The Sacramento Bee ran an article this week on how, “Plug-in hybrids promise more power, greater efficiency.”

This may not seem like a big deal, but remember this is a state led by hydrogen-Hummer-driving Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised the first statewide “Hydrogen Highway. ” That dream has all but died, as expected, killed largely by the reality of plug-in hybrids (see here).

After many interviews with the newspaper over the years about hydrogen, this was my first one where I wasn’t the one to bring up plug ins. As I told the newspaper:

“Plug-in hybrids are going to be the vehicle story of the next few years,” said Joseph Romm, an energy policy expert with the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

The full Sac Bee article is below:

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While wind and solar get the media attention of a sexy starlet, good old geothermal power is treated like an aging character actor.

But geothermal energy is, in fact, sizzling hot these days. Big-time investors from Warren Buffet to Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley to Google have begun investing:

In 2007, private equity firms invested more than $400 million in geothermal energy, which is derived from hot water under the Earth’s surface and can be used for space heating or generating electricity

Why the interest in a form of energy that President Bush repeatedly tried to zero out of the Department of Energy Budget? One reason is the soaring cost of conventional power, like coal and nuclear. Another is the growing awareness of just how much is zero-carbon electricity will need in coming decades.

But perhaps most important for this reemerging technology, in the 2005 energy bill, Congress finally extended the renewable energy tax credit to geothermal “which at 2 cents per kilowatt hour for the first ten years, can account for a third of the cost of a project” — and which will expire in December unless Congress gets its act together (see here)!

The U.S. currently has 3 gigaWatts (3000 megaWatts) of geothermal, one third of the world’s capacity, generating $1.8 billion electricity sales. What is the ultimate potential?

The US Geological Survey estimates the US could generate 150,000 megawatts.

A major 2007 study by MIT on Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) found that it could be a provider of substantial baseload (24/7) power:

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The coal-industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has launched a major lobbying campaign against the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191). ACCCE claims it is opposed to Lieberman-Warner because it “does not adequately embrace” their “principles” and raises “just too many unanswered questions.”

Principles: ACCCE’s 12 principles for federal legislation boil down to demands that they be allowed to construct new, uncontrolled coal-fired power plants until taxpayers pony up unlimited amounts of money for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. That’s not a statement of principles — it’s a ransom note.

Lieberman-Warner, named for its two co-sponsors Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), would allow the United States to join the rest of the world in combatting climate change by setting a firm limit on carbon emissions while providing support to low-income families. However, the bill also makes significant concessions to polluters, particularly the coal industry:

–The bill calls for reductions in greenhouse emissions that are insufficient to avoid climate catastrophe.
–The bill gives a windfall of emissions permits to polluters, instead of auctioning all permits.
–The bill promises over $300 billion directly to coal polluters.

Strangely, that isn’t enough for ACCCE.

Questions: ACCCE’s questions boil down to pro-coal talking points, recycled attacks on “foreign fuels,” and vague fears about “unnecessarily” increased costs that have been well debunked.

Listen to the Pennsylvania radio spot:

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What is the point of no return for the climate — the level of CO2 concentrations beyond which catastrophic outcomes are virtually unstoppable?

No one knows for sure, but my vote goes for the point at which we start to lose a substantial fraction of the tundra’s carbon to the atmosphere — substantial being 0.1% per year! As we saw in Part 1, frozen away in the permafrost is more carbon than the atmosphere currently contains (and much of that is in the form of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide).

What is the point of no return for the tundra? A major 2005 study (subs. req’d) led by NCAR climate researcher David Lawrence, found that virtually the entire top 11 feet of permafrost around the globe could disappear by the end of this century.

Using the first “fully interactive climate system model” applied to study permafrost, the researchers found that if we tried to stabilize CO2 concentrations in the air at 550 ppm, permafrost would plummet from over 4 million square miles today to 1.5 million. If concentrations hit 850 ppm in 2100, permafrost would shrink to just 800,000 square miles.

While these projections were done with one of the world’s most sophisticated climate system models, the calculations do not include the feedback effect of the released carbon from the permafrost. That is to say, the CO2 concentrations in the model rise only as a result of direct emissions from humans, with no extra emissions counted from soils or tundra. Thus they are conservative numbers–or overestimates–of how much CO2 concentrations have to rise to trigger irreversible melting.

In short, those would-be points of atmospheric stabilization, 550 ppm or 850 ppm, aren’t stable at all — they are past the point of no return. We must stay well below 450 ppm to save the tundra and hence the climate.

