A total must-read from Mike Tidwell:
Don’t spend an hour changing your light bulbs. Don’t take a day to caulk your windows. Instead, pick up a phone, open a laptop, or travel to a U.S. Senate office near you and turn the tables: “What are the 10 green statutes you’re working on to save the planet, Senator?”
Read the whole thing.
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Sarah Mae
During a Harvard information session, the admissions officer compared the intramural sports competitions there to the Hogwarts House Cup. The tour guide told me that I wouldn’t be able to see the university’s huge freshman dining hall as it was closed for the day, but to just imagine Hogwarts’s Great Hall in its place.
At Dartmouth, a tour guide ushered my group past a large, wood-paneled room filled with comfortable chairs and mentioned the Hogwarts feel it was known for. At another liberal arts college, I heard that students had voted to name four buildings on campus after the four houses in Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin. Several colleges let it be known that Emma Watson, the actress who plays Hermione Granger in the movies, had looked into them. I read, in Cornell’s fall 2009 quarterly magazine, that a college admissions counseling Web site had counted Cornell among the five American colleges that have the most in common with Hogwarts. Both institutions, you see, are conveniently located outside cities. The article ended: “Bring your wand and broomstick, just in case.”
Yikes. I’d heard about student quidditch clubs showing up around the country, but not this kind of institutional embrace of pop culture as an admissions selling-point. And while I get that competition for the top applicants among elite schools is intense, one would imagine that the like of the Ivies would give their prospective students a little more credit. It all seems so childish. As Edelston points out, despite growing up enjoying the Harry Potter books, “what I enjoy in fiction I don’t necessarily want to find in college.” Can you imagine showing up at Harvard, after working your ass off in high school, only to be mock-sorted into Hufflepuff?
Over at The Quick and the Ed, Chad Alderman highlights the real problem – rather than marketing their diversity, these colleges and universities are falling over themselves trying to show how similar they are. Deciding on a college is an enormous decision, one I wish I had taken more seriously when I was 17. For a student like Edelston, who, by virtue of the schools she is visiting, is probably a smart and accomplished candidate, things like research facilities, student-teacher ratio, and financial aid ought to be bigger selling points than who has the most Hogwarts-esque library. You’re making a choice that will guide your future, both socially and professionally, in any number of ways, not to mention a huge financial investment. And while a drunken quiddich game actually sounds like a pretty good time on campus, all Edelston seems to be asking for is a little respect. “After all,” she concludes, “Harry Potter is frozen in high school, and we’re growing up.”
UPDATE: With his latest story, one-time NYT science reporter Andrew Revkin embarks on a new career as drama critic — while utterly mocking Hoyt’s analysis. I’ll discuss it at the end.
If you think the NY Times public editor, Clark Hoyt, doesn’t have the whole story, doesn’t simply get a free pass from writing a balanced story, you should email him at public@nytimes.com.
One thing is clear from the story known as ClimateGate — the anti-science ideologues are much better at “Working the Refs“ than the climate science realists.
On his blog, DotEarth, NYT climate reporter Andy Revkin has started turning reader comments into primary text. Okay. Here’s our own Ken Levenson from a comment on today’s CP post, British PM attacks “anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics” while UK Conservatives reaffirm climate science and need for “desperately urgent” Copenhagen deal:
Brad DeLong says that instead of a PR gimmick jobs summit, we need a meeting at which key players get together and decide what they think is going on. Is more fiscal expansion a bad idea because it will lead to a spike in interest rates, or is more monetary expansion a bad idea because the economy is too awash in liquidity? As he points out, it can’t be both:
Both of these arguments are comprehensible; each might well be true. But they cannot both be true at the same time. Either the economy is so awash in liquidity that the Federal Reserve cannot do much to boost spending—in which case additional spending by the government won’t generate any substantial rise in interest rates. Or additional government spending will crowd out investment as businesses scramble for liquidity and interest rates rise—in which case the economy is not awash in liquidity, and quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve could do a lot right now to boost spending and employment. [...]
