The White House today offered its endorsement to the 648-page draft climate and energy bill unveiled by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman of California and Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts.”President Obama is committed to an energy policy that launches a new sector of clean energy jobs, makes our economy more competitive, and weans the nation off its dependence on foreign oil,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an e-mail. “While we are still reviewing the details, it is clear that Chairman Waxman’s legislation would advance all of those goals, and the president looks forward to working with members of Congress in both chambers to pass a bill that would transition the nation to a clean energy economy.”

So reports E&E News PM (subs. req’d, excerpted below) reports on the new House climate bill (see “First impression of Waxman-Markey” for more details).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she’d try to get GOP votes, but wouldn’t hold the bill up waiting for them.

“We would hope to have Republican votes as we go forward on this,” Pelosi said. “Will I not put it forth unless I do? No. No. There’s an inevitability to this that everyone has to understand.”… House Republican leaders signaled little interest in working with Democrats on the climate and energy bill.

Duh. Then E&E News PM reprinted the standard conservative lie:

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National Center for Public Policy Research president Amy Ridenour explains to Congress why she laundered $2.5 million for Jack Abramoff.

In a widely reprinted column, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s (NCPPR) David Ridenour attacks White House energy and climate change adviser Carol Browner as a “socialist” and “zealot” with “so much baggage she could be an airline”:

As little respect as she has shown for the law, she has shown even less for science.

Ridenour’s arguments include the bizarre Drudge Report attack that Browner is a socialist, accusing Browner of complicity in an EPA case for which she was fully acquitted, and the repetition of a 1995 claim of “illegal lobbying” by then-Congressman David McIntosh (R-IN), which the New York Times explained then involved “doing things that have long been routine functions of officials in the executive branch, practices that lawyers in Republican and Democratic administrations alike have declared legal.”

In fact, it is the National Center for Public Policy Research that has little respect for the law, and even less for science:

Little Respect For The Law: Laundering $2.5 million for Jack Abramoff. Jack Abramoff was a member of NCPPR’s Board of Directors; he resigned in October 2004. From 1999 to 2001, NCPPR wrote “repeated articles that aligned with the positions of the lobbyist’s clients.” In October 2002, Abramoff directed the Mississippi Band of Choctaws to give $1 million to NCPPR, and then told Amy Ridenour to distribute the funds to front organizations he controlled. In June 2003, Greenberg Traurig, the firm that employed Abramoff, sent $1.5 million to NCPPR, which Ridenour again distributed to front organizations controlled by Abramoff. Amy Ridenour later testified to Congress that she was an unwitting dupe. [Raw Story, 3/8/06]

Less Respect For Science: NCPPR Is Part Of The Right-Wing Climate-Denier Machine. The National Center for Public Policy Research was founded in 1982 by Amy Ridenour, David’s wife and a compatriot of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist in the leadership of the College Republicans in 1981. NCPPR is a member organization of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Cooler Heads Coalition and the right-wing State Policy Network. In 25 years of operation, NCPPR has received about $280,000 from Exxon Mobil, in part to fund its “Envirotruth” climate denial website. [ExxonSecrets, SourceWatch]

Less Respect For Science: NCPPR Uses African Poverty to Attack Climate Change Action. Using its Project 21 front group, NCPPR put out a press release supporting CEI’s Third-World vs. Gore campaign on Amy Ridenour’s blog. It attacked “Gore and his celebrity friends” for “living opulent lifestyles” while “many in the Third World – particularly those in Africa – are literally dying due to a lack of adequate power, and the catastrophe that could result from imposing anti-global warming emissions regulations on power generation in these areas.” In fact, Africa is “one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability,” with between 75 and 250 million Africans facing increasing water scarcity by 2020, potential food shortages and a rise in disease. [Project 21, 3/10/2008] [IPCC, 2007]

This hit piece was published in several right-wing publications, including Investor’s Business Daily, Robert Decherd‘s Providence Journal, and Rev. Sung Yun Moon’s Washington Times.

Comcast, FedEx, GM, Honda, Microsoft, TimeWarner, Toyota (!), Visa, VW, and WalMart — these are among the brand name companies who support the global warming denial promoted by the Cato Institute (full list below).

Many of you have probably now seen that absurd anti-scientific denier ad Cato is spending big bucks to put in major newspapers. “The New York Times ad alone would have cost over $150,000, based on the newspaper’s published ad rates,” notes one article.

The ad attacks President Obama and the whole notion of strong climate action with studies that don’t even support its basic premise — see New study quoted by Cato deniers concludes “warming over the 21st century may well be larger than that predicted by the current generation of models” and RealClimate’s excellent post (here).

The ad’s premise — “We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated” — has been utterly debunked by the most comprehensive and up-to-date scientific research in the past two years (see “M.I.T. doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C and “Hadley Center warns of catastrophic 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path” and “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm).”

If we listen to Cato and the ad’s signatories, we are sure to destroy a livable climate for our children and their children and the next fifty generations (see “Intro to impacts: Hell and High Water“).

So I thought as a matter public service, you’d like to see the corporate sponsors of Cato, whose money goes to support its efforts, including this ad and their general disinformation effort (see “The intellectual bankruptcy of the Cato Institute“).

