President Obama will this week become the first African American President to make an official visit to an African country.

The most interesting fact is that he does not go to South Africa or Nigeria - the two countries that compete for the unofficial title of leaders of black Africa. President Obama decided to go to the oil producing belt of West Africa, and this cut out South Africa;  then he chose the unassuming Ghana, rather then the feisty Nigeria - the most populous black state and important partner of the US in oil trade.

Why? What does he teach in this visit?

Nigeria is a corrupt state to its bone. Even its son, the Nobel Price winning Wole Soyinka said that neglecting Nigeria was just the right medicine that Nigeria needed. He continued then with the shocking statement: “I’d ’stone’ Obama if he showed up in Nigeria and conferred legitimacy on its sorry government.”

Ghana on the other hand, a much smaller West African nation, as of now with little US trade, did hold fair multiparty democratic elections since 1992, and  has a history of incumbents stepping down once they reach their term limits.

Ghana is a beacon of hope to Africa and has produced the only two-terms African UN Secretary-General, Koffi Annan, who we hope will be at hand when President Obama arrives for a day at the end of this week.

Yes, we know, it is rumored that the US is interested in Ghana also as it is the newest arrival to the West Coast Oil-belt, and with China making inroads in the region, the US might be interested to establish here a military base as well as an oil trade relationship.

But even so, this US President showed preference for clean government if this is at all possible.

Africa watch and learn!

Chanukah is a Jewish “Fourth of July” and a most Zionist holiday. that was the only reference I found by putting to google the task “A Jewish Fourth of July” “The Jewish Week” - this even though the paper had such an article in its July 3, 2009 issue. That was quite a pitty because the column under Jewish Intelligence - Jinsider was actually very good.

The missing column was by Jinsider legal intern Zack Eisner and Rabbi Simon Jacobson and should have been available also at www.meaningfullife.com - but was not.

It starts by saying that though the Founding Fathers doid not go to Hebrew School, nevertheless Jewish wisdom can be found in the Declaration of Independence and in the US Constitution - and then goes through the following four points:

Unalienable Human Rights via “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” That is clearly based on the Torah saying that all human beings are created in the image of God and are equal as persons - so it would also imply equality between men and women.

Faith via the Declaration of Independence and the First Commandment implying there is a creator even when going after the separation of church and state.

Justice via the 15th Amendment calling for due process of law, and the scriptures: “Hear both small and great alike. Do not be afraid of man for judgement belongs to God.”

Free Speech via the 1st Amendment, and in the scriptures the greatest men and women of faith spoke out and even challenged God.

We liked that column as it shows how the paper is moving away from self-centerd positions to issues of general interest by linking to the American society at large. This being stressed further in this week’s editorial dealing for the first time with the issue of Climate Change and a very good editorial it was indeed.

 ———-

First Step On Climate Change

The Jewish Week, by The Editor, July 3, 2009

Climate change is a difficult issue to grasp. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that the planet is warming and that the emission of greenhouse gases are a cause, but it’s hard to identify the milestones of these changes in our everyday lives.

Seriously addressing climate change will require sacrifices from all of us, never a popular notion with politicians in our democracy. And there are too many vested interests determined to fight any real attempt to reverse climate change before it is too late.

That’s why last week’s House passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act was such a landmark. The legislation is hardly comprehensive, and passage in the Senate is by no means assured, but it represents the first  real attempt by political leaders to deal with the root causes of climate change. Perhaps more importantly, it is an important first step in altering a national mindset that puts today’s economic comfort ahead of the planet’s future.

We are pleased to note that several Jewish groups, led by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, were active players in the fight for passage. The Orthodox Union played a role in ensuring that religious groups would get a share of the funding for environmental upgrades.

Addressing the crisis in a practical but aggressive fashion is crucial to giving future generations a chance for the security and prosperity we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. It is related to the essential drive for energy independence that will greatly affect Israel’s as well as our own nation’s future. It is a matter of social justice, since the world’s poor are being more adversely affected by the early consequences of climate change. And time is running out, many scientists warn, with the potential costs of inaction reaching genuinely perilous levels.

“We have only been given one world to live in and for too long humanity has not done its part to ‘till and tend’ the earth for future generations,” said JCPA president Rabbi Steve Gutow. “We must do a better job in reducing air pollution, cleaning up rivers and streams, and protecting the wilderness. Congress’ vote to move forward with the climate bill was a good first step.”

We agree. {Concludes Gary Rosenblatt - The Editor}

———–

Furthermore, this week’s Middle East political topics take into account Mr. Sarkozy encouraging Mr. Netanyahu to make changes in his government by returning Tzipi Livni to the office of Foreign Minister, which would mean replacing the Avigdor Lieberman party with Kadima in his governing coalition. There are reports on the Ehud Barak-George Mitchell meeting in New York, and on the ways the Obama Administration might figure its near future moves in the Middle East - these presentations - obviously with Israel at heart - are nevertheless seen from an angle that says what is best for the US.

———

So why are we excited?

For years (at least for the last eight years) The Jewish Week, like the Israeli government, had all its eggs in the Washington Administration basket when it came to questions of climate change/global warming as they were interrelated with a Washington sold all to the oil interests - and the Jewish lobby like the Israeli government, thought that it would serve them best by being on the side of oil and not stir the pot.

The climate change article/editorial is not just a first in Washington’s acceptance of a pro-climate bill,  but a first article of this kind in The Jewish Week - sort of an independence of having to look over the shoulder at what the oil lobby - Jewish and otherwise - wants them not to say. we would like to hope that now Jewish organizations will find that basically all what the scientists and the ethicists are saying on environment in general, and on climate change in particular, has been put in the scriptures a long time ago. The Torah asks us to take care of God’s creation - not just to get funded from stimulus money!

It boggles our mind how all these years the Jewish lobby, and the State of Israel as well, did not speak up on the issue of making the world less addicted to oil - there is no state on the planet that had actually more interest then Israel in reducing this addiction of the world economy to petroleum. We understood the politics and why they kept away from it - so this issue of The Jewish Week marks to us not just Amerca’s Independence Day - but you bet - the independence of the Israeli people as well, and we hope they will now start looking at what Israeli governing coalition would serve their interests best.

———

 

Having said the above, for some sort of balance, I want to add what “The Week” of July 3-10, 2009 quotes from Tony Judt, Professor at NYU and usually viewed as unfriendly to Israel, who wrote those things for The New York Times.

He says: Every Mideast peace plan presumes that Israel will have to disband its settlements in the West Bank,  but there is just one catch understood in Israel but not in Washington: “The settlements will never go.”

He proceeds and tells us that with 500,000 residents in those settlements, or 10% of the Jewish inhabitants of all of Israel, and with Maale Adumim now at 35,ooo and taking in more land than Manhattan, simply put, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu will never dismantle them - so he asks - why does Washington pretend otherwise?

What above says is that a new start is neded for the handling of the Middle East negotiations - the building of a future by starting with negotiated final borders, and interestingly, it was the President of Arab-Americans who suggested recently that in order to allow for a start of negotiations - vertical increase of settlements could be acceptable for the time being, but not further horizontal structures.

 

The President Breaks Hearts in Appalachia.
Friday 03 July 2009
by: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  |  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…
Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?

If ever an issue deserved President Obama’s promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day - the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly - to blow up Appalachia’s mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains - encompassing about a million acres - buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region’s air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia’s rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not - obliterating the hemisphere’s oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas - while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry’s promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry’s fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains - with their impoverished and alienated population - are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.

Obama promised science-based policies that would save what remains of Appalachia, but last month senior administration officials finally weighed in with a mixture of strong words and weak action that broke hearts across the region. The modest measures federal bureaucrats promised amount to little more than a tepid pledge of better enforcement of existing laws.

And government claims of doing everything possible to halt the holocaust are simply not true. George Bush gutted Clean Water Act protections. Obama must restore them.

First, the White House should fix the “fill” rule the Bush administration adopted in 2002 to allow coal companies to use streams as waste dumps. Under this perverse interpretation of the Clean Water Act, 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been interred under mining waste. Obama could reverse the “fill” rule to reflect its original meaning, which forbids waste matter from being dumped into waterways.

