California voters back weakened climate law
-The opinions are the author’s own-
California voters on Tuesday rejected a measure to suspend the state’s innovative climate change law. But the state’s emission trading scheme has been substantially diluted to buy off opposition from energy-intensive industries and allay fears about job losses.
If it is true that “as California goes, so goes the nation”, the past 10 days have confirmed the lack of political support for tough emissions curbs.
The survival of California’s cap-and-trade scheme has kept alive hopes for enacting a patchwork of state and regional schemes in the absence of a federal program. Supporters hope establishing even a diluted system will lay the groundwork for a program that can be toughened as the economy improves.
But the state government’s last-minute decision to give away most emissions allowances rather than auction them suggests voters and politicians are not ready to embrace the steep increase in energy prices needed to decarbonize the economy.
“NO” ON 23 Proposition 23 would have suspended the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) until the state unemployment rate fell below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. Proposition 23 would have effectively killed the law because unemployment is currently over 12 percent and has only rarely dipped below 5.5 percent in the last three decades.
Voters rejected it by a wide margin following a heavily funded campaign pitting clean technology companies, environmentalists and moderate lawmakers against parts of the oil refining sector. With 92 percent of precincts reporting, “No” votes led “Yes” votes by 4.2 million to 2.6 million (61 percent to 39 percent), according to the Los Angeles Times.
from The Great Debate UK:
Impact of the volcano disruption on the airlines
- Joris Melkert, MSc BBA, is assistant professor in aerospace engineering at the Delft University of Technology. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Despite the announcement that air space could begin to re-open in Northern Europe, the Icelandic volcano eruption could prove to be a major turning point for the global airline industry with short- to medium-term questions already being asked by some about its future financial viability.
One of the biggest questions, which engineers will be grappling with right now, is whether there is a cost-efficient way to ‘design out’ the current problems that aircraft experience with dust clouds.
The short answer is that it may be possible to make modifications to aircraft engine cores to make them less sensitive to ash deposits. However, such major engine development is a long term project so no solution will be in sight for at least a year. Moreover, the expense of such an undertaking could be prohibitively costly for airlines right now.
The volcano eruption has cost the airline industry an estimated 200 million dollars each day. Voicing the industry’s frustration and concern, the Air Transport in Europe (AEA) trade body warns that, without state aid, some airlines would have potentially gone out of business as soon as next week unless travel restrictions began to be lifted.
The crisis has been especially worrying for the industry for three main reasons.
I wish more people were talking about this, right now. I travel all over Europe for my work, and have often wished I had time and money to go by train/ferry. The infrastructure is hopeless at the moment. Trying to get back from Germany to Scotland by train and ferry is a bad joke. Presumably air travel will be more expensive in the future, anyway, so hopefully the train and ferry companies will get their act together.
from The Great Debate UK:
Why the Icelandic volcano could herald even more disruption
- Dr Andrew Hooper is an Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology and is an expert on monitoring deformation of Icelandic volcanoes. The opinions expressed are his own. -
The unprecedented no-fly zone currently in force across much of Europe has already caused the greatest chaos to air travel since the Second World War. Thousands of flights have been cancelled or postponed with millions of travel plans affected.
The economic consequence to our ‘just-in-time’ society is incalculable at this stage given the disruption to holidays, business plans and indeed the wider business supply chain. However, the global cost of the disruption will surely ultimately result in a cost of billions, with the share price of several airlines in particular already taking a hit.
It is exceptionally hard to gauge how long the current grounding of flights will remain in force, although Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano which has erupted, could potentially sputter on for months or even more than a year. Much could depend upon weather patterns, especially wind direction, over the next few days.
The worst-case scenario in terms of precedent here is the 1783-1784 eruption at Laki (a very large eruption of 14km3 compared to the one in Mount St. Helens in 1980 of 1 km3) that had a huge impact on the northern hemisphere, reducing temperatures by up to 3 degrees. This led to catastrophe far beyond the shores of Iceland (where 25 percent of population died), with thousands of recorded deaths in Britain due to poisoning and extreme cold, and record low rainfall in North Africa.
By contrast, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 1821-1823 (when only about 0.1km3 was erupted) had little impact beyond the shores of Iceland, where livestock were killed by flourine poisoning. Like 1821-1823, this current eruption is likely to remain small in terms of volume, but in an age of mass aviation, a relatively small amount of erupted ash is having huge consequences.
