Compromise of the Art

Paul Krugman writes today about the watered-down climate bill, but more specifically the difficulty among the progressive movement to figure out the tipping points in the face of all the compromising and atom-splitting:

In a way, it was easy to take stands during the Bush years: the Bushies and their allies in Congress were so determined to move the nation in the wrong direction that one could, with a clear conscience, oppose all the administration’s initiatives.

Now, however, a somewhat uneasy coalition of progressives and centrists rules Washington, and staking out a position has become much trickier. Policy tends to move things in a desirable direction, yet to fall short of what you’d hoped to see. And the question becomes how many compromises, how much watering down, one is willing to accept.

We can apply this to a lot of legislation coming out of Washington, but Krugman specifically looks at the climate bill. We all knew that the initial Waxman-Markey bill would represent the leftward bound of the policy. Predictably, coal-state Dems reacted unfavorably, and sought concessions, the most important being the softening of both the cap on carbom emissions and the renewable energy standard, as well as the inclusion of emissions allowances to polluters, instead of selling off all allowances 100% at auction. Not only will this giveaway to polluters push more of the costs of implementation onto the poor and give a windfall to groups like coal plant executives, but it won't stop electricity producers from raising their prices even though that's the entire point of the allowances. What's more, this doesn't seem to be enough for Senate Democrats:

Another senior aide said Waxman’s “pragmatic approach … will be appreciated in the Senate” but cautioned that the deal is unlikely to fully satisfy Senate moderates who are looking to temper the bill even more.

“Rick Boucher does not equal Evan Bayh does not equal Debbie Stabenow,” the senior Senate Democratic aide said of the Democratic Senators from Indiana and Michigan, respectively. Bayh and Stabenow have expressed reservations about cap-and-trade provisions, which would cap emissions and allow industries to trade for pollution permits.

“There are a substantial number of moderate Democrats who are uneasy at best,” the knowledgeable Senate Democratic aide noted.

Basically, plenty of Democrats would rather see absolutely nothing pass.

Given all of that, as long as the cap is hard and cannot be gamed, this will drive down emissions, coupled with the new fuel economy standard for cars, not to mention all of the initiatives on energy efficiency and renewable standards in the bill). And if anyone can shepherd through a bill of this magnitude and make sure it doesn't get totally de-fanged, it's Henry Waxman. His policy style is to keep working on an idea and taking small victories until the full flower of the policy is realized. Obviously it's an open question whether Waxman-Markey will amount to enough of a victory to support.

And that's really the fault line in this debate. If you accept that voters care about climate change, and want to see real action, a light-as-a-feather bill could alienate the young voters who care about it the most, and frustrate those who see no way for Congress to deal with such an abstract yet devastating issue, especially given all the special interests seeking the destruction of the legislation (This, by the way, is why Republicans are backing a carbon tax, because they know it's politically impossible and an attempt to stop the main bill cold). Where is the tipping point, where do progressives draw the line? And since we really do have a short window for dealing with mitigating climate change until we're powerless to stop it, if the subsequent bill would fail to reach its intended goals, wouldn't it be used as a symbol of Democratic failure?

There are strategic issues in addition to policy issues at work here. It's hard to figure what's right.

It's A Trap!

Yesterday, Al Gore testified on Capitol Hill about the climate crisis. Even though it was COLD! In January! I don't know how he worked up the courage to show his face.

Anyway, here's some of what he had to say.

We have arrived at a moment of decision. Our home - Earth - is in grave danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings [...]

We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.

For years our efforts to address the growing climate crisis have been undermined by the idea that we must choose between our planet and our way of life; between our moral duty and our economic well being. These are false choices. In fact, the solutions to the climate crisis are the very same solutions that will address our economic and national security crises as well.

In order to repower our economy, restore American economic and moral leadership in the world and regain control of our destiny, we must take bold action now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's ICE outside, Grandpa!

OK, wingnut cloak off. So Elena Schor was interested by Bob Corker's apparent desire for a carbon tax:

I want to tell you that I wish we would just talk about a carbon tax, 100 percent of which would be returned to the American people. So there's no net dollars that would come out of the American people's pockets.

Gore agreed with Corker. But this is a scheme to slow down progress on the climate, a divide and conquer strategy. Dave Roberts explains.

The 111th U.S. Congress is not going to pass a carbon tax. Calls for a carbon tax, to the extent they have any effect, will complicate and possibly derail passage of carbon legislation.

