As the U.S. moves towards a new type of green economy and renewable energy (slowly and painfully) President Obama has announced an extra $3.4 billion for smart meters and the smart grid.
The funding will be for ‘smart grid’ projects aimed at promoting green power and reducing electricity bills and blackouts. Dan Reicher, Director of Climate and Energy Initiatives for Google testified this week on the smart grid during the second day of the EPW hearings. The hearings are worth listening to, especially Tuesday’s panels (find the hearings here).
Friday, there were some early fireworks as Senator Voinavich, a Republican from Ohio, accused Senator Boxer of not wanting a true bipartisan discussion on energy and climate. The EPW’s Republicans are feeling very frustrated right now because they are feeling pressure from their constituents against any climate legislation but they want the jobs and new energy promises from the Kerry-Boxer bill. The issue of energy and climate change has dissolved into heavy partisanship and fearmongering on the part of the Republican politicians, as they favor business over the liveability of the environment, and they attempt to score political points at the expense of our country and our planet. Meanwhile, President Obama is going ahead with funding the smart grid, and that is good news.
A major proposal of the Obama administration’s national energy makeover has been to build a next-generation “smart” power grid that enables integration of more renewable energy and maximizes efficiency. Most stimulus funding has so far gone to fix roads and other infrastructure, but on Tuesday the smart grid began catching up.. . .
Just 100 utilities of more than 400 applicants won federal grants, which officials say will leverage more than $4.7 billion in matching private sector investment. These grants comprise the lion’s share of the $4.5 billion stimulus money set aside for smart grid development, and is expected to create tens of thousands of new jobs.
Courts Issue 2 More Important Greenhouse Gas Rulings. By Jennifer Koons, Greenwire, October 19, 2009. “Less than a month after a federal appeals court in New York issued a historic ruling regarding citizen and government enforcement of greenhouse gas emissions, decisions in two similar cases have come down. Their divergent results could have immediate implications for future climate change lawsuits… Together, the rulings ‘represent mounting legal authority that the Constitution is not a barrier to climate tort litigation,’ said Bruce Myers of the Environmental Law Institute.”
Obama to Give Senate Climate Bill a Push With MIT Speech, NYTimes. President Obama will try to push the Senate climate bill forward Friday (October 23) with an energy-themed speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just days before the start of a marathon series of hearings featuring testimony from top administration officials.. . . Also on Friday — U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson plans to release the agency’s economic and environmental analysis of the climate bill (S. 1733 (pdf)) from Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
With the EPA analysis in hand, Boxer is set to begin a three-day series of hearings in her Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday, Oct. 27, with testimony from Kerry, Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff.
Germany Considers Reversing Law to Phase Out Nuclear Plants. By Judy Dempsey, NYTimes.”Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives want to prolong the life of Germany’s nuclear reactors by overturning a law aimed at phasing out atomic energy by the 2020s, according to a party working document. In a country in which the public is deeply opposed to nuclear power but obsessed with climate protection, [like the U.S., minus the "obsessed with climate protection" part] Mrs. Merkel will have to persuade even her supporters that prolonging the life of the 17 power plants is necessary until there are sufficient alternative sources of clean energy to replace the plants once they are closed.”
“An unlikely lobbying group is pressing the U.S. Senate to curb greenhouse gas emissions: American hunting and fishing groups who fear climate change will disrupt their sport.
Hunters and anglers are mainly a Republican Party constituency [according to this article] representing tens of millions of votes in the U.S. heartland and could help swing crucial votes as the Senate tries to pass legislation to cut carbon output.
Twenty national hunting and fishing groups urged senators in a letter last month to ensure “the climate legislation you consider in the Senate both reduces greenhouse gas emissions and safeguards natural resources.”
This group is not unlikely to be lobbying the Senate for a strong climate bill, but it’s interesting that so many writers think this is unusual. In another one of many articles online, this 2007 article also finds it unusual that hunters are environmentalists.
Most people I know here in Minnesota who like fishing and hunting are “outdoorsmen”, (even if they are women) — people who love and appreciate nature. They are often people who would much rather be outdoors than in an office. Hunters and fishers, in my experience, are very careful in how they treat the environment, because they know their sport depends on habitat. As for hunters being mostly “Republicans”, that is a complicated issue. It is usually not their love of guns that makes people hunters and fishers, it is mainly their love of being outdoors and enjoying nature. (For many, along with the food it provides).
In the U.S., there are two kinds of “Republicans”. The traditional kind who live in the Midwest and are financially conservative without all the extra Washington D.C. ideology of being hyper-partisan, pro-war, pro-militarism, pro-big corporatism. Republicans in the Midwest are generally against war and foreign interventions and for the small business owner. They might be more pro-business than the average Democrats, often because many of them are independent business owners who are fearful of being taxed out of business. They are also independent in many other ways and don’t trust national level “politicians.” They are quite different than big city, east coast Republicans, and it’s the type of Republican that is in my family. They all love the outdoors, and appreciate and want to conserve the environment. So it seems natural that these types of “conservatives” would want to conserve the environment that they are so familiar with.
