I’d be interested in your thoughts on this inauspicious occasion. I have three:

1. Climate change is not the only reason to wean ourselves from oil.
2. In the past 20 years, Exxon saw staggering profits and became the primary fossil-fuel company funding climate disinformation.
3. The company still gets better media attention than it deserves (see NYT suckered by ExxonMobil in puff piece titled “Green is for Sissies”).

Here is a good E&E News PM (subs. req’d) story on how, “Two decades after the Exxon Valdez disaster, the oil spill haunts the Prince William Sound ecosystem, Alaskan fishing communities and the nation’s energy policy”:

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With the publication of George F. Will’s error-filled “Dark Green Doomsayers” column of February 15th, the Washington Post failed to abide by its guiding principles. Despite the publication of a mildly critical ombudsman’s column, a strong rebuke by guest columnist Chris Mooney, and a letter to the editor from the misattributed United Nations World Meteorological Organization, the Washington Post editors have not issued a single correction to the column, which was syndicated to dozens, and possibly hundreds, of newspapers across the nation. After Eugene Meyer bought the Post in 1933 and began the family ownership that continues today, he published “These Principles“:

The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.

The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.

As a disseminator of the news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.

What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old.

The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of the owner.

In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good. The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.

Will’s column, distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group syndicate, ran in dozens of newspapers. Until the Writers Group issues a correction — George Will himself does — his lies will live on. Based on Nexis and online archives, these papers include: Read more

At one time, Chicago was a serious contender for America’s greenest big city. Now they appear to be mostly contending for biggest greenwasher.

I didn’t learn the stunning story about what Chicago is trying to get away with until I was interviewed by a Chicago Tribune reporter. His story “Chicago’s ‘green’ promise fades: Chicago taxpayers on hook for carbon credits that do little to fight global warming,” was published yesterday:

Mayor Richard Daley promised long ago that his administration would start fighting global warming by buying 20 percent of its electricity from wind farms and other sources of green energy.

But more than two years after the deadline he set, the city continues to get nearly all of its power from coal, natural gas and nuclear plants, according to records obtained by the Tribune.

Daley administration officials contend they have kept the mayor’s promise by buying carbon credits, a controversial way of offsetting pollution by paying money to producers of green energy. The credits are supposed to lower the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide sent into the atmosphere.

But most of the credits Chicago has bought over the last two years didn’t reduce carbon emissions at all, energy experts and the city’s own broker on the deal said.

So what exactly is the city of Chicago wasting its citizens’ money on? Good old-fashioned rip-offsets — in this case, emphasis on the word “old”:

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We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can create those jobs right here in America.

We know the right choice. We have known the right choice for a generation. The time has come to make that choice, to act on what we know.

Obama gets it. Nobody is delivering the clean energy and global warming message better or more consistently (see Obama at SCE Electric Vehicle Technical Center: “The nation that leads on energy will be the nation that leads the world in the 21st century”).

And one thing I particularly like about his message is that he (and Cabinet secretaries like Chu) don’t gloss over global warming, its dire impacts, or our moral obligation to act.

Obama’s remarks came after a meeting between administration officials and energy entrepreneurs here in Washington. Full speech is here:

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Following the schedule leaked to the public earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency has sent a global warming endangerment finding to the White House, nearly two years after the Supreme Court mandated action. The finding that “global warming is endangering the public’s health and welfare” will be signed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on April 16th after interagency review, for publication in the Federal Register on April 30th. By the time the decision is finalized after two months of public comment, it will have been nearly two years since the EPA was blocked by the Bush White House from issuing such a finding.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce responded with dismay. Bill Kovacs, the Chamber’s vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, complained:

By moving forward with the endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, EPA is putting in motion a set of decisions that may have far-reaching unintended consequences. Specifically, once the finding is made, no matter how limited, some environmental groups will sue to make sure it is applied to all aspects of the Clean Air Act. This will mean that all infrastructure projects, including those under the president’s stimulus initiative, will be subject to environmental review for greenhouse gases. Since not one of the projects has been subjected to that review, it is possible that the projects under the stimulus initiative will cease. This will be devastating to the economy.

