Climate change bill: How Congress could fail us all, even if it passes health care
Filed under: Energy, Technology, Economy, Green
While the planet's environmental apocalypse may not be much much nigh than it was last month, this year's Election Day bore grim tidings for voters concerned with climate change. By electing public officials whose tendency on this issue is inaction, we may tipped the climate ever so slightly in the direction of the doomsday scenario -- a realm of irreversible ecological change that scientists have long warned about.
One battlefield was New Jersey, which elected Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie, a U.S. attorney, over hapless Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine. Another was Virginia, which elected former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell over his Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds. Christie vowed, if elected, to make trouble for the Environmental Protection Agency, while McDonnell revealed his own radical views denying climate change, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its existence. McDonnell's denial of global warming also puts him at odds with the most prominent members of the Republican party, who acknowledge climate change as fact:
Not that the elections of Christie and McDonnell are themselves signs of the approaching Four Horsemen. But if the Republican party regains momentum, that would spell bad news for climate and energy legislation. The Virginia election especially has been cast as a predictor of the Republicans' winning back enough seats in the U.S. Senate and House next year to continue the party's work of obscuring of global-warming science, obstructing of the emergence of renewable energy, and bending over backwards to serve the fossil-fuel industry.
But the election may have been part of the back-and-forth in a season of Democratic dominance. In late October, as Congress worked on health-care reform, President Obama and Vice President Biden were on the road, pitching renewable energy. Obama starred in a media event at the newest and biggest solar-power plant in the U.S., the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, in Arcadia, Florida. Biden was in his home state of Delaware for the announcement that a closed GM plant would be reborn to produce as many as 100,000 plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars. Biden's speech is at 2:43 of this video:
In turning its attention to climate change, the Obama administration is confronting a colossal task -- convincing Congress to pass a meaningful climate and energy bill -- and is looking beyond any criticism that reducing carbon-emission costs will wreck the economy in the short-term. But arguing that climate legislation would hurt the economy seems like a cost-benefit analysis performed by accountants on the deck of the Titanic.
The key to such a bill's success lies in renewable energy's potential for job creation. The administration has touted renewable energy as a key driver for job growth. But when and how many jobs would emerge is painfully unclear as Bracken Hendricks, green jobs adviser to the Obama transition team and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, demonstrated last month on NPR as he sidestepped pointed questions about green job creation.
Both sides of the green-jobs debate have oversold themselves, says Marc Gunther, senior editor at Fortune and an advocate of renewable energy and green jobs. "It's intellectually dishonest to pretend that we can forecast, with any degree of accuracy, the impact of a complicated government policy on a dynamic global economy decades into the future," Gunther wrote in Fortune. "Both sides know that their projections are based on a host of assumptions which may or may not come true."
But the most disturbing news yet for climate-legislation supporters was last week's announcement that Warren Buffett was buying the Burlington Northern Sante Fe railroad (BNI) for $34 billion. It's impossible not to see this deal as a play for coal: Burlington Northern owns the rights-of-way along the Powder River Basin, where it hauls enough coal -- 297 million tons last year -- to power one in 10 U.S. houses. "Buffett is trying to get into coal, but doing it in a cheaper way," Jack Albin, chief investment officer at the Harris Private Bank in Chicago, told Reuters. "It's leveraged against coal's demand without actually having to buy the commodity itself."
On Friday, Republican senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted a vote that pushed the Boxer-Kerry climate bill through committee. Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma -- who has called global warming a "hoax" -- took the standard Republican line that the bill would kill jobs and hurt the economy.
Unless Buffett knows something the rest of us don't -- and he often does -- then it seems unlikely that meaningful climate legislation will make it through Congress this year. Bruce Stokes, international economics columnist for the National Journal, told NPR this week that environmental lobbyists are trying to push for climate legislation to pass within the first few months of next year, before members of Congress turn to the more pressing business of getting themselves re-elected. "It's a very narrow window of opportunity," Stokes said. And if Congress doesn't pass health-care legislation this year, the window will be narrower.
