Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Climate Progress


Climate Progress


In lead story on climate debate, WashPost pushes a dubious narrative at odds with their own polling

Posted: 31 Aug 2009 08:16 AM PDT

I was quoted on the front page of the Washington Post today in a very questionable story, "Environmentalists Slow to Adjust in Climate Debate:  Opponents Seize Initiative as Senate Bill Nears," by staff writer, "David A. Fahrenthold":
"Progressives and clean-energy types . . . made a mistake and slacked off" after the House of Representatives passed its version of a climate-change bill in June, said Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who blogs on climate issues. "And the other side really kept making its case."
Now, my poor choice of words "slacked off" aside — many of my friends have never worked harder in their lives — this story and Fahrenthold's use of my quote is seriously flawed:
  1. On the specific issue of the effort of "progressives and clean-energy types," I was quite clear to Fahrenthold that I was talking about the period immediately after the House vote.  I explained that by the end of July, progressives and clean-energy types, had gotten their organizational act together.  Now this in retrospect turned out not to be the narrative Fahrenthold wanted to push.  But I think it is wrong for a reporter to interview a subject and then use one quote from the person that fits the reporter's narrative when the reporter knows that the interviewee disagrees with that narrative.
  2. The fact that Fahrenthold's narrative and conclusion is, ultimately, wrong comes from his paper's own polling — see Yet another major poll [by WashPost] finds "broad support" for clean energy and climate bill: "Support for the plan among independents has increased slightly." It's downright absurd for the Washington Post to argue in a piece today, Monday, that industry groups are winning the messaging war when on Friday they published the results of a survey that demonstrates the opposite.  Heck, that piece's headline was "On Energy, Obama Finds Broad Support."
  3. When the political reporters treat this as just another political horse-race story, treating the industry falsehoods as equivalent to the accurate statements of climate action advocates, they play into the hands of the right-wing disinformers (see How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — "The media's decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress").  You'd never know from this story that the Post has actually done some very good reporting on the dire nature of the climate problem (see, for instance, this 2006 Juliet Eilperin story, "Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change:  Some Experts on Global Warming Foresee 'Tipping Point' When It Is Too Late to Act" or this 2008 story on the dangers to this country of our current do-nothing path).
Let me elaborate on the second point before coming back to the larger question of how the climate action advocates are doing.  Fahrenthold himself is forced to concede:
It's hard to know now if anybody is winning. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 52 percent of Americans supported the cap-and-trade approach used in the House climate bill.
Well, that's lame.  After all, the thrust of his article is that industry groups are winning.  The Friday article includes this line "Support for the plan among independents has increased slightly, with a narrow majority now in favor."  How about that.
A much more accurate piece with a more defensible narrative can be found in the Sunday L.A. Times, "Both sides in energy debate watching healthcare battle:  Obama's broad plan for new technology, efficiency and a 'cap and trade' system to curb emissions may spark another nasty fight — so participants are learning from the tactics being used on healthcare":
When Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) spoke this month at the groundbreaking for a new biomass power plant in remote Camden, Ark., the crowd of 400 included 250 clean-energy advocates brought together by the Sierra Club.

"Our side is starting to really turn people out," said Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the environmentalist group. "The public is on the side of this. They want clean energy."

A few days later, in Houston, oil company workers packed a rally sponsored by conservative groups and major oil and business lobbyists to celebrate the fossil-fuel industry and denounce the climate bill.

A batch of recent polls shows that voters support efforts to boost solar, wind and other energy alternatives to fossil fuels; that more voters believe those efforts will create jobs rather than eliminate them; and that a majority appears willing to pay some amount more for energy as a result.

That's why some GOP strategists are warning that, unlike with the health debate, Republicans can't just criticize Obama's energy plans — they have to offer their own, including a boost for renewable energy.

"On this issue, Republicans have to say, 'Here's our alternative,' " said Glen Bolger, a GOP pollster with Public Opinion Strategies in Virginia who has done polling on the energy question this summer.

