Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Now it is quite clear why the We campaign so enthusiastically embraced Newt Gingrich for an advertisement sitting next to Nancy Pelosi.  Yes, that Newt Gingrich who is working so hard for [false] “American Solutions for Winning the Future”. We would think that might actually include thinking seriously about moving forward on Global Warming legislation.  Yet, Newt’s misleading and deceptive calls on people to support efforts to “Drill Here” and “Drill Now” also includes a broadside against the Lieberman-Warner Climate (in)Security Act that could have come straight out of the mouth of a polluting industry spokesman.  (On reflection, perhaps it did).  Gingrich’s truthiness about solutions to gas prices is potentially inticing but misleading, at best, and, fundamentally, false.

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Today, Congressman Ed Markey has announced that he will introduce the the Investing in Climate Action and Protection (iCAP) Act next week.  Unlike the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner Climate inSecurity Act (BLW CISA), the iCAP follows science calling for a reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in covered sectors by 85 percent by 2050.  It also is serious in making polluters pay, with nearly 100 percent of pollution permits auctioned (94 percent in 2012, 100 percent by 2020). And, it has strong provisions to secure social equity (both domestically and internationally).  In short, iCAP is in lines with the basic principles for global warming legislation.

The iCAP has significant focus on “investing”, on investing in a positive vision for dealing with Global Warming.  “To heal this sick planet” in a way that will strengthen society, strengthen the economy at the same time.

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With each read, with each detailed understood, the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner Climate InSecurity Act (BLW CiSA) seems ever more questionable on climate policy terms and, in addition, on basic politics.  Last fall, Friends of the Earth (FOE) launched their Fix It or Ditch It campaign, seeking to develop momentum for the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act to be transformed into effective climate legislation or else to be ditched so that better legislation could be developed and passed with the cooperation of the next Administration.

In the intervening time between passage of the bill from committee and Senator Boxer’s Manager’s Amendment, George W Bush gave a speech with absurd concepts about Global Warming that would doom the globe to catastrophic climate change.  Sadly, emerging analysis about implications of the evolved BLW CiSA suggest that the bill is far close to Bush’s disastrous concepts than anything resembling reasonable climate legislation.

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Just up today is an extremely well done, informative, and rather fear-provoking website:  Future Scenarios.  Done by David Holmgrem, a leading thinker on Permaculture, this site “maps the cultural implications of peak oil and climate change”. 

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As written about in The Shocking Analysis of Lie-berman-Warner, Environmental Defense Fund has a great little gag site (Get America Working) that provides a tool for learning of false industry statements on Global Warming legislation with counters from EDF. The site also links to a petition that I recommend readers NOT sign. Sadly, while EDF’s send-up of industry opponents is amusing, its petition is disingenuous.

Why not sign up to support Lieberman-Warner? Because it fails, across the board, to meet basic principles for global warming legislation.

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Next week, Senator Harry Reid is going to bring the Lieberman-Warner Coal-Subsidy Act to the Senate floor for debate and votes.  Even after modification by Senator Boxer, Lieberman-Warner remains grossly inadequate in face of the challenges we face.  Even so, the National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce, and global warming deniers are attacking it as too high cost.  Let us be clear, absolutely clear, these are dishonest claims, claims that insult the term truthiness.  To be clear, dealing with global warming is not just an absolute necessity, but a necessity that will leave us far ahead economically (and otherwise) than simply allowing the problem to worsen.

Environmental Defense Fund has put together Get America Working to providea a shocking path to force an industry lobbyist to tell some truth when it comes to Global Warming issues. 

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APSmith, of Energize America, is an extremely knowledgeable and thoughtful individual well worth listening to and pondering. This discussion reflects what he sees as a driving motivation for denying reality and global warming denial.  This relates to my efforts to explore the motivating factors behind ‘irrational skepticism’ (term referring to those whose skepticism is not honest, not open to suasion by evidence) and climate denial.  A Siegel

Coal is NOT Clean.

Coal IS Dirty!

Introducing the Clean Coal Body Slam.  Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog has put together an amazing team with a clear (not clean) agenda:

For a while now, whenever I mentioned the term “clean coal” people would roll their eyes and groan, “clean coal,” usually followed by a rolling of the eyes or a mock gagging, eyes bulging expression. Most people know coal isn’t clean, but that hasn’t stopped the coal industry from trying to convince us otherwise.

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Forget Katrina and Louisiana (where there are many other man-made factors, such as bad river management/flood protection), Alaska is the state most affected by Global Warming. It is also on the front lines of continued Republican efforts to confront reality directly … and deny it!

Several Republican members of the Alaska State Legislature drove through, almost beneath the radar scope, a $2 million funding for a conference on Global Warming. This conference, however, is not intended to be an honest discussion about Global Warming’s impacts on Alaska and what Alaskans might do in the face of these impacts (both in terms of changed energy/other usage to reduce contributions to Global Warming and amelioration measures to help Alaska/Alaskans deal with Global Warming). No, instead, it is an effort to put together a lavish environment to fete and give prominence to pseudo-scientists that seek to obfuscate reality and inhibit action to deal with Global Warming.
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Ranking up there with the Energy Dumb concept of a Gas Tax Holiday, the US House of Representatives passed (on a 324-84 vote) a bill to authorize the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and conspiring to set crude oil prices. The Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act seeks to apply US antitrust laws to OPEC members, just as they apply for US companies.

While it is true that OPEC does “conspire” to control oil prices, the time has passed where OPEC has meaningful control over supply (other than an ability to shut down world supply, perhaps in anger over arrogant US legislation?). As Joe Romm recently wrote, Note to media/Bush: Saudis/OPEC don’t control the price of oil any more!

Unlike the 1970s and 1980s and even much of the 1990s, neither OPEC nor the Saudis no longer control the price of oil.

This legislation is, perhaps, 30 years too late.

And, this legislation is quite likely to anger OPEC members who (along with China) have a tremendous amount of ownership stake in, for example, US treasury bonds and now have a role in the US economy well beyond their share of the oil that is burned in US SUVs.

And, even worse, it sends entirely the wrong signal to the American public (including the voting public) about what we face as individuals, as a nation, as a global society with Peak Oil, global economic growth, and Global Warming. 

This legislation suggests that the problem is one of market manipulation and of people controlling the spigot to spite the American consumer.  This type of legislation encourages people to look back toward $1 gasoline rather than to look forward (and prepare better) for the coming $10 gallon of gas.

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