The New York Times Editorial Board detailed in yesterday’s paper exactly why and how executive action is needed to rein in carbon emissions. Worth a full read. [New York Times]

America cannot solve a global problem by itself. But as Mr. Obama rightly observed in his inaugural address, the United States, as both major polluter and world leader, has a deep obligation to help shield the international community from rising sea levels, floods, droughts and other devastating consequences of a warming planet.

The prospects for broad-based Congressional action putting a price on carbon emissions are nil. The House is run by people who care little for environmental issues generally, and Senate Republicans who once favored a pricing strategy, like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have long since slunk away. Meanwhile, Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have spent the last two weeks trying to derail Mr. Obama’s nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency — a moderate named Gina McCarthy. Ms. McCarthy has served two Republican governors (Mitt Romney was one) but is considered suspect by the right wing because she wants to control carbon pollution, which is driving global temperatures upward.

Hence the need for executive action. Yet we are now four months into Mr. Obama’s second term, and there is no visible sign of a coherent strategy. … As this page has noted, it is possible to adopt a robust climate strategy based largely on executive actions. The most important of these is to invoke the E.P.A.’s authority under the Clean Air Act to limit pollution from stationary industrial sources, chiefly the power plants that account for almost 40 percent of the country’s carbon emissions. …

He can hasten the development of less-polluting alternatives to older-generation refrigerants and other chemicals. He can order the Energy Department to embark on a major program to improve the efficiency of appliances and commercial and residential buildings, which consume a huge chunk of the country’s energy supply. And he can ramp up investment in basic research.

All of this will take time, which is why it is important to get started.

Heatwave deaths in New York City could spike 22 percent in the next decade. [Guardian]

Elizabeth Kolbert on Keystone: “The pipeline isn’t inevitable, and it shouldn’t be treated as such. It’s just another step on the march to disaster.” [New Yorker]

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The U.S. Energy Information Agency’s new state-by-state report on carbon emissions shows some progress, but you sort of have to squint to see it. The paper, which came out on Monday, didn’t account for the last three years — it only has data for 2000 to 2010 — but it ran through several different ways of looking at the problem.

So here’s a drill down into what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, and what we can do about it.

First, the good news. The total carbon intensity of the economy dropped 17.9 percent over those ten years. That’s how much carbon we release for every million dollars our economy produces. Our carbon emissions per person are also down 12.6 percent, and the amount of energy we use for every million dollars of economic production we crank out is down 15.2 percent. That last number is good news for energy efficiency, but it’s the headline number that’s really important. It means we’re getting better at producing jobs and incomes while doing less damage to the global climate. Here’s a breakdown of the economy’s carbon intensity by state:

PERCENT CHANGE IN CARBON INTENSITY OF ECONOMY 2000 – 2010

Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency

Remember, we want reductions, so the columns in the negative are good — and all but Missouri are. Unfortunately, while some of this is certainly more renewable energy (driven by state/federal policy) and cheap natural gas and tightened fuel efficiency standards, a lot of it is also the recession. A sluggish economy is forcing us to learn to do more with less. The real question is whether we can hold onto those lessons once growth picks back up.

Now the bad news. Total carbon emissions only dropped 4.2 percent. That’s what will determine whether we catastrophically destabilize the climate. The planet doesn’t care how efficiently we produce carbon, it just cares how much carbon we produce. Again, here’s a breakdown by state. Notice how fewer columns are in the negative:

PERCENT CHANGE IN TOTAL CARBON EMISSIONS 2000 – 2010

Source: U.S. Energy Information Agency

Right now our increased efficiency and lower carbon intensity is being swamped by America’s rising population and the sheer scale of its economy. And the carbon intensity of our energy — how much carbon we produce per unit of energy — is only down 3.2 percent. So we’re getting better at using energy more efficiently, but not so much at producing less carbon while generating that energy.

That’s a big problem. The International Energy Agency recently ran the numbers and determined that the carbon intensity of the United States’ energy sector has barely budged since 1990. Same for the carbon intensity of the world’s energy production. If those numbers don’t drop drastically by 2050, we’re headed for six degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100.

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Credit: AutomobileMag.com

Tesla Motors Company is coming off a very good week. On Wednesday, the company reported that it had sold more electric vehicles than any other automaker during the first quarter of the year, and turned a profit for the first time in its 10 year history.

On Thursday, Consumer Reports — the famously austere purveyors of customer satisfaction surveys and product testing for all manner of consumer goods — announced that Tesla’s Model S roadster outperformed every other commercially-available vehicle in their annual battery of stress tests, scoring a 99 out of a possible 100:

The Tesla Model S outscores every other car in our test Ratings. It does so even though it’s an electric car. In fact, it does so because it is electric.

