U.S. media misses the story, while “China spends big to counter severe weather caused by climate change”

It’s pretty remarkable that we are having record rainfall and record flooding in the cold season month of March. It’s much easier to set records in August, when there is much more moisture in the air available for record rains.

The Northeast has been walloped with record-smashing deluges and flooding.

I have called this type of rapid deluge, “global warming type” record rainfall, since it is one of the most basic predictions of climate science “” and it’s an impact that has already been documented to have started, as I’ll discuss.

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President Barack Obama has made comprehensive energy reform a key issue of his presidency, with massive investments in clean energy, initial efforts to confront climate change, and a commitment to “ending our addiction to foreign oil.” Today, Obama announced a sweeping new offshore drilling policy, opening “vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling” for the first time. This plan would also restore the ban on drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and the West Coast. White House officials “pitched the changes as ways to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and create jobs,” the Associated Press reports. For years, however, Obama has correctly explained that new offshore drilling would do nothing to “reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil”:

“The days of running a 21st century economy on a 20th century fossil fuel are numbered – and we need to realize that before it’s too late.”

“The truth is, an oil future is not a secure future for America.”

“We could open up every square inch of America to drilling and we still wouldn’t even make a dent in our oil dependency.” 9/15/05

“It would be nice if we could produce our way out of this problem, but it’s just not possible.” 2/28/06

“Instead of making tough political decisions about how to reduce our insatiable demand for oil, this bill continues to lull the American people into thinking that we can drill our way out of our energy problems. ” 8/1/06

“Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close.” 8/28/08

This expansion in offshore drilling leases, the Energy Information Administration has found, will have no effect on gas prices or dependence on foreign oil. Nor will it increase jobs, as oil companies aren’t really interested in new drilling — they are already sitting on existing leases instead of drilling them, in order to inflate their bottom lines by claiming the value of leased oil reserves as an asset. Furthermore, a Center for American Progress study has found that money that goes into the oil sector instead of the clean energy economy means a net loss of 14 jobs per million dollars.

In the beginning of August 2008, as Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign overlapped the presidential campaign, and oil and gas prices were skyrocketing to record levels, Obama dropped his “blanket opposition to expanded offshore drilling,” saying that he would be willing “to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage” in order to get Republican votes for comprehensive climate and energy reform.

In 2005 and 2006, Obama talked about the “tough decisions” of “how to reduce our insatiable demand for oil” and “investing in more hybrids and renewable energy sources, raising CAFE standards and helping our auto industry transition to a fuel-efficient future,” instead of drilling. In his first year in office, Obama made tremendous down payments on the clean-energy transition, the cash-for-clunkers program, and ninety billion dollars of Recovery Act funds for hybrid cars, efficiency, and renewable energy technologies, and momentous new CAFE standards that will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil demand. That accomplished, Obama took a step back, saying in his 2010 State of the Union speech that “clean energy jobs” means “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.” America’s oil addiction can only be broken with comprehensive climate legislation that puts a real cap on carbon pollution.

Conservatives are treating the announcement with disdain — Gingrich’s ASWF said the president’s plan “is likely to be an attempt by Obama to seduce the public (into) believing that he will do something in the future on offshore drilling,” but amounts to little more than window-dressing. Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity vice president Phil Kerpen commented that “the idea that this is a big concession in exchange for which Congress should jumpstart climate legislation is ridiculous.”

Bush official Dan Bartlett admits authorizing offshore oil drilling will be unlikely to win over any GOP votes: “Republicans have made a calculation that cooperating with this administration at this time is not necessary for them to pick up seats”

The Obama administration announced today that it will be approving “significant oil and gas exploration off America’s coasts.”  Why?  Why?  Why?

Last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration report, “Impact of Limitations on Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Federal Outer Continental Shelf” analyzed the difference between full offshore drilling (Reference Case) and restriction to offshore drilling (OCS limited case).  In 2020, there is no impact on gasoline prices (right hand column).  In 2030, US gasoline prices would be three cents a gallon lower.  Woohoo!

I have previously written about the trivial impact of opening the OCS further to drilling — The oil companies already have access to some 34 billion barrels of offshore oil they have barely begun to develop (see “The cruel offshore-drilling hoax“).  I have also written that I thought it inevitable that the Dems would cave on drilling when oil prices started to jump (which hasn’t happened yet thanks primarily to the global recession).

So the only reason for the administration’s policy shift would be to get conservative votes for comprehensive energy reform.  As Think Progress explains, that effect seems unlikely:

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Our guest blogger is Katie Chin, a student enrolled at the business school of Boston College, and a member of Students for a Just and Stable Future.

