhagen talks.

The uproar has threatened to complicate a multiyear diplomatic effort already ensnared in difficult political, technical and financial disputes that have caused leaders to abandon hopes of hammering out a binding international climate treaty this year.

In recent days, an array of scientists and policy makers have said that nothing so far disclosed — the correspondence and documents include references by prominent climate scientists to deleting potentially embarrassing e-mail messages, keeping papers by competing scientists from publication and making adjustments in research data — undercuts decades of peer-reviewed science.

Yet the intensity of the response highlights that skepticism about global warming persists, even as many scientists thought the battle over the reality of human-driven climate change was finally behind them.

On dozens of Web sites and blogs, skeptics and foes of greenhouse gas restrictions take daily aim at the scientific arguments for human-driven climate change. The stolen material was quickly seized upon for the questions it raised about the accessibility of raw data to outsiders and whether some data had been manipulated ...

Yet the case for human-driven warming, many scientists say, is far clearer now than a decade ago, when the skeptics included many people who now are convinced that climate change is a real and serious threat.

Even some who remain skeptical about the extent or pace of global warming say that the premise underlying the Copenhagen talks is solid: that warming is to some extent driven by greenhouse gases spewing into the atmosphere from human activities like the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Today's Climate Change Cartoons

 

The Mountain Out Of A Molehill Emails

 

Global Warming Cartoons

The Copenhagen Diagnosis: "Updating the world on the Latest Climate Science"

A new report has been released that "serves as a handbook of science updates ... in time for Copenhagen in December 2009, and any national or international climate change policy negotiations that follow ... The report has been purposefully written with a target readership of policy-makers, stakeholders, the media and the broader public." From their press release:

Climate change accelerating beyond expectations, urgent emissions reductions required, say leading scientists

Global ice-sheets are melting at an increased rate; Arctic sea-ice is disappearing much faster than recently projected, and future sea-level rise is now expected to be much higher than previously forecast, according to a new global scientific synthesis prepared by some of the world’s top climate scientists.

In a special report called ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’, the 26 researchers, most of whom are authors of published IPCC reports, conclude that several important aspects of climate change are occurring at the high end or even beyond the expectations of only a few years ago.  

The report also notes that global warming continues to track early IPCC projections based on greenhouse gas increases.  Without significant mitigation, the report says global mean warming could reach as high as 7 degrees Celsius by 2100.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis, which was a year in the making, documents the key findings in climate change science since the publication of the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

The new evidence to have emerged includes:

• Satellite and direct measurements now demonstrate that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass and contributing to sea level rise at an increasing rate.
• Arctic sea-ice has melted far beyond the expectations of climate models. For example, the area of summer sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average projection from the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
• Sea level has risen more than 5 centimeters over the past 15 years, about 80% higher than IPCC projections from 2001. Accounting for ice-sheets and glaciers, global sea-level rise may exceed 1 meter by 2100, with a rise of up to 2 meters considered an upper limit by this time.  This is much higher than previously projected by the IPCC.  Furthermore, beyond 2100, sea level rise of several meters must be expected over the next few centuries.
• In 2008 carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were ~40% higher than those in 1990. Even if emissions do not grow beyond today’s levels, within just 20 years the world will have used up the allowable emissions to have a reasonable chance of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

The report concludes that global emissions must peak then decline rapidly within the next five to ten years for the world to have a reasonable chance of avoiding the very worst impacts of climate change.

To stabilize climate, global emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases need to reach near-zero well within this century, the report states.

Read the summary or full report.

China Joins U.S. In Pledge of Hard Targets On Emissions, But Ours Are More Aggressive

Wash Post:

China announced Thursday that it will cut its economy's carbon intensity by up to 45 percent by 2020, the state news agency Xinhua said, and that Premier Wen Jiabao will participate in international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month.

The move by the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter to set a near-term target of a 40 to 45 percent reduction, coming a day after President Obama set U.S. climate goals for the talks, suggests a possible breakthrough in Demark next month in the long-stalled climate negotiations. But the State Council's announcement that China will cut its carbon output relative to economic growth, using 2005 as a baseline, fell short of the 50 or 55 percent cut many world leaders had hoped Beijing would make.