The two biggest carbon-dioxide polluters are China and the U.S., according to Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations for the Asia Society. The U.S. and China generate more than 40% of the world's carbon emissions, Schell says; 80% of China's electricity, and 50% of America's, is powered by coal. Yet neither country wants to make the first move away from coal, he says -- and both need to convince Congress to pass climate and energy legislation. "Otherwise, the U.S. will have no world standing," Schell says. "It will be in an amputated leadership position, and without the U.S., I don't think the rest of the world can act.
"Simply put," Schell says, "if the U.S. and China cannot come to terms with coal and carbon emissions, I think it's very doubtful that the world will soon find any remedy for climate change." So it all comes down to the U.S. Congress, which may yet pass health-care reform -- and then fail at a task that's much, much bigger.
Mark Svenvold, author of Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America, teaches English at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.
One battlefield was New Jersey, which elected Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie, a U.S. attorney, over hapless Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine. Another was Virginia, which elected former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell over his Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds. Christie vowed, if elected, to make trouble for the Environmental Protection Agency, while McDonnell revealed his own radical views denying climate change, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its existence. McDonnell's denial of global warming also puts him at odds with the most prominent members of the Republican party, who acknowledge climate change as fact:
Not that the elections of Christie and McDonnell are themselves signs of the approaching Four Horsemen. But if the Republican party regains momentum, that would spell bad news for climate and energy legislation. The Virginia election especially has been cast as a predictor of the Republicans' winning back enough seats in the U.S. Senate and House next year to continue the party's work of obscuring of global-warming science, obstructing of the emergence of renewable energy, and bending over backwards to serve the fossil-fuel industry.
But the election may have been part of the back-and-forth in a season of Democratic dominance. In late October, as Congress worked on health-care reform, President Obama and Vice President Biden were on the road, pitching renewable energy. Obama starred in a media event at the newest and biggest solar-power plant in the U.S., the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, in Arcadia, Florida. Biden was in his home state of Delaware for the announcement that a closed GM plant would be reborn to produce as many as 100,000 plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars. Biden's speech is at 2:43 of this video:
In turning its attention to climate change, the Obama administration is confronting a colossal task -- convincing Congress to pass a meaningful climate and energy bill -- and is looking beyond any criticism that reducing carbon-emission costs will wreck the economy in the short-term. But arguing that climate legislation would hurt the economy seems like a cost-benefit analysis performed by accountants on the deck of the Titanic.
The key to such a bill's success lies in renewable energy's potential for job creation. The administration has touted renewable energy as a key driver for job growth. But when and how many jobs would emerge is painfully unclear as Bracken Hendricks, green jobs adviser to the Obama transition team and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, demonstrated last month on NPR as he sidestepped pointed questions about green job creation.
Both sides of the green-jobs debate have oversold themselves, says Marc Gunther, senior editor at Fortune and an advocate of renewable energy and green jobs. "It's intellectually dishonest to pretend that we can forecast, with any degree of accuracy, the impact of a complicated government policy on a dynamic global economy decades into the future," Gunther wrote in Fortune. "Both sides know that their projections are based on a host of assumptions which may or may not come true."
But the most disturbing news yet for climate-legislation supporters was last week's announcement that Warren Buffett was buying the Burlington Northern Sante Fe railroad (BNI) for $34 billion. It's impossible not to see this deal as a play for coal: Burlington Northern owns the rights-of-way along the Powder River Basin, where it hauls enough coal -- 297 million tons last year -- to power one in 10 U.S. houses. "Buffett is trying to get into coal, but doing it in a cheaper way," Jack Albin, chief investment officer at the Harris Private Bank in Chicago, told Reuters. "It's leveraged against coal's demand without actually having to buy the commodity itself."
On Friday, Republican senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted a vote that pushed the Boxer-Kerry climate bill through committee. Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma -- who has called global warming a "hoax" -- took the standard Republican line that the bill would kill jobs and hurt the economy.
Unless Buffett knows something the rest of us don't -- and he often does -- then it seems unlikely that meaningful climate legislation will make it through Congress this year. Bruce Stokes, international economics columnist for the National Journal, told NPR this week that environmental lobbyists are trying to push for climate legislation to pass within the first few months of next year, before members of Congress turn to the more pressing business of getting themselves re-elected. "It's a very narrow window of opportunity," Stokes said. And if Congress doesn't pass health-care legislation this year, the window will be narrower.