I slept in the Cambridge Common Sunday night. Cold, drenched, and hungry, I took the long bus ride Monday morning back to my college dorm carrying two sleeping bags, a tent, and my book bag weighed down from the rain the night before. Exhausted after a twenty-hour day of rallies, campaign planning, tweeting, and lobbying, I returned back to my classes, school job, and normal college life before returning to write about my experience.

Why do I do this? I have no choice. We have no choice. The world is burning.

As part of The Leadership Campaign, I am fighting alongside community partners to create legislation in Massachusetts for 100% clean electricity by 2020. Currently we are pushing the legislature to release An Act to Create a Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force so that we can see real change in our energy consumption necessary for fighting climate change. The science is clear: we must act now. This bill will be the first step in preventing the devastations of climate change in Massachusetts while opening up the opportunity for the state to lead the country in the clean electricity sector, inviting investment in the booming green technology field, and boosting our economy at a critical time.

To display the necessity of our legislature’s action, The Leadership Campaign has pioneered the ‘sleep-out’, demonstrating our moral qualms with sleeping in homes powered by dirty electricity by sleeping out across the state, joining together in public spaces in sleeping bags and tents under the stars. Throughout the past six months, hundreds of individuals have been participating in these sleep-outs. The most recent sleep-out took place Sunday on the Cambridge Common, before a day of lobbying on Monday. At the rally before the sleep-out, Martha Pskowski, a freshman at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts, stated our current situation accurately:

I have good news and bad news. The good news is: It’s up to us. We have the drive, the energy, the imagination, the ingenuity and the determination not to quit that makes history. Combining our forces and forming coalitions we will shape the state of the world in thirty years. The bad news is: It’s going to be extremely hard, it’s going to take everything we’ve got, and powerful interests will be fighting us every step of the way. It’s not going to end with this bill. It’s not going to end with the next one. It’s not going to end until the world is a safe, stable, and just place for all our brothers and sisters.

Martha joined a superstar line-up of speakers, including former Seattle Major Greg Nickels, who founded the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, leading over 1,000 mayors to adopt Kyoto regulations in their respective cities, and Whit Jones, Deputy Field Director of the Energy Action Coalition, a youth climate action leader. Vice Mayor Henrietta Davis, Representative Will Brownsberger, Cambridge City Council members Leland Cheung, Craig Kelly, Sam Seidel, and Denise Simmons, community organization leaders, and student speakers also spoke at the rally. Monday morning, Dan Proctor, Massachusetts Chapter Chair of the Sierra Club, spoke and lobbied with members of The Leadership Campaign.

Our most important sleep-out of The Leadership Campaign will take place on the Boston Common on April 21st, the eve of Earth Day. As John Beatty, a junior at Harvard University and Boston Campaign Coordinator, said, “We are the cavalry. We need to go out there and be the fire to get this thing done!”

For a list of community partners, policy platform, and how to further participate with The Leadership Campaign, visit our website.

Senate Trio Targets Week of Earth Day for emissions bill

The three senators at the center of climate and energy negotiations are aiming to unveil their bill during the week celebrating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22.

And that just happens to coincide with the launch of my new book Straight Up, which puts the bill and forthcoming debate into context.  Here’s more background on the bill.

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After Greenpeace released a report yesterday detailing the efforts of the Koch Industries billionaires David and Charles Koch to pollute energy policy and deny the threat of global warming, Koch Industries communications director Melissa Cohlmia attempted to greenwash their record:

Both a free society and the scientific method require an open and honest airing of all sides, not demonizing and silencing those with whom you disagree. We’ve strived to encourage an intellectually honest debate on the scientific basis for claims of harm from greenhouse gases.

Americans for Prosperity — founded, funded, and overseen by Koch Industries billionaire David Koch — claims to be trying to build that “free society” by “educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing those citizens as advocates in the public policy process.” So far, they’re not doing a very good job of engaging in an “intellectually honest debate” without “demonizing and silencing those with whom you disagree”:

‘Hitler Youth.’ At an Americans for Prosperity event in December 2009, guest speaker Christopher Monckton called youth climate activists “Hitler Youth.” He told a Jewish youth climate activist whose grandparents escaped the Nazis that he was “Hitler Youth,” and that “you people don’t care” that “millions are dying in third world countries.” Americans for Prosperity again featured Christopher Monckton at a regional summit in March 2010. [The Times, 12/11/09]

