Brazil does away with laws to protect large swathes of rainforest
Brazil’s powerful agricultural sector has scored a major victory, with the approval by the lower house of Congress of a reform that would open up some protected forests to cropland and ranchers.
Christie: “In the past I’ve always said that climate change is real and it’s impacting our state. There’s undeniable data that CO2 levels and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are increasing. This decade, average temperatures have been rising. Temperature changes are affecting weather patterns and our climate.
In order to to best deal with climate change you have to understand its causes…. I’ve taken the time to develop a better understanding of the role that humans play in global warming and what impact human activities has on our climate. In the last few months, I’ve sat down with experts both inside the government and outside the administration in academia and other places to discuss the issue in depth…. When you have over 90% of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts…. We know enough to say that we are at least a part of the problem. So looking forward we need to work to put policies in place that get at reducing those contributing factors.
And that’s why, People of New Jersey, I am withdrawing from the most successful regional climate initiative in the country, the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI. You see, I don’t think the carbon pollution price in RGGI is high enough, and yet at the very same time I’m going to complain that it is a “gimmicky” program that is “nothing more than a tax on electricity.” Sure it is a market-based “gimmick” Republicans once embraced to help lower pollution-reduction costs to businesses. And sure RGGI revenues lower the state’s deficit and at the same bring clean energy and energy efficiency to you, which keeps your bills low. But my new motto is climate science, true, climate action, Fuggedaboutit!
Okay, while he did say all that stuff on the science (video here), the previous paragraph is just my summary of what he said about RGGI. Christie did in fact simultaneously complain that the CO2 price was too low and that RGGI was a “tax on electricity.” The question is why did he do this.
One popular theory is that he has national political ambitions in the GOP.
The struggles of families and businesses over the past seven years are linked directly to high profits for oil companies due to high energy price volatility. A new report from the Center for American Progress finds that families and businesses are exposed to massive price swings for the vast majority of their energy spending. Brad Johnson has the story.
CAP Senior Fellow Christian E. Weller and Special Assistant for Economic Policy Jaryn Fields explain that these large price swings for gasoline and other energy prices make it even more difficult for families, businesses, and ultimately the entire American economy to plan for the future:
Climate Progress is now on Facebook. Help build our community of people like you who are passionate about climate and energy issues — “like” us and pass the word onto your network of friends and colleagues.
Also, you can connect with us on Twitter and join the nearly 14,000 people who get a steady stream of updates on climate science, policy issues and development of clean energy technologies. In addition to tweeting the CP headlines with shortened urls as articles are posted, like an old-fashioned news teletype, we’re going to do more direct tweeting, led by clean energy reporter Stephen Lacey.
And on May 31, Climate Progress will be unveiling a major new site redesign that will open up CP to a whole new set of readers while hopefully solving some of the problems folks have been having with comments, among other improvements. More on that in the coming days.
NOTE: I’m bringing this post back up for reasons that will become clear shortly.
Parts of West Texas, Oklahoma and adjoining states are suffering from a drought that rivals the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Some scientists say this is a kind of “global weirding” heralding climate change.
Were it not for the Biblical flooding of the Mississippi River and, well, Biblical whirlwinds slamming the Midwest, the “hellish” side of Hell and High Water would be the big news. Last month a “record breaking 1.79 million acres burned across the country” and most of that was in Texas, NOAA reported.
The Houston Chronicle reported this week, “Texas’ farmers and ranchers are coping with their eighth drought in the last 13 years, and this one, while still young, has a chance of slamming producers with their biggest losses ever, officials said.
Nearly four fifths of Texas is under extreme or exceptional drought. Reuters reports, the “dire drought” has “expanded across the key farming state of Kansas … the top U.S. wheat-growing state” over the last two weeks, “adding to struggles of wheat farmers already dealing with weather-ravaged fields.”
“It is pretty bad,” said Kansas state climatologist Mary Knapp. “For a lot of these areas… the last significant rainfall was in July of last year.”
It’s not just the United States that is being slammed. As AFP reports, “Central China’s worst drought in more than 50 years is drying reservoirs, stalling rice planting, and threatens crippling power shortages as hydroelectric plants lie idle, state media said Wednesday.”
The UK’s Guardian explains the “drastic” measures the Chinese are taking :
Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) was “one of President Reagan’s senior speech writers” from 1981 to 1988. Reagan, of course, famously said “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.”
