Posts by Dr. Joseph Romm

Dr. Joseph Romm is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he oversees the blog ClimateProgress.org.

Sen. Boxer Makes Clear U.S. Won't Pass a Climate Bill This Year
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on February 3, 2009 at 1:45 PM.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, released her "Principles for Global Warming Legislation” at a press conference today. But her remarks contained the real news -- no chance of climate legislation be enacted into law this year.

Greenwire (subs. req'd) reports:

"Copenhagen is December,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told reporters. "That's why I said we'll have a bill out of this committee by then.”

… Boxer added that she could move to mark up legislation quickly given her committee's large Democratic majority, but she would wait for now to build up support.

So Boxer's goal is to have an EPW bill by December. Then, of course, it has to go through Senate debate, get modified, and actually pass. And then, of course, it must be reconciled with the bill that comes from the House led by Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA):

"When it comes to these bills, we're going to write our own bill, and he's going to write his own bill,” Boxer said of Waxman. "And we'll see where it goes. As far as coordinating and having exact legislation, we haven't decided.”

So reconciliation will probably not be easy nor fast, especially since this is a key point in the process for team Obama to weigh in. And then the final bill must pass both the House and Senate again, which will be yet another challenge, especially if the Senate bill borrows provisions from the presumably tougher House bill.

This timetable should be no surprise to CP readers. As I've said for a while, Obama should realize a 2009 bill is not possible, make lemon out of lemonade, and use this year to build domestic support for the bill, take strong actions on energy and climate that don't require congressional approval, and engage in high-level climate negotiations with China (see "Obama can get a better climate bill in 2010. Here's how.” and "Does a serious bill need action from China?").

As for Boxer's Principles, there is nothing terribly surprising here, although I think she overestimates how much of the auction revenues are likely to be available for her various desired purposes:

1. Reduce emissions to levels guided by science to avoid dangerous global warming.

2. Set short and long term emissions targets that are certain and enforceable, with periodic review of the climate science and adjustments to targets and policies as necessary to meet emissions reduction targets.

3. Ensure that state and local entities continue pioneering efforts to address global warming.

4. Establish a transparent and accountable market-based system that efficiently reduces carbon emissions.

5. Use revenues from the carbon market to:

- Keep consumers whole as our nation transitions to clean energy;

- Invest in clean energy technologies and energy efficiency measures;

- Assist states, localities and tribes in addressing and adapting to global warming impacts;

- Assist workers, businesses and communities, including manufacturing states, in the transition to a clean energy economy;

- Support efforts to conserve wildlife and natural systems threatened by global warming; and

-Work with the international community, including faith leaders, to provide support to developing nations in responding and adapting to global warming. In addition to other benefits, these actions will help avoid the threats to international stability and national security posed by global warming.

6. Ensure a level global playing field, by providing incentives for emission reductions and effective deterrents so that countries contribute their fair share to the international effort to combat global warming.

As a matter of politics, I believe the vast majority of the revenues from the auction will need to be returned to taxpayers -- that is to say, the vast middle class. I think at least 60% to 80% needs to be refunded to start with, rising to 80% to 90% within 10 years. Otherwise conservative opponents will simply attack this entire effort as a tax (see "Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us"). Yes, they'll do so anyway, but if the bottom of three to four quintiles are made whole, the argument can be refuted.

It is also a tad surprising that she did not mention cost containment provisions, including rip-offsets, that so haunted her first attempt (see "Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill update: Probably no U.S. CO2 emissions cut until after 2025"). Needless to say, any significant number of rip-offsets would be utterly at odds with principle number one -- "Reduce emissions to levels guided by science to avoid dangerous global warming” (see "Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 8: The U.S. needs a tougher 2020 GHG emissions target").

Huge Win for the Environment: Waxman Defeats Dingell
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on November 20, 2008 at 10:42 AM.

Ding Dong the Dingell is gone! Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) will take the gavel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in January.

This is huge for those who’ll want strong action on both climate change and clean energy and energy independence (and health care). Heck, it’s the second best piece of news on global warming this month!

I’m told the vote was 137-122. I will post updates as they come.

UPDATE 1: The NYT piece is now up: “Longtime Head of House Energy Panel Is Ousted.”

UPDATE 2: The E&E Daily piece (subs. req’d) is below:

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Waxman ousted longtime Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), 137-122, in a secret ballot vote of the entire House Democratic Caucus today.

With Waxman’s victory, many expect the Beverly Hills Democrat to bring a liberal voice to the podium as he crafts energy and environmental legislation for the incoming Obama administration.

