CNN's Steve Hargreaves

Ultimately it is an election year and it will create a lot of jobs and it will be a lot of money and Americans are concerned about energy, they’re concerned about energy independence, they’re concerned about high gasoline prices. So to vote — to limit the amount of oil coming in to this country especially coming into it from a place like Canada would be a very difficult thing for Obama to do while facing what’s going to be a tough re-election. So most analysts, yes, they do expect it will be built.

Watch it:

Independent analysts whose work wasn’t paid for by the oil industry believe that the claims Hargreaves made are likely false. The tar sands pipeline will be as bad for the American economy as it is for the environment:

Keystone XL Could Kill American Jobs. TransCanada and the American Petroleum Institute cite a study by the Perryman Group, commissioned by TransCanada, that claims the pipeline’s construction will generate 20,000 American jobs. The U.S. State Department’s analysis, drafted by Cardno Entrix and also commissioned by TransCanada, estimates that the construction will only involve 5,000 to 6,000 workers, including non-American employees.

The only study independent of TransCanada influence, by the Cornell Global Labor Institute, finds that even the State Department’s employment figures are too rosy. In the first stages of the pipeline project, steel from Canada and India was used, and only 11 percent of workers were local hires. The pipeline will reduce air quality in both Canada and the U.S., increasing health care costs and thus killing jobs, for decades after the brief construction period of the pipeline.

Keystone XL Will Increase Gasoline Prices. Gasoline prices are expected to rise in 15 Midwest states, because the pipeline will allow Canadian oil producers to bypass that market and reach Texas refineries for export to China and the rest of the global market. In Canada, TransCanada says that one of the benefits of the pipeline is that it will raise the price of heavy crude oil in the Midwest.

Keystone XL Will Threaten Energy Independence. Canadian tar sands oil won’t reduce American dependence on foreign oil. The Keystone XL pipeline is designed to feed the global market, instead of U.S. demand. Its primary effect on American energy policy will be to increase the profits and thus the political influence of oil industry players like Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, while accelerating the threats of global warming. Climate change, the greatest threat to global security, could reach a point of no return if Canada’s tar sands are fully exploited.

The Keystone XL debate is not economy versus environment — it’s a battle between dirty energy and clean energy.

CNN, whose campaign coverage has been sponsored for years by the coal and oil industry, has a shoddy track record of promoting dirty, risky, and expensive fossil fuel technologies, from “clean coal” to Arctic drilling.

Transcript:

KAYE: It is 1,700 miles long on paper anyway, and three feet wide. It would bisect the nation already split between economic hopes and environmental fears. as big and controversial as it is, the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline is “undercovered.” Here’s the plan: connect the oil sands of Alberta, Canada with the oil refineries of southeast Texas. In between are millions of acres of farms, forests, rivers and streams which no one wants to see covered in oil. But there are also millions of Americans who need jobs and TransCanada, the project’s owner, says Keystone XL will put 20,000 Americans to work. You may have seen pictures of the anti-pipeline protests. This one got Darryl Hannah arrested outside the White House. If President Obama missed them, he certainly knows that there is a backlash. Here he is yesterday in Denver trying to talk student loans.

OBAMA: All right. Thank you, guys. We’re looking at it right now. No decision has been made and I know your deep concern about it so we will address it.

KAYE: Since the pipeline would cross U.S. borders, addressing it is up to Hillary Clinton. State Department gets the final say after a series of public hearings and an environmental impact study that pipeline opponents say was fixed. That’s because TransCanada picked the firm and a TransCanada lobbyist is a former campaign aide to Clinton. See how this works? I’m joined by senior writer for CNNMoney.com, Steve Hargreaves. Steve, this story certainly isn’t “undercovered” by you. What would the pipeline mean for U.S. imports?

HARGREAVES: It would mean a lot of new oil, doubling imports coming from Canada’s oil sands into the U.S. Right now we consume about 1 million barrels a day. Pipeline would add 700,000 to that so it is a lot of oil.

KAYE: In terms of environmental concerns, these concerns go beyond the potential leaks in a pipeline. Right? We’re talking about something called tar sands here. Can you shed some light on that?

HARGREAVES: Yeah, correct. the oil comes from — in Alberta they have oil sands or tar sands and it is a heavier form of oil and it is basically like a tar mixed with a sand. In order to extract it you either have to mine it like a big open pit mine, or you have to use traditional oil drilling techniques but with the addition of heat. So what it all means is that they’re a little bit dirtier than a traditional form of oil. Estimates are that they produce anywhere from 5% to 30% more greenhouse gases on a well-to-wheel basis than traditional oil does. So that’s what has a lot of people concerned. They don’t like the additional pollution that would be associated with expanding production from these oil sands.

KAYE: And I’m sure that in your reporting you’ve probably talked with many analysts about this. Do they think that this pipeline will get U.S. approval?

HARGREAVES: Well, yeah. Ultimately it is an election year and it will create a lot of jobs and it will be a lot of money and Americans are concerned about energy, they’re concerned about energy independence, they’re concerned about high gasoline prices. So to vote — to limit the amount of oil coming in to this country especially coming into it from a place like Canada would be a very difficult thing for Obama to do while facing what’s going to be a tough re-election. So most analysts, yes, they do expect it will be built.

KAYE: When will we have that final decision, do you think?

HARGREAVES: Well, it is a long process. The State Department just finished up some public hearings on it. They have a few more hearings to do. I think a decision is expected by the end of the year.

KAYE: All right, Steve Hargreaves, appreciate your reporting on that, what we think is an “undercovered” issue. Thank you.

by Auden Schendler

On October 17th, Newsweek will release its attention-getting rankings of the top “green” publicly traded global companies.

Last year, the magazine ranked Dell  #1. Dell is no slouch on operational greening: the company, along with Hewlett Packard, has led the tech industry in lifecycle stewardship, with a willingness to take back and recycle its old hardware, among many other progressive internal waste reduction measures. Dell also leads in the energy efficiency of its products.

But is Dell really the greenest company in the world? It depends on your criteria. The Newsweek analysis looks at operational issues like emissions of nine key greenhouse gases, water use, solid-waste disposal, and emissions that contribute to acid rain and smog. That’s good and important.

But if you read Climate Progress regularly, you know two things: First, that the scale of the climate problem (the response to which is what defines corporate sustainability today) is so large that voluntary corporate action won’t solve it. Second, you know that because of this, how companies operate is vastly less important than how they try to influence policy, policymakers, and public opinion. If the lobbying power of one company — Koch Industries, for example — can more or less single handedly stop climate solutions, then what other companies do as climate activists is clearly critical.

The influence of the Kochs and other wealthy lobbyists and business owners was put in stark relief by Jane Mayer at the New Yorker last August and then again last week, when she exposed Art Pope’s successful purchasing of the North Carolina legislature. The work of Pope and the Kochs (now magnified by the passage of Citizens United) means corporate advocacy and activism (and the broader issue of money in politics) is the battlefield on which climate will be solved or ignored.

And so, it makes sense for Newsweek, and the roughly dozen or so other corporate rankings like the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, to include, and heavily weigh, advocacy or activism in their ranking methodology. I’ve just published a paper, “The Factor Environmental Ratings Miss,” that goes into detail on this topic with Mike Toffel of Harvard Business School, in this month’s Sloan Management Review. (That article is available free, but you need to sign up on the site).  The article notes:

News Corporation’s climate change performance was recently rated AAA by one rating organization — yet Rolling Stone magazine named News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch No. 1 in its list of “politicians or execs blocking progress on global warming.”

Toffel, in other research, has shown that companies will respond to negative rankings, and improve their performance.

Another legendary tech company, Apple, which was admittedly late to the operational greening and product stewardship dance, ranked in at 65th in the Newsweek ratings last year. But Apple arguably did more to move the ball on climate change solutions than any other company last year, when it very publicly dropped out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of that organization’s strident criticism of plans to limit greenhouse gases. (The chamber, by the way, also supports the Keystone XL pipeline, which Jim Hansen has called “game over” for climate, if allowed by Obama.)

Where might Apple rank if this bold move were included in the rating criteria? And how might the tide of the climate battle change if increasingly visible corporate rankings appropriately valued activism?

Newsweek should take note. These are the forces that are truly driving sustainability.

— Auden Schendler is vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company

More Greenwashing by Murdoch’s Anti-Green, Anti-Humanity Newscorp

So I received a lengthy email from the PR wizards at Fox.  The subject line, “FOX GOES GREEN FOR RED CARPET ARRIVALS — Press Release and Photos.”  Apparently they believe all caps makes their greenwashing more compelling.  #FAIL.

I wrote far-too-favorably once about the “greening” of Fox in March 2009, giving Murdoch the benefit of the doubt because he spoke accurately about the science back in 2007 — see Jack Bauer becomes first-ever carbon-neutral torturer as Rupert Murdoch says “Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats.” But it was all BS.

As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.   Fool me over and over again, shame on the right-wing media

A company can’t be said to go green if it’s the leading purveyor of  anti-science, anti-clean-energy  disinformation around the world — see “Foxgate: Leaked email reveals Fox News boss Bill Sammon ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science” and “Murdoch’s NY Post Fabricates Statistic to Vilify Green Jobs” and “How Murdoch’s Times of London and Fox News Coordinate Their Deceitful Reporting on Climate Change.”

Rolling Stone was correct when they labeled Murdoch last year, one of the “The Climate Killers: 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb the climate catastrophe.”

The email I was sent had this absurd logo Fox has been using:

The point, of course, is that they don’t mean it.  Climate Progress readers know that I am all in favor of individual and corporate action — indeed I spent over 10 years working with companies to help them adopt greenhouse gas targets and clean energy.  The Climate Savers program I helped World Wildlife Fund launch reduced CO2 emissions “by over 50 million tons by the end of 2010″ — businesses from IBM and Johnson & Johnson to LaFarge and Sony.

But all the individual corporate action in the world can’t make up for the lack of serious climate and clean energy legislation in this country, which Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has done more than any other to squash, indeed to make politically untenable for an entire political party in this country.  It is immoral and inexcusable and couldn’t be justified by the purchase of even a million solar panels.

And it’s sad, too, because Fox is doing some pretty interesting things to green itself.  Here is the whole email I was sent:

FOX GOES GREEN FOR RED CARPET ARRIVALS

OF THE “63RD PRIMETIME EMMY® AWARDS”

FOX, in partnership with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, will bring clean energy to the 63RD PRIMETIME EMMY® AWARDS airing live Sunday, Sept. 18 (8:00-11:00 PM ET live/5:00-8:00 PM PT live) on FOX. Solar panels will provide power to the Primetime Emmys red carpet and, for the first time ever, FOX will donate the solar panels and the red carpet to local charities after the event. In addition, the 390-foot red carpet is the largest ever to be lit entirely by low-energy LED and fluorescent lighting.

This year’s red carpet is made from 25,000 square feet of locally-sourced recycled carpet, produced in the only LEED-certified carpet facility in the world. Made from 50% recycled content, the carpet will be donated after the awards to the Ronald McDonald House Long Beach and to Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles.

FOX has also partnered with Kinetic Lighting to provide Prism Projection RevEAL Studio LED lighting fixtures throughout the red carpet area. The low-energy LED and fluorescent lighting will vastly reduce power consumption, using only approximately 20% of the power traditionally used for red carpet arrivals.

In addition, the red carpet will be powered by over 200 locally-manufactured solar panels. In the five days leading up to the broadcast, the solar panels, provided by SolarWorld, will produce approximately 925-kWh of energy—enough to power a typical family home for approximately two months. The solar panel system will be tied into the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power utility grid and will greatly reduce FOX’s power consumption.

After the event and with the support of SolarWorld, the solar panel system will be donated to Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, which will install the panels in sustainably built homes throughout the Los Angeles area. Once permanently installed, the system is expected to mitigate an average of approximately 90,000 pounds (or 45 tons) of CO2 each year (in addition to approximately 480 pounds of SO2 and 340 pounds of NOx), and will generate renewable energy for at least the next 25 years.

FOX’s goal for all special events is to have zero waste. -Therefore, all food waste and biodegradable disposables will be composted. In addition, all recyclable materials used during the event will be collected and sorted.