Thus we need a jobs summit right now. We need the White House’s National Economic Council and key congressional “centrists” on one side and the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee on the other to meet. Those two groups seem to have very inconsistent views of the economic situation. They seem to be working at cross-purposes. Something has to give. If they could reach agreement on whose view of the economy is likely correct, then a rescue plan—entailing either more government spending or greater liquidity—would become obvious.
I think this view of the problem is, if anything, too optimistic. Last week in addition to the White House jobs meeting we also had Senate hearings featuring Ben Bernanke. Bernanke indicated that he thought further fiscal expansion is unwise, and also indicated that the FOMC is not considering additional monetary easing. He appears to have reached the conclusion that as long as GDP growth is positive and equity prices are rising, years of high unemployment is an acceptable outcome and public officials ought to focus on cutting Social Security benefits.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)
The nonprofit insurance companies would “go to OPM and say I want to compete and then you show them you’ve got standing to compete,” Brown said. Existing insurance companies could participate as long as their plan is not-for-profit, he said. Lincoln said she, as well as Snowe and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), has advocated a similar proposal in the past for small businesses. The Office of Personnel Management has been effective in negotiating affordable premiums and generous benefits in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan – and could presumably do the same under this expanded program, Lincoln said. “I just think it’s a good idea,” Lincoln said. “I’ve always thought it was a good idea for quite some time now, for years, because it does utilize what we utilize as federal employees, which is volume and a good negotiator with private industry.”
While the details of the new plan are still unclear, policy makers are strongly hinting at establishing a new exchange of nonprofits within the already existing state-based exchanges. OPM could presumably lower costs by negotiate premiums and benefits with the nonprofit private insurers participating in the new exchange, bargaining with plans for lower bids and excluding plans that do not offer good value and cost-effectiveness. Despite Lincoln’s claims, however, OPM has not been “effective” at lowering costs in the past. From 1985 to 2002, the growth rate for FEHBP is virtually identical to that for private health insurance, averaging 7.3%, compared with 5.8% for Medicare.
If the purpose of the public plan is to build an alternative to the private health insurance model that relies on the Medicare’s infrastructure and reach to lower costs, institute delivery system reforms and provide real competition, then this compromise is a long way from that goal. As Jacob Hacker asks over at The Treatment, “How is that going to provide real pressure on private insurers in a consolidated insurance market in which nonprofit plans already have a large presence (and often act little differently from for-profit plans)?”
Reportedly, Sens. Harkin, Rockefeller, Feingold, Pryor, Lincoln, Brown, Carper, Ben Nelson, Schumer, and Lieberman are taking part in the negotiations. Democrats are also working to bring Sen. Olympia Snowe back to the negotiating table.
Such an “endangerment” decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early next year with new emission standards for cars. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said it could also mean large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants would have to curb their greenhouse gas output.
The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill that would modify the price of polluting.
Science and the law drive policy in this Administration, unlike the previous one.
It was, after all, back on April 2, 2007, that the U.S. Supreme Court determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were pollutants and that the EPA would have to regulate them if they were found to endanger public health and welfare — see EPA finds carbon pollution a serious danger to Americans’ health and welfare requiring regulation. For more background, see New EPA rule will require use of best technologies to reduce greenhouse gases from large facilities when “constructed or significantly modified” “” small businesses and farms exempt.
The WSJ is reporting one change from the original EPA proposal:
Most CP readers know about the 2°C warming limit, but many don’t appreciate its full implications. This short essay by two of the analysts who completed the first comprehensive analysis of that limit back in 1989 elaborates on the most important of these implications. Author bios and all references are at the end. Koomey has been a friend and colleague for more than a decade and a half. The figure comes from MetroNaturel.
