This week, the U.S. Senate is considering whether to add language forcing approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to major transportation legislation. In a C-SPAN interview on Friday, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the chair of the Senate energy committee, indicated his support for the construction of the risky project after sufficient environmental review. After agreeing with the Obama administration’s decision to require a full environmental review of the pipeline, Bingaman claimed that “the American public would like to see us go ahead with the project to the extent they know what the project entails,” calling it “meritorious”:

They shouldn’t be forced to issue a permit until they are satisfied on the environmental effects involved. So I think that point is valid. Whether that requires another six or eight months, that’s open to question. It is a good issue to try to get resolved some way or another. The American public would like to see us go ahead with the project to the extent they know what the project entails. It sounds meritorious. We’ve got pipelines all over the country. That is true with most members of Congress, too. I think most members of Congress probably would like to go ahead to get the issue resolved.

Watch it:

Bingaman’s claim about the American public’s support for the foreign tar sands project is incorrect. A recent poll from Hart Research Associates found that Americans who are informed about the pros and cons of the pipeline don’t want it built by a 14-point margin. Americans without this information — influenced by the extreme pro-pipeline bias in corporate media — support the pipeline by an 11-point margin.

Bingaman also rejected Republican claims that there is an “urgency about getting this permit approved,” because oil production is so high that the United States is a net exporter of petroleum products.

If built, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would put six states at risk of toxic oil spills along its 1700-mile route, and would add about five billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere over its intended 50-year lifespan of bringing dirty crude from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries for foreign export.

Other Democratic senators who have expressed support for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline include finance chair Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), budget chair Kent Conrad (D-ND), Jon Tester (D-MT), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Begich (D-AK), Ben Nelson (D-NE), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Nelson and Baucus have criticized Republican attempts to speed approval, while Manchin has signed on with the GOP.

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EIA analysis finds that Senator Bingaman’s clean energy standard would reduce carbon emissions by 43% and lower GDP growth by just .02 percent.

by Richard W. Caperton

Imagine if we could create jobs, increase renewable energy generation, improve air quality across the country, and reduce our carbon dioxide pollution — all at effectively zero cost to our economy. Wouldn’t that be great? Well, the Energy Information Administration just informed us that we can do all of these things, by adopting a strong national clean energy standard. (In fact, as the map above shows, 29 states have already done so.)

If you were to believe the hyperbole from the fossil fuel advocates, you would think that a clean energy standard would ruin the United States.  For example, the Heritage Foundation recently declared that a similar policy “would be bad for families, bad for business, and bad for the economy.” As I said at the time, Heritage was simply building a straw-man that isn’t even a serious clean energy proposal, and they weren’t actually modeling our electricity system.

Fortunately, we now have an accurate study of a real clean energy standard proposal, and the EIA has given us some insight into how this policy could benefit our country. In response to a request from Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), EIA modeled a proposal to get 80% of our country’s power from low-carbon and zero-carbon sources. They allow all generation resources to qualify, and weight them based on actual carbon emissions (roughly, that means that natural gas only gets half of the clean energy credits of wind or solar power, for instance). EIA also models several different cases to identify the effects of specific policy choices, like including a cap on program costs or exempting some utilities from compliance.

Here are the top line findings:

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One of the most popular myths of supporters of unregulated natural gas drilling is that fracking — the hydraulic fracturing process that has spurred the drilling boom — has never contaminated groundwater. Although such supporters as Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) have been confronted with case after case of natural gas sites contaminating water with spills, blowouts, and other accidents, they argue that the fracking process itself poses no danger. They have been bolstered in recent years by statements from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, including administrators Carol Browner and Lisa Jackson:

BROWNER: “There is no evidence that the hydraulic fracturing at issue has resulted in any contamination or endangerment of underground sources of drinking water.” [Letter, 5/5/95]

BINGAMAN: And although there have been over a million hydraulic fracturing jobs conducted in the last 5 years, there have been zero confirmed instances of hydraulic fracturing contaminating drinking water. [Congressional Record, 3/7/02]

EPA: “EPA also reviewed incidents of drinking water well contamination believed to be associated with hydraulic fracturing and found no confirmed cases that are linked to fracturing fluid injection into CBM wells or subsequent underground movement of fracturing fluids.” [EPA, 6/2004]

LAMBORN: “More than one million fracturing jobs have been completed in the U.S. since the technique was first developed, and there have been no demonstrated adverse impacts to drinking water wells from the fracking process or by the fluids used in the process.” [U.S. House, 6/4/09]

AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE: “U.S. government studies have shown no evidence of drinking water contamination from hydraulic fracturing.” [Empire Energy Forum, 11/12/10]

INHOFE: [There's] never been one case — documented case — of groundwater contamination in the history of the thousands and thousands of hydraulic fracturing. [4/21/11]

