Theda Skocpol is a leading sociologist and political scientist at Harvard University who has entered the fray of the climate bill debate.

Because Skocpol’s academic credentials are in areas largely unrelated to climate and energy politics/policy, her views on those subjects must stand or fall on their own. As one leading scholar wrote me after my previous post disputing key Skocpol assertions:

I thought your analysis was dead on — I really appreciated that you pointed out that no single person’s opinion (especially without facts) should carry any more weight than another person’s opinion.

In particular, Skocpol has been widely criticized for holding President Obama blameless while spending so much time criticizing the environmental community. As readers know, I have been as critical of the environmental community as anyone, but they were the ones who put this issue on the table — and kept it there. So even though their strategy and tactics were not optimal, it’s hard to see how they deserve a significant portion of the blame for the failure of the climate bill, in my opinion.

Skocpol has written a new, self-contradictory analysis at Grist, “Learning from the cap-and-trade debate.” I don’t generally think we need even more Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday-morning quarterbacking at this point, but I do think it is important not to learn the wrong lessons from the climate bill’s failure.

Probably Skocpol’s most revealing paragraph, offered with no justification whatsoever, is:

Now that President Obama has been reelected and some new supporters made it into the Senate, established environmental organizations are happily reveling in the president’s new willingness to give speeches about global warming and signal that he will support regulatory steps through the Environmental Protection Agency and other executive bodies. One can almost hear the sigh of relief that, now, most professionally run organizations can go back to doing what they do best: writing reports and recommending regulatory actions. That has been the well-worn groove of action since the 1970s. Throw in occasional chain-yourself-to-fences demonstrations and short visits to jail, and we’ll be on a roll, global-warming reformers think.

Ouch! Or it would be “ouch” if there were any truth to this harsh caricature.

It is beyond insulting to suggest that the major environmental organizations would “sigh with relief” as the chances for a serious climate bill collapse. Anyone who thinks those groups prefer “writing reports” (or even half-measures by the EPA) to federal legislation doesn’t know the first thing about them — doesn’t know how deeply they care about averting catastrophic climate change and how tirelessly many of them worked to keep this issue on the table when it seemed utterly hopeless for years (i.e. during the Cheney/Bush Administration).

Not one single person I know in any established environmental NGO is “happily reveling” in the grim situation we are now in. Quite the reverse, they are all despairing of it and trying to figure out a new strategy.

And I know some of you thought that Skocpol’s critique of the established environmental groups meant she endorsed the growing grassroots actions of groups like 350.org and the anti-Keystone campaign led by Bill McKibben — certainly McKibben himself thought that. But no, Skocpol holds them in the same contempt, as her mocking final line above makes clear.

So why does Skocpol have such disdain for the environmental community? Why does she write things like, “Global-warming reformers must stop being blind and tone-deaf to the real-life circumstances of typical American families in an era of astonishing socioeconomic inequality”? The answer is clear:

Because like it or not, environmentalism has long been primarily a cause of the educated upper-middle class in the United States, and it remains largely populated by experts and activists from that relatively privileged, non-majority class background (including university students headed for that stratum).

Let’s set aside the fact that this applies to her Harvard University far more than it does modern environmentalism.

While her criticism was true decades ago, the environmental community in general and the global warming community in particular have made great strides in expanding to the “majority.” Indeed, the climate bill coalition in particular had

• the National Latino Coalition on Climate Change and 2,000 Hispanic business owners from South Florida alone
• Iraq war veterans
• The Hip Hop Caucus and a major effort to Engage African Americans on Climate Change
• Hunters and anglers
• Physicians and public health groups
• The AFL-CIO and many other major labor groups
• Countless faith-based groups, women’s groups, and others concerned about equity issues and low- and moderate-income families.

Skocpol seems entirely unaware of this effort, which was certainly the biggest and most coordinated inter-organizational alliance effort ever put together by the environmental community. Obviously it wasn’t enough, but the climate bill push simply wasn’t the elitist effort Skocpol describes.

Here is where Skocpol’s critique becomes absurdly self-contradictory. She spends her entire blog post explaining why environmental groups are privileged non-majority elitists, poor at lobbying, “blind and tone-deaf” to the realities of average Americans, and generally disorganized — but her report paints them as all powerful:

To hold a “failure of leadership” by Obama responsible for the ultimate shortfall for cap and trade, we would have to imagine that, in the spring of 2010, the President could have done something better or different than the USCAP leaders or Senate bargainers to satisfy Rahm Emmanuel’s realistic demand to “get me some Republicans.” We have to picture Barack Obama being more persuasive with leading Republicans than, say, Environmental Defense Fund honcho Fred Krupp, who had successfully cajoled votes out of GOP Senators in the past. I do not find that plausible. Presidential arm-twisting and sweet-talking were not the issue. Developments in the two parties, especially among Republicans, were pivotal.