Second, the Interior Department should strictly enforce the widely ignored “buffer zone” rule that forbids dumping waste within 100 feet of intermittent or perennial streams.

Third, our laws require companies to restore mined areas to their original condition. The administration should end the absurd fiction that extraction pits filled with unconsolidated rocks and rubble where trees will never grow and streams will never flow are “reclaimed.”

  Fourth, current law forbids the issuance of “fill” permits that will cause “significant degradation” to waterways. It is absurd for the Army Corps of Engineers to endorse the canard that filling miles of streams is not causing significant degradation. The president should require the Corps to deny and rescind permits where operations will cause downstream damage.

Fifth, the Clean Water Act requires mining operators to prove that they can restore the “function and structure” of affected streams. Operators have never been compelled to make the functional or structural analyses of the aquatic ecosystem required by the act. Obama should order his officials to stop ignoring this requirement.

Sixth, the administration should enforce the law requiring an environmental impact study for each permit when a mine “may have significant environmental impacts,” individually or cumulatively. The Corps of Engineers routinely allows coal operators to escape this mandate - an illegal practice that should stop.

Instead of acting to enforce these laws, administration officials indicated last month that they will allow more than 100 permits to go forward while they carefully review their regulatory options. If they act accordingly, the ruined landscapes of Appalachia will be Obama’s legacy.

President Obama should go to Appalachia and see mountaintop removal. My father visited Appalachia in 1966 and was so horrified by strip mining - then in its infancy - that he made it a key priority of his political agenda. He complained that Appalachia, with our nation’s richest natural resources, was home to America’s poorest populations, its worst education system, and its highest illiteracy and unemployment rates. These statistics are even grimmer today as mining saps state wealth. In 1966, 46,000 West Virginia miners were collecting salaries and pensions and reinvesting in their communities. Mechanization has shrunk that number to fewer than 11,000. They extract more coal annually, but virtually all the profits leave the state for Wall Street.

The coal industry provides only 2 percent of the jobs in Central Appalachia. Wal-Mart employs more people than the coal companies in West Virginia. Last week a major study documented how coal imposes a net cost to Kentucky of more than $100 million per year. Coal is not an economic engine in the coalfields. It is an extraction engine.

Obama has the authority to end mountaintop removal, without further action from Congress and without formal rulemaking. He just needs to make the coal barons obey the law.

——–

The writer is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Aspen Ideas Festival
June 29, 2009 - July 5, 2009
Aspen, CO

We watched on C-Span the Aspen Institute discussion and we deffer our reporting to David Brooks’ professionalism. Brooks defined himself as one of the last still active liberal Republicans. Others on that panel were two Wertheimers - Linda Wertheimer and Fred Wertheimer - both very centrist speakers.

Fred Wertheimer is founder and president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan organization that works to ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. Wertheimer has spent more than 35 years working on money and politics issues and has been described by The New York Times as “the country’s leading proponent of campaign finance reform.” He is a national leader and spokesman on campaign finance, ethics and lobbying reform, and government accountability. Wertheimer previously served as president of Common Cause; as a Fellow at the Shorenstein Press, Politics, and Public Policy Center at Harvard University; as J. Skelly Wright Fellow and visiting lecturer at Yale Law School; and as a political analyst and consultant for CBS News, ABC News, and ABC’s “Nightline.”

 

Linda Wertheimer is a senior national correspondent for National Public Radio. Before her current post, she spent 13 years as a host of NPR’s flagship news magazine, “All Things Considered.” She has worked at NPR for more than three decades and has held various positions, including congressional and national political correspondent. In 1976, she became the first woman to anchor network coverage both of a presidential-nomination convention and of an election night. She has received numerous journalism awards, including those from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, American Women in Radio/TV, and the American Legion. Wertheimer has also received the prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. She is the author of Listening to America: Twenty-five Years in the Life of a Nation as Heard on National Public Radio (Houghton Mifflin, 1995).

NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
Chinese Fireworks Display.
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: July 2, 2009

On July Fourth, we think about our country and its future. But these days it’s impossible to think about America and its future role in the world without also thinking about China. This was the subject of a combative discussion this week at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

The agent provocateur was Niall Ferguson of Harvard. China and the U.S., he argued, used to have a symbiotic relationship and formed a tightly integrated unit that he calls Chimerica.

In this unit, China did the making, and the United States did the buying. China did the saving, while the U.S. did the spending. Between 1995 and 2005, the U.S. savings rate declined from about 5 percent to zero, while the Chinese savings rate rose from 30 percent to nearly 45 percent.

This savings diversion allowed the Chinese to plow huge amounts of capital into the U.S. and dollar-denominated assets. Cheap Chinese labor kept American inflation low. Chinese efforts to keep the renminbi from appreciating against the dollar kept our currency strong and allowed us to borrow at low interest rates.

During the first few years of the 21st century, Chimerica worked great. This unit accounted for about a quarter of the world’s G.D.P. and for about half of global growth. But a marriage in which one partner does all the saving and the other partner does all the spending is not going to last.

The frictions are building and will lead to divorce, conflict and potential catastrophe. China, Ferguson argued, is now decoupling from the United States. Chinese business leaders assume that American consumers will never again go on a spending binge. The Chinese are developing an economy that relies more on internal consumption.

Chinese officials are also aware that the U.S. will never get its fiscal house in order. There may be theoretical plans to reduce the federal deficit and the national debt, but there is no politically practical way to get there. Depreciation is inevitable and the Chinese are working to end the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.

Chinese nationalism is also on the rise. The Internet has made young Chinese more nationalistic. The Chinese are acquiring resources all around the world and with them, willy-nilly, an overseas empire that threatens U.S. interests. The Chinese are building their Navy, a historic precursor to expanded ambitions and global conflict.

Think of China, Ferguson concluded, as Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany in the years before World War I: a growing, aggressive, nationalistic power whose ambitions will tear through pre-existing commercial ties and historic friendships.

James Fallows of The Atlantic has lived in China for the past three years. He agreed with parts of Ferguson’s take on the economic fundamentals, but seemed to regard Ferguson’s analysis of the Chinese psychology as airy-fairy academic theorizing. At one point, while Fallows was defending Chinese intentions, Ferguson shot back: “You’ve been in China too long.” Fallows responded that there must be a happy medium between being in China too long and being in China too little.

Fallows pointed out that there is no one thing called “China” or “the Chinese,” and that many of the most anti-American statements from Chinese officials are made to blunt domestic anxiety and make further integration possible. That integration, Fallows continued, is deep and will get deeper. Many, many Chinese leaders were educated in the U.S. and admire or at least respect it. If you go to cities like Xian, you find American and European aviation firms fully integrated into the commercial fabric there.

Fallows’s main argument, though, was psychological. When he lived in Japan in the 1980s, he said, he sometimes felt that the Japanese had a chip-on-their-shoulder attitude in which their success was bound to U.S. decline. He says he rarely got that feeling in China. Instead, he has described officials who are thrilled to be integrated in the world. Their mothers had bound feet. They themselves plowed the fields in the Cultural Revolution. Now they get to join the world.

Some of the officials interviewed by Fallows believe the U.S. is following unsustainable fiscal policies that will lead to decline, but they view this with frustration, not joy. Fallows doesn’t know what the future will hold, but he believes that Chinese officials still see the dollar as their least risky investment. Domestically, China will not turn democratic, but individual liberties will expand. He agreed that China and the U.S. will dominate the 21st century, but he painted the picture of a more benign cooperation.

I came to the debate agreeing more with Fallows and left the same way, but I was impressed by how powerfully Ferguson made his case. And I was struck by their agreement about what to do. This conversation, like many conversations these days, gets back to America’s debt. Until the U.S. gets its fiscal house in order, relations with countries like China will be fundamentally insecure.

