After it was reported that House Democrats do not intend to include President Obama’s carbon cap legislation in a non-filibusterable budget reconciliation bill, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos called health care “the survivor“:

Cap and trade will not get the same budget protection, and there are nowhere near 60 votes for it. Keeping it out of the reconciliation process recognizes reality: Congress can’t pass it in the middle of a recession.

Delaying climate legislation doesn’t “recognize reality” — it ignores it. As top climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf explained at the Copenhagen Climate Change Congress last week, the observed reality is worse than climate models have been predicting. Even limiting global warming to two degrees Centigrade above historical levels — 1.3 degrees (2.3 F) above current temperatures — isn’t as safe as Russian roulette:

I personally as a climate scientist, I could not honestly go and tell the public that two degrees warming is safe. We’re already seeing a lot of impacts of the 0.7 degrees warming that we’ve had so far. So I consider two degrees not safe. And John Schellnhuber this morning asked about the question “Is Russian roulette dangerous?” and in Russian roulette you have a one in six chance of something terrible happening, I think that when we go to two degrees we probably have more than a one in six chance of really bad impacts occurring.

Watch it:

This terrific post is from guest blogger Laurie Johnson, Chief Economist for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center. For more on Newt’s embrace of the dark arts, see “Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh” and “Note to media: Newt Gingrich is an eco-fraud.”

Newt Gingrich has taken to calling President Obama’s proposal to cap global warming pollution an “energy tax,” even specifically claiming it would be a “hidden $1,300-per-family energy-tax increase“:

If the country’s No. 1 priority is to create jobs, then a hidden $1,300-per-family energy-tax increase in the guise of a cap-and-trade system is absolutely destructive. Herbert Hoover raised taxes in 1932, and it further crippled the economy.

Newt Gingrich’s assertion is voodoo economics — designed to scare us into believing we can’t afford climate protection.

In Newt’s nightmare tax math, the economic value of the carbon market just disappears!

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In Why the United States REQUIRES a strong climate bill to remain competitive, Part 1, I reprised the thesis first documented by Harvard’s Michael Porter — strong, leading edge, pro-innovation regulations promote national competitiveness. As President Obama said yesterday:

We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for our lasting prosperity.

It is Obama’s final point — “lasting prosperity” — that is the focus of this post. Obama is hinting at a point I tried to make explicit with last week in my interview with NYT‘s Tom Friedman and subsequent post (see “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme“):

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm.

To perpetuate the high returns the rich countries in particular have been achieving in recent decades, we have been taking an ever greater fraction of nonrenewable energy resources (especially hydrocarbons) and natural capital (fresh water, arable land, forests, fisheries), and, the most important nonrenewable natural capital of all — a livable climate.

In short, we have failed to designed a system capable of lasting prosperity. Quite the reverse.

Like all Ponzi schemes, the system must collapse. When it does, the only jobs left standing will be those that are “green” — which can be defined as those jobs that do not plunder nonrenewable energy resources and natural capital and/or do not to destroy a livable climate.

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Yesterday, the Senate unanimously confirmed John Holdren for science adviser and Jane Lubchenco as NOAA head. These are world-class experts on climate science:

• For NOAA head, Obama appoints yet another scientist who gets climate
• Obama’s strongest message on climate yet: John Holdren to be named Science Adviser

And for all the angst about the delay in their appointment, it should be noted that President Bush’s science adviser wasn’t even named until June 25, 2001 and not confirmed until four months later, October 23, 2001 — and his NOAA head wasn’t even selected until September and confirmed until December.

Kudos to President Obama for making these key administration science positions a top priority.

An energy efficiency portfolio standard is as important as a renewable standard, but has gotten much less attention — until now. A new coalition is pushing this crucial strategy, as guest blogger Kalen Pruss, a Center for American Progress intern and U. Mich. major in environmental studies, explains.

President Obama’s inclusion in his 2010 budget proposal of revenue from a global warming has launched the debate over clean up costs, who pays, and who benefits. For the most part, the debate has ignored the cheapest, cleanest energy source: using electricity more efficiently. Reducing energy demand and consumption would mean that we could do more while using less. According to McKinsey & Company, improving energy efficiency could offset 85 percent of projected electricity demand in 2030. Energy saved via efficiency improvements costs significantly less than conventional base-load electricity.

Even though efficiency reduces energy use, saves money, and reduce pollution, a win- win-win, most government and businesses are just awakening to the opportunities of efficiency investments. Uniting under the newly announced Campaign for an Energy Efficient America, more than 60 corporations and nonprofits strongly advocate a national Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS) to mandate efficiency improvements across the country.

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