Waxman has not given many details of his proposed agenda, but a clear look at his record suggests he will pursue aggressive pollution cleanup for all industrial sectors, as well as some of the most aggressive limits for U.S. business as it embarks on a first-ever mandatory program to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Palin Still Gets Global Warming Backwards and Repeats Big Energy Lie Twice
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on October 3, 2008 at 9:57 AM.

Palin had told Katie Couric "I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate."

The debate transcript reveals she still can't get her talking points straight on this issue:

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

It's "attribute changes in the climate to activity of man"!

And, of course she repeated the The Big Energy Lie that John McCain actually believes in an "all of the above" energy policy -- twice:

John McCain is right there with an "all of the above" approach to deal with climate change impacts....

So even in dealing with climate change, it's all the more reason that we have an "all of the above" approach,

China's Fuel Efficiency Kicks America's Butt
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on March 25, 2008 at 12:04 PM.

The Toronto Star reported an alarming factoid earlier this month:

No gasoline-powered car assembled in North America would meet China's current fuel-efficiency standard.

That's mainly because:

1. Their standard is much higher than ours is currently.
2. Their standard is a minimum-allowable efficiency standard, not a "fleet-average" standard like ours.
3. Our lame car companies don't make their (relatively few) most efficient vehicles in this country.

As for our much-hyped new 35-mpg (average) standard -- it will take us in 2020 to where the Chinese are now (but not even to where Japan and Europe were six years ago). If we don't rescind it, that is. So whether you believe in human-caused global warming or peak oil, America remains unprepared to capture the huge explosion in jobs this century for clean, fuel-efficient cars.

Oh, and by 2010, China will be the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing and solar photovoltaics manufacturing. No worries, though, our TV and movie sales overseas still kick butt. For now.

Why John McCain Isn't the Candidate to Stop Climate Change
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on February 8, 2008 at 12:10 PM.

McCain's astonishing doubletalk on climate in the Florida GOP debate -- denying that a cap and trade system is a mandate -- made me start rethinking what a McCain presidency would mean for the fight to prevent catastrophic global warming. The more I researched McCain's views, the more I talked to others, the more I felt forced to change my previous view.

Salon has just published my long analysis, which concludes that while he would be vastly superior to Bush on climate,

... a President McCain would not be the climate leader that America and the world requires. He is a conservative who happens to be on the only intellectually defensible side of the climate change debate. But he is still a conservative, and the vast majority of the solutions to global warming are progressive in nature -- they require strong government action, including major federal efforts to spur clean technology.

Of course, as I argue in my book, it is precisely because they know that the solutions to global warming are mostly progressive in nature that most conservatives are so close-minded on the subject. My basic argument is:

As increasingly desperate climate scientists have been telling us, the effects of global warming are occurring faster than anyone had thought possible.

The next president must make reducing GHG emissions a central focus of his or her administration if we want to avoid the worst impacts of global warming: catastrophic sea level rise, widespread drought and desertification, and loss of up to 70 percent of all species.

While McCain may understand the scale of the climate problem, he does not appear to understand the scale of the solution. He understands the country needs to put in place a mandatory cap on GHG emissions and a trading system to energize American innovation. But in a recent Republican debate, he denied that a cap and trade system is a mandate, even though it would arguably be the most far-reaching government mandate ever legislated.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Hope Is Still Alive for the Senate Climate Bill
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on December 6, 2007 at 3:00 PM.

This post, written by Dr. Joseph Romm, originally appeared on Climate Progress

After a day-long mark-up, the Lieberman-Warner bill proposing to cut global warming gases (70 percent by 2050 from covered sources) passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by a vote of 11-8, largely on party lines. [The fact that Bernie Sanders (I-VT) voted for the bill is a good sign for the full Senate, since he has been the voice of the hard-core greens.]

As she hoped, Chairwoman Barbara Boxer is able to attend the UNFCCC climate discussions in Bali with something to show from her committee. Even if the White House refuses to act, at least part of Congress has acted. As has the rest of the country.

As I wrote earlier this week with Kit Batten, Managing Director of Energy and Environmental Policy at the Center for American Progress, state and local-level actors have pulled out far ahead of federal action this year. To reiterate our examples:

• In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide.
• Three regional initiatives have formed to reduce greenhouse gases in the absence of federal regulation: The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, in the Northeast; the Western Climate Initiative along the West Coast; and the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Accord (of Governors).
• Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), current head of the National Governors Association, declared energy and energy security as his top priority.
• California passed and will soon enact the country's first global warming legislation, known as AB32. The state, backed by at least 15 others, filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency in order to reduce tailpipe emissions through stringent fuel economy standards.
• Several states joined with international actors to form the International Carbon Action Partnership to reduce emissions.
• And finally, several states, including Washington, Maine, Florida, and Kansas, have denied permits to build traditional, pulverized coal-fired power plants, enormous emissions offenders.

