By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 24, 2010
Facebook
When I first heard on Thursday that Senate Democrats were abandoning the effort to pass an energy/climate bill that would begin to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming and promote renewable energy that could diminish our addiction to oil, I remembered something that Joe Romm, the climateprogress.org blogger, once said: The best thing about improvements in health care is that all the climate-change deniers are now going to live long enough to see how wrong they were.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Alas, so are the rest of us. I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.
We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign — even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.
Since I don’t have anything else to say, I will just fill out this column with a few news stories and e-mails that came across my desk in the past few days:
•
Just as the U.S. Senate was abandoning plans for a U.S. cap-and-trade system, this article ran in The China Daily: “BEIJING — The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target. The decision was made at a closed-door meeting chaired by Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission ... Putting a price on carbon is a crucial step for the country to employ the market to reduce its carbon emissions and genuinely shift to a low-carbon economy, industry analysts said.”
•
As we East Coasters know, it’s been extremely hot here this summer, with records broken. But, hey, you could be living in Russia, where ABC News recently reported that a “heat wave, which has lasted for weeks, has Russia suffering its worst drought in 130 years. In some parts of the country, temperatures have reached 105 degrees.” Moscow’s high the other day was 93 degrees. The average temperature in July for the city is 76 degrees. The BBC reported that to keep cool “at lakes and rivers around Moscow, groups of revelers can be seen knocking back vodka and then plunging into the water. The result is predictable — 233 people have drowned in the last week alone.”
•
A day before the climate bill went down, Lew Hay, the C.E.O. of NextEra Energy, which owns Florida Power & Light, one of the nation’s biggest utilities, e-mailed to say that if the Senate would set a price on carbon and requirements for renewal energy, utilities like his would have the price certainty they need to make the big next-generation investments, including nuclear. “If we invest an additional $3 billion a year or so on clean energy, that’s roughly 50,000 jobs over the next five years,” said Hay. (Say goodbye to that.)
•
Making our country more energy efficient is not some green feel-good thing. Retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson, who was Gen. David Petraeus’s senior logistician in Iraq, e-mailed to say that “over 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hauling fuel to air-condition tents and buildings. If our military would simply insulate their structures, it would save billions of dollars and, more importantly, save lives of truck drivers and escorts. ... And will take lots of big fuel trucks (a k a Taliban Targets) off the road, expediting the end of the conflict.”
•
The last word goes to the contrarian hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, who in his July letter to investors, noted: “Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for ... what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? I have a much simpler but plausible ‘conspiracy theory’: the fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”
Showing posts with label energy bill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy bill. Show all posts
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Energy bill, jobs bill, get it done.
Bloomberg
Energy Measures May Go to Jobs Bill After Brown Win (Update1)
January 21, 2010, 03:17 PM EST More From Businessweek
By Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Kim Chipman
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Measures to spur green-energy jobs may end up in a new economic-stimulus bill after Republican Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts dimmed prospects for legislation to curb carbon-dioxide emissions.
Provisions to help homeowners reduce power use and make industry more energy-efficient may be shifted out of cap-and- trade legislation that’s stalled in the Senate, said Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Those Democrats who may have already been nervous about a vote on climate policy are even more nervous now,” he said.
Brown, who on Jan. 19 won the Senate seat held by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy for almost 50 years, opposes the emissions-trading program that President Barack Obama says is needed to fight global climate change. Republican opponents say the cap-and-trade legislation would boost costs and cut jobs in an economy that already has a 10 percent unemployment rate.
“A large cap-and-trade bill isn’t going to go ahead at this time,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, told reporters in Washington yesterday.
Putting energy provisions into a bill to stimulate job creation instead “makes sense” because that’s the Senate’s next priority after health-care legislation, Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, said before Brown’s win.
“Everybody who’s got a job-creation idea is going to try to get on this train,” Brown said in a Jan. 15 interview, referring to a new jobs bill. “Anything that we’re thinking of doing in any energy related area that can produce jobs short- term, mid-term, long-term will be considered in this.”
House Jobs Bill
The House passed a $154 billion jobs bill before the Christmas break. The Senate was planning to take up a bigger package this year.
Some Republicans may support moves to help manufacturers make the transition to clean-energy production if the provisions aren’t too costly, said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who advised former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The loss in Massachusetts should prompt Democrats to seek smaller-scale legislative victories.
“What Democrats are going to want to do more is get some discrete, easily understandable accomplishments that they can take back to the voters,” Feehery said in an interview. “They’re going to have to ditch climate change and push on more targeted agenda items, like energy independence and green jobs.”
