Byrd, Brown Keys To Climate Fight; EPA Steps Up

Yesterday's release of the Kerry-Boxer climate bill found at least one surprising supporter - West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd.

Senator Byrd put out a statement making surprisingly supportive noises, saying he’s “glad” that Kerry and Boxer incorporated his suggestions and promising to keep working on the bill with them. A Kerry aide says Byrd’s comments came after Kerry lobbied Byrd’s staff extensively in one-on-one meetings.

Now, I'd rather have the Senator from West Virginia who is physically able to perform - Jay Rockefeller criticized the bill - praising the bill, but if Byrd is reachable, that does widen the list of reachable Senators. The Hill reports that Sherrod Brown of Ohio could be a key:

The Ohio liberal has been working diligently behind the scenes on behalf of manufacturers, seeking concessions from two Democrats who share his views on most other policy matters [...]

For starters, he thinks the Senate climate change bill needs to invest significantly more to help U.S. manufacturers, which face a competitive disadvantage with companies in China and other countries with less strict environmental rules.

Brown wants Boxer to increase the size of rebates to manufacturers that consume large amounts of energy, and give more assistance to small- and midsized manufacturers trying to retool their businesses to compete in the clean-energy economy.

Perhaps most controversially, Brown wants the Senate to consider imposing tariffs on foreign competitors operating in countries with lax rules for greenhouse gas emissions.

“Carbon dioxide emissions expand if a company closes down in Toledo, Ohio, and moves to Shanghai, where the emissions standards are weaker,” he said. Brown describes this phenomenon as “carbon leakage.”

Democrats such as Sens. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Carl Levin (Mich.) and Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.) say they have the same concerns as Brown and acknowledge that he has been a leading advocate for industrial states.

“His voice on manufacturing is really important,” said Stabenow of Brown.

I'm actually pleased that there is a voice for manufacturing in the Senate, though I don't necessarily agree with all of Brown's proposals, many of which are admittedly parochial. But I strongly support carbon adjustment tariffs. It's just a fact that greenhouse gas emissions should be factored into the price of goods, and such a tariff would be a way to do that. If Wal-Mart sells me a set of tube socks for $2, the cost to the environment and eventual cleanup is far higher.

The good news yesterday is that the Obama Administration stepped up. The EPA issued a new rule on regulating greenhouse gases emitted at stationary sources, and it could prove a motivator for Congress to get something done.

Appearing at a climate summit in Los Angeles today, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson will announce the administration’s plan to regulate industrial global warming pollution, with or without the support of Congress. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed global warming standards for motor vehicles, applauded by the auto industry. Under the rules of the Clean Air Act, when these regulations go into effect in March 2010, all major greenhouse gas polluters — from coal-fired power plants and oil refiners to methane-emitting landfills — are automatically subject to regulation:

Under EPA’s current interpretation of PSD [Prevention of Significant Deterioration] and title V applicability requirements, promulgation of this motor vehicle rule will trigger the applicability of PSD and title V requirements for stationary sources that emit GHGs.

Today’s proposed rule — which allows public comment until December — technically is a “tailoring rule” to limit regulation of global warming pollution to emitters of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, instead of the automatic statutory amount of 250 tons. This 250-ton standard would cover about four million businesses and homes — the “glorious mess” President Bush used as an excuse for his inaction. The EPA plans to raise the pollution limit to 25,000 tons, so that only 14,000 industrial pollution sources nationwide would be covered by the regulations, 11,000 of which are currently covered by the Clean Air Act permitting requirements already.

Raising that pollution limit means that churches or schools, who emit over 250 tons, would not be targeted. But it does mean that thousands of power plants will get permits showing they are working to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That sets a date - March 2010 - for the fight. And Congress can either provide their own counterpart legislation or get out of the way. That's helpful to Kerry and Boxer's efforts.

Movement By Inches On The Green Economy At The G-20

These international conferences rarely produce anything of value beyond some communique. In Pittsburgh at the G-20, leaders of the major nations congratulated themselves on saving the global economy and committed themselves to regulatory reform by 2012, with crackdowns on derivatives and banker pay and capital requirements. All of that's somewhat nebulous, however, and will be determined by national legislatures. I'm more interested in two measures. One is the pledge to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels. Again this is easier said than done, but it's good to put the nations of the world on the record, that artificially keeping polluting industries afloat is antithetical to the need to reduce greenhouse gases.

World leaders gathered in Pittsburgh for the Group of 20 summit agreed Friday afternoon to phase out fossil fuel subsidies over time, approving language that does not outline a specific timetable for the phaseout and makes clear that poorer citizens may still receive help in paying their energy bills.

But the wording of the statement, championed by the Obama administration, signals the world's most influential nations are taking an initial, tentative step away from the fossil fuels that power their economies.

"We commit to rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption," the statement said. "As we do that, we recognize the importance of providing those in need with essential energy services, including through the use of targeted cash transfers and other appropriate mechanisms. This reform will not apply to our support for clean energy, renewables and technologies that dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

The other somewhat important announcement was the acknowledgement that the G-20 should be the key international economic conference going forward, rather than the more exclusive Group of 8. This gives emerging nations like China, India and Brazil more say in the global economic future.

Bullet Dodged

Lisa Murkowski's effort to stop the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions at power plants failed yesterday, which is a boon for the public. The EPA is complying with a Supreme Court ruling to regulate carbon, and if Republicans don't like it, they can write their own legislative guidance for how to do so. Even my Senator got this one right:

Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) smacks down Murkowski at great length, saying “we can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand on climate change” and if you don’t want the EPA to take action, then the only alternative is cap-and-trade. “Global warming is real…. it’s happening all over the world.” Attacks the “Flat Earth Society” who opposes action.

Murkowski has vowed to bring this back up, but she could also work to pass a real climate bill. The EPA's jurisdiction on setting their own rules is the proverbial gun to the head to force something to get done, and Murkowski may not like it, but her only recourse is to take action.

I don't know what that action will be. Jeff Bingaman is talking about splitting cap and trade from the renewable energy standard. But hopefully we can get something, and failing that, the EPA will be able to carry out its mission.