Additional highlights of FOX’s greening efforts at the Primetime Emmy Awards include:

• All signage will be printed with water-based inks either on recycled aluminum by AoSA or on eco-friendly and biodegradable materials.
• The media press tent and red carpet are entirely incandescent-free. The tent will be illuminated by compact fluorescent and LED lamps. The red carpet will be lit by fluorescent and LED lighting, reducing the power need by approximately 80%.
• The 25,000 square feet of arrivals red carpet is made of 50% recycled content – including 40% pre-consumer and 10% derived from post-consumer carpet. Additionally, the carpet is being produced locally by Bentley Prince Street whose factory is a mere 16 miles away.
• In lieu of golf carts traditionally used by staff and crew at such events, bicycles from a previous event will be used on site.
• Supplemental power will be provided by bio-diesel generators using UPS batteries. The batteries will signal the generator to turn on in the event of a power failure reducing the need to have generators running simultaneously.
• A full recycling program is in place throughout the main show, media center and red carpet area to collect waste from batteries, paper, bottles, plastic and food.
• Locally grown and/or organic foods will be provided by Chef Alan Jackson of Lemonade and served to production staff, press and event guests.
• Events teams will use reusable serviceware including glasses, plates, silverware, serving platters and trays. Tables and chairs are rented and reusable.
• All linens used in the media areas are rented and will be cleaned with environmentally-friendly laundry detergents.
• All plants in the arrivals area and media areas are rented and therefore are considered reusable living plants (no cut plants).

SolarWorld is a worldwide leader in offering brand-name, high quality, crystalline solar-power technology. Its strength is its fully integrated solar production. From silicon as the raw material through wafers, cells and modules all the way to turn-key solar systems of all sizes, the group combines all stages of the solar value chain. The central business activity is selling quality modules into the installation and distribution trades and crystalline wafers to the international solar cell industry. Group headquarters are located in Bonn, Germany. The group´s largest production facilities operate in Freiberg, Germany and Hillsboro, OR. Sustainability is the basis of the group strategy. Under the name Solar2World, the group supports care projects using off-grid solar-power solutions in developing countries, exemplifying sustainable economic development. Worldwide, SolarWorld employs about 3,500 people. SolarWorld AG has been quoted on the stock exchange since 1999 and today is listed on, among others, the TecDAX and ÖkoDAX as well as in the sustainability index NAI.

Kinetic Lighting is an award-winning lighting company based in Glendale, California (Los Angeles area). We supply stage lighting and theatrical supplies — with a specialty in energy-efficient LED lighting — to a variety of clients throughout the world. The vast majority of our clients operate in entertainment, exhibit, publicity, social events and retail markets. The lighting services we offer include event lighting services, lighting rentals and sales, lighting design and repair services.

News Corp now brags “we are the world’s first carbon neutral global media company.”  What they are is the world’s first climate-science-neutering global media company.  Shame on Rupert Murdoch and shame on Fox.

America is facing some tough challenges right now. Two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. North America actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. A large part of that is oil sands. This resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. At our Kearl oil sands project in Canada, we’ll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils, and that’s a huge breakthrough. That’s good for our country’s energy security and our economy.

Watch it:

The 30-second ad manages to say almost nothing that isn’t misleading:

“Two Of The Most Important Challenges”: Exxon deliberately ignores mention of the third related challenge that tar sands development affects: global warming. The Kearl tar sands mine contains over 5.5 billion barrels worth of bitumen — the tarry substance that gets processed into synthetic crude through an energy-intensive and ecologically destructive process. Even if the processing of the bitumen didn’t produce huge amounts of greenhouse pollution (see below), using oil from the Kearl project would emit about 2 billion tons of greenhouse pollution. There will be no “energy security and economic growth” in a world ravaged by rapid climate change.

“Hundreds Of Thousands Of Jobs”: The industry study that claims there will be massive job creation from tar sands development — mostly in Canada — admits that 82 percent of the jobs “created” aren’t actually in tar sands production. The oil and gas industry is one of the worst sectors for investment in job creation — green sectors create four times as many jobs with the same investment.

“Same Emissions As Many Other Oils”: Kearl is expected to produce 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to 800,000 passenger vehicles. ExxonMobil is optimistic that experimental technology will reduce greenhouse pollution from oil derived from the Kearl tar sands by about 6 percent (a 25 percent reduction of production-related emissions, which are about 25 percent of total emissions, including combustion). Even with advanced technology, the tar-sands oil production will always be more polluting than conventional oil production.

Each year, the cost to civilization of each added ton of carbon dioxide increases. Exploiting the Canadian tar sands to fuel ExxonMobil’s profits would be suicidal. If Exxon has its way, climate scientist James Hansen warns, “it is essentially game over.” This is why thousands of people are heading to the White House to stage a mass protest to convince President Obama not to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

It’s baffling to see a dirty energy front group operative, Robert Bryce, getting a seat last week next to Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof on the New York Times’ opinion page, with a piece of pro-dirty energy propaganda, without having to say if he’s paid by dirty energy.

I remember from journalism school that opinion pages are run separately from the news pages. But is it really that hard for someone on the Times’ opinion page staff to ask Bryce where his host organization, the Manhattan Institute, gets its money? Don’t Times readers deserve to know that the Manhattan Institute gets a significant amount of money from dirty energy?

I’m not even expecting that the Times actually demand a factual grounding for the opinion pieces it runs. That seems to have gone out of style a while ago. The Washington Post demonstrated this new normal with its tortured sidestepping of questions about why it let columnist George Will demonstrably lie about the wide and deep scientific consensus around global climate disruption. Basically, it seems that you can lie without consequence on the nation’s most influential opinion pages.

But Bryce got away with something much more preventable: pretending he’s some sort of intellectually honest thinker when his organization has ties to dirty energy money that no one bothered to note.

The ease with which intellectual burglars like Bryce can break into the major media’s house of standards is why dirty energy underwrites dozens of PR firms masquerading as think tanks. And they have done so for decades, going back to the call to start farming these groups in the 1971 Powell Manifesto. The result is what can be described as a Front Group Industrial Complex for polluting industries, a network including the Manhattan Institute, Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and the Institute for Energy Research.

Here’s something to institute on all these “institutes”: Why not have a standard for all opinion pages for papers over a certain basic level of readership requiring opinion page submission finalists to disclose financial conflicts, direct or indirect, on the subject on which they have written?

After all, the Times applies these standards to its own news staff through its code of ethics:

Masquerading. Times reporters do not actively misrepresent their identity to get a story. We may sometimes remain silent on our identity and allow assumptions to be made ­ to observe an institution’s dealings with the public, for example, or the behavior of people at a rally or police officers in a bar near the station house. But a sustained, systematic deception, even a passive one … may be employed only after consultation between a department head and masthead editors. [emphasis added]

So, for the Times’ opinion page, why not apply the spirit of that standard on masquerading by always asking a few direct questions of guest writers about their funding? The total daily time required would be, what, 30 minutes?

I’m a PR guy paid by renewable energy companies, and I proudly say that on my firm’s website. Robert Bryce is a PR guy flacking for dirty energy sources, yet he doesn’t seem to be proudly saying that. In fact, he seems to be going out of his way to avoid discussion of his funding.

By making the polluting industry front group guys answer the funding question when they submit opinion pieces to major papers, it might inject just a little bit of honesty into what is now an all-too-frequent stream of enabled propaganda. For those working to maintain the increasingly endangered standards of good journalism, that seems like a pretty easy one to uphold.

The contrast between what News Corp.’s chairman says and what its employees actually do is a stark illustration of the company’s attempt to play both sides of the climate issue.

I have previously written about how Jack Bauer became first-ever carbon-neutral torturer as Rupert Murdoch says “Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threat.” Sarah Pavlus has more in a Media Matters repost.

Billionaire conservative financier David Koch doesn’t know it, but the cutting-edge energy-saving technologies included in a brand new $211 million research lab that bears his name were partly funded through a government program to reduce global warming pollution. It happens to be the very same program under a blistering attack by one of Koch’s biggest political beneficiaries, the group Americans for Prosperity.

Here’s the story, which has not been publicly reported elsewhere:

The David H. Koch Institute, dedicated earlier this month at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will use almost a third less energy than comparable facilities. Everything in the building is designed to maximize efficiency, from lighting and climate controls to the laboratory systems – even the floorplan.

Money for all those extras came through MIT’s $14 million campus-wide partnership with their utility, NSTAR. In just 36 months, they plan to cut the university’s energy use 15 percent – enough to power 4,500 Massachusetts homes for a year. The total lifetime payback is expected to exceed $50 million.

But NSTAR didn’t just decide to do this on its own. By law, Massachusetts utilities are required to pay for efficiency upgrades whenever the energy savings cost less than building the equivalent amount of new generating capacity. Funding comes from ratepayers, same as it would for a new power plant.

And as it turns out, almost a fifth of that money last year came from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, or “Reggie”), the pioneering agreement by 10 Northeast states that limits the amount of carbon dioxide utilities can put in the air and collects a small fee – set by auction – for every ton of they emit.

Koch would not be alone in missing the RGGI connection. In fact, many top supporters of the increasingly embattled program didn’t know either. And that is precisely why RGGI is in trouble today.

Thousands of businesses, families and local communities are reaping RGGI dividends without knowing it, because those benefits flow through a tangled network of rebate and incentive programs administered by utilities, state governments and non-profits, robbing an effective program of the natural constituency it deserves and making it easier for groups like Americans for Prosperity to attack at will.

And attack they have.

Thanks to AFP’s aggressive yearlong campaign, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted last month to quit RGGI. Senate agreement is expected. The new Republican Governor of Maine wants to follow, and there is mounting pressure on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to do likewise.

That would be a giant leap in the wrong direction, not just — or even mainly — for the environment, but also those state economies.

RGGI costs the average household about 75 cents a month. It pays for upgrades from home weatherization to energy efficient industrial boilers, big commercial lighting projects, and rooftop photovoltaic installations on schools and warehouses (which is how New Jersey became the number two state for solar, by the way).

Those efforts provide access to scarce capital and help reduce operating costs, creating new opportunities for businesses of all sizes, from architects, engineers and programmers to the people in toolbelts who bend metal and wire up buildings. And it’s opportunity that can’t be outsourced to China.

These investments also save money by avoiding expensive new power plants, and by lowering peaks in demand that drive up electricity prices across the board. That’s good for ratepayers, and good for the business climate.

Of $789 million raised by RGGI through last December, more than half went to efficiency projects. Eleven percent went for renewables, and 14 percent to offset bills for low-income families. Less than five percent went for administrative overhead, a figure that should warm Tea Partier hearts. (Those numbers would be even better if New York and New Jersey hadn’t used some proceeds for deficit reduction.)

The point of all this is not that David Koch is a hypocrite (not knowingly so, at least in this case). Rather, it is that if RGGI is good enough for him, it is plenty good enough for the rest of us.

At a time when energy prices are threatening a shaky recovery and many parts of the Northeast are logistically pressed to meet electricity demand, lawmakers (and business leaders) should step back from the AFP rhetoric about cap-and-trade and take an honest accounting of RGGI benefits before they surrender this important and highly cost-effective economic tool.

– Jon Coifman

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

• How Koch Industries makes billions corrupting government and polluting for free
• Video: Scott Brown begs David Koch for money
• Koch Industries outspends Exxon Mobil on climate and clean energy disinformation

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the newest member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, claimed today that the coal industry doesn’t receive any government subsidies, unlike every other form of energy.  Brad Johnson debunks this absurd claim.

The former governor of coal-state West Virginia, who famously fired a rifle at clean energy legislation in a campaign ad, argued that the Obama administration has “villainized” coal. In a hearing on energy markets, Manchin went on to criticize the Environmental Protection Agency “” which has issued regulations to limit the catastrophic impact of mountaintop removal mining and the existential threat of global warming pollution “” for putting up “roadblocks” on the “greatest source” of energy in the nation:

What I don’t understand is the subsidies. The subsidies of energy, whether it be to oil, gas, wind, solar, biofuels, ethanol. The only energy source “” which is the greatest source that we have so far as we’re dependent on “” is coal. It doesn’t get a penny of subsidies. But it’s been villainized by this administration and so many people and it’s the one we depend on the most. It gives back more than it takes. I can’t figure it out.

