Kerry-Lieberman: Thoughts

Senator Graham pulled out, so it is no longer a tri-partisan effort, more like a Frankenstein of good intentions and unrealized ambitions. What was supposed to be comprehensive climate change legislation for the U.S. has turned into a joke. I mean, come on, the new Kerry-Lieberman climate change bill (The American Power Act) has provisions for expanding off-shore oil drilling. Really? I don’t know much about politics but even I can tell that will go over like a lead balloon in the Senate. With a BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico hemorrhaging 5000 barrels of oil a day, politicians want to include offshore oil drilling in a climate change bill. Really? And that begs the question as to why incentives for offshore oil drilling are in a climate change bill in the first place. Aren’t we supposed to find ways to wean ourselves off the teat of fossil fuels and carbon dependence? Also, Senator Graham cites the importance of the immigration debate as another reason for his withdrawal. All of this highlights the shortsightedness of American policy makers. Understandably, climate change deals in timelines that are more expansive than a single election cycle, or even the life of a single politician, but these are problems that need to be addressed now. We think the immigration debate is at a fever pitch right now, just wait until millions (if not billions) are displaced by rising tides and natural disasters. Climate change refugees on a global scale will make Arizona border jumping look like child’s play. I think that Senator Graham saw the writing on the wall and wanted his name off of this bill of concessions.

I am not saying that America needs its own private Kyoto, not even close. What it does need is an honest effort to address the problem. A problem that is not just America’s. We are starting to become the laughing stock of the world. And why not, I ask? When Fox News leads off its Earth Day coverage with the headline that insinuated that climate change was a hoax. There is no denying that climate change is upon us and that it is anthropogenic. Now the issue needs to be how to stop it. How to stop sea level rise, how to stop increasing storm intensity, how to stop ocean acidification, how to stop loss of biodiversity. The problem lies in the time horizon. A popular adage in the environmental community is that a good economy breeds green, and guess what… we are far from a good economy. Our focus now is on cheap energy, finding jobs, and immigration. We can’t even be bothered with fixing the mess BP has created in the Gulf. I am not saying we are approaching another era of flaming rivers, Love Canals and Silent Springs… I am saying that it could be worse.

Kerry-Lieberman claims to be THE comprehensive climate change bill, and they released it without Senator Graham. While this can be viewed as an act of defiance, it isn’t. It seems to be the fastest way to kill the bill. The target is 60 votes. That is not going to happen with a key Republican backing out of his own bill. What kind of message does that send? It sends the message that America has other concerns. Immigration. That America doesn’t want to play ball with the rest of the world. Byrd-Hagel. That America likes its oil.

Other stumbling blocks (besides the offshore provision that would essentially give states a 37.5% share in the revenues from drilling in Federal waters) in the Act are nuclear power, offsets, and allowance allocation. The problem with nuclear is that Kerry-Lieberman is for it, but not in a smart way. The Act has provisions that would expedite the permitting and construction of new nuclear plants. This is both dangerous and necessary. The last nuclear power plant built went online in 1996 and there have been no new orders for plants since the 1970s. This is a problem. Some European nations, such as France, are almost 80% nuclear. The Act also calls for billions in loan guarantees to build new plants. This is a problem because we still have no place to store the waste. Yucca Mountain is out—Harry Reid has made sure of that. So now we are looking at on-site storage and that is toxic for politicians. No one wants a potential nuclear accident in their state even if it means cheap, clean power.

Another problem is the offsets. If there is one adage in American environmental politics, it is don’t mess with agriculture. Kerry-Lieberman is yet another example of agriculture getting its way. It gets the offsets. To put a finer point on it, the USDA gets oversight over all offset crediting from agriculture and forestry. Also, the cap for offsets is set at 2 billion tons of carbon per year, which is way too high. Offsets are essential for a cap and trade system to work effectively and efficiently. They allow flexibility and allow covered entities to come into compliance in the cheapest manner possible- either clean up your act or pay for offsets. Simple. Except for the fact that these offsets can lack environmental integrity and to allow so many in could bust the cap and lead to no real reductions in CO2 levels. If the offsets come from projects that generate no reduction in carbon emissions, the integrity of the cap will be compromised. Kyoto has struggled with this, as has the European Union-Emission Trading System. It seems like we are next.

