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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation (DOT) today released proposed rules for implementating the increase in CAFE standards, beyond the Congressional mandate, as announced this past May. In short, this deal between the Obama Administration and the auto industry accelerates the improvement in light vehicle fuel efficiency across the fleet average (the CAFE) to 35 mpg from 2020, the Congressional mandate, to 2015.  This action merits applause, even if far from as aggressive as it could (or should) be (check out US compared to other countries). This move should lead to cutting US liquid fuel (almost entirely oil) demand, reducing oil import requirements, improving US auto industry competitiveness in the world market, and helping to reduce US pollution loads (whether fossil fuel aerosols, carbon dioxide, or otherwise).  All in all, even if less than what is possible, a win-win-win move.

As per Republican Roy LaHood, Secretary of Transportation,

“The increases in fuel economy and the reductions in greenhouse gases we are proposing today would bring about a new era in automotive history. These proposed standards would help consumers save money at the gas pump, help the environment, and decrease our dependence on oil – all while ensuring that consumers still have a full range of vehicle choices.”

As per EPA Administrator (Democrat) Lisa Jackson,

American drivers will keep more money in their pockets, put less pollution into the air, and help reduce a dependence on oil that sends billions of dollars out of our economy every year. By bringing together a broad coalition of stakeholders – including an unprecedented partnership with American automakers – we have crafted a path forward that is win-win for our health, our environment, and our economy. Through that partnership, we’ve taken the historic step of proposing the nation’s first ever greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles, and moved substantially closer to an efficient, clean energy future.

From the press release, the four key measurable achievements expected from this move

Specifically, the program would:

• Increase fuel economy by approximately five percent every year
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons
• Save the average car buyer more than $3,000 in fuel costs
• Conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil

Again, laudable goals and laudable achievements.  A serious question to ask, however, is as follows:  Is this underselling the likely impact of the overall program in terms of financial implications for both the average car buyer and the overall economy?

As discussed this past May, when the deal was originally announced, in Valuing cutting oil dependency, valuing savings at “$3,000 in fuel costs” simply takes a straight line assessment of how many fewer gallons the “car buyer” will burn using a more efficient car without seeking to assess or understand the financial implications of cutting global oil demand.   Very simply, markets are (at least partially) driven by supply and demand functions. In economic terms, to determine prices, creating new (additional supply) is functionally the same as reducing demand.  Analysis suggests that, come a decade from now, this program would reduce US oil demand in the range of 1.4 million barrels per day (roughly 7 percent) compared to the business as usual case (without considering any other possible world developments, technologies, etc …). In 2008, world demand fell by about 2.5 million barrels / day in the face of $140 barrel / oil.  Prices fell into the $40s before coming back up to the $60-70 range.  Was that demand destruction “the” reason for reduced prices? Likely not the sole, but a key factor.

With that in mind, how much would an average 1.4 million barrel/day demand reduction impact oil prices? Could we see $50 barrel/day lower prices? $25?  $10?  This is a form of predictive analysis that is very difficult to do and basically impossible to do with certainty, but we can be certain that lowered demand will foster lower prices on average.

Let us take a very low figure, reducing oil prices by $5 per barrel.

• This translates to about 12 cents per gallon less expensive gasoline.
• Assuming 15 million barrels per day of US usage (a 25% reduction from today), this would be $75 million per day of savings for US drivers and the US economy. This would translate to over $27 billion in annual savings for the US economy. And, that $27 billion would almost certainly be mainly in reduced oil imports (thus strengthening the US dollar due to improved (or less bad) balance of payments accounts).
• Globally, assuming 80 million barrels/day of production (perhaps optimistic), this would mean perhaps $400 million/day or in the range of $150 billion/year in reduced expenditures on oil — freeing resources, globally, for spending on other priorities and requirements (whether clean energy investments, education, or otherwise).

In fact, $5 calculation as to the lowered per gallon cost of liquid fuels in 2020 due to this deal seems to be an absurdly low figure.  But, using that “absurdly low” figure, it is quite evident that there is a huge societal benefit that has not been part of the overall discussion.

By the way, let’s take a look at “cost/benefit” analysis.  Reporting is that the estimated cost, per vehicle, for this additional fuel efficiency would be $600.  An upfront cost paid back five-fold (not counting net present value) due to those fuel savings. Okay, that sounds great. Now, let’s us take a higher level look. That $600 will represent, for the most part, additional economic activity in the United States in exchange for reducing oil imports. Wow, that makes the overall economic “win” even better by displacing imported fuel costs for domestic “green jobs”. Another ‘win’.  However, what about that reduced fuel cost impact?  Taking a figure of $600 per car and assuming 10 million light vehicle sales/year translates to $6 billion in costs (within the economy, for the most part, meaning jobs and recirculating money) for (using that absurdly low figure of $5 barrel/oil lower price) for $27 billion per year in reduced oil import costs.