Lisa Murkowski Plans To Melt The World

The Senate is a club bound and determined to do absolutely nothing in the most boisterous and attention-grabbing way possible. It is filled with the kind of people who get angry when told they're a bunch of do-nothings while holding fast to the ideal of doing nothing. Indeed, there are US Senators like Jim Inhofe who plan to lead a delegation to Copenhagen to tell the world proudly that the Senate will do nothing on climate change.

This is what the Administration has to deal with. So, unsurprisingly, faced with the prospect of Copenhagen fracturing, and rather than being left in China's wake as the world's biggest polluter without a strategy to deal with a warming planet, the White House instructed the EPA to come up with some goals under the law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Supreme Court essentially ratified this already. So as a last-ditch attempt to do absolutely nothing, Lisa Murkowski wants to stop the EPA.

WASHINGTON — Environmentalists say they're disappointed in a proposal by Sen. Lisa Murkowski to force the Environmental Protection Agency to hold off for a year on regulating so-called "stationary" emitters of greenhouse gases, such as power plants.

The Alaska Republican's proposal essentially forbids the EPA from working to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and large manufacturers while the Senate continues to work on its own global warming proposal. It would not keep the agency from continuing work on emission standards from mobile sources, such as automobile emissions.

"The Senate is moving so slowly it's disingenuous to say we just need a time out," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. "They want to handcuff the EPA."

Murkowski, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee, plans to introduce the proposal in an amendment to a spending bill. Her proposal does not have the backing of the EPA, which is currently working to comply with a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which requires the agency to determine whether certain greenhouse gas emissions are harmful to the environment and public health.

Believe it or not, Murkowski is seen as one of the gettable votes in the Senate on climate change.

While the Senate dithers, the courts have consistently ruled, including just this week, that carbon is a pollutant and governmental entities can sue or create regulations to limit those emissions. Only some members of the Senate want to revoke that power, and they plan to use multiple steps to force the hand of the other branches.

It's quite a political system we've got here.

If The Congress Won't Do It, The EPA Will

Harry Reid is signaling that health care and financial regulatory reform will take precedence in the Senate over the climate change bill, which could push the legislation into next year. The problem with that is the Copenhagen conference coming up in December, and the need for the US to bring something tangible to the table if there is any hope for an agreement. Indeed, the Europeans are already angry at the US approach, and not having some movement on the climate in hand will probably kill it completely. So the Administration has taken the law into their own hands, as allowable under the Supreme Court mandate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The Obama administration on Tuesday formally proposed new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, a move that signals the first federal limits on greenhouse-gas pollution.

In May, President Obama announced in a Rose Garden ceremony that cars would be held to a higher environmental standard. On Tuesday, officials filled in the details, linking fuel economy to emissions from vehicles.

The net effect would be to require manufacturers to ratchet up fuel economy 5 percent per year. In 2016, new cars and trucks would have to achieve an average rating of 35.5 miles per gallon. Cars currently must average 27.5 miles per gallon; light trucks must average 23.1 miles per gallon.

If this is any indication, it's only a first step, leading to other command-and-control measures from the EPA and other regulatory agencies in the absence of a climate deal from Congress. Power plants, one presumes, would be next. In fact, they've already started revising the rules on waste discharges from coal plants.

It's probably not the best practice, but under the current gridlock, it's the only tool available to the Administration. So members of Congress, particularly Republicans, have a choice to make. Legislation or regulation?

Polluting industries certainly didn't give up the fight against legislation in the face of regulation, and they'll continue to fight tooth and nail against the regulation in an attempt to run out the clock and maximize profits. David Roberts says that's why Obama needs to get involved and get a climate bill passed.

The war against EPA regulations will also be waged with aggressive public relations campaigns. There will be great hue and cry about the economy-destroying burden that command-and-control regulations impose on American business. And unlike with a climate bill, responsibility (read: blame) cannot be dispersed. There is no hint of bipartisanship. Responsibility for EPA regulations will fall entirely on Barack Obama and his administration, not on Congress—which is probably how Congress prefers it. If it’s a total mess, or demagogued as one (as is all but certain), it’s Obama that takes the hit. That is yet another reason he’d rather avoid it.

Greens are fighting to preserve EPA authority in the climate bill. Some have even said that it would be preferable for legislation to fail and the EPA to take over. It’s not hard to understand why—something needs to be done about existing coal plants, and there aren’t many tools in the climate bill toolbox to address them. But no one should be under any illusions. The NSR/PSD/BACT approach is grossly suboptimal for the job that needs doing. It might have the intended effect—killing coal plants—but there’s potential for unintended effects as well, including substantial political blowback.

Both sides, greens and industry, have reason to fear if the climate bill fails. It’s terra incognita, a volatile and unpredictable situation. Obama doesn’t need any more problems like that. That’s among the reasons he is likely, this fall, to put some of the time and energy toward lobbying for a good climate bill. From his narrow political perspective, virtually any bill is preferable to catching the EPA tiger by the tail. That tiger eats bunnies.

In this case, the House has already passed a bill, so really we're looking at the Senate as the holdup here. But the dynamic of Senators not wanting to be responsible, pushing all the political liability on to the President, will be difficult to change.

The Big Shift On Cleaner Cars

I'm looking at the President's speech on raising gas mileage standards and finally putting to an end the slow-walk approach to reining in greenhouse gas emissions. My state Senator, Fran Pavley, is there, and there may be nobody more responsible then her for this day. She authored the landmark tailpipe emissions law in the California legislature that provoked this eventual solution. And as Kate Sheppard explains, this is really a big step.

The move will push the entire country to meet the aggressive standards proposed by the state of California. California and 13 other states had requested a waiver from the U.S. EPA that would allow them to set tougher auto-emissions standards than the federal government by requiring cars to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide—and the only viable way to cut CO2 emissions is to require cars to get better gas mileage. The Bush administration denied California’s request last year, but Obama directed the EPA to reconsider the petition almost immediately after he took office.

The Obama administration will now officially grant California’s request for a waiver, and at the same time will adopt California’s standard for the whole country. This means fuel-economy and emissions standards will be combined into one straightforward set of rules [...]

The announcement will also be an opening move for the EPA in its fight against global warming. Last month, the agency indicated that it intends to begin regulating greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, having determined that planet-warming gases threaten human health. EPA’s first target was expected to be mobile sources—i.e., cars and trucks—which account for 20 percent of all U.S. emissions.

The move will please the Auto Alliance, the major industry group representing car makers, which has been asking for one standard that unifies emission and fuel-economy standards across the whole country.