One volcanic eruption in Alaska in 1989 necessitated the postponement and cancellation of flights in North America for days. It is likely that the fallout from the volcanic eruption yesterday will be worse because European airspace is more congested than in North America for global airline traffic.
Nice article.
Thanks for the analysis of the situation and all the background info on Eyjafjallajökull.
Climate skeptic: We are winning the science battle
- Dr. Fred Singer is the President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project and Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. The views expressed are his own -
The International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) charter states that the organization’s purpose is to look for human induced climate change. The Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) does not have this problem. If we find support for human induced climate change, we say so. If we do not find support for human induced climate change, we say so. In fact, the first NIPCC report, of which I was a lead author, was called ‘Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate’.
We see no evidence in the climate record that the increase in CO2, which is real, has any appreciable effect on the global temperature. IPCC relies heavily on the surface temperature data, which is distorted by a deletion of a number of surface stations. The ‘best’ stations were kept – the ones around temperature islands and by airports.
Now the Climategate leak has shown that the surface temperature data that IPCC relies on is based on distorted raw data and algorithms that they will not share with the science community. The scientists implicated in Climategate have misused peer review and pressured journal editors to prevent publication of research that questions their research. They have taken control of the IPCC process and they have smeared opponents personally, rather than critiquing the research.
IPCC’s mandate states that its role is to assess the science in a comprehensive, objective, open, and transparent manner. Unfortunately, the process has been anything but comprehensive, objective, open, and transparent. Climategate exposed this flawed process, and now it turns out that global warming might have been ‘man made’ after all.
I have traveled around Europe for a month now, talking to colleagues and people who are concerned about the draconian policies being put in place. But we are winning the science battle; the alarmist has no evidence.
The World Meteorological Organization (UN-WMO) wanted to set the tone for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen by releasing a statement that says that the past decade has shown some of the warmest tempratures on record, based on the 160 year of instrumental data we have. Intended or not, the statement created the impression that anthropogenic global warming is the cause of increased temperature and that the IPCC was correct after all. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Human-activity-induced-climate-change is no longer a scientific theory. It has become a doctrine, and we’re all losing something because of this.
Science has always survived political ideologies, simply because it’s a system built on rational criticism, not faith, interests, and sticking to the party line.
I’m positively surprised that Reuters published this article – Good job!
For real results on climate, look beyond Copenhagen
– Aron Cramer is the president and CEO of BSR, a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability. He is also coauthor of the forthcoming book Sustainable Excellence (Rodale 2010). The views expressed are his own. –
(Updated on December 17th to correct figure in McKinsey study in paragraph 7.)
As world leaders seem uncertain about whether a binding treaty is even possible at Copenhagen, it’s important to remember what was already clear: Twelve days in Copenhagen were never going to solve climate change anyway.
No doubt, these negotiations, now extending into 2010, are crucial. The sooner we can seal a global deal to reduce emissions, the sooner we can avoid catastrophic climate change. But as important as the treaty negotiations in Copenhagen’s Bella Centre are, even a successful outcome will be for naught if boardroom decisions and factory processes aren’t reoriented toward a low-carbon future.
To steer the world in that direction, business must change how it operates, with a shift of historic proportions. Otherwise—like the Kyoto Protocol of 1997—a new international climate agreement won’t achieve its goals.
Making this change requires business to focus on innovation, efficiency, mobilization, and collaboration—and that work must start now.
At every turning in point in history, from the advent of the railroad to the internet revolution, innovation has redefined our economy. Solving climate requires exactly the same thing. Everything about a climate-friendly economy—from the basic products we use to the places we shop to how we commute—will look different.
Comfortable conservation and global warming
– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –
Energy efficiency will have to make the single most-important contribution if policymakers are serious about limiting greenhouse gas emissions and dampening growing demand for fossil fuels.
Energy efficiency will not remove the need to invest in large volumes of wind, solar and nuclear generation, or in technology for carbon capture and storage, but it does form the third leg of the triad.
In the United States, nowhere have efficiency initiatives been given higher prominence and become as deeply entrenched in the public policy process as in the state of California. In response to a series of power crises, the state has adopted some of the toughest standards anywhere in the world.
The 1974 Warren-Alquist Act, signed by then-governor Ronald Reagan, created the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, now renamed the California Energy Commission (CEC), with a mandate to develop minimum efficiency requirements for new construction and appliances.
Efficiency improvements have been enforced through a strict standard-setting process.