So it is perhaps not a complete surprise that at a House hearing on UN climate talks chaired by Rohrbacher, he actually asked:
“Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?” the California Republican asked Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate diplomat and lead witness at the hearing. “Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening?”
Seriously. Even the centrist mavens at Politico were taken aback, titling their story, “Do trees cause global warming?”
But they should remember that this is a guy who, in a 2007 hearing, said of previous warm periods in the paleo-record, “We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?”
Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, dismissed Rohrbacher’s anti-scientific comment in an email to me:
Popular Science has posted an amazing collection of photos, “Amid Floods, Dwellers Turn Homes Into Islands.”
They cry out for captions — and I welcome reader suggestions. “Fortress America” comes to mind.
Here are more photos, with captions courtesy of John Dunne:
Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co. (GE)
Of course, being cheaper than new nuclear isn’t hard when cost curves are moving in opposite direction (see “Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve?“).
Here is the solar cost curve (in blue) from the recent IPCC report on renewables:
Dan Weiss, in a CAP cross-post
Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of “summer driving season.” Families pack up their cars or minivans to visit relatives and friends. Or they hop on America’s highways to enjoy our national parks, forests, beaches, and cities. The car trip is as American as apple pie or baseball.
This summer, however, Americans’ car trips are going to be much more expensive. Gasoline prices are nearly a dollar per gallon more than last year””a one-third leap. These higher prices are directly related to higher oil prices, which are $23 per barrel more than one year ago. This is a 33 percent hike.
Adding insult to injury, a significant portion of the gasoline price increase is due to speculators exploiting fears about the impact of instability in the Persian Gulf on the future price of oil. Reliable evidence indicates that speculators prey on these fears by bidding up oil prices, which ultimately hit $114 per barrel a month ago.
Calif. can meet 75% of its clean energy goals with existing technologies — study
California regulators are jumping hurdles to meet their target of 1990 emissions levels by 2020, but they still have the long view in their sights.
A new study from the Electric Power Research Institute finds that a “smart grid” would cost up to $475 billion, the total economic and environmental value provided would range between $1.2 and $2 trillion.
Here are two EPRI figures comparing today’s power system to the “energy internet”:
If you tuned in to the House Natural Resources Committee yesterday expecting to learn about roadblocks to wind and solar development, you may have been surprised to hear yet again about how to grow the profits of Big Oil companies.
Chairman Doc Hastings’ (R-WA) Natural Resources Committee bumped the hearing entitled “Identifying Roadblocks to Wind and Solar Energy on Public Lands and Waters – The Wind and Solar Industry Perspective.” They replaced it with part three of their oil above all look at gas prices, including witnesses associated with the Koch brothers and Jack Abramoff. Brad Johnson has the story.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation funded six groups from across the political spectrum to put forward plans addressing our nation’s fiscal challenges. All the plans are here. The Center for American Progress plan, “Budgeting for Growth and Prosperity” brings the deficit below 2% of GDP within 6 years and fully balances by 2030.
The CAP budget does so while boosting clean energy research and deployment funding roughly $10 billion a year — and instituting a high and rising CO2 price. The plan achieves the CO2 reduction targets from the 2009 House climate and clean energy jobs bill (Waxman-Markey): A 42% cut (from 2005 levels) by 2030, and 83% cut by 2050.
The CAP plan does not specify whether the carbon price would be instituted as a tax or some sort of trading mechanism. Lower income groups are protected from the impact of higher energy prices through rebates and tax reform. The plan creates a single 15% tax bracket for 80% of Americans. Some of the additional clean energy funding can also go towards efficiency measures that will help lower people’s bills.
The CAP strategy probably isn’t a big surprise to Climate Progress readers. But what is remarkable is that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) takes a strikingly similar approach on the revenue side — a high and rising CO2 price! As AEI’s plan, “A Balanced Plan for Fiscal Stability and Economic Growth,” explains:
House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA)
Chairman Doc Hastings’ (R-WA) Natural Resources Committee bumped today’s hearing entitled “Identifying Roadblocks to Wind and Solar Energy on Public Lands and Waters – The Wind and Solar Industry Perspective.” They replaced it with part three of their oil above all look at gas prices, including witnesses associated with the Koch brothers and Jack Abramoff.