Environmentalists do not consider this a backtrack or a compromise at all, but the "single biggest step the American government has ever taken to cut greenhouse-gas emissions," according to Daniel Becker of the Safe Climate Campaign. The cost of cars will increase, but the reduction in fuel costs will offset that.

And this shift will aid the climate and energy legislation moving through the House. Obviously the White House is signaling that they're moving forward, and the Congress can either get involved in the solution or sit back and watch. I have no doubt that Obama's EPA will be vigorous in pulling the trigger on regulating more greenhouse gas emissions, for example from power plants, in the absence of legislation.

Waxman: Focus on the Cap

The EPA today took a major step in declaring greenhouse gas pollution a danger to the public, increasing the urgency to regulate CO2.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is officially confirming today that greenhouse gas pollution endangers the health and welfare of the American public, finally obeying the mandate set down by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 2, 2007. Following a review from the White House and agencies across the administration, Jackson is announcing this morning that she has signed the Clean Air Act endangerment finding for six greenhouse gases. By the time the decision is finalized after two months of public comment, it will have been nearly two years since the EPA was blocked by the Bush White House from issuing such a finding.

The implications of this ruling loom large over proposed climate and energy legislation under consideration in the Congress. I agree with Barbara Boxer that this finding will provide a serious boost to those efforts, because now the EPA is obligated under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions.

The EPA's endangerment finding will open the door for the Obama administration to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act.

Although the president would prefer not to tackle this issue through his administration's regulatory power, the threat of EPA regulation could be used as a hammer to persuade moderate senators of both parties to get behind cap-and-trade legislation.

"What it says to the senators on the fence is that it's not really a question of whether regulation is happening. It's a question of how it will happen," a senior aide to Boxer told ABC News.

Call it "blackmail," as the corporate lobbyists do in this piece, or call it what it is, a requirement under the law mandated by the Supreme Court. So the obstructionists can block legislation in Congress and watch the EPA enact strict mandates, or they can have a say in the regulation. Their choice.

Respective of Congressional legislation, I recently had a great opportunity to sit down as part of a lobbying delegation with Henry Waxman, my Congressman and the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to discuss the Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation introduced on March 31. There are actually two bills, one in Energy & Commerce and one in the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, both following similar tracks and expected to be out of committee by Memorial Day. And it can be argued that this provides a wealth of options for Congress to consider in pricing carbon, and thus the multiplicity of bills makes sense. But clearly, by virtue of its expansiveness and impact on a host of energy/climate issues, not just carbon pricing and hard caps but energy efficiency and renewable energy standards, the Waxman-Markey bill will be the template for energy legislation in this Congress.

Waxman brings an interesting perspective to the debate. He believes that the best way to get energy legislation through the Congress is to just start moving it, with tight deadlines, and dare the Republicans to stop it. He frames the issue as one of national security, to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy; of environmental imperative, to mitigate the catastrophic impacts of climate change; and of economic necessity, to move the country into a renovated, clean energy economy.

There's a lot of talk about how the cap and trade portion of the bill will be handled. The bill is somewhat murky on these points. The potential exists in the bill for offsets that would give a substantial portion of the carbon permits away for free. And the bill has no mention of how the revenues gained from what permits are auctioned off would be used (Waxman said that he would like to see some money directed to ratepayers, and some money directed to R&D for innovation in the energy space, and he would like to see the money targeted rather than applied as a broad tax cut). But Waxman de-emphasizes these concerns in favor of looking at the cap part of cap and trade. If the cap is firm and based on what the scientists have set as a goal to mitigate the effects of climate change, he reasons, the rest will fall into place. He used the example of acid rain, which used a similar cap and trade system in the 1980s. Industry feared that they'd have to spend billions for compliance, but lawmakers focused on the cap, and the problem was resolved for 1/10th of the expected cost. The goal, then, must be the cap. Waxman believed that offsets would have to be verifiable, and in exchange for the offsets there would have to be more reductions (a 1-to-1 1/2 ratio rather than 1-to-1). But if that's the cost to make the bill more politically attractive, Waxman is content to focus on the cap. Waxman also responded to a question I had about Europe's cap and trade system, which was marred by offsets and giveaways, by saying that the committee worked with Europe's regulators in drawing up the legislation, and that they will not fall into the same traps.

Waxman also played up the economic possibilities of the legislation, that only the innovation unleashed by having to get under the cap will be sufficient to actually create valuable goods for America and "get us out of the recession." Dozens of new industries can be developed and tremendous potential realized through innovation and technological advancements.

The other problematic element of the bill, for the progressive citizen lobbyists in the room with me, was the inclusion of clean coal technology in the bill, something that has been accepted by the White House and the Department of Energy as part of the solution. The typical response to this is that India and China will keep using coal even if the Western world stops, and we'd better come up with a way to capture and store the carbon produced or else our efforts will come up lacking. Waxman said that "we have to figure out if we can keep coal in our future." Obviously, the cap will eventually be too stringent for coal to remain a going concern in the United States without capture and storage technology advancing. And hopefully, the cap can force that, and develop new industries and new exports in the process. I don't know that I totally agree with that, but it's the party line on this, anyway. And besides, renewable energy has its own trade-offs.

Overall, I am far more optimistic about the prospects of climate and energy legislation coming through the Congress than I was before walking into that meeting. We still need to work hard to make the bill stronger, but the combination of the EPA ruling and the deliberate pace of the legislation moving through the House could provide the necessary momentum. We have to get this done, and hopefully we can create that sense of urgency. Also, we need to use the leverage of the EPA ruling to ensure this bill doesn't get weakened as it goes through the legislative sausage-making.

A New Day To Address Climate Change

Juliet Eilperin reports on the sweeping changes being made by the Obama Administration on environmental policy:

After the United States voiced support for the idea of a new, binding mercury treaty, the world community embraced it in Nairobi.

The rapid policy reversal is just one of more than a dozen environmental initiatives the new administration has undertaken in its first two months. In nearly every case, the decisions were based on extensive analysis and documentation that rank-and-file employees had prepared over the past couple of years, often in the face of contrary-minded Bush administration officials.

After years of chafing under political appointees who viewed stricter environmental regulation with skepticism, long-serving federal officials are seeing work that had been gathering dust for years translate quickly into action.