No, seriously, it’s right there on page 20 of her report.

So what is it, Prof. Skocpol? Are the environmental groups incompetent, disorganized elitists who don’t represent average Americans and who would rather write reports than do the hard work needed to pass a climate bill — or are they so friggin’ powerful that the head of just one group is more persuasive than the president of the United States, the single most powerful person on the planet?

[For the record, the answer is "neither."]

As you can see, there is no coherent substance to her critique — nor to her “solution”:

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Here’s a small story to warm the heart, via Clean Technica: At the start of March, a group of fourth graders from Central Park School in Durham, North Carolina — along with their teacher, Aaron Sebens — set up a Kickstarter campaign to raise $800 to set up a solar array to power their classroom.

“We believe in the sun,” their Kickstarter page says. “And would like to fundraise to get enough money to buy solar panels for our classroom so we do not have to use any electricity from the power plant.”

Apparently, they reached the $800 mark within a single day. Not only that, but they’ve blown so far past their initial target that they’ve set up a list of further goals:

If we can raise $3000 we’ll be able to buy 2 more 145w panels (6 total) and make more than 1kw of clean energy for our classroom. We will be able to send whatever extra electricity we make back through the grid to other classes in the school!

If we can raise $3500 we will be able to buy enough materials for every student in the class to build their own wind turbine!

As of Thursday morning, the class had raised just over $5,800.

Adam James from the Center for American Progress recently argued that this form of online crowdfunding — through sites like AngelList and Gust as well as Kickstarter — could play a big role in clean tech financing, especially now that President Obama’s recent;y-passed JOBS Act has opened up this form of financing to smaller investors.

In fact, companies like Mosaic are already stepping in to provide solar array financing at unusually low interest rates by taking advantage of crowdfunding’s potential.

The planet we live on is valuable only as a repository for natural resources, according to Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX). Stockman, a lawmaker best known for bringing Ted Nugent to the State of the Union and opposing the Violence Against Women Act because it protected “change-gender” individuals, went on an extended Twitter rant Thursday afternoon accusing environmentalists of hating science.

His commentary included several dubious assertions about the planet:

 

The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.

— Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013

There is reportedly $1 trillion in oil off the coast of California. But liberal hatred of science and human progress keeps them bankrupt

— Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013

 

The offshore drilling moratorium Stockman refers to largely does not cover the majority of federal land. The moratorium was originally imposed after a massive oil spill off of the coast of Santa Barbara caused three million gallons of oil to leak into the ocean.

Most people probably believe the best thing about the Earth is that it has a stable biosphere and climate that sustains life — unique among all the planets we have observed. And while Stockman asserts that liberals hate science, he refers to the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change — something that could kill millions of people in the next two decades alone and ultimately destroy our livable climate — as “the new fad thing.”

Stockman’s number one source of corporate campaign donations in the 2012 election was the oil and gas industry.

Kiley Kroh and Howard Marano via CAP.

In order to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change, enormous fossil-fuel reserves will need to remain in the ground untouched.

2012 was supposed to be a banner year for Royal Dutch Shell, as the company planned to embark on the first Arctic offshore exploratory drilling activity in decades and set itself up to make billions of dollars prospecting for oil in the far-flung region off Alaska’s North Slope. But that’s not how things turned out.

Instead, beginning with efforts to prepare for operations, the company experienced one setback after another. Shell struggled to meet the government’s safety requirements for its oil spill response equipment, experiencing multiple technical failures and permit violations. Mother Nature weighed in and kept the drilling sites choked with sea ice. Yet despite these setbacks and others, Shell received permits from the federal government in August to begin preparatory drilling, albeit not deep enough to actually strike oil in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

The coup de grace came on New Year’s Eve when Shell’s Kulluk rig ran aground near Kodiak, Alaska — a fiasco that required a 500-plus person response effort, led by the Coast Guard, working for more than a week in dangerous conditions to secure the rig. This final calamity prompted the Obama administration to launch a high-level 60-day review of Shell’s entire Arctic drilling program, and after assessing its equipment and determining that both Arctic drilling rigs were too damaged to operate in 2012, caused Shell to announce on February 27 that it would not seek to drill in the remote and challenging region in 2013.

In presenting the results of the Department of the Interior’s review on March 14, outgoing Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar admitted, “The government still has a lot to learn. The Arctic is a very difficult environment to operate in. … Shell is one of the most resource-capable companies in the world (and) they encountered a whole host of problems in trying to operate up there.” The review concluded that Shell would have to develop a “comprehensive plan” for its operations before it would be allowed to move forward. This begs the question: What exactly did the permit process consist of before all these mishaps?