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“Money no object for Indian reactor plans”

That is certainly the attitude you need to have if you’re planning to build a bunch of nukes:

• Turkey’s only bidder for first nuclear plant offers a price of 21 cents per kilowatt-hour
• Exclusive analysis, Part 1: The staggering cost of new nuclear power
• Warning to taxpayers, investors — Part 2: Nukes may become troubled assets, ruin credit ratings
• The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power
• Nuclear meltdown in Finland

The recently introduced Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Act (H.R. 1550) is seriously flawed, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The ACEEE is one of the most respected organizations in the country analyzing and promoting sound energy efficiency policies. I have worked with them many times over the past two decades. Here is their press release:

March 31, 2009

Washington, D.C.: ACEEE commends the intent of Representative Sutton, sponsor of the CARS Act, to help the U.S. auto industry emerge successfully from the current crisis while reducing oil dependence and global warming emissions. Unfortunately, the vehicle scrappage program outlined by the bill as introduced would not achieve its energy and environmental objectives.

The most serious shortcomings of the bill are:

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House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) have unveiled green economy legislation today that will set national standards for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and global warming pollution — but leaves open whether polluters will be subsidized to achieve those standards.

Green economy legislation is needed now, for three key reasons:

Repowering A Healthy Economy. According to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a federal standard requiring all utilities to obtain 25 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025 would create 297,000 new domestic jobs and save consumers $64.3 billion in lower electricity and natural gas bills. Clean energy standards will reduce the 24,000 premature deaths, 550,000 asthma attacks, and 38,000 heart attacks caused each year by power plant pollution, disproportionately hurting vulnerable children and the elderly.

Restoring Economic Leadership. Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr warned Congress in January that “of the top 30 companies in solar, wind, and advanced battery technologies in the world today, only six of them are U.S. firms.” Doerr called for “a predictable price tag be put on greenhouse gases in order to encourage the massive investment and innovation necessary to make the American economy competitive in coming years.”

Stopping Global Catastrophe. The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has devised this visual representation of the risks of global temperature rise if we don’t implement green economy policies. Any rise over 2°C carries high risks of worldwide devastation.

NO POLICY	GREEN ECONOMY

Waxman and Markey are releasing their discussion draft today, with an aggressive schedule to get the legislation to the House floor in less than two months:

– March 31, 2009: Discussion draft
– April 6 – 17: Representatives return home for spring district work period
– Week of April 20: Hearings
– Week of April 27: Energy and Environment subcommittee mark up
– Week of May 4: Full committee hearing
– May 11: Full committee mark up begins

House Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) told E&E News that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “plan floor votes in both chambers by the end of July,” with a conference “by the end of the fall.”

House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) are releasing their long-awaited draft energy and climate bill today. Based on reports from a Committe debrief and an E&E Daily story this morning (subs. req’d, excerpted below) and a Reuters story (here), I’ll give some first impressions.

[UPDATE: Full 648-page (!) bill is here and summary is here. More comments to come, but first impression stays the same. I agree with the Greenpeace statement, "Waxman-Markey Draft a Good First Step, but Improvements Needed."]

Waxman-Markey seems pretty good. It will jumpstart the crucial transition to a green economy. It keeps the overall impact to U.S. businesses and consumers very low (as any smart climate bill would, see “Introduction to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar“). And it has the targets needed for the U.S. to join other countries in averting catastrophic lobal warming impacts that are inevitable if we stay on our current emissions path.

I’d give it a B+.The bill, as Friday’s Waxman-Markey-Dingell-Boucher letter suggested, uses the flawed US Climate Action Partnership proposal as a blueprint (see “NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan“).

But it has stronger near-term targets: “a 20 percent cut from 2005 levels by 2020.” And the bill embraces the useful USCAP notion of a medium-term target — in this case “a 42 percent reduction in 2030.” That target sends a strong message that business-as-usual is off the table for fossil fuel companies. It also keeps the needed 80% cut in 2050.

It has both a renewable electricity standard for utilities (25 percent in 2025, though “a fifth can be met with efficiency measures”) and an energy efficiency resource standard — two essential provision for jumpstarting a transition to a clean energy, green jobs economy, while keeping total energy bills low. It also establishes a Low Carbon Fuel Standard — eventually, which is to say apparently after 2022.

One reason the bill doesn’t get an “A” is because it still allows too many offsets — 2 billion, whereas total U.S. GHGs in 2005 were about 7.2 billion tons (see “Bush policies cause U.S. GHG emissions to soar 1.4% in 2007“). The good news is you apparently have to purchase 5 tons of offsets to substitute for 4 tons of actual emissions reductions and you can’t get international offsets from a country that has not agreed to reduce its emissions — which together are vast improvements over USCAP.

The provisions on new coal plants do not strike me as tough enough for the next few years, but don’t lose much sleep — or lower the overall grade for this bill too much — over this since the Obama administration is probably not going allow very many new dirty coal plants anyway (see “EPA makes landmark finding: Global warming threatens public health and welfare“).

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Countries representing 190 nations are participating in United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change talks this week (see Climate Envoy Stern in Bonn: The U.S. can’t “ride in on a white horse and make it all work”). Guest blogger Andrew Jones and Elizabeth Swain has been doing important modeling work on what climate commitments are needed to avert catastrophic impacts in a post first published here.

The diplomats at this week’s UNFCCC meeting in Bonn will need to aim towards the most ambitious proposals offered so far within the UNFCCC process if they want a global agreement later this year that will stabilize CO2 levels in the range of 350-450 ppm.

The figure to the left — the output of the C-ROADS simulator — explains why.

We collected emissions reductions proposals in the public domain up until March 10, 2009 (called “Current Proposals” in the graph and documented here) — and found that even if they were fully implemented they would be far from sufficient to meet the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 levels at or below 450 ppm, reaching instead about 730 ppm by 2100.

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