Michael Levi, the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the announcement "disappointing," because the Energy Information Administration estimates that existing Chinese policies will already cut the nation's carbon intensity by 45 to 46 percent. Carbon intensity is a measure that captures the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of gross domestic product.

"It does not move them beyond business as usual," Levi said. "The United States has put an ambitious path for emissions cuts through 2050 on the table. China needs to raise its level of ambition if it is going to match that. One can only hope that, now that China has made a proposal, negotiators are able to work out something better."

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, welcomed "the leadership China is bringing to this negotiation," while noting that it will be "disappointing to some" that the cuts did not go further. Others hailed China's commitment as a step that the country had not been willing to take before.

China is not obligated to cut its greenhouse gas emissions under the current framework for the United Nations-sponsored negotiations. But it is expected to account for 50 percent of the growth in global emissions over the next 20 years, making its output nearly 60 percent higher than U.S. output by 2020. Any future climate treaty will be ineffective unless China agrees to make deep cuts.

Given China's projected growth rates, its emissions are projected to rise even under the plan outlined by Xinhua Thursday. Still, any effort China makes to curb its carbon footprint has an enormous impact.

According to the D.C.-based Center for Clean Air Policy, China's current plan to cut its energy intensity by 20 percent translates into a 1.6 billion-ton carbon cut.

Denialism: New Poll Shows Fewer Americans "Believe" Global Warming

Why am I not surprised the shift has primarily occurred within the science-phobic GOP (for more on the subject, see A Blue View's Denialism category and/or buy the book that named the phenomenon: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives). From the Wash Post:

The percentage of Americans who believe global warming is happening has dipped from 80 to 72 percent in the past year, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, even as a majority still support a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

The poll's findings -- which also show that 55 percent of respondents think the United States should curb its carbon output even if major developing nations such as China and India do less -- suggest increasing political polarization around the issue, just as the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are intensifying efforts to pass climate legislation and broker an international global warming pact.

The increase in climate skepticism is driven largely by a shift within the GOP. Since its peak 3 1/2 years ago, belief that climate change is happening is down sharply among Republicans -- 76 to 54 percent -- and independents -- 86 to 71 percent. It dipped more modestly among Democrats, from 92 to 86 percent. A majority of respondents still support legislation to cap emissions and trade pollution allowances, by 53 to 42 percent.

Amanda Feinberg, a retired administrative assistant living in South Williamsport, Pa., said she became disenchanted with the idea of human-caused global warming when former vice president Al Gore launched a public awareness campaign with his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."

"He just seemed a little radical in his views," said Feinberg, a Republican. "I don't deny it's happening, I just think it's just an evolution of nature."

Lisa Woolcott, another Republican poll respondent, said she doesn't think that burning fossil fuels is "causing all the global warming," adding: "We can't control what happens in the atmosphere." But Woolcott, a physician's assistant who lives in Kansas City, Kan., said she supports the idea of a bill that would cap the nation's greenhouse gas emissions and doesn't think the United States should predicate its actions on what other nations do. "We need to do what's best for us," she said. "I don't think we should back down."

Even proponents of action on climate change, such as Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who has conducted polls on the issue for the American Security Project and the Pew Charitable Trusts, say they have detected a recent fraying of bipartisanship.

"It's a sad state of affairs when science becomes subject to partisan politics," Mellman said. "It can only be attributed to the sense that this issue has become part of a political battle."

Climate Change Makes Strange Bedfellows: Environmentalists Increasingly Support Nuclear Power

Wash Post:

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.

It has been 13 years since the last new nuclear power plant opened in the United States. But around the world, nations under pressure to reduce the production of climate-warming gases are turning to low-emission nuclear energy as never before. The Obama administration and leading Democrats, in an effort to win greater support for climate change legislation, are eyeing federal tax incentives and loan guarantees to fund a new crop of nuclear power plants across the United States that could eventually help drive down carbon emissions.

From China to Brazil, 53 plants are now under construction worldwide, with Poland, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia seeking to build their first reactors, according to global watchdog groups and industry associations. The number of plants being built is double the total of just five years ago.