JACKSON: “I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water although there are investigations ongoing.” [Senate testimony, 5/24/11

INHOFE: “Since the first use of hydraulic fracturing, producers have completed more than 1.5 million fracturing jobs without one confirmed case of groundwater contamination from these fracked formations.” [The Hill, 7/19/11]

In fact, a New York Times investigation reveals that in 1987, the EPA documented contamination of groundwater by the fracking process. In a report to Congress, the agency described how “fracturing fluid migrated into Mr. Parson’s water well” in West Virginia:

Although this represents just one documented case, that hardly means that fracking contamination is extremely rare. Researchers are “unable to investigate many suspected cases because their details were sealed from the public when energy companies settled lawsuits with landowners,” Times reporter Ian Urbina explains.

By Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Even with a huge Exhibit A staring them in the face in the form of the 469,000-acre Wallow fire in Arizona — the largest in the state’s history — Senate Republicans on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee couldn’t be drawn into a discussion of the realities of climate change yesterday.

Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) gave them an opening at the outset of the hearing on federal wildland fire policy. He drew the link between climate change and the four Arizona fires now burning that have in total burned over 663,000 acres – more than 1,000 square miles. With climate change, Bingaman correctly noted, “droughts will be more frequent in the Southwest and they will last longer than they have in the past.”

But committee Republicans Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), James Risch (R-ID) and Dean Heller (R-NV) preferred to talk about the federal government’s aging fleet of air tankers, this year’s heavy snowpack in the northern Rockies, the threat of an endangered species listing of the sage grouse and those (overblown) environmental lawsuits against forest thinning projects. Actually looking into a key driver of the last decade’s huge increase in big western wildfires? A non-starter.

That left it to Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) to draw out U.S. Forest Service chief Tom Tidwell, who unequivocally said his agency’s scientists see climate change at work in the desert southwest: more drought, quicker snowmelt, longer wildfire seasons. “I’ve been on a lot of large fires in my career,” said Tidwell, who flew over the Wallow fire last weekend. “It definitely topped anything I’ve seen before.” Franken noted that his colleagues should recognize that these fires are “the cost of climate change”:

A lot of what we are talking about today is the cost of climate change. And sometimes when we talk about energy and we talk about the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into our atmosphere, and we talk about cost, I think that it would be really good for members to take into account this kind of cost. This is a real cost. We’re talking about real dollars here. A lot of the focus of this hearing today has been the cost of this. And I think that it would be well and good for members to understand that this is related to climate change, and how important it is for us to address this and to take national action to reduce our carbon emissions.

Watch it:

 

 

The Wallow Fire is now expected to become the largest fire in Arizona history, bigger even than the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire that burned about 470,000 acres. Read more

Last week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) defended the inclusion of expanded offshore drilling in the climate bill he will unveil tomorrow, brushing off the deadly Gulf disaster by saying that “accidents happen“:

There were good reasons for us to put in offshore drilling, and this terrible accident is very rare in drilling. I mean, accidents happen. You learn from them and you try not to make sure they don’t happen again.

Today, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chair of the Senate energy committee, rebuked this attempt to excuse the BP oil disaster as an unforeseeable anomaly. Bingaman’s committee today began the Congressional investigation of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion in a hearing with executives of the companies involved — BP, Halliburton, and rig owner Transocean. Bingaman noted that this disaster is a failure of technology, people, and regulations, not just an “accident” that was, as BP claimed, an unforeseeable mechanical failure:

At the heart of this disaster are three interrelated systems — a technological system of materials and equipment, second, a human system of persons who operated the technological system, and third, a regulatory system. Those interrelated systems failed in a way that many have said was virtually impossible. We need to examine closely the way each of these systems failed to do what it was supposed to do. I don’t believe it’s enough just to label this catastrophic failure as an unpredictable and unforeseeable occurence. I don’t believe it’s adequate to simply chalk what happened up to a view that accidents do happen. If this was like other catastrophic failures of other technological systems in recent history — whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, Three Mile Island, or the loss of the Challenger — we will likely discover there was a cascade of failures and technical and human and regulatory errors.

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After fighting off stricter safety regulations and failing to prepare for a major blowout, BP ludicrously described the disaster as “inconceivable” and “unprecedented.”

The final draft of the climate bill, which Lieberman was devising with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), will be unveiled tomorrow without Graham’s involvement. After a political squabble with Sen. Harry Reid, Graham has said that the Senate should not consider comprehensive energy reform until the oil disaster is resolved.

