Environment Forum

from Tales from the Trail:

Salmon ‘chanted evening?

The one word that leaped out of President Obama's State of the Union address to Congress wasn't "optimism," "business," "teachers," "economy" or "budget."

To those who listened to the speech on National Public Radio, the memorable term was "salmon," writ large in a word cloud NPR compiled from its listeners after Obama finished.

That kind of makes sense. Without the Punch-and-Judy theater of Republicans and Democrats popping up from their seats to cheer or boo, as they customarily do when they're seated on opposing sides of the room for a presidential address, it was up to the Commander in Chief to deliver some chuckle-worthy lines.

Obama got his biggest laugh for this rather understated poke at overlapping federal bureaucracies:

"There are 12 different agencies that deal with exports. There are at least five different agencies that deal with housing policy. Then there's my favorite example: the Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they're in saltwater. (Laughter.) I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked. (Laughter and applause.)"

(No offense, Mr. President, but this was kind of an easy room if you got such a boffo response to this joke. Plenty of Facebook and Twitter posters wondered why you didn't mention cream cheese and bagels.)

This being Washington, though, it didn't end there.

from Tales from the Trail:

Panda diplomacy: the remix

The latest chapter in the long story of panda diplomacy was written at Washington's National Zoo, where the Chinese government agreed to lengthen the "loan" of popular panda pair Mei Xiang and Tian Tian for another five years. Actually, the loan is conditioned on whether they produce a new heir or heiress to the cuteness of panda-dom in the next two years;  one or both could be exchanged for more fecund substitutes.

They have a good track record: Washington native Tai Shan, born in 2005, headed back to China last year.

This was a big enough deal for President Barack Obama to mention it at an elaborate state dinner at the White House for Chinese President Hu Jintao.

“Today, we’ve shown that our governments can work together, as well, for our mutual benefit,” Obama told the glittering gathering. "And that includes this bit of news: Under a new agreement, our National Zoo will continue to dazzle children and visitors with the beloved giant pandas."

In the United States, panda diplomacy started soon after President Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to China. But the idea that China might be able to export, or at least loan, this cuddly symbol to further diplomatic ends may date back to the Tang Dynasty, when 7th century Chinese Empress Wu Zetian sent a pair of pandas to Japan.

For some reason, Washington has gone disproportionately gaga over pandas. In 2004, the PandaMania exhibition put fancifully painted panda sculptures around town; there's still one near the hotel where the Chinese government set up its press operations for President Hu Jintao's visit. Asked why people in the United States are so smitten, Chinese conservation official Zhang Shanming told reporters it just might be that, when pandas sit on their hind quarters, eating, they look like human babies.

To be honest, Tian Tian and Mei Xiang didn't look so much like babies in that distinctive pose; they looked more like furry beanbags as the big deal was unveiled. But pandas are pandas and Washingtonians are likely to continue the love affair with them.

from Tales from the Trail:

White House commission wades into “Deep Water”

The great thing about presidential commissions is that they can soberly consider complicated matters and then offer unvarnished reports on what to do. The tough part is when that information rockets around Washington, as occurred after a White House commission issued its final report on the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The "Deep Water" report, apparently titled in reference to the doomed BP Deepwater Horizon rig, blames the deadly blowout and oil spill on government and industry complacency, and recommends more regulation of offshore drilling and a new independent safety agency. But as my colleague Ayesha Rascoe reports, the commission lacks the authority to establish drilling policies or punish companies.

Within minutes of the report's release, and even as commission co-chair William Reilly was bragging about bringing the report in on time and under budget, interest groups started the PR barrage, with industry critical and environmental outfits largely complimentary. Two Democratic members of Congress said they'd introduce legislation to implement the commission's recommendations.

Will that legislation go anywhere? Industry analysts are doubtful. To get an idea of how much action can be prompted by White House panels, it's useful to take a look at two previous ones.

The 911 Commission (formally called "The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States") was perhaps the ultimate in gracefully delivering its hard findings: "... on that September day we were unprepared.  We did not grasp the magnitude of a threat that had been gathering over time. As we detail in our report, this was a failure of policy, management, capability, and – above all – a failure of imagination."

Many of the 911 Commission's recommendations were acted upon.

But not all presidential panels' reports make such an impact. In case you missed it, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released its report on December 16.

Renewable energy advocates fear a time bomb in the tax bill

Solar and wind advocates hailed the United States Senate’s move Thursday night to extend for another year a key incentive program for big renewable energy projects. But they warned that another provision of the tax compromise under consideration could devastate the industry.

First the good news for green energy proponents: If the tax bill passes in its present form, developers will be able to receive through 2011 a federal cash grant to cover 30 percent of the cost of solar power plants, wind farms and other large renewable energy projects.

