By Donald A. Brown via Ethics and Climate

Marco Rubio, a U.S. Senator from Florida, recently said that he was not sure that climate change is human caused. This is one of the reasons he’s unwilling to support U.S. government action to reduce the threat of climate change. Many other U.S. politicians have also recently said they will not support legislation to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions because they’re not convinced that climate change is happening or is human-caused. In fact, 7 out of 8 Republican candidates for the US presidency proclaimed they didn’t believe that climate change was a problem.

When these politicians are asked about the basis for their positions on climate change, they almost always respond by saying such things as they “have heard that there is a disagreement among scientists,” or similar responses that strongly suggest they have formed an opinion on climate change science without any understanding of the depth of the scientific evidence on which the scientific consensus view of climate change has been based. For instance, U.S. politicians frequently assert that it’s an open question whether humans are causing the undeniable warming that the Earth is experiencing — thus exposing their ignorance of dozens of lines of independent and robust evidence of human causation, including attribution studies, finger print analyses, strong evidence that correlates fossil fuel use to rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and other physical and chemical evidence.

 

Although ordinary individuals may have no duty to go beyond their own personal opinion about the science of climate change, government officials — who have the power to enact policies that could present catastrophic harm to millions of people around the world — may not, as a matter of ethics, justify their refusal to support policies to reduce the threat of climate change on the basis of their uninformed opinions on climate science. This is so because government officials, unlike ordinary citizens, have the power to prevent or minimize great harms to millions of people around the world, that mainstream scientists have concluded that their constituents or governments that they represent are causing or contributing to. That is, government officials have more responsibility than the average citizen to understand the state of climate change science because government officials can uniquely prevent harm that their constituents or governments are causing.

And so, when government officials with the power to enact climate change policies are on notice that respectable scientific evidence supports the conclusion that their constituents or governments are likely causing great harm, they may not appeal to their uninformed opinion on climate science as justification for not taking action.

The government official is like the railroad official who’s been told by employees in a position to know the location of the company’s trains that there is a runaway train hurtling toward a bus full of children that’s stuck on the track, when the official has the ability to divert the train onto a track on which no humans will be harmed.

In the case of climate change, government officials should know that 97 of every 100 scientists that actually do peer-reviewed climate science research in the United States — by the most prestigious scientific organizations including the US National Academy of Sciences — have concluded that greenhouse gases coming from their constituents threaten catastrophic harm. Not only to their constituents, but to millions of people around the world, most of whom have done little to cause climate change.

In the case of climate change, the U.S. politician not only has the power, working with colleagues, to prevent great harm caused by his or her constituents, he or she has the responsibility to prevent his or her constituents from harming others outside United States. This responsibility was expressly agreed to by the United States when it ratified the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, which contains the following acknowledgment of the U.S. government’s responsibility to prevent harm to those outside the United States in the convention’s Preamble:

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“Beware the Ides of March” — Soothsayer, “Julius Caesar”

The Ides of March falls on the 15th of March every year, but this year that fateful date and the impending doom it foretells could arrive two weeks early—on March 1, when $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts are set to occur.

The so-called sequester will slash 5.3 percent in funding from every federal program except Social Security and Medicaid. For public health and clean energy programs, the sequester means less protection from air pollution and the health problems associated with it, less assistance after severe extreme weather events, more oil imports, fewer permits for oil and gas production on federal lands and waters, and reduced accessibility to our national parks. In short, it’s clear that sequestration will harm middle- and lower-income Americans.

1. More families exposed to the cold and heat

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, provided $3.4 billion in fiscal year 2012 to assist low-income seniors and other households with their heating and cooling bills. The National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, which runs low-income energy assistance programs, reports that, “LIHEAP recipient households are likely to be vulnerable to temperature extremes” and that many of them have medical and other significant expenses.

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program provides aid to 8.9 million households, but “only 20 percent of the families eligible for assistance received LIHEAP aid,” according to a 2012 letter from 137 U.S. representatives to the House Appropriations Committee.

The sequester will axe an estimated $180 million in funding from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Since the average household received $450 from the program in 2011, this would mean preventing some 400,000 households from receiving aid from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

The Weatherization Assistance Program helps to weatherize the homes of low-income families, making them more energy efficient and saving the typical household $400 in their annual heating and cooling costs. Moreover, the Department of Energy reports that:

Funding reductions under sequestration will reduce by more than a thousand the number of homes that would be weatherized in FY2013 and could result in the unemployment of 1,200 skilled weatherization professionals.