We’re trying to use it in so many different forms, in super-critical heating, and things of this sort. We’re running into roadblocks with the EPA from every turn that we go. We’re trying to use it in conjunction with our natural gas productions, and trying to look at the changing the fleet to compressed natural gas, I think that’s very doable. Do you all have a comment on why that one source of energy which is the most dependent upon in this nation has no types of subsidies but the others demand so subsidies?

Watch it:

In reality, the coal industry is heavily subsidized by the federal and state governments, enjoying explicit subsidies of billions of dollars a year, plus the indirect subsidy of free pollution that costs the United States 10,000 lives a year, destroys the land and water of mining communities, and destabilizes our climate. In September 2009, the Environmental Law Institute identified coal industry “subsidies of around $17 billion between 2002 and 2008″³ [amounts in millions of dollars]:

Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels ($14.1 billion)- IRC Section 45K. This provision provides a tax credit for the production of certain fuels. Qualifying fuels include: oil from shale, tar sands; gas from geopressurized brine, Devonian shale, coal seams, tight formations, biomass, and coal-based synthetic fuels. This credit has historically primarily benefited coal producers.

Characterizing Coal Royalty Payments as Capital Gains ($986 million) – IRC Section 631(c). Income from the sale of coal under royalty contract may be treated as a capital gain rather than ordinary income for qualifying individuals.

Exclusion of Benefit Payments to Disabled Miners ($438 million) – 30 U.S.C. 922(c). Disability payments out of the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund are not treated as income to the recipients.

Other-Fuel Excess of Percentage over Cost Depletion ($323 million)- IRC Section 613. Taxpayers may deduct 10 percent of gross income from coal production.

Credit for Clean Coal Investment ($186 million)- IRC Sections 48A and 48B. Available for 20 percent of the basis of integrated gasification combined cycle property and 15 percent of the basis for other advanced coal-based generation technologies.

Special Rules for Mining Reclamation Reserves ($159 million) – IRC Section 468. This deduction is available for early payments into reserve trusts, with eligibility determined by the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act and the Solid Waste Management Act. The amounts attributable to mines rather than solid-waste facilities are conservatively assumed to be one-half of the total.

84-month Amortization Period for Coal Pollution Control ($102 million) – IRC Section 169(d)(5). Extends the amortization period used in calculating the deduction from the generally applicable 60-month period available for other types of pollution control facilities.

Expensing Advanced Mine Safety Equipment ($32 million) – IRC Section 179E. The costs of qualifying mine safety equipment may be expensed rather than recovered through depreciation.

Black Lung Disability Trust Fund ($1 billion)- As industry excise tax payments did not sufficiently cover early benefits payments, the BLDTF was given “indefinite authority to borrow” from the U.S. General Fund, and bailed out for $6.498 billion, 13 percent of which is relevant to the 2002-2008 period.

In addition, Synapse Energy Economics found that the government subsidizes the coal industry through several other avenues:

Financial support for the World Bank and other international financial institutions that finance fossil fuel use and extraction. Since 1994, these institutions have provided $137 billion in direct and indirect financial support for new coal-fired power plants.

U.S. Treasury Department’s backing of tax-exempt bonds and federally subsidized taxable Build America Bonds for use in the electric sector. $81 billion in tax-exempt debt was issued between 2002 and 2006 for electric power, most for coal plants.

U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service provision of loans, loan guarantees, and lien accommodations to public power companies that are investing in new or existing coal plants.

Tax credits, loans, and loan guarantees through the U.S. Department of Energy. In 2009, DOE issued $5.9 billion in loan guarantees for advanced coal projects.

Furthermore, cash-strapped state governments give millions of dollars in subsidies to coal, including $115 million from Kentucky, and $26 million from Virginia. In 2008, then-Gov. Manchin himself offered Appalachian Fuel $200 million in subsidies for a liquid coal plant.

Meanwhile, the health and environmental costs of mining and burning coal are staggering. “What’s been the healthcare cost of 47 tons per year of mercury from burning coal,” the Sierra Club asks, “that put 300,000 fetuses at risk for neurological damage each year?”

The coal industry was responsible for 2,237 megatons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent greenhouse pollution in 2008, 38 percent of the United States footprint. The cost of this “market externality” is between $60 and $600 billion every year, given expert estimates for the cost to human civilization of manmade climate change.

Manchin is correct that coal “doesn’t get a penny of subsidies” “” the industry gets trillions of pennies, borrowed against our children’s future.

–Brad Johnson, via the Wonk Room.

Brad Johnson has the story — and his estimates of the Koch carbon pollution.

Furthermore, Koch is exempt from the risk disclosures that are standard for public corporations. The financial status of Koch Industries is similarly clouded in secret, with only vague statements of annual revenue around $100 billion and the Forbes estimates of the principals’ extraordinary wealth. Charles and David Koch have directed many millions of their shared $43 billion net worth into a vast propaganda machine denying the threat of global warming pollution, corrupting American politics to permit their pollution-based enterprise to continue.

Below, the Wonk Room makes some estimates of the Koch Industries carbon footprint, based on the pollution generated by its activities and from the use of the products it sells:

The Koch Industries Carbon Footprint Is About 300 Million Tons. With the assumption that Koch has a carbon intensity on the order of oil majors such as Chevron and ExxonMobil, each billion dollars of revenue corresponds to 2 to 4 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gases. Therefore, each year, Koch Industries is likely responsible for about 300 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution every year. Flint Hills Resources, Koch’s refining subsidiary, processes 300 million barrels of oil a year. This one company “” with its refining, pipeline, chemical, fertilizer, cattle, and forestry operations “” is involved in up to five percent of the entire United States 7-gigaton carbon footprint.

Koch Climate Denial Is Dirty Self Interest. The virulence of the Koch brothers’ opposition to climate policy “” to anything that would make polluters instead of society pay for the cost of their pollution “” is purely a matter of self-interest. The immense profitability of their carbon holdings depends on their freedom to pollute without consequence “” a toxic freedom they have sold to the American public, and particularly the Tea Party faithful organized by the various Koch front groups, as inherent to the American dream. If their pollution was fairly priced in a free-market system such as the cap-and-trade markets the Koch successfully demonized in Washington (but failed in their attempt to do so in California), the Kochs would be facing costs of anywhere from $1 billion to $40 billion a year. Spending well less than $1 billion a year on their political and philanthropic activities, the Kochs have made a brilliant investment to defend their killer business model.

The Carbon Liability Of The Kochs Is Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars. Over the lifetime of the Koch Industries, as it has grown from a $100 million enterprise built on oil refining in Stalinist Russia to one of the largest private companies in the world, its cumulative carbon footprint rivals that of most nations. Experts estimate that the social cost of carbon “” the true cost to society of global warming pollution “” is between $30 and $300 per ton of carbon dioxide. The potential liability the Kochs face for having knowingly destabilized the global climate system “” and funded a propaganda network to prevent political action to end their pollution “” represents practically the whole of their wealth.

Charles And David Koch Each Have A Carbon Footprint Of 100 Million Tons. The average American has a carbon footprint of 19 tons of carbon dioxide a year “” much greater than the European average of 9 tons, the Chinese average of 5 tons, or India’s annual average of 1.4 tons of carbon dioxide per person. However, the annual carbon footprint of the Charles and David Koch is on the order of 100 million tons of carbon dioxide each. Just as their personal wealth is staggeringly greater than that of the average American, so is their damage to this planet.

Koch’s carbon pollution is inherent to its business model, putting them in direct opposition to people who care about preserving God’s creation and their children’s future.

– Brad Johnson, in a WonkRoom cross-post

Related Post:

• Koch Industries outspends Exxon Mobil on climate and clean energy disinformation
• From promoting acid rain to climate denial “” over 20 years of David Koch’s polluter front groups
• What we’re up against: Polluter-funded Tea Party climate zombie astroturfing
• Must-see video: Polluter-funded Smithsonian exhibit whitewashes danger of human-caused climate change
• Tea party pollutocrat David Koch denies climate change, shrugs off his carbon pollution
• Pollutocrat Kochs sue: Claim that Koch Industries believes in global warming damaged our reputation
• Rolling Stone names 12 politicians and executives blocking progress on global warming

Senate disclosure forms reveal that oil giant Chevron spent $2.9 million lobbying the federal government last quarter, eclipsing even Exxon ($2.6 million) and BP ($2.2 million). Chevron’s 2010 lobbying totaled $12.89 million, following a tremendous outlay in 2009 of $20.8 million.

Chevron also recently launched a major greenwashing campaign, “We Agree,” which claims that it shares the public concern that “oil companies should put their profits to good use” and “oil companies should support the communities they’re a part of.” However, Chevron is also spending millions to defend itself in a 17-year-old lawsuit over the billions of tons of toxic waste its now-subsidiary company Texaco dumped into the Ecuadorian watershed.

The case is finally nearing its conclusion in the Ecuadorian court system:

The attorneys representing Amazonian communities in a lawsuit against Chevron have submitted their final argument to a judge in Ecuador, the latest development in a legal saga involving the oil giant that that began nearly two decades ago. The plaintiffs are seeking up to $113 billion in compensation for environmental damages in the Amazon.

Ecuador, smaller than the state of Nevada, is a remarkable hotbed of diversity. The rich life above lies above significant oil reserves “” another legacy of millions of years of biological richness. Those reserves have both fueled and threatened the future of the nation and its peoples. The costs of the extraction “” including 16 billion gallons of toxic waste water “” have been been borne by the indigenous communities of the Amazon watershed, even as the profits were enjoyed elsewhere. The closing argument made by the plaintiffs sums up the toxic record of Chevron in this case:

The evidence makes it clear and unmistakable that Chevron is guilty. Guilty of polluting the rainforests with toxic sludge from lucrative oil drilling operations, guilty of a shoddy and haphazard cleanup operation, guilty of letting toxic waste continue to devastate the rainforest and its inhabitants’ lives, and perhaps worst of all, guilty of trying to cover it all up by destroying documents and making false accusations of fraud before courts in the U.S. and Ecuador. Chevron’s complete disdain for Ecuador, its courts, and its citizens was captured perfectly by a Chevron lobbyist who told Newsweek: “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this – companies that have made big investments around the world.”

So far, Chevron disagrees.

– Brad Johnson, in a WonkRoom cross-post.

Related post:

• Chevron and Proposition 26

The attorneys representing Amazonian communities in a lawsuit against Chevron have submitted their final argument to a judge in Ecuador, the latest development in a legal saga involving the oil giant that that began nearly two decades ago. The plaintiffs are seeking up to $113 billion in compensation for environmental damages in the Amazon.

Ecuador, smaller than the state of Nevada, is a remarkable hotbed of diversity. The rich life above lies above significant oil reserves — another legacy of millions of years of biological richness. Those reserves have both fueled and threatened the future of the nation and its peoples. The costs of the extraction — including 16 billion gallons of toxic waste water — have been been borne by the indigenous communities of the Amazon watershed, even as the profits were enjoyed elsewhere. The closing argument made by the plaintiffs sums up the toxic record of Chevron in this case:

The evidence makes it clear and unmistakable that Chevron is guilty. Guilty of polluting the rainforests with toxic sludge from lucrative oil drilling operations, guilty of a shoddy and haphazard cleanup operation, guilty of letting toxic waste continue to devastate the rainforest and its inhabitants’ lives, and perhaps worst of all, guilty of trying to cover it all up by destroying documents and making false accusations of fraud before courts in the U.S. and Ecuador. Chevron’s complete disdain for Ecuador, its courts, and its citizens was captured perfectly by a Chevron lobbyist who told Newsweek: “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this – companies that have made big investments around the world.”

So far, Chevron disagrees.

Lee Fang of ThinkProgress has the story of greenwashing gone awry:

David Koch masks his role as one of the top financiers of the Tea Party movement and pro-polluter front groups by loudly tacking his name to more laudable charities, like the New York city ballet. Koch, who has professed his devotion to “The Nutcracker” ballet performance by Alexei Ratmansky, made a matching grant of $2.5 million so that it could go on this season. At a special opening of the performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music shortly before Christmas, Koch made an appearance to talk about his donation. The Financial Times’ John Gapper was in the audience and witnessed a crowd of “harried Brooklyn moms and salivating balletomanes” erupting in boos at the sight of the Tea Party billionaire:

“The excitement started even before the show when David H. Koch, the co-owner of Koch Industries, the largest privately-own industrial conglomerate in the US, came out on stage to talk about his $2.5m sponsorship of the production. Most people applauded but there were also boos from near where I sat in the balcony, followed by an angry debate in the row in front of me, with one of the booers declaring “he’s an evil man” and a couple next to her telling her to “shut up” and to leave the theatre. [...] Once Mr Koch had left the stage, the booing stopped and the ballet started.”