Shell spent seven years and an estimated $5 billion getting ready for its chance to tap the reserves of fossil fuels thought to be stashed beneath the Arctic seabed, and the result was irrefutably a failure. Neither the oil and gas industry nor its regulators are adequately prepared for Arctic offshore drilling operations.

Furthermore, climate change is already wreaking havoc in the region, melting it at an alarming rate and setting off a domino effect that will ripple through the entire global system. The trends so plainly on display in the Arctic are merely a preview of what awaits the rest of the planet if serious action isn’t taken soon to aggressively curb our carbon emissions. If we allow corporate interests to tap the reserves of additional fossil fuels that have been exposed by the rapid onset of global climate change, we’re missing the clear message about the future of our environment on a planetary scale. Slowing the devastating steamroll of climate change requires slashing the amount of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, not opening up vast new sources of carbon.

In President Barack Obama’s most recent State of the Union address, he reiterated his commitment to addressing the urgency of climate change for the sake of future generations. The president’s will, however, is matched by the utter intransigence of Congress and what has been called the most antienvironmental House of Representatives in history. Looking forward, the Obama administration will face some big decisions early on in the second term: the fate of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, regulating pollution from existing coal-fired power plants, and whether or not to move forward with offshore drilling in the fragile Arctic.

America’s Arctic outer continental shelf will be undisturbed by drilling rigs in 2013, but the battle over oil and gas exploration in its frigid waters is far from over. Shell made clear that it sees this latest announcement to pause operations as a hiatus, not a cancellation of its plans to tap the Arctic Ocean’s reserves. Marvin Odum, Shell’s director of Upstream Americas, said, “Our decision to pause in 2013 will give us time to ensure the readiness of all our equipment and people following the drilling season in 2012.”

The Obama administration will also need to decide on ConocoPhillips’ applications to begin exploratory drilling in 2014. The company said its plans remain on track and it will submit remaining information to the Department of the Interior this spring, despite Shell’s problem-filled year.

As CAP’s John Podesta and Carol Browner articulated in a recent Bloomberg op-ed, Shell’s string of mishaps and failures provide overwhelming evidence that the oil and gas industry is not prepared for the enormous challenge and incalculable risk that accompanies any operations in the Arctic. In light of that reality, they wrote, “The Obama administration shouldn’t issue any new permits to Shell this year and should suspend all action on other companies’ applications to drill in this remote and unpredictable region.”

Below we examine in further detail the risks and potential consequences of offshore drilling in the Arctic region.

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So I’m using the excuse that I’m still recovering from pancreatic surgery to finish and update some old draft pieces.

I never got around to posting a great Dave Roberts TEDx talk from, well, June, but in October, it was given a soundtrack and cool videos, so technically I’m only 5 months late.

Plus, just Tuesday, Roberts wrote a must-read post, “Two reasons climate change is not like other environmental problems,” so I’m killing 2 birds with one stone here, if efficient avicide is your thing.

Watch “Climate Change Is Simple”:

Worth the wait, no?

On Monday the Senate held a symposium under the auspices of Sen. Tom Carper’s (D-DE) office — “Climate Change Actions under the Clean Air Act: Reducing Power Plant Emissions without Harming the Economy” — bringing together representatives from both clean energy groups and the energy industry to explore how greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The Supreme Court has ruled that under that law, the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate carbon dioxide emissions if it finds them to be a danger to public health and the environment — which it has. The EPA is already finalizing rules for new power plants, with rules for existing plants anticipated to be in the works, which brings us to the symposium’s question of just how to apply those powers.

The stand out presentation came from David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which lays out a plan for the EPA to cut carbon emissions from power plants 26 percent from 2005′s levels by 2020. The plan was run through the same model used by the EPA and a host of other outfits, and according to the analysis it would prevent 3,600 deaths and thousands of other health incidents by 2020, deliver $25 to $60 billion in savings (depending on your preferred discount rate) by avoiding those health effects and the damage of climate change, and it would do this for a compliance cost of only $4 billion in 2020.

The three main parts are:

1. Set a different carbon emission rate for each individual state. This avoids imposing a one-size-fits-all approach. The baseline rate for coal generation would be 1,500 lbs of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour versus 1,000 for natural gas generation. The final rate for an individual state would be a blend between those two baselines determined by its mix of coal and natural gas power generation. (For example, a state that now gets 90 percent of its fossil fuel electricity from coal and 10 percent from gas would be required to hit a rate of 1450 lbs per megawatt hour.) This would be an overall emission rate for the state, meaning individual plants could emit at higher or lower levels. The allowable emission rate would drop again in 2025.