Enacted as part of the 2009 stimulus package, the Treasury cash grant “1603” program was offered as an alternative to a 30 percent investment tax credit that few developers had use for as they typically have no profits to offset. And so-called tax equity investors who would buy those credits from renewable energy developers in exchange for financing their projects largely disappeared as the recession took hold.

The cash grant program is set to expire at midnight on Dec. 31, which led California and federal regulators to green light nearly 3,000 megawatts’ worth of solar power plants over the past three months, with two more projects expected to be approved next week.

But that building boom is likely to go bust unless the cash grant program is extended.

“An extension of the program will keep our U.S. industry growing and help achieve the industry’s goal of installing enough new solar energy to power 2 million new homes each year by 2015,”  Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a Washington, D.C., trade group, said in a statement Friday. “The program has allowed the solar industry to grow by over 100 percent in 2010, create enough new solar capacity to power 200,000 homes and double domestic solar employment to more than 93,000 Americans.”

Of course, this time next year, the solar and wind industries would find themselves in the same exact position. Congress’ failure in past years to enact a long-term extension of a production tax credit for wind developers, for instance, led to a cycle of boom and bust as the tax credit would expire and then later be revived for another year or two.

from Tales from the Trail:

Steven Chu: Energy Secretary, Nobel Laureate, Zombie

You sort of have to like a U.S. cabinet secretary and Nobel Prize winner who knows how to have a little fun while getting out a message.

That would be Steven Chu, who posted a picture of himself as a green-faced, blood-dripping zombie on his Facebook page. Just in time for Washington's scrupulously-observed Halloween weekend, Chu used his own zombification as a platform to point out power-sucking appliances -- energy vampires, he called them.

"Garlic doesn't work against these vampires," Chu wrote. "But by taking some simple steps – like using power strips or setting your computer to go into sleep mode – you can protect yourself, and your wallet." Then he linked to the Energy Department's "energy star" page .

Perhaps it's a profile-raising approach?

Chu's got nearly 15,000 Facebook followers but he's near the bottom of a recent accounting in Politico about which cabinet secretaries can claim the highest media profile. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tops the list, based on how often her name showed up in major newspapers, network evening television news shows, the White House blog and its Flickr feed in the last year. Only Gary Locke, Hilda Solis, Shaun Donovan and Eric Shinseki ranked lower than Chu (you can see which departments they lead by clicking on the link in this paragraph).

But how did Chu come up with the zombie angle? Turns out that my alert colleague Tom Doggett, who reports on energy issues, saw the zombified version of Chu online last week and passed it along to Energy Department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. To soften the blow, Tom urged her to tell Chu not to take it personally: "I hear (Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar looks much worse." She wrote back: "Your email inspired a Facebook posting ... The Secretary loved the zombie website. Be sure to check out his Facebook page."

And even though Halloween has passed, you can still see what you'd look like undead by going here .

from Tales from the Trail:

Green energy aspirations for Obama’s India visit

When Barack Obama heads for India next month, he'll be carrying a heavy policy agenda -- questions over the handling of nuclear material, the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and India's status as a growing economic power, along with regional relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan. But Rajendra Pachauri, the Nobel Peace laureate who heads the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, hopes the U.S. president has time to focus on clean energy too.

Even as Pachauri and the U.N. panel evolve -- and as Pachauri himself weathers pressure from some quarters to resign -- he urged Obama to work on U.S.-India projects that he said would enhance global energy security.

Given India's red-hot economic growth rate -- 8 or 9 percent a year, Pachauri told reporters during a telephone briefing -- he said it makes sense for the United States to work with India to head off an expected soaring demand for fossil fuels.

Over the next two decades, Pachauri said, "If we continue on a business-as-usual path, India will be importing something like 750 million tons (that's about 5.25 million barrels) of oil a year ... and possibly over 1,000 million tons of coal. So I think India has to make some very radical shifts and bring about a movement towards cleaner energy technology."

While the two countries have launched a few initial programs in this area, Pachauri acknowledged that "nothing of great substance has been achieved so far." Obama's passage to India could change that, he said on the call, which was set up by the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council.

Areas ripe for cooperation include collaborative research and development in new areas of energy technology, as well as "a much more liberal approach" to investments in clean energy technology, Pachauri said.

Low interest financing for Indian clean energy projects, including large-scale solar projects in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat, would also be welcome, he said.

from Tales from the Trail:

Should U.S. oil royalties pay for studies of BP spill’s environmental impact?

Oil caused the mess in the Gulf of Mexico. Should U.S. oil royalties pay for scientists to study what happened, and what's still happening, to this complex environment?

At least one scientist thinks so. Ed Overton of Louisiana State University figures the billions of dollars collected in royalties by the now-defunct and much-reviled Minerals Management Service -- re-named and re-organized as the Bureau of Ocean Energy -- must have enough money to pay for research into the environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and spill.