Leading By Example This Independence Day.
By Jeff Siegel of Green Chip Living,  Friday, July 3rd, 2009

So here we are, gearing up for another Independence Day. The early fireworks have been going off all week, and the early corn tastes unseasonably sweet. Some will spend tomorrow attending 4th of July parades, some will park it in front of the television, and some will be working 4th of July sales. If you’re doing the latter, I feel for you.

Of course, even though I won’t be working tomorrow, I’ll inevitably be reading articles about how we need to declare our independence from fossil fuels. These obligatory articles seem almost too predictable at this point. Not that I’m complaining. After all, it’s important to be reminded of the fact that we truly are held hostage by our reliance on fossil fuels - particularly oil.

But I find that some of these articles can have a negative effect. In other words, if they become too preachy, folks tend to become defensive. And that’s the last thing we need. So when it comes to spreading the word about breaking the shackles of our fossil fuel dependence, I often refer to something my father told me at a very early age while doing chores - don’t tell me about, just do it.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about…

In the past, you’ve likely read something I’ve written about hybrids. Well, I not only write about them.. I also drive them. Not at home, because 95 percent of the time, I take public transportation. It’s just too easy not to. But when on business, if I need to rent a car, I always try to rent a Prius. And I do this because on nearly every single trip, someone will ask me - either genuinely or mockingly - how the gas mileage is. And it always brings me great joy to tell them. Especially on my last trip to Raft River, ID, when I inadvertently had our Prius cruising at around 85 to 90 mph. I’m not advocating speeding. But admittedly, I was very happy to report to a foreman at the U.S. Geothermal power plant that we still managed 41 mpg!

For me, it’s always been about spreading the word, and practicing what you preach.

So this Independence Day, I’m not going to write an article about declaring our independence from fossil fuels. I’m simply going to do my part to decrease my fossil fuel consumption. That means using the light rail to get to the fireworks display downtown, and buying only organic vegetables (that don’t use petroleum-based synthetic fertilizers) and local, grass-fed beef (which doesn’t have to be shipped from 1,500 miles away) for our cookout.

It may not end our reliance on fossil fuels - but it limits my contribution to it.

I do hope you have a fantastic Independence Day.

But before you head out to the fireworks or the parades, check out this week’s stories at Green Chip Living, including:

Fed works to speed solar development in Southwest

Senator Inhofe grasps at straws to continue his campaign of denial

10 Outrageous claims about Climate Change

Organic farming gaining ground in the South

Increase in renewables aids Human Rights

To a new way of life, my friends…

Jeff

Franny Armstrong Informs us that Scotland has become the first nation world-wide to comply in full with the IPCC CO2 emissions’ cut.  It is a 42% cut based on 1990 by 2020.

Compare above with the US 14% based on 2005 by 2020 - it is indeed more then 10 times the cuts suggested in the US House of Representatives legislation and 5 times the EU’s 20 by 2020 plans.

 http://www.christianaid.org.uk/ActNow/Co…

Scotland! Bonny, bonny Scotland has finally passed its own Climate Act, and in the process has become the first rich nation to commit to mid-term targets that are actually in line with the IPCC’s guidelines for avoiding that dreaded 2˚C threshold. Massive bigups to Stop Climate Chaos, WWF, Christian Aid and Friends of the Earth Scotland for all their work to make that happen, as well as everyone else who took the time to lobby their MSPs about this. Scotland actually now leads the developed world in climate mitigation policy. Who knew?

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20…

      Scottish parliament agrees tougher 42% target to cut emissions.

Campaigners say ‘hugely significant’ vote to cut emissions by 42% by 2020 sets new ‘moral’ standard for the rest of the industrialised world

Scotland has set itself the world’s most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets after the Scottish parliament voted today to cut the nation’s CO2 emissions by 42% by 2020.
In a rare show of unity, all political parties at Holyrood unanimously agreed to fix the target as part of a radical climate change bill which also requires the Scottish government to set legally binding annual cuts in emissions from 2012.

The measures are tougher than the 34% target set in the UK government’s climate change act last year, which has no statutory annual targets. In common with UK government aspirations, the new act also commits Scotland to an 80% reduction on 1990 levels by 2050.

The campaign coalition Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, which claims its 60 member organisations represent two million people, said this “hugely significant” vote set a new “moral” standard for the rest of the industrialised world.

It comes the day after the US stated that a 40% cut by 2020 was “not on the cards”: developing nations have demanded this level of cut from rich nations.

Kim Carstensen, head of WWF International’s global climate initiative, said: “At least one nation is prepared to aim for climate legislation that follows the science. Scotland made the first step to show others that it can be done. We now need others to follow.”

However, the new measures are already under intense scrutiny. The act allows ministers to reduce the target later this year if the UK government’s advisory panel on climate change says it is unrealistic, or the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December fails to agree on a global deal to replace Kyoto.

Environment groups are critical of the Scottish government’s refusal to abandon road, bridge and airport expansion programmes, its plans for a new coal-fired power station, and its unwillingness to tackle directly increasing car use.

Furthermore, Scottish ministers only directly control about 30% of Scotland’s total annual emissions of 68m tonnes of CO2 – which only equates to a 700th of the world’s emissions. Most significant policies are controlled in Brussels and London, critics point out.

About 40% is covered by the European Union carbon emissions trading agreement, while the UK government has policy responsibilities for a further 30% of Scotland’s emissions. That includes fuel taxation, low emission vehicles, VAT on energy efficiency and air taxes.

The Committee on Climate Change, the panel set up to advise Gordon Brown’s government, has warned Salmond that Scotland is effectively jumping the gun by setting a 42% target in advance of a deal at Copenhagen.

In a letter to Stewart Stevenson, the Scottish climate change minister, the committee’s chief executive, David Kennedy, said it believes Scotland should follow the UK strategy of waiting until the Copenhagen conference.

If a deal is reached, it should follow the UK government’s lead and only then set a 42% target.

The Scottish government had also increased the pressure on itself by including emissions from international aviation and shipping in its target, Kennedy wrote, even though it has no control over policy for these sectors.

“I would therefore consider that an appropriate Scottish 2020 target could be set slightly below 34% to account for different treatments of international aviation under UK and Scottish approaches.”

Despite these criticisms, the chairman of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, Mike Robinson, said the significance of the all-party consensus could not be underestimated.

“It means Scotland’s climate change bill has the toughest target of any industrialised nation in the world and will be held up as an example, ahead of the climate talks in Copenhagen in December, of what can and should be done,” he said.

“This is a moral commitment and we hope other developed nations will hear this call for action and follow Scotland’s lead.”

Although on renewable energy the Scottish National party is very likely to surpass its ambitious targets to deliver half of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020, ministers have failed to embark on any politically unpopular measures to combat car use or the growth in short-haul aviation.

It has authorised a second road bridge over the Firth of Forth and abandoned bridge tolls, paid to extend the M74 motorway, supports a new ring road around Aberdeen and dualing the A9 and wants a major new coal-fired power station.

Its most ambitious emissions-reduction policies, such as using carbon capture for all fossil fuel power stations, using marine energy, and a wholesale switch to green transport, either have targets set at 2030 or are largely UK-government controlled. The SNP has also completely ruled out any new nuclear power stations.

——————-

Scotland ‘Leads the World’ in the Fight Against Climate Change

The Scottish Parliament today (Wednesday 24 June) led the world by passing the strongest climate change legislation of any industrialised nation.

MSPs voted in favour of legislation that commits Scotland to:

at least 80% cuts of all greenhouse gases (on 1990 levels) by 2050
a 2020 target of at least 42% reduction in greenhouse gases
include the full effects of emissions from international aviation and shipping from the start
a strong duty on all public bodies to make a full contribution to tackling climate change
strong energy efficiency measures to tackle fuel poverty and save energy
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) has been campaigning for three years to see these key elements included in the Bill.

Mike Robinson, Chair of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, said: This is a truly momentous day. The Scottish Parliament has voted for legislation that will be held up as a positive example to the world ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen in December. An emissions reduction target of at least 42% and the inclusion of aviation and shipping from the start sets Scotland’s Bill apart from the UK Act. We hope other developed nations will hear this call for action and follow Scotland’s lead. Now that MSPs from all parties have made these moral commitments, they have a responsibility to do what is necessary to deliver them.