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[This 3-parter will look at the tundra-climate connection, modeling of tundra loss from future warming, and some new research.]

The tundra is probably the single most important amplifying carbon-cycle feedback. None of the IPCC’s climate models, however, include carbon emissions from a defrosting tundra as a feedback.

Yet, as NOAA reported last month (here), levels of methane (a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) rose last year for the first time since 1998, which may be an early indication of thawing permafrost. So it seems like a good a time for a review and update of what we know.

The tundra or permafrost is soil that stays below freezing (0°C or 32°F) for at least two years. Normally, plants capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and slowly release that carbon back into the atmosphere after they die. But the Arctic acts like a freezer, and the decomposition rate is very low. The tundra is a carbon locker. We open it at our own risk.

We now know the Arctic contains far more carbon than previously thought (Science, subs. req’d) — nearly 1000 billion metric tons of carbon (some 3600 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide). That exceeds all the carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere. The permafrost may contain more than a third of all carbon stored in soils globally, much of it in the form of methane. Problem: Global warming is melting the top layer of permafrost, creating the possibility of large releases of soil carbon, and that is a potentially devastating vicious cycle. We are defrosting the tundra freezer-and at an unprecedented rate.

We know methane is bubbling up out of the tundra far faster than previously thought (Nature, subs. req’d). In fact, a 2006 study by Alaska researchers (GRL, subs. req’d) finds rapid degradation to key elements of the permafrost “that previously had been stable for 1000s of years.” The study, titled “Abrupt increase in permafrost degradation in Arctic Alaska,” concludes that this recent degradation exceeds changes seen earlier in the 20th Century by a factor of ten to a hundred.

What’s happening in Siberia is even more alarming:

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The most serious impacts of global warming involve water and the hydrological cycle:

• Sea level rise and storm surges
• Droughts and desertification
• Deluges and Flooding
• Loss of snowpack and inland glaciers

That’s why “The Water Environment Federation (WEF) and a coalition of national water organizations called on Congress to recognize the severe impacts that global climate change will likely have on water resources in the United States.” The groups noted that climate change is already begun to effect water resources around the country. The letter to Congress (here) calls for a number of measures including

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I don’t. But should you?

You can’t read everything or listen to everybody. Life is just too short. I debated Christy years ago so I know he tries to peddle unscientific nonsense when he thinks he can get away with it.

But some of the more than 360 (!) comments in my recent post “The deniers are winning, especially with the GOP” can’t seem to get enough of the analyses by these two scientists University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) who famously screwed up the satellite temperature measurements of the troposphere.

In the interest of saving you some time, which is a major goal of this blog, let’s see why these are two people you can program your mental DVR to fast forward through. First off, they were wrong — dead wrong — for a very long time, which created one of the most enduring denier myths, that the satellite data didn’t show the global warming that the surface temperature data did. As RealClimate wrote yesterday:

We now know, of course, that the satellite data set confirms that the climate is warming , and indeed at very nearly the same rate as indicated by the surface temperature records. Now, there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes when pursuing an innovative observational method, but Spencer and Christy sat by for most of a decade allowing — indeed encouraging — the use of their data set as an icon for global warming skeptics. They committed serial errors in the data analysis, but insisted they were right and models and thermometers were wrong. They did little or nothing to root out possible sources of errors, and left it to others to clean up the mess, as has now been done.

Amazingly (or not), the “serial errors in the data analysis” all pushed the (mis)analysis in the same, wrong direction. Coincidence? You decide. But I find it hilarious that the deniers and delayers still quote Christy/Spencer/UAH analysis lovingly, but to this day dismiss the “hockey stick” and anything Michael Mann writes, when his analysis was in fact vindicated by the august National Academy of Sciences in 2006 (see New Scientist‘s “Climate myths: The ‘hockey stick’ graph has been proven wrong“).

In their solo careers, Spencer and Christy are still pros at bad analysis. Read more

Normally I would listen to Robert Hirsch and the legendary Charlie Maxwell, over CNBC’s “Mad” Jim Cramer. But Hirsch (here) and Maxwell (here) are making headlines for saying $12-$15 gasoline is around the corner, based on Maxwell’s projection of oil “reaching $180 a barrel in 2015 and $300 a barrel in 2020.”

Sorry guys, every extra $40 barrel is another dollar a gallon or so at the pump. Don’t quite know how they did the math, but they did it wrong.