Some of these proposals include the creation of a national greenhouse gas registry, to put real numbers on emissions so industry can account for them; a halt to plans for mountaintop removal; real resources for prosecuting coal-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act for violations; a fresh look at granting a waiver to California and other states to regulate their own tailpipe emissions; and study of whether the EPA will regulate greenhouse gas emissions on their own. For all of this, the EPA is drawing on the work of career officials they were unable to put forward in the eight long years of the Bush Administration. Finally, employees of the EPA are allowed to write the rules again.

And the President has followed this up by announcing a series of global meetings over the next few months to discuss climate change and renewable energy issues, leading into the negotiations for a new global treaty in Copenhagen in December. While the Bush Administration also set up meetings, there was a sense by stakeholders that the plan was to talk the issue to death. Just looking at the work of the EPA, the Obama Administration is primed for action.

The EPA As Bad Cop

Some believe that the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is through a carbon tax on either production or consumption. Others favor a cap and trade approach that sets a ceiling on emissions and either gives away or sells credits to industry to emit. Then there's a third strain of thought that the EPA could simply declare carbon dioxide and methane poison and regulate the hell out of it.

The Environmental Protection Agency, about to declare heat-trapping gases to be dangerous pollutants, has embarked on one of the most ambitious regulatory challenges in history.

The move is likely to have a profound effect across the economic spectrum, affecting transportation, power plants, oil refineries, cement plants and other manufacturers.

It sets the agency on a collision course with carmakers, coal plants and other businesses that rely on fossil fuels, which fear that the finding will impose complex and costly rules.

But it may also help the Obama administration’s efforts to push through a federal law to curb carbon dioxide emissions by drawing industry support for legislation, which many companies see as less restrictive and more flexible than being monitored by a regulatory agency. And it will lay a basis for the United States in the negotiations leading up to a global climate treaty to be signed in Copenhagen in December.

The ultimate problem with making the EPA the bad cop is that the chief of police changes depending on the party in power. But in the short term, characterizing Lisa Jackson as a determined regulator who will restrict greenhouse gas emissions in transportation vehicles, power plants, factories and oil refineries would certainly get the business community's attention. And maybe a carbon pricing system, through cap and trade or a carbon tax, would be seen as a more fuzzy alternative. Ultimately, Congress needs to manufacture a solution, but the EPA finding could be a very large bargaining chip. In theory it will work, but if the corporate community owns the huevos of the Administration on this issue the way they do on the banking crisis, all the strategies in the world won't matter.

As far as what Congress may produce, Brian Beutler, apparently in his new gig at TPM, reports that the Administration seeks to put the clean energy R&D tax credit under budget reconciliation rules. I believe we can only innovate our way out of this climate crisis, and the R&D credit should be protected and extended as a national security priority in addition to an environmental one. The President discussed investments in clean energy just yesterday:

We can remain the world's leading importer of foreign oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy. We can allow climate change to wreck unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can create those jobs right here in America.

We know the right choice. We have known the right choice for a generation. The time has come to make that choice, to act on what we know. And that's why my budget makes a historic investment: $150 billion over 10 years in clean energy and energy efficiency, building on what we've achieved through the Recovery Plan.

And it includes a 10-year commitment to make the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit permanent. This is a tax credit that Serious Materials has used to grow its business, and one I'm sure others here today have used, as well. This is a tax credit that returns $2 to the economy for every dollar we spend.

Yet over the years we've allowed this credit to lapse or we've extended it year to year -- even just a few months at a time. Under my budget, this tax credit will no longer fall prey to the whims of politics and partisanship. It will be far more effective when businesses like yours can count on it, when you've got some stability and reliability [...]

Progress is rarely easy, and I know people in this room understand that. Sometimes it takes months to learn that your ideas just won't work -– or years to learn that it will. Sometimes the funding dries up or the investors walk away. Sometimes you have to fail before you can succeed.

And often it takes not just the commitment of an innovator, but the commitment of a country to innovation. Often, what's required is the support of government, recognizing that our future is what we make of it. Our future is what we build it to be.

Sometimes progress comes not in waves, but in the small inching of water onto the shore. The R&D tax credit may be one of those puddles, but enough of them can add up to an ocean.

That Guy On The Sunday Talk Shows Sounds Like A Good Governor, We Should Get Someone Like That

When Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't governing by magazine cover, he's governing by Sunday talk show. This is a good venue for him, because nobody asking him questions has any idea what Arnold's actually done to California, and he can spout off one-liners and talk the Beltway language of post-partisanship without rebuttal. These kinds of interviews are never given to reporters in his home state, because they might actually have experience with his tenure and thus would be in position to know a lie when they see one.

For example, the Governor is getting a lot of ink for the line about how he'd be willing to take any stimulus money from any governor in the country who rejects it. Less discussed is the essential falsehood present in this comment:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So when you -- we're looking at a similar budget crisis in the coming years here in the United States. Does the Republican Party have to re-think its absolute opposition to tax increases of any kind?

SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, no, I think that the Republican Party or any party has to always think, when you make a decision, "Do I want to make a decision that's based -- that's best for the party? Or am I a public servant and have to serve the people, what is best for the people?"

And in this particular case, in order to solve a $42 billion deficit, the only way you can do that is a combination of making severe cuts and also having some revenue increases.

Really? Arnold was "listening to the people" when he helped ram through a massive corporate tax cut, in a time of deficits, for large multinational corporations? Show me the poll where the public was clamoring for a multinational corporate tax cut. How about the poll where the public was desperate for waiving environmental laws regarding public works projects and delaying implementation of laws regulating diesel emissions? Actually, the California public has spoken pretty profoundly that they want a serious reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

I mean please. This is a guy who campaigned almost entirely in 2003 on cutting the vehicle license fee, costing the state almost enough to fill this entire budget gap over 6 years, and now he's raised it after admitting defeat. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a born liar. He has the interests of the California Chamber of Commerce and anything but the people of California. That's why he refuses to engage with them or their elected representatives, preferring to float above it all and run to the national media with false tropes about "serving the people." Forget just apologizing to Gray Davis, he should abdicate to him.

This last but from John Myers was amusing:

And in non-governor news, he confirmed an interest in a cameo appearance in an upcoming Sylvester Stallone flick, picked Mickey Rourke to win an Oscar, and said The Candidate was his favorite political flick. That movie is an interesting choice, given it's about a candidate who's so focused on winning -- rather than governing-- that after his victory famously says: "What do we do now?"

