Excerpt of the draft EPA rulemaking, discussing the threat global warming poses to public health. Download the first 150 pages of the document (Part I and Part II).

Reporters for Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal write that an “intense private battle” has broken out between officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Environmental Protection Agency over “the publication of a document that could become the legal roadmap for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions across the U.S. economy.” The portions of the document obtained by the Wonk Room reveal why the White House has been suppressing it since December of last year.

Even after major cuts from the December version, this document makes a mockery of President Bush’s claim in April that applying the Clean Air Act to global warming pollution “would have crippling effects on our entire economy.” In fact, after spending all of 2007 working with the Departments of Transportation and Energy to model the effects of motor vehicle greenhouse gas regulations, the EPA found the exact opposite:

Assuming gas prices in the range of $3.50 per gallon, “the net benefit to society could be in excess of $2 trillion” through 2040:

With higher gasoline prices, the benefits of high carbon-dioxide standards would be even greater. The EPA’s findings, completed last year, raise serious questions about whether Bush’s statements to the American public were made in good faith, and why he is now asserting executive privilege to block the Congressional investigation.

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The AP has the bombshell news. A judge has finally used the Supreme Court decision that carbon dioxide is a pollutant:

The construction of a coal-fired power plant in Georgia was halted Monday when a judge ruled that the plant’s builders must first obtain a permit from state regulators that limits the amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

The ruling, from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, is here [big PDF]. What did the judge find?

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“TV journalism” has been an oxymoron as long as I can remember, but not “print journalism.” My father was an old-school newspaper editor, which is why I still hold print journalists in moderately high regard. But media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, in a Tim Russert eulogy, explains just how far newspapers (like the Orlando Sentinel) have now fallen:

Under its new owner, Sam Zell, the Tribune Co. earlier this month decreed a 12 percent cutback in content, meaning that the Los Angeles Times, for instance, will be serving up 82 fewer news pages each week. Tribune’s Baltimore Sun announced last week it will cut 100 employees, in part through layoffs, and produce what publisher Tim Ryan called “a more concise newspaper with more local news” — a euphemism for slashing news space.

Randy Michaels, the company’s chief operating officer, said Tribune has begun measuring productivity by how much copy each journalist churns out – and that the average Times reporter generates a mere 51 pages a year, compared with more than 300 apiece at the Sun and Hartford Courant. Perhaps no one has explained to him that writing in-depth stories — say, prizewinning investigative pieces — takes a bit more time.

Note to Tribune — if “journalists” are measured by quantity over quality, then you really have nothing whatsoever over the web. Your journalists are typically less knowledgeable than many of the people who blog on their areas of expertise. And I don’t see how you can match the web for quantity. Nor price, of course. Once your quality is gone, why should anyone pay for your product?

Lee Abrams, hired from XM Satellite Radio as Tribune’s chief innovation officer, has been cranking out colorful memos: “Newspapers strike me as being a little TOO NPR. I like NPR, and their shows like Morning Edition do well. But NPR can also be a bit elitist. . . . It’s all about being INTELLIGENT . . . not intellectual.

Hence the emphasis on quality over quantity. Oops. But wait, the memo gets better….

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In a landmark victory in the battle to regulate global warming pollution, a Georgia judge ruled that a proposed coal-fired plant could not be built unless its carbon dioxide emissions are limited, effectively killing the project. The ruling is the first to apply the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts vs. EPA decision to the question of greenhouse gas pollution from power plants. According to GreenLaw, the Georgia environmental organization who filed suit with the Friends of the Chattahoochee and the Sierra Club in June 2007, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Moore’s decision “goes a long way toward protecting the right of Georgians to breathe clean air“:

The decision overturns an administrative court’s ruling that affirmed the state Environmental Protection Division’s (EPD) decision to issue an air pollution permit for Dynegy’s Longleaf plant. In practical terms, Dynegy cannot begin construction of the plant unless it can obtain a valid permit from EPD that complies with the Court’s ruling. The Judge held that EPD must limit the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the plant, a decision that will have far-reaching implications nationwide; this is the first time since the April 2, 2007, Supreme Court decision requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO2 that a court has applied that standard to CO2 from an industrial source rather than from motor vehicles.

