You may recall that classic Onion story from November 2010, “Report: Global Warming Issue From 2 Or 3 Years Ago May Still Be Problem.”  It included the image at the right captioned, “This 2007 chart predicting rising temperatures worldwide could still possibly be worth looking at today.”

Well, apparently NPR missed it. In a story last Friday, “Budget Deal Provides Tax Breaks For Green Energy,” NPR reports:

The tax benefits for green energy that Congress extended were originally created over the past decade. At the time, it seemed that energy sources, especially homegrown ones, were scarce. The country also seemed to be on the verge of setting limits on emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

“There was a sensible reason to want to subsidize a transformation,” says energy analyst Kevin Book. It’s harder to make a case for renewable energy now, given the booms in natural gas and oil, he says.

“All of these things are different now: Demand is declining, supply is increasing, the decarbonization mandate has weakened if not disappeared, and energy security isn’t the risk that it used to be,” he says.

Book predicts that the New Year’s tax package may be the last big payday for green energy.

Yeah, might as well have an extended quote from someone arguing there’s no need to ever decarbonize or incentivize green energy again, ’cause that whole global warming thing is so last year.

Or rather, so one week ago. Because on December 30, NPR filed an interview with Bill McKibben with this headline:

2013: A Tipping Year For Climate Change?

The story’s introduction spells out precisely why the decarbonization mandate has strengthened in the past year:

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A commercial airline? Or a rogue geoengineering experiment?

The World Economic Forum has put out a new report on global risks for 2013, and the report’s chapter on “X factors” — concerns more remote than the report’s primary risks, but still worthy of note — includes a section on rogue “geoengineering” experiments.

Geoengineering involves large-scale efforts to either remove carbon from the atmosphere, or to remake the atmosphere’s chemical or physical make-up to offset the effects of climate change. The most plausible scenario mentioned by the report uses aircraft to inject particles into the atmosphere to mimic the way eruptions of volcanic ash block sunlight, and thus cool the climate. More far-fetched scenarios go so far as deploying mirrors into orbit to reflect sunlight.

Such projects involve a host of funding and deployment problems, as well as the serious risk of unintended consequences for both the climate and the billions of humans who rely on it. For instance, a project at the UK-based Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project, or “SPICE,” working on the idea to mimic volcanic ash, was delayed in October over environmental concerns. Unfortunately, this leaves an opening for smaller nations or even commercial interests to begin experimenting with geoengineering unilaterally, say researchers at the World Economic Forum:

Nobody envisions deployment of solar radiation management anytime soon, given the difficulties in resolving a suite of governance issues (evidenced by the fact that even the relatively simple SPICE experiment in the UK foundered in the midst of controversy). Beginning with Britain’s Royal Society, many academic and policy bodies have called for cautious research as well as broader conversation about the implications of such technologies.

But this has led some geoengineering analysts to begin thinking about a corollary scenario, in which a country or small group of countries precipitates an international crisis by moving ahead with deployment or large-scale research independent of the global community. The global climate could, in effect, be hijacked by a rogue country or even a wealthy individual, with unpredictable costs to agriculture, infrastructure and global stability. [...]

For example, an island state threatened with rising sea levels may decide they have nothing to lose, or a well funded individual with good intentions may take matters into their own hands. There are signs that this is already starting to occur. In July 2012 an American businessman sparked controversy when he dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Canada in a scheme to spawn an artificial plankton bloom. The plankton absorb carbon dioxide and may then sink to the ocean bed, removing the carbon – another type of geoengineering, known as ocean fertilisation. Satellite images confirm that his actions succeeded in produce an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres.

The July 2012 incident was first reported by The Guardian in October, noting the gambit may have violated two international agreements and possibly involved misleading the local indigenous population about the nature and risks of the experiment. Russ George, the American businessman who oversaw the iron sulphate dump, is the former chief executive of Planktos Inc., and has been involved in other failed efforts to pull off large commercial dumps near the Galapagos and Canary Islands. Those attempts led to a warning from the EPA and to his ships being barred from ports by the Spanish and Ecuadorean governments. George had apparently hoped to net lucrative carbon credits.

The basic problem with geoengineering is that portions of the climate cannot be walled off to perform small-scale tests. This means geoengineering projects essentially have to jump straight from the experimental and computer modeling phases to a full-on implementation phase — as Russ George recently attempted. This means, at best, that geoengineering is last-resort, break-glass-in-case-of-emergency response to climate change, to be attempted when all other efforts have failed.

At worst, geoengineering is a distraction jumped on by interest groups, who wish to delay far more technologically and economically feasible efforts to tackle climate change by simply reducing the amount of carbon human beings emit into the atmosphere.