Exactly.
Unlike the health care debate, we actually have a simple, positive, accurate message that has taken hold.  That should change the dynamics of the debate — if we're smart (and by we, I mainly mean team Obama).
Some enviros were unhappy with my choice of words.  Certainly many of my friends have never worked harder in their lives, so I'm sorry for having used the phrase "slacked off."  I probably should have said we failed to press our advantage.  It always pays to remember from a rhetorical perpsective that the negating words shouldn't be the verbs or adjectives or nouns — they become too memorable and too easily quoted out of context.
That said, the basic thrust of my comments are what I've been saying for a while (see Memo to enviros, progressives: The deniers and dirty energy bunch are "full of passionate intensity" — and eating our lunch on the climate bill).  But, like I said, I do think that enviros and progressives have gone back into high gear, especially in advertising, which seems clear from the polling.  I do still worry that we are being outhustled.  I wrote back in mid-July:  "I have heard from multiple sources that many U.S. Senators are now getting 100 to 200 calls a day opposing a climate and clean energy bill — and bupkes in favor."  Now Fahrenthold claims:
In the Midwestern heart of the current ad blitz, the office of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has been getting calls from people inspired by environmental groups' TV ads. But in the office of Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a staff member said letters were running 100 for and 7,000 against climate legislation.
If this is true, it's not good news.  Lugar is a potentially gettable GOP vote.  If staffers and others have different information, I'd love to hear it.  But for now, it appears we simply aren't doing enough, which I suppose it isn't a total surprise given the other side has access to billions of dollars and a total lack of scruples (see "The latest polluter front group trying to kill the clean energy bill is overseen by a proud former shill for a man convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges").
Only one person can really counter the level of effort the fossil-fuel-funded deniers can.  And that's why my far bigger concern is that the progressives who matter the most — team Obama — definitely slacked off after the House vote.  And while the Administration appears to be holding some meetings to push the bill, fundamentally:
  1. They are giving the climate bill short shrift.
  2. They have let some Senators say the silliest things about the bill.
  3. They have completely downplayed the climate science message and, in general, are focusing on their lame health care messaging to the exclusion of most everything else.

The rest of the progressive community, clean energy advocates, and environmentalists can create the conditions to get us close to 60 votes in the Senate.  But fundamentally only Obama can get those last few votes.  He needs to finish his now 2-month vacation from the issue ASAP.

And one more thing — where is the scientific community?  It's time for them to speak out on this issue.

The Bjorn Irrelevancy: Duke dean disses Danish delayer

Posted: 31 Aug 2009 05:43 AM PDT

I don't have time to debunk Bjorn Lomborg every time he writes a disinformation-filled WSJ op-ed [and yes, that is redundant].  I've debunked him enough [see "Lomborg skewers the facts, again" and "Debunking Lomborg — Part III and "Voodoo Economists 4: The idiocy of crowds or, rather, the idiocy of (crowded) debates"].  But I'm happy to feature the work of guest debunkers (see "Lomborg's main argument has collapsed)."  Today's guest debunker is the uber-accomplished Dr. Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, in a post first published on his Green Grok blog.

http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/graphics/grokBjorn Lomborg is at it again on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. (See previous Lomborg posts here and here.) No action on climate change, he argues, because it's too hard *and* too easy. Cool argument.

I woke up this morning to find one of my favorite columnists in the journal's op-ed pages. In "Technology Can Fight Global Warming" (Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2009) Lomborg outdoes himself in his sleight-of-hand pseudo-logic arguing against imposing emission reduction targets through a global climate agreement. In Lomborg's worldview, the whole climate problem will go away if we just throw a few dollars at the problem and stand back. Actually, I thought that's exactly what we've been doing over the last two decades or so, and look where that's gotten us.