The last problem is that only 25% of allowances are to be auctioned. Ideally, 100% of allowances should be auctioned to send a proper price signals as to the true value of carbon in the market. As it is designed, the government gets to pick winners (utilities and heavy manufacturers). While this amounts to windfall profits to utilities, they are to pass on the benefits to consumers. This is a problem because it creates a perverse incentive for consumer to keep consuming. The goal seems to be cheap power, not clean power.

There are problems. Lots of them. Some that could be worked out in committee, others that might sound the death knell of the Act in its entirety. However, this should not mean that America isn’t ready for energy reform. We are. Past due, actually. Changes must be made and this is a notable step in the right direction, it just seems that something has gotten lost in translation. While there are aspects of the bill that are not ideal, I understand that politics is like sausage making. What you want is the end product, you don’t want to know how it’s made. Kerry-Lieberman may be like that. Lets see what we get when it gets out of committee. Hold your breath (just because soon you wont be able to breathe the air).



For more information on Kerry-Lieberman see:

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/05/11/kerry-lieberman-short-summary/

or

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/12/kerry-lieberman-american_n_572963.html

Kagan’s Stance on Environmental Issues Uncertain but Promising

President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to replace Justice John Paul Stevens has generated the usual questions from both sides the political spectrum, often raising more questions than answers. Kagan’s views on environmental issues will be particularly important, because as the government acts to increasingly regulate greenhouse gas emissions and institute cap-and-trade programs in the coming years, legal challenges to such issues will reach the Supreme Court with increasing frequency. As far as her stance on these issues is concerned, Kagan hasn’t expressed a clear view in favor of upholding environmental regulation, but her actions as dean of Harvard Law School should give environmentalists hope.

During her nearly six years as dean, Kagan brought Harvard’s Environmental Law program from relative obscurity to its current position as one of the best in the country. She started the school’s environmental law program in 2005, and created its environmental law clinic. In what was seen as one of the most prominent hires of her time as dean, Kagan persuaded Jody Freeman, an expert on environmental policy who served as the White House Counselor for Energy and Climate Change, to leave UCLA in order to head the program. While these actions don’t give a clear answer to how Kagan would decide important environmental issues, they do show at least a general support of environmental protection.

Kagan further showed her understanding of environmental issues in a letter in the summer 2008 Harvard Law Bulletin. In the letter she spoke favorably of moving past litigation to an interdisciplinary approach to combat what she called “the growing perils posed by greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change.” This way of thinking could hopefully turn into support for a broad range of measures to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Although Elena Kagan is undoubtedly not an outspoken advocate for environmental protection, her limited record should at least provide a sense of optimism. She seems to understand the importance of climate change regulation to the future of our country, and her moderate approach to the issue could help gather the five votes needed to sustain any environmental regulation that reaches the Supreme Court.

Engaging the Public in the Latest Round of Rulemaking on Forest Planning

On May 11 and 12, in Washington, D.C. (actually, Rockville, Maryland) the Forest Service convened the last (for now) of a series workshops on forest planning. This most recent workshop followed a series of workshops throughout the country in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of interested parties gathered together to offer the agency their ideas for improving national forest planning and management. As a party to the Lakewood, Colorado workshop and the most recent workshop in Rockville, I’d like to share a few personal observations and conclusions.

First, the Forest Service deserves substantial credit for initiating this remarkable process. The agency wisely chose to hire an outside professional consultant (Meridian Institute) to organize and facilitate public involvement and the consultant performed admirably. Moreover, recognizing that not everyone has the time, inclination, or interest to participate in workshops, the Forest Service has supplemented this more conventional process, with a web page, blog, live web casts of the workshops, and other electronic resources, in an effort to engage a broader audience.