It's possible that a carbon tax (and/or cap-and-dividend) bill will be introduced. One or both might even make it to a full vote, though I doubt it. But they won't pass. If you want carbon pricing out of this Congress, cap-and-trade is what you're getting. It follows that your energies are best spent ensuring that cap-and-trade legislation is as strong as possible [...]

Through some process I find truly mysterious, the carbon tax has become a kind of totem of authenticity among progressives, while cap-and-trade now symbolizes corporate sellouthood [...] It doesn't seem to daunt these folks that their hostility toward cap-and-trade and support for carbon taxes has been taken up by a growing cadre on the far right, including Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, economist Arthur Laffer, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and yes, even climate wingnut Sen. James Inhofe (R-Gamma Quadrant). Hell, throw in a refunded gas tax and you get America's Worst Columnist© Charles Krauthammer too. Are we to believe that these folks understand the threat of climate chaos, want to reduce climate emissions the amount science indicates is prudent, and sincerely believe that a carbon tax is the best way to accomplish that goal?

Perhaps, if we slept through the last decade, we might believe that. Having been awake (and watching in horror), we understand that it's a poison pill. It's a way to avoid legislation at all if possible and secure the weakest possible bill if not. It's a way to exploit disagreements within the climate coalition and derail momentum. That's what they do. As usual, they're fighting a knife fight and the left is holding a grad school seminar.

Now, Roberts strongly favors cap and trade, so take that with a grain of salt. But he's not wrong and we've seen this movie before. Hell, John Dingell proposed this a couple years ago, taunting environmentalists that he was doing so "just to sort of see how people really feel about this.” One goal is to associate mitigating climate change with a tax, and making sure the conservative base knows that's the only way any progress can be made (even though in one iteration, that tax would be paid by carbon producers and refunded to the people). Another is simply to drive a wedge on the left to blunt consensus.

Whether it's a carbon tax or cap and trade, the environmental movement should pick a side and go with it. They're going to need to be unified against near-universal Republican opposition. Kevin Drum has more.

Sigh... Comity

I guess it was too nasty and partisan to suggest that coal makes people sick, so Dr. Steven Chu had to tone it down in the hearing room.

President-elect Barrack Obama's nominee for Energy secretary, Steven Chu, walked a fine line today between his strong views on the need to combat climate change and the concern of some senators about Chu's past criticism of coal use, endorsement of gasoline taxes and tepid embrace of a cap-and-trade system for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Chu, who appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was asked about a comment he once made that "coal is my worst nightmare." Chu told the committee that "if the world continues to use coal the way it is using it today, not only in the United States but in Russia, India and China, it is a pretty bad dream." But he added that he does not favor a moratorium on coal and said he would seek and fund research on technologies so that the United States could continue to tap its abundant coal reserves.

Although Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, once called for sharply raising gasoline taxes, today he echoed Obama's comments that given the troubled economy, higher gasoline taxes are for now "off the table." But he also said that higher taxes could lead to lower prices for crude oil by creating incentives for more efficient vehicles and reducing demand for petroleum products [...]

Chu also responded to questions on a variety of topics from members of the Senate committee:

Nuclear power: Chu said that he favored tapping loan guarantees to restart the U.S. nuclear industry, which he said had to be "part of our mix." But he deflected a question from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) about whether he favored a far-reaching expansion of nuclear power, saying he hoped to get "a few" new plants started while continuing to search for safe ways to store nuclear waste.

He said that current methods of reprocessing nuclear waste, a solution favored by the Bush administration, were "not ideal" and that the issue need not be resolved for a decade. "We don't need a solution today or even ten years from today," he said.

Offshore oil exploration: Chu repeated Obama's view that exploration onshore and offshore had to be part of "a comprehensive energy policy," but he added that U.S. reserves were a tiny fraction of world reserves. "The more efficient use of energy in the United States is the biggest factor that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil," he said.

Clean coal, nuclear, no carbon pricing, offshore drilling - what a conservative bonanza! Boy, was this guy emasculated.

In his opening remarks Chu promised to reduce emissions, but given the fact that his wings are so clipped and the progress will be so incremental, I'm not sure it'll matter. Very disappointing stuff from what was thought to be one of Obama's best nominees. Heck, even the CEO of EXXON is advocating a carbon tax (though probably because he knows the politics are treacherous; John Dingell tried this same kind of sabotage last year).

Random Bits

Because I can't totally think straight in between checks for poll numbers and early exits (which you shouldn't pay any attention to), here's some stuff I'm reading, in convenient bullet-point form:

• Conservative hero John Shadegg is paying felons and sex offenders to do his GOTV work.