Stop Climate Chaos Scotland commends the Liberal Democrats and Greens for introducing robust targets early in the process and Labour and the SNP for their strong targets as the Bill neared conclusion.

—————
To the Editor:

Re “In Climate Change Bill, What May Become an Election-Year Issue” (Congressional Memo, June 27, The New York Times):

It is clear to me, having watched the climate bill debate in the House, that many Republicans simply do not believe that global warming is real, is caused by burning of fossil fuels and will lead to devastating consequences in a matter of decades if the status quo is maintained or actions to lower greenhouse gas emissions are inadequate.

This is reinforced in your article, describing Republicans “almost in a celebratory mood” at the close of the debate, believing they had gained a trump card to be used in future elections.

I can only hope that voters will take the time to read what the scientists are saying and see through the hot air offered by those politicians who deny global warming and deny the urgency of the situation.

Michael Yellin
Montclair, N.J., June 28, 2009

•

To the Editor:

“Betraying the Planet,” by Paul Krugman (column, June 29, The New York Times), recognizes that we can no longer afford to deny global warming, particularly in light of heavy Republican opposition to the Waxman-Markey bill that was passed in the House on June 26. Refuting global warming certainly constitutes betraying the planet, yet, surprisingly enough, so does supporting the bill.

A minority of the 212 representatives who voted against the bill did so because they considered the bill too weak. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that countries should cut their emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Yet the short-term target in the bill offers only a 4 percent reduction by 2020, which just begins to signal the numerous problems with the bill.

Supporting this bill is a step backward and would only further betray the planet and give in to these global warming deniers.

Brian Howe
Manlius, N.Y., June 30, 2009

•

MONDAY, JULY 6, 2009
THOMAS G. DONLAN - EDITORIAL COMMENTARY  BARRON’S MAGAZINE

The Cap That Doesn’t Fit - A cap-and-trade system for reducing emissions looks great on paper. Did politicians feed their copies to the dogs?

FEW CONCEPTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS COULD be more logical and efficient than a “cap-and-trade” system to reduce emissions of a noxious substance. All it requires is competent authorities to decide, on the basis of the best scientific evidence, how much of the substance should be allowed to escape into the world. Then the authorities print up certificates allowing that much emission, which they auction for cash. The emitters then can buy and sell the certificates in a free market.

Emitters with no easy alternative will bid vigorously for certificates as a matter of survival, but an emitter with an easy alternative also will bid, because he can sell certificates after reducing his own emissions.

The market for certificates also will attract speculators and hedgers; the rapid exchange of cash will stimulate invention; every emitter who can reduce emissions will profit; there will be less of the noxious substance; and the world will be a better place.

Those industries that are low emitters and those that can easily curb their emissions will be winners. Emitters with no choices will have to buy certificates and they will pass their new costs along to their customers, or go out of business. Their customers also will be worse off if they have to pay higher prices or curb their use of products that can’t be made without the noxious emissions.

Thanks to the market for cap-and-trade certificates, the authorities and the citizenry will know they have done the best they can in the face of a serious challenge: Emissions will be lowered at the least possible cost, and everyone who benefits from emissions will pay for the reduction.

Theory and Practice

That’s the story in some economics textbooks. In the real world, it is hard to find competent regulators, harder to understand the best scientific evidence and hardest of all to determine what emissions actually are noxious. The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference. But in practice, there is.

The House of Representatives passed a cap-and-trade bill last month to control carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It’s considerably different from the textbook version of cap-and-trade. It is a remarkable case study in political science, focused on special-interest pleading and rent-seeking.

The bill, drafted under the supervision of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), is crammed with energy-wasting, money-wasting pet ideas. After promising to hand out 85% of the permits at no charge, the bill also provides loopholes and exemptions and escape clauses from the cap-and-trade system.

From coast to coast, the Waxman-Markey bill subsidizes, mandates and spends the taxpayers’ money on the ideas and industries dear to them and to a couple of hundred other congressmen. Markey and Waxman imagine cap-and-trade as a tax on business that won’t tax customers.

“Food Fight at the Carbon Trough”

Joining the congressmen in such absurdity are some major U.S. corporations. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership includes more than the usual environmental activists. Big energy producers and users are also members, including the former Big Three auto companies, ConocoPhillips, Alcoa, DuPont, and several big electric utilities.

Maybe they hope to have a voice in the shaping of the final legislation — a form of political-risk management. Some, such as General Electric and Siemens, may hope to reap subsidies for their green investments.

European businesses went along with a pan-European cap-and-trade system that started in 2005. That system has provided little reduction in carbon dioxide, but it has taught a few lessons.

The European regulators created too many emission certificates and they exempted 55% of greenhouse-gas emissions. The market set the price of certificates at nearly zero, and emissions increased under the system designed to reduce them.

After 2007, the system was tightened. Now the European authorities claim credit for reduced emissions, although the worldwide recession and the high energy prices of 2008 may also have something to do with it. Imagine how Congress will follow the European example. Not all emitters will have to have certificates — some will be more equal than others: small businesses, of course, especially small farmers, and individual car owners and homeowners and any other groups that vote in great numbers.

After that, industries and traders will be lining up and lobbying for the “free” certificates — always with the argument that one industry is unfairly hurt, or that another industry is extremely important to the economy and deserves a break. Kenneth Green, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, predicts “a food fight at the carbon trough.”

It will be just like the food fight at the defense trough, the food fight at the stimulus trough, the food fight at the tax-break trough, the food fight at the housing trough, the food fight at the health-care trough, the food fight at the poverty trough, the food fight at the oil-and-gas trough and at all the other troughs Congress has created.

No-So-Hidden Tax

In the current political debate, cap-and-trade has been denounced as an energy tax in disguise. It is, but raising energy prices is a sensible thing — probably the only sensible thing — if you want to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions or increase energy efficiency.

Higher energy prices are an effective incentive to conserve. Tradable permits, moreover, can work better than a straightforward energy tax, because the system can allow for winners and losers. A tax forces every energy user to cut back; the cap-and-trade system can push for the least efficient energy users to cut back the most and allow the most profitable uses of energy to expand.

Cap-and-trade will slow down economic growth and put some Americans out of work. But a properly designed system should be less painful than an energy tax, and far less painful than a regulatory mandate for equal reductions by all emitters.

If carbon-dioxide emissions are a real environmental problem, cap-and-trade should be the right economic solution. But, first, Congress has to read the textbook.

Editorial Page Editor THOMAS G. DONLAN receives e-mail at  tg.donlan at barrons.com.

—————–

Barron’s concludes: It is hard to find competent regulators, harder to understand the best scientific evidence and hardest to determine what emissions must be controlled. The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference, but in practice there is.

 

We liked the above Barron’s article and we also see a move at The Wall Street Journal that starts to see the truth in the danger from Climate Change - so the money folks start seeing the reality and even better - they start like in this Barron’s editorial - to makes positive criticism in the name of true free enterprise concepts - so the culprits are no more the scientists but the politicians and spcial interests with their manhandler Washington lobbyists legionaires.

 

Among the other self appointed speakers for free enterprise, we still find that The Cato Institute was left nearly alone as speakers for plain insanity as they still doubt that there is a man made global warming effect and distribute long lists of names with professorial titles (lots of them emeritus) addressing now President Obama with “all due repect - Mr. President, that is not true” notes on all what the vast majority of world’s scientists have already accepted as immediate needs for action.

But then, in utter disbelief, we founfd that Alan Reynolds of CATO is ready to accept a fuel tax if this is what will save that miserable US General Motors company that no way can measure up to today’s world without being propped up by the corrupt culture that allowed for its boom time.

We rather feel that it will be a time to danse when finally the curtain is drawn on GM.

See Mr. Reynolds, big Wall Street Journal OPINION piece for which he got paid - we hope.

Fuel Standards Are Killing GM: A higher gas tax is a better way to get green cars on the road.