Exactly.

Time To Burn The Coal Industry

Fantastic news for the environment and efforts to reduce climate change.

The Obama administration on Tuesday agreed to review whether it should regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, portending a major reversal of the Bush administration's policy on global warming.

The Environmental Protection Agency granted a petition from environmental groups seeking to overturn a Bush-era EPA memo that prohibited controls of those emissions.

"I am granting this petition because we must learn more about how this memo affects all relevant stakeholders impacted by its provisions,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement.

Sierra Club lawyer David Bookbinder welcomed the move, saying it "stops the Bush administration's final, last-minute effort to saddle President Obama with its do-nothing policy on global warming."

"With coal-fired power plants emitting more than 30 percent of our global warming pollution, regulating their carbon dioxide is essential to making real progress in the fight against global warming," he said in a statement.

The industry is busy doomsaying this decision (Higher prices! Inflexible standards!), but it's too bad. We simply cannot do what is necessary to control emissions if 30% of the emissions are shielded from reductions. Coal makes people sick and Americans are actively fighting them. If the industry wants to stay in business they can abide by the restrictions.

To be clear, I support research and development solutions that would make coal feasible, if only because China and India are likely to keep burning it. That's just pragmatic. But there is no way that coal should be burned in this country at current levels. If they can't make it clean and profit-generating, they can't stay in business. The cost of the externalities outweigh the additional costs in energy.

Old Tech, New Tech, Lower Emissions

We have such an urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that we must explore all options. Some are very forward-thinking, like Democrat Chris Van Hollen and Republican Zach Wamp's proposal for green banks:

Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) wrote a letter to Obama this week urging his support for a national “green bank,” and a fund to help homeowners retrofit their homes for energy efficiency.

They say private sector support for the projects is flagging in the face of falling fuel prices and the evaporation of credit markets.

“The current financial crisis has not only thrown us into recession, it has significantly derailed or killed off virtually every alternative energy project in the pipeline,” the duo wrote in a letter to Obama this week, “making renewable energy yet another victim of the economic fallout.”

The “green bank” has a more formal name, the National Clean Energy Lending Authority. The $10 billion program would be a government organization intended to finance the transformation of the energy sector.

I agree, says the guy with SRI (socially responsible investing) funds that have lost 60% or more!

More seriously, thinking long-term on funding green investment and future innovation in the sector is a brilliant idea. But there are also more immediate solutions that aren't totally intuitive, but would reduce emissions in a big way. Phillip Longman writes about freight rail.

For now, Virginia lacks the resources to build its "steel wheel interstate," but that could change quickly. Thanks to the collapsing economy, a powerful new consensus has developed in Washington behind a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure. The incoming administration is talking of spending as much as $1 trillion to jump-start growth and make up for past neglect, an outlay that Obama himself characterizes as "the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s." We’ll soon be moving earth again like it’s 1959.

By all rights, America’s dilapidated rail lines ought to be a prime candidate for some of that spending. All over the country there are opportunities like the I-81/Crescent Corridor deal, in which relatively modest amounts of capital could unclog massive traffic bottlenecks, revving up the economy while saving energy and lives. Many of these projects have already begun, like Virginia’s, or are sitting on planners’ shelves and could be up and running quickly. And if we’re willing to think bigger and more long term—and we should be—the potential of a twenty-first-century rail system is truly astonishing. In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get 85 percent of all long-haul trucks off the nation’s highways by 2030, while also delivering ample capacity for high-speed passenger rail. If high-traffic rail lines were also electrified and powered in part by renewable energy sources, that investment would reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emission by 38 percent and oil consumption by 22 percent. By moderating the growing cost of logistics, it would also leave the nation’s economy 13 percent larger by 2030 than it would otherwise be.

Yet despite this astounding potential, virtually no one in Washington is talking about investing any of that $1 trillion in freight rail capacity. Instead, almost all the talk out of the Obama camp and Congress has been about spending for roads and highway bridges, projects made necessary in large measure by America’s overreliance on pavement-smashing, traffic-snarling, fossil-fuel-guzzling trucks for the bulk of its domestic freight transport. This could be an epic mistake.

Again, I agree. The over-reliance on "shovel-ready" projects encourages unsustainable suburban sprawl. The current mania for infrastructure spending offers an opportunity to change that dynamic and use the latest in technology as well as old tech like freight rail.

California Leads On Climate Change

Yesterday's adoption by the California Air Resources Board of a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is really worthy of praise. Ignoring the bleatings of neo-Hooverists and apologists for polluters who insist that concern for the environment is a "job-killer," the board, led by Mary Nichols, put forward 31 rules designed to cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This will force innovation and provide a boost to the economy and the burgeoning industry of green technology, as the Governor noted in his remarks.

The Modesto Bee has a look at some of the plans.

INDUSTRY:
• Impose an emissions cap on utilities, refineries and other large industrial sources of greenhouse gases.
• Allow those large polluters to gradually lower emissions by participating in a cap-and-trade market.

TRANSPORTATION:
• Put into effect a 2002 California law requiring automakes to produce cleaner vehicles. The Bush administration has blocked the law, but state regulators expect President-elect Barack Obama's administration will back it.
• Require fuel companies to reformulate fuels so they are a combined 10 percent less carbon-intensive by 2020.
• Give local governments incentives to curb urban sprawl and reduce how far people drive to work or school.
• Require cargo and cruise ships to turn off their engines while docked.

ENERGY:
• Require utilities to generate one-third of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal by 2020.
• Strengthen energy-efficiency standards for appliances, as well as for existing and new buildings.

The fact that a renewable standard, cap and trade, green building, smart growth and development, energy efficiency and clean fuels are all combined into this large agreement is very hopeful. While the political sector is a mess, this is truly one area where California can become a model for the nation. And while there will be up-front costs, those can be mitigated by expected federal attention to renewable energy and green jobs, which could allow consumers to be eligible for federal tax incentives to implement these ideas. What's more, as Nichols argued, this is a big-picture savings over the long term.

But Air Resource Board chairwoman Mary Nichols said California's plan would save its residents and businesses money in the long run.