Despite ranking among the most profitable corporations in the world, Big Oil benefits from $4 billion in annual tax breaks. It fights to maintain them through aggressive political donations, lobbying, and heavy ad spending, but also employs another tactic: Pretending these tax breaks don’t exist.

“The oil and gas industry gets no subsidies, zero, nothing,” API President Jack Gerard said on Tuesday. “We get cost-recovery benefits, much like other industries. You can go down the road of allowing economic activity, generating hundreds of billions to the government, or you can take the alternative route by trying to extract new revenue from industry by increasing their cost to do business.”

Tax deductions are indeed subsidies, as API admitted in a document that labeled “subsidies for alternative fuels” as “preferential tax treatment.” And the oil industry’s $4 billion preferential treatment is written permanently into the tax code. These include:

Percentage depletion allowance: lets companies deduct the costs of an oil or gas well, about 15 percent, from its taxes.

Domestic manufacturing tax deduction: Allows oil companies to collect $1.8 billion each year, even though there are vast differences between oil and traditional U.S. manufacturing. It is a benefit that was never intended for them, according to Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, who said Congress included oil producers “almost inadvertently.”

The foreign tax credit: Oil companies overwhelmingly fall into the category of companies that can claim credits for payments to foreign governments.

Expensing intangible drilling costs: For over a century, oil companies have written off wages, fuel, repairs, and hauling costs.

ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips have paid federal tax rates well below the 35 percent top corporate rate, a far cry from paying “more than our fair share”. ExxonMobil, for instance, paid a 13 percent tax rate in 2011, after drilling deductions and benefits, and 14 percent on average between 2008 and 2010.

The record-high gas prices of 2012 reinforce the decades of data showing domestic drilling has very little impact on gas prices. At the same time, the Big Five companies are on track to collect more than $100 billion profit this year.

Last summer, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar expressed his faith in Shell’s ability to handle drilling in Arctic waters.

“I believe there’s not going to be an oil spill,” said Salazar.

But after Shell lost control of two drilling rigs, crushed its oil-response equipment, and received more than 30 safety and environmental warnings that forced regulators to dock one of its ships, Salazar seems ready to re-consider the implications of offshore drilling in the region six months later.

Yesterday, the Interior Department said it would conduct a two-month review of Shell’s drilling plans. This morning, Salazar elaborated on concerns at the department about Shell’s recent “troubling…series of mishaps.”

Bloomberg reported on his comments:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said a 60-day assessment of drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas will be used in considering future permits for Arctic exploration. Environmental advocates said the review should lead to tighter government rules, or even force Shell to suspend its efforts.

“It’s troubling that there was such as series of mishaps,” Salazar said today at during a Washington meeting of an agency offshore-drilling advisory panel. If the drill ship, the Kulluk, is damaged, “it may be that Shell isn’t even ready to move forward in 2013” with oil drilling, he said.

Shell has spent $4.5 billion over the last five years to prepare for drilling offshore for oil in the Arctic — a region melting quickly due to carbon pollution from fossil fuels. Last year, the Interior Department granted Shell permits for exploratory drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, allowing Shell to move equipment up Arctic waters and begin drilling test wells.

As problems piled up for Shell in its first summer drilling in the region, Environmental groups reacted by calling on the Interior Department to revoke permits for the company, saying the risks are too high to warrant continued operations.

For a full re-cap of Shell’s year in the Arctic, see our timeline.

by Daniel J. Weiss

Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was built on “hope and change.” Millions of Americans went to the polls hoping that the federal government would change its approach to many of the nation’s challenges after eight years of retreat, neglect, and inertia under President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. This was particularly true for concerns about providing greater public health protection from climate change and air pollution, while also increasing security of our energy supplies. The Bush administration gave scant attention to these challenges, and instead pursued policies designed by Big Oil and coal companies for their economic benefit—policies that ignored growing threats from climate change.

In December 2008, during President-elect Obama’s transition, the Center for American Progress proposed the “Top 10 Energy and Environment Priorities for the Obama Administration and 111th Congress.” This progressive agenda was designed to protect public health from carbon and mercury air pollution, reduce oil consumption, and simultaneously boost the economic recovery. Four years later the administration accomplished nearly all of these goals despite the worst economy in nearly 80 years and strong opposition from Big Oil, coal, and other energy interests. Unfortunately, the priorities that required congressional action did not occur, though some progress was still made in each of these areas.

Here are brief descriptions of these top 10 energy and environment priorities outlined by CAP in 2008, and their status at the end of President Obama’s first term. Shortly, we will propose the top 10 energy and environment priorities for President Obama’s second term and the 113th Congress.

Let’s look at each of the above priorities in greater detail.