• Great article by Paul Waldman on Why We Vote. And you can match it up with this older story, also from The American Prospect, from Scott Lemieux about why federal elections should be under federal control. The "irrationality" of voting when one person can't make much of a difference is magnified when you're in a safe state with virtually no electoral activity. Those who hate the National Popular Vote idea say that it would change the rules so candidates would only campaign in a few big cities, but that's just patently false. It's too expensive to do that. What it would do is force a national strategy of local get-out-the-vote activities, where neighbors meet neighbors, and civic engagement is enhanced, and the country is better for the exchange. Furthermore, we have to do something about these different states with different standards, voting on a Tuesday for no discernible or defensible reason, etc.

• Newt Gingrich is an idiot who doesn't understand the free market at all. Pricing carbon emissions would necessarily get those energy producers to find smarter and more efficient ways to create and deliver energy. And that wouldn't be a tax, but (finally) the recognition of the serious externalities of carbon.

OK, now off to biting fingernails...

California Report

• Do read Robert in Monterey's report about Abel Maldonado, Don Perata's best buddy, running as a write-in candidate in the Democratic primary to stall an attempt to get an opponent on the November ballot. First of all, this is an example of why crossfiling should be banned once and for all. Second, Abel Maldonado is a snake and I can now see why Don Perata would knock on doors for him. Apparently, neither of them have much interest in the democratic process.

• Arnold thinks the legalization of gender-neutral marriage will be a boost to the sluggish economy, but I hope he's not basing his entire budget on a sharp uptick in gay weddings. I mean, there are only so many Mr. Sulus rich enough to have that surge register more than a blip. By the way, good for Mr. Sulu. And good for Ellen DeGeneres for telling Straight Talk Express where to shove it.

• Speaking of John W. McCain, he's in California today. Nobody show him the PPIC numbers!

• Lucas mentioned this, but Darrell Issa got in the middle of a heated exchange between Henry Waxman and EPA Adminstrator Stephen Johnson over the EPA's breaking the Clean Air Act. Emptywheel has video:



• Why Fabian Nuñez is claiming racial bias at this late date over questions about his travel practices is completely beyond me. And he's taken to Spanish-language television for these accusations to stoke divisiveness in the Latino community, too. It's so counterproductive, as well as misleading.

• Speaking of Spanish-speaking media, this is an older story, but it's fascinating to me that the Spanish-language channels in LA are so much more substantive than the English-language ones, featuring longer, "more deeply reported" pieces.

• We could see a settlement very shortly on prison overcrowding in the state which would not require early release. There are some decent components to this deal, but it basically gives everyone three more years to clean up their act, and I wouldn't be surprised if it just puts us in the same siutation come 2011. The policies needed are well-known; the political will remains elusive.

• The Bay Area AQMD passed a carbon tax for businesses that emit greenhouse gases. It's "not enough to change behavior," one expert said, but it does presage what may be coming down the pike for polluters. Whether you get there through selling carbon permits at auction or with a tax, the bottom line is that pollution is going to cost enough money to alter business' approach to engaging in it. This is a good step.

• Arnold's plan to borrow against the lottery (and it is borrowing) is getting almost unanimously bad reviews, including from the budget nun.

• Interesting that we denied the endorsement to Rep. Laura Richardson (CA-37) on the same day that she is forced to defend herself against allegations that she walked away from her foreclosed home in Sacramento. It sounds like the Congresswoman renegotiated the loan, but the conservative fever swamps are all over this one (check the comments in that LAT blog post). She did buy the half-million-dollar home with no money down, and then left Sacramento almost immediately after winning election to fill the open seat in Congress.

Tomorrow - Toward A New Energy Future

As long as we're talking about what we're all doing this weekend, I will be your intrepid reporter tomorrow, live from the Wadsworth Theater in Los Angeles at the Presidential Forum on Global Warming and Our Energy Future, sponsored by the California League of Conservation Voters, the enviro website Grist and PRI's "Living On Earth" radio program. Grist will have a live webcast of the forum tomorrow at 2:00pm PT. You can find it here. I'm expecting to liveblog the event at Calitics as well.

Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich are scheduled to attend, and speak for a half-hour on the environmental and energy proposals they would support as President. The good news is that practically all of our Democratic candidates, even the ones who aren't attending, have put out strong policies on fighting global warming and expanding renewable energy, from Chris Dodd's corporate carbon tax to Bill Richardson's ambitious CAFE standard porposal (50MPG) to Barack Obama's 100% auction for a cap-and-trade system, where polluters would have to buy their carbon credits and not be given them. Clinton and Edwards have also put out bold proposals in this arena, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about them tomorrow.