When Mad Money‘s Jim Cramer is the voice of sanity, you know the energy world is topsy-turvy, but I happened to catch him explaining to Matt Lauer on Today that such prices take us to $6 to $7 over the next few years, yes, but $12 to $15 gasoline requires a price of oil that the world is exceedingly unlikely to get to any time soon — $450 to $500 a barrel by my estimate. The world would almost certainly go into a deep global recession long before we hit those prices.

But the situation is dire, as I’ve noted many times (see below). The WSJ has a front page article today, “Energy Watchdog Warns Of Oil-Production Crunch: IEA Official Says Supplies May Plateau Below Expected Demand,” which begins ominously

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This past Saturday, Governor Sebelius vetoed the third (and final) piece of legislation that proposed two new coal-fired power plants in western Kansas.

There’s still a chance that legislators will attempt an override on May 29th. Like last time, an override is a given in the Senate, but the House votes are in question.

Her comments are starting to sting, and you can tell she’s sick of the shenanigans:

Rather than working toward a compromise solution, legislative leaders recklessly chose to jeopardize important initiatives for businesses and communities across our state by combining them with energy legislation I have previously vetoed twice. …this maneuver has done nothing to address the issues at hand – developing comprehensive energy policy, providing base-load energy power for Western Kansas, implementing carbon mitigation strategies and capitalizing on our incredible assets for additional wind power.

This third attempt to build the coal plants is unique in that the legislation pairs the coal plants with economic development incentives. Sounds like it should give coal proponents a leg up, until you find out that under the Kansas constitution, no single piece of legislation can undertake two subjects. So there’s a good chance that for this legislative session, the final attempt will be forced to die with a whimper. Let’s hope so.

– Kari Manlove

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is an obscure Cabinet-level office that oversees the activities of all the federal agencies of the Executive Branch. Under President Bush, the OMB has become administration’s primary mechanism for politicizing the work of the Environmental Protection Agency, as congressional investigations have discovered.

Bush’s political appointees to the OMB and EPA share personal ties and a common right-wing ideology of defending corporate polluters against environmental regulation. The individuals listed below joined the administration directly from anti-regulatory think tanks or from the staff of Republican congressmen.

Yesterday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) held an oversight hearing into OMB interference with EPA decisions on ozone and greenhouse gases, at which EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson yet again put in a performance that “rivals Alberto Gonzales” and failed to turn over subpoenaed documents. Today, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) held an oversight hearing into OMB interference with the EPA risk assessment process for toxic chemicals. Tomorrow, the House Global Warming Committee will hold a vote to recommend that Johnson be found in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with their subpoena.

Here are a few of the major figures linking the OMB to the EPA:

John D. Graham

Former Administrator of the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

John D. Graham

BACKGROUND: Administrator of the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) from 2001 to 2006. Called “the man behind the curtain” by OMB Watch, Graham “made his anti-regulatory agenda clear upon entering office.” In 1990, Graham founded the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, an industry-funded think tank that fights environmental regulation. Graham is now the dean of the RAND Graduate School, the military think tank’s private school. His protegés — Marcus Peacock and George Gray — now hold top positions in the EPA.

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Roger Pielke has jumped the shark.

The ultraconservative Washington Times, in yet another media piece that misunderstands the recent Nature article on warming (see here), writes:

Roger A. Pielke, environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, and not previously a global warming skeptic, reacted to the Nature article: “Climate models are of no practical use beyond providing some intellectual authority in the promotional battle over global-warming policy.”

Who is this “not previously a global warming skeptic”? Let me call him Mr. Pielke, since, unlike Dr. Jekyll’s, Mr. Hyde, Dr. Pielke and Mr. Pielke look exactly the same. The friendly non-skeptical heretic Dr. Pielke explicitly said on this blog that the “acceptable level” of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide is 450 to 500 ppm (see here). The friendly Dr. Pielke has also said achieving such a target would require more than 14 wedges (see here), which is a bloody lot of effort.

But Mr. Pielke says climate models have no practical use. Yet it is climate models that tell us that if we don’t stabilize near 450 ppm, the consequences for the climate and humanity will be an unmitigated catastrophe. If climate models are of no practical use, then why go to all that effort mitigating? Why not do nothing — as the Washington Times prefers — and just go to 1000 ppm?

That’s why Mr. Pielke is the go-to guy for quotes on not mitigating …

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The year of living stupidly is over. No longer must we put up with the nonsense that Bush’s policies are anything but an outright catastrophe for greenhouse gas emissions and future generations.