Thus, seeking to take a step back and do a systems-of-systems look suggests that steps to improve transportation fuel efficiency have far greater payoff than simple stove-piped announcements suggest.

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Tommaso Boggia provides, in this guest post from Campus Progress, some thoughts from the sand box that Barack Obama might find useful to deal with Glenn Beck and other little people throwing tantrums running around kicking sand in people’s faces.

On November 4th 2008, young people propelled President Obama to victory with a clear mandate to advance a progressive agenda. Unfortunately things have not been going as well as we would have hoped. Right wing bullies, led by the deranged Glenn Beck, have been relentlessly pushing Obama and congressional Democrats around like kids in a playground. From delaying health care reform to the recent resignations of key progressives in the administration, our new found hopes are rapidly reverting to distant dreams.

It is time for President Obama to start dealing with the bullies who are threatening to take him down. Unfortunately, it seems like he does not yet know how to do this, despite having been an avid comic book reader (and thus a likely victim of bullies) and having sharpened his political mind in Chicago. As someone who has been pushed around a good amount as a kid and having done some pushing around myself, here are some pointers for how President Obama (hereon little Obama) can avoid losing more ground to the likes of Glenn Beck (hereon big bad Beck).

Big bad Beck is a bully through and through. His rocky childhood gave rise to deep paranoia, a bipolar personality, delusions of grandeur, and deep-seated anger at people he perceives to be different than him. He consciously and repeatedly attempts to cause psychological harm to little Obama, mostly by spreading false rumors, making threats, using put-downs and encouraging his base to take up arms. Big bad Beck’s attacks are not just criticisms of little Obama’s pet projects. His attacks are meant to destroy Obama’s spirit, self-esteem, and popularity and to get back at him for winning the elections by a wide margin. It must be said that, as Dr. Gary Namie (author of “The Bully at Work”) says, “Good employers purge bullies, bad ones promote them”. Fox News and talk radio stations are complicit in big bad Beck’s “bullyism” by providing him a bullhorn to spread his slanderous and deranged rumors.

It must be said that big bad Beck’s behavior is perfectly normal for a bully, especially one in the kindergarten playground spanning from New York’s media rooms to Washington D.C.’s halls of power. The unusual aspect of this bullying dynamic is that little Obama is passively taking all the blows. As Kidshealth.com states,

“Bullies tend to bully kids who don’t stick up for themselves.” [Read more →]

Last week, the New York Senate passed legislation to take revenues from New York’s ‘cap and tax’ on carbon emissions and leverage these funds into the private financing market to make energy efficiency improvements more affordable and more accessible to New York’s homeowners.

Passed unanimously in the New York House, a Republican Senator played a key role in making this truly a bipartisan measure in the Senate. Sadly, in the fossil-foolish funded and fostered mania against the sensible Silver BB of Green Jobs, too many Republicans are walking away from smart energy and fiscal policy to avoid, it seems, the wrath of frothing Glenn Beck / et al inspired mobs. [Read more →]

Mountain Top Removal, as practiced in Appalachia, is perhaps best described as a warfare on America, Americans, and the planet. A practice filled with devastating implications, about the only redeeming feature is its short term profit making for those who rate the dollars in their pocket above essentially everything else. Many of those who encounter it end up with disgust about the practice, such as these two guards hired to ‘deal with’ MTR protesters.

This video is interesting because it highlights practices used by Massey Energy to try to deal with protestors, from ‘psychological’ operations (offering them coffee, food; playing loud music and using noise makers to prevent protestors from sleeping) to entrapment actions to entice potentially prosecutable acts (such as encouraging protestors up in trees to throw down items, in ‘exchange’, that will be used as a pretext for claiming assault (‘throwing things at security guards’).
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“Green” is the buzzword for business, seeking to greenwash themselves into warmer customer relations and “consumer” confidence.

“Green” also represents substance and represents giving people options, making it easier to do less harm to the planet while fulfilling needs for food, transport, and shelter.

Expansion of the second is a Silver BB / Dust mite to help us transition through the perfect storm of economic, energy, and environmental challenges. Around the globe, such increased ‘store front’ real green options are increasing, even if not fast enough and even if not dominant enough against our challenges.  Here is a guest post from John Tehans,  a ‘virtual’ friend/colleague, who has just opened a Main Street store to make “green” options more accessible to the average citizen.