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by Peter Iwanowicz

The Clean Air Act is one of the most successful public health laws we have.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s  (EPA) assessment of the Act finds that in 2010 alone, the reductions in fine particle and ozone pollution from the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments prevented more than: 160,000 cases of premature mortality; 130,000 heart attacks; 13 million lost work days; and, 1.7 million asthma attacks.

Under normal implementation and enforcement of the Act, the EPA projects that in 2020, benefits will be even greater, preventing more than 230,000 cases of premature mortality, 200,000 heart attacks, 17 million lost work days, and, 2.4 million asthma attacks.  The health benefits are expected to exceed $2 trillion while the costs will be $85 billion.

We are, however, working in anything but “normal” circumstances and EPA’s ability to realize these benefits is under significant risk.

For the past two years, Big Polluters and their allies in Congress have been working to roll back, weaken and block critically important updates to clean air standards that the EPA is required to make under the Act.  These efforts included attempts to permanently block EPA rules that would limit standards to limit toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants and protect us from air pollution that blows into other states. At the urging of Big Oil, members of Congress have also tried to strip away EPA’s authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions, which not only endangers our health today but also  future generations by increasing temperatures that significantly contribute to the formation of lethal ozone (smog) pollution.  Other attacks on the Clean Air Act have focused on undermining the very core of this public health focused law by attempting to block consideration of health benefits in setting clean air protections

Thus far, these attempts to impede our nation’s healthy air progress have been thwarted by the leadership in the Senate and the effective implementation of this healthy air law by the Obama Administration.  Except for the outrageous decision made by the President in September 2011 to reject EPA’s proposed health standard for ozone, the Administration has largely acted to implement the Clean Air Act as required and as a result millions of people will lead healthier lives and tens of thousands will not die prematurely.

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State Sen. Dick Saslaw (D-VA)

As Virginia’s state legislature considers whether to lift a decades-old ban on uranium mining in the Commonwealth, Senate Democratic Leader Richard “Dick” Saslaw has been among the most vocal proponents of such a move.

While a wide array of environmental groups, the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, and local chambers of commerce have opposed lifting the ban — citing serious environmental risks — Saslaw dismissed any long-term threats because he’s “not going to be here” and they might not affect him personally.

WAMU reports:

State Sen. Dick Saslaw does not mince words about his support for uranium mining. A Northern Virginia Democrat who is also the Senate minority leader, Saslaw says burying the radioactive byproduct known as tailings underground should be a solution to environmental concerns. And he says he can’t be concerned about what might happen 100 [years] from now.

“What about 10,000 years from now? I’m not going to be here,” Saslaw says. “I can’t ban something because of something that might happen 500 or 1,000 years from now.“

The ban, of course, is already on the books. And while the state’s Coal and Energy Commission has recommended repealing the ban, a report by the Southern Environmental Law Center warns that lifting the ban could impact residents near the proposed mining site “both directly, by increased environmental and occupational exposure to uranium and other toxic substances through the air, soil, or groundwater, and accidents resulting from mining operations, and indirectly, through stress and other health effects related to community changes, including potential loss of recreation sites, declining property values, changes to the local economy, and the perceived stigma of uranium mining.”

After a series of serious mishaps involving Shell Oil’s Arctic ocean oil drilling equipment, federal officials said they will conduct a 60-day assessment of the proposed offshore drilling program in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, off the north coast of Alaska. [Summit County Voice]

Barack Obama may intervene directly on climate change by hosting a summit at the White House early in his second term, environmental groups say. [Guardian]

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said Tuesday that she would introduce legislation next week aimed at preventing the transfer of research funded by the Department of Energy to companies based in non-allied countries. [The Hill]

Lisa Jackson has announced her exit as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who faced congressional criticism over green-energy programs, could follow. Obama may end up assembling a second- term team for a different task: how to manage the boom in U.S. production of oil and natural gas. [Bloomberg]

Jack Gerard, the often-combative chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, said Tuesday that the United States was “at the crossroads of a great turning point” in the nation’s energy history. [New York Times]

The commercial shipping industry has warned since November that if low water makes moving cargo too dangerous, a 200-mile stretch of the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cairo, Ill., would be effectively closed. [USA Today]

Australia on Wednesday was grappling with an unprecedented heat wave that has sparked raging bushfires across some of the country’s most populated regions – pushing firefighters to their limits, residents to their wits’ end and leaving meteorologists tracking the soaring temperatures into uncharted territory. [New York Times]

The world’s climate could be hijacked by a rogue country or wealthy individual firing small particles into the stratosphere, claims a warning that comes not from a new Hollywood movie trailer but a sober report from the World Economic Forum (WEF). [Guardian]

France has doubled its target for new solar projects to at least 1,000 megawatts in 2013, helping spur use of European equipment, Energy Minister Delphine Batho said. [Renewable Energy World]