Title 24 of the state code of regulations prescribes detailed requirements for all new buildings and major redevelopments in the state. Title 20 establishes standards for appliances sold to in-state customers, including heating and cooling systems, lighting units and refrigerators. Both have been repeatedly tightened to require higher levels of efficiency.
Lets talk again about carbon taxes
Let me put it bluntly, that the idea of carbon tax swap based on swapping fixed taxes with carbon tax failed to impress the American public has as much to do with the American electorate as it is with the champions of this idea such as Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer. It’s the way in which this concept was presented and being presented to the American public that has doomed the carbon tax swap from the beginning. Let me explain.
Lets put coal aside for a while and concentrate on oil which unlike coal has tremendous geopolitical externalities with much of the world’s oil concentrated in the hands of rogue regimes and Islamic Sharia states. The Middle East alone costs the US billions. The oil market is massively unstable, never mind the OPEC and it price manipulations. Cheap gasoline encourages suburban sprawl and waste of space with local taxes required to support the infrastructure then decimating US taxpayers. If you don’t believe in anthropogenic global warming, that’s fine with me, the world is cooling down. There are still more than enough reasons for the US to want to slap a massive carbon tax to bill all those expenses into the price of gas/oil. So lets talk about swift implementation of a sizable carbon tax swap. We are going to swap payroll taxes, income taxes, VAT… You name it, we can swap it for a carbon tax. Say we swap 50c immediately and then we swap 10c every next year over the course of a decade. Does it mean that the American nation is required for painful sacrifices to rid itself of its addiction to oil? No. That’s the point! It does not at all!
For a start, when you swap a tax for a tax in a revenue neutral manner, it’s not that there are no winners and no losers. There is a simple law of microeconomics that postulates that regardless if a tax is imposed on the consumer or the producer, the price usually falls somewhere in between with a loss getting split between the two. Those who believe that the demand for oil is too inelastic for the carbon tax to be subject to this law, should check what happened in Oregon where gas taxes have ended with such a dramatic fall in tax revenues that the state had to consider replacing them with a mileage tax. This is very relevant for the US which accounts for 25% of the global oil consumption. The US is twice as much a global swing consumer as Saudi Arabia is a global swing producer. This means that a gas tax of $1 does not make the price of gas go up by all $1. It will go up, say, 80c. Given that taxpayer is fully refunded through the swap, the taxpayer wins 20c on every gallon. In this case the producer takes a loss of 20c and, given that so much of the US oil is imported, it’s a loss inflicted on foreign producers. Those still confused can try to read this: http://happyarabnews.blogspot.com/2009/0 5/great-committment-of-president-obama.h tml.
Next, a carbon tax swap means that we are swapping regular taxes, say payroll taxes, with a “please don’t pay me” tax. If the taxes are swapped dollar for dollar, it’s enough that a taxpayer then finds a job close to home and he is already winning. If the taxpayer switches to a hybrid or electric car, he is sabotaging the whole system. That’s why any swap of regular taxes for carbon taxes amounts to sheer cutting taxes. A revenue neutral carbon tax swap won’t stay revenue neutral even for a year as the taxpayers will quickly start defunding the state by avoiding carbon taxes. It’s a stimulus package that requires taxpayer to do a certain work for his personal benefit and the benefit of his country to get his taxes down. It’s a tax cut in which taxpayers cut their own taxes. It’s way better than this senseless throwing of money around we’ve seen until now.
Finally, if a certain taxpayer prefers to pay carbon tax, he is not losing a penny as long as a tax swap is done dollar for dollar. But if in other corners of the economy people and business do their share of avoiding carbon taxes, they are bringing the price down for all taxpayers. You don’t want to change? No problem. Let others change and benefit from their work.
In fact, with a bit of imagination carbon tax swap can be modified to serve all kinds of additional purposes. For example, rich tend to have a larger carbon footprint than poor. The swap can be designed in such a way that it does not refund the upper 10 percent, but instead redistributes their taxes between the rest. So such a swap can be used as another method of wealth redistribution, in which case an average taxpayer is more than compensated for carbon tax right from the beginning.