By ALAN REYNOLDS

General Motors can survive bankruptcy far more easily than it can survive President Barack Obama’s ambitious fuel economy standards, which mandate that all new vehicles average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

The actual Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) results will depend on the mixture of fuel-thrifty and fuel-thirsty vehicles consumers choose to buy from each manufacturer — not on what producers hope to sell. That means only those companies most successful in selling the smallest cars with the smallest engines will, in the future, be allowed to sell the more profitable larger pickups and SUVs and more powerful luxury and sports cars.

Sales of Toyota’s Prius, Yaris, Corolla and Scion, for example, allow and encourage Toyota to market more Lexus 460s, Sequoia SUVs and Tundra pickups in the U.S. without incurring fines. Hyundai’s success selling Accent and Elantra compacts allows it to sell 368-horsepower Genesis sedans.

Similarly, Ford has the Toyota-licensed hybrid Fusion and will soon produce the European Ford Fiesta in Mexico. Chrysler will soon have Fiats. But what does GM have?

No independent reviewer suggests that the Chevy Aveo and Cobalt are credible contenders in the small car field. Even the president’s auto task force finds the electric Chevy Volt “unviable,” since it will lose money unless priced above a Cadillac CTS. The Opel-engineered 2011 Chevy Cruze will face tough competition from Asian cars whose reliability is better established. Launching such new models will be even tougher in the future, now that GM has lost control of Opel.

GM accounted for about 19% of vehicle sales so far this year, but the company had a much smaller share of the market for small cars and SUVs (which accounted for 20% of total sales through May). To continue offering a Toyota-like array of larger cars and trucks under ever-tighter CAFE rules, GM would have to capture a much larger share of the market for small and/or diesel-powered vehicles. Unfortunately, European and Asian car makers have decades more experience building reliable subcompact cars and diesel engines for their local markets — where consumers face steep taxes on gasoline and large engines.

General Motors does produce competitive cars and trucks, but not one of them is small. Consumer Reports recommends three GM cars and three GM trucks. The recommended cars are the Chevy Malibu (the unrecommended hybrid has been dropped), the large Buick Lucerne and the Cadillac DTS. Consumer Reports recommends the Chevy Avalanche and Silverado and the GMC Sierra trucks. Car enthusiast magazines insist on adding Camaro, Corvette and the 556-horsepower Cadillac CTS-V to that list.

Among those nine best GM vehicles, only the four-cylinder Malibu achieved as much as 25 mpg in Consumer Reports testing. The others get 12-17 mpg, yet they are no less fuel-efficient than comparable foreign brands. The Environmental Protection Agency rates the mileage of the Toyota Sienna van and Nissan Titan pickup as worst in their class, and comparable Chevys as best. Unlike GM, however, Japanese car companies sell enough small cars to offset the large and thus hold down the average figures.

General Motors is likely to become profitable only if it is allowed to specialize in what it does best — namely, midsize and large sedans, sports cars, pickup trucks and SUVs. The company can’t possibly afford to scrap billions of dollars of equipment used to produce its best vehicles simply to please politicians who would rather see GM start from scratch, wasting more taxpayer money on “retooling” to produce unwanted and unprofitable subcompacts and electric cars. The average mileage of GM’s future cars won’t matter if nobody buys them.

Politicians are addicted to CAFE standards because they create an illusion of doing something sometime in the future without voters experiencing the slightest inconvenience in the present. Tighter future CAFE rules will have no effect at all on the type of vehicles we choose to buy. Their only effect will be to compel us to buy larger and more powerful vehicles from foreign manufacturers. Americans will still buy Jaguars, but from an Indian firm, Tata, rather than Ford. They’ll buy Hummers, but from a Chinese firm, Tengzhong, rather than GM. The whole game is a charade; symbolism without substance.

As a matter of practical politics, rescuing GM from strangulation by CAFE will require offering economically literate environmentalists a greener alternative, i.e., one that works. Luckily, the government has two policy tools that, with minor modifications, really could discourage people from buying the least fuel-efficient vehicles.

One is the federal excise tax on “gas guzzlers,” which could take some fun out of the horsepower race except that it applies only to cars, not to SUVS, vans and trucks. Why not apply this tax to all types of gas guzzling vehicles? Owners of trucks used for business could deduct the tax in proportion to miles used for business, as they do with other vehicular expenses. Phase it in after 2011 to encourage buyers to snap up the unsold inventory of gas guzzling trucks quickly — a timely “stimulus plan.”

Second, the federal fuel tax is highest on the most efficient fuel (diesel) and below zero on the least efficient fuel (ethanol). Cars get about 30% better mileage on diesel than on gasoline, and cars running mainly on gasoline get about 30% better mileage than they would using 85% ethanol.

To stop distorting consumer choices, simply apply the same 24-cent-a-gallon federal tax to gasoline and ethanol as we do to diesel. This would add funds to the depleted federal highway trust. More importantly, it would remove an irrational tax penalty on buying diesel-powered cars — arguably the most cost-effective way to improve mileage without reducing car size or performance.

These two proposals are a greener alternative to CAFE, because they’ll work. But they’ll only work if Congress totally and permanently abandons the charade of CAFE. It is arguably worthwhile to accept a modest tax increase in exchange for an end to harmful regulations, but that exchange is effective precisely because it is not painless.

Unifying fuel taxes and broadening the excise tax on gas guzzlers makes sense as an alternative to CAFE. Otherwise it’s just more pain with no gain.

If politicians insist on tightening fleet average mileage standards for bankrupt auto companies, how could those rules be enforced? The only penalty for violating CAFE rules is a big fine. If consumers keep refusing to buy enough small cars from GM and Chrysler to allow them to meet the CAFE rules, how are those companies expected to pay the fines?

The government is already planning to spend about $50 billion bailing out General Motors plus $7 billion for Chrysler. Will President Barack Obama provide Detroit auto makers with even more subsidies to pay CAFE fines?

Maybe so. That would be only slightly more bizarre than current plans to bribe folks with $4,500 to sell their “clunkers,” or to offer huge tax credits to those rich enough to buy a $73,000 hybrid Cadillac Escalade or an $88,000 Fisker Karma.

The bottom line is that CAFE standards are totally unenforceable and ineffective. Regardless of how much damage the rules do to GM and Chrysler, Americans can and will continue to buy big and fast vehicles from German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indian car companies. CAFE standards might just be another foolhardy regulatory nuisance — were it not for the fact that they could easily prove fatally dangerous for any auto maker overly dependent on the uniquely overregulated U.S. market.

Mr. Reynolds is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and the author of “Income and Wealth” (Greenwood Press, 2006).

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page  A13, Thursday July 2, 2009.

 http://democracyctr.org/blog/2009/06/amb…
 http://www.as-coa.org/article.php?id=173…

SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 2009
Ambassadorial Moves

Last September, in the midst of violence by opposition groups in the Bolivian departments of Santa Cruz and Pando, President Evo Morales accused U.S. Ambassador Phillip Goldberg of having a clandestine hand in that violence and ordered him out of the country.

That set off a chain reaction of diplomatic tit-for-tats. The Bush administration kicked out Bolivia’s ambassador to Washington, Gustavo Guzman, then “decertified” the Morales government’s anti-coca program and based on that cut Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade preference program. Unable to resist a good diplomatic mud-wrestling match with Washington, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pushed himself into the game and kicked out the U.S. ambassador to his country as well, leading to the Bush administration’s ouster of Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S.

By the time it was over. this diplomatic version of “screw you, no screw you“, left behind four embassies operating on auto-pilot, a path or torched diplomatic relations, and with the elimination of the trade preferences, thousands of Bolivian workers with their jobs on the line.

Well, this week, as part of the ongoing game of making nice between the Obama administration and the Chavez government, the two countries announced that they are returning their respective ambassadors to Caracas and Washington. U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy and Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez are dusting off their suitcases and getting ready to return to their former diplomatic outposts. This follows Obama’s and Chavez’s “all smiles” visit in April at the Summit of the Americas in Tobago.

So what about the diplomatic rift that started it all, between the Washington and La Paz?