2. Allow plants an array of tools for meeting their emission rate. Each plant or company could then decide which mix tools works best for particular circumstances. For example, an individual plant could improve its boiler technology or retrofit with carbon sequestration — assuming, that is, the latter becomes commercially viable. Owners of multiple plants could coordinate running times, or build in more natural gas or renewable capacity to average out to the overall target. Low- or zero-emitting sources would earn generators credits that could then be traded between companies, within states, or even across state lines among states that allow it — essentially creating a kind of cap-and-trade system under the auspices of the EPA rather than an act of Congress.

3. Allow energy efficiency to also earn credits. Qualifying efficiency programs run by the states could also earn credits, which generators could then purchase to give themselves added leeway. Increased efficiency would lower costs for consumers and businesses and thus cut demand. To qualify, these energy efficiency programs would have to meet rigorous standards laid out in NRDC’s report.

If states can demonstrate that an alternative approach from the EPA’s model — say, California’s new cap-and-trade system — will deliver equal or better results, they’ll be free to pursue that.

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By Vladimir Petoukhov and Stefan Rahmstorf, via The Conversation

The northern hemisphere has experienced a spate of extreme weather in recent times. In 2012 there were destructive heat waves in the U.S. and southern Europe, accompanied by floods in China. This followed a heat wave in the U.S. in 2011 and one in Russia in 2010, coinciding with the unprecedented Pakistan flood — and the list doesn’t stop there.

Now we believe we have detected a common physical cause hidden behind all these individual events: Each time one of these extremes struck, a strong wave train had developed in the atmosphere, circling the globe in mid-latitudes. These so-called planetary waves are well-known and a normal part of atmospheric flow. What is not normal is that the usually moving waves ground to a halt and were greatly amplified during the extreme events.

Looking into the physics behind this, we found it is due to a resonance phenomenon. Under special conditions, the atmosphere can start to resonate like a bell. The wind patterns form a regular wave train, with six, seven or eight peaks and troughs going once around the globe (see graph). This is what we propose in a study published this week together with our colleagues of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Planetary waves

Normally, an important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes of the Earth takes the form of waves wandering around the planet, oscillating irregularly between the tropical and polar regions. So when they swing northward, these waves suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US; and when they swing southward, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic. This is a well-known feature of our planet’s atmospheric circulation system.

However, during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost froze in their tracks for weeks. So instead of bringing cool air after having brought warm air before, the heat just stays. And stays. And stays. In fact, we detected a strong amplification of the usually weak, slowly moving component of these waves.

Time is critical here: two or three days of 30°C are no problem, but 20 or more days lead to extreme heat stress. Since many ecosystems and cities are not adapted to this, prolonged hot periods can result in a high death toll, forest fires, and devastating harvest losses.

What does climate change have to to with it?

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A new report from the National Academy of Sciences showing how the U.S. can cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by 80 percent by 2050. Unsurprisingly, this will take more than just one single policy or technology. [Washington Post]

Case in point: In the past few years, the Obama administration has enacted a series of ambitious corporate average fuel economy standards that will require new cars to get around 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. (That will translate into about 35.4 miles per gallon on the road.) That sounds impressive, but the NAS study concludes that current standards aren’t enough to hit even that 2030 goal for oil use.

In fact, the report argues, it’s tough to find any single technology that can cut oil use in half by 2030 on its own. Making conventional cars more efficient won’t do it. A major push on electric vehicles won’t do it. The only things likely to work are a massive switch over to natural-gas vehicles (which would, in turn, make it much harder to hit the greenhouse-gas goals) or a combination of efficiency, electric vehicles, and advanced biofuels.

The Water Resources Development Act will come to the Senate floor as soon as April, which could contain strengthened coastal infrastructure to to minimize damages from extreme weather events. [The Hill]

The Alaska Senate decided to cut taxes for oil companies, sending the bill to the state House. [Alaska Dispatch]

Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz continues to draw attention for his industry ties. [ProPublica]

New research reveals that nearly all books about climate denial are funded by conservative think tanks. [DeSmogBlog]

Receding Arctic sea ice is leaving polar bears less time to eat. [Christian Science Monitor]

Would a “tiny carbon tax” shift behavior, reduce emissions, or raise revenue? Probably not. [Bloomberg]

The U.S. Midwest and Great Plains will need above-average rainfall to recover from last year’s drought. [Businessweek]

In case you missed it: LED bulbs are cheaper, last longer, can be any color, are dimmable, can turn on instantly, and use much less electricity to light your home. [New York Times]

Elementary school students in a North Carolina classroom blew past their Kickstarter goal to make their classroom 100 percent solar powered. [Cleantechnica]

Harrison Ford makes the case that conservation is important because “nature doesn’t need people — people need nature.” [BBC]