The two biggest carbon-dioxide polluters are China and the U.S., according to Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations for the Asia Society. The U.S. and China generate more than 40% of the world's carbon emissions, Schell says; 80% of China's electricity, and 50% of America's, is powered by coal. Yet neither country wants to make the first move away from coal, he says -- and both need to convince Congress to pass climate and energy legislation. "Otherwise, the U.S. will have no world standing," Schell says. "It will be in an amputated leadership position, and without the U.S., I don't think the rest of the world can act.
"Simply put," Schell says, "if the U.S. and China cannot come to terms with coal and carbon emissions, I think it's very doubtful that the world will soon find any remedy for climate change." So it all comes down to the U.S. Congress, which may yet pass health-care reform -- and then fail at a task that's much, much bigger.
Mark Svenvold, author of Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America, teaches English at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-11-2009 @ 2:42PM
mimsysc said...
Climate change, lolol, its called w-e-a-t-h-e-r, You are stuck with the global warming, even though it hasnt worked out for you, but heck, Gore is making millions off of it, idiots, I have a bridge to sell you,
Reply
11-11-2009 @ 5:14PM
Eric said...
If CO2 is causing climate change, then let's just take the simple solution: more trees,more grass, more plants in general. That is simple grade school level biology. (Plants take in CO2 and convert it to oxygen, remember?)
It's interesting how this environmentally friendly solution is ignored. Instead,climate change is all about control of corporations, government regulations, limitations on technology, more taxes and penalties. The climate change debate has nothing to do with the earth, it has everything to do with governments creating an excuse for more CONTROL.
Reply
11-11-2009 @ 6:05PM
Sam said...
The climate bill will destroy the planet by increasing emissions of cyanide, arsenic, lead, mercury, and radiation. Acid rain will dramatically increase. The bill is a bait and switch that prioritizes dirty/unsafe energy and does nothing to further genuine safe/clean energy. The most dangerous and dirtiest forms of energy are coal and nuclear. There is no such thing as "clean coal." "Clean coal" is an oxymoron, like "government intelligence." It causes death to children and others in the way of the emissions. The nuclear winter the bill risks will wipe out the planet. San Onofre has already released dangerous levels of radiation with great frequency and Orange County residents are fearing for their lives and those of their children. Shame on the Democrats for pretending a climate-destroying bill will help the planet.
Reply
11-11-2009 @ 6:53PM
GLS said...
I'm sorry Mr. Svenvold, I have researched your background and I cannot find what gives you the the background to have an expert opinion on climate change. No where does it say what you teach at Seton Hall other than some reference to you writing poetry. There are very few defintes in science as is proven almost daily that something that was believed to be a scientific fact just 20 years ago has now been proven false. I grew up in the 70s and some of the same scientist that were forcasting the next great ice age was upon us are the same ones saying now we have global warming. . I have a great idea. People that believe in climate change should change their lives to prevent it from happening and those of us who don't believe in it will keep on living as we are now. Oh yeah, my background, IQ 172 I was programming some of the largest computers in the US before I was 20, have owned 4 businesses , one which was one of the largest in the south . Have a good day sir!
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11-11-2009 @ 7:51PM
Jim said...
Climate has certainly been changing -- warming since the late renaissance with occasional cooling periods, as in the last few years. Still it isn't as warm as in the middle ages when, history tells us, the Scandinavians were raising wheat north of the arctic circle. Also most of the screaming seems to come from politicians. Responsible scientists really don't know why the change. Lindzen at MIT and Gray recently retired from at NCAR have expressed grave doubts that human activity makes any substantial contribution. These two are among our foremost climate researchers. Then there is the work of the Danish physicist Svensmark who has made a positive co-relation of warming with cosmic ray incidence and demonstrated the mechanism (aerosol formation) in the laboratory. I think we should approach the whole business with the utmost caution. Remember your Menken: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
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11-11-2009 @ 8:18PM
Mark Svenvold said...
Many thanks, Jim, for your thoughtful remarks. You deserve an award.