David and his brother Charles are among the top ten richest men in America through their co-ownership of Koch Industries, the sprawling private conglomerate that includes oil refineries and pipelines, consumer goods, a financial derivatives practice, chemical interests, timber, shipping, and coal. Koch Industries, one of the worst air polluters in America, has lobbied to eviscerate the EPA, repeal health reform, and Koch front groups fight every day to cut government spending on programs for the poor and middle class. However, Koch says he “welcome[s]” taxpayer money for his ballet performances.

Cheers to the jeerers!

Related Posts:

• From promoting acid rain to climate denial “” over 20 years of David Koch’s polluter front groups
• What we’re up against: Polluter-funded Tea Party climate zombie astroturfing
• Must-see video: Polluter-funded Smithsonian exhibit whitewashes danger of human-caused climate change

Prairie Ridge Estates, a single-use, single-family residential subdivision being constructed on farmland 40 miles southwest of Chicago, is billing itself as ‘the nation’s first net zero energy community of custom designed homes.’   The suggestion is that, if you purchase a home here, you’re as green as it gets.  The development’s web site devotes a page to LEED, the green building rating system – featuring the US Green Building Council’s LEED logo, and noting the following:

“In an environment where we face increasing energy costs and have a heightened awareness of environmental responsibility there needs to be an alternative. That alternative is Prairie Ridge Estates, a community of 132 net-zero energy homes in New Lenox, Illinois, that can produce as much energy as a typical family consumes.

“Built using Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs), concrete walls encased in a highly engineered insulating foam extend from the foundation to the peaks of the roofline. The homes begin with a shell that is exponentially more efficient than traditional 2″x4″ framed houses and are then combined with appliances and technologies that squarely focus on efficiency. From electricity to water to air quality, efficiency has driven the careful and deliberate selection of each window, appliance, and infrastructure system. While a Prairie Ridge Estates home will look and feel just like other homes it will perform unlike any other home, producing its own energy with wind turbines and solar panel systems. The homes also use designed systems, such as closed-loop geothermal, that limit energy consumption by as much as 80%. The result is a standard LEED Gold certified home that can easily achieve Platinum certification with minor design modifications.”

So far, so good, I suppose.  Those are laudable elements of green building design.

But, um, how can you be net-zero if you have to drive long distances to do anything?  The closest intersection to the construction site that has roads with names in Google’s data base is the intersection of South Gougar Road (Will County highway 52) and West Oak Avenue (79th Street).  That’s two-tenths of a mile from the entrance to the subdivision and a third of a mile from the heart.  The Walk Score for that intersection is, well, ZERO.  I think that’s a different kind of ‘net zero’ than the developer is claiming, though.

Remember Abogo, from last week, the tool that measures likely transportation costs and average transportation emissions from a given location?  I ran Prairie Ridge’s location through Abogo, too:  average transportation costs per household are 24 percent higher than the regional average, and carbon emissions from transportation are nearly twice the regional average.  How green does that sound?  What might happen to the ‘net zero’ claim if the 1.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted every month by households in the Prairie Ridge location – and the energy consumption they represent – were factored into the equation?  And what about the claimed energy cost savings, if you’re shelling out $200 more each month for transportation than the average household in your metro region?

According to the web site, “lots average 1/3 acre in size. Floorplans start at 2,500 square feet. and lots can accomodate homes as large as 6,000 square feet.”

Incidentally, while noodling around Google Earth I found an empty parcel of suburban infill about four miles away in Joliet (below left) of about the same size as Prairie Ridge that would at least bring the Walk Score up to 31, and lower carbon emissions by around 34 percent, compared to Praire Ridge.  A few miles west of that one is another suburban infill parcel (below right) that would raise the Walk Score to 66.  Both of those are still above average in costs and emissions but infill can at least begin to retrofit suburbia to something more sustainable. Shouldn’t alternative sites similar to those be preferred over totally unwalkable farmland?

Prairie Ridge’s environmental shortcomings are not emphasized in the mostly glowing article written on the new development in the Chicago Tribune earlier this month by Mary Ellen Podmolik – but the writer, to her credit, does observe that “The homeowner’s commitment to a green philosophy is a question mark, starting with daily commuting practices:  Anyone driving 80 miles round-trip to Chicago in a SUV probably loses the right to claim a green lifestyle.”  You think?

The LEED page on the developer’s web site mentions, after the passage quoted above, that “LEED for Neighborhood Development extends the benefits of LEED beyond the building footprint into the neighborhood it serves.”  Well, yes, if you meet the requirements.  But look where Prairie Ridge is.  This photo was taken right across the county road from the entrance:

This is not true green development but exurban sprawl.  One can earn LEED building certification pretty much in the middle of nowhere, unfortunately, so they may well accomplish that part. The developer seems to be claiming that the homes-to-be already have qualified for LEED-gold and that a builder can make easy adjustments to a building plan to enable the purchaser to aim higher and obtain a LEED-platinum rating.

But there is not a chance in hell that Prairie Ridge is earning LEED-ND certification for smart, green urbanism.  If it does, there is something very wrong with LEED-ND.  And I would add that, if something in this location, with these transportation characteristics, is awarded a LEED-platinum rating under the LEED for Homes criteria, there is something very wrong with that system, too.

Move your cursor over the images for credit information.  [JR:  "me" is Kaid.]

– Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog’s home page.

Our guest blogger is Mike Casey, president of cleantech communications firm Tigercomm. The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting live from the international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

When I started working on solar energy issues several years ago, I heard it repeatedly: “Everyone loves solar.” Back then, many people in solar and other cleantech sectors saw long-term meritocracy in the energy business. Public demand, technological advances and an inevitable price on carbon were going to drive cleantech to dominance over time. “Renewable energy,” it was often said, “will soon become just plain ‘energy.’”

From the gridlocked global warming treaty negotiations here in Cancun, however, the picture seems starkly different. The congressional climate bill fight ended in disaster, the recession tightened credit markets, and the coal and oil industries bought themselves a new Congress last month. And that global carbon market many were counting on? The most optimistic note Thursday night from a top U.S. treaty negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, was “Maybe next year.”

Still, cleantech possesses a great combination of assets that many industries spend considerable time and money trying to generate. These include policy momentum, business success, and wide and deep public support. California’s anti-cleantech Proposition 23 lost by a huge margin last month, solar is creating jobs in all 50 states, and over 90% of Americans support solar energy, while 87% believe we should build more wind farms.

However, that asset combination has also moved solar, wind, battery storage, and energy efficiency technologies from being cute niceties to potentially serious market disruptors for traditional dirty energy players. The dirty energy guys know that, and they are acting accordingly:

– A series of anti-cleantech editorials on the Wall Street Journal editorial page

– Sniping from fossil-funded front groups and “experts” for hire

– Seemingly random hit pieces on individual renewable energy projects

– ExxonMobil’s New York Times front page ad falsely equating fossil fuel subsidies with those of wind and solar

– An emerging class of “green ingrates,” pro-dirty energy pundits posing as cleantech players

– Chevron’s pioneering of what I’ve begun calling “cleantech washing” — pretending to promote clean energy while actually undercutting it

Virtually all of these attacks push three interlocking memes about cleantech: 1) It’s “not ready”; 2) It’s “too expensive”; and 3) It’s “unreliable.” And the message discipline and sheer number of these attacks make it very likely they are being underwritten and coordinated by people with a vested interest in making them happen.

Cleantech is now in a full-contact game with dirty energy, which is playing accordingly. The attacks by dirty energy are serious, coordinated, and are beginning to get traction in public opinion research. By generating, stimulating, or exacerbating customer concerns about readiness, cost and reliability, the attacks are affecting the marketing and sales environment for large and small cleantech companies. It’s in each cleantech player’s financial interest to help to mount a more concerted effort to push back against detractors.

Clean energy needs to capture people’s imaginations, not just their intellects. There’s far too much engineer-speak, facts, figures, watts, and jargon dominating cleantech communications. Emory University psychologist Dr. Drew Westen conducted groundbreaking research in 2004, finding that people make decisions first and foremost at the emotional level, and only then do they begin rational consideration. In fact, Westen found, humans are incapable of doing otherwise. The cleantech community should assume there’s a reason why deep-pocketed Chevron and the coal front group, America’s Power Army, have spent huge sums on advertising and marketing materials with a certain feel to them.

Cleantech companies have strong individual interests in collective brand defense. A great recent example of a cleantech executive doing his company a service through collective brand defense was SPG Solar CEO Tom Rooney’s piece making the case that political conservatives should support clean energy. “One of the biggest challenges is helping solar companies talk about the context — why they matter and how they’re affecting their industry in the broader picture,” said Edelman’s Kimberly Kupecki at a recent panel. “It’s another way we can simply and cheaply be our own advocates.”

Cleantech voices need to frame the cost argument properly by relentlessly pointing out that fossil fuels’ supposed cheapness is underwritten by massive taxpayers subsidies. On October 12, 2010, Solar Energy Industry Association CEO and President Rhone Resch called for cutting the “grotesque” subsidies to fossil industries. Just two weeks later, ExxonMobil ran a remarkably defensive ad in the form of an obfuscating quiz on subsidies at the bottom of the front page of the New York Times.

Cleantech managers and investors are busy trying to build successful companies, but their growing successes have drawn the opposition of status quo players who don’t want them to succeed. That’s why the dirty energy industries are now spending significant resources to harden the marketing and sales environment against cleantech’s success. All the facts, figures and solid product offerings in the world won’t overcome that problem if this emerging threat isn’t faced.

Dirty energy is playing full contact. Are we ready to do the same?

Today CAN Europe released a new report based on an analysis of publicly available campaign finance records, definitively proving that polluting European companies are funding climate legislation blockers in US politics. Their overseas support is all the more galling because the same companies argue that additional emissions reductions in Europe cannot be pursued until the United States takes action.

CP reported over the weekend that the ‘U.S.’ Chamber of Commerce’s pro-GOP, pro-pollution ad blitz was fueled by foreign oil, especially companies in India.  Now Climate Action Network Europe is out with a new report, “Think globally, and sabotage locally,” that documents European companies are backing Senate opponents of climate action — while shamelessly arguing in Europe that the EU must not make stronger commitments because of U.S. inaction:

Big European emitters –  Lafarge, GDF-SUEZ, EON, BP, BASF, BAYER, Solvay and Arcelor-Mittal supported climate change deniers in the US senate in 2010 for $107,200. Their total support for senators blocking climate change legislation in the US amounts to $240,200, which is almost 80% of their total spendings in 2010 senate race….

This behind the scenes behaviour exposes a major hypocrisy in those European headquarter based companies. In Europe they are amongst the most influential and vocal within their sector federations, the confederation of European business (Business Europe) and the Alliance for a competitive European Industry) to avoid more climate action in the EU. The main reason of argument of those companies is that, for instance, the move to a 30% reduction target in the EU by 2020 cannot happen because of inaction in the rest of the world especially in the USA.

The report provides a number of typically hypocritical quotes from these secret saboteurs:

Business Europe wrote to the president of the EU Environment Council, ahead of the Environment Council meeting on 14 October, enclosing a position paper setting out their recommendations on EU policies for climate and energy. !They say that there should be no increase in the 20% emission reduction target until the international conditions are fulfilled:
“BUSINESSEUROPE is convinced that at this point in time, i.e. in the absence of an international deal securing equally strong action from other economies, any further increase of the EU’s unilateral 20% emission reduction target would be premature and even counterproductive.”

CEFIC (the European Chemical industry council includes BASF, BAYER and Solvay as important members)
“Acting in isolation is doomed to fail, as the Copenhagen conference has shown.”

So these big polluters, including BP, are trying to block European action by arguing that the U.S. won’t act — and at the same time they have a cash pipeline to senators in the United States trying to block action.

Even more hypocritically, some of these companies have being greenwashing themselves by asserting that they actually care about global warming:

“Lafarge confirms its commitment against climate change”¦.” [from its "Sustainable Development" page].