Another guest post from BruceMcF.  Quite simply, rail (and, especially, electrified rail) is one of the more important Silver BBs before us (the U.S.) to deal with the perfect storm of economic, energy, and environmental challenges.  Bruce is a thoughtful, eloquent advocate on rail (and nodal transportation) issues who is well worth paying attention to.

The Appalachian Hub Part 2: The Charleston WV Hub

The increasingly infamous Appalachian Development Highway program started out with the goal of supporting the potential for genuine economic development in Appalachia by improving transport links into and within the region.

And yet, with the decentralized, state-based system for planning 110mph, 125mph and 220mph High Speed Rail systems, there is the threat that the very problem that the Appalachian Development Highway system was established to address will be re-created as we modernize our regional passenger transport backbones from asphalt to steel.

An Appalachian Hub project would aim to drag these laudable goals into the 21st Century by filling the gaping hole in Eastern US planning for High Speed Rail systems. “Would”, since this is an exploration of what such a system might look like if West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee joined this planning process – not a report on ongoing, formal projects such as the Midwest Hub or Ohio Hub.

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What follows is a guest post (the quotation material), with some commentary, from Stranded Wind who has a major focus on finding routes for solutions and opportunities amid the perfect storm of economic problems, peak oil (and other resource constraints), and global warming.  One of the streams of discussion, with various degrees of urgency and certainty, among those considering our challenges is that today’s international system fundamentally is at odds with fostering an environment conducive for human existence and confronting our intertwined challenges requires significant rethinking and restructuring of how we live.  I have not, myself, reached the point of rejecting the potential that well-managed and structured (including regulation) captalism is, a priori, impossible to have and deal with our resource challenges.  On the other hand, I cannot build a conclusive case that rejects those who are calling for a fundamental rethinking and restructuring to help us ride through the perfect storm to find (create) a safer, stronger, and sustainable society.

The American Dream. This phrase calls up many things for many people, but it was defined post World War II and common imagery involves a house in the suburbs, a shiny, swoopy, chrome laden 1950s Detroit sedan, and maybe a picket fence.

An important point, to me:  that “The American Dream” is not a fixed item, immutable for eternity, but something that develops and modifies and shifts over time.  Today, few Americans (a pitiful few, if any) likely dream of being a plantation owner with hundreds of slaves while we might imagine that this would have been a “day dream” for a white boy two hundred years ago. Few Americans 50 years ago imagined anything like a large-screen TV in the home while that is a standard consumer item, consider a near necessity by many.  Etc … Society changes. Technology changes. Economics changes. Our “dreams” change.

We built and built that little subdivision over and over until it was forty five minutes out from anything that mattered, and then the residents ran smack into $4/gallon gas. Even the International Energy Agency now admits oil production will peak at some point, disputing the historic peak event of July 2008 but confirming the concept. Something must be done and the American Dream without limitless cheap oil will certainly become the American Nightmare.

The laws of unintended consequences.  Rosy dreams, embraced by nearly all, can have nightmarish consequences. The plummeting house values in areas remote from jobs and shopping amid that $4/gallon gas is just a taste of the potential “American Nightmare”.

There are many things that can be done, but helping visualizing the good life after they’re applied is something we don’t do enough of as a nation.

This is, to me, a powerful call — to highlight that the “positives” that can emerge from change.

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A guest post from Warren Senders, providing a window on how one man is taking his own skills to help raise awareness about Global Warming and why 350 is the most important number in the world. If you’re in the Boston, MA, area come 24 October, perhaps this is an event that might interest you.

About “Johnny Rook”, please see this for excerpts from and links to obituaries to this thoughtful, eloquent, impassioned man.

I thought I’d tell you about a little event I’m planning up here in the People’s Republic of Cambridge.

When I first started reading JohnnyRook on Climaticide, I asked him to tell me what I should be doing.  The destruction of our environment had me completely freaked out…but beyond wringing my hands, I didn’t have a clue as to what and how I could contribute.  He responded by telling me: “Go to www.350.org.”

Which is how I learned about the upcoming Day of Action on Climate Change, on October 24, 2009.

Which is how I got a little mojo back.  I was pacing the floor, wondering what I could do on October 24 to help create momentum for the reduction of atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm.  I fretted and mumbled and despaired; nothing seemed appropriate.  Then I remembered that in fact I had a hugely applicable skill set which had lain dormant for about a decade: I used to be a concert producer. How had I forgotten about that?