The EIA reported yesterday:

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels increased by 1.6 percent in 2007…. Factors that drove the emissions increase included … a higher carbon intensity of electricity supply.

President Bush immediately released a statement:

We are effectively contributing to the problem of global climate change through flawed energy policy, obstructionist domestic and international climate policy, and general disinformation.

Okay, he didn’t release that statement, but he should have, given that after EIA revealed the temporary dip last year, he claimed:

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The list of very knowledgeable folk who still are pushing no-till farming as a greenhouse gas mitigation strategy even though science passed them by a while ago include:

• Sen. John McCain (see “Relying on offsets = Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic)
• Princeton University*
• The Chicago Climate Exchange
• The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions

I buried the science in the McCain post, but it deserves higher visibility. As a major review article from Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, “Tillage and soil carbon sequestration–What do we really know?” concluded:

In essentially all cases where conservation tillage was found to sequester C[arbon], soils were only sampled to a depth of 30 cm or less, even though crop roots often extend much deeper. In the few studies where sampling extended deeper than 30 cm, conservation tillage has shown no consistent accrual of SOC [soil organic carbon], instead showing a difference in the distribution of SOC, with higher concentrations near the surface in conservation tillage and higher concentrations in deeper layers under conventional tillage.… Long-term, continuous gas exchange measurements have also been unable to detect C gain due to reduced tillage. Though there are other good reasons to use conservation tillage, evidence that it promotes C sequestration is not compelling.

[Conservation tillage is "broadly defined as any tillage method that leaves sufficient crop residue in place to cover at least 30% of the soil surface after planting.]

This is actually not especially new research. The review article went online in June 2006, and, of course, as a review article, it was based on even earlier research — including a 1981 (!) study that came to the same exact conclusion:

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House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) opened today’s hearing on White House interference with EPA decisions by excoriating President Bush’s record with the rule of law. Stating that we are all bound by “the science, the facts, and the law,” Waxman charged that “President Bush seems to believe these rules don’t apply to him”:

On key issues, this Administration has pushed ahead with its agenda despite the evidence and the law. We know that’s what happened on the decision to launch the Iraq War. It happened again on decisions authorizing torture. And it happened when the White House fired independent and nonpartisan Justice Department officials.

For months this Committee has been investigating recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decisions relating to both global warming and new air quality standards. And after reviewing nearly 60 thousand pages of internal documents and interviewing officials involved in the rulemakings, we have found evidence that the White House again ignored the facts and the law.

Watch it:

Waxman concluded his opening statement by saying, “The president does not have absolute power, and he is not above the law.”

The full text of Waxman’s opening statement can be found on the Oversight Committee website. The Speaker of the House’s blog has more video.

UPDATE: Empty Wheel at FireDogLake describes a confrontation between Rep. Waxman and Stephen Johnson over Johnson’s refusal to answer whether or not he discussed his rulings with the White House. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) interrupted the chairman until he said, “I will have you physically removed from this meeting if you don’t stop.”

UPDATE II: The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has announced it “will hold a vote on a resolution recommending that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson be found in contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with a subpoena duly issued” by the committee. The vote will be held at 9:45 AM Thursday morning. The subpoena for documents relating to the EPA’s refusal to obey the Supreme Court mandate to regulate greenhouse gases was issued by a unanimous, bipartisan vote on April 2, a year after the Supreme Court decision.

Watch it: Read more

I love House. Not the House of Representatives, but the TV show.

Seems like everybody loves to see people with seemingly inexplicable symptoms saved from sure death. No doubt that explains the fascination with the Lieberman-Warner Bill. But people — I’ve been trying to be gentle about this — it’s dead. Sure, like Amber on the season finale — [Spoiler Alert] — L-W can be briefly revived so we can say goodbye to it forever, but that is really just a soap opera gimmick. And she died anyway.

We don’t need to say goodbye to L-W, we need to focus all our effort on those important bills that are still clinging to life, bills that haven’t already signed a contract to appear on another TV show next season — like the investment tax credit that is crucial to keeping the momentum going on core technologies that can avert catastrophic climate change (see Barlett op-ed here and PG&E op-ed here). To L-W supporters, I can only offer this eulogy:

L-W has passed on! It is no more! It has ceased to be! L-W’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, It rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT piece of so-so climate legislation that in any case would not have averted catastrophe!