‘Radical Global Warming Agenda.’ “President Obama is at again,” the Americans for Prosperity Regulation Reality Tour warns, with a “radical global warming agenda” by “unelected bureaucrats regulating our life,” “ignoring the entire democratic process all together.” Supposed threats of “EPA’s power grab” include “Grass Mileage Standards,” “Government Control of your Thermostat,” “Churches would need EPA Permits,” and The tour features “EPA Carbon Cops” who want to punish you if you “opened your refrigerator” or “drove a car.” [RegulationReality.com]

‘Al Gore’s Global Warming Alarmism.’ The Americans for Prosperity Hot Air Tour told people to “rally against Al Gore’s global warming alarmism” and “propaganda advanced by global warming alarmists,” claiming “global warming alarmism” means “fewer jobs,” “less freedom,” and a “government that controls your home thermostat remotely.” The Hot Air Tour flew a balloon over Al Gore’s “energy-guzzling mansion” in Tennessee with the message “Global Warming Alarmism.” [HotAirTour.org]

‘We Might As Well Forget Freedom.’ The Americans for Prosperity Hot Air Tour says that “far left environmentalists” are “radicals” with a “radical Global Warming ideology that claims people are the problem” who “want GOVERNMENT to force us to drive less and live in smaller homes while killing jobs that help grow our economy” and “want GOVERNMENT dictating our lives.” [HotAirTour.org]

Cohlmia told the Wonk Room that “AFP is an independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.” This is a remarkable claim, as Koch Industries executive vice presidents and directors Charles Koch and Richard Fink are also directors of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

In a must-read report, Greenpeace details how Koch Industries has “become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition,” spending over $48.5 million since 1997 to fund the anti-science disinformation machine.  Brad Johnson has the story.

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“Energy only” bills short-change new technologies

Studies show that “energy-only” legislation that fails to put a price on carbon pollution is less effective and more costly than comprehensive reform.  CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss and Kate Gordon explain why in this repost, which examines key provisions needed in a bill.

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Based on their inquiry and evidence, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason … to challenge the scientific consensus … that ‘global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity’.”

We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced….

In the context of the sharing of data and methodologies, we consider that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community….

Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.

These are quotes from the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee must-read report on Phil Jones and “the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.”

Climatologist Michael Mann called the report an “exoneration” of Jones and said:

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The Wonk Room has long detailed the role of the billionaire brothers of Koch Industries, Charles and David Koch, in destroying American prosperity. Their pollution-based fortunes have fueled a network of right-wing ideologues, from McCain mouthpiece Nancy Pfotenhauer to loony conspiracy theorist Christopher Monckton. In public, the Kochs like to burnish their reputations by buying museum and opera halls. In private, however, they’ve outspent Exxon Mobil to fund organizations of the climate denial machine, as Greenpeace details in a new report:

Although Koch intentionally stays out of the public eye, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming. Koch Industries has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent Exxon Mobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, Exxon Mobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the climate denial machine.

This report, “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine” documents roughly 40 climate denial and opposition organizations receiving Koch foundation grants in recent years, including:

– More than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) for its nationwide “Hot Air Tour” and “Regulation Reality Tour” campaigns to spread misinformation about climate science and oppose clean energy and climate legislation.

– More than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of misinformation on climate and environmental policy issues.

– Over $1 million to the Cato Institute, which disputes the scientific evidence behind global warming, questions the rationale for taking climate action, and has been heavily involved in spinning the recent ClimateGate smear campaign.

– $800,000 to the Manhattan Institute, which has hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years. Lomborg is a prominent media spokesperson who challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.

– $365,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) which advocates against taking action on climate change because warming is “inevitable” and expensive to address.

– $360,000 to Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRIPP) which supported and funded “An Inconvenient Truth…or Convenient Fiction,” a film attacking the science of global warming and intended as a rebuttal to former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary. PRIPP also threatened to sue the US Government for listing the polar bear as an endangered species.

– $325,000 to the Tax Foundation, which issued a misleading study on the costs of proposed climate legislation.

The blockbuster report covers the role of Koch’s dirty network in promoting the ClimateGate smear campaign, pushing junk science about polar bears, fueling supposedly independent Spanish and Danish studies that attacked green jobs, and selling a pack of lies about the costs of climate legislation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is leading the bipartisan effort with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to craft comprehensive climate legislation that can overcome a Senate filibuster. “The green economy is coming,” Graham said when he announced the partnership with Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) last November, explaining that he was “convinced with my colleagues that controlling carbon pollution is good business.” However, Graham is also co-sponsoring the effort by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to reverse the scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that global warming pollution endangers public health and welfare. Speaking to business and environmental leaders Monday in Columbia, SC, Graham declared that he wants “to stop the EPA from regulating carbon,” which would be “a disaster for every state”:

This administration is not going to back off. They are going to regulate carbon. If Congress doesn’t get involved, it’s going to be a disaster for this state and it’s going to be a disaster for every state.