Speaking at a Senate hearing last week on the effects of oil-dispersing chemicals, Overton and other experts called the BP spill an unintentional "grand experiment" into what deep water oil exploration can do to animals, plants, water and land in the Gulf. As Overton put it, the oil and dispersants are out there now. Best to study them over the months and years ahead to figure out what they're doing to the environment.

"The Mineral Management Service has generated royalty income to the federal government of billions of dollars.  And virtually all of that money has been spent on not understanding the environment," Overton said.

While it should be the oil industry's obligation to know how to respond to an environmental disaster like this one, Overton said, "the government  ought to have some oversight in taking some of that royalty money, a significant amount of that royalty money, and understanding how, both from an engineering perspective as well as an ecological perspective, what to do about it."

There's plenty that the engineers and ecologists don't know, Overton said, starting with how to collect oil samples in deep water (there are sampling techniques to collect plants and animals, but not crude). As he told it, when the samplers went down into the Gulf, they got coated with oil, so it was impossible to tell if the oil was just a layer they passed through or whether it was a true sample of what was there at the sea bed.

Now that the Macondo well has been capped and a final "bottom kill" is seemingly within reach, it's probably natural for everyone to want to turn the page. But researchers want to actually know what happened. Should oil royalties help pay for that research?

from Tales from the Trail:

What does an oiled pelican look like?

You've probably seen the disturbing images of pelicans so badly mired in leaking oil in the Gulf of Mexico that they can barely be distinguished as birds at all -- they look like part of the muck.

But nearly three months after the blowout at BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, there are other pelicans touched by the oil where the impact is far less apparent, though still real.

Take a look at some video I took during a boat trip on July 15 along West Pass, a long channel stretching out into the ocean from Louisiana's southern-most tip:

The video was taken aboard a small, bobbing boat with a light wind distorting sound, but it clearly shows a section of a rocky jetty stretching into the Gulf. There were hundreds of pelicans and gulls perched on the jetty; the video only shows a short section.

What's important to look for are the dark patches on the heads, beaks and wings of some of the pelicans; that is untreated black oil, according to Joao Talocchi of the environmental group Greenpeace. There was no black oil in the water nearby, or the reddish sludge of treated oil seen in the photo of the drenched pelican above, only a few isolated pea-sized beads of emulsified oil that appeared to have been treated with dispersant chemicals.

from Tales from the Trail:

Lockbox may be making a political comeback

Republicans may be coming around to former Vice President Al Gore's way of thinking. Not on climate change, but on the "lockbox."

During his failed 2000 presidential bid, Gore talked about setting aside Social Security tax surpluses and putting them in a kind of  "lockbox"  to keep them off limits for other government spending and tax cuts. NBC's "Saturday Night Live" comedy show made great fun of the Democrat's comment.

Now Senate Republicans have revived the idea.

Not for Social Security, but for the oil spill clean up fund. Democrats are proposing to increase the oil spill clean up fund tax to 41 cents a barrel from 8 cents a barrel. The increase is part of a bill being considered by the Senate to help the long-term unemployed, offer relief to cash-strapped states and extend some expired business tax breaks.

Democrats said the tax increase is needed to make sure enough money is in the fund to deal with future oil spills. Not all companies have pockets as deep as BP Plc, which has promised to pay for damages caused by the deep water leak in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Dick Durbin argued during Senate debate on the bill.

The tax increase will ensure taxpayers are not stuck with the tab in case of a future spill caused by a company that is not quite so flush with cash as BP, he said.

Republicans cried foul. They accused Democrats of raising the tax to offset some of the $126 billion cost of the bill.

from Tales from the Trail:

Washington spinmeisters start BP’s damage control

The new public relations gurus hired by BP couldn't have started at a better time. The team, headed by Anne Womack-Kolton -- a former spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney and the White House -- had just started work when they had to deal with an unfortunate statement by BP chief executive Tony Hayward.

On Sunday Hayward infuriated many of those struggling to deal with the impact the massive oil spill has had on their lives and livelihood when he said he wanted his "life back" and wanted the oil spill mess to be over. So today his office issued the following email:

I made a hurtful and thoughtless comment on Sunday when I said that 'I wanted my life back.' When I read that recently, I was appalled. I apologize, especially to the families of the 11 men who lost their lives in this tragic accident. Those words don’t represent how I feel about this tragedy, and certainly don’t represent the hearts of the people of BP – many of whom live and work in the Gulf - who are doing everything they can to make things right. My first priority is doing all we can to restore the lives of the people of the Gulf region and their families – to restore their lives, not mine.

So what do you think? Does it work to issue such an email? Can Washington pubic relations officials really do anything to fix BP's image?

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Sean Gardner (Garret Graves with the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority shows his hand after collecting oil samples in Pass A Loutre near Venice, Louisiana on May 26, 2010)