"We believe that California, again and again, has pushed for higher levels of efficiency in our electric sector, our buildings and appliances, and time after time it turns out efficiency measures have not only saved us money but leaped our economy ahead," Nichols said after the vote.

A board report found that the average household would save $400 a year by driving more fuel-efficient vehicles and living in more energy-efficient homes. And already, private investors have given more than $2.5 billion this year to new companies that have sprung up in California, in part to respond to the state's environmental goals, said Bob Epstein, co-founder of Environmental Entrepreneurs.

"Our president-elect has called for stimulating our economy," said Bill Mcgavern, director of California's Sierra Club. "I think he and the Congress will be looking to the state of California, and these measures can serve as a model for the rest of the country."

This is one area where we can be proud to be Californians. The SacBee has more.

United Front Against Climate Change

In what is some big news out of Poland, developing nations are agreeing to sharp emissions cuts in the next Kyoto-style agreement.

POZNAN, Poland -- Several major developing countries that had long resisted making specific commitments to combat global warming are laying out concrete plans to curb their greenhouse gas emissions at the United Nations climate conference here, a shift that could mark the most positive development in the slow-moving negotiations.

Getting the emerging economies -- such as China, Brazil and South Africa -- to limit their escalating carbon footprint has been seen as crucial to the prospects for a future global climate pact. For years these nations have argued that the industrial world must first own up to its historic responsibility and commit to binding cuts, while the United States and other developed countries have countered that they cannot afford to limit emissions until their international economic competitors do the same.

The past two weeks, however, have seen an easing of that impasse. Brazil has pledged to cut its annual deforestation rate by 70 percent by 2017 -- which could reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 30 to 45 percent over the next decade -- and Mexico has vowed to bring its carbon emissions to 50 percent below their 2002 levels by 2050.

China, South Korea, South Africa, India and even Kazakhstan are also planning cuts (I like!).

Now, in some ways, the lower emissions are a fait accompli given the global economic slowdown. Global oil use was down this year for the first time since 1983, and will probably continue to fall in the near term. But it's important that the slowdown be used as a moment to increase competitiveness along green energy lines, and spur the kind of innovation needed to maintain a carbon lifestyle without carbon usage. This can be done through increased energy efficiency and hard emissions targets. Thankfully, we will have a President committed to those steps, and an Energy Secretary who understands the science and technology needed to make great advancements, and who knows the engineers can do it if the lobbyists get out of the way.

Add in a little environmental activism and you have the ingredients for a very real global focus toward mitigating the worst effects of climate change. In these bleak times, at least this is encouraging.

UPDATE: The EU put together a big climate change pact today as well.

They Work Hard For The Money

So after driving to Capitol Hill this time, the heads of the Big 3 auto companies are due for their ritual stoning in front of Congress today, as they continue to prostate themselves and beg for funding to keep them alive. This time, they came prepared with plans for viability, and the promises are wide and deep. The three top executives will lower their salary to $1. They'll cut product lines and consolidate operations. They'll work on comprehensive health care reform, fair trade and even producing more fuel efficient cars, though many like Robert Reich are skeptical about that last offer, especially considering that gas has fallen back to under $2 a gallon and demand for bigger vehicles and SUVs may be creeping back up. I've read that getting the real junkers off the road and replacing them with even moderately efficient cars saves a lot more gas than getting everyone in an economical car into a Prius, so incentives for trading in those cars on the low end would actually be the best policy, and Ford has suggested that as well.

Even the UAW is offering concessions in return for the loans, which flies in the face of conservative propaganda about fat-cat unions destroying the industry (which makes sense, because, you know, without the industry, there is no union):

The United Auto Workers said Wednesday it is willing to change its contracts with U.S. automakers and accept delayed payments of billions of dollars to a union-run health care trust to do its part to help the struggling companies secure $34 billion in government loans.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said the union will suspend the jobs bank, in which laid-off workers are paid up to 95 percent of their salaries while not working, but he did not give specifics or a timetable of when the program will end.

"We're going to sit down and work out the mechanics," Gettelfinger said at a news conference after meeting with local union officials. "We're a little unclear on some of the issues."

In truth, the union contracts are not a problem, it's the fact that a country without high wages and benefits and free healthcare is competing with a bunch of countries that have all that, and hopefully we'll see people finally understand that fact. And by the way, this is on top of UAW restructuring from 2007 that lowered the wage structure under even nonunion auto plants in the South and transfered responsibility for the pension plan to the union as well. So this is not the first time the UAW has lent a hand.

GM and Chrysler are even considering a pre-arranged bankruptcy in exchange for bailout money, to reorganize the entire sector.

My point is that the auto companies are bending over backwards for an accommodation with Congress, all for a mere fraction of what Emperor Paulson has spent on the TARP program, without hardly any oversight at all. And yet the votes still aren't there, at the moment.

One day after the auto companies sent survival plans to Capitol Hill in an urgent plea for bailout billions from the fund, Sen. Harry Reid told The Associated Press in an interview, "I just don't think we have the votes to do that now."

I don't think the automakers are saints or anything. They're still spending a fortune on lobbying and campaign contributions. And Ford wants Congress to block California's plan to regulate tailpipe emissions, saying that there ought to be one national standard (and it should be California's - 16 states have signaled they would adopt it, and it is completely in government's interest and mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). But this really shows how completely in bed Congress is with the financial industry. The CEO of Citigroup didn't have to agree to take $1 in salary. The head of Goldman Sachs didn't have to drive to Washington. Nobody on Wall Street had to agree to major reregulation as a precondition for a bailout.

An auto industry bailout is unpopular but so was the financial bailout. But that didn't stop lawmakers from taking seriously the threats of depression if the banks didn't get practically no-strings-attached money. Automakers are also playing up fears of serious economic collapse but lawmakers seem less concerned.

I think one difference here is that Congress actually understands how auto companies make money, while they can't fathom the financial industry's complex arrangements, and tend to just trust the "very serious people" that the banks need hundreds of billions to survive. Also, if Detroit contributes to campaigns, Wall Street bankrolls them. And there's the skillful PR campaign from the right that the carmakers' struggles are all the fault of the unions, when that doesn't come into play with the financial industry.

It's still pretty shameful that an industry that pushes paper back and forth and pretends to create wealth can ask for and receive hundreds of billions of dollars by snapping their fingers, while companies representing working people that make things for a living have to grovel and beg. A deindustrialized America is an America that will not function as a first-rate power in the future.