Rather than deride the emphasis on nuclear power, some environmentalists are embracing it. Stephen Tindale typifies the shift ... "It really is a question about the greater evil -- nuclear waste or climate change," Tindale said. "But there is no contest anymore. Climate change is the bigger threat, and nuclear is part of the answer."

A number of roadblocks may yet stall nuclear's comeback -- in particular, its expense. Two next-generation plants under construction in Finland and France are billions of dollars over budget and seriously behind schedule, raising longer-term questions about the feasibility of new plants without major government support. Costs may be so high that energy companies find financing hard to secure even with government backing.

But experts also point to a host of improvements in nuclear technology since the Chernobyl accident and the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. Most notable is an 80 percent drop in industrial accidents at the world's 436 nuclear plants since the late 1980s, according to the World Association of Nuclear Operators.

So far at least, the start of what many are calling "a new nuclear age" is unfolding with only muted opposition -- nothing like the protests and plant invasions that helped define the green movement in the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s.

As opposition recedes, even nations that had long vowed never to build another nuclear plant -- such as Sweden, Belgium and Italy -- have recently done an about-face as they see the benefits of a nearly zero-emission energy overriding the dangers of radioactive waste disposal and nuclear proliferation.

In the United States, leading environmental groups have backed climate change bills moving through Congress that envision new American nuclear plants. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House, for instance, shows nuclear energy generation more than doubling in the United States by 2050 if the legislation is made law. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing applications for 22 new nuclear plants from coast to coast.

Why The China Trip Matters

James Fallows:

Nearly thirty years after he left office, the most important achievement of Jimmy Carter's time as president was his cementing the relationship with China that had begun under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. (Second-most important: Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt. Third: showing that it was possible, at least for a while, to increase the energy efficiency of cars, buildings, power generation, and industry within the US.)

Thirty years from now, the most important aspect of Barack Obama's interaction with China will be whether the two countries, together, can do anything about environmental and climate issues. If they can, in 2039 we'll look back on this as something like the Silent Spring/Clean Air Act moment in American history, which began a change toward broad environmental improvement. If they can't....

Copenhagen Setback A Real Setback: For Climate Change & Obama

Following up on American Inaction Destroys Hopes For Climate Change Conference: Revised Agenda Is Lamer, Less Effective, there's this from the NY Times:

President Obama came into office pledging to end eight years of American inaction on climate change under President George W. Bush, and all year he has promised that the United States would lead the way toward a global agreement in Copenhagen next month to address the warming planet.

But this weekend in Singapore, Mr. Obama was forced to acknowledge that a comprehensive climate deal was beyond reach this year. Instead, he and other world leaders agreed that they would work toward a more modest interim agreement with a promise to renew work toward a binding treaty next year.

The admission places Mr. Obama in the awkward position of being, at least for now, as unlikely to spearhead an international effort to combat global warming as his predecessor — if for different reasons.

In Mr. Bush’s case, he remained skeptical about the science of global warming until near the end of his presidency and dubious about the need for concerted global action. And his reluctance was echoed by a Congress that wanted to see clear commitments from developing countries like China.

But Mr. Obama has been a champion of climate change regulation. He has moved unilaterally to limit greenhouse gases from vehicles and large sources such as coal-burning power plants. And in recent months, China, India, Brazil and some other developing countries have issued promises to slow the growth of emissions, although with the knowledge that a binding treaty to enforce such pledges will not take effect for at least several years.

Yet Mr. Obama has found himself limited in his ambitions by a Congress that is unwilling to move as far or as fast as he would like.

American negotiators have been hamstrung in talks leading to the Copenhagen conference by inaction on legislation supported by the administration that would impose strict caps on carbon dioxide emissions. The House passed a relatively stringent bill in June, but the Senate is not expected to begin serious debate on the measure until next year.

Without a firm commitment from the United States — for decades the world’s leading emitter of climate-altering gases — other nations have been reluctant to deliver firmer pledges of their own. Mr. Obama’s aides say he remains determined to use his domestic authority and international clout to continue pressing toward a global agreement. despite the latest setback.

