A: Of course not. Only efforts to sharply cut CO2 emissions starting immediately would be good for the climate.

If proof were ever needed that winning a Nobel Prize does not make you a genius on every subject, consider what atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen told Reuters:

It’s a cruel thing to say … but if we are looking at a slowdown in the economy, there will be less fossil fuels burning, so for the climate it could be an advantage… We could have a much slower increase of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere … people will start saving (on energy use).

Yes, and monkeys could fly out of my butt, which, as an aside, is probably the only thing I could do that might garner a Nobel prize or at least a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. But (butt?) I digress.

If carbon dioxide emissions stopped growing forever, concentrations would still keep rising forever, and the climate would be destroyed. In fact, the recent rate of growth of emissions has been faster than even the most pessimistic IPCC model had projected (see “Global carbon emissions jumped 3% in 2007“). If that rate of growth were cut in half, we would still have our foot on the accelerator headed toward the cliff (see “For peat’s sake: A point of no return as alarming as the tundra feedback“).

Crutzen knows better. He signed the Must Read Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists, which acknowledged that to avoid catastrophic impacts “global emissions must peak and decline in the next 10 to 15 years.” A global economic slowdown doesn’t increase the chances of that happening. Quite the reverse.

Lots of people who apparently never believed in serious climate action have been taking the opportunity of the slowdown to say we must back off intelligent emissions controls:

In an interview with The Associated Press, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said that in light of the economic downturn, a bill that would give polluters permits free of charge would be preferable.

And he’s a Democrat. Sadly, he doesn’t seem to know better. Even his own inadequate climate bill doesn’t began restricting emissions for 5 years, and given its absurdly generous rip-offset provisions, it doesn’t actually lower emissions from current levels for two decades (see “Dingell and Boucher draft climate bill: Likely no CO2 cut until near 2030“). Why should the current economic slowdown change what we do several years from now? Even sadder are these comments:

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a lead sponsor of a Senate bill to curb greenhouse gases that failed this year, acknowledged that the economy could delay when reductions in carbon dioxide would start.

Has he even read his own bill? It too doesn’t kick in at all for five years, and it too wouldn’t actually start reducing CO2 emissions below current levels for two decades (see “Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill update: Probably no U.S. CO2 emissions cut until after 2025“).

You would expect such doubletalk from congressional opponents of climate action — and you wouldn’t be disappointed:

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Last week I critiqued EDF’s pointless video/graphics competition (see EDF’s bizarre $10,000 contest: “What is a carbon cap and how will it cure our oil addiction?”). The contest is pointless because a carbon cap can’t cure our oil addiction. Indeed, under any plausible cap, U.S. oil consumption rises.

Gernot Wagner, an economist at Environmental Defense Fund, responded with a post at Grist: ‘Bizarre’? No. Tough? Yes Joseph Romm’s critique of EDF’s contest is misguided. As I expected, EDF claimed that auctioning off the allowances would “generate large sums of money. Part of that could be used to jump-start our transition to a greener transportation sector that’s less dependent on fossil fuels.” That takes us to Fantasyland Shellenberger-Nordhaus-land, which we’ll visit below.

But what I did not expect is that someone from EDF, particularly an economist, would actually argue the cap itself “goes a long way toward solving the problem. Let’s look at the numbers”:

MIT’s analysis of the Climate Security Act [CSA] using their EPPA model says that net crude oil imports would be 22 percent lower by 2015 under CSA than without. These savings rise to 31 percent by 2020, 41 percent by 2025, and 66 percent by 2030. (Savings decrease in the next years due to some modeling assumptions around other countries taking on caps, but are up to 62 percent again by 2050.) Sure, that’s technically not “solving the problem” entirely. However, solving two thirds of it isn’t all that bad in my book.

I stand corrected — not! Needless to say, I was quite shocked to see my old alma mater cited as the source of a claim that so blatantly flies in the face of both standard economics and practical logic.

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More than thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line, and their plight has only worsened with rising energy, food, and healthcare costs. The inequality gap in our country has reached record highs, and it’s unclear from current economic events if there will be any near-term relief or directional change. For that reason this year’s Blog Action Day is on the issue of poverty, which has undeniable connections and even potential solutions in the energy and environmental sphere.

Within the last year, the Center for American Progress Action Fund and partners have launched a campaign to cut national poverty in half in the next ten years — Half in Ten. The campaign has its roots in the Poverty to Prosperity report, released in 2007, which outlines 12 policies that would reach the campaign’s goal.

The Urban Institute found that just three of these policies — raising and indexing the minimum wage; expanding the Earned-Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit; and providing childcare assistance for working families below a certain income-level — would reduce poverty by more than 26 percent. Child poverty would drop by 41 percent, and over 9 million fewer Americans would be poor.

The Center for American Progress has also proposed a Green Economic Recovery plan that demonstrates how investments into transitioning to a low-carbon economy can also carve pathways out of poverty and create 2 million green-collared jobs across the U.S., primarily in the construction and manufacturing sectors.

Many of the jobs created would be in response to rising demand for energy efficiency retrofits, which in turn can cut a household’s energy expenditures. This is significant in relation to poverty because while the average American household spends about 5 percent of its annual income on energy bills, a low-income household spends closer to 16 percent on energy bills (and some cases and estimates suggest up to 35 percent). At a time when homeownership is in peril, energy costs and utility bills must be factors in our understanding of home affordability.

The green dream and the American dream are not exclusive battlegrounds, and in fact they share a lot in common. In the next few weeks — which are crucial to our economy — and the next few months — which are crucial to our political direction — it should be a priority to address economic mobility, green recovery, and the opportunities in each.

What can and should you do? Today, keep reading.

The Wonk Room has a post, “With McCain’s Tacit Approval, Bush Rushes To Open Grand Canyon To Toxic Uranium Mining,” excerpted here:

The Bush Administration is rushing forward with plans to mine the Grand Canyon for uranium, ignoring a command from Congress to cease such operations…. As Mineweb reports, “The Bureau of Land Management has published a proposed rule which rejects the House Natural Resources Emergency House Resolution enacted in June that bans uranium mining and exploration near the Grand Canyon National Park.” The Arizona Republic explains what’s at stake:

Never mind that the drinking water of more than 25 million people, served by the Colorado River, is at risk. Or that Arizona Game and Fish warns about the impact on wildlife. Or that Grand Canyon National Park is still dealing with the toxic mess from past mines.

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