The $2 billion, 1200 megawatt plant — the first proposed in Georgia in over 20 years — was to be built by Dynegy Inc., the Houston-based energy company with several other proposed coal-fired power plants across the country. Dynegy and other fossil fuel polluters have been scrambling to get new plants started in anticipation of future limits on greenhouse gases, before investors and ratepayers recognize the risk.

Last October, the Kansas Department of Health denied air quality permits to a proposed coal plant expansion because of the danger greenhouse gas emissions pose to the climate. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) vetoed repeated attempts by the legislature to override the decision.

In contrast, officials recently appointed by Gov. Timothy Kaine (D-VA) to the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board unanimously granted air quality permits to Dominion Resources for a $1.8 billion coal-fired plant last week.

UPDATE: Clean Air Watch‘s Frank O’Donnell (also a Wonk Room guest blogger) has forwarded the court decision, which unequivocally rules that carbon dioxide must be regulated:

Faced with the ruling in Massachusetts that CO₂ is an “air pollutant” under the Act, Respondents are forced to argue that CO₂ is still not a “pollutant subject to regulation under the Act.” Respondents’ position is untenable. Putting aside the argument that any substance that falls within the statutory definition of “air pollutant” may be “subject to” regulation under the Act, there is no question that CO₂ is “subject to regulation under the Act.”

Frank writes, “Those proposing coal plants elsewhere are going to be running for the Excedrin.”

UPDATE II: At Raising Kaine, TheGreenMiles, who earlier revealed the “menacing letter” Kaine sent to the Virginia board to push them to approve the Dominion plant, writes:

As for Gov. Kaine … you’ve spent the last year championing this coal plant as a cure-all for southwest Virginia’s economic woes, global warming and green jobs be damned. Now a judge is very likely to rule that your efforts have been in violation of the Clean Air Act, leaving southwest Virginia without the jobs, Virginia behind the curve on a clean energy future and you with a deeply scarred legacy. There are no winners here.

I am scheduled to be on Fox Business News at 7 pm today on “to drill or not to drill.” I doubt many of you have access to FBN, but I will try to post the video if I get it. The only interesting thing about this is that Wayne Rogers is hosting for David Asman.

Rogers, for those who aren’t long time readers of this blog (or fans of Fox), is the Bizarro World‘s Alan Alda (see here). So I’m doing this for amusement, practice, and general-masochism.

That’s the title of my new article in Salon. I had proposed “The political fight of the century,” but the editors wanted a stronger headline — and subhead:

Americans must not allow global warming deniers to block the policies needed to avert catastrophic climate change. Our future is at stake.

Now that the relevant science is settled — namely that failing to quickly embrace strong greenhouse gas reduction policies would be the greatest act of self-destruction in human history — the fight to save a livable climate will indeed be the greatest political fight of our times. As the piece concludes:

Conservatives can’t stop the impending catastrophe with anti-government rhetoric. But they can prevent progressives and moderates from stopping it by blocking aggressive climate legislation. Progressives and moderates will need all their political skill and tenacity to overcome the obstructionism of the anti-science, anti-technology conservatives. This is unlike any previous political fight; it is a fight to save the health and well-being of the next 50 generations, a fight to preserve our way of life. Losing is not an option

The article summarizes the current state of conservative anti-science intransigence on climate, which I have discussed at great length (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us” and “Krauthammer, Part 2: The real reason conservatives don’t believe in climate science“.) I then describe how I think the next couple of decades will play out, assuming most conservatives continue to press what they are convinced is a rhetorical and political advantage in opposing strong climate legislation:

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No, 450 is not politically possible today.

OK, that was clear before. But the debate over the Climate Security Act made clear it won’t be politically possible anytime soon, for two reasons:

1. The vast majority of conservatives have not budged an inch on climate science even in the face of now overwhelming direct scientific observation and a much deeper and broader scientific understanding of the dangerous impact of unrestricted human greenhouse gas emissions on the climate.
2. Equally important, conservatives now have a very potent political issue to beat back advocates of an economy-wide cap & trade system — high gasoline prices. And gasoline prices are probably going to be much higher over the next few years (see “Must read CIBC report: $7 gas by 2010, 10 million cars off the road, 1970s style GDP growth“). That is one reason I would leave transportation out of an economy-wide cap & trade, but that will be the subject of another post.

I live-blogged the debate at the time. Here are the highlights — or, rather, lowlights — from the GOP side that make clear just how far conservatives are from understanding climate reality:

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On Wednesday (June 25th), Florida Governor Crist signed a historic piece of energy legislation that advances Florida one step closer to establishing a cap and trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Florida is the first state in the Southeast to adopt a law of this nature. While Crist has prevented new coal plant construction and while this article describes a handful of solar thermal projects in Florida, Joe has followed and described some attempts by companies in Florida to pursue nuclear, encouraged by the governor.

Other state progress is happening in New Hampshire, whose Governor John Lynch just recently signed his state on to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

In other power plant-related news in states, Virginia is mid-showdown over the future of coal in the state, an issue which has left a huge divide between northern Virginia and southern Virginia. Unfortunately, the latest coal plant in Virgina has unanimously won approval (on the condition that another coal plant start to burn natural gas). Still, this is a state to keep an eye on. In terms of coal, but also in the upcoming presidential election (see this 2007 example of the changing political orientation).

Finally, all has been quiet on the Kansas front. But it’s worth keeping in mind that every single Representative and Senator is up for re-election in November. So once the new pieces are set, it will literally be an entirely different game.

On “Fox and Friends” yesterday, Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer — a top policy adviser for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — derided those who say that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium won’t affect gas prices, saying it “reveals ignorance on the futures markets.”

That position puts her at odds with the federal Energy Information Administration, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and even McCain himself. Why would Pfotenhauer go so far off message?

Perhaps it’s because the only ones who would benefit from lifting the moratorium are energy companies like Koch Industries (pronounced “coke”), the largest private company in the United States, the secretive backer of the right-wing message machine, and Pfotenhauer’s longtime boss.

Koch Industries Is The Secret Dirty Energy King. With $90 billion in annual sales, Koch Industries is the largest privately owned company in the United States. Begun in 1940 as an oil refining business by Fred Koch, his company — now controlled by sons David and Charles Koch — has diversified into “refining and chemicals; process and pollution control equipment and technologies; minerals and fertilizer; fibers and polymers; commodity and financial trading and services; and forest and consumer products” — a global warming pollution factory. [Forbes, 2007]

Koch Industries Is At The Center Of The Right-Wing Message Machine. Koch’s founder, Fred Koch, also helped found the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative organization that believed the U.S. government was controlled by a traitorous cabal of Communist sympathizers. Koch Industries’ charitable arm, the Koch Family Foundations, has provided over $120 million in the past 20 years to the Cato Institute (founded by Charles Koch), Citizens for a Sound Economy (founded by David Koch, now Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks), the Heritage Foundation, George Mason University, the Federalist Society, the Mercatus Center, and dozens more right-wing, anti-regulatory, and global-warming denial organizations. [Media Transparency]

Nancy Pfotenhauer Is A Pure Right-Wing/Koch Industries Product. Pfotenhauer’s resumé includes George Mason University (funded by Koch), Citizens for a Sound Economy (founded by Koch), Americans for Prosperity (founded by Koch), and the Independent Women’s Forum (funded by Koch). She also worked directly for Koch Industries as their top Washington lobbyist. When not on the Koch payroll, Pfotenhauer worked for the Republican National Committee, Sen. William Armstrong (R-CO), and Dan Quayle’s Council on Competitiveness. [Media Transparency, Dunamis International Ministries]

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The German government announced it will be helping to fund VW’s plug-in hybrid development program with 15 million euros. VM aims for a 2010 vehicle with 31 miles of all-electric range. VW head Martin Winterkorn said that while petrol or diesel powered cars would be around for some time to come, “the future belongs to all-electric cars.” According to autoblog, the Twin Drive uses a 82-hp electric motor and a 2.0L turbodiesel producing 122 hp.

VW recently signed a deal with Sanyo, which is aggressively ramping up automotive lithium-ion battery production. It expects the hybrid and plug-in hybrid markets to be 4 to 4.5 million vehicles by 2015, and aims to capture 40% of this market. Sanyo uses a mixture of Ni, Mn, and Co for the positive electrode, thereby producing a safer battery that exhibits power retention ratio of 80% or higher after 10,000 cycles (10-15 years in a hybrid vehicle).

Last week, Daimler announced it would bring an electric car to market in 2010.

For more on plug ins, see “Plug-in hybrids and electric cars — a core climate solution, nationally and globally.”

’nuff said!

Funny you should ask. That is the title of an analysis published this month in Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) by four scientists from the Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle. What did they conclude?

A model study has been conducted of the unprecedented retreat of arctic sea ice in the summer of 2007. It is found that preconditioning, anomalous winds, and ice-albedo feedback are mainly responsible for the retreat. Arctic sea ice in 2007 was preconditioned to radical changes after years of shrinking and thinning in a warm climate. During summer 2007 atmospheric changes strengthened the transpolar drift of sea ice, causing more ice to move out of the Pacific sector and the central Arctic Ocean where the reduction in ice thickness due to ice advection is up to 1.5 m more than usual. Some of the ice exited Fram Strait and some piled up in part of the Canada Basin and along the coast of northern Greenland, leaving behind an unusually large area of thin ice and open water. Thin ice and open water allow more surface solar heating because of a much reduced surface albedo, leading to amplified ice melting. The Arctic Ocean lost additional 10% of its total ice mass in which 70% is due directly to the amplified melting and 30% to the unusual ice advection, causing the unprecedented ice retreat. Arctic sea ice has entered a state of being particularly vulnerable to anomalous atmospheric forcing.

In short, Santa Claus and Superman need to find a new home. Next stop for them — East Antarctica, which is probably good for another century or two.

Related Posts:

• Must See TV: Ice Ice Maybe (not)
• Arctic Ice shrinks by an Alaska plus a Texas
• A meter of sea level rise by 2100?
• Arctic ice loss is “stunning” — total loss possible by 2030, scientists warn
• Arctic sea ice update: 2008 poised to repeat — or beat — 2007

… on the prospects for and impact of an ice-free North Pole. Or at least that is the plan!

Too bad Shepard Smith wasn’t hosting — he wouldn’t have wasted time on the global cooling nonsense!

Remember, Shepard thinks global warming deniers are a “little crazy” like some guy who got stuck in the toilet (see QUIZ: Who said, “People who deny the whole global warming thing. They’re just a little crazy.”)

I have previously debunked this absurd claim we have somehow cooled in the last year back to levels of a century ago (or even two decades ago), see Media enable denier spin 1: A (sort of) cold January doesn’t mean climate stopped warming and Breaking News: The Great Ice Age of 2008 is finally over — next stop Venus!

For another perspective, News Hounds wrote up this encounter here, “To This Day, Fox is Feeding its Audience “Proof” That Global Warming Doesn’t Exist.” I may blog on this again.

In a parting shot at the competition for its fossil fuels supporters, the uber-lame (duck) Bush administration “has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.”

• Drilling for oil and gas, even in pristine areas — hey, we’re former oil company executives.
• Leveling mountains in beautiful West Virginia — we’re all for it.
• Toxic metals from mining — bring ‘em on!
• Logging old-growth forests — what so you think forests are for?

But solar power on publicly owned desert land? We need to study that for two years. Wouldn’t want to risk a rush to clean energy. As Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, this is “the wrong signal to send to solar power developers, and to Nevadans and Westerners who need and want clean, affordable sun-powered electricity soon.”

The only upside of this lame last-minute attack on renewables is that it can be overturned on January 21.

The McKinsey Global Institute has published another terrific piece of analysis, “The carbon productivity challenge: curbing climate change and sustaining economic growth.”

MGI is best known for its comprehensive cost curve for global greenhouse gas reduction measures (reprinted below), which came to the stunning conclusion that the measures needed to stabilize emissions at 450 ppm have a net cost near zero. The new report has its own stunning conclusion:

In fact, depending on how new low-carbon infrastructure is financed, the transition to a low-carbon economy may increase annual GDP growth in many countries.

The new analysis explains that “at a global, macroeconomic level, the costs of transitioning to a low-carbon economy are not, in an economic ‘welfare’ sense, all that daunting — even with currently known technologies.” Indeed, 70% of the total 2030 emissions reduction potential (below $60 a ton of CO2 equivalent) is “not dependent on new technology.”

The final reality is perhaps the most important:

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[I'm not sure this Independent story is quite that big a deal, but it got Drudge all globally hot and bothered with the banner headline and pic below, so at least the deniers and delayers will all see it.]

SHOCK CLAIM:,

NO ICE AT
,

NORTH POLE
,

THIS SUMMER

,

Related Posts:

• Arctic sea ice update: 2008 poised to repeat — or beat — 2007
• Breaking News — Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss
• Forecast: 3-in-5 chance of record low Arctic sea ice in 2008

White House intervention at the EPA is back in the news.