“THE WAXMAN-MARKEY bill on climate change that recently passed the House is a train wreck waiting to happen. Intended to reduce global warming and achieve energy independence, it is totally inadequate in its reliance on a flawed cap and trade system, and the recently released Senate version called the Kerry-Boxer bill follows the same track. Like the House bill, the Senate version represents the further transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the nuclear and fossil-fuel industries – a result of their immense power and influence.
Both bills impose a legal limit or “cap’’ on greenhouse gasses emitted each year. The trading part is based on issuing emission allowances, or permits, to various industries for each ton of greenhouse gas they emit. However, the fatal flaw in Waxman-Markey is the misguided government giveaway, for free, of 85 percent of all allowances, particularly to coal-related industries. For example, the most egregious source of carbon dioxide emissions is coal-fired electrical generating plants, which account for one-third of all such emissions. To mollify the powerful coal lobby and coal state representatives, this government giveaway provides little or no incentive to phase out old coal-fired plants anytime soon, and may diabolically increase their profits.
A lesson is to be learned from the 2005 European Union Emissions Trading Scheme that likewise gave away 95 percent of its emission allowances. The result was that EU electric utilities earned windfall profits while continuing to pass on higher energy costs to industrial and residential consumers. The EU told the US Government Accountability Office that “it could not be certain [the trading scheme] resulted in any reduction of emissions.’’
To successfully confront the climate change crisis and the nation’s addiction to fossil fuels, we at Clean Power Now endorse a straightforward carbon tax instead of the cap and trade schemes. To neutralize the impact on consumers, revenue from the carbon tax would be used to reduce payroll taxes, increase Social Security benefits, and fund renewable energy efforts that create new jobs and new industries particularly in the wind and solar sectors. This would amount to a tax shift with enormous societal benefits.
The energy/jobs bill known as Kerry-Boxer or CEJAPA is already terribly weak and full of allowances for coal, but now they want to let a Republican who doesn’t respect the EPA to have her way with the bill and make demands. The big question is how far they will let her change it for the worse. It’s already looking bad. From the NYT:
A senior Republican in the United States Senate, conservative Senator Lisa Murkowski, (R-Alaska) said she would consider voting for a “cap and trade” climate change bill Democrats are pushing if it also contains a vigorous expansion of nuclear energy and domestic oil drilling.
That’s right — increase oil drilling. How is that going to help the climate?
From the NYT: “Some of these elements already are included in Democratic legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives.
“Count me as one of those who will keep my mind open as we move forward,” said Murkowski, the senior Republican on the Senate energy panel and a member of her party’s leadership.”
The Democrats are the clear majority in the House and the Senate, so why do we need to hinge the health care bill on a Republican? Why do we need to hinge the energy/jobs/climate bill on a Republican? Murkowski actually introduced a bill that would stop the EPA from regulating greehouse gases but it was blocked. That would not have been a legal bill, because it’s the EPA’s job to protect the environment. But Murkowski created a situation where the Democrats felt they had to weaken the CEJAPA bill to meaninglessness in order to please a Republican who’s against the bill unless it includes drilling for more oil.
Murkowski’s remarks came after her fellow conservative, Senator Lindsey Graham, published a column in The New York Times with liberal [moderate to conservative] Senator John Kerry, in which they vowed to work together to advance legislation tackling global warming.
In signaling her willingness to work on a bill, Murkowski said Democrats must include tangible incentives for building nuclear power plants and stepping up domestic oil drilling, offshore and on land. It has got to be “more than just window dressing,” she warned.
WHY ARE DEMOCRATS LISTENING TO WARNINGS FROM REPUBLICANS WHO DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE??
“The U.S. might not agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a new treaty this year because there is no domestic law setting a framework, the country’s top negotiator said at United Nations climate talks in Bangkok.”
This almost seems like a set-up. Don’t make it a priority for Congress to pass strong climate legislation, then blame the fact that we can’t agree to a new treaty because Congress hasn’t passed any legislation.
Apparently, the introduction of jobs/energy/climate legislation on September 30th, (CEJAPA) was just to placate the environmentalists. After all, it wasn’t even fully written yet, and according to John Kerry, everything is still negotiable. Even the EPA’s very important authority to regulate emissions. If the Senate and House take that out of the climate bill, then we are left with a carbon trading system that will allow CO2 and other emissions to basically continue until some undefined point in time when we’ll have to get emissions down to zero in a very short period of time. Meanwhile, there isn’t enough stimulus and support for renewable energy in either the House bill (ACESA) or the Senate bill. Negotiations will further weaken the bill.
“The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee likely won’t consider a landmark climate bill until November, officials and Democratic aides close to the matter said. The schedule suggests the bill is unlikely to make it to the Senate floor until next year.”
We obviously won’t have any sort of climate bill or even a jobs/energy bill before next year. It looks like the U.S. is going to have next to nothing to offer when they arrive in Copenhagen in December.
Big Energy corporations and Big Business are winning, this year at least, but what are they really winning? Eventually, climate change is going to threaten their profits, but before that happens, they are amassing huge bank accounts. The rest of us will pay the price.
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Copyright 2008-2010 by Shelly Thomas -- All rights to clean air and water reserved
As the U.S. moves towards a new type of green economy and renewable energy (slowly and painfully) President Obama has announced an extra $3.4 billion for smart meters and the smart grid.