Why two degrees really matters
Jonathan G. Koomey and Florentin Krause[i]
When the countries of the world meet for climate negotiations in Copenhagen this month, they will discuss how to prevent global temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. This warming limit, accepted in principle by the leaders of the G8 countries in July,[ii] is more than just a number””it represents a way to think about the climate problem that can help us develop and evaluate options for solving it.
The current trajectory for greenhouse gas emissions would move the Earth by the middle of this century well outside the temperature range in which humanity evolved, marked by the 2-degree limit. This trend increases substantially the risk of dangerous, irreversible, and, perhaps, catastrophic changes in the global life support systems upon which we all depend.[iii] As the White House Science Advisor John Holdren aptly puts it, we’re “driving in a car with bad brakes towards a cliff in the fog.”[iv] The 2-degree limit is like a road sign warning us to avoid the cliff ahead.
Defining a warming limit implies a greenhouse gas budget, which is an upper limit to our cumulative emissions over the next 50 to 100 years. Such a budget encapsulates our scientific understanding of how emissions interact with the Earth’s climate and affect global temperatures. Some of the most significant greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, stay in the atmosphere for many decades,[v] which is why the budget is defined over the long term.
There’s a perception out there that the Obama administration’s health reform drive is operating hand-in-glove with industry players. You see a left-wing version of this critique from the “public option or nothing” crowd and a right-wing version in things like Tim Carney’s Obamanomics book. And certainly this legislation is friendly to corporate interests than the bill we’ll be writing when I become dictator.
But the simple fact of the matter is that corporate America is doing what it usually does—attacking progressive legislation, and promoting obstruction by conservative politicians. The Chamber of Commerce is vehemently opposed to health reform, and the insurance industry is making nice sounds while, in practice, trying to kill reform. The insurance industry knows it’s unpopular, so it takes a reassuring attitude in public, but as my colleagues have been documenting there’s a vast industry-funded anti-reform effort underway aimed not just at killing the public option but killing the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Lee Fang reports that the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBS’ lobbyists) are covertly backing far-right efforts to get health reform declared unconstitutional. Their key partner in this is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization that drafts business-friendly legislation and feeds it to conservative state legislators. ALEC is developing “states rights” legislation aimed at raising “tenther” constitutional objections to health reform, and one of the three masterminds of ALEC’s efforts is Joan Gardner from BCBSA. And as Lee points out, industry players don’t shy away from a little hypocrisy:
Part of the reason the BCBS Association has claimed that it opposes the reform bill in its current form is because of what it perceives as a weak individual mandate. However, the BCBS Association-supported ALEC campaign depicts the very notion of an individual mandate as “anti-freedom.” So either way the Senate acts, BCBS will be able to trash the bill and try to kill reform.
It’s worth being clear about this. Whatever drawbacks there may be to the administration’s health care approach, it is in fact being fought by industry. Similarly, the Obama administration is often alleged to be in bed with the big banks, but it’s the administration that’s pushing to overhaul financial regulations, and it’s the banks and the GOP who’s blocking it.
In October, Brazil’s President announced, “I foresee that by 2020 we will be able to reduce deforestation by 80 percent; in other words, we will emit some 4.8 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide gas.”
Now, a new article in the December 4 issue of Science, “The End of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon,” (subs. req’d, abstract below), explains just how modest is the funding needed to beat that goal — “$7 to $18 billion beyond Brazil’s current budget outlays.” And that could mean “the end of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which could result in a 2 to 5% reduction in global carbon emissions.”
As the news release from the Woods Hole Research Center explains, Brazil has already made significant reductions in deforestation in that last few years:
The right-wing swiftboating campaign against climate scientists dubbed “Climategate” by its perpetrators is becoming frighteningly unhinged, accusing climate researchers of Hitlerian fascism for fighting against corruption of science by oil-funded ideologues. On Wednesday, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the top Republican on the House global warming committee, claimed these scientists were engaging in “scientific fascism.” After Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) denounced his egregious attack, Sensenbrenner defined “scientific fascism” of “intimidation in the scientific community of people who wish to be contrary what the convention wisdom is”:
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter.