Tomorrow, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will unveil their long-awaited American Power Act, comprehensive climate and energy legislation designed to achieve President Obama’s commitment to addressing the threats of our fossil-fuel dependence.

Draft summaries of the legislation have been leaked to the press. At Climate Progress, Joe Romm has published his initial analysis of the legislation, finding that it will “create millions of clean energy jobs, slash pollution and oil use, while boosting U.S. farmers and manufacturers.”

Below is the text of the short summary, exclusively transcribed by the Wonk Room from the scanned document acquired by the National Journal, which notes that the bill would give neighboring states veto power over any expansion of offshore drilling.

Download the short summary as a readable PDF.

Read more

Bill “eliminates the possibility of market manipulation” and “from day one, two-thirds of revenues not dedicated to reducing our deficit are rebated back to consumers”

Kerry and Lieberman have apparently been waiting for a sign from above to release their climate and clean energy jobs bill, the American Power Act.  Instead, the unmistakable message that we need to get off of dirty, unsafe fossil fuels came from an undersea volcano of oil unleashed by the hubris, recklessness, and arrogance of Big Oil.

You can read the leaked 21-page draft Section-by-Section description of the American Power Act here (big PDF).  You can read the leaked 4-page “draft short summary” by clicking here.

Before offering my thoughts on individual sections, here’s Dan Weiss, CAPAF’s Director of Climate Strategy:

Read more

Keith Olbermann is scheduled to interview me at around 8:08 pm on the circular firing squad at the BP/Transocean/Halliburton hearing today.

Thoughts on messaging are always welcome.

Last week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) defended the inclusion of expanded offshore drilling in the climate bill he will unveil tomorrow, brushing off the deadly Gulf disaster by saying that “accidents happen“:

There were good reasons for us to put in offshore drilling, and this terrible accident is very rare in drilling. I mean, accidents happen. You learn from them and you try not to make sure they don’t happen again.

Today, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chair of the Senate energy committee, rebuked this attempt to excuse the BP oil disaster as an unforeseeable anomaly. Bingaman’s committee today began the Congressional investigation of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion in a hearing with executives of the companies involved — BP, Halliburton, and rig owner Transocean. Bingaman noted that this disaster is a failure of technology, people, and regulations, not just an “accident” that was, as BP claimed, an unforeseeable mechanical failure:

At the heart of this disaster are three interrelated systems — a technological system of materials and equipment, second, a human system of persons who operated the technological system, and third, a regulatory system. Those interrelated systems failed in a way that many have said was virtually impossible. We need to examine closely the way each of these systems failed to do what it was supposed to do. I don’t believe it’s enough just to label this catastrophic failure as an unpredictable and unforeseeable occurence. I don’t believe it’s adequate to simply chalk what happened up to a view that accidents do happen. If this was like other catastrophic failures of other technological systems in recent history — whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, Three Mile Island, or the loss of the Challenger — we will likely discover there was a cascade of failures and technical and human and regulatory errors.

Watch it:

After fighting off stricter safety regulations and failing to prepare for a major blowout, BP ludicrously described the disaster as “inconceivable” and “unprecedented.”

The final draft of the climate bill, which Lieberman was devising with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), will be unveiled tomorrow without Graham’s involvement. After a political squabble with Sen. Harry Reid, Graham has said that the Senate should not consider comprehensive energy reform until the oil disaster is resolved.

Plus a higher starting floor price for carbon dioxide

The energy and climate bill Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) will unveil Wednesday will give states the right to veto offshore oil drilling in a neighboring state, according to sources briefed on the plan.

This is from the WP‘s Post Carbon blog.  That confirms what I heard also.

The two Senators “tweaked the bill in a few ways to address concerns raised by” BP’s Titanic oil disaster.  Here are some more details on the bill, which is being introduced tomorrow:

Read more

“As hopes dim for containing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico anytime soon” after a giant containment dome failed, the cost of cleaning up the spill will continue to rise.  BP is financially responsible for the disaster, and President Obama wants to raise the cap on what the company is liable for, as cleanup costs have already surpassed the current limit.

BP said yesterday that it had already spent $350 million on the spill response, and the company’s stock has taken a big hit, but the “behemoth” company will almost certainly survive the disaster with little long term damage.  TP has the story:

Read more

The UK’s Guardian has a piece on “the key people and organisations you should be following on Twitter if you’re interested in climate change and the environment.”

Climate Progress is atop the bloggers’ list — Click here to join the other nearly 5,000 subscribers to CP tweets.

Read more

Oh wait, that headline is based on a blog post I wrote 2 years ago.  Doh!

Our ongoing efforts to wipe out sea life may lack the media-grabbing pizzazz of a Titanic oil spill, but it does not lack the punch.  See, for instance, “Nature Geoscience study concludes ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years”).  Or watch coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson’s 18-minute TED talk, “How we wrecked the ocean“:

Read more

CP has been blogging about BP’s Titanic oil disaster and the record-smashing TN rains.  I’m pleased to have a guest post from Dominique Browning on those two subjects.  She is author of the new book Slow Love. She writes regularly for The New York Times Book Review, Wired, and others.  This is a repost from her monthly column for the Environmental Defense Fund website:

Read more

You can find the webcast live here.

The NYT has been liveblogging here.

Reducing Fossil Energy Use on the Farm: Impacts of Low-External-Input Cropping Systems on Energy and Yield

Conventional agriculture production relies heavily on fossil fuels, particularly in its ability to provide energy at a low cost. However, the uncertain future of fossil fuel availability and prices point to need to explore energy efficiencies in other cropping systems.

Read more

Lawmakers today aren’t seeing the forest for the trees; that will change when the forest has burned or been destroyed by bark beetles, but by then it will be too late.

That’s the concluding paragraph from a terrific editorial in today’s L.A. Times, “Climate change is the true crisis:  West Virginia’s mining disaster and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were disastrous and investigations are justified, but the real threat is much worse.”

Read more

In its last two budgets, the Obama administration has proposed ending a series of tax subsidies collected by Big Oil companies. This year, the target is $36 billion in tax breaks, including nixing deductions that oil companies collect to write-off the cost of drilling.

In light of the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it makes sense to reevaluate whether we want to be using the tax code to subsidize drilling for oil, particularly after oil companies reaped billions in profits during the first quarter of this year.  Big Oil is unhappy about this, as discussed in the Wonk Room repost.

Read more