CAP has a good report on the way forward for the auto industry - they call it a "bridge loan to the 21st century."

Tofu For Planetary Survival

Remember when the Bush Adminstration boasted about how they reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 1% in 2006? Remember how this showed that they were on the right path to solving the climate crisis? Yeah, well, that's no longer operative.

According to a new release from the Energy Information Administration, “U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 were 1.4 percent above the 2006 total.” This increase erases the 1% drop in emissions in 2006, for which Bush claimed credit (even though the decrease was due to an unusually warm winter and high fuel prices).

So, if warm winters have the effect of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, then maybe global warming is the only way to stop global warming! Ever think of that, Al Gore?

Still, this kind of puzzles me. Gas prices were high in 2006, but they hit a record high in 2007, and were consistently higher than the previous year. It doesn't make a lot of sense, outside of just general increases in demand, to see emissions rise. Unless, you know, this is all about the cows rather than the cars.

When Rajendra Pachauri, who runs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made a suggestion that could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 18 percent, he was excoriated. Why was his proposal so unpalatable? Because he suggested eating less meat would be the easiest way people could reduce their carbon footprint, with one meat-free day per week as a first step [...] Boris Johnson, London's outspoken mayor, posted a long screed on his blog, declaring, "The whole proposition is so irritating that I am almost minded to eat more meat in response."

Johnson may not appreciate the environmental value of replacing his steak and kidney pie with a tofu scramble, but the benefits would be quite real. Animal agriculture is responsible for local pollution from animal waste and chemical use and for greenhouse gas emissions from the energy-intensive process of growing feed and raising livestock, plus the, ahem, byproducts of animal digestion. It would be much easier -- and cheaper -- to give up meat than to, say, convert an entire country's electrical grid to using solar, wind, or nuclear energy. A rural Montanan might have no choice but to drive to work, but he can certainly switch out his pork chop for pinto beans. While Pachauri was correct to note that one need not go vegan to help the environment -- simply eating less meat would help -- he could have also emphasized the more politically appealing point that one can be a carnivore and still reduce one's impact by choosing different meats. Even limiting one's meat consumption to chicken yields major environmental benefits -- not to mention health and financial benefits [...]

Now should be environmental vegetarianism's big moment. Global warming is the single biggest threat to the health of the planet, and meat consumption plays a bigger role in greenhouse gas emissions than even many environmentalists realize. The production and transportation of meat and dairy, particularly if you include the grains that are fed to livestock, is much more energy-intensive than it is for plants. Animals, especially cattle, also release gases like methane and nitrous oxide that, pound for pound, are up to 30 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Internationally there is an additional cost to animal agriculture: massive deforestation to make land available for grazing, which releases greenhouse gases as the trees are burned and removes valuable foliage that absorbs carbon dioxide. As a result, according to a 2006 United Nations report, internationally the livestock sector accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions -- more than the transportation sector.

While typing this, I recognized that I had a meat-free day yesterday: grapefruit for breakfast, meatless chicken nuggets (quite tasty!) for lunch, and my world-famous bean and cheese quesadillas for dinner. Getting the whole country on board with this might be even harder than making every car a Prius, but it'd be good to see at least some emphasis on the role of food consumption in energy and carbon policy.

There are so many systems that rely on burning carbon that it's going to be extremely difficult to get them all in order without a comprehensive strategy. And that includes meat-eating.

Anti-Manufacturing

John Dingell, who's an ornery SOB, is throwing around the insults at Henry Waxman for daring to challenge him for his post of chief protector of auto industry fuel economy standards in the Congress.

Dingell, who is in the process of whipping up support from colleagues to retain support of the influential committee, told a Detroit radio show last week that Waxman lacks a concern for the manufacturing industry, particularly the auto industry (workers in which populate Dingell's southeast Michigan district).

"At a time when the auto industry, American manufacturing, American industry needs somebody who understands these things in that particular spot to look after them and see that they are fairly treated," Dingell said, "he wants to put in an anti-manufacturing, left-wing Democrat."

Hmm. Anti-manufacturing? Interesting that the groups that send manufacturers their loans, who have every interest in keeping manufacturing strong, want to cut greenhouse gas emissions by precisely the same number as Waxman does.

A group of large financial institutional investors will on Tuesday call on rich countries to cut their emissions by up to 95 per cent by 2050, in the sector’s strongest demand yet on climate change.

The group of more than 130 investors, with a combined $7,000bn under management, includes Calpers, Calsters, several other US public sector pension funds, and several UK public sector pension funds. The group also includes Blackrock Investment Management, Deutsche Asset Management, HSBC Investments, Schroders and BNP Paribas Asset Management.

Those anti-business businessmen!

By the way, is anybody asking how successful Dingell has been in protecting the auto industry so far? Has he really allowed them to succeed? Is that why they're coming to Congress asking for handouts or they'll have to dissolve their businesses? Was resistance on fuel economy really positive for them? Maybe they need a push.

By the way, I tentatively support help for the auto industry and the saving of millions of factory jobs, as long as in the exchange, Detroit starts making efficient cars that people want to buy. But that might require management with heads dislodged from their ass. That Dingell supports the aid package as well makes me more, not less, dubious.

Great Developments in Emission Reduction

This happened a couple days ago, but as it's crucial that the clean-truck program at two of the nation's busiest ports go forward, I think it's significant:

A federal court judge in Los Angeles on Monday tentatively denied a trucking association's bid to block a landmark clean-truck program at the nation's busiest port complex.

After a 40-minute hearing, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder said she would probably allow the program to move forward, despite objections from truckers.

"The balance of hardships and the public interest tip decidedly in favor of denying the injunction," she said in court.

Under the program, the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach would upgrade their aging fleet of about 16,800 mostly dilapidated rigs that produce much of the diesel pollution in Southern California.

Though the American Trucking Association is opposing the bill and filed the attempted injunction, the clean-ports program was borne of a true blue-green alliance between labor and environmental groups, which is the next level of how we're going to fight climate change in this country and build millions of new green-collar jobs. The courts are now on the record as saying that reducing greenhouse gas emissions are in the public interest. And the ATA is being a little coy here - a good number of the trucking firms are already upgrading, so their injunction effort was meant to satisfy a few big corporations. It didn't work.