Built from the ground up as an EV, this car’s overall balance benefits from mounting the battery under the floor and in the lowest part of the body. That gives the car a rock-bottom center of gravity that enables excellent handling, a comfortable ride, and lots of room inside.

The reviewers didn’t stop there. So thorough was the performance of Tesla’s flagship car, the magazine went on to describe the Model S as one of the best cars they’ve ever tested in its nearly 80 year history: “So is the Tesla Model S the best car ever? We wrestled with that question long and hard. It comes close.”

Tesla’s score of 99 is the highest for any hybrid or electric vehicle, and tied for the highest rating awarded to any car in the history of the magazine. The market for 100 percent electric cars has lagged behind the rest of the industry, hindered in part from the perception that the cars weren’t reliable or practical for everyday use. But coupled with the quickening expansion of high-speed charging stations in the most highly trafficked parts of the country, the endorsement from Consumer Reports could further expedite Tesla’s growth.

Lest critics think that fancy sports cars always sell well, it turns out that Tesla outsold the similarly-priced cars that drink gasoline created by Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi.

Sales of the company’s luxury sedans have steadily grown in recent months and the company is now on track to sell an estimated 21,000 cars by year’s end. Tesla believes that one way the company will sell more cars is to be able to sell them directly — not through a dealership. It is asking states that currently bar manufacturers from doing this to change their laws so that Tesla could sell cars to, say, Texans in Texas. A recent bill passed by a North Carolina Senate committee would ban the direct sale of automobiles, which would be a huge step backward for the company, which has sold 80 cars in the state.

Tesla’s recent growth and profit are nice, but the company needs to grow a lot more if it plans to displace more of the gas-guzzling vehicles currently on the road. Two things will help:

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The fight over American coal exports continues to be dramatic.  Yesterday, energy company Kinder Morgan announced that it is dropping plans to build its Port Westward Project near Port of St. Helens, Oregon. The export terminal would have transported 15-30 million tons of coal from Wyoming and Montana to Asian nations.

While the company attributed its decision to the logistics of the site rather than larger global energy dynamics or community opposition, environmental groups noted that residents of the region were stridently opposed to the terminal. “It’s clear that our citizens have no interest in seeing their region turned into a conduit for dirty coal,” as an advocate for Columbia Riverkeeper said.

Less than a year ago, six coal export terminals were under consideration in Oregon and Washington, but as of yesterday only three remain. These are: the Gateway Pacific Terminal near Bellingham, WA; the Millennium Bulk Terminals in Longview, WA; and the Morrow Pacific Project near Boardman, OR.

Coal exports from the United States to Asia are controversial for many reasons. One of these is that the coal that would be shipped abroad is primarily taxpayer-owned coal, from public lands in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. This region produces approximately 40 percent of our nation’s coal. Recently, concerns have been raised that coal companies may not be providing taxpayers with a fair return for the extraction of their minerals, and are “dodging” royalty payments. This allegation has prompted an internal investigation at the Department of the Interior, interest by the chairman and ranking member of a key Senate committee, and concern from the governors of Oregon and Washington.

Additionally, moving the coal from the Rockies to the west coast requires significant new infrastructure, including trains that can be up to a mile long. Communities along those routes have worried about the noise, air pollution, and water contamination that come with transporting vast amounts of coal by trains. As one rancher whose property would be crossed by a new rail line put it, “They call us radical environmentalists because we want the laws enforced.”

In 2012, U.S. coal exports were expected to reach their highest levels since 1981, and the potential for continued growth is high considering that the U.S. has more proven reserves that any other country. And, Wyoming recently mined its 10-billionth ton of coal, to which the Executive Director of the Wyoming Mining Association responded, “The industry looks forward to supplying power from Wyoming coal–affordably, reliably—for the next 100 years.”

But, WyoFile’s Dustin Bleffizer recently pointed out an important paradox regarding coal exports and climate change that will be important for policymakers to keep in mind:

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The Washington Post editorial board calls a carbon tax “one of the best ideas in Washington almost no one in Congress will talk about.” It joins a very diverse group (including conservative economists, big oil companies, environmental advocates, and most Americans) that thinks pricing carbon pollution is smart policy. People are talking about it, if you know where to listen.