So I got out the phone list and found some people to go in with me on a benefit concert on October 24.

Perhaps you are so embroiled in the uproar over Republican lack of decorum during the President’s health care address to a Joint Session of Congress that you missed that the Supreme Court looks to be on the edge of opening the floodgates of Corporate “speech” in the electoral process (here, here, and here as well).

the U.S. Supreme Court is threatening to strike down key provisions of the 2002 “McCain-Feingold” bipartisan campaign finance reform act, overruling two of its prior rulings in the process and uprooting a century-old principle – existent in American law since Teddy Roosevelt’s Administration – that corporations should be barred from making unlimited expenditures in elections.

Wait, what? What did I just say? Corporations might soon be able to make unlimited expenditures in elections? Can they do that?

The answer is yes, if the Supreme Court says they can.

Clearly this has environmental and energy implications. We have seen how West Virginia’s unlimited contributions rules have led to ‘buying’ of judicial decisions. What might the impact to the prospects for sensible energy policy if Exxon-Mobil, Peabody Energy, or the Southern Company could use their huge cash reserves to drown out the political dialogue with advertising campaigns for (or against) a specific candidate.  Already, their huge campaigns (laundered through Astroturf organizations like ACCCE and the Americans For (less) Prosperity (AFP) distort the political conversation and process. Where would eliminating even what some see as a fig leaf of constraints lead us?

Not to worry, it seems, since Corporations only want to share knowledge with us, provide wisdom and understanding to enable better decision-making on the part of the voter.

Don’t worry, be happy has to be the conclusion about unleashing Corporate funds during election cycles reading Justice Anthony Kennedy’s comments (see transcript) during oral arguments yesterday:

Addressing Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Kennedy said:

Corporations have lots of knowledge about [the] environment… and you are silencing them during the election.  (52:7)

Later, addressing Seth Waxman (who was arguing on behalf of John McCain and Russ Feingold (see McCain-Feingold statement yesterday), to uphold McCain-Feingold):

[T]he phenomenon of — of television ads where we get information about scientific discovery and — and environment and transportation issues from corporations who after all have patents because they know something, that — that is different [from campaign laws that have been around for 100 years, because the former is a new development]. (73:5)

How can this be read any other way that Kennedy somehow believes (okay, perhaps doesn’t believe but wants to sell the line) that corporations’ goal in elections is to somehow share their wealth of knowledge about “the environment” and “scientific discovery.” 

Yes, all McDonalds wants to do is have an open and honest discussion of childhood obesity and the role that McNuggets might play in this epidemic.

Yes, all the tobacco industry wanted to do was share leading edge research on the impacts of tobacco on human health.

Yes, all the fossil fuel industry wants to do is engage in honest, fact-based, scientifically sound discussion of pollution and climate change.

Yes, Justice Kennedy, all these Corporations wish to do is provide real insights and understanding, to help us have the most enlightened political process in human history.

Yes, Justice Kennedy, if you really believe this, I have a bridge that I’m looking to sell. When should I come by?

Carbon offsets should trouble anyone concerned about climate change.  Whether on a personal, business, or community/nation level, even when they work, they act almost as a form of indulgence: paying someone else resources as a means to make up for your own failures and problem creation.  As we consider climate change challenges, this sort of ethical and moral challenge really should be a secondary issue. If offsets can manage to work, to help hasten reductions in global pollution levels such that we can avoid a massive crash in the global system’s ability to support modern human civilization, then this is a moral and ethical issue worthy of debate and discussion in philosophical circles rather than a functional reasoning to fail to exploit any and all effective measures to turn the tides of Global Warming’s rising seas.

The real challenge when it comes to “offsets” is a functional one:

Do international carbon offset programs work well today to help reduce carbon emissions cost effectively?

Should we have confidence that that they will do so into the future?

A pause for a brief definitional item:  Carbon Offsets, as referred to here, are really an international issue. In other words, moving resources across international boundaries to support emissions reductions in one country to ‘offset’ emissions in another. Currently, the European Union’s cap and trade scheme allows significant credits (in essence, 50% of a nation’s targeted reductions) for international offsets. The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) bill, that passed the House earlier this year, has significant provisions for international offsets. (Enough, in fact, that they could, in theory, displace any direct US carbon emissions for decades into the future.)

Friends of the Earth just published A Dangerous Distraction: Why offsets are a mistake that the US cannot afford to make.  This report provides significant documentation to answer the two functional questions. And, that material should give us great pause because the answer to both questions, based on this work, is a very resounding:  NO!

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