Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) has joined conservative senators who want to preserve the threat of a filibuster against President Obama’s legislation to fight global warming pollution. President Obama’s climate adviser Carol Browner has been testing the waters of using the budget reconciliation process to pass his cap-and-trade plan, preventing a floor filibuster and allow passage with the support of 50 senators. However, this effort has “drawn opposition from 28 senators,” in a letter sent Thursday to the Senate Budget Committee:

We oppose using the budget reconciliation process to expedite passage of climate legislation.

The signatories, organized by Mike Johanns (R-NE) and Robert Byrd (D-WV), include 22 Republicans and six Democrats. Every Democrat except for Sen. Casey had indicated their opposition to progressive climate legislation last year, by stating they would have blocked the industry-friendly Lieberman-Warner bill because it did not do enough to protect polluters. On January 28, 2009, Sen. Casey argued convincingly that the Senate needed to address “catastrophic global warming” immediately:

The threat of catastrophic global warming may seem to be a second priority after fixing our current economic crisis, but I believe that we if we do not address both simultaneously we are setting ourselves up for another crisis in the future that will have untold consequences on the world’s economy and population. We must work aggressively to fix our immediate problems while ensuring our long-term security and prosperity.

The full text of the letter: Read more

Ross Douthat, the young conservative taking Bill Kristol’s spot as a New York Times op-ed writer, heralds the climate policy work of Jim Manzi, a software executive who is now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, specializing in “the economics of energy & climate change.” Douthat described Manzi’s 2007 National Review piece “Game Plan” as “one of the smartest right-of-center policy manifestos I’ve read in a long time”:

Everyone should read it: Conservatives will find a sensible blueprint for moving from the denialist fringe to the political mainstream, and liberals will get a taste of how a wised-up, heads-out-of-the-sand Right could kick their ass on the issue.

Manzi’s “wised-up,” “sensible blueprint” boils down to the claim that emissions don’t need to be reduced because the risk of global warming is so uncertain:

Global warming is a real risk, but its impact over the next century could plausibly range from negligible to severe. . . Adaptation should take center stage, as it is by far the most cost-effective means of addressing climate risk. We can reduce the climate impact of carbon that is emitted, often using such simple techniques as planting more trees or using more reflective paint.

To be fair, Manzi wrote this piece in early 2007, before Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report was completed:

Members of the panel said their review of the data led them to conclude as a group and individually that reductions in greenhouse gases had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster, which could leave island states submerged and abandoned, African crop yields down by 50 percent, and cause a 5 percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

Following the IPCC’s grim consensus assessment, new scientific research found that warming oceans are strengthening hurricanes and Arctic sea ice loss predicted by the IPCC to happen by 2050 may instead occur within four or five years, among hundreds of other portents of disaster ahead, including unprecedented floods, droughts, wildfires, and storms across the globe. If Manzi’s head really is “out of the sand,” one might think his policy recommendations would reflect the new evidence. However, Manzi’s plan remains to “just say no” to restricting emissions, explaining that “We can win the cap-and-trade fight” in the December 2008 National Review:

Even if one accepts the scientific and economic projections used by cap-and-trade advocates, the costs of restricting emissions can’t be justified based on the benefits that it is expected to provide. This is why getting drawn into a discussion of how to improve cap-and-trade is a strategic error. The Republican reaction should be to “just say no.”

Douthat may “generate a conservative column that progressives will have reason to read and take seriously,” as our colleague Matt Yglesias argues. He may be “funny and smart and sharp,” as Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal calls him. Perhaps “his writing steers away from partisanship,” as Times writer Richard Perez-Pena claims, despite his authorship of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.” But if Douthat continues to think that Manzi — someone without an academic background in economics, energy, or climate change — is a “kick ass” expert, it will be hard to take him seriously on the issue of global warming.

Political question of the day: Is Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) a realist who believes in serious climate action — or is he in fact just trying to undermine congressional action?

I gave him the benefit of the doubt last time. I said his well justified trashing of rip-offsets –”I am also opposed to the inclusion of international and domestic offsets” — wasn’t just a way to set up the climate bill for failure or at least for him to vote against the final bill (see “Sen. Corker agrees with Climate Progress on rip-offsets“)

But now he comes out swinging against coal with carbon capture and storage. Yes, he advances a realistic view (see “Is coal with carbon capture and storage a core climate solution?“), but this technology is the darling of all moderates and conservatives who might conceivably vote for a climate bill. Is he badmouthing it to spook them?

Judge for yourself. E&E Daily has the details on what Corker said and on yet another of the many Achilles heels of CCS:

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File this one under “now they tell us” or maybe “the former drug kingpin says crack is not healthy for you.” The Financial Times reports the shocking not-quite-deathbed conversion:

Jack Welch, who is regarded as father of the “shareholder value” movement, has said the obsession with short-term profits and share price gains that has dominated the corporate world for over 20 years was “a dumb idea”….

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world,” he said. “Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy … your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”

Uhh,”your products,” Jack? Still, an amazing statement and 2 out of 3 aren’t bad.

I realize this is not the same as Jack denouncing the whole system as a Ponzi scheme (see “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme, are we all Bernie Madoffs, and what comes next? Part 1). It’s not like he said “your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and the next generation.”

But escaping the Ponzi scheme requires a massive national and global investment in the trifecta of energy efficiency, cogeneration, and renewable energy (see “An introduction to the core climate solutions“). And that requires companies to make investments maximizing long-term profits and minimizing lifecycle costs — not maximizing short term profits and minimizing first costs.

Having spent a decade working with leading businesses on greenhouse gas mitigation strategy, helping (many of) them to adopt energy efficiency, renewable energy, and cogeneration technologies, I can attest that the single biggest reason senior company executives and corporate energy managers turned down even highly profitable investments was the companies’ obsession with short-term profits. Read more

Obama spoke to the CEO’s from the world’s biggest companies yesterday and, “offered his most extensive remarks on global warming policy since taking office yesterday,” as E&E Daily (subs req’d) reports.

At the Business Roundtable meeting, Obama reaffirmed that, “I said during the campaign we were looking at a hundred percent auction,” and warned inaction was not an option because we face a return to $150 a barrel oil and serious climate impacts:

The science is overwhelming. This is a real problem. It will have severe economic consequences, as well as political and national security and environmental consequences.

I was especially please to see that he focused on the threat of ever-worsening droughts across this country and the world (see full remarks below).

Weyerhaeuser President Daniel Fulton, said companies are worried about the costs of a cap & trade bill during tough economic times. But Obama had already made the key point:

I understand that this will be a difficult transition for many businesses to make, and that’s why this budget does not account for such a cap until 2012 — a time when this economy should be on the road to recovery.

Realistically, a climate bill is not going to be law before 2010, and I doubt the cap is going to be put in place before 2013 — and it won’t bite for a few years after that. I’d be amazed if the price for CO2 was much higher than, say, $15 a ton in 2015, which means a total “cost” of maybe $90 billion (assuming consumers and businesses do no energy efficiency whatsoever) — not a bloody big impact on a $15 trillion U.S. economy.

Obama understands that repetition is the key to good messaging and that his Administration and progressives needs to repeat this key message over and over again:

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The long-stalled nominations were unanimously approved by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. And a key Republican says there are no GOP holds on them, and they will be confirmed.

That is awesome news for science in general and climate in particular (see “For NOAA head, Obama appoints yet another scientist who gets climate” and “Obama’s strongest message on climate yet: John Holdren to be named Science Adviser“).

Kudos to everybody who took some action to move these forward (see here).

E&E News (subs. req’d) has the full story:

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