In a speech on the Senate floor last Thursday, Sen. Byron Dorgan expressed his strong opposition to the establishment of a carbon market, sharply criticizing the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy and Security Act, saying the bill would “find very little favor from me” if it were brought to a Senate vote:

Those in the Senate who are working very hard and talking about the issue of climate change and how we might want to cap carbon and what kind of a low-carbon future we might be able to do should understand at least there are some of us — and I certainly speak only for myself — who believe that cap-and-trade — quote, unquote around the “trade” — makes no sense to me. I don’t think we ought to embrace cap-and-trade, I think we ought to embrace a cap with different approaches.

And so, Mr. President, I will have more to say on this, but I wanted to explain at least as those who are writing this bill and attempting to take that which was produced in the House with 400-and-some pages on cap-and-trade, I want them to understand that some of us will resist very aggressively the “trade” side of “cap-and-trade.”

Watch it:

Dorgan’s concerns about “consigning our interest with respect to a carbon restrained future to a trading system of carbon securities that the biggest trading companies in the world have an interest in” have been widely noted, after he ran an op-ed that summarized his floor speech. Joe Romm wonders “if he is proposing to reduce emissions without using the free market,” and discusses how the carbon market established by Waxman-Markey would limit speculation and manipulation. Paul Krugman eviscerates Dorgan’s broadside attack on any kind of carbon market:

This is really bad — it’s not a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good, it’s a case of the perfect being an enemy of the planet.

“By all means keep a watchful eye on speculators and regulate derivatives — and make market manipulation illegal, as Waxman-Markey does,” Krugman writes. “But don’t apply standards to emissions trading that you don’t apply to any other market.” Thanks to Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), Waxman-Markey also closes loopholes in existing energy markets. Brad Plumer notes that Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have introduced legislation to establish even stronger carbon market regulation.

In his 18-minute speech, Dorgan reiterated his commitment to a “low-carbon future,” but said the Congress should not “create targets and timelines for CO2 emissions that are simply unachievable.” He argued that the energy legislation he helped craft in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee should be passed “first,” as he believes it “is a significant step toward the climate change challenge.”

In fact, the “targets and timelines” in Waxman-Markey — including a 14 percent reduction in current emissions levels and a renewable electricity standard of 15 percent by 2020 — are of course eminently achievable. Unfortunately, it is an open question whether such targets are sufficient to avoid climate catastrophe. Further, numerous studies have found that stronger targets lead to more innovation and job creation — just what the American economy needs now.

As Center for American Progress CEO John Podesta has pointed out, the Senate energy bill is “weak, toothless, and unacceptable.” In line with Bush-era energy bills, the bill fails to limit carbon pollution while promoting an expansion of fossil fuel production. Dorgan’s renewable standards are considerably weaker than the Waxman-Markey target, which itself is projected to have little effect on business-as-usual growth of clean energy. The Senate energy bill has helpful provisions for a clean, smart energy grid, but it is not comparable to the American Clean Energy and Security Act. A bill without mandated global warming pollution reductions simply does not address the “climate change challenge.”

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Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has published a blockbuster study, “Realistic Costs of Carbon Capture.” The paper concludes that First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) carbon capture and storage plants are going to be much more expensive than most people realize:

1.  The costs of carbon abatement on a 2008 basis for FOAK IGCC plants are expected to be approximately $150/tCO2 avoided (with a range $120-180/tCO2 avoided), excluding transport and storage costs….

This yields “levelised cost of electricity on a 2008 basis is approximately 10¢/kWh higher with capture than for conventional plants.“  So pick your favorite price for new coal plants — Moody’s said last year that is about 11¢/kWh — and add 10¢ and you get 20+¢/kWh.

We’re talking nuclear power prices (see “$26 Billion cost “” $10,800 per kilowatt! “” killed Ontario nuclear bid“).

But all is not lost for CCS, because we have many optimistic assumptions yet to be thrown in:

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Oil companies, electric utilities and the coal industry have poured more than $250,000 this year into the coffers of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House fundraising arm that has played a lead role in attacking Democrats who supported climate legislation.

All told, political action committees for various fossil fuel industries have given at least $280,000 to NRCC through the end of June, according to quarterly finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission….

In the 2008 campaign cycle, the oil and gas industry and utilities combined to contribute more than $1.6 million to NRCC, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

So reports Greenwire (subs. req’d) today.  See also “Follow the money: Global warming polluters pay to undermine Waxman-Markey clean energy bill.”

And don’t get me started how stupid the natural gas industry is for using their money to stop a climate bill that will be a boon to their industry (see Game changer 4: Tim Wirth delivers must-read “extreme words” to natural gas execs: “You don’t have the right to sit back and do nothing” about climate change. “We are in very deep trouble, the edge of catastrophe, and you can help”).  I’ll blog on that shortly.

Here are more details on this dirty money, and how the GOP is spending it:

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Given the importance of the agricultural sector to climate action, I’m going to repost both a Wonk Room piece by Brad Johnson and an analysis by Jake Caldwell, Director of Policy for Agriculture, Trade & Energy at American Progress.

In testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack debunked conservative fearmongering of the cost of cap-and-trade legislation on American farmers. Right-wing organizations from the Heritage Foundation to the American Farm Bureau have presented flawed analyses of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) to claim that a cap on global warming pollution would lead to a “permanent drought season” for the agricultural sector. At the request of Republican Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Mike Johanns (R-NE), the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted their own analysis of the clean energy legislation. As Vilsack testified, the USDA found that “the economic benefits to agriculture from cap and trade legislation will likely outweigh the costs”:

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In testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack will debunk conservative fearmongering of the cost of cap-and-trade legislation on American farmers. Right-wing organizations from the Heritage Foundation to the American Farm Bureau have presented flawed analyses of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) to claim that a cap on global warming pollution would lead to a “permanent drought season” for the agricultural sector. At the request of Republican Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Mike Johanns (R-NE), the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted their own analysis of the clean energy legislation. As Vilsack will testify, the USDA found that “the economic benefits to agriculture from cap and trade legislation will likely outweigh the costs”:

HR 2454′s creation of an offset market will create opportunities for the agricultural sector. In particular, our analysis indicates that annual net returns to farmers range from about $1 billion per year in 2015-20 to almost $15-20 billion in 2040-50, not accounting for the costs of implementing offset practices.

So, let me be clear about the implications of this analysis. In the short term, the economic benefits to agriculture from cap and trade legislation will likely outweigh the costs. In the long term, the economic benefits from offsets markets easily trump increased input costs from cap and trade legislation. Let me also note that we believe these figures are conservative because we aren’t able to model the types of technological change that are very likely to help farmers produce more crops and livestock with fewer inputs.

This analysis comports with the findings of the Brookings Institution, which found that a cap-and-trade system without an offset program would have little economic impact on the agricultural sector. Furthermore, not only does the USDA analysis not take into account the rewards of technology innovation, demand for biofuels, or opportunities for wind farms, it fails to account for the costs of inaction. Global warming has already hit American farmers hard, leading to reduced crop yields from droughts, floods, extreme storms, heat waves, seasonal shifts, and increased pestilence. In coming years, these disasters for farmers are expected to increase dramatically if no action is taken to address global warming.

The reality is that Waxman-Markey is both necessary for the survival of American farmers and an economic boon. The real debate Washington should be having is whether the concessions made on behalf of existing industrial agricultural giants weaken that opportunity — not only for the American public at large, but for the farmers themselves.

There are only three sure things in life “” death, taxes, and you’re never going to buy a hydrogen fuel cell car.  Congress should stop wasting your money pursuing Bush’s phony dream.

The fundamental problem with hydrogen as a transport fuel is one that no amount of federal R&D can solve:  The absurdly expensive infrastructure will never be built.

Why would the oil companies build an infrastructure which would, at best, compete with their existing product, or, more likely, cause them to lose their entire investment.  That leaves governments.  But who has the kind of money needed for an infrastructure that — if built around natural gas, which currently produces 95% of hydrogen in this country — won’t even save significant greenhouse gases compared to the best hybrids today running on gasoline?

But a renewable-energy-based hydrogen fueling system capable of handling even half the cars and light trucks on the road would cost hundreds of billions of dollars.  And it would have a cost of avoided carbon dioxide of more than $600 a metric ton, which is more than a factor of ten higher than most other strategies being considered today (see “Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a dead end from a technological, practical, and climate perspective“).

Even California — the big U.S. champion of hydrogen cars in the last decade — has all but abandoned efforts to build a major infrastructure (see “California Hydrogen Highway R.I.P.“).  Thus, the absurdly expensive hydrogen cars themselves will never be more than a niche product and thus never achieve the economies of scale needed come close to being affordable.

Energy Secretary Chu wisely slashed the hydrogen budget back in May:

“We asked ourselves, ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will covert to a hydrogen car economy?’ The answer, we felt, was ‘no,’” Chu said in a briefing today. He cited several barriers, including infrastructure, development of long-lasting portable fuel cells and other problems.

Duh.

But now, as Jim Motavalli reports in the NYT‘s Wheels blog, Congress is putting that money back:

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Future of Western U.S. Water Supply Threatened b Climate Change

As the West warms, a drier Colorado River system could see as much as a one-in-two chance of fully depleting all of its reservoir storage by mid-century assuming current management practices continue on course, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.

The study, in press in the American Geophysical Union journal, Water Resources Research, looked at the effects of a range of reductions in Colorado River stream flow on future reservoir levels and the implications of different management strategies. Roughly 30 million people depend on the Colorado River — which hosts more than a dozen dams along its 1,450 journey from Colorado’s Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California — for drinking and irrigation water.

The Colorado River system is presently enduring its 10th year in a drought that began in 2000, said lead study author Balaji Rajagopalan, a CU-Boulder associate professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering. Fortunately, the river system entered the drought with the reservoirs at approximately 95 percent of capacity. The reservoir system is presently at 59 percent of capacity….

See also “Australia today offers horrific glimpse of U.S. Southwest post-2040” and “NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe.”  Photo above is of Lake Powell in Utah.

Nissan Plans to Add Electric Vehicles to U.S. Factory

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There are many obstacles to taking action on climate change. Most of those obstacles have deep roots: there are powerful interest groups that don’t want market prices to reflect true costs, and there are ideologues “” financially supported by these interest groups “” who don’t want to admit that sometimes the government has to intervene.

But there’s also, it seems, growing opposition to cap-and-trade from people who should be on the side of progress “” but whose reaction is basically “Eek! Markets!Wall Street! Speculation! Bad!”

We don’t need this.

So let me talk a bit about why this reaction is 99% wrong, and bad for the planet.

So writes Paul Krugman on his blog.  He is responding to Sen Byron Dorgan’s op-ed yesterday and my blog post on it (see “When Sen. Dorgan finds out what’s in the climate bill “” hint, hint, White House “” he might just support it“).  Of course, I only did an undergraduate “concentration” on economics — micro, macro, and “The Economics of Energy and Environment” — whereas Krugman has a Nobel-friggin’-Prize, so people should probably listen to what he has to say on the subject:

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