Okay, that wasn’t really a eulogy. But the point is, the wind and solar tax credits must be saved. As Bartlett (R!-MD) wrote:

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The Senate Energy & Natural Resources committee held a pointless if not counterproductive hearing today, “To receive testimony on Energy and Related Economic Effects of Global Climate Change Legislation.”

How painful a hearing was it? Before it started, the Senate’s leading global warming denier issued a release titled, “Inhofe Praises Energy Committee for Holding Hearing on Economic Impacts of Climate Bill.” Grist called it a “hearing to stoke fear about the costs of climate legislation.”

The hearing did not have any experts on the cost of inaction or on clean energy technologies, especially energy efficiency, which is the cornerstone of any strategy to minimize total costs. The witness were mostly filled with the same-old classical economists:

• Mr. Brent Yacobucci, Congressional Research Service
• Dr. Larry Parker, Congressional Research Service
• Dr. Howard Gruenspecht – Deputy Administrator, Energy Information Administration
• Dr. Brian McLean, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• Dr. Peter Orszag, Congressional Budget Office

I actually worked with both Gruenspecht and Orszag during the Clinton administration. They are very smart guys, but they have never been people who believed in the serious ability of energy efficiency (or other low-carbon technologies) to keep energy bills from rising much even as fuel costs inevitably rise under a major cap-and-trade bill.

The opening statements were bland. Question after question trashing even the idea of US climate legislation was answered lamely if at all. Absent any relevant experts, conservative senators were able to raise doubts about impacts on the economy, on gas and oil prices, and on US competitiveness — and even potential allies were left calling for a Manhattan project to develop new technologies, blah, blah, blah, with little pushback from the witnessses.

The hearing only came to life when Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke. He dismissed everything he had heard [from the witnesses] as “old think.” He wondered how you could contemplate analyzing the economic impact of climate legislation if you don’t understand what’s going on with energy efficiency in California and other states, or electric vehicles, or the new concentrated solar thermal power (!) plants now being built. He also demanded to know what the cost of inaction would be, and why none of the witnesses spoke to that.

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Although still dead, the L-W climate bill remains a subject of morbid curiosity. Now that its body has been donated to science, L-W will probably get as much attention as a certain season finale also about anatomy.

Grist has kindly posted the version of the L-W bill that will go to the Senate floor (through the miracle of Scribd here). This is the “substitute amendment” by Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to the Climate Security Act.

In dissecting the bill, let’s start with Title V, Subtitle C: Emergency Off-Ramps.

If the price of carbon allowances reaches a certain price range, there is a mechanism that will automatically release additional emission allowances onto the market to lower the price. The additional allowances are borrowed so that the environmental integrity of the caps over the long term is protected.”

We see here that the bill was rushed to the emergency room in a desperate attempt to save the bill from the safety valve. Yes, borrowing is a better idea than the safety valve (see A Better Idea Than the “Safety Valve”), but the patient is left with a medical mystery that would even intrigue the Sherlock Holmes of diagnosticians, Dr. Gregory House –what is meant by “a certain price range”?

If that price range is anywhere near $30 a ton of carbon (and rising each year), then the coroner’s original cause of death, “apathy,” will prove to be well justified (though justifiable homicide would also be a plausible verdict). If it is closer to $30 a ton of carbon dioxide (and rising each year), we may have to look elsewhere. [For a critique of the greenhouse gas target, see A Siegel here.]

Interestingly, with the body still warm, we almost forgot about the deceased’s will. But in a move whose generosity will warm the hearts of everyone but the coldest conservatives, the bill creates the largest bequest in history — $5.6 trillion from now through 2050 — to boost clean energy and to satisfy various interest groups. Let’s look at the astonishing array of beneficiaries Boxer’s amendment provides (all dollars are cumulative through 2050): Read more

This is a follow up to the Climate Progress exclusive from last month, “The Great Ice Age of 2008 is finally over — next stop Venus!” NOAA’s National Climactic Data Center reported (here):

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the thirteenth warmest on record for April and the January-April year-to-date period ranked twelfth warmest.

So global coolers will have to find some other fish to fry freeze. [Yes, I know, deniers/delayers, the mere fact that this wasn't the warmest April or warmest January-April on record proves conclusively we must be cooling.] Interestingly the warmest April and January-April on record according to NOAA/NCDC occurred in … wait for it … 2007.