“By helping to prevent climate warming, preserving fossil fuels and natural resources and promoting environmentally friendly energy, GDF SUEZ is working to control the impact of its own activities and those of its customers on the environment…..  Technologies that emit the least CO2 are the priority” [from its "Environment and Climate" page].

“Climate change is one of the main challenges faced by society. Industries, science, politics and society need to curb further increases in greenhouse gas emissions and make efficient use of available resources. Innovative solutions developed by BASF contribute to protecting our climate….  As the first company in industry to do so, BASF published a corporate carbon footprint in 2008….  Dr. Ulrich von Deessen has been named the first Climate Protection Officer of BASF in 2008″  [from its "Climate Protection" page].

“ArcelorMittal recognises that it has a significant responsibility to tackle the global climate change challenge.”

BP:  “As a global energy company, we believe we can play a major part in finding and implementing solutions to one of the greatest challenges of this century.”

CAN Europe rightly calls this “sabotage on a global scale.”

It is probably time to start considering some serious boycotts.

This is what they call a “push poll,” a “technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll.”

First off, the specified choices don’t include most of the strategies needed to actually reduce emissions from fossil fuels — as opposed to, say, just slowing their growth.   R&D into technologies “that increase efficiency and reduce emissions in hydrocarbon production” — what, more efficient drills and refineries?  Yes, that’s going to reduce fossil fuel emissions.  And establishing a “capability” in CCS?  Seriously.  How about putting in place a standard that requires CCS?

Of course, this “poll” omits all regulations, renewable standards, efficiency standards, all significant efforts to accelerate deployment, or any mechanism to create a price on CO2.  So what precisely is the point of this “energy poll” if not to mislead the public into thinking that those measures are actually “priority” ones and that the problem isn’t terribly urgent.

And if we’re quoting what IEA “predicts,” how about explaining what the IEA warns will happen if we don’t dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions (see Must read IEA report, Part 1: Act now with clean energy or face 6°C warming):

Unsustainable pressure on natural resources and on the environment is inevitable if energy demand is not de-coupled from economic growth and fossil fuel demand reduced.

The situation is getting worse”¦. Baseline scenario foreshadow a 70% increase in oil demand by 2050 and a 130% rise in CO2 emissions”¦. a rise in CO2 emissions of such magnitude could raise global average temperatures by 6°C (eventual stabilisation level), perhaps more. The consequences would be significant change in all aspects of life and irreversible change in the natural environment.

Yeah, no point in sticking that into this energy poll, otherwise readers might actually figure out how lame are the prioritized steps they’re voting on.

Jeers to Scientific American for running this pop up push poll in “association with” a once-green, now-greenwashing oil company (see Shell shocker: Once ‘green’ oil company guts renewables effort and Investors warn Shell and BP over tar sands greenwashing).

And yes, it only compounds the irony that the banner ad is for “easy & affordable carbon offsets” to “fight global warming.”  One thing we can safely say, if offsets are cheap, then you’re getting what you’re paying for.  Absent a national climate bill and global climate deal, offsets, particularly cheap ones, are a placebo.

Sadly, Scientific American has joined the growing list of newspapers and magazines who go astray while struggling to find sources of revenue to supplement their dwindling print readership base:

• Media stunner: Newsweek partners with oil lobby to raise ad cash, host energy and climate events with lawmakers “” while publishing the uber-greenwashing story, “Big Oil Goes Green for Real”
• The New York Times sells its integrity to ExxonMobil with front-page ad that falsely asserts “Today’s car has 95% fewer emissions than a car from 1970.”³

Highly profitable oil and other large companies are increasingly turning to U.S. universities to perform their commercial research and development. Investigative reporter Jennifer Washburn has the story in this major new CAP report (big 220-page PDF here).

The world’s largest oil companies are showing surprising interest in financing alternative energy research at U.S. universities. Over the past decade, five of the world’s top 10 oil companies””ExxonMobil Corp., Chevron Corp., BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell Group, and ConocoPhillips Co.””and other large traditional energy companies with a direct commercial stake in future energy markets have forged dozens of multi-year, multi-million-dollar alliances with top U.S. universities and scientists to carry out energy-related research. Much of this funding by “Big Oil” is being used for research into new sources of alternative energy and renewable energy, mostly biofuels.

Why are highly profitable oil and other large corporations increasingly turning to U.S. universities to perform their commercial research and development instead of conducting this work in-house? Why, in turn, are U.S. universities opening their doors to Big Oil? And when they do, how well are U.S. universities balancing the needs of their commercial sponsors with their own academic missions and public-interest obligations, given their heavy reliance on government research funding and other forms of taxpayer support?

The answers to these three questions are critical to energy-related research and development in our country, given the current global-warming crisis and the role that academic experts have traditionally played in providing the public with impartial research, analysis, and advice. To unpack these questions and help find answers, this report provides a detailed examination of 10 university-industry agreements that together total $833 million in confirmed corporate funding (over 10 years) for energy research funding on campus.

Copies of these contractual agreements were obtained largely through state-level public record act requests (see the table on pages 13 and 14 for a list of these 10 agreements, and see page 15 for the methodology used for obtaining and analyzing them). Each agreement spells out the precise legal terms, conditions, and intellectualproperty provisions that govern how this sponsored research is carried out by the faculty and students on campus. (See methodology on page 15 for a discussion of how practices that are not required in these conflicts fit into the analysis.)

Independent, outside legal experts then performed a detailed analysis of each agreement. These experts’ detailed contract reviews may be found in Appendices 1 through 10 beginning on page 75 of this report, and include responses from a number of the universities that entered into these agreements. It should be noted that our external reviewers’ rankings for several of the “Contract Review Questions” are subjective because interpretations of law and other intellectual property terms cannot be strictly quantified. Also, the provisions in these contracts have not to our knowledge been tested in a court of law, so their “legal” meaning has not been definitively established.

The results of this report’s analysis of these 10 large-scale university-industry contracts raise troubling questions about the ability of U.S. universities to adequately safeguard their core academic and public-interest functions when negotiating research contracts with large corporate funders. This report identifies eight major areas where these contracts leave the door open to serious limitations on academic freedom and research independence. Here are just a few brief highlights:

• In nine of the 10 energy-research agreements we analyzed, the university partners failed to retain majority academic control over the central governing body charged with directing the university-industry alliance. Four of the 10 alliances actually give the industry sponsors full governance control.
• Eight of the 10 agreements permit the corporate sponsor or sponsors to fully control both the evaluation and selection of faculty research proposals in each new grant cycle.
• None of the 10 agreements requires faculty research proposals to be evaluated and awarded funding based on independent expert peer review, the traditional method for awarding academic and scientific research grants fairly and impartially based on scientific merit.
• Eight of the 10 alliance agreements fail to specify transparently, in advance, how faculty may apply for alliance funding, and what the specific evaluation and selection criteria will be.
• Nine of the 10 agreements call for no specific management of financial conflicts of interest related to the alliance and its research functions. None of these agreements, for example, specifies that committee members charged with evaluating and selecting faculty research proposals must be impartial, and may not award corporate funding to themselves. (See summary of main findings for details, pages 52-59, and the Appendices beginning on page 75.)

To our knowledge, this report represents the first time independent analysts have systematically examined a set of written university-industry agreements within a specific research area””in this case, the energy R&D sector””to evaluate how well they balance the goals of the corporate sponsors to produce commercial research that advances business profits with the missions of American universities to perform high-quality, disinterested academic research that advances public knowledge for the betterment of society.

Before Congress releases billions of dollars in much-needed federal funding for more research and development of alternative and renewable energy and energy efficiency via direct grants and other public-private partnerships, it should give careful consideration to the findings and recommendations made in this report. Indeed, this analysis could not be more timely. As proposals to put a cap and price on carbon pollution circulated earlier this in Congress, most major oil companies, including their main lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, continue to vigorously oppose any such carbon caps by running millions of dollars’ worth of negative ads warning the public and politicians of the dire consequences of action. But whenever comprehensive energy legislation is finally implemented, then a significant portion of the funds generated through cap-and-trade legislation will likely be targeted toward efficiency and clean-energy R&D performed by academic experts at U.S. universities.

What’s more, these funds will likely be disbursed through a variety of public-private research partnerships similar to the ones examined in this report. In recent years the U.S. Department of Energy and other federal agencies have shown a strong preference for disbursing federal research dollars through public-private cost-sharing arrangements. According to Doug Hooker, the director of renewable energy at the DOE’s Golden Field Office in Colorado (which handles grant making for DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy), roughly 80 percent to 90 percent of the federal research money that now goes to finance renewable-energy and efficiency R&D is disbursed through some form of public-private cost-sharing arrangement.

Usually, says Hooker, the corporate beneficiary of this DOE research funding is asked to provide a 20 percent to 50 percent matching grant, depending on the stage of the research project and its proximity to commercial application. “We are leveraging the available dollars that are out there in the private sector,” Hooker said in an interview. “We believe it helps with the success rate and the industry’s commitment to these technologies.”

Yet the long-term effectiveness of this strategy remains unknown. John DeCicco, an expert on transportation and a senior lecturer in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan, remains skeptical. “The whole concept of using tax dollars in public-private arrangements needs much better scrutiny,” he argues. “This strategy inherently threatens the essence of public-good research, and can blur the boundary lines between independent invention and analysis on the one hand, and strictly commercial R&D on the other.”

U.S. universities, of course, have long relied on a combination of federal government and industry grants to finance their research operations. U.S. academic institutions spent $52 billion on research and development in 2008, the last year for which complete data were available, with about 60 percent financed by U.S. taxpayers through a variety of federal grant-making agencies. Nationally, though, only about 6 percent of university research overall is funded by industry.

Nevertheless, according to some estimates, because of the federal government’s growing preference for allocating federal R&D funds through corporate matching grants and other cost-sharing and cooperative-research arrangements, private industry now directly influences anywhere from 20 percent to 25 percent of university research funding overall. In this way, a significant share of U.S. taxpayer funding that starts out as “public” funding is effectively turned “private” by the time it reaches the university investigators in their academic labs.

Top Obama administration officials, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Undersecretary for Science at the Department of Energy Steven E. Koonin, are strong supporters of using industry-university-government partnerships to advance clean-energy R&D. In 2007, prior to joining the administration, both Chu and Koonin were instrumental in brokering a $500 million research collaboration (discussed in detail in this report) between the British oil giant BP PLC and three major U.S. taxpayer-financed research institutions: the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a federal research lab managed by U.C. Berkeley. At the time, Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, was director of Lawrence Berkeley, and Koonin was serving as BP’s chief scientist.

By academic standards, these multiyear, multimillion-dollar industry investments on campus certainly look huge. Yet relative to the oil industry’s vast profit margins, this R&D spending remains infinitesimally small. Consider BP’s 10-year, $500 million investment in the Energy Biosciences Institute at U.C. Berkeley, which is primarily dedicated to researching biofuels. Relative to BP’s profit margins, this mega-size university deal represents little more than a drop in the proverbial bucket. Let’s begin by conservatively estimating that BP’s average business performance from 2006 to 2015 will remain roughly on a par with its 2003-2007 performance. During this time period, BP’s average revenues were $233 billion, and its average profits hit $19.2 billion. If such trends continue, and excluding any significant hit to BP’s bottom line due to the consequences of the 2010 oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, then:

• BP’s total 10-year, $500 million investment in the Energy Biosciences Institute will amount to a mere 0.021 percent of BP’s total projected revenues, and just 0.26 percent of its total profits, during the period 2006-2015.
• This level of R&D spending is not inconsistent with energy industry totals, but it remains well below the average for U.S. industry as a whole. According to energy experts Gregory Nemet and Daniel Kammen, during the years 1988 to 2003, the U.S. energy industry (in its entirety) invested just 0.23 percent of its revenues in R&D, far below the average of 2.6 percent for U.S. industry as a whole.

Nevertheless, this redirection of industry R&D dollars to U.S. universities is significant. The reasons: A sizable portion of this university funding is now being directed to “alternative energy research” (especially biofuels), and this shift in the allocation of industry resources has the potential to significantly influence the academic research culture in this new energy arena.