Renewable-Energy Investment
The U.S. lost 85,000 jobs in December, and unemployment remains close to a 26-year high. Republicans have successfully cast the cap-and-trade bill as “as a job-killer and a tax- raiser,” Feehery said.
Climate-change legislation would penalize use of power from fossil fuels while guaranteeing long-term returns for investors in wind turbines and solar panels, said Jeffrey McDermott, the former co-head of investment banking at UBS AG who started Greentech Capital Advisors LLC in 2008 to advise and raise money for alternative-energy companies. Renewable developers in the U.S. must rely on a “patchwork” of state regulations and short-lived federal incentives, he said.
“There’s no way to spin it as positive,” McDermott said in an interview. “The failure of Congress to put in place policies which set a framework is that it’s just going to be more difficult for capital to make long-term investment decisions.”
Exelon, Nike
Chief executives officers of Exelon Corp., Nike Inc., and 81 other companies today urged Obama and lawmakers to enact climate legislation. In a letter, the group called for “strong policies and clear market signals that support the transition to a low-carbon economy and reward companies that innovate.”
The new Senate version of the jobs bill may include funding for a “cash for caulkers” program providing grants to make homes more energy efficient, said Lowell Ungar, policy director for the Washington-based Alliance to Save Energy.
“The money will run out from the recovery act and if there’s not further legislation to push these retrofits, there’s a real risk that the infrastructure we’re creating right now will wither,” Ungar said in an interview. “The people who are being trained right now to do these retrofits will no longer have jobs.”
The Obama administration credits last year’s economic stimulus bill with helping to stabilize the economy and creating 640,000 jobs, including 52,000 in clean energy.
‘Daunting’ Challenges
The cap-and-trade measure that the House of Representatives passed in June would limit emissions and establish a market in pollution allowances. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said yesterday that Democrats “will tackle our daunting energy and climate challenges” with legislation that creates “good-paying, clean-energy jobs.” He provided no specifics.
“The election itself means the loss of one vote,” Nikki Roy, who monitors Congress for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia, said of Brown’s victory. “Obviously the bigger unknown is how it affects thinking by moderates. Most moderate members of the Senate were already feeling very cautious on this issue.”
Some lawmakers were describing passage of the cap-and-trade measure as unlikely this year even before Brown’s win, which gave Republicans 41 votes in the Senate and deprived Democrats of the 60-vote supermajority generally needed to pass legislation.
‘Climate-Friendly’ Measure
There won’t be enough political will left to undertake such a disputed measure after the fight over health-care legislation, Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota who recently announced his retirement, said Jan. 19 on a conference call with reporters.
“It’s my assessment that we will not do a climate bill, but that we will do an energy bill instead.” Dorgan said. “The energy bill will be climate-friendly.”
The Senate Energy Committee approved a measure last year that would require utilities to get as much as 15 percent of their power from renewable sources. That bill, which wouldn’t place a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, hasn’t been taken up by the full Senate.
Carol Browner, Obama’s top adviser on energy and the environment, said last week that an energy and climate bill limiting emissions from power plants, factories and refineries remains a priority of the White House.
Kerry, Graham, Lieberman
Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who co- sponsored a climate-change bill last year, said he is beginning daily meetings with colleagues Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, to draft a compromise bill.
“The political atmosphere doesn’t reduce the urgency of dealing with pollution and energy,” Kerry said in an e-mail. “This is the single best opportunity to create jobs, reduce pollution, and stop sending billions overseas for foreign oil from countries that would do us harm.”
--With assistance from Simon Lomax in Washington. Editors: Larry Liebert,
Energy Measures May Go to Jobs Bill After Brown Win (Update1)
January 21, 2010, 03:17 PM EST More From Businessweek
By Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Kim Chipman
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Measures to spur green-energy jobs may end up in a new economic-stimulus bill after Republican Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts dimmed prospects for legislation to curb carbon-dioxide emissions.
Provisions to help homeowners reduce power use and make industry more energy-efficient may be shifted out of cap-and- trade legislation that’s stalled in the Senate, said Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Those Democrats who may have already been nervous about a vote on climate policy are even more nervous now,” he said.
Brown, who on Jan. 19 won the Senate seat held by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy for almost 50 years, opposes the emissions-trading program that President Barack Obama says is needed to fight global climate change. Republican opponents say the cap-and-trade legislation would boost costs and cut jobs in an economy that already has a 10 percent unemployment rate.
“A large cap-and-trade bill isn’t going to go ahead at this time,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, told reporters in Washington yesterday.