Far from being “devastating to the economy,” a global warming endangerment finding is needed to allow the government and businesses to rationally guide future economic policy. As Robert Sussman wrote in the Wonk Room last year, responding to the same doom and gloom scenario painted that time by the Wall Street Journal, this fear is without merit:

The specter of bureaucrats running amok and strangling the economy — by intruding into small businesses and individual households and banning fuels on which millions of Americans depend — is a fantasy of die-hard free-market zealots. In fact, a new administration could enforce new global warming regulations with common sense, focusing on large emitters of greenhouse gases to achieve reasonable reductions while spurring trillions of dollars worth of economic growth and green-collar jobs.

Sussman is now the EPA Senior Policy Counsel.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos wrote an opaque and misleading post on recent news about climate politics and budget policy, “Dems Make Choice: Health Care Over Carbon Caps.” So did Nate Silver at 538.com, “Health Care > Environment? It’s the Economy, Stupid.” So did Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic, “Dems Choosing Health Care Over Cap-N-Trade?”

In short, nothing that happened in the last week provides any serious evidence that the Democrats have chosen health care over cap-and-trade — or even that a health care bill will pass before a climate bill (though it may and I hope it does).

Now admittedly, Congressional Democrats’ decision to drop the cap-and-trade from the budget — and the general subject of budget reconciliation — is also opaque. And the Dems haven’t really explained what they were doing or why.

Let me take a shot at both the climate and budget side of things, though I’d be happy if any of the four people in the country who really understand the budget reconciliation process add their thoughts.

The key thing to bear in mind is that a carbon cap possesses two qualities that make it both an unnecessary and poor choice for inclusion in the budget process — it is very complicated, and it is self-financing.

Let’s start with what Stephanopoulos wrote:

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[CP's Bill Becker adds his perspective on the current climate debate in DC and on the conservatives who fight action at any cost, including the health and well-being of future generations. While you read this, ignore the conservative revisionism that the New Deal prolonged the Depression and did not stimulate the economy. In fact, historian Eric Rauchway notes "Excepting 1937-1938, unemployment fell each year of Roosevelt's first two terms [while] the U.S. economy grew at average annual growth rates of 9 percent to 10 percent.” What happened those two years? As Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has noted, in 1937-38, FDR “was persuaded to balance the budget” by fiscal conservatives and “cut spending and the economy went back down again” (see here).]

Growing National Debt

It’s time for a reality check in the contentious debate over the investments President Obama has proposed to fight global climate change and build a new energy economy.

As Ken Burns once put it, “we need a little more Pluribus and a little less Unum” in the United States these days. Instead, a newly outraged Outrage Class is firing bullets made of silly putty, hoping some will stick to the new President.

Here are some prominent current examples:

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President Obama has picked David Sandalow, to be assistant secretary for Policy and International Affairs at the Energy Department. He also plans to nominate BP chief scientist Steven Koonin to be undersecretary for Science.

And I hear that renewables expert and UC Berkeley professor Dan Kammen is on the short list for assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) — the position I held for 6 months in 1997 (in an acting capacity).

Sandalow is a good friend who also held a number of positions during the Clinton administration (bio here). He is an expert on both global warming and oil policy — and wrote The Book to Read on “Freedom from Oil.” you can watch a video interview of Sandalow laying out his plan to end the US oil addiction here.

Sandalow is a big supporter of plug-in hybrids, which is no surprise since they are a core climate solution, And electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence.

E&E Daily (subs. req) says about the appointment:

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Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) appears to like deserts so much that she wants them to stretch from Oklahoma to California and cover one third the planet.

The AP reported Friday, “Feinstein seeks [to] block solar power from desert land“:

Nineteen companies have submitted applications to build solar or wind facilities on a parcel of 500,000 [Mojave] desert acres, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Friday such development would violate the spirit of what conservationists had intended when they donated much of the land to the public.

Feinstein said Friday she intends to push legislation that would turn the land into a national monument, which would allow for existing uses to continue while preventing future development.

I am sympathetic to “conservationists,” but mostly to those who are trying to conserve what matters most, a livable climate. The solar resource is the only one capable of sustaining the nation’s and world’s population, even if we all become far, far more efficient (see “The Solution“).

The good news is that concentrated solar thermal power (CSP aka solar baseload aka “The technology that will save humanity“) is such an efficient converter of the sun’s energy that we could generate half the country’s power with a 65 mile by 65 mile square grid in the southwest. The “bad” news is that the obvious place to put much of California’s CSP is the Mojave Desert:

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Coincidence? I think not!