These investments in clean energy research by leading energy companies also appear to be part of the energy industry’s current campaign to project a more pro-environmental public image. Turn on the TV or open virtually any magazine and you’re likely to see an ad from a major oil, coal, gas, auto, agriculture, or other company touting its commitment to the research and development of clean-energy technologies: biofuels, “clean coal” technology, hydrogen fuel cells. Not infrequently, these “green ads” explicitly reference the industry’s multimillion-dollar alliances with U.S. universities, whose prestige and public trust are an added selling point (see box).

It’s clear that Big Oil and other large energy companies have ramped up their advertising budgets to project a pro-environmental business orientation. But if we crack open the industry’s annual reports, it is also clear that today’s climate and energy crises (and persistently high oil prices) haven’t had anywhere near the impact on energy industry R&D spending that the earlier oil price shocks of the 1970s once had. After rising sharply in the 1970s, energy industry spending (adjusted for inflation) on all types of R&D has plummeted, from an annual average of nearly $6.4 billion in the early 1980s to an annual average of roughly $1.7 billion at the start of the last decade (see graph).

The annual reports of four of the largest oil companies”” ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Chevron”” between 2000 and 2007 (before the Great Recession began) do show some overall gains in R&D spending. But these R&D gains, which are overwhelmingly directed toward enhanced oil and gas recovery, not clean energy, remain truly marginal, particularly in light of the oil industry’s vast profit margins in recent years. In constant 2006 dollars, here’s what these company reports reveal:

• ExxonMobil’s total R&D spending has remained essentially flat since 1993, with barely any increase.
• Shell had the fastest growth in R&D expenditures over the past five years (out of the four companies); however, because Shell’s R&D outlays had dropped dramatically throughout the 1990s, actual gains were marginal.
• BP continues to spend less on energy R&D than either ExxonMobil or Shell. Despite dubbing itself BP or “Beyond Petroleum” in 2000, BP’s aggregate spending on all energy R&D is still roughly the same as it was a decade ago, although the company’s pledge of $50 million per year over 10 years for the Energy Biosciences Institute will lift this total slightly.
• Chevron’s aggregate spending on R&D remained extremely low and flat from 1999 through 2004. Since 2005, Chevron’s R&D outlays rose, but they still remain the lowest of the four. (see the graph for details).

It is clear, then, that industry spending on all forms of energy R&D (especially low-carbon energy R&D) remains chronically low. Nevertheless, the industry’s decision to shift more of its already limited R&D spending to U.S. universities is highly significant, and could have far-reaching consequences for the future direction of energy R&D efforts nationally. In large part, this is because the U.S. government commitment to energy R&D has remained persistently low for decades, so every dollar of private industry funding that comes into university labs is urgently needed. Consider that:

From 1993 to 2006, U.S. government spending on all energy-related R&D (in real dollars) remained stuck at roughly $3 billion to $4 billion per year, averaging $3.6 billion per year over this period. This is 60 percent less than the $9 billion the U.S. government spent on energy R&D in 1979. (see graph)

Over the same years, by contrast, real federal spending on defense R&D and health R&D averaged $58 billion and $22 billion per year, respectively. (see graph)

Industry financing of university research is certainly legitimate. Academic-industry research collaborations have led to critical advancements in science and engineering and should be nurtured. Yet industry funding can also have a powerful distorting influence on the quality, topics, and credibility of academic research when it is not properly managed.

Indeed, in recent years a large body of analytic and empirical research has shown that industry-funded studies in sectors ranging from pharmaceuticals to tobacco to food are associated with reported outcomes that strongly favor the corporate sponsor’s products and/or interests compared to studies funded by government and non-profit sources.

What do the 10 contractual agreements tell us?

Now let’s turn to the centerpiece of this report: the university-industry-research agreements themselves. The central analysis that underpins this report, and the questions it raises, is drawn from a comprehensive analysis and independent expert level review of 10 recent alliance agreements among as many as 43 companies (some contracts boast fluctuating membership), 13 leading universities, and two federal research labs, totaling $833 million in confirmed industry funding over ten years.

Most of the copies of the 10 agreements were obtained through public record act requests filed with state-funded universities (although these often proved extremely time-consuming and difficult to obtain because many state-funded institutions stalled or outright refused our requests). Several were also obtained from academic administrators through personal phone requests, or had been previously made public. Private universities are not required to (and usually do not) publicly disclose their contract research agreements with industry. Stanford University made a rare exception when it chose to publicly disclose its contract with ExxonMobil and three other companies following campus pressure to do so (see table below for a complete list of the 10 agreements analyzed and the accompanying box on page 15 for an explanation of the methodology we employed).

Major findings””A brief synopsis

This report’s analysis of the contracts underlying 10 large-scale university-industry alliances to finance energy research identifies eight major areas where serious limitations on academic freedom and academic research, and governing independence are permitted. What follows is a brief description of the eight areas where these agreements appear to fail to uphold the universities’ core academic and public-interest obligations:

1. Do these agreements protect university independence and academic self-governance?

In nine of the 10 agreements, the university partners failed to retain majority academic control over the central governing body charged with directing the university-industryresearch alliance. Four of the 10 alliances allow for full industry sponsor control over the alliance’s main governing body.

In some cases the written agreement explicitly gives the industry sponsor or sponsors full control. In other cases, this is how the agreement is being interpreted and/or administered in practice. This finding is quite remarkable. “Academic independence” has been rooted, historically, in the university’s core belief that it must retain the ability to govern its own internal affairs. This is often referred to as “academic self-governance” or “academic autonomy.”

Ever since the birth of the academic freedom movement in the early 1900s, U.S. universities and their faculties have worked strenuously to prevent outside donors (whether a wealthy benefactor, a commercial sponsor, or a federal grant-making agency) from exerting undue influence over faculty teaching, research, and other internal academic governance decisions. The rationale for this is quite straightforward: Without self-governance, research independence and free inquiry are meaningless.

2. Do these agreements require faculty research proposals to be evaluated and awarded funding on the basis of impartial “peer review”?

None of the 10 agreements requires faculty research proposals to be evaluated and awarded funding in each new grant cycle using academic methods of independent, impartial peer review. In the case of the Arizona State University-BP research alliance this question does not apply because all the research projects have been identified upfront so no other campus faculty are eligible to apply for funding.

In interviews and written comments, several university officials told CAP that, even though their formal alliance agreements do not require peer review, they do frequently draw on the expertise of outside expert reviewers. Yet, in all the cases reviewed in this report, it is the view of the author and our legal experts that the use of peer review is variable, inconsistent, and/or does not rise to the level of genuine, impartial, expert peer review. And because peer review is not secured in the alliance’s legal contract, its weight in the research-selection process remains unclear, and its application can be altered or simply abandoned at any time. (For more discussion, please see the detailed contract reviews in Appendices 1-10.)

Consider Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project, which is funded by Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Toyota and Schlumberger. Neither of GCEP’s formal written alliance agreements (originally signed in 2002 and renewed in 2008) requires the use of expert peer review for the selection of faculty research proposals. Both agreements’ use of peer review is entirely optional and left to the discretion of the four industry sponsors. Stanford officials respond that GCEP uses an informal peer-review system even though it is not legally required, and that they posted written peer-review protocols on a public website to clarify how this peer review works in practice. But our outside legal experts say this informal peer review system is not legally binding and could be altered or abandoned at any time. (see Appendix 8 for details)

Academic peer review has long been considered the gold standard when it comes to appropriately and fairly evaluating the quality and worthiness of scientific and academic research. When faculty research proposals are evaluated by independent experts using an impartial peer review process, it helps to ensure that corporate-research funding is awarded on the basis of both scientific and academic merit””not merely on the basis of one firm’s short-term business needs or the narrow strategic goals of one industrial sector.

When Cornell University’s faculty senate issued final recommendations in 2005 on how best to structure large-scale, university-industry research alliances, it strongly emphasized the centrality of independent peer review: “The important point””vital to honoring the principal that we are engaged in academic, not corporate research””is that genuine, disinterested peer review occur.”

3. Are these agreements fully transparent about how the faculty may apply for commercial funding, and what the methods and criteria for selection will be?

Eight of the 10 alliance agreements fail to specify in adequate detail how faculty may apply for alliance research funding, or what evaluation and selection criteria will be used. Within the university and scientific communities it is widely understood that high standards cannot be maintained unless faculty research and scholarship is judged fairly and impartially based on academic merit and scientific excellence, not according to the narrow wishes or dictates of outside sponsors.

The notable lack of clarity and transparency in a majority of these 10 university-industry agreements (combined with their failure to require peer review) suggests that funding awarded through these academic-industry alliances will strongly favor the business and strategic interests of the corporate sponsors. Given that nine of the 10 agreements also clearly state that the university side will be responsible for administering and overseeing the research-selection process (on behalf of the alliance as a whole), this could leave university leaders vulnerable to accusations that they are putting the sponsors’ commercial interests ahead of the universities’ core commitment to high-quality research, and the disinterested quest for knowledge and truth for the benefit of the public.

4. Do these agreements adequately distinguish “academic research” from “corporate research for hire?”

The answer to this question largely rests on which party to the agreement defines the alliance’s overarching research agenda, which party draws up the “request for faculty research proposals” in each new grant cycle, and which party retains majority control over the evaluation and final selection of academic research proposals. Let’s consider each of these in turn.

In eight of the 10 agreements that we reviewed, the industry sponsor substantially defines the alliance’s “overarching research agenda.” (The exceptions were Arizona State University and Stanford University.) This is not unusual. No funding source is entirely neutral. Simply by defining what research questions will be asked, nearly every sponsor exerts some degree of influence over the academic research enterprise.

It also is not unusual for the corporate sponsors to play a subsequent role in setting the research agenda during each new grant cycle. In five of the 10 agreements, the industry sponsors and the university partners share some responsibility for drawing up a list of research topics in each new grant cycle, and issuing the request for new faculty research proposals. In four cases, the contact allows the industry sponsors to fully set the agenda in each new grant cycle.

But in eight out of 10 contracts we examined, the agreements broke significantly from longstanding university commitments to academic self-governance. This finding is the most significant one. Usually, when it comes to internal academic governance decisions””including the evaluation and selection of faculty research””the university insists on majority academic representation and the right to use independent, expert peer reviewers. In 2007, for example, a U.C. Berkeley faculty senate committee reviewing the Energy Biosciences Institute partnership stressed that all BP-EBI funded research “should not in any way be conceived of or seen as work made for hire for the benefit of the corporate sponsor.”

Nonetheless, in eight of the 10 alliance agreements reviewed here, the university failed to retain majority control over the evaluation and final selection of faculty research proposals, or to require the use of impartial peer review, thus leaving the distinction between “academic research” and “corporate research for hire” quite unclear and uncertain.

5. Is the university’s fundamental right to publish protected?

Yes. Nine of the 10 agreements affirm the university’s right to publish, but in many instances this contractural right is curtailed by potentially lengthy corporate delays. The National Institutes of Health generally recommends no more than a 60-day delay on academic research publication, which it deems adequate time for the corporate sponsor to file a provisional patent application and remove any sensitive proprietary information. None of the 10 agreements analyzed abide by this maximum-60-day federally recommended publication delay; most far exceed it.

One alliance agreement at the University of Colorado, Boulder and three other publicly funded research institutions in Colorado (known as the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels, or C2B2) permits the industry sponsors to delay publication for up to 210 days. Another alliance agreement at Stanford University, the Global Climate and Energy Project, gives the four sponsors a mandatory, 60-day review period to consider patent protection prior to release of any academic publications. After this, the agreement provides for no maximum delay on publications, leaving the potential, at least, for indefinite delays. A third alliance agreement with Chevron permits the sponsor to delay publication for up to one year, including student theses.

The timely release of academic information is what makes the university research sphere so exceptionally vibrant, innovative, and dynamic. Rapid dissemination of new knowledge helps to insure that all scientific research is subject to independent review and replication to verify its accuracy. Research should never be quarantined; it needs to be released rapidly so others can react to it and build upon it, continually driving the pursuit of new knowledge forward.

6. Does the corporate sponsor enjoy monopoly commercial rights to all the university’s sponsored-research results?

We asked our outside legal examiners to rank each alliance agreement on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 representing very weak contract language granting exclusive commercial rights to the industry sponsor, and 10 representing very strong language granting exclusive commercial rights. Seven of the 10 agreements ranked 8 or higher for their degree of exclusivity, thus giving the industry sponsors strong monopoly commercial control over the alliances’ sponsored research results.