First, there is some activity in Congress. The Senate Finance Committee released a white paper last month which recommended a carbon tax as a way to reduce the estimated $16 billion of foregone energy tax expenditures in 2013. Back in February, Senators Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer introduced comprehensive climate legislation that would put a price on carbon pollution and invest in a renewable energy economy. Boxer, Chair of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, said she would move the bill through her committee and hopefully to the Senate floor this summer. Rep. Henry Waxman, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, and Sen. Brian Schatz have also released a carbon price discussion draft for review.

However, given the last few years of congressional inaction, it would be surprising if the Senate passed legislation to put a price on carbon or the bill received bully pulpit support from the White House. Even more so if the House took it up. During the budget debate in March, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have made it more difficult to pass a carbon tax, though it did get majority support. The GOP House leadership, following the lead of Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party, signed a “no climate tax” pledge along with nearly 100 other House members. And new Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in a written statement prior to his confirmation that the administration is not planning to propose a carbon tax, though its hard to believe President Obama would veto a bill containing one if it actually arrived at his desk.

That is a lot of strikes against a proposal, even by the standards of the barely-functioning U.S. political system. 90 percent of Americans support background checks on gun sales but that could not make it out of the Senate. So is a price on carbon completely dead? Or mostly dead?

Putting a price on carbon pollution is something that finds support in across the globe, and in some very unexpected places.

Large areas of the world have already put a price on carbon:

• 33 countries and 18 sub-national jurisdictions will price carbon in 2013. This comprises 850 million people and nearly a third of the global economy.
• An official in the Chinese Ministry of Finance said that the country was considering a price on carbon along with a market-based cap-and-trade system. China’s emissions are the largest in the world and if the nation put a well-designed price on carbon it would have a significant impact.

Support for pricing carbon pollution is surprisingly widespread in the U.S.:

• 67 percent of Americans would rather reduce the deficit via a carbon tax than through cutting government programs, according to a poll conducted last December. A revenue neutral carbon tax that would provide dividends back to taxpayers and invest in renewable energy received 70 percent support in the poll.
• Another poll by YouGov found 56 percent of Americans would prefer a carbon tax to help reduce the deficit. The poll used an interesting tool that allowed participants to try to balance the budget themselves, which led to more than half concluding that a carbon tax would be a good idea. (Another poll found less support if the revenue would only be used to pay for renewable energy initiatives, so the fiscal component is key to gaining wider support.)

Many businesses prefer taxing carbon pollution:

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The Washington Post, among others, have seen the recent failed attempt to shore up the European Union’s carbon trading system as a sign of its demise.

[Washington Post]

That system, however, is in deep trouble. … On April 16, the European Parliament was on the verge of temporarily tightening the supply of allowances to boost the price of carbon and shore up the ailing market. But opposition by countries led by Poland — a nation strongly dependent on heavy-emitting coal power plants — defeated the measure. The rejection sent the price of carbon plummeting to a historic low of roughly $3.60.

In case you missed it, after the vote David Roberts provided some much-needed context on the program. [Grist]

First off, the ETS is not a mess/broken/dying, it’s working like it’s supposed to. The goal of a cap-and-trade system is not to create a high price on carbon, or a low price on carbon, or any particular price on carbon. It is to reduce carbon emissions along a pathway specified by a series of targets (17 percent by 2020, etc.). The EU is on that pathway. Emissions are expected to come in under the cap, which means the cap-and-trade program is working. …

Now, it is true that the current price on carbon in the EU is not high enough to drive the kind of long-term investments that will be needed to lower emissions substantially by 2030 or 2050. There are legitimate timing issues here: If those investments aren’t begun now, then later, when carbon targets tighten and carbon prices rise, there’s going to be a crunch.

One way to address this problem would be to switch from a cap-and-trade system to a carbon tax, which allegedly offers price certainty. …

The other way to solve the problem — the obvious way, the correct way, which no one is talking about for reasons unclear to me — is to lower the carbon caps. If it’s “too cheap” to hit current targets, then current targets are insufficiently ambitious. If EU members want a higher carbon price to drive more clean-energy investment, they should reduce emissions more. That, not the failure to pass some unholy kludge, is what people ought to be yelling at the European Parliament about. …

I think everyone should take a deep breath. There are certainly positive ways to reform the ETS: reduce the allocation of free permits and the use of offsets, tighten the rules on those offsets, and perhaps put in a carbon-price floor. But the goal should not be to tweak short-term carbon prices. Remember, the point of a carbon-trading system is not the prices, it’s the targets.

The Canadian government objects to a European plan to designate dirty tar sands oil from Alberta as, well, dirty. [Reuters]

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The new analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is a classic good news, bad news story, summed up in this chart:

The good news is that merely by extending existing energy policies, the United States could keep energy-related carbon dioxide emissions flat through 2040.