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Wall Street Journal Editor Slanders Al Gore, Nobel Prize and All Climate Scientists
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on December 5, 2007 at 3:00 PM.

This post, written by Dr. Joseph Romm, originally appeared on Climate Progress

The bar for Wall Street Journal editorials, in the journalistic equivalent of limbo dancing, keeps dropping. In a piece titled, "The Science of Gore's Nobel" (subs. req'd), Holman W. Jenkins Jr. of the WSJ ed board, manages to slander the media, Al Gore, the Nobel Committee, and all climate scientists -- without offering any facts to back up the attacks:

The media will be tempted to blur the fact that his medal, which Mr. Gore will collect on Monday in Oslo, isn't for "science".... Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

Why would the media blur the Nobel Peace Prize with a science prize when Gore isn't a scientist? They wouldn't, of course, but this imagined media blunder allows Jenkins -- a journalist -- to make the subject of his piece climate science.

What is especially bizarre about the WSJ piece is that Gore shared the Nobel Peace Price with thousands of scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- but Jenkins never mentions that fact at all. Again, that's because he wants to attack the Nobel committee for "promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis."

In fact, the award was not given for promoting "belief" -- a pejorative word as Jenkins uses it -- but for promoting "knowledge" -- as the Committee said, the award was given for "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

By omitting mention of the IPCC, Jenkins can ignore the tremendous scientific evidence for the theory of human-caused global warming and the urgent need for action. Jenkins attacks the international scientific consensus without providing a single piece of counterevidence -- or any understanding of either the nature of the consensus or the difference between "belief" and "scientific knowledge." Because the consensus is so important, and now, so alarming, it is worth understanding what it is -- and what is isn't -- since conservatives either must ramp up their attack on it -- or accept the clarion call for immediate government action (something most of them cannot stomach politically no matter what the science says).

Let's start with what the consensus isn't -- ably set out by Jenkins:

What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

Uhh, not even close. The scientific consensus is most certainly not established by counting heads (although, strangely enough, that is how we elect our leaders). Scientists do not devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses they've chosen to believe (although that would be a good description of the people who study "intelligent design").

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Fall Canceled After 3 Billion Seasons
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on December 3, 2007 at 5:22 PM.

Yesterday's New York Times had the sobering story:

Fall, the long-running series of shorter days and cooler nights, was canceled earlier this week after nearly 3 billion seasons on Earth, sources reported Tuesday.

The classic period of the year, which once occupied a coveted slot between summer and winter, will be replaced by new, stifling humidity levels, near-constant sunshine and almost no precipitation for months.

"As much as we'd like to see it stay, fall will not be returning for another season," National Weather Service president John Hayes announced during a muggy press conference Nov. 6. "Fall had a great run, but sadly, times have changed...." The cancellation was not without its share of warning signs. In recent years, fall had been reduced from three months to a meager two-week stint, and its scheduled start time had been pushed back later and later each year.

Okay, maybe this isn't exactly a news story -- Tom Friedman in yesterday's NYT was merely reprinting a hilarious story from The Onion," America's Finest News Source."

What makes this especially sad funny ironic is that, the same day, the New York Times also ran a front page news story on how the fashion industry is turning to climate experts to help them respond to the bizarre weather and changes in seasons we have been experiencing. In a stunning case of life imitating art, the Times quotes Michael Alexin, vice president for apparel design and development at Target, on what is happening to the fall (fashion) season:

"Retailers used to consider September the start of fall," Mr. Alexin said. But Target now stocks lightweight jackets during that month, waiting until November to sell heavy coats. And even then, Target is avoiding the thickest fabrics. "We sell very, very little wool," Mr. Alexin said.

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Global Warming Claims Its First Major Political Victim
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Huffington Post on November 26, 2007 at 3:35 PM.

This post, written by Dr. Joseph Romm, originally appeared on The Huffington Post

Global warming takes down its first major political victim:

"Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming."

Why the stunning loss? A key reason was Howard's "head in the sand dust" response to the country's brutal once-in-a-thousand year drought. As the UK's Independent reported in April:

... few scientists dispute the part played by climate change, which is making Australia hotter and drier..... Until a few months ago, Mr Howard and his ministers pooh-poohed the climate-change doomsayers.

You can read about Howard's lame attempt to change his rhetoric on global warming here.

Now we are the last industrialized nation with a leader who refuses to take any serious action -- hopefully that dubious distinction will be corrected in next year's presidential election.

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