In a letter to Senate colleagues, energy committee chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said they “strongly oppose” efforts to shift offshore oil and natural gas royalties from the federal government to coastal states. President Obama’s sweeping new offshore drilling policy did not specify where revenues from newly opened federal lands should go, but drilling advocates such as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK), and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) want a portion of the proceeds to go to their states, even as ten coastal-state Democrats oppose the expansion. The letter from Bingaman and his fellow energy hawks explains why they believe “revenue sharing” would amount to dirty pork-barrel politics:

Bingaman, Dorgan, and Rockefeller have been critics of the efforts of their more liberal colleagues to enact comprehensive green economy legislation. These energy hawks should recognize their opposition to dirty drilling pork is just the first step. The time is overdue for them to support ending the biggest dirty subsidy of all — the free global warming pollution that is putting civilization at risk.

Full text of the letter: Read more

“Snowmageddon.” “Snowpocalypse.” “SnOMG.” These popular depictions of the record snowstorms that have crippled the Mid-Atlantic region demonstrate that the American public knows the weather is disastrously out of control. Instead of galvanizing Congress to take action to stop the manmade disruption of our climate, these storms are being used by Washington pundits to excuse inaction. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the chair of the Senate energy committee, is turning to these killer storms to justify his resistance to passing strong climate legislation, telling the Hill’s Alexander Bolton that “the blizzards that have shut down Congress have made it more difficult to argue that global warming is an imminent danger”:

It makes it more challenging for folks not taking time to review the scientific arguments. People see the world around them and they extrapolate. I think that it’s hard to see an economy-wide cap-and-trade [proposal] of the type that passed the House could prevail.

It’s bizarre that Bingaman can’t make the argument that killer weather is one of the most significant consequences of heating up the climate. Global warming deniers may repeat the fatuous argument that killer blizzards disprove global warming ad infinitum, but it doesn’t make their argument more compelling. Bingaman’s concession to anti-science ideology is suspiciously convenient, as he has been open to dropping comprehensive climate legislation in favor of his committee’s energy-only package.

In case Sen. Bingaman is interested in convincing his colleagues of the very real threat of killer weather fueled by global warming, he can start with the findings of Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States (Chagnon et al., 2006), which describes how snowstorms and climate warming are strongly correlated in the United States:

Results for the November–December period showed that most of the United States had experienced 61%– 80% of the storms in warmer-than-normal years. Assessment of the January–February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%–80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years. In the March–April season 61%–80% of all snowstorms in the central and southern United States had occurred in warmer-than-normal years. The relationship of storm incidence to precipitation in all three 2-month periods of the cold season showed that 61%– 85% of all storms occurred in wetter-than-normal years. Thus, these comparative results reveal that a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more snowstorms than in 1901–2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.

Now, following the warmest January on record, Washington DC has received record snowfall, breaking a record that stood for more than a century. “As of 2 PM today, with the 9.8 inch two-day snowfall total at National Airport, the seasonal snowfall total in Washington DC stands at 54.9 inches,” the National Weather Service reports. “This would break the previous all-time seasonal snowfall record for Washington DC of 54.4 inches set in the winter of 1898-99.”

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the influential chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, opposes efforts to add coal and nuclear subsidies to win votes for climate legislation. In an interview with Grist, Bingaman disagreed with Sen. Joe Lieberman‘s (I-CT) strategy to make the Senate version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act “more attractive to Republicans and conservative Democrats” by “including greater funding for coal and nuclear energy,” saying that instead climate leaders should put forward “a proposal people are confident will work“:

Frankly I don’t believe that gaining support of conservative Democrats depends upon putting more money into nuclear and coal power…. I think what’s really needed to get conservative Democrats supporting cap and trade legislation is to be able to put forward a proposal that people are confident will work and that people are confident will not impose an undue burden on rate payers or on our overall economy.

Watch it:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) intend to introduce their climate legislation to the Senate on Wednesday. Senators such as John McCain (R-AZ), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Mark Udall (D-CO), and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have implied they will only support climate legislation that includes increased subsidies for the nuclear, coal, or agribusiness industries. However, as Sen. Bingaman indicates, the only successful strategy to overcoming a Republican filibuster of clean energy reform is to convince the Senate that reform will create jobs, expand the economy and preserve and create prosperity.

Fortunately for advocates of reform, each day brings new evidence that a clean-energy future is just what America needs to rebuild our economy and prevent catastrophe. The UK Meteorological Office has found that global warming is accelerating. Military analysts warn “climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions.” The “Chinese decision to go green,” New York Times columnist Tom Friedman argues, “is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik.” And despite the ideological rantings of polluters who have crippled the global economy, non-partisan analyses repeatedly find that the tremendous benefit of halting global warming by investing in American jobs comes at a pricetag of a postage stamp a day.

“The carbon-based free lunch is over,” Exelon CEO John Rowe explained today. “But while we can’t fix our climate problems for free, the price signal sent through a cap-and-trade system will drive low-carbon investments in the most inexpensive and efficient way possible.” Rowe also announced his company was severing ties with the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of its opposition to clean-energy investment.