2. Children and seniors more vulnerable to air pollution

Sequestration will slash funds used to protect children, senior citizens, and those suffering from other respiratory or cardiac illnesses. These populations are most vulnerable to harm from smog, soot, mercury, and other hazardous pollutants that can lead to asthma attacks, respiratory ailments, learning impairment, and even premature death.

The Environmental Protection Agency warns that sequestration would harm vital programs that reduce air pollution by:

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Cross-posted from the Sierra Club

After a weekend during which tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline and demand solutions to the climate crisis, the American Petroleum Institute (API) is touting a one-sided poll they claim shows Americans supporting the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.

However, a closer look at their poll questions unveils a biased survey which failed to equip respondents with the basic facts of the project before asking them to form an opinion. Instead, API crafted a poll to ensure they got the types of answers they were looking for by totally ignoring the environmental and economic realities of the toxic pipeline from Canada.

You can see the questionnaire for yourself here (PDF). And you’ll notice that poll respondents are presented with all types of arguments for the pipeline, but not a single argument against Keystone XL. In fact, the survey doesn’t even mention the words “tar sands” at all. Without the proper context, people who had never heard of Keystone XL before could easily associate the pipeline with conventional oil — not the toxic, more carbon-intensive tar sands oil that Keystone XL would transport. Furthermore, there is no mention of the grave risks Keystone XL poses. API’s survey ignores any discussion of possible oil spills, drinking water contamination, or climate-disrupting pollution — just to name a few.

The poll also primes respondents to believe that Keystone XL tar sands oil is destined for the U.S. marketplace — rather than noting that it is effectively an export pipeline that pumps tar sands oil through the U.S. to get to the global marketplace. By failing to mention that much of the tar sands oil coming through Keystone XL will be shipped overseas, the survey allows respondents to assume that this oil is destined for the United States and will improve our energy security.

Here’s the kicker: Polling conducted by Hart Research last year showed that once American voters hear both the pro and con arguments about the Keystone XL pipeline, they support President Obama’s decision to deny the permit for the pipeline by a 47 percent to 36 percent margin. This poll, which surveyed 1,000 voters in the swing states of Colorado, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio, showed that voters were especially worried about the risks to water quality and supplies from tar sands pipeline spills. Moreover, the arguments of API and other Keystone XL supporters were found to be much less powerful once voters learned that much of the tar sands oil will be exported and consumed overseas.

API’s polling instrument is incomplete and one-sided, so it’s difficult to take any meaning from it — though that doubtlessly won’t stop API from declaring it as “proof” Americans want this project. But what this poll is “proof” of is that it’s easy to win a one-sided debate. But Americans deserve to know these critical — and basic — facts about Keystone XL before being asked to form an opinion about it.

– Grace McRae, Sierra Club Polling and Research Strategist

Gina McCarthy, the current Environmental Protection Agency’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation and the front-runner to fill the top vacancy at the EPA pledged to push ahead with actions to confront climate change during a speech on Thursday. [The Hill]

McCarthy discussed a list of emissions rules rolled out during Obama’s first term, touting them for their public health benefits and effects on tackling climate change.

Among the rules were stronger fuel economy standards for vehicles, proposed rules for new coal-fired power plants and limits on mercury and other toxic air pollutants. [...]

Republicans have slammed the emissions standards, calling them economically burdensome.

McCarthy said, however, that tackling climate change “hasn’t hurt the economy,” and that “there are tremendous opportunities to address climate change that build the economy, that grow jobs.”

She challenged those in the audience to “be clear on the cost and benefits on all these programs moving forward.”

An analysis of weather station data shows that the coldest American states are warming the fastest, and across the country winter warming since 1970 has been more than four-and-a-half times faster per decade than over the past 100 years. [Climate Central]

The boom in cheap natural gas is undercutting the development of American nuclear power. Since 2010, the amount of electricity generated from U.S. nuclear reactors has fallen about 3 percent. [WaPo]

According to a paper published Thursday in Science, the melting of northern permafrost and consequent release of carbon dioxide could come sooner, and be more widespread, than experts previously believed. [Climate Central]

Time is running out to avert a third summer of drought in much of the High Plains, West and Southwest, unless significant bouts of heavy snow and rain come in the remaining days of winter. [Climate Central]

Affordable solar power is starting to make its way down the income ladder, and a pair of statewide California solar programs show how that’s good news for utility customers and taxpayers, too. [Clean Technia]

A new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance uncovers a litany of biases in financial regulation that tilt markets in favor of conventional energy, and could potentially hold back the flow of investment into renewable energy technologies. [BusinessGreen]