Seven of the 10 agreements left the university side with extremely limited power to license sponsored-research results nonexclusively to outside commercial users. But there are three notable exceptions. The first is the so-called “shared side” of the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels. The second is the alliance agreement between the University of Texas at Austin, Rice University, and ten companies. And the third is Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project agreement. GCEP was originally launched in 2002, but the university and its four industry sponsors negotiated a new, revised contract in September 2008 that greatly facilitated non-exclusive licensing and open academic sharing of GCEP research results through the elimination of a 5-year, sponsor exclusivity provision. (see Appendix 8 for details)

But the flip side is this: At least four of the 10 agreements (BP-Arizona State University, BP-Energy Biosciences Institute, Chevron-U.C. Davis, and Chevron-Texas A&M) explicitly permit the industry sponsors to extend the commercial rights to “background” academic research, which by definition was not funded by the industry sponsors but by public and other sources not party to the alliance agreement.

Because U.S. taxpayers continue to subsidize higher education substantially through general overhead for state universities, federal and state subsidies for student tuition, graduate-student fellowships, educational tax breaks, and federal research grants, most U.S. universities pledge their commitment to patenting and licensing academic research in a manner “consistent with the public interest.” This is generally understood to mean that universities will work to maximize broad public use of their academic inventions and research tools, and prevent any one private or commercial entity from exerting excessive monopoly control, unless it is absolutely necessary to promote commercial development.

Case in point: In one 2008 review of the BP-EBI alliance, a faculty senate Task Force on University-Industry Partnerships noted that “the use of exclusive licenses should be as limited as possible, given our public mission.” Such sentiments have also been affirmed by the National Institutes of Health, and by more than 50 universities that are signatories to a 2007 statement titled “Nine Points to Consider in University Licensing.”

Yet in seven of the 10 contracts we examined for this report, industry sponsors are granted broad, upfront, exclusive commercial rights to alliance research””even, in some cases, when certain “background knowledge” was developed prior to the creation of the alliance and not funded by the sponsor.

7. Are university faculty members free to share their sponsored-research results with other academic investigators?

Using our 1-to-10 scale, with 1 representing very weak protections for academic use and sharing and 10 representing very strong protections, the 10 agreements earned an average ranking of just 5.5 for protecting academic use and sharing. Given how important academic sharing is to the whole university and national scientific enterprise, this is troubling.

Since 2007, more than 50 U.S. research universities have endorsed a public statement listing nine core principles that all universities should be required to uphold in their licensing deals with industry. The first of these principles calls for all universities to include a provision in their industry contracts””often known as a “research exemption” “”that permits professors and students to freely share their sponsored-research results (including data, tools, and methods) with outside researchers for non-commercial research purposes, including verification of published research findings.

Nevertheless, only four of the 10 alliance agreements had strong academic-use and sharing provisions, receiving a rank of 7 or higher. Five of the 10 agreements ranked 5 or lower (moderate to poor) for protecting the academic investigators’ right to share sponsoredresearch with other academic scientists and scholars for purely research and non-commercial purposes, despite its centrality to the academic research enterprise.

8. Are conflicts of interest adequately regulated in these university-industry alliance agreements?

Nine of the 10 agreements fail to discuss the management of financial conflicts of interest related to the alliance and its research functions. The lone exception is Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project, where the agreement mentions the need to manage conflicts of interest only with regard to optional peer review panels (convened at the discretion of the industry sponsors) and third-party university grant recipients. This latter reference, however, was dropped from GCEP’s, revised 2008 agreement.

None of the 10 agreements prohibit members who sit on the alliances’ main governing body from having personal financial interests related to the research they are charged with overseeing and directing. At the BP-Arizona State University alliance there is no formal governing body so this question does not apply.

Similarly, none of the 10 agreements prohibits committee members charged with evaluating and selecting faculty research proposals from having financial conflicts of interest related to the research they are reviewing. Again, the lone exception is Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project, where the agreement states that peer review panels must be free of conflicts, but these panels are optional, and used solely at the discretion of the management committee members, where the industry sponsors control all the votes.

Furthermore, none of the 10 agreements specifies that these committee members may not award commercial research funding to themselves, or their own labs. This type of potential conflict has already surfaced as a widespread problem at the BP-funded Energy Biosciences Institute administered by U.C. Berkeley. Specifically, after the EBI deal was finalized at the end of 2007, U.C. Berkeley’s press office announced that the executive committee charged with evaluating faculty research projects for possible BP funding would have strong majority academic representation. And when the first formal executive committee convened in 2008 it had eight members, seven of whom were academics and one of whom was a representative from BP. But when this report’s author probed a bit deeper, she soon found that seven of these eight committee members had significant potential conflicts of interest, including all but one of the academics.

Two of the eight executive committee members, including the EBI’s Academic Director and the lone BP representative, had financial ties to firms that could stand to profit from the EBI’s academic research. And five of the other committee members had a different potential conflict: All were listed on the EBI website, in the spring of 2008, as “primary investigators” on research projects funded by BP-EBI. What this strongly suggests is that all five could award BP research grant money to themselves and their labs. At the very least, the application and receipt of BP-EBI funding calls into question whether these faculty members were capable of fairly and impartially evaluating other faculty research proposals.

More recently, these potential conflicts of interest on the EBI’s executive committee seem to have only worsened. As of September 2010, the EBI listed a total of 13 executive committee members: 11 academics and two representatives from BP. Yet 10 of these academics are also listed as primary EBI investigators or heads of projects supported with BP-EBI funding, and one, EBI Director Chris Somerville, continues to have personal financial interests in an outside firm partnering with BP on research that is similar to that of EBI. That means three of the executive committee’s 13 members have financial ties to firms that could profit from EBI research, and the other 10 are academic researchers who have vested research and financial interests with the EBI that could compromise their ability to evaluate incoming faculty research in an impartial and disinterested manner, based on scientific merit (for more details, see the box on conflicts of interest on page 64).

Implications

The 10 university-industry agreements reviewed for this report reveal a considerable amount about the goals and expectations of the big energy companies as well as the research conditions and constraints that academic researchers at U.S. universities are now operating under as a condition of their acceptance of this private industry financing.

Our review found that the terms and conditions outlined in these 10 agreements do not always show parity between the two sets of research partners. Indeed, the report’s analysis supports the author’s view that, in fundamental respects, the vast majority of these contracts seriously challenge the historic research integrity and the independence of the universities involved.

In the recent past, private industry (through Bell Labs and numerous other corporate research hubs) conducted a substantial amount of scientific research and technological development. Over the past 30 years, however, many private companies have vastly reduced their R&D investments, and downsized or outright eliminated their own inhouse scientific and technological expertise. What research these companies do continue to fund is increasingly contracted out to third parties, including private contract research labs and U.S. universities. This is not true of all firms, of course, but it is certainly true of most of the large, established energy companies, as this report demonstrates.

On campus, meanwhile, the research climate is also rapidly changing. Thirty years ago, large-scale, multi-year strategic corporate research alliances on campus were far less common, and overt academic commercialism was largely taboo. Today the boundary between academic research and commercial research is far more blurry. So far, the long-term consequences of this subtle but important shift in the nation’s science-and-technology infrastructure have not been well explored. This shift is especially important to consider in the energy sector, where independent university scientists and experts are urgently needed to measure and interpret today’s complex global-warming problems, uncover path-breaking new technologies, and provide impartial advice and expertise to the public and government agencies regarding effective public policy.

Because this independent university sector remains so vitally important, the Obama administration, Congress, federal agencies, and university leaders across the country would do well to carefully consider the findings of this report, which point to several intriguing new conclusions regarding the efficacy of developing new sources of alternative energy through joint university-industry research partnerships.

First of all, the manner in which these industry contracts were negotiated and concluded points to numerous potential challenges for future U.S. university negotiators. Many of these agreements fail to make any clear distinctions between independent, academic research and commercial research for hire. If more U.S. universities begin to work with the energy industry through these types of contract-research arrangements then it will be far more difficult for them to continue producing credible, independent energy research in these critical academic fields. One has only to review the extensive science literature on pharmaceutical industry influence and conflicts of interest in academic medicine to see the potential hazards that can arise from tearing down the boundary walls that separate academic and commercial research.

Second, preserving an independent research sector inside top-ranked U.S. universities remains vitally important for the advancement of clean energy research and the health of the U.S. science and innovation system more broadly. U.S. universities have traditionally performed many types of research (curiosity-driven science, fundamental inquiry, disinterested research) that private firms were unable, or unwilling, to finance adequately on their own, because of shorter-term commercial, strategic, and profit considerations. Many of this nation’s most path-breaking scientific discoveries””including those that launched the biotechnology, computing, and information-technology revolutions””were born out of publicly financed research, performed in academic labs.

Of course, private industry has also made enormous contributions to U.S. science and innovation. But until recently, most major firms operated their own independent, commercial R&D labs. It remains highly uncertain what will happen to our nation’s unique academic sector if private industry continues to move its R&D operations onto U.S. campuses without showing adequate respect for the university’s highly distinctive academic research culture.

Third, we need to preserve a research sphere that is committed to public-good research”” research that has enormous social value, but which rarely generates commercial profits. In the area of energy research alone, this might include studies comparing the relative social, economic, energy, and environmental consequences of various competing alternativeenergy technologies, or advanced research to measure carbon and other greenhouse gases emitted from various sources, or the development of effective carbon caps, taxes, trading, and measuring systems. Without this type of public-good research””carried out independently of specific commercial- or special-interest groups””it is far more difficult for political leaders and the public to develop effective, enlightened public policies.

Finally, public-private partnerships will certainly be necessary for bringing new cleanenergy research and technologies into the commercial marketplace, whether they originate in academic labs, government labs, or commercial labs. But these partnerships should not be pursued in a manner that compromises the long-term health of this nation’s public research sphere. When U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Energy, issue public-private R&D grants, they should clearly differentiate between the research objectives of American universities and the objectives of the individual private-sector partners. This can be done by crafting standard legal agreements between the federal funding agencies, U.S. universities, and private firms that vigorously protect the universities’ core academic- and public-knowledge missions, including their commitment to self-governance, free inquiry, and research independence. Commercial firms should be required to accept these terms in exchange for government research support.

In the final section of the main report, we offer recommendations for avoiding what we see as the problems with the contracts at these 10 universities, through our “detailed contract reviews” featured in this report’s appendices. The purpose: so the problems will not be repeated at other universities. The goal of these recommendations is to ensure that corporations seeking to partner with U.S. universities to capitalize on academic expertise and resources are not granted excessive commercial influence over the academic research process and, in some instances, overly broad commercial advantages as well. We briefly detail these recommendations here.

Recommendations for the U.S. government

Launch an “Apollo Project” for clean-energy, climate, and efficiency R&D with strong academic and public-interest safeguards

In 2009, for the first time in several decades, the U.S. Congress significantly boosted energy R&D spending. When both stimulus money and appropriations funding are included, the 2009 Department of Energy budget for R&D bounced 68 percent (over 2008 funding levels) to $16.3 billion, with the largest portions going to Basic Science ($6.1 billion) and Energy R&D ($6.4 billion), and the remainder ($3.8 billion) going to DOE defense-related research. Of this, roughly $3.95 billion is slated for Energy Efficiency and Renewables R&D specifically. Such investments must continue. It is time for the U.S. government to launch a major new initiative to finance cutting-edge research in clean energy and energy efficiency at U.S. universities on the scale of past federal science programs, such as the Apollo and Manhattan projects.

Before the U.S. government invests in additional R&D, however, it should develop “standard contract language” attached to every federal research grant for universities that obligates the university to uphold certain core academic and public interest obligations””no matter whether this funding comes via the federal government alone, or in combination with corporate matching grants.

Require all federal energy grants be issued using expert peer review

Renewed U.S. investment in energy-related R&D should be accompanied by a standard federal contract that requires use of impartial expert peer review by all federal, university, and private industry research partners. Allocating federal science funding through an independent, scientific peer-review process is the only way to ensure that taxpayer grants are awarded on the basis of true scientific merit. Use of independent expert peer-review should also be stipulated in all academic-industry-government R&D alliance agreements.