Interestingly, even as Chavez, the supposed “bad boy” among the South American left presidents is rebuilding bridges, Morales’ moves with the U.S. are still sour. At Tobago, while Chavez was handing Obama a book to read, Morales was demanding that the U.S. President declare that his fingerprints weren’t on the alleged assassination conspiracy linked to four men killed by government troops in Santa Cruz.

So, will U.S. and Bolivian ambassadors be returning to their posts anytime soon? Certainly, the same ambassadors won’t be, as in the case of Venezuela.

Former Ambassador Goldberg probably wouldn’t choose to return to La Paz for all the saltenas in Cochabamba, given the constant state of combat between he and Morales. This week Mr. Goldberg was handed his new U.S. diplomatic assignment, leading the U.S. team in charge of implementing sanctions against the government of North Korea over its recent atomic tests. That probably fits Mr. Goldberg better anyway, who in Bolivia seemed much more at ease chastising foreign leaders than forming good relations with them, a task that Morales never made especially easy.

Former Ambassador Guzman, who I visited with a couple of months after his return to La Paz, probably wouldn’t head back to Washington for all the Starbucks coffee in Dupont Circle. He and his family, including a new baby, seemed quite happy to be back home in Bolivia once more.

This past week Secretary of State Clinton sent an emissary to talk with Morales, following up on a high level U.S. diplomatic mission here not long before. Clearly the Obama administration would like to get its Bolivian relations in order. Where Morales is on this is anyone’s guess.

But if an announcement between La Paz and Washington is forthcoming, akin to the one this week between Washington and Caracas, both countries will have to go through the process of nominating and approving a new pair of ambassadors.

In Washington that process will likely go smoothly, with few in the Senate likely to challenge whomever President Obama selects (I am betting on a Latino or Latina). In La Paz the case may be different. The opposition in the Senate already denied, last year, President Morales’ appointment of Pablo Solon as Ambassador to the UN (he now essentially serves in that post, but under a different title). That was pure politics, given the fact that Solon is probably the most able representative Bolivia could have in the U.S.

So watch in the next week or two for signs that Bolivia and the U.S. are ready to follow suit with Venezuela and refill the ambassador positions in their respective capitals. And then watch for it to get weird, as U.S./Bolivia relations just seem to have a tendency to do.

“The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity” - a book
by Sir Nicholas Stern as presented by Joanne J. Myers to the Carnegie Council - Ethics in International Affairs, New York City - May4th, 2009.

 http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcrip…

The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity.

Ma4y 4, 2009

Introduction JOANNE MYERS: I’m Joanne Myers, Director of the Public Affairs Program. On behalf of the Carnegie Council, I’d like to welcome our members and guests, and to thank you for joining us on this rainy Monday morning.
Today, our speaker is a world-renowned economist, Nicholas Stern.

Lord Stern is a man of many achievements. But the one that is most relevant to our discussion this morning is his work on climate change. Since the release of the 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate change, commissioned by Gordon Brown when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, this seminal document and the ongoing debate on this subject has made Lord Nicholas the man to turn to when questions about the costs and benefits of dealing with global warming arise.

In fact, from what I’ve read, it seems as if almost every significant discussion of climate change since has drawn heavily on his findings. This report has now been transformed into a book for the general public and is entitled The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity.

In focusing on the economics of climate change, Sir Nicholas shifted the debate away from polar bears and unseasonable summers and reframed the argument in the cold language of the balance sheet. In The Global Deal, Lord Stern evaluates our economic future and the essential steps we must take to protect growth and reduce poverty while managing climate change. He is guided by three principles, those of effectiveness, efficiency and fairness. By proposing green technologies, international emissions trading, and financing to halt deforestation, he lays out the technological and economic foundations for new industries by which he believes we can overt a catastrophe.

At the heart of his work is a simple calculation, which is if the science of climate change is right, the transition costs incurred by switching to low-carbon economy will, however daunting, be a fraction of what we will face by averting disaster. In other words, the cost of doing nothing about global warming would be very high, while the cost of transforming our energy system would be relatively low.

Climate change is often an awkward issue for governments to address, as the costs are immediate, while benefits only accrue in the future. Even so, understandings will be vital this year, as the world’s nations and their negotiators count down toward a UN climate conference to be held in Copenhagen in December. This is a target day for concluding a grand new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that reduced carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions by industrial nations.

While we may be a planet in peril and the global financial crisis could distract us from the bigger task of tackling climate change, Lord Stern sees global warming as an opportunity to bring forward investments in low-carbon technologies. In the long-term, these efforts could provide sustainable and well-founded economic growth.

Please join me in giving a very warm welcome to a very distinguished guest. We are honored to have you with us.

——–

Remarks

NICHOLAS STERN: Thank you very much, Joanne. That was a very kind introduction. And thank you all very much for coming today.

Since the Stern Review was published two and a half years ago, much of my time has been spent, since I’m back in academic life, arguing with my fellow economics professors about the best way to look at these issues. And we’re doing all right with that. They’re starting to understand just how big this is and what that means for the kind of economics that they have to bring to bear. So I sort of went back into academic life and wrote academic papers, which you wouldn’t want to read unless you’re heavily into mathematical economics.

But the other part of what I’ve been doing is working with people around the world, particularly in developing countries, which was the big part of my professional life before I got involved in climate change. In Europe, my own country the U.K., still part of Europe, and the U.S., for two years or so, I’ve been intensely involved in these discussions. And these have shaped, in large measure, the structure of the book, and indeed, my motivation for writing the book.

So what I want to do in the time I’ve got is to explain something about the global deal. How would we come to an international agreement to tackle climate change? What would it look like? What principles should it be built on? But before you can do that, you have to understand yourself why it is that you need such an agreement. But also, the quantitative analysis of why you need such an agreement actually shapes the agreement itself in very large measure.

So what I want to do is to begin with the logic of the problem, why it’s so important, the scale of what we have to do, because that shapes everything else. The scale shapes everything else, and the logic of the problem itself, because it’s a risk management problem, with long time lags. That also shapes the kind of agreement that we should be putting together and the difficulties in putting it together. So let me explain, from the beginning, in a very simple and fast way, I hope, the basic science, how that shapes the economics you should bring to bear to analyze the problem. And then on the basis of those things, what the global deal should look like.

I know that most of you are not economists. There’s a lot of economics underlying what I will say. I won’t go into it in any detail. The fact that you’re not economists is your fault. Most of you would have had the opportunity at some point in your life, and you didn’t take it. But I am not going to dwell on that. But those of you who are economists will recognize that there’s quite a lot of difficult stuff underlying what I have to say.

So here is the problem. It starts with people and it ends with people. People, through their lives, their production consumption, the way they live, emit greenhouse gases. They emit more greenhouse gases than the earth can absorb. And therefore, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rises. So there is a flow stock problem. And that’s critical to the logic of the whole thing. The flow of emissions, because they’re not fully absorbed, adds to the stock.

The next link in the chain is from the increase in stocks of greenhouse gases to temperature increases. That’s the very simple greenhouse effect. It’s a piece of science that goes back nearly 200 years now to French mathematician and physicist, Fourier. By the end of the 19th century, the gases that were causing this effect were basically identified, and there was some initial quantitative work on how big some of these effects might be.

The greenhouse effect is very simple physics and chemistry. Those of you who have been in a greenhouse will have noticed that it’s warmer in the greenhouse than outside. The very good reason is that the glass in the greenhouse prevents some of the infrared energy escaping, and that’s how the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere works. It’s not mysterious or complex or dubious science. It’s just a very basic physics and chemistry effect.

So from global warming, from increased concentrations, increased temperatures, from increased temperatures to climate change. And the language of climate change is the language we should use, not global warming, because it’s climate change that causes the problem. And most of it’s through water, in some shape or form. Storms, floods, droughts, sea level, sea level rise. The temperature does have a direct effect, in some cases, through heat stress, changing the length of growing seasons and so on. But basically, it’s the effect of the increased temperature on the climate that’s the issue. And, of course, those effects, storms, floods, droughts, sea level rise, have a very direct impact on people.