The reality of carbon tax swap is that it’s one of the best deals that could have been ever offered to the US taxpayer and this tremendous opportunity was squandered because of the misguided and confused marketing campaign by Thomas Friedman and his colleagues. The correct presentation of the swap should have been this:
“We give you, taxpayers, a perfect deal, from which you almost immediately benefit, first, by the simple law of tax incidence described in every introduction to microeconomics for dummies and, second, because we are replacing your fixed taxes with a “please avoid me” tax about which you can do all kinds of things to pay less of it or stop paying it completely. In the worst and almost impossible scenario you just don’t lose. In any other case you can only win. Have some mercy on yourselves and your wallets and allow us put a few government’s dollars and a bit of the Arab Sheikhs’ money back into your pocket. One should be an idiot to refuse such an offer.”
Talking about national good, long term vision, patriotism is all nice and good, but fundamentally carbon tax swap is first of all an issue of unenlightened or semi enlightened self interest. Carbon tax swap belongs to the same category of things as tax cuts, stimulus packages and their likes. And it is this aspect of the swap that was completely missed both by TF and others.
The most surreal aspect of the situation is that the public recently got so irrational about taxes that it refuses to allow the government to cut taxes just because the public has heard the word “taxes”! No tax reform, no restructuring of taxes seems to be possible these days even when it benefits taxpayers! There is no way the public can be excused for its irrationality and plain stupidity.
However, neither the proponents of carbon taxes are clean on this because of the misguided way the carbon tax swap was presented to the public. And this is my advise to all carbon tax promoters: Stop blaming the public for your own fault. First, get your facts about carbon tax swap straight, then we will see how the public responds.
Obviously I am only scratching the surface here. I could write ten times more. There is a difference between coal and oil. We can take a massive action on oil immediately, but not on coal. Another one: tax on imported oil may be actually preferable to gas tax. Yet another one: When it comes to oil no carbon tax is needed, cutting oil consumption is pretty much the same as cutting emissions. Where emissions are out of proportion to oil consumption carbon tax may be necessary, but in all other cases regular taxes are more straightforward and easy to implement while they are just as effective. We can discuss all of this stuff and more, but first we should restart the debate on carbon tax swap and we should do it better.
from Environment Forum:
Trade lessons for climate negotiators
- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own --
As hopes for reaching a binding agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the Copenhagen summit die, climate negotiators could learn useful lessons on how to structure the negotiations from the multiple rounds of trade talks within the GATT/WTO framework.
Climate negotiations are about limiting carbon dioxide emissions, but the negotiators are also hammering out a complex economic instrument that will define the distribution of production, energy use and income in the next few decades. It is the agreement's profound economic effects that are making it so hard to reach a final deal.
While the stalled negotiations on the Doha Round might make it seem likely an unlikely role model, the GATT/WTO process has successfully created a legal framework for liberalising world trade through eight successive rounds of increasingly complex negotiations, as well as a dispute settlement system accepted by all major countries.
In the process, negotiators have already had to resolve many of the difficult issues bedevilling attempts to reach an emissions deal:
* How to obtain treaty commitments from a huge range of countries at different stages of economic development.
Change the climate narrative
– Nancy Birdsall is the president of the Center for Global Development. Arvind Subramanian is a senior fellow at the Center and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a regular columnist for the Business Standard, India’s leading business newspaper. The views expressed are their own. –
Efforts to cut emissions of the heat-trapping gases are gridlocked over a misunderstanding about what is fair. This misunderstanding is hindering climate change legislation in Congress and threatens to torpedo international negotiations in Copenhagen next month.
We propose a new way of thinking about climate fairness that focuses not on emissions cuts but on meeting developing countries’ energy needs in a climate-friendly manner. This simple narrative can provide a framework for U.S. legislation and open the way for international collaborative efforts to avert climate catastrophe.
At present, many people in the United States focus on the large and growing emissions of the developing world, especially China, which in absolute terms is now the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases, and India, which is growing fast and like China relies heavily on coal. They argue that it would be unfair to force emissions cuts at home without similar cuts in developing countries. A recent poll found that 60% of Americans believe that in any climate agreement China should cut its emissions the most.
It is true that developing countries already account for roughly half of all greenhouse gas emissions, and that their large populations and rapid economic growth are boosting emissions fast enough to create a planetary crisis by 2050-even if today’s rich countries had never existed.
But meanwhile a quarter of humanity — including millions in China and India — live without any electricity, and one-in-three people on the planet rely on straw, brush, charcoal and animal dung for their cooking needs. The resulting indoor air pollution kills 1.5 million people a year — about 4,000 per day — mostly children. Power for small businesses, irrigation networks, clinics and schools is sorely lacking.