“Is this impasse the United States’ fault? Of course. But others are at fault as well,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign in Washington, citing the opposition of polluting industries and the reluctance of emerging economies to commit to binding curbs on emissions. “We have both the obligation and capability of taking the lead on this issue. The longer we delay, the more extreme the steps that will have to be taken.”

Mr. Obama expressed support on Sunday for a proposal from Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of Denmark to pursue a two-step process at the Copenhagen conference.

American Inaction Destroys Hopes For Climate Change Conference: Revised Agenda Is Lamer, Less Effective

NY Times:

President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future.

At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting on Sunday morning, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on.

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen, which starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. “I don’t think the negotiations have proceeded in such a way that any of the leaders thought it was likely that we were going to achieve a final agreement in Copenhagen, and yet thought that it was important that Copenhagen be an important step forward, including with operational impact.”

With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it has, for several months, appeared increasingly unlikely that the climate change negotiations in Denmark would produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming, as its organizers had intended.

The agreement on Sunday codifies what negotiators had already accepted as all but inevitable: that representatives of the 192 nations in the talks would not resolve the outstanding issues in time. The gulf between rich and poor countries, and even among the wealthiest nations, was just too wide.

Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen was Congress’s inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges.

Administration officials and Congressional leaders have said that final legislative action on a climate bill would not occur before the first half of next year.

Climate Change Cartoons

A Grim Energy Report Sets The Stage For Copenhagen Climate Change Talks

NY Times:

As the world heads for tough negotiations over a global climate deal next month, an influential forecasting agency said on Tuesday that current energy policies were not sustainable, and that a vast transformation of energy use was required to fend off the worst consequences of global warming.

In the absence of a global deal to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for climate change, energy consumption will soar over the next decades. This would result in a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, according to the International Energy Agency, an adviser to industrialized nations that is based in Paris.

“Continuing on today’s energy path, without any change in government policy, would mean rapidly increasing dependence on fossil fuels, with alarming consequences for climate change and energy security,” the agency said.

The warning was contained in the annual World Energy Outlook, a 698-page publication that focuses this year on policies needed to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide.

A part of the report was released last month as a map for policy makers considering how to make significant reductions. Government officials from about 190 nations will meet next month in Copenhagen to try to hammer out an international deal to replace the agreement known as the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

But international negotiators have signaled that an agreement is unlikely to be reached this year in the absence of a broad consensus on how to share the costs of switching to lower-carbon technologies and fuels.

The recession, the energy agency said, offers an opportunity to make big strides in lowering emissions. As a result of reduced economic activity this year, global emissions are expected to fall as much as 3 percent, the steepest decline in 40 years.

Without a new global agreement, carbon emissions will rise by 40 percent by 2030, the agency said. More than half of that growth will come from China alone, with the rest coming from other developing nations.

The agency’s forecasts are based on the assumption of no changes in energy policy from governments.

Global electricity demand, for example, would rise by 76 percent by 2030, requiring the addition of five times as much production capacity as exists today in the United States. Much of that would come from burning coal; its share of the global energy mix would grow by 2 percentage points to reach 44 percent in 2030.

The recession, which has slowed the growth in demand and allowed governments to introduce energy-saving programs, provides some breathing room. As a result of some of these policies, like stricter fuel economy standards for cars, the energy agency has reduced its forecast for oil demand in coming years.

Forecasters now expect global oil consumption to grow 1 percent a year in the next two decades, reaching 105 million barrels a day by 2030, from 85 million barrels a day in 2008. That estimate is lower than last year’s forecast for 2030 of 106 million barrels a day. It is also well below the 120 million barrels a day that the energy agency had projected a few years ago.

If the world agreed on stringent emissions limits, oil demand would reach just 89 million barrels a day by 2030, the agency said. That would represent a modest increase of four million barrels a day over current consumption levels.

As economies recover, energy demand will rise. After two years of declines because of the recession, government forecasters in the United States projected on Tuesday that global oil consumption would rise again next year ...

The recession has not only reduced energy demand this year, it has also curbed investments in new supplies. In the oil and gas sector, most companies have announced cutbacks in capital spending, as well as project delays and cancellations, the International Energy Agency said. It estimated that investment budgets for 2009 had been cut by around 19 percent compared with last year, a drop of over $90 billion.

