Climate Politics and Obama's Business Speech

President Obama portrayed himself as a business-loving centrist today at a Business Roundtable.   Obama is stepping up his pursuit of an energy/jobs/climate bill and he did say that we need to address climate change. But as always, he emphasized jobs and the economy, calling this the ‘lost decade’. Though it was a good speech,  it was uninspired-sounding. (possibly due to his audience; see photo below.)   You can read a summary of his remarks here.   He also said we need a price on carbon.

If this helps sell a climate bill it will be worth it.  He did say quite a bit about energy and climate and keeping America competitive through keeping up with the rest of the world.  Here are those remarks from the transcript:

[President Obama]:  “A competitive America is also America that finally has a smart energy policy.  We know there’s no silver bullet here.  We understand that to reduce our dependence on oil and the damage caused by climate change, we’re going to need more production in the short term, we’re going to need more efficiency, and we need more incentives for clean energy.

Business Roundtable audience. Are the people who run America's businesses really this homogenous? Capitalism needs some diversity! Photo from whitehouse.gov

And already, the Recovery Act has allowed us to jumpstart the clean energy industry in America -– an investment that will lead to 720,000 clean energy jobs by the year 2012.  To take just one example, the United States used to make less than 2 percent of the world’s advanced batteries for hybrid cars.  By 2015, we’ll have enough capacity to make up to 40 percent of these batteries.

We’ve also launched an unprecedented effort to make our homes and businesses more energy efficient.  We’ve announced loan guarantees to break ground on America’s first new nuclear plant in nearly three decades.  We’re supporting three of the largest solar plants in the world.  And I’ve said that we’re willing to make tough decisions about opening up new offshore areas for oil and gas development.  So what we’re looking at is a comprehensive strategy, not an either/or strategy but a both/and strategy when it comes to energy.

But to truly transition to a clean energy economy, I’ve also said that we need to put a price on carbon pollution.  Many businesses have embraced this approach — including some who are represented here today.  Still, I am sympathetic to those companies that face significant potential transition costs, and I want to work with this organization and others like this to help with those costs and to get our policies right.

What we can’t do is stand still.  The only certainty of the status quo is that the price and supply of oil will become increasingly volatile; that the use of fossil fuels will wreak havoc on weather patterns and air quality.  But if we decide now that we’re putting a price on this pollution in a few years, it will give businesses the certainty of knowing they have the time to plan for the transition.  This country has to move towards a clean energy economy.  That’s where the world is going.  And that’s how America will remain competitive and strong in the 21st century.”

But a jobs bill is not the same as a bill to stop climate change.   Don’t you wish scientists made the decisions on what needed to be done on environmental issues?  More environmental-related political news from today is below.

U.S. Aims for Legally Binding Climate Change Agreement in 2010 (Bloomberg)

In a State Department letter to the UNFCCC, the U.S. said it wants to reach a legally binding agreement at the summit in Mexico in December, a sign Pres. Obama hasn’t given up the fight for a global climate accord.

“Mexico is an ambitious time frame, but a year later it’s very possible,” Saleemul Huq, head of climate change at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said today in a telephone interview.

The fight against global warming has been beset in recent months by the failure of the UNFCCC to secure a treaty in Copenhagen and the resignation last week of its chief diplomat, Yvo de Boer. Impediments to a legally binding deal include the lack of a U.S. domestic law and a reluctance of India and China to adopt mandatory emissions targets.

UN Official Sees Climate Aid Scheme within Months (Reuters)

Developing nations could be able to apply within three months for some of the $30 billion in climate aid promised by rich nations at last year’s Copenhagen talks, the head of the UNEP said on Monday.

The Copenhagen Accord was vague on how the money would be disbursed.

But the head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Achim Steiner, said a loose framework under which developing nations could apply for some of the money could be ready within three months.

“I was asked a few days ago by one member state whether I could give them a telephone number for who to ring about this $30 billion because they are trying to find out, as a developing nation, ‘Who do I talk to? Who do I call in this universe?’” Steiner told Reuters.

“If, in three months’ time, there still isn’t a phone number then I expect that part of the Accord to be in trouble, but I expect there to be one,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of a major U.N. environment conference in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Obama Mounts Last-Ditch Attempt to Pass a ‘Hybrid’ Climate and Energy Bill (ClimateWire)

[this was written before the roundtable occurred] — The White House is mounting a last-ditch effort to piece together an energy and climate bill that has enough incentives for nuclear power, natural gas and the coal industry to muster the votes needed to pass it this year**. . . . In an address to the nation’s top CEOs at a Business Roundtable meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Obama [discussed  his energy plans] and, according to sources, roll out a proposal meant to incentivize coal-burning power plants to switch to cleaner-burning natural gas.

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said the ongoing efforts are aimed at a bill that is a “hybrid of ideas” that would attract enough votes from fence-sitting Democrats whose states are heavily reliant on coal and from Republican ranks to secure passage through the Senate.

“I’ve never seen everyone so engaged in something that conventional wisdom thinks is dead,” Krupp said, explaining that recent White House proposals providing more government support for nuclear power plants and incentives for the coal industry to adopt carbon capture and sequestration technology will probably be part of the evolving package.

**We need to get coal out of this climate bill. It obviously should not be included.  That’s like putting a requirement to eat butter every day  into a health care bill.

Lately, Obama sounds a bit deflated if not defeated in his speeches.   We could use a more passionate campaign-style rhetoric to get a climate change bill through congress.

Bonn to Host Extra UN Climate Talks, Treaty Unsure (Reuters)

Germany will host an extra session of UN climate talks in April but it is too early to say if the world will agree to a new treaty this year, Danish Climate Minister Lykke Friis, who presides over the negotiations, said on Monday.

“The negotiations are picking up speed again after Copenhagen,” Danish Climate and Energy Minister Lykke Friis, who presides over the U.N. negotiations, told Reuters by telephone.

She said that 11 representatives of key nations decided at a one-day meeting at the headquarters of the Bonn-based U.N. Climate Change Secretariat to add an extra session of senior officials from 194 nations in the Germany city from April 9-11.

Some of the news today came from SolveClimate