That’s also the bad news — for two reasons.

First, the anti-science, anti-government crowd has a stranglehold on federal policy for the foreseeable future, whereas the Extended Policies case assumes the Congress actively extends key policies including “the continuation of the production tax credit for wind, biomass, geothermal, and other renewable resources, and the investment tax credit for solar generation technologies.”

Second, as CAP’s Dan Weiss noted on CP in December, flatlining CO2 “would be an epic disaster for the United States and the rest of the planet”:

Such an outcome would certainly condemn the United States and the world to the most devastating impacts from climate change, including more fatalities and damages from increasingly ferocious and frequent extreme weather, more deaths and illness from smog, tropical diseases infecting people in northern latitudes, and the disruption of the world’s food production system.

It bears repeating that a 60% reduction by 2050 vs. 1990 levels is the target that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the rich countries (Annex I) should adopt if the goal is to stabilize at 550 ppm CO2-eq.  I discussed the science underlying this at length in 2009.

Here’s the key chart from the full Working Group III report (Box 13.7, page 776):

The 550 ppm CO2-equivalent is about 450 ppm CO2 (because of the warming from the other greenhouse gases). It means ultimately “stabilizing” at 3°C (5.4°F) above preindustrial levels using the “best estimate” of climate sensitivity — see the IPCC’s Synthesis Report “Summary for Policymakers” (Table SPM.6). And that “stabilizing” assumes no major carbon cycle feedbacks, like, say the thawing permafrost, which will likely add 0.4°F – 1.5°F to total global warming by 2100.

Thus, in the real world, 550 ppm CO2-equivalent is likely to be devastating to modern civilization, leading to widespread Dust-Bowlification and an ice free planet. So even a 60% reduction in U.S. emissions by mid-century isn’t sufficient.

A non-suicidal species would pursue something closer to 450 ppm CO2-eq or less — and that means taking U.S. emissions down more than 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. That would require us to be near 1 billion metric tons of CO2 around 2040, rather than flatlining at over 5 billion.

Through 2020, Obama can put the U.S. close to the sane path without Congress, by using the executive authority under the Clean Air Act — a plan spelled out in detail by the Natural Resources Defense Council. To stay anywhere near the 450 ppm path post-2020, we’d likely need a sane Congress, too.

For the media — and even the White House — the big news was that Obama killed at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner [WhiteHouse.Gov].

For homo sapiens, as we have been reporting, the epochal news is that in the next few days, CO2 levels in the atmosphere are expected to reach 400 parts per million for the first time in human existence, which continues a 200-year rise that is now accelerating. [Guardian]

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 399.72 parts per million (ppm) and is likely to pass the symbolically important 400ppm level for the first time in the next few days.

Readings at the US government’s Earth Systems Research laboratory in Hawaii, are not expected to reach their 2013 peak until mid May, but were recorded at a daily average of 399.72 ppm on 25 April. The weekly average stood at 398.5 on Monday.

Hourly readings above 400ppm have been recorded six times in the last week, and on occasion, at observatories in the high Arctic. But the Mauna Loa station, sited at 3,400 m and far away from major pollution sources in the Pacific Ocean, has been monitoring levels for more than 50 years and is considered the gold standard.

“I wish it weren’t true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat. At this pace we’ll hit 450 ppm within a few decades,” said Ralph Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography which operates the Hawaiian observatory.

Hurricane Sandy caused 11 billion gallons of untreated sewage to overflow into eight states. [Climate Central]

The European Environmental Agency warned the continent that it may have to erect storm surge protections like the Thames flood barrier to protect its citizens. [Guardian]

The American Society of Civil Engineers similarly rated U.S. infrastructure a D+, which as Ed Maurer and Eugene Cordero point out is not ready for climate change. [MarketWatch]

House Democrats call on Congress to say that climate change especially impacts women and could destabilize some enough to cause them to resort to “transactional sex” for survival. [The Hill]

Researchers have linked smog-related air pollution to brain damage and strokes. [Newsday]

The BLM will publish a rule in the Federal Register that limits mining claims in areas slated for renewable energy development. [The Hill]

Climate talks begin again in Bonn, as groups begin to draft concrete proposals in advance of the 2015 treaty deadline. [Guardian]

Some are asking why a group formed to advocate passage of comprehensive immigration reform is also advocating for fossil fuel extraction. [Politico]

Cutting off your nose to spite your face: study finds that conservatives won’t buy an efficient bulb if it says it will help the environment, even if they would buy the same efficient bulb not labeled as such. [Atlantic Cities]

Climate change could endanger DC’s water supply through droughts in the Potomac River Basin. [AP]

BP earned $4.2 billion in profits last quarter. [BBC]

The government of Scotland will fund floating offshore wind turbines to the tune of £15 million. [CleanTechnica]

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell: “The American West is a tinderbox right now.” [New York Times]

(Credit: IBTimes)

The coal that will likely be developed just in Australia could take up 75 percent of what the world can still burn while staying under two degrees Celsius of global warming. That’s according to the latest report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI).