Putting energy provisions into a bill to stimulate job creation instead “makes sense” because that’s the Senate’s next priority after health-care legislation, Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, said before Brown’s win.
“Everybody who’s got a job-creation idea is going to try to get on this train,” Brown said in a Jan. 15 interview, referring to a new jobs bill. “Anything that we’re thinking of doing in any energy related area that can produce jobs short- term, mid-term, long-term will be considered in this.”
House Jobs Bill
The House passed a $154 billion jobs bill before the Christmas break. The Senate was planning to take up a bigger package this year.
Some Republicans may support moves to help manufacturers make the transition to clean-energy production if the provisions aren’t too costly, said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who advised former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The loss in Massachusetts should prompt Democrats to seek smaller-scale legislative victories.
“What Democrats are going to want to do more is get some discrete, easily understandable accomplishments that they can take back to the voters,” Feehery said in an interview. “They’re going to have to ditch climate change and push on more targeted agenda items, like energy independence and green jobs.”
Renewable-Energy Investment
The U.S. lost 85,000 jobs in December, and unemployment remains close to a 26-year high. Republicans have successfully cast the cap-and-trade bill as “as a job-killer and a tax- raiser,” Feehery said.
Climate-change legislation would penalize use of power from fossil fuels while guaranteeing long-term returns for investors in wind turbines and solar panels, said Jeffrey McDermott, the former co-head of investment banking at UBS AG who started Greentech Capital Advisors LLC in 2008 to advise and raise money for alternative-energy companies. Renewable developers in the U.S. must rely on a “patchwork” of state regulations and short-lived federal incentives, he said.
“There’s no way to spin it as positive,” McDermott said in an interview. “The failure of Congress to put in place policies which set a framework is that it’s just going to be more difficult for capital to make long-term investment decisions.”
Exelon, Nike
Chief executives officers of Exelon Corp., Nike Inc., and 81 other companies today urged Obama and lawmakers to enact climate legislation. In a letter, the group called for “strong policies and clear market signals that support the transition to a low-carbon economy and reward companies that innovate.”
The new Senate version of the jobs bill may include funding for a “cash for caulkers” program providing grants to make homes more energy efficient, said Lowell Ungar, policy director for the Washington-based Alliance to Save Energy.
“The money will run out from the recovery act and if there’s not further legislation to push these retrofits, there’s a real risk that the infrastructure we’re creating right now will wither,” Ungar said in an interview. “The people who are being trained right now to do these retrofits will no longer have jobs.”
The Obama administration credits last year’s economic stimulus bill with helping to stabilize the economy and creating 640,000 jobs, including 52,000 in clean energy.
‘Daunting’ Challenges
The cap-and-trade measure that the House of Representatives passed in June would limit emissions and establish a market in pollution allowances. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said yesterday that Democrats “will tackle our daunting energy and climate challenges” with legislation that creates “good-paying, clean-energy jobs.” He provided no specifics.
“The election itself means the loss of one vote,” Nikki Roy, who monitors Congress for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia, said of Brown’s victory. “Obviously the bigger unknown is how it affects thinking by moderates. Most moderate members of the Senate were already feeling very cautious on this issue.”
Some lawmakers were describing passage of the cap-and-trade measure as unlikely this year even before Brown’s win, which gave Republicans 41 votes in the Senate and deprived Democrats of the 60-vote supermajority generally needed to pass legislation.
‘Climate-Friendly’ Measure
There won’t be enough political will left to undertake such a disputed measure after the fight over health-care legislation, Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota who recently announced his retirement, said Jan. 19 on a conference call with reporters.
“It’s my assessment that we will not do a climate bill, but that we will do an energy bill instead.” Dorgan said. “The energy bill will be climate-friendly.”
The Senate Energy Committee approved a measure last year that would require utilities to get as much as 15 percent of their power from renewable sources. That bill, which wouldn’t place a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, hasn’t been taken up by the full Senate.
Carol Browner, Obama’s top adviser on energy and the environment, said last week that an energy and climate bill limiting emissions from power plants, factories and refineries remains a priority of the White House.
Kerry, Graham, Lieberman
Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who co- sponsored a climate-change bill last year, said he is beginning daily meetings with colleagues Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, to draft a compromise bill.
“The political atmosphere doesn’t reduce the urgency of dealing with pollution and energy,” Kerry said in an e-mail. “This is the single best opportunity to create jobs, reduce pollution, and stop sending billions overseas for foreign oil from countries that would do us harm.”
--With assistance from Simon Lomax in Washington. Editors: Larry Liebert,
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)