So that’s the logic of the problem: Key aspects of that chain of events—there were five links in the chain, you were counting, that I just described. The logic of that problem shapes the economics and the politics of it all in a very profound way. First, the atmosphere doesn’t recognize where the greenhouse gases came from. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Los Angeles or Beijing or Johannesberg or London. They have the same effect. It’s global in its origins and it’s global in its impact. That global feature of the problem is absolutely fundamental.

There are lots of things that we do in life that damage what other people can do. When we take our car out, we slow other people down. If we emit, as we did in London and many other places, soot from coal fires, we give people bronchitis and heart disease. But you can see, in a very direct way, how these effects are working. They’re local, and the effects are fairly observable, and they’re fairly immediate. This is a global problem and many of these effects have long legs. So the links in the chain I describe, some of them take years or even decades to manifest themselves. That, again, affects the politics of all of this in a fairly profound way. So by the time you see these effects with their full force, it’s actually too late to head many of them off.

So you can see the way in which the logical structure here has a profound effect on what you should do and how you should do it and how you see your relationships with others. Also, this flow stock story is critical because it means the costs of delay are immense. When you have a collapse of WTO talks, as we do in life, you get together five years later, and it’s a pity that you lost those five years, but you resume roughly where you were. This is not the case with climate change, because you would have had those increased flows which increase the stocks. And you’re in a more difficult starting point five years down the track.

So this logical structure, the problem, is very important in what you can do in the politics of it all. I’ll come back to that in just a moment in one or two respects, although it runs right through what I’m saying in the book. But let me just describe the magnitude. And here, you will need a little bit of mental arithmetic. It’s not hard stuff. But it’s very important that we get a feel for the numbers. We start around where we are now, around 435 parts per million of CO2 equivalent. That’s the measure of the stock, the concentrations, at the moment, 435 parts per million of CO2 equivalent. 380-something of that is CO2. And then the rest is other greenhouse gases translated into CO2 equivalent. We’re adding about two and a half parts per million a year. And that two and a half is rising. So since the two and a half we’re adding a year is rising, averaged over a century, we would be adding, on average, well over three parts per million a year. So a century of that, it’s a bit over 300. Add a bit over 300 to 435. If we didn’t do much, at the end of the century, we’d be about 750 parts per million.

If we stopped it right there, what would the temperature eventually be within a decade or two or three? It would be about probably around five degrees centigrade, or roughly 50/50 probability of being above or below five degrees centigrade. All of this has to be expressed in probability. This is a risk management issue. What does five degrees centigrade look like? Well, we’re not sure because we haven’t been there for about 30 million years as a planet. We’ve experienced five degrees below that quite often. Well, very recently, actually, 10 or 12,000 years ago, the last Ice Age when the ice sheets came down roughly to New York and London, natural benchmarks for latitude.

But where were people? Of course, there were quite a lot of people around 10, 12,000 years ago. People have been around 100—well, it depends how you count people, but 100,000, 200,000, depending on your definition of Homo Sapiens, or depending on your definition of sapiens, I suppose. But 100/200,000 years, humans have been around, we haven’t seen five degrees centigrade for 30 million years. At that time, the Eocene period, the world was covered in swampy forests. Very little ice, anyway. Five degrees centigrade below, we have seen, much more frequently.

And, of course, both of these things, five degrees up or five degrees down, transform where people can be. They rewrite the rivers. They rewrite the coastlines. Most of where we are, as humans, is shaped by rivers and coastlines. Southern Europe would probably look like the Sahara Desert. People would have to move. People would move on an enormous scale, just as they moved when it was five degrees centigrade lower. People haven’t seen five degrees centigrade higher, nowhere near. Three degrees centigrade 2 or 3 million years ago.

Again, way, way before humans. So we don’t really know how we would react to that, other than to be able to say where we could live and how we could live would be radically different. The snows would go off the Himalayas, the big rivers of the world would get rewritten—I mean, the big rivers of the world, in terms of the populations that they present. The big majority of them, not all of them, of course, but the big majority of them arise in a few hundred square kilometers of the Himalayas. Now, if you just go clockwise around from the Yellow River to the Yangtze to the Ganges and the Brahmaputra and the Jumna and the Indus. You’re talking about rivers that are the main sources of water for countries with a couple of billion people, with a billion or so or more directly affected by those rivers. You would just rewrite where people would be. Populations would move. Hundreds of millions, probably billions of people would move, and we would have extended world conflict.

This is not Nick Stern, the economist, describing this. This is simply Nick Stern relaying to you what the science tells us in a very direct way. But I’m expressing it in a way that allows us to start thinking about this as an insurance story or a risk management story in what we’re ready to pay to reduce the odds. If we held these concentrations of greenhouse gases below 500 parts per million, which we could with strong action, and I’ll describe what it is and what it would cost, if we held those concentrations below 500 parts per million, that 50/50 probability being above five degrees centigrade would come down to something like 3 percent. And that’s a huge insurance gain, a huge rich risk reduction, if we did manage to hold it below 500 parts per million.

We can’t hold it below 450. We will be at 450 in about six years. I mean, we’re adding two and a half a year, and six times two and a half is 15. Add that to 435. You know, in six years, we’re at 450. But we can hold below 500. And we can also be thinking about how we bring it on down from there. It takes a while to do that, and even 500 is a very dangerous place to be. Far, far less dangerous than 750, obviously. But we could work out how to bring it on down from there.

What would it cost us? Very roughly speaking—I could have told the story in three, four, five, six degrees centigrade, but just to be specific and to cut down the time, I told it in terms of five. But it’s the whole distribution that counts, not just one particular temperature like five degrees centigrade. What would it cost us? Well, relative to business as usual, we would probably have to take out about 65 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. What do we have to do? We have to get down from the over 50 gigatons that we emit each year at the moment. We have to get down to about 20 gigatons by 2050. That’s, roughly speaking, the path associated with holding below 500. In 1990, we were at 40 gigatons. So getting down to 20 gigatons in 2050 is cutting by 50 percent, relative to 1990.

So globally, the kind of path I described of holding below 500 involves getting down to about 20 gigatons as a flow. 500 is the stock. Getting down to about 20 gigatons is a flow by 2050. And that involves —depends on how you define business as usual, but taking out around 65 gigatons. And now you have to do another piece of arithmetic. It’s only multiplication. It’s not hard. 65 gigatons. We could probably do that at an average, and an average costs about $30 a ton. So $30 a ton times 65 gigatons. Well, you’ve obviously got 195 in there or 1.95 or 19500, however you do the numbers, and, of course, you’ve got to get your decimal points in the right place when you do this sort of thing. You’ve got to remember that giga is billion. Scientists like giga. Economists like billion. But giga, billion, same thing. So it’s actually, when you multiply 65 gigatons or 65 billion tons by $30 a ton, it’s 1.95 trillion, 2 trillion dollars, close enough.

What will world income be in 2050? It’s a bit over 50 trillion now. If we’re sensible and follow good policies in climate and elsewhere, it could easily double. I mean, not if we don’t, but it could easily double. That makes the arithmetic and the percentages easy. We’re a bit over 50, so a bit over $100 trillion in 2050. So two in 100 or so is around 2 percent. So you can build this up through boring old economic models and so on. But it’s very important to get a feel for why these numbers are what they are.

So for around 2 percent of GDP—I picked that for the year 2050, but it might look something like that for a while, for the next few decades—you buy this enormous reduction in risk. You make the difference between probably destroying the planet, as far as it is a place for life in any sense for humans, as we know it—that’s if you do nothing—but if you act sensibly and pay this very modest insurance premium, you can reduce the risks to levels which are probably manageable.

So that’s basically the story. What does it look like if you try to do this? Well, in the first place, a properly constructed green recovery would help us to get out of a recession. That’s the very, very short run. For the next two or three decades, we will create a technological revolution similar to, probably bigger than, the railways, electricity, the motor car, or IT. We will create a, those of you who like your economic history, we will create a Schumpetarian technology innovation investment-driven story of growth for the next two or three decades. When we get to low carbon growth, we will have something—because it’s the next three, four or five decades that’s the transition to that story—but when we get there, we will have a form of growth which is cleaner, more energy secure, quieter and more biodiverse.