It's indisputable that there have been warming and cooling trends in human history and you're correct to point this out. But here's the thing. According to what I've read and heard, there is a tremendous correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperature. And according to the recent study EPICA DOME 2 that traced ice cores back 650,000 years, no CO2 concentration has come close to what we have now. It's just not plausible that this type of concentration can be attributed to a natural cycle. Here's a great video of an on-going ice core project. Really interesting stuff. Fun to watch. Shows you the nitty gritty of how they go about getting the cores, keeping track of them, and the work they do upon them to get the results they've gotten.
http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/outreach/video.html
11-11-2009 @ 8:29PM
David S. said...
I do believe that Global warmimg is a fact. But Other than planting trees by everyone, we need to cut Factory emmisions. Also I think we have already taken a step in the right direction with the "Cash For Clunkers" program. I'd kinda like the government, and evironmental groups to keep up the educational effort. Thats my personal opinion. Speaking For myself
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11-12-2009 @ 12:33AM
Tech said...
Global warming is junk science and Al Gore's London operation, "Blood and Gore" is nothing more than another scheme by the elite to tax energy use while doing nothing constructive except enrich the wealthy rulers and restrict energy use through higher costs. The REAL problem is oil production growth has just about hit the limits and while there is still oil it's net barrels that counts. No-one is talking about the real story as oil backs the US dollar as the reserve currency and the fear that truth about oil production limits would crash the global economy. I guess this is their way of restricting energy use without telling the truth and enabling a new revenue stream for the parasite classes like the British Royals, Goldman Sachs, Rothchild's, etc. through "carbon trading". I'm not in the least worried about the global warming hoax but I am deeply concerned about the end of easy oil. The global economy could suffer a tremendous and fatal "hit" from only a 10-15 decline in global production and it's coming sooner than people think. The 911 "attack", invasion of Iraqistan by the British and Bush, the "war on terror" are all pre-symtoms of the anticipated changes coming up. I'm amazed at the complete lack of planning by the world leaders and the stupidity of the corporate chiefs and bankers who after all are oil bankers. The response so far of war and sham schemes like global warming seems highly dangerous and foolhardy. Al Gore's father ran a nasty coal operation and was in Occidental Petroleum's pocket-he's no greenie. We should have taken this head on and the corporations morphed faster into geothermal, coal to oil, algae and bio-fuels, solar, wind, tidal, and the neccesary lifestyle changes which have to made in the west. Society will have to change quickly and it seems with the global warming tax scam and the Copenhagen Treaty it will be through global taxation and a shift of money from the west to developing nations. Perhaps they're right, that people are too pig headed to accept the truth and can only be forced into into the new reality, but regardless, oil production will decline and human existence is facing it's greatest challenge. Trains would be a big start in the USA and just maybe the leaders could try telling the truth instead of thinking up new ways to fleece everyone as the people get even less. The other alternative is WW3 and the downsizing of the world's population and believe me they could pull that too. The next 100 years will be very interesting for the human species.
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11-12-2009 @ 3:13AM
Brian said...
I'm all for renewable energy and less polution but don't cross that over into the human caused global warming nonsense. To suggest human caused global warming as a "fact" has been discredited by most climate "experts" unless your expert is Gore... Mr. Svenvold, before you pen an article like this, take a few minutes and educate yourself from some MIT and other climate experts: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monthly_report/sppi_monthly_co2_report_july.html
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11-12-2009 @ 3:13AM
Eric said...
Notice how "global warming" has become "climate change?" That's becuase the earth has been cooling,
NOT warming, for the last 10 years. (Google "is the earth warming or cooling?") These people cannot accurately predict next week's weather but clam to know what will happen to weather in 20 or 30 years? Back to the article's headline, yes Congress could fail us, if they do pass a cap and trade bill.
Reply
11-12-2009 @ 3:41AM
TomTom said...
Nov. 12, 09 news headline: "Heaviest Snowfall in 54 Years Blankets Northern China." Since this is not supportive of the theory of "global warming," we will call it "climate change" and regulate your business anyway.
Reply
11-12-2009 @ 5:13AM
Steve said...
The official goal (hope) of the government is to produce 20% of U.S, electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
("20 by 20"). That means that 10 years from now, 80% of our electricity will still be produced by coal/gas/oil. Better not close the mines or cap the wells quite yet.
Reply