This finding comes on the heels of CTI’s report that $6 trillion in fossil fuel investments worldwide could be wasted globally if carbon emissions are brought under the two degree target.

Building off additional work by the International Energy Agency, the CTI determined that for the world to have an 80 percent chance of staying under the two degree target until 2050, no more than 200 to 360 additional gigatons of carbon emissions can be produced by burning coal. The Australian coal reserves already owned by companies account for 51 gigatons, and the remaining goal reserves that the CTI expects to be exploited would add another 100 gigatons.

In short, the coal that Australia alone is expected to provide the world all could chew up as much as three-fourths of what we can still burn without driving ruinous climate change:

Just in 2012, the Australian economy invested $5.71 billion in Australian dollars to develop coal reserves that can’t be burned if we’re going to adhere to the two degree target. Globally, the investment in unburnable fossil fuels has reached $674 billion in U.S. dollars per year. Either that money goes to waste, or the climate will be catastrophically destabilized.

Australian coal export expansion was also one of 14 “carbon bombs” — anticipated projects that could push global warming past the two degree threshold — listed by Ecofys and Greenpeace in January. If the expected expansions of the country’s coal exports occur as planned, global carbon dioxide emissions could rise by 1.2 billion metric tons a year. And that’s just one of the fourteen examples.

That said, awareness of the problem is certainly growing in the country: Australia just endured a summer of record-breaking brush fires, heat waves, and flooding — which the government’s climate commission determined can be linked to climate change. The government also recently passed a carbon tax, and studies suggest Australia’s power supply could go 100 percent renewable by 2030.

But starting in 2015 the price the policy puts on carbon is scheduled to be pegged to the European Union’s carbon trading scheme — and the E.U. carbon price has been rather dysfunctional as of late. The good news is that the price of wind is already outperforming fossil fuels, even without the assistance of government policy, and solar isn’t far behind on that trend.

Cooling towers for Chinese coal Plant. (Source: AP)

By Nigel Purvis, Samuel Grausz, and Andrew Light

Scientists now believe that absent a major change of course, the planet will warm 4 degrees Celsius by 2100. Climate change on that scale would trigger severe economic, environmental, and social disruptions. The global community would become more fractured and unequal than today, and human suffering on an unprecedented scale could ensue, according to the World Bank.

Nations are negotiating in the United Nations a new global climate agreement, but that treaty may not enter into force until 2020. While such an agreement is essential, the international community must ramp up climate action now—not at the end of the decade. Stimulating much stronger climate action would require creating real political will—a sense of purpose that simply does not exist today. Although not a panacea, this report examines the contributions global carbon markets—defined here as the buying and selling of climate-change securities earned by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in developing nations—could make to increasing the world’s ambition in addressing climate change.

To date, global carbon markets have played a key role in accelerating climate action while mobilizing billions of dollars in private-sector investment, encouraging economic growth, and helping to alleviate poverty. These markets have spread the revolutionary idea that all countries and communities benefit from fighting climate change and that domestic policies such as “pricing” carbon make economic sense. In the process, however, these markets have failed in serious ways including giving credits for questionable emission reductions and creating slow and opaque approval processes that have been tarnished with apparent conflicts of interest. The world’s largest carbon markets, moreover, face severely collapsed prices and a crisis in confidence. But these failures and crises should not obscure the markets’ more important legacy and opportunities for impact.

With the right political commitment and much-needed reforms, global carbon markets have the potential to deliver outsized environmental and economic benefits in the coming years. To harness these benefits, the international community should take the following concrete actions:

Over the next few pages, we describe the legacy of international carbon markets. We then discuss where those markets are likely to go in the coming years and how the above-mentioned recommendations can further make use of international carbon markets to fight climate change.

Endnotes and citations are available in thePDF version of thisreport.

Nigel Purvis is the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Climate Advisers. Samuel Grausz is a director of policy and research at Climate Advisers. Andrew Light is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. This piece is reposted with permission from CAP.