Bona Biden: Why Biden is such an important pick for those who care about the climate.
Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) on August 25, 2008.

Catastrophic climate change is the primary preventable threat to the health and well-being of all Americans — as readers of this blog already understand and as pretty much everyone else will figure out in the coming years. Keeping total planetary warming as low as possible — ideally below 2°C, which it turn requires keeping atmospheric concentrations of CO2 below 450 ppm — will become the central organizing principle for all U.S. energy, environmental, economic, and international policy over the next two decades, and will almost certainly remain so for the next two centuries.

While this is a long-term problem, “What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment,” as IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri warned last fall. Beating 450 ppm is certainly not politically possible now, as I have argued in a long ongoing series. Indeed, the recent climate debate in the Senate makes it painfully clear that conservatives are prepared to go down with the climate ship.

The current oil drilling “debate” only underscores how hopeless the climate situation is until progressives occupy the White House.

That said, the next president is almost certainly going to pass some sort of climate legislation establishing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions that kicks in around 2015. Again, it won’t be easy to pass a serious bill, but if we had a president who was capable of truly inspiring people and who actually believes in government-led clean energy policies, then I think it will happen.

But — and this is where Biden comes in — even if that legislation is strong enough to put this country on the path towards rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the entire U.S. effort will certainly fall apart if the next president is not able to negotiate a serious international treaty that encompasses all major emitters.

Yet it has become increasingly clear in recent months that achieving a serious, binding international treaty is even more politically implausible a task than passing serious, binding domestic legislation. And that is because Russia has emerged as a country that is likely to be every bit as much an obstacle as China and the United States currently are.

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The Chinese challenge:

I have written about China extensively already, and no one should underestimate the difficulty of getting them to embrace the necessary reductions in projected emissions and then in absolute emissions.

But everyone I know who knows the country tells me that the Chinese leaders understand that global warming will be catastrophic for them — even if those leaders mistakenly believe they can “go back and solve climate change after they get rich,” which has been the standard procedure for how Western countries dealt with traditional environmental problems. Sadly, that approach won’t work with climate because the climate system almost certainly has tipping points.

Also, the Chinese are capitalists and are already poised to become the leading producer of both solar PV and wind turbines. And they could run their entire country on baseload solar, if they figure out fast enough that it is the renewable with the biggest potential as a primary power source and if they return to their strong energy efficiency policies from decades past.

I cling to the view that Chinese could be brought around if their customers all applied enough pressure to them — assuming of course that those customers, including us, are all prepared to take the necessary measures themselves, which is far from obvious.

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Russian recalcitrance:

But Russia may be even more problematic, and not just because they are more self-destructively nationalistic than China (or us). Russia does not have a good solar resource. But they do have a lot of coal and oil — and they very much want to stake a claim to the rich oil resources in the Arctic.

Moreover, they may (mistakenly) think global warming is good for them. Since it will create a navigable Arctic and open up “currently inaccessible energy resources,” no less an authority than The Economist has written, “warming is likely to make Russia richer rather than poorer.” Sad — but quite untrue, especially since we are on path to far overshoot any degree of warming that could possibly be beneficial to Russia.

Perhaps the most important climatic tipping point is in Russia — the Siberian tundra. If that defrosts, then avoiding the equivalent of 1,000 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will be all but impossible. After all the tundra contains more carbon than the atmosphere does, and much of it would likely be released as methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Indeed, we have some evidence that may have already started.

Russia does have a staggering amount of wind potential, but it tends to be in the sparsely populated areas. Russia will need to be convinced that some combination of nuclear, wind, and natural gas can provide all the power it needs, but the even harder task will be convincing them not to use all that oil and coal they have.

Indeed, the great challenge for the world in the next three decades is not so much aggressively deploying low carbon technology — although that would not be easy it would certainly be straightforward both technologically and economically.

The great challenge for the world is political — convincing countries (and states) to leave a lot of the cheap fossil fuel resources they have, especially coal, in the ground, and to agree to import low-carbon electricity from other countries (or states).

That will require not merely strong domestic action by the world’s richest country, the one that has admitted by far the most cumulative amount of carbon dioxide. It will also require global leadership by us, the ability to negotiate one-on-one and collectively with every major country in the world. The Democratic team now has onboard someone who not only gets global warming, but who is certainly one of the most qualified people in the country to help lead that effort from the White House, which is where it must be lead from.