Second, if the first step to addressing a problem is admitting you have one, then the Forest Service seems well on its way to addressing its problem with planning. While the workshops certainly did not dwell directly on past failures, the unspoken premise for much of the discussion was that forest planning is broken. Agency officials seem to get that. Despite several substantial efforts to develop a workable planning process, going back to at least the early 1980’s, land and resource management plans, as they are called, take far too long to prepare and are too often the subject of appeals and litigation. Moreover, they tend to suck most of the energy (and financial resources) out of the agency, with the result that not much is left to adequately assess project level decisions and to engage in post planning monitoring of forest conditions.

Third, the Forest Service seems genuinely committed to engaging the public and hearing how they might improve the planning process. Numerous agency officials at all levels actively participated in both the regional and national workshops and they genuinely seemed grateful for the public’s sometimes disparate ideas for designing a smarter approach to forest planning.

Fourth, the level of dialogue among participants was, on the whole, quite sophisticated, but it was also welcoming toward the views of those with less direct experience in forest planning. Kudos once again to the facilitator, Meridian Institute, for attracting and convening a diverse group, and for structuring an efficient and effective program for engaging participants with varied backgrounds in the task at hand.

A good process, of course, does not guarantee a good result, and time will tell whether this process will fulfill the agency’s goal of developing a better way to do planning. But the prospects for better forest planning are brighter because of the choice of process, and we owe the Forest Service a debt of thanks for offering other agencies a model for effectively engaging the public in this important decision. Now it’s our turn to offer the agency our best ideas for improving forest planning.

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Mark Squillace is a law professor and the Director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School. Some of his views on the substantive issues surrounding forest planning are set out in a post titled Rethinking Forest Planning on the Forest Service’s planning blog.

too many leaks; too few answers

Last month an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and caught fire. Following the initial explosion the underground pipes from the rig continued to leak oil. This has become the worst environmental disaster, in America, in the last decade, and is threatening to surpass the Exxon Valdez leak of 1989 to become the worst environmental disaster ever in America. The story has been gaining lots of media coverage and the focus of this coverage has been broad. Originally, I was impressed at how many different parts of the disaster the media was trying to cover, including: how it happened, who is responsible, how is it going to be stopped, how will it be cleaned up, who will clean it up, etc., but my optimism quickly faded as it became clear that while there was a lot of coverage about the questions surrounding the disaster, there are few answers to actually be found.

Finger pointing and passing the buck has continued to keep any positive progress on solving the problem from happening. Even after there was a Senate hearing over the cause of the disaster it is still unclear who was responsible. Everyone blames someone else down the line. It was BP’s fault, and then it was a concrete plug that wasn’t correctly poured, or a failure of a safety device and battery. While the blame game continues the leak has still not been stopped. Two attempts to cap the well have fallen short, and there appears to be no other solid strategy to seal off the leaks. It boggles my mind that with all of the attention this problem has received there has not been any new plans made or attempted to stop the leak at the source. Before the cleanup can begin it is necessary to contain the problem. The leak occurred over three weeks ago and it still has not been stopped. I believe that more attention should be turned to why this hasn’t been stopped instead of focusing on other issues, like who is to blame, which is trivial at this point and can be determined at a later time.

An important question yet to be answered is the impact that this event will have on off-shore drilling? President Obama has been pledging to make future changes between the Government and oil industry, but what will these changes entail? This has re-opened many concerns and fears about off-shore drilling, but it may still be a necessary evil because the need for oil has not decreased. It will have to continue, but how will it be improved to prevent another tragedy from occurring?

I am tired of finding all of these reports that provide nothing but more questions. Even my own rants about this issue have added nothing but more questions. Enough time has passed, and I am ready for solutions.