Developing countries point to these unmet energy needs and to large disparities in per capita emissions to argue that the rich world must move first. They note that the 20 tons of CO2 that Americans emit annually is five times the world average, well above both China (5 tons per capita) and India (below 2 tons per capita).
Casper in order to exercise logic one must first be able to comprehend what they read. I stated CO2 has increased 20 percent. 300 ppm in 1960 to 370 ppm currently. Oxygen on Earth is currently around 19 percent at sea level and steadily decreasing. The higher the elevation, the lower the oxygen. Thinner air. Fifteen or sixteen percent oxygen content are the limits for large mammals generally though not always.You are correct that humanity has burned up the planet and that the time for debate has passed. I am not so sure that the people of my country have the stomach to do what is required.
Defeats doom climate bill in ’09
– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –
Resounding defeats for Democratic Party gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey on November 3 have killed any lingering hope Congress will enact climate change legislation this year, and may doom the prospect of passing a cap-and-trade bill this side of the 2010 mid-term elections.
Prospects for eventually passing legislation may now depend on winning Republican support with nuclear loan guarantees and more offshore drilling.
While the president remains personally popular, with high approval ratings, and does not need to face the voters again for another three years, 16 Democratic senators and 256 Democratic members of the House of Representatives will be on the ballot in November 2010.
The Virginia and New Jersey off-cycle elections are often idiosyncratic. But crushing defeats for Democrats at the top of the ticket in both states are already sparking a bout of soul-searching over the lessons that need to be learned if the party is to retain firm control of both houses of Congress next year.
What worries many Democrats is that turnout among the young voters who helped propel them to victory last year fell away sharply, self-identified independents broke heavily for the Republican candidates; and voters overwhelmingly cited the economy and jobs rather than healthcare or climate change as their major concern in exit polls.
Democrats face the classic dilemma for any party after a defeat — press ahead trying to enact a difficult agenda or pull back, re-focus on simpler and less controversial measures.
Look over there, my boy and cheer
For coming from the yonder shore,
Bringing promises and more,
Old Cap’n Trade is here.
Far beyond the politics we know,
He sails the seas of emission trade,
Avoiding the perils of party debate,
Just watch him go.
The perils of the world are grand.
Cresting the waves of voter polls
And the erratic winds of public opinion,
The Cap’n will stand.
So away he sails to foreign lands,
While young girls and presidents
Are tucked safe in bed,
And old men sit on their hands.
Who can say just where or when,
Old Cap’n Trade will sail his boat,
Or when that peerless mariner
Will see our shores again?
from The Great Debate UK:
Can emissions be tackled without Copenhagen deal?
Even if a deal is reached among political delegates at the upcoming United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, it is unlikely to set out specific emission targets, says Mike Hulme, author of "Why We Disagree About Climate Change" and a professor at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
"What we've done with climate change is to attach so many pressing environmental concerns to the climate change agenda that trying to secure a negotiated multilateral agreement between 190 nations is actually beyond the reach of what we can achieve," he argues.
Hulme, who will take part in a debate hosted by the Institute of Economic Affairs in November about carbon emission policies and economic activity before he heads to the Copenhagen conference, discussed his views with Reuters.
Climate change is happening. This is an indisputable fact. The only reason the facts seem obscured is because there are many people with a vested interests (who stand to profit), in keeping the global warming issue on the back burner.In the 70′s a whole in the ozone layer was discovered. This ozone hole was attributed to CFC’s. CFCs combine with ozone to create O2, and release chlorine gas which destroys even more ozone.In the 70′s the hole was barely noticeable. Now that barely noticeable hole covers the ENTIRE CONTINENT of Antarctica. So asking if this is really happening is a moot point.Even if we as human beings only contributed to a small fraction of the problem, it still doesn’t change the fact that we are now living in it. And as human beings we have the responsibility of doing what ever we can to make things right.But this whole sorry attitude on the part of die hard profiteers will get us no where. We are facing a very serious problem where we live. We have no other planets to run to. So we would do well to put our heads together to find a solution that will allow us to continue on.
DaBear is wrong as usual, its the republicans and the Chamber of Commerce that heavily supports off shoring our good paying middle class jobs, the republicans killed any legislation that punishes companies for doing so.For some bizarre reason they think the minimum wage workers that remain can sustain our government and pay off the national debt. Talk about a bunch of loons, and then they attempt to blame their evil ways on the democrats. Shame on you DaBear, get some education or shut up…