The cost of reducing carbon emissions — through energy efficiency, more investments in renewable power, electric vehicles, expansion of nuclear power, and building carbon capture and storage technology for coal-burning power plants — would be high.

But for each year of delay in an agreement, the world will eventually have to spend an additional $500 billion to cut emissions, the agency said.

The Party Of No Adamantly Says No To Climate Change Legislation Too

NY Times:

In a step that reflected deep partisan divisions in the Senate over the issue of global warming, Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee pushed through a climate bill on Thursday without any debate or participation by Republicans.

The measure passed by an 11-to-1 vote with the support of all the Democratic committee members except Senator Max Baucus of Montana. The seven Republicans boycotted the committee meetings this week, saying they had not had sufficient time to study the bill and demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency conduct a thorough study of its economic costs and benefits.

The move suggests that President Obama and Democratic supporters of the bill will have serious problems assembling the votes needed to enact it when it comes to the Senate floor, probably not before next year.

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, the committee’s chairwoman and co-sponsor of the bill, employed a rarely used exception to customary committee rules to muscle the 959-page measure through her panel. She conducted three days of hearings last week on the bill, known as S. 1733, but there was no debate on the complex measure, nor any chance for panel members to offer amendments.

Mrs. Boxer said that the E.P.A. had already conducted a preliminary analysis of the bill and that further study would be costly and duplicative. She said it was necessary to bypass the committee’s rule that required Republican participation because of Republican intransigence and the urgency of the issue.

“A majority of the committee,” she said in a statement, “believes that S. 1733, and the efforts that will be built upon it, will move us away from foreign oil imports that cost Americans $1 billion a day, it will protect our children from pollution, create millions of clean energy jobs and stimulate billions of dollars of private investment.”

The senior Republican on the environment committee, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, said the bill would harm the American economy and cost millions of jobs. He said the Democrats’ decision to ram the bill through “marked the death knell” of efforts to enact a comprehensive climate change bill.

Mr. Baucus’s vote against the bill was another ominous sign. He is the influential chairman of the Finance Committee and a senior member of the Agriculture Committee, both of which will have major input in any final climate and energy legislation. He said the bill’s emission reduction targets were too ambitious and its agriculture provisions too weak. He said the measure had a long way to go.

“This is a first step,” he said Thursday. “There will be many other steps.”

Climate Change Bill Faces High Hurdles In Senate

Wash Post:

The climate-change bill that has been moving slowly through the Senate will face a stark political reality when it emerges for committee debate on Tuesday: With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

Like the measure adopted by the House, the legislation favors a cap-and-trade system that would issue permits for greenhouse gas emissions, gradually lower the amount of emissions allowed, and let companies buy and sell permits to meet their needs -- all without adding to the federal deficit, according to projections. But key Republicans are making their opposition clear, even as  Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has enlisted  Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) as his most visible GOP ally in gathering support for the bill.

 Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee who was initially seen as one of the few Republicans who might consider backing the majority, is helping lead the opposition.

"Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now?" he asked during a hearing last week. "Wouldn't it be smarter to take our time and do it right?"

He wrote Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson twice this summer to ask for a more detailed economic analysis of the House-passed climate legislation, and he has joined the other six Republicans on the committee in boycotting the climate bill's markup, scheduled for Tuesday.

The measure has deeply divided Democrats. With states in the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain West dependent on fossil fuels for energy, many senators are worried about the legislation's impact on industry and consumers.

"I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home will be disadvantaged,"  Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told CNBC on Friday, explaining why he did not think the bill Kerry had sponsored along with Environment and Public Works Chairman  Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) could pass.

So Democratic leaders, with the support of the Obama administration, are trying to sway at least half a dozen Republicans by offering amendments to speed along their top priority: building nuclear power plants.

Graham has suggested provisions on nuclear power and offshore oil drilling that could win his support for a cap-and-trade climate bill.  Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) has established a bipartisan working group of 17 Senate offices that is close to producing a detailed amendment aimed at hurrying the construction of U.S. nuclear reactors.