One thing you all can do TODAY is take action on the imminent federal energy bill. There are three planks that everyone would like to see in it; a federal renewable energy standard that would mandate a healthy percentage of all electricity come from renewables like solar and wind; tax incentives for renewable energy, both for corporations AND for individuals who put solar panels on their house (this would be vital is California is to reach its One Million Solar Roofs Initiative), and a major increase in CAFE standards. I believe that the first two would be signed by the President; he signed similiar legislation as the governor of Texas, and now Texas has MORE wind power than California. Environment California is asking people to email Speaker Pelosi today and ask her to stand strong on the federal energy bill.

UPDATE: This ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is a positive step, requiring the Bush Administration to force SUVs and light trucks to meet the already-meager federal CAFE standards. This would close a loophole the automakers have been using for a while.

Ideology vs. Progress, Take 2

Barack Obama's energy speech yesterday was yet another example of this demarcation between an ideologically rigid position and one that advocates for expedient progress. The dividing line among environmentalists and global warming activists is between carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. You can make arguments about the relative benefits of each; personally, I think that carbon taxes (in a loophole-free, perfect world) are probably the best way to reach the goals we need to reach to mitigate the effects of greenhouse gases. But that doesn't mean that I believe that all cap-and-trade plans are insufficient. In fact, Obama's plan is pretty sound.

I will set big goals for this country as President – some so large that the technology to reach them does not yet exist. But that has not stopped us before. When President Roosevelt’s advisors informed him that his goals for wartime production were impossible to meet, he waved them off and said “believe me, the production people can do it if they really try.” And they did. When the scientists and engineers told John F. Kennedy that they had no idea how to put a man on the moon, he told them they would find a way. And we found one [...]

As President, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming – an 80% reduction by 2050. To ensure this isn’t just talk, I will also commit to interim targets toward this goal in 2020, 2030, and 2040. These reductions will start immediately, and we’ll continue to follow the recommendations of top scientists to ensure that our targets are strong enough to meet the challenge we face.

In addition to this cap, all polluters will have to pay based on the amount of pollution they release into the sky. The market will set the price, but unlike the other cap-and-trade proposals that have been offered in this race, no business will be allowed to emit any greenhouses gases for free. Businesses don’t own the sky, the public does, and if we want them to stop polluting it, we have to put a price on all pollution. It’s time to make the cleaner way of doing business the more profitable way of doing business.

This differs from other cap-and-trade proposals in that the price is set by the market in a 100% auction. This way, no company gets away cheaply, and the price for clean energy starts to look attractive by comparison. It's why environmental blogger Dave Roberts likes it:

100% auction of cap-and-trade credits. This is a home run, a real act of standard-setting boldness (the kind that Obama always promises but rarely delivers). The green community should immediately use it to push Clinton and Edwards into making the same commitment, insuring that it's the new baseline for any cap-and-trade program.

Smart investment. The revenue from auctions will be considerable, up to $50 billion a year, and Obama's smart about putting it to work, dividing it between energy R&D, protections for low-income workers, and market deployment of existing clean tech.

A focus on efficiency. Clearly Obama gets that efficiency is the easiest route to emission reductions, and he's got a set of thoughtful, detailed initiatives to make it work.

Obama's proposals are smart, sound and politically achievable. There are some who call this compromise before legislative negotiations begin. I don't in this case. There's absolutely no reason that carbon taxes could not be added on to this somewhere down the road. Further, by making the cap-and-trade auction 100%, Obama IS mandating carbon payments without calling it a tax. That's brilliant, and it's the kind of innovative policymaking we need. Now, the worry is that this gets watered down in the sausage-making legislative process, so why don't you go ahead and offer the boldest proposal first. I have a certain amount of affinity for that reasoning, but it neglects the fact that Obama's proposal actually is bold, and it generates specific, mandatory revenue that can be plowed into all these other noble projects.

For more, see this excellent writeup from the New York Review of Books by Bill McKibben, who reviews a couple environmental books and concludes that we can impact global warming meaningfully without the vast effect on the global economy that conservative doomsayers predict.

Moreover, the IPCC team made it clear in their May report that it was not only feasible to make these changes but economically possible as well. They calculated that if we made this energy transition, the economy would grow very slightly more slowly than before—about 0.12 percent more slowly annually, or 3 percent total by 2030. In other words, our children would have to wait until Thanksgiving 2030 to be as rich as they would otherwise have been on New Year's Day of that year.

This seems to me very good news—I've long worried that the cost would be substantially higher. But it also makes a good deal of sense. Remember how, say, the auto industry warned that first seatbelts and then airbags would cripple them economically? As soon as the government mandated their use, manufacturers figured out how to make them more cheaply and easily than we would have guessed. We've seen the same results with other pollutants.