Misinformation

A Lomborg piece would not be a Lomborg piece without a healthy supply of misinformation, and his latest does not disappoint:

  • Lomborg cites studies purportedly showing that avoiding dangerous climate change would require a "staggering" 12.9 percent reduction in world gross domestic product. He even states that "some economic models" find that the only way to avoid dangerous climate change is to reduce "world population by a third." I agree: these scenarios are staggering — they are also absurd. They do not represent the economic community's main findings. Virtually every economic assessment of the impact of a global effort to avoid dangerous climate change puts the impact on global G.D.P. at three percent or less. (See economic analyses here, here, here, and here [pdf].) How is it that Lomborg neglected to mention these other studies?
  • Lomborg argues that we should lower methane emissions and plant trees. Great ideas, but guess what? Both those measures are included in the menu of options for lowering greenhouse gas emissions through a proposed global treaty (and, by the way, U.S. legislation also). So how is this at all relevant to whether a treaty is needed?

Geo-engineering

Lomborg argues that geo-engineering can be a substitute for cutting greenhouse gas emissions: for example by seeding clouds over the ocean to cool the planet and offset the warming. He fails to mention the logistical challenge of deploying ships all over the world's oceans to continuously spray seawater into the atmosphere.

Lomborg also doesn't mention that such "solutions" leave the problem of ocean acidification from enhanced carbon dioxide unsolved. And he does not acknowledge the host of unanticipated consequences of our geo-engineering. If you're thinking geo-engineering is a panacea, read this by Gabriele Hegerl of Grant Institute in Edinburgh and Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But hey, why sweat the details?

Sleight of Hand

Technology plays an interesting role in Lomborg's piece. Note how he telegraphs it in his title "Technology Can Fight Global Warming," as if using technology runs counter to the intention of a global treaty to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, technology is the answer to getting us out of our climate change pickle. The question is how to get the new technologies we need developed and implemented. Many economists say the most effective and least expensive way to make this happen is through market forces. Internalize the cost of greenhouse gas pollution by putting a "price on carbon" (e.g., mandating lower emissions) and allow the marketplace to wind down our dependence on carbon-intensive energy sources and industries.

But Lomborg doesn't want to go down that path — it is simply too expensive and too difficult to even try. But don't despair. Lomborg claims to have a better way.

The Technology-Led Effort

Lomborg's alternative to requiring emission reductions is a "technology-led effort." He claims that a paltry $100 billion investment per year "in noncarbon based energy research could result in essentially stopping global warming within a century or so." Wow, I had not realized it could be that easy. Instead of requiring emission reductions, just invest a small sum in energy research and presto chango, emissions will fall of their own accord. I like it. Sign me up.

But wait a minute. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2008 "total clean-energy investment last year grew … to $155 billion." So, by Lomborg's metrics, we are already there! We don't need to spend anything additional. Like Marx's rise of Communism, in Lomborg's climate manifesto stopping global warming is an historical inevitability — all we have to do is leave everything alone.

There is however this little nagging problem. It's a consistency thing. You see, according to Lomborg, a global treaty mandating emission reductions through the development of new technologies will cost us 12.9 percent of world G.D.P. — that's equivalent to about $7 trillion per year. At the same time Lomborg claims we can solve the global warming problem with an investment of $100 billion per year. It seems that the key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to not require any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Like I said, cool argument.

Are conservatives capable of producing their own Ted Kennedy? What can progressives learn from him?

Posted: 30 Aug 2009 12:26 PM PDT

Q:  Would any GOP Senator today get the kind of funeral and remembrance that Edward Kennedy has?

A:  That is increasingly unlikely.

http://www.theodoresworld.net/pics/1206/kennedyandmccainImage3.jpgCertainly all GOP Senators who vote against the upcoming climate and clean energy bill will be consigning themselves to be dustbin of history.  Given how rapidly climate impacts are accelerating, by the 2020s the entire country — even most Republicans — will realize how tragically mistaken were those who blocked serious action and who demagogued against those trying to avert catastrophe.  Those conservatives who want to be fondly eulogized by the status quo media and centrist opinionmakers have maybe a decade left.