The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming finally received some long-awaited documents from the EPA. In a letter to President Bush, Committee Chairman Markey indicated what the EPA was recommending before the White House stepped in to weaken the regulations. First Representative Markey sets the stage:

On May 14, 2007, you directed EPA, along with other agencies, to prepare a regulatory response to Massachusetts v. EPA by the end of 2007 and to complete it by the end of 2008. According to reports, EPA staff spent about six months developing this proposal, and transmitted both a positive finding of endangerment to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and a draft regulatory proposal to require the equivalent of 35 miles per gallon (mpg) fuel economy standard from the fleet of cars and light trucks by 2018 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in early December, 2007.

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Climate Progress was (or is supposed to be) featured in:

• Great frontline story Tuesday on the human impact today of climate change in Asia and Africa (video online here) — a prequel to a 2-hour special this fall.
• CBS Evening News piece tonight on CIBC oil report (which is how I came to blog on it).
• CNN report tomorrow morning on a new hydrogen fueling station in California.

Energy and climate are hot — stay right here for the cutting edge news and analysis.

How do you return greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 while promoting jobs, competitiveness, and public health? Conservatives in the U.S. Senate think it can’t be done. California knows it can.

The Air Resources Board has just published their Scoping Plan here. How do they cut 169 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020? Efficiency, efficiency, renewables, renewables, and even some conservation:

Given that the single biggest source of California’s GHG emissions is transportation, surging oil prices will make it that much easier for them to achieve this target and increase the savings for California consumers and businesses.

Unlike U.S. Senate conservatives, Californians understand that the multiple benefits of action — and the cost of inaction — greatly exceed the costs of action:

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The New York Times revealed yesterday that the White House’s global warming denial reached levels of absurdity that would be hilarious if the stakes weren’t so high. Last December, senior EPA officials tell the Times, White House officials literally refused to open the e-mail from the EPA that concluded that “greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled.” The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin fills in more details:

And upon learning that EPA had hit the “send” button just minutes earlier, the White House called again to demand that the e-mail be recalled. The EPA official who forwarded the e-mail, Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett, refused, said the sources, who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

That fateful December confrontation — Burnett “sent the e-mail to the White House Office of Management and Budget at 2:17 p.m. Dec. 5 and received the call warning him to hold off at 2:25 p.m.” — was the culmination of months of effort by the EPA following April’s Supreme Court mandate to take action on global warming pollution. As documents shown to the House Global Warming Committee under threat of subpoena revealed, “EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson determined that man-made global warming is unequivocal, the evidence is both compelling and robust, and the administration must act to prevent harm rather than wait for harm to occur before acting.”

Instead, the administration acted to prevent the EPA from following its legal and moral duty. After the White House rejected the EPA’s efforts, EPA administrator Stephen Johnson reversed his decision to allow California to regulate tailpipe greenhouse emissions. All work at the EPA on global warming ceased, and in May Burnett announced his resignation.

Today, Johnson’s EPA is expected to unveil a censored version of the report it submitted to the White House in December, as an “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” asking for new round of comments on whether global warming represents a threat to human health and whether it should take action. This administration knows full well that global warming represents a very present threat to our health and security, as reports issued this month by its scientific and intelligence agencies reveal. Of course, Bush impeded those reports as well. The scientific assessment was submitted under court order, four years after its legal deadline, and the intelligence assessment was classified despite being based on public information.

Burnett — who came to the EPA with an anti-regulatory background — is now telling reporters he resigned because the White House threw away his efforts to confront the threat of global warming. In an email to the Post, he wrote:

The White House made it clear they did not want to address the ramifications of that finding and have decided to leave the challenge to the next administration. Some [at the White House] thought that EPA had mistakenly concluded that climate change endangers the public. It was no mistake.

Last Friday, Bush asserted executive privilege to prevent the House Oversight Committee from investigating his involvement in this gross dereliction of duty.

UPDATE: At Dot Earth, Andy Revkin reminds us the Bush stonewalling of the EPA on global warming began “just two months into his first term to abandon his campaign pledge in 2000 to restrict carbon dioxide from power plants.” A March 7, 2001 memorandum from the EPA to the White House recommended that the carbon dioxide pledge be kept, but a group of non-scientists rejected the plea. Among the cabal of right-wing officials with industry ties who blocked action in 2001 was the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Marcus Peacock, now the number-two official at the EPA.