James Martin testified on behalf of the 60 Plus Association, which openly admits that they are “viewed as the conservative alternative to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).” As a 501 (c)(4), the 60 Plus Association does not reveal from where their funding comes, but it has been reported that Republican sources described the organization in 2010 as receiving “an influx of funds from the billionaire brothers, David and Charles Koch.” ThinkProgress also obtained a 2007 PowerPoint presentation prepared by the BP-funded front group “Consumer Energy Alliance,” in which the 60 Plus Association is listed as an “affiliated group”.
Another witness on the panel, Deneen Borelli, testified on behalf of the National Center for Public Policy Research, which once had Jack Abramoff on its Board of Directors. This connection is particularly of interest given that in her testimony, when discussing the need for a pro-growth energy strategy, Ms. Borelli states:
“There is something terribly wrong when the corporate and social elite can use the power of government to advance their narrow interests while harming the standard of living of hardworking Americans, denying us our right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Yet, she failed to recognized a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that shows 74 percent of voters support eliminating tax breaks to oil companies or that according to a March 2011 survey by polling firm Greenberg Quinlan & Rosner Research (GQCR), 52 percent of voters blame oil companies for the recent increase in gas prices.
Big Oil may be the largest example of “corporate and social elite” in the world, and they continue to rely on their friends in the Grand Oil Party to protect their taxpayer subsidies and push for policies that pad their shareholder’s pockets. The votes don’t lie. The GOP controlled house has taken 13 votes that directly benefit Big Oil. Today’s postponed wind and solar hearing is just one more example of the GOP’s plan to protect oil above all, rather than get serious about reducing gas prices with a comprehensive energy plan.
Joplin, Missouri happens to be represented by a climate science denier. Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) loves to mock those who want to restrict global warming pollution — with unintentionally self-mocking comments (see video below):
In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change you know. Who in the world want to put politicians in charge of the weather anyways?
Seriously. And now E&E News (subs. req’d) reports that he wants to become Senator:
An engineer by training, who is seeking the Republican Senate nomination to take on Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) next year, Akin said the science supporting man-made climate change had always appeared thin to him.
Interesting that E&E News mentions his engineering training — that would be a B.S. in “management engineering” — and not, say, his “Master of Divinity degree at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis.” Hey, I’m not saying either matters in terms of his climate science denial — there are deniers with Ph.D. in physics while the Vatican itself says the science is real and requires immediate action — just that it’s interesting E&E plays up the engineering side. But I digress.
The Earth Policy Institute reported on figures today showing that cancer is now the leading cause of death in China, accounting for a quarter of all deaths in the country. The most common type? Lung cancer – caused in large part by increasingly foul air due to a heavy reliance on coal:
Every major GOP presidential candidate is a flip-flopper on the most important issue of our time (see Tim Pawlenty: “Every one of us” running for president has flip-flopped on climate change). But the presumptive front-runner is a professional flip-flopper, from his opposition to the Obama healthcare reform bill that his Massachusetts plan inspired to his embrace of the dirty energy he once tried to stop (see In 2003, Romney attacked coal jobs that “kill people”).
Now Think Progress documents one of Romney’s most bizarre flip-flops — his effort to wrap himself around the now successful auto bail out he once vilified.
The debate about the cleanliness of natural gas continues, as the National Energy Technology Laboratory weighs in with its own analysis comparing coal and gas.
Last month Climate Progress wrote about a new study from Cornell University ecology professor Robert Howarth, which found that shale gas was potentially as big a contributor to climate change than coal. By examining the impact of “fugitive emissions” of methane – a greenhouse gas that traps heat far better than CO2 – Howarth came to the conclusion that shale gas “may aggravate rather than mitigate global warming”:
Norway plans billion-dollar clean energy initiative for poor
Norway wants to channel billions of dollars to renewable energies in developing nations, building on a scheme to protect tropical forests to which Oslo has been the biggest donor, officials said.
Unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases means more extreme weather events like deluges and droughts. For the GOP, however, a vote to increase disaster relief money is just another opportunity to gut funding for clean energy — which would make it another positive or amplifying feedback, albeit much smaller than the really worrisome ones (see “The methane hydrate feedback revisited“). Brad Johnson has the story.
In a stunningly heartless move, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) put strings on emergency relief for the victims of the killer Joplin tornado, saying that other government services would have to be cut to offset aid spending.
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