He continued:

The Supreme Court has allowed the regulation of carbon through the Clean Air Act. The question is, is Congress going to be smart enough to stop it? I want to stop the EPA from regulating carbon and allow elected officials to come up with a statutory scheme that not only cleans up the air, it creates jobs instead of losing jobs and gets this country on the path to energy independence.

Graham’s assertion that Clean Air Act regulation of global warming pollution would be a disaster is baseless. The Clean Air Act has been such a successful piece of legislation that the coal industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the oil-funded think tank American Enterprise Institute tout its track record of cleaning up our air while keeping our economy strong. The myth that environmental protection and economic growth are incompatible has been repeatedly debunked, in theory and practice. A healthy economy thrives on a strong framework of rules.

The Clean Air Act global warming rules for mobile sources — the joint EPA-Department of Transportation greenhouse gas tailpipe standards — have been embraced by environmentalists and the auto industry alike, after years of litigation and astroturf campaigns claiming that such regulation would destroy Detroit. It was the decay of regulation that brought the American auto industry to its knees:the lack of competitive standards for domestic carmakers and the lack of financial regulation that allowed Wall Street to blow up the American economy.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has acceded to the unfounded attacks on the Clean Air Act by delaying and weakening rules for stationary greenhouse sources that were first proposed by the EPA under the Bush administration, even as politicians promote a fear campaign that “churches, schools, restaurants and even large homes could fall under new federal regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gases.”

The traditional tools of the Clean Air Act must be complemented by a comprehensive redirection of national energy policy if we are to confront the increasing disaster of climate change. But the idea that Congress should pass climate legislation to prevent the specter of the mean nasty EPA Carbon Cops — as Koch Industries’ Americans for Prosperity is selling in Arkansas right now — is, quite simply, toxic.

Anyone who has specific ideas for marketing the book or knows someone who might need review copy should email me at the address here.

My new book doesn’t come out until the week of April 19th.  But you can pre-order it on Amazon.com (click here).  You know you want to after getting all these Climate Progress posts for free for so long….

Seriously, though, the timing couldn’t be better for Straight Up:  America’s Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions.  We were always planning for it to come out the week of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and roughly the same time as when the Senate would start taking up the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill.  But now it looks like Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman are going to introduce their bill the same week the book comes out!

The bill should tee off the most important environmental and energy debate of our time.  In the book, I put the core issues of the debate — climate science, clean energy solutions, and environmental politics — in perspective.

Here’s the back jacket for the book:

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Do you think that having a price on carbon is crucial?

I do. I absolutely believe a price on carbon is essential — that will send a very important long-term signal. [But] if it’s five years from now, I think it will be truly tragic, because other countries, notably China, are moving ahead so aggressively. They see this as their economic opportunity to lead in the next industrial revolution.

That’s from an interview of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, by Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek and WashPost.  Here’s more Q&A with the Nobel Prize-winning physicist:

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Republican senators say they can work with Democrats, despite dire predictions that the healthcare fight would make cooperation impossible.

Okay, this story from The Hill isn’t a big shock.  But once again, John McCain proved how out of touch he is:

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AFP: “Many scientists have warned that if global temperatures rise more than 2.0°C (3.6°F) by century’s end, Earth’s climate system could spin out of control, unleashing human misery on an unprecedented scale.”

Kudos to AFP for its bluntness on the harsh reality of climate science today, a sharp contrast to the generally wishy-washy reporting in this country.

Europe’s electricity could be all renewables by 2050

Europe could meet all its electricity needs from renewable sources by mid-century, according to a report released Monday by services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

A “super-smart” grid powered by solar farms in North Africa, wind farms in northern Europe and the North Sea, hydro-electric from Scandinavia and the Alps and a complement of biomass and marine energy could render carbon-based fuels obsolete for electricity by 2050, said the report.

The goal is achievable even without the use of nuclear energy, the mainstay of electricity in France, it said.

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Fourteen men representing the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth (AEEG) are meeting with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kerry (D-MA), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to negotiate the terms of comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation.  Brad Johnson has the background of this remarkably non-diverse group.

Per Matt Yglesias’s note that the “male-dominated nature of Wall Street is a source of dysfunction,” meet the AEEG:
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I met John Denver when I lived in Colorado and worked at Rocky Mountain Institute (in a place he helped build).  I’m quite sure he would have approved of this spoof of his classic song:

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Memo to NY Times:  TV weathermen are not climate experts.