And that makes Biden a great vice presidential choice for Obama, the nation, and the world — that and the fact that picking him signals the Democrats might finally put up a strong fight in the face of the hailstorm of lies and disinformation they face every four years.

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This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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Who’s advising McCain on energy and climate?
Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) on 25 Aug 2008.

Greenwire has also published ($ub. req’d) a detailed list of who is advising McCain on energy and environment policies, which I am reprinting below the fold.

By contrast, McCain’s campaign relies on a small group of longtime friends and advisers. Campaign staff would not comment on why their advisory team isn’t as large as Obama’s, but sources say the staff’s size reflects how frequently the Arizona senator departs from the Republican Party line on environment and energy issues.
I know Woolsey, and he is certainly very solid on energy security issues. But he is the exception. Doug Holtz-Eakin is much more typical of the conservatives McCain is likely to find available to fill his administration. Like his boss, he doesn’t believe in clean technologies and he doesn’t believe in government efforts to promote them.

“I’m not sure a McCain EPA would look any different than an Obama EPA,” quipped Brian Kennedy, a former House Republican leadership aide. “He might even bring Carol Browner back.”
That last quote would be laughable if it weren’t part of a targeted campaign of disinformation. Conservatives — including McCain himself — want the media and independents to believe McCain is liberal on the environment. But his voting record makes clear that he is a hard-core conservative, who happens to believe that global warming is almost as serious as scientists.

The GOP bench is exceedingly thin on genuine green Republicans — and none of them are conservatives. Anyway, here is his team:
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McCain’s team:
Doug Holtz-Eakin, the campaign’s economic policy adviser, handles all energy and environmental matters. Holtz-Eakin, 50, met McCain during the senator’s unsuccessful 2000 run for president. Holtz-Eakin was then an economics professor and associate director of the Center for Policy Research in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Holtz-Eakin had several roles in the Bush administration during President Bush’s first term. He was chief economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2001 to 2002. He then became director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005. Holtz-Eakin also served under former President George H.W. Bush as a senior staff economist in the Council of Economic Advisers.
John Raidt is one of McCain’s longest-serving aides and was policy coordinator for McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. On Capitol Hill, Raidt was McCain’s legislative director from 1993 to 1997 and was staff director for the Senate Commerce Committee. Raidt also worked as a staff member on the 9-11 Commission, which investigated the 2001 terrorist attacks in Washington and New York. Click here to watch Raidt at a panel discussion covered by E&ETV.
James Woolsey, 66, a former CIA director, has been advising McCain on environmental and energy issues since the primary campaign. “I just do what I’m asked,” he said in an April interview. Woolsey said he has known McCain for more than 30 years, dating back to McCain’s job as Senate legislative affairs director for the Navy. Woolsey has served under Democratic and Republican presidents, including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Out of government, his roles include serving as a senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton and as a co-author of the National Commission on Energy Policy report. He has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a master’s from Oxford University and a law degree from Yale Law School. Click here and here to watch Woolsey’s appearances on OnPoint.
Floyd DesChamps, 45, is a longtime McCain aide for energy and environmental issues on Capitol Hill. “No one else would claim it,” DesChamps joked in a recent interview. DesChamps first joined McCain in 1995 as a fellow and returned two years later for a full-time job on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. DesChamps helped write the global warming cap-and-trade bill McCain introduced with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in 2001. He updated the bill in 2005 and 2007. DesChamps also handles technology and space issues for McCain. A design engineer by training, DesChamps started his career working on nuclear submarines for Westinghouse Electric Corp. He would later join the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to review the use of radioactive materials in medical and industrial devices. DesChamps also worked on nuclear engineering at the Energy Department. He has a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina and a master’s degree in engineering management from the University of Maryland.
Rebecca Jensen Tallent is at the center of outreach from the McCain campaign with other informal energy and environmental advisers. Based in Arlington, Va., Tallent, 29, began her Capitol Hill career in 2001 as a legislative assistant in McCain’s Senate office. She moved to Arizona Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe’s office and then returned to McCain in August 2005 to handle immigration issues and reform of the Army Corps of Engineers. Tallent has a political science degree from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.

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This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.