Allocate sufficient funds for fundamental, pre-commercial science and other vital public-good research

The federal government likes the idea of using public-private partnerships to maximize the economic impact of public science spending. And certainly using government R&D funding to leverage (and also stimulate) industry R&D spending can be a “win-win” combination. But public-good research should involve more than the pursuit of technologies with the potential for near-term commercialization. As transportation expert John DeCicco at the University of Michigan explains: “Ultimately, public-good research needs to be directed toward achieving critical public-good outcomes such as lowering global greenhouse gas emissions in the near term, not just the development of new technologies.” Academic expertise is urgently needed to tackle a broad array of public interest problems, and also to advance public knowledge and understanding.

Recommendations to U.S. universities

This report also offers recommendations on how to sustain America’s vibrant public research infrastructure, and our universities’ commitment to high-quality, disinterested, public-good energy research. Here, we briefly summarize these recommendations.

Police commercial conflicts of interests

U.S. universities must not allow their quest for research revenue or, increasingly, their quest for earnings from the transfer and commercialization of academic research, to distort their core academic and public-knowledge functions. Industry relationships and other commercial activities on campus should not compromise the universities’ fundamental commitment to the pursuit of truth, impartial inquiry, and public-good knowledge.

This is not to say that U.S. universities and their faculties should disregard the potential commercial applications of their academic research and discoveries. Not at all. But universities need to make a far more vigorous effort to oversee and, whenever possible, eliminate financial conflicts of interest on campus (both at the faculty and at the institutional levels) to preserve their scientific and academic integrity, research independence, and public trust. This process, too, could be vastly aided by stronger federal conflict-ofinterest guidelines attached to federal research grants.

Maximize faculty involvement in the design and oversight of large-scale corporate-research alliances

University faculty, through their main governing body””the academic or faculty senate””should be fully involved in the planning, execution, and monitoring of any large-scale, academic-industry research alliances proposed on campus. These large, multi-year corporate-research alliances tend to have a broad impact on the whole academic institution, due to their size, duration, and potential influence on the public perception of the institution compared to more common, smaller industry-sponsored research agreements. As such, they warrant far greater faculty-senate involvement in their initial design, formation, and subsequent oversight. This will also engender greater campus support and public trust through enhanced transparency.

Safeguard academic autonomy

To protect the American university’s valuable traditions of self-governance and research independence, academic representatives (not industry representatives) should retain strong (preferably two-thirds) majority representation and voting power on any academic governance bodies that are charged with overseeing or administering university-industry research alliances on campus. Equal distribution of voting power is not sufficient, because it does not protect the university’s tradition of self-governance and research autonomy.

Retain academic control over research selection and the use of independent expert peer review

University representatives should retain majority representation (and voting power) on any academic body that is charged with evaluating faculty research proposals, and/or making final research awards, as part of any large-scale, multiyear, university-industry research alliance. Faculty research proposals should also always be evaluated using independent expert peer review so research excellence, not merely narrow commercial preferences or profit criteria, guide the academic selection process. And experts selected to judge faculty research proposals should never be in a position to derive any financial benefit from the alliance (or its corporate sponsors). They should remain free of personal financial interests that could in any way bias or prejudice their evaluations.

Minimize delays on publication

U.S. universities should not permit their industry sponsors to delay publication for longer than 60 days, which the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies deem sufficient time for the commercial sponsor to file for provisional patent protection and remove any sensitive corporate proprietary information. Publication is an academic principle that helps ensure the rapid diffusion of public knowledge, which is independently scrutinized and verified for accuracy.

Protect academic knowledge sharing

Any university that enters into a large-scale industrial research alliance should include a legal clause””known as a “research exemption” or “academic-use exemption”"”as part of its licensing agreement with the corporate sponsor. This “exemption” permits all university professors to freely share their sponsored-project results (related to any published academic research) with other scientists, both within their own academic institution and at other non-profit and governmental institutions, for purely non-commercial, research purposes. Too many schools continue to overlook this critical knowledge-sharing function even though it is the first principle enshrined in a 2007 academic statement titled “In the Public Interest: Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology,” endorsed by more than 50 universities.

Resist monopoly ownership of academic knowledge

Researchers rely on the wellspring of shared academic knowledge to stimulate their own creativity, research, and scientific and technological discovery. Over the past several decades, in an effort to extract rents from campus-based research, U.S. universities have imposed proprietary restrictions on a growing share of this academic research. Because U.S. universities remain heavily reliant on U.S. taxpayer support for their research-anddevelopment funding, it is important for these academic institutions to resist the temptation to grant their corporate sponsors exclusive, monopolistic control over the universities’ academic research, most of which is heavily subsidized by public sources. To the greatest extent possible, U.S. universities should license the bulk of their research nonexclusively so it may be used by multiple parties in diverse research and commercial applications.

Together, these sets of recommendations to the federal government and universities would help both private industry and the American public by preserving a vibrant, highquality, public research sector. The analysis of these 10 university-industry research contracts alongside our observations and recommendations can help the Obama administration and Congress as they consider new measures, such as national limits on carbon pollution, a Clean Energy Technology Fund, and other programs to stimulate sustainable energy and clean energy technologies. By ensuring that the balance in these collaborative research efforts tilts strongly in favor of academic independence, the administration and Congress have a rare opportunity to restore this vital balance between our public and private research sectors. Our energy security, global environment, and economic competitiveness all hang in the balance.

Methodology used for reviewing the 10 agreements

To better understand the specific contractual requirements underlying each of these university-industry research alliances, we turned to Professor Sean O’Connor, a noted legal scholar at the University of Washington Law School with expertise in intellectual property law and university-industry contracting, and Jeremiah Miller, his former graduate assistant and now a practicing attorney in Seattle. O’Connor is co-director of the UW Graduate Program in IP Law and Policy. He provides private legal- and IP-consulting assistance to many universities, including at least one of the universities discussed in this report. He provided these services in his personal capacity.

All the “academic benchmarks” used in our review of the 10 agreements were drawn from a set of detailed analyses of Strategic Corporate Alliances, or SCAs, on campus, developed by a prominent faculty-senate committee at Cornell University from 2004 to 2005. Most of the 10 agreements reviewed here broadly fit Cornell’s definition of a Strategic Corporate Alliance: “a comprehensive, formally managed company-university agreement centered around a major, multiyear, financial commitment involving research, programmatic interactions, intellectual property licensing, and other services.” Academic norms and public-interest commitments are not well codified in any single document, but they are frequently referred to and affirmed in university mission statements, faculty senate documents such as Cornell’s SCA review, and statements and reports issued by government funding agencies and prominent university associations, including the Association of American Universities, Association of American Medical Colleges, and American Association of University Professors.

This report’s author used the Cornell SCA analyses and their SCA management recommendations as the basis for developing a list of 17 Review Questions to structure this report’s legal contract review. As such, when O’Connor and Miller interpreted the legal contract language contained in these 10 agreements, they did so not from a purely business standpoint (since most legal contracts are assumed to involve two business entities) but rather from the standpoint of widely accepted academic norms and public-interest benchmarks, including the need to safeguard the university’s core academic mission, and its commitment to self-governance, independent research, and the dissemination of high-quality, reliable, public knowledge.

With regard to the intellectual property provisions in these agreements, our outside legal experts were asked to rank each agreement on a scale of 1 to 10 to assess the amount of exclusive commercial control over academic research results that each agreement permits the industry sponsors, as well as the degree of flexibility afforded to the university partners (and faculty) to license discoveries nonexclusively and/or to share research with other academics. Knowledge sharing is widely seen as a fundamental duty of all academics, as detailed in “Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology,” a 2007 statement signed by more than 50 universities, and other federal agency guidelines. It should be noted that our external legal reviewers’ scored rankings for several of the Contract Review Questions are necessarily subjective because interpretations of law and other intellectual property terms cannot be strictly quantified. Moreover, to the author’s knowledge, these contracts have not been tested in a court of law, so their “legal meaning” has not been definitively elaborated.

O’Connor and Miller’s first round of legal reviews were completed in the summer of 2008. In July 2010, CAP invited the universities heading up these 10 alliances to provide written comments on the major contract findings, and any contract updates. Seven of the 10 universities provided feedback, two did not respond to our request, and one, Texas A&M University, requested permission from the state attorney general to deny our request for information relating to its Chevron alliance. To the best of our knowledge, the contract analyses in Appendices 1-10 beginning on page 75 are current.

Many university administrators, in their comments and interviews, raised objections to this report’s reliance on written contracts, noting the existence of other academic customs, campuswide policies, and procedures and practices developed outside of the written contracts. Many of these administrators also objected to the report’s predominant focus on academic and public-interest benchmarks to rate the contracts, arguing there also is an academic and public interest in drawing private-sector money and expertise into the research and development of alternative energy technologies. They felt this view was not sufficiently addressed in the analysis of their contracts as presented in our major contract findings at the time of their review. These comments from university administrators are presented in the individual appendices beginning on page 75 and are taken into account when germane in the appendices and the main body of the report.

Still, these legal agreements consitute the primary, if not the only, legally binding authority between the parties. Anything that is left up to informal practices and generalized policy is subject to alteration and inconsistent application, and may not be legally binding. Written contacts also enhance accountability, and engender public trust. Thus the focus of this report on the contracts themselves as the basis of the report’s analysis.

– Jennifer Washburn is an investigative journalist and independent researcher.

Methodology

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The greatest crisis we confront in the 21st Century is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models, but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve. For too long, too many have been focused on the wrong end game.

For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal, we need 10 people and policy bodies working toward the goal of broad energy access. Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human condition for billions of the energy impoverished can we accelerate progress on environmental issues such as a reduction in greenhouse gases.

That would be Gregory H. Boyce Chairman and CEO of Peabody Energy, “the world’s largest private-sector coal company.”  Last week he “outlined a multi-step plan to eliminate energy poverty and inequality by unlocking the power of coal to advance energy security, generate economic stimulus and create environmental solutions.”

Yes, the power of coal needs “unlocking.”  Poor, imprisoned, climate-destroying coal — can anyone set it free from its rampant growth curve?

Boyce can relax.  For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal there are 10 people funded by the corporate polluters to shout them down, spread disinformation, or lobby against serious action (see “Dirty Money“).

The rest of us, however, can’t relax because here is the “Peabody Plan”:

1. Working to eliminate energy poverty and propelling global economies by ensuring that at least half of new generation is fueled by coal, the dominant global baseload source of power;
2. Replacing the 1,000 gigawatts of traditional coal plants with supercritical and ultrasupercritical plants, which are more efficient and carbon capture ready;
3. Developing at least 100 major projects around the world that capture, store or use carbon dioxide from coal-based plants within 20 years;
4. Deploying significant coal-to-gas, coal-to-chemicals and coal-to-liquids projects around the world over the next 10 years. Such plants are in heavy development in China, and doing so elsewhere would reduce risky reliance on scarce oil and volatile natural gas; and
5. Commercializing and deploying next generation clean coal technologies to achieve continued environmental improvement and ultimately near-zero emissions.

If even half of that happens, you can pretty much guarantee unending misery and poverty for billions and billions of people in the coming decades (see “An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water“  and “Congress should say NO to coal-to-diesel).

While I have argued repeatedly on CP that rich countries will be devastated by unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions, we do at least have the wealth to minimize the worst impacts on most of our citizens for many decades.  The poor around the world, those Peabody claims to be interested in helping, will find that the livable climate that they had depended upon — the water from glacial melt, relatively stable sea levels, and rainfall and arable land — will slowly vanish for a long, long time (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

The poor will inevitably suffer from the most from the hit that global agriculture takes from human-caused climate change:

• Ponzi redux: Scientific American asks “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?”
• The Coming Food Crisis: Global food security is stretched to the breaking point, and Russia’s fires and Pakistan’s floods are making a bad situation worse.
• Half of world’s population could face climate-driven food crisis by 2100

And the poor already suffer the most from climate disruption caused by global warming driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases (see Juan Cole: The media’s failure to cover “the great Pakistani deluge” is “itself a security threat” to America).

Certainly, lifting billions of people out of poverty is a top global priority certainly as important as avoiding catastrophic global warming.  But pretending that greenhouse gas emissions do not have an extremely high societal cost right now is to ignore everything we know about science.  That’s why aggressive deployment of energy efficiency and low carbon energy sources — coupled with a high and rising price for CO2 — remains the only rational strategy for people who care about the poor, future generations, and everyone else.