Dick Cheney himself may live long enough to be seen by even his last 3 or 4 remaining admirers as a leading agent of humanity's self-destruction (see "Has anyone in U.S. history made more Americans less safe than Dick Cheney?").  And I can't even imagine the kind of funeral President George W. Bush will get if he lives to, say, the 2030s, when the consequences of his all-out effort to stop domestic and international action on climate change have initiated the grim time in American history I've labeled "Planetary Purgatory."

But there are also important lessons for Democrats here, too.  Although an indisputable liberal lion, Kennedy repeatedly reached across the aisle to achieve what was achievable.  As the Post reported this weekend in, many Democrats say

… what made Kennedy successful was knowing when to compromise, when to agree to terms that fell short of expectations but left room for later gains. "He had this unerring sense of what was the critical bottom line for the people most in need — what the key goal was you were making progress on and why you were at the table to begin with," said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster and strategist has brief but must-read op-ed, "Where's the GOP's Ted Kennedy?":

Ted Kennedy's voice and leadership will be sorely missed in the effort to pass health-care reform. But when Republicans say that Democrats don't have anyone to take his place in achieving a bipartisan compromise, they are either missing, or deliberately obscuring, the relevant lesson of Kennedy's example.

The truth is that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, with the support of the White House, has worked hard for months to reach consensus with Sens. Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe and Mike Enzi on a health-reform bill — incurring, for his trouble, more than a little heat from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But so far, the Republicans haven't had the will, courage or independence to strike a deal. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been doing his best to end the negotiations, apparently agreeing with Jim DeMint's political assessment that health care could be President Obama's Waterloo. And now Chuck Grassley says he could sign only a compromise that a majority of the GOP caucus would support.

The problem is not that there is no Ted Kennedy among the Democrats who understands the art of compromise. The problem is that there is no Republican willing to provide, for health reform, the kind of bold leadership that Kennedy provided to help pass controversial legislation when George W. Bush was president.

For example, No Child Left Behind become law because Kennedy agreed to support President Bush's signal education initiative — aggravating more than a few members of the Democratic caucus and establishment who thought the act was wrong on the merits and poor politics. But Kennedy believed it was worth the risk and lent his prestige and credibility to making it happen.

Democrats did not get their way on the creation of the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, but on that, too, Kennedy decided that something was better than nothing, even though seniors were required to buy their coverage through private companies and Medicare was prevented from negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies for the best prices.

Kennedy gave Bush a victory rather than sending the Republicans to their Waterloo because he believed the result was more important than short-term politics. If Republicans really want to honor the senator's memory, they should stop using him as an excuse for the failure of health-care reform and instead start living up to his example.

What Garin says about the lack of boldly GOP leadership goes double for the climate change bill, a far more consequential piece of legislation.  We had one such senator last Congress, John Warner (R-VA), stalwart conservative understood the dire nature of the problem, particularly from a national security perspective.

The only conservative Senator who comes close now is John McCain.  Until very recently he had been strongly dissing the House climate bill, but recently he appears to be remembering that the science has become more dire.  I have difficulty seeing how we get beat a filibuster if McCain isn't one of the 60 votes.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure who else he would bring with him — perhaps Lindsey Graham.  Still, those two coupled with the two Maine Senators would be pretty darn close to what is needed.

Can we find enough conservative senators to make a deal?  Will progressives be able to take a Kennedy-esque compromise?  In September, I'll take a closer look at where the swing Senators stand and what  the deal might look like.

Japanese opposition easily wins elections — running on a much stronger climate target

Posted: 30 Aug 2009 10:42 AM PDT

For only the second time in postwar history, Japanese voters cast out the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party in elections on Sunday, handing a landslide victory to an untested opposition that must tackle severe economic problems and point Japan in a new direction.

Voters flocked to the main opposition Democratic Party, a broad coalition of former socialists and ruling party defectors who promised to ease Japan's growing social inequalities and reduce its traditional dependency on Washington.