In fact, Dr. Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech explained to me a few years ago:

Meteorologists are not required to take a course in climate change, this is not part of the NOAA/NWS [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Weather Service] certification requirements, so university programs don’t require the course (even if they offer it). So we have been educating generations of meteorologists who know nothing at all about climate change.

The reason I am repeating this basic fact for the umpteenth time — see “Are meteorologists climate experts?” — is that the former paper of record has once again equated people who don’t know about climate science with people who do (see “NYT Faces Credibility Siege over Unbalanced Climate Coverage“).

In a new, uber-dreadful he-said, she-said piece, “Scientists and Weathercasters at Odds on Warming,” the NYT‘s Leslie Kaufman gives a platform to some of the most uninformed, most widely debunked anti-science weathermen in the country, including Joe Bastardi and, yes, Anthony Watts!  Does anybody read Boykoff any more on (see  “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change”)?

Wow!  I see that this is now a front page story for Tuesday and that the NYT changed the headline in the last hour to the much worse, “Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming.”  Great.  May I suggest instead, “Some non-scientists who don’t know much about how humans are changing the climate spout nonsense on the subject”?

Either way Andy Revkin’s blog hypes the whole damn piece:

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has expressed “deep disappointment” with the direction Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) is heading with climate legislation being crafted with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). In a letter to Kerry, the Vermont independent praised Kerry’s “continued leadership” as a “tireless advocate for taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” However, Sanders has “serious concerns about provisions that could harm our environment and provide new federal government support for polluters”:

– State Preemption: “In my view, preempting leading states would be a huge mistake: we should definitely set a floor, but not a ceiling.”

– Support for New Nuclear Power: “If the private sector will not finance new nuclear plants, the government should not risk taxpayer dollars by stepping in.”

– Offshore Drilling: “We should not, in a global warming bill, support increased offshore drilling.”

– Coal Plant Emissions: “Global warming legislation should move us forward by requiring coal plants to meet increasingly stringent pollution standards. It should not take us backwards by exempting coal plants from this kind of regulation by grandfathering in the dirtiest plants so they can continue to operate for years to come.”

Ten other senators have challenged new support for offshore drilling in the bill. Sanders also called for several green economy initiatives to be in the legislation, including green jobs and energy efficiency funding that was included in the Kerry-Boxer climate bill that passed out of the Senate environment committee last December. That legislation limited EPA and state authority to set rules for global warming pollution, but it appears that Kerry-Graham-Lieberman could go even farther to preempt existing law with a new framework, leading Sanders to warn, “I do not want to see a global warming bill become a bonanza for the coal industry.”

Sanders’ concerns mirror those of Mike Brune, the new executive director of the Sierra Club, who told The Hill:

We will go to the mat for defending Clean Air Act authority. We are also concerned about offshore oil drilling, and we will not be able to accept the dramatic giveaway that offshore oil drilling represents.

Climate legislation will, by discouraging global warming pollution, support existing low-carbon energy technologies like renewables, natural gas, and nuclear power, and will also create a market for advanced coal technology. The coal, gas, and nuclear industries certainly do not need an additional layer of taxpayer subsidies to thrive in a low-carbon future. However, they have the resources to make clean energy reform an arduous process unless their demands are met, especially if, as Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard argues, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are “neglecting the Senate’s environmental champions.”

Download the Sanders letter.

The Hill‘s blog has a post, “Why kill cap-and-trade? Because it’s there.”

The NYT‘s John Broder had a piece, ” ‘Cap and Trade’ Loses Its Standing as Energy Policy of Choice.”

CBS reports of the forthcoming Graham, Kerry and Lieberman bill, “notably missing from it will likely be the cap-and-trade system that had not long ago been expected to be the centerpiece of any legislation.”

Peter Barnes comments on my blog, “If cap-and-trade is politically dead, why not try some version of cap-and-dividend?”

Two points.  First, the bipartisan bill will have a cap. And it appears almost certain it will have a trading system.  But such is the world we live in that this isn’t cap-and-trade.

I’ve said many times it is crazy from a communications perspective to build your core message around a process — “cap-and-trade” [or health care reform] — rather than an outcome, like clean air or clean energy jobs.  If it needs a name, let’s call it “puppy.”  We can call cap-and-dividend “baby seal,” since it has a cap and a trading system, too.

Second, conventional wisdom says we probably won’t get a climate bill this year, whatever it is called.  But that’s not because of “cap-and-trade.”  As Harvard economist Robert Stavins explains in “Who Killed Cap-and-Trade?“:

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