So you want to have greenhouse gas standards with teeth, but you want to minimize the risk they take too big a bite from the economy. And, of course, like Climate Progress, you don’t like the safety valve idea. What do you do? Banking and borrowing of course.

With “banking,” the right to emit carbon can be saved for future use. With “borrowing,” current emissions are extended against future abatement.

What is fascinating is that today a detailed banking and borrowing proposal, “Cost-Containment for the Carbon Market,” was put forward by four moderate senators — Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and John Warner (R-Va.) — with the help of Duke University’s environmental program.

A Greenwire piece (subs. req’d) notes “a top environmental group also didn’t shy away from the latest idea”:

“This is an interesting proposal to help address cost concerns while maintaining the integrity of the emissions cap,” said David Doniger, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Borrowing and repayment is far preferable to the safety valve, which breaks the cap by allowing firms to increase emissions with no payback requirement.

I agree. Kudos to the Senators for moving the debate forward. Here are more excerpts from the piece:

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A Sacramento, CA publication — check it out. Quotable quote:

The thing that California has done the best is to sustain over an aggressive energy-efficiency effort. That has enabled the state to keep per capita energy consumption flat over the last three decades, whereas it has gone up 60 percent in the rest of the country.

Our top climate scientist has sent out a really, really long email (where does he find the time?), mostly discussing comments on his recent email essay on coal. I think Hansen is the clearest thinker on climate among the top scientists in the field, so I will reprint the email, breaking it up into several postings. The first one addresses “Coal-CO₂ versus Oil-CO₂” (a query that was also raised by a commenter here)

My statement that releasing a coal-CO₂ molecule into the air is more harmful than setting free an oil-CO₂ molecule caused puzzlement. Of course the molecules are identical. What I want people to recognize is a way of framing the climate problem that makes clear what action is required to avert disaster. Only two aspects of the physics must be understood:

(1) CO₂ “lifetime”. A substantial fraction of the CO₂ released to the air in burning fossil fuels will stay there for a very long time (about one-quarter is still there after 500 years).

(2) Fossil fuel reservoir sizes. There is enough CO₂ in readily accessible oil and gas reserves to take atmospheric CO₂ close to, and probably somewhat beyond, the “dangerous” level. The coal reservoir, not to mention unconventional fossil fuels such as tar shale, can take CO₂ far beyond the dangerous level, producing, indeed, “a different planet”.

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The definitive study on the global warming impact of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) is out. And it confirms what Climate Progress has long been saying:

The widespread use of plug-in hybrid vehicles — which could be driven up to 40 miles on electric power alone — would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States without overloading the nation’s power grid, according to a new study.

The study, “Environmental Assessment of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” is by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council (whose new blog is the oddly-named Switchboard). Here’s a key chart:

Here are some more details on the study’s conclusions:

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