And if we run the clock forward just a bit more, we will have reduced the risk of the transformation of the planet, which would occur as I just described it. This is a no-brainer. I mean, you’ve got the short run returns, you’ve got the driver of the technological story for the next two or three decades, you create a form of low carbon growth that’s much more attractive, and you drastically reduce the risks of major transformation of the planet. It’s just good sense, basic economics.

The wise investors and the wise business people are already out there seeing where this is going. And it’s even getting detailed. I mean, in Korea’s green recovery, they say, well, if the U.S. is going to build a smart grid, smart grids need smarter plants, they’re going to be made here in Korea. And people are already running through this story, seeing the opportunities.

But what we can’t do is pretend that there are no investment costs in this transition. There are investment costs in this transition. They’re serious. But they’re manageable. And they will happen, provided that the governments of the world set the right kind of framework for this to happen. And it means economic policy. It means a price for carbon, through attacks or a trading scheme or a bit of each. It means regulations. It means regulations on emissions. It means doing what we’ve just done in the U.K., announcing that there won’t be any more coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage. These are the kinds of policies it needs. It needs public, private partnerships in helping develop new technologies. It needs strong and clear policies to get there.

But basically, here we are. We know the kind of scale that we have to act on. We know the kinds of areas where we have to act, energy efficiency, low-carbon technology, and stopping deforestation. We know the economic instruments that we have to use. “Know,” in this sense, means have a good idea of. But we know enough to set off down the road. And we’re going to discover and learn like mad along the way. So we know the scale, we know the areas where we have to act, we know the kind of economic instruments. It’s now a matter of political will. And it’s this year that is absolutely crucial for putting that political will together.

I’ve already described, actually, one way or another, many aspects of the global deal. But let me now just pull out the global deal, from what I’ve said.

The global deal, if it’s going to be agreed and sustained, will have to be effective on the scale that’s necessary. I’ve already described that.

It will have to be efficient. That will be crucial because there will be serious costs of investing in the transition. It’s crucial to keep those costs as low as possible. If people think we’re wasting money pursuing those policies, then those policies will become politically fragile.

And it’s got to be equitable. Because otherwise, the different countries around the world, the different groups in the population will not support it or would not stay supporting it.

It has to be led by the rich countries. The rich countries, in terms of early action and I think it has to be led by the poor countries in terms of design. Because it’s the poorer countries of the world who are affected earliest and hardest, although we’re all affected, in the story I just described, in a very profound way.

But it’s the rich countries who have to take the lead in action. Why? Because they’re responsible, the 1 billion, out of the 6.7 billion, who live in rich countries, are responsible through their economic history for something like 60 to 65 percent of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now. They’re largely responsible, through the pursuit of high carbon growth; but this is a very difficult starting point.

We really wouldn’t have wanted to start from here. But we are where we are. And it’s the rich countries who are largely responsible through that pursuit of high carbon growth in the past. Of course, they’re better off, and they have the better developed technologies. So I think the responsibility for early and strong action clearly lie there.

Where do we have to go to in terms of what each country should look like now? Well, I’ve already said we’ve got to get down to 20 gigatons, and I’ve explained why. In 2050, there will be 9 billion of us, roughly speaking, plus or minus a few hundred million. There will be 9 billion. So if we’re emitting, as a world, 20 gigatons, and there are 9 billion of us, remembering again that giga and billion are the same thing, 20 divided by 9, you can all do that, even on a Monday morning, is just over 2. So we’ve got to be down to 2 tons per capita as well, roughly speaking.

Where are we now? Well, Europe, Japan is 10, 12 tons per capita. So to get from 10 to 12 to 2, divide by 5, cut by 80 percent. There’s nothing mysterious in the idea that rich countries should be cutting by 80 percent. 1990 to 2050, it just follows from the arithmetic.

Now, the United States is over 20 per capita. And Barack Obama said we’ll cut by 80 percent, 1990 to 2050. He really meant 90 percent. Because, you know, to get from over 20 down to 2, you’ve got to divide by 10, right? But never mind, we’re a very tolerant lot in Europe. The basic thing is if you set out strongly down the right road, a lot of the arithmetic, a lot of the technology is going to sort itself out later on.

We shouldn’t get overly hung up about exactly 80 or 90 percent. It does matter to have a strong view of where we’re going. And it does matter to set off down that path in a strong way. I mean, that’s what’s crucial. So when we get to Copenhagen, the 2050 will be the anchor for the arithmetic. There’s going to be some very hard bargaining, and there should be, over 2020. Because 2020 is surely an indication of whether we’re serious about getting to where we want to go in 2050. And that’s going to be where, I think, hard stuff is going to come. And it’s already coming in Copenhagen. The Waxman-Markey Bill talks about 7 percent reductions by 2020, relative to 1990 for the U.S. That’s a tough ask, actually, for the U.S., because they’re already 16, 17 percent above 1990. So to get back to 7 percent, below 1990, by 2020, as in Waxman-Markey, means taking off about a quarter in a decade.

Now, this is where the politics of this is going to get tough. Because there are two ways of looking at 2020. I’m sure there are many ways of looking at 2020, but here are two. 2020 is the midpoint between 1990 and 2050. They’re arithmetically unexceptionable. And 2020 is 10 years after 2010. Again, we can’t quarrel with the arithmetic. But the perspective is fundamentally different. Because in countries like the U.S. and Canada, and I was in Canada a couple of days ago talking to environmentalists and others, and there it’s a good deal higher in the U.S. relative to 1990. So to get, say, the U.S. as in Waxman-Markey, I take out of 25 percent in the next ten years is going to be tough.

But then, you know, sitting in India or China or Indonesia or Brazil or South Africa, you’re saying, “I see, you’re going to cut by 80 percent , 1990 to 2050. And at the halfway stage, 80 percent you’re going to take out in six decades. And after three decades, you’ve taken out 7 percent?” How serious does that sound?

So you can see why these two different perspectives on 2020 matter. And I think as a world, we have to recognize we’ve only been serious about this for two or three years. And we are getting serious about this. And that’s what makes me more optimistic about getting a global deal. So that’s going to be hard bargaining and very difficult. But I hope we can get there. It’s going to need a lot of mutual understanding.

But here it is. I more or less described the global deal. It’s 50 percent reductions overall, 1990 to 2050. If people keep going on about percentages, just bring them back to the 20 gigatons in 2050, because that’s what really counts, and the path to get there. 50 percent reductions overall, 80 percent reductions for rich countries.

None of this is going to work unless the developing countries are absolutely at center stage. 8 billion out of the 9 billion people in 2050 are going to be in currently developing countries. If the rich world was emitting precisely zero in 2050, then the average for the developing world would have to be not 2, but 2 1/2 tons per capita. This cannot work unless the big majority of people in the world are involved.

So that’s essentially a story which says that over the next ten years, the developing world will embark on climate change action plans. China described a climate change action plan two years ago, India one year ago, Brazil and South Africa at the end of last year. They’re starting to develop serious engagement in working out how to cut emissions. Now, where I see the global deal working out is the developing world explains to the rich world, these are the conditions. This is conditionality of the developing world on the rich world.

Take those 80 percent cuts you’re talking about. Be credible over the next decade. Develop the technologies. Share them with us. We’ll be developing technologies. We’ll share them with you also. The biggest producer of photovoltaics is in China. One of the biggest windmill producers for electricity is in India. They will be sharing technologies both ways. But develop the technologies, share them with us, help us with the finance, help us with adapting to climate change, because it’s really happening and it will happen, and we need to invest to protect ourselves against what’s going on and to pursue development in a more hostile climate.

You do all of these things, those are our conditions, and we will commit now to taking on targets, say from ten years time. In the meantime, here are our climate change action plans. Please help us with those, because the more you do, the more we can do. This is the way in which this discussion is starting to move, and I think it should move. But building on the kind of commitments, the rich countries are already indicating that they’ll take on.

Trading will be