The rest of us know that we are on the cool side of all-time warming because we’re still in a (weakened) La Ni±a and a local mininum of the solar irradiance cycle (see figure) but the deniers/delayers insist that if CO2 doesn’t explain every single short-term and medium-term temperature fluctuation, then the whole damn theory of human-caused warming is as debunked as, say, the notion that men ever landed on the moon.

By the way, I don’t like to brag or anything, but as I correctly predicted last month:

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House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has today released documents and testimony that show White House involvement in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to deny California’s request for a waiver to enforce its greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks.

According to testimony by former EPA Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s “preference for a full or partial grant of the waiver did not change until after he communicated with the White House“:

When asked by Committee staff “whether the Administrator communicated with the White House in between his preference to do a partial grant and the ultimate decision” to deny the waiver, Mr. Burnett responded: “I believe the answer is yes.” When asked “after his communications with the White House, did he still support granting the waiver in part,” Mr. Burnett answered: “He ultimately decided to deny the waiver.” Mr. Burnett also affirmed that there was “White House input into the rationale in the December 19th letter” announcing the denial of the waiver and in the formal decision document issued in March 2008.

Burnett refused to testify on any further specifics, telling the investigators “that he had been directed not to answer any questions about the involvement of the White House in the decision to reject California’s petition.” Burnett, who was involved in a series of questionable EPA decisions during his tenure, resigned from the EPA on May 6. He was deposed on May 15.

On December 19, 2007, the date President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson announced that his agency would deny California’s waiver request. This request, made in 2005, set off a series of legal battles that culminated in the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts vs. EPA that ordered the EPA to take action on greenhouse gases. Since then, the EPA has failed to obey the Supreme Court mandate, despite the efforts of career staff.

Waxman’s memo concludes:

It would be a serious breach if the President or other White House officials directed Administrator Johnson to ignore the record before the agency and deny California’s petition for political or other inappropriate reasons. Further investigation will be required to assess the legality of the White House role in the rejection of the California motor vehicle standards.

Johnson is expected to testify before Waxman’s committee tomorrow at 1 PM.

UPDATE: Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch writes in: “This is an incredibly sordid story. Steve Johnson should come out and finally tell the truth about this situation. And he should resign for agreeing not only to be a White House pawn but for trying to deceive the public about what happened.” Frank has more at Gristmill.

UPDATE II: National Journal’s CongressDaily reports that Johnson may refuse to turn over documents subpoenaed for tomorrow’s oversight hearing. In a letter to Johnson last Friday, Waxman indicated his expectations about the documents on the “revised national ambient air quality standards for ozone”:

Unless the President asserts a valid claim of executive privilege with respect to the documents being withheld by EPA, you will be expected to personally bring the documents to the hearing. The Committee’s subpoena was directed to you and you will be in defiance of the subpoena if you appear at the hearing without the documents.

UPDATE III: Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) responds: “The EPA’s top leadership has decimated the integrity of the agency, and allowed it to become a total tool of the White House. This report asserts that the White House was directly involved in the decision to deny California’s waiver — over the objections of the Agency’s career scientists and attorneys. This demonstrates incredible arrogance by the White House — to wholly pervert an Agency that is supposed to be independent.”

Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) responds: “When I asked Administrator Johnson about this matter several months ago, the stilted, repetitive legalese of his answers made him seem like a man who had been coached on his answers and had something to hide. I hope he will be much more forthcoming tomorrow, and give the American people the straight answers they deserve.”

When President Bush delivered his much-hyped climate policy speech from the Rose Garden last April (see here), he voiced an interesting concern. He’s worried that the courts will do what the other two branches of government have failed to do: take meaningful action to curb the country’s carbon emissions.

“We face a growing problem here at home,” the president said. “Some courts are taking laws written more than 30 years ago — to primarily address local and regional environmental effects — and applying them to global climate change.”

“Decisions with such far-reaching impact should not be left to unelected regulators and judges,” he continued. “Such decisions should be opened — debated openly; such decisions should be made by the elected representatives of the people they affect. The American people deserve an honest assessment of the costs, benefits and feasibility of any proposed solution.”

The White House promised that Bush’s Rose Garden remarks would be important and it was correct: The president’s call for open debate and an honest assessment of climate action was a major policy shift. His complaint about unelected judges making decisions was specious, however. The elected members of past Congresses and Bush’s predecessors signed the 30-year-old laws on which some of the current court decisions are based. Old laws are being applied to global warming because the current Congress and White House have failed to pass new ones.

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