Cutting Through Ice

One of the reasons I think that so many people in America believe that the country is on the wrong track is because it's so supremely difficult to get anything major accomplished anymore. Our political institutions are not what they used to be in terms of stature or even power, and the willful divisiveness strategy of the conservative movement (and the progressive movement in response) makes any consensus a struggle. It is far easier to take a nation to war than to actually fix a persistent problem, and that's dangerous.

I am encouraged that CEOs are getting on board with solving global warming and health care, for example. They have a self-interest in doing so, and as the corridors of power have shifted from Washington to the boardroom, any program aimed at tackling these problems needs to have corporate America as part of the solution. However, let's not deny that a primary factor in businesses involving themselves in these issues is to steer them in a course that is favorable to industry. And, there isn't just one "business" consensus; different industries have different ideas about how to solve problems, and they all have a financial imperative. For example, look at the hardcore lobbying to turn coal into a clean fuel:

Even as Congressional leaders draft legislation to reduce greenhouse gases linked to global warming, a powerful roster of Democrats and Republicans is pushing to subsidize coal as the king of alternative fuels.

Prodded by intense lobbying from the coal industry, lawmakers from coal states are proposing that taxpayers guarantee billions of dollars in construction loans for coal-to-liquid production plants, guarantee minimum prices for the new fuel, and guarantee big government purchases for the next 25 years.

With both House and Senate Democrats hoping to pass “energy independence” bills by mid-July, coal supporters argue that coal-based fuels are more American than gasoline and potentially greener than ethanol.

One of the lobbyists pushing Congress to approve "green coal" subsidies is Dick Gephardt, the former House Minority Leader. And since so many states have an abundance of coal in them, those legislators see it as a possible answer. And yet, it's a terrible idea. Even with proper carbon sequestration, it doesn't move the needle at all on global warming.



One of the leading advocates for clean coal, by the way, is Barack Obama.

It's darn near impossible to get the United States to agree to any significant caps on greenhouse gas emissions as it is. And while it's great that American carbon emissions fell 1.3% last year (could that be due to the continued loss of manufacturing jobs?), it's not good enough. So when "clean coal" is now thrust forward as the savior of the environment, it makes me wonder if we're politically equipped to pull off any dramatic change. That change, clearly, begins and ends with taxing carbon emissions before it's too late and too costly.

The proposed fixes for climate change are as numerous as its causes. Most only tinker at the edges of the problem, such as a California bill to phase out energy-inefficient lightbulbs. To produce the cuts in greenhouse gases needed to slow or stop global warming, the world will have to phase out the fossil fuels on which it relies for most of its power supply and transportation — especially the coal-burning power plants that account for about 32% of the annual emissions of carbon dioxide in the U.S. and that generate about half of our electricity. There are three basic methods of doing that, which are the subject of debate and legislation at every level of government [...]

A carbon tax simply imposes a tax for polluting based on the amount emitted, thus encouraging polluters to clean up and entrepreneurs to come up with alternatives. The tax is constant and predictable. It doesn't require the creation of a new energy trading market, and it can be collected by existing state and federal agencies. It's straightforward and much harder to manipulate by special interests than the politicized process of allocating carbon credits.

And it could be structured to be far less harmful to power consumers. While all the added costs under cap-and-trade go to companies, utilities and traders, the added costs under a carbon tax would go to the government — which could use the revenues to offset other taxes. So while consumers would pay more for energy, they might pay less income tax, or some other tax. That could greatly cushion the overall economic effect.

This is one of the better op-eds that the LA Times has ever done, I encourage you to read it. But even it acknowledges that taxes are a difficult sell in the current political environment. And excuse me if I question the intent of the corporate CEOs all lining up to be good stewards of the environment. Their economic imperative is to cause the least damage to their bottom line. There are ways around this problem. But with so many competing interests, the road is fraught with peril.

Not That They Will, But...

The Supreme Court just ruled that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gas emissions if they so chose. Which they won't.

The nation's highest court said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "has offered no reasoned explanation" for its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.

This will all be in my new book, "How the Bush Administration Offers No Reasoned Explanation for Anything."

Incidentally, the poorest countries on Earth will be the most impacted by a climate change created by their richer neighbors, who after neglecting it for decades will save themselves and leave the underdeveloped world to suffer droughts, rising sealevels and famines. We'll dither about instituting a carbon tax until we absolutely need it while destroying the ecology of countries who can't afford the change. Good people, we are.