But it remains unclear whether that approach will hold currency in the current era of political polarization. One of the top Republicans whom Democrats hope to recruit in this effort --  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), whom Graham and Kerry recently buttonholed on the Senate floor -- has voiced skepticism about the legislation.

Please Don't Turn The Planet Into Venus (cartoon)

 

White House, Dems Try To Move Forward On Climate Change. GOP's Response: No, Don't Rush!

NY Times:

The Obama administration and some Senate Democrats expressed fresh urgency on Tuesday about the need to address climate change and refashion the nation’s energy economy.

But they faced determined opposition from Republicans, new concerns from some Democrats and reminders of the financial, technological and political hurdles in remaking the way the nation produces and consumes power.

In a Senate hearing on a new climate change and energy bill and in coordinated appearances by President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the administration promoted measures to cap greenhouse gas emissions and support new means of fueling homes and vehicles with far less carbon dioxide intensity. Mr. Obama appeared at a solar energy installation in Florida and Mr. Biden at an auto plant in Delaware that will produce electric vehicles, talking about the potential of alternative energy to create jobs.

On Capitol Hill, five senior administration officials appeared before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to speak in support of a bill to address global warming and encourage development of nonpolluting energy sources. They said such measures were important not only to the environment but to the nation’s economic competitiveness.

“When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Senate panel, saying that spending on green energy technology in China and several European nations was far outstripping that of the United States. “But I remain confident that we can make up the ground.” ...

The climate change measure, sponsored by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, aims to cap emissions of the gases linked to the warming of the planet by setting up a program under which industries can buy and sell emissions permits.

The measure also provides a variety of incentives for new energy technology, including billions of dollars in subsidies for research on capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Republicans on the committee dismissed the bill as an overly complex one that will harm the economy, kill jobs and favor some parts of the country over others. Democrats generally defended it as a market-based approach to a serious environmental problem that will create jobs by spurring energy innovation.

Obama Takes On Critics Of Energy Legislation

NY Times:

President Obama, taking aim at business interests that have lobbied against an energy and climate bill moving through Congress, called on legislators Friday to rally around the push toward greater use of renewable energy.

In a wide-ranging speech on energy and the environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Obama called for passage of legislation that would make “the best use of resources we have in abundance, through clean coal technology, safe nuclear power, sustainably grown biofuels and energy we harness from wind, waves and sun.”

At the same time, Mr. Obama chided critics of the proposed legislation.

“There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs,” Mr. Obama said, an apparent reference to the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.

Both organizations oppose the proposal moving through Congress to cap the emissions of greenhouse gases and allow companies to buy and sell permits to pollute. That approach, known as cap and trade, is meant to guarantee that emissions will decline, while providing market incentives for companies to invest in the most cost-effective technologies.

The legislation “provides the largest single boost in scientific research in history,” Mr. Obama said.

“The closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology runs counter to action,” he added ...

“There is also another myth we must dispel,” Mr. Obama said in his speech, “and it is one far more dangerous than any attack made by those who wish to stand in the way of progress — and that’s the idea that there is little or nothing we can do. That is the pessimistic notion that our politics are too broken and our people too unwilling to make hard choices. Implicit in this argument is the sense that we’ve lost something important — that fighting American spirit, that willingness to tackle hard challenges and the determination to see those challenges to their end.”

Legislation addressing energy and the related problem of climate change from fossil-fuel emissions faces significant challenges in Congress, where some Democrats remain worried about lost jobs and rising energy costs in the parts of the country most heavily dependent on coal and manufacturing. From the outset, the bill’s proponents have sought to make the case that it will create high-tech jobs and save money on energy costs in the long run.

The Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee will begin hearings next Tuesday on the climate change and energy bill introduced last month by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts — who hitched a ride home to Boston with Mr. Obama aboard Air Force One — and Senator Barbara Boxer of California. Mr. Obama’s speech appeared timed to give the legislation a strong lift-off.

But the timing on any committee action, let alone passage by the full Senate, is highly uncertain and depends not only on the environment committee but also on action by several other Senate committees, not all of them as friendly toward strict caps on emissions. The White House has said it does not expect final Senate action before next year, and certainly not before the big climate change summit in Copenhagen next month.