However, the victory seemed less an embrace of the opposition and its policies than a resounding rejection of the conservative incumbents, whom voters blame for this former economic superpower's stubborn decline and increasingly cloudy future.

The big news for climate science realists is that the Democratic Party of Japan has a much stronger target than the one the ruling conservative center-right LDP had.  The DPJ "aims to lower the country's greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels," whereas the LDP only proposed an 8% cut.

[I can't imagine the climate target played much of a role in the election, given how badly the economy was doing, but I'd welcome any comments from people who know Japanese politics.]

Bloomberg News has the backstory, from a late July story, "DPJ to Raise Target for Japan's Greenhouse-Gas Cuts" on party leader Katsuya Okada (pictured above):

"Japanese people, especially in the business circle, say our target is tough," Okada, 55, said in a July 24 interview at party headquarters in Tokyo. "But internationally speaking, our number is more in line with the trend as the European Union seeks a 20 percent cut and the Group of Eight countries agreed on an 80 percent cut by 2050."

The DPJ is seeking to oust Aso's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for all but 10 months since 1955. Okada said his party wants environmental policy to be a "pillar" of economic growth.

Okada said a DPJ government will push the 25 percent target in a new international climate change treaty. Almost 200 countries are seeking to meet a December deadline in Copenhagen for an accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Under the Kyoto agreement, Japan pledged to cut emissions by 6 percent from the 1990 level by 2012. Instead, they've risen 8.7 percent since then.

Keidanren, Japan's biggest business lobby, has said it opposes any cut bigger than 6 percent. The lobby group in May suggested a 4 percent increase from the 1990 level, calling it the "most rational goal" in terms of fairness, viability and the financial burden on consumers.

Aso's proposal is an "extremely tough goal" for Japanese industries, Keidanren head Fujio Mitarai said in June.

Okada said the DPJ will seek legislation that would cap emissions and establish a trading system for pollution permits, along with promoting of alternative energy and a carbon tax. Such policies will give rise to new industries as Japan's population declines and faces competitions from China and India.

"The LDP has been taking a lot of measures to create short-term demand," Okada said. "But what's important is investment for the future, and climate change provides a big opportunity to invite new investment and raise industries."

Japan already uses energy more efficiently than any other country, according to the International Energy Agency. The U.S. required twice as much energy to produce a unit of gross domestic product in 2006, China needed more than eight times, and Russia about 17 times, agency data show.

The DPJ wants to persuade the U.S., China and India to join the new framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Okada said he's interested whether the U.S. Senate will approve President Barack Obama's climate bill, which cleared the Congress in June.

Okada left the ruling party in 1993 to participate in the coalition government that briefly ousted the LDP later that year. He said the next general election will be an "historic event."

Let's hope Okada and the DPJ follow through on their promise.  Certainly that target is more in line with the science (see "Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 8: The U.S. needs a tougher 2020 GHG emissions target").

Since we don't have a parliamentary form of government — and since we have the filibuster "rule" in the Senate, which may ultimately prove our nation's (and the world's) undoing — we don't get the automatic adoption of the policies advanced by the winning party in an election.  Of course, Obama only campaigned on returning to 1990 levels by 2020 — though there is no apples-to-apples comparison between Obama's target for 2020 and the 4% target in the House bill, as I explain here.

We also didn't sign on to Kyoto, which should have brought Japanese emissions below 1990 levels by this time (making a tougher 2020 target in theory easier for them to adopt).  That said, as of 2007, Japan's emisisons are up 8% since 1990, so achieving a 25% reduction by 2020 won't be easy, especially given how relatively efficient and low-carbon their economy already is.

But the bottom line is that we have a government in Japan that believes in stronger climate action.  And that should be quite helpful in the months leading up to the big international negotiations in Copenhagen — and in the months that follow where the real deal will be hammered out.

UPDATE:  Matt Dernoga, Campaign Director of UMD for Clean Energy, has more thoughts here.