The second exciting development is SB 375, which for the first time links emissions to urban planning, and could easily become a model for the nation. We have to make sure it's signed into law, of course, but if and when it is, it will represent a great leap forward for the environment, live/work issues, quality of life, and traffic reduction.

The measure, known as SB375, aims to give existing and new high-density centers where people live, work and shop top priority in receiving local, state and federal transportation funds. The idea is that such developments check sprawl and ease commutes, in turn cutting the car pollution wafting through the Golden State.

Authored by Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), the bill reflects California's push to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Sponsors say the measure is part of a much-needed growth policy for a state whose population is expected to swell to 50 million from the current 38 million in two decades.

"Many places across the country have realized that if you just build spread-out developments, with the expectation that everyone will have to drive for everything, it should be no surprise when the result is excessive burning of gasoline," said David Goldberg, spokesman for Smart Growth America, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit group that helps cities and towns plan more workable, environmentally friendly growth.

"SB375 breaks new ground, because it specifically links that pattern of development to excess driving and what we need to do to address climate change," he said.

Instead of trying to capture more resources every time there's an energy shortage, we can reorganize our lives to maximize existing resources while making our lifestyles far less stressful and more pleasant. It's the solution that works on all fronts.

The budget madness is super-depressing, but these developments are cause for optimism.

Brave New World

At some level I suppose it's futile to expect Nero to do something other than fiddling, but it's the manner in which they went about this that's so frustrating. Feeling unsatisfied by directly contravening federal Congressional statutes, the Bushes have moved on to contravening judicial mandates. And since nobody in Washington is demanding anything approaching accountability, they'll get away with it.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and welfare -- a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.

The Supreme Court, in a decision 15 months ago that startled the government, ordered the EPA to decide whether human health and welfare are being harmed by greenhouse gas pollution from cars, power plants and other sources, or to provide a good explanation for not doing so. But the administration has opted to postpone action instead, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

To defer compliance with the Supreme Court's demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials' congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action.

The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA's written recommendation from December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare. Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection, and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA's analyses found.

Short version: The EPA lost a case in court, the Supreme Court ordered a decision on regulating greenhouse gases as a pollutant, the EPA rendered one, the White House decided not to open the email, and now they're going to punt on the whole thing. So goodbye from the world's biggest polluter.

The radical nature of the Cheneyite project in Washington has revealed giant flaws in the modern rendition of the Constitutional system. What we've now seen is that the structure of democracy in America has to this point been held by a broad gentleman's agreement. If laws aren't followed by the branch meant to execute the laws, everything breaks down. If court orders mean nothing, if federal statutes can be appended by someone other than the legislature, we are living in a spinning chaos.

This isn't that new - Andrew Jackson's famous quote about Chief Justice John Marshall's ruling on removing Cherokees from their land in Georgia, "John Marshall has made his
decision, now let him enforce it," comes to mind - but there's an audacity to the current project that does suggest that somuch of this government's practices are faith-based. Many of us believe in the law and the rules and the expected conduct based on following them, and this sliver of conservative thought just doesn't. They find it perfectly acceptable to disavow their own reports and rewrite their own rules and create their own reality. It's only because of the stunning lack of success of this project that there's even a chance to discredit it.

But this all comes back to accountability. Nobody tries to pull this off if they aren't confident they'll suffer no consequences. I think one of the more revealing essays of the week comes from Tim Noah at Slate, discussing this new Serious Bipartisan Commission report from Village elders about war powers, which is pretty much not needed if Article I, Section 8 were ever consulted in a rigorous manner. The document that James Baker and Warren Christopher provided this week would eliminate what little accountability is provided in the 1973 War Powers Act, eliminating the sunset provision for military action by the executive without Congressional approval after 30 days. But this is precisely what Congress desires. Noah writes:

Congress doesn't want to streamline its role in declaring war, because, for all its bluster (not to mention its constitutional responsibility), Congress doesn't want to be held politically accountable for the results. I first became aware of this phenomenon 21 summers ago while covering a House debate on the use of Navy convoys to escort 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers through the Persian Gulf. Iraq and Iran were at war, and although the United States didn't officially take sides, this military action reflected our government's quiet tilt toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq...

Anyway, on that August afternoon in 1987 the House was debating whether to invoke the War Powers Resolution, a 1973 law meant to require congressional approval of any executive action that introduced the armed forces into hostilities, or into a situation in which hostilities seemed pretty goddamned likely, as appeared to be the case here. (Happily, the Navy escort occurred without incident.) What amazed and shocked me, and moved me to write up the debate for the New Republic, was the unembarrassed manner in which members of Congress declared as their paramount interest the absence of any legislative fingerprints on whatever might result from allowing (or not allowing) the Navy convoys to enter an area of violent conflict. In fact, it was pretty much taken as a given that the War Powers Resolution would not be invoked, not because the president was not complying with it (no president ever has) but because doing so would require Congress to either approve or revoke Reagan's decision. Here is how I described the House debate 14 years later in this column (I can't seem to locate the original New Republic piece); I should point out that the first two speakers were members of Reagan's own party:

"This resolution puts congressional fingerprints on our course of action," complained Rep. Toby Roth. "Does this put the fingerprints and the handprints of the Congress on that policy?" asked Rep. Donald Lukens. No, assured Rep. Pat Schroeder: It was "a teeny-weeny first step" that "doesn't commit the Congress in any way." Only then could the resolution pass.

The Baker-Christopher proposal, then, is an empty exercise in high-mindedness for its own sake. Congress has all the war-making power it needs, and considerably more than it wants. The latter problem can't be solved legislatively. Cowardice, opportunism, and indecision inhabit a realm beyond the reach of law, and you'd think that two experienced hands like Baker and Christopher would understand that better than most.

Oh, they understand it all right. They're counting on it. And so do the Cheneyites who mapped out this plan for an unfettered unitary executive. It may have lost in unimportant areas like "court" and "public opinion," but inside the Beltway it is victorious and shining.

Dog Ate My Homework

It is a novel excuse, I will say that.

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

I would give you my opinion of this, but I refuse to read the article. I excerpted the first two paragraphs with my eyes closed. And if you try to comment I'm not going to read those either. La la la la I can't hear you!

(I was also considering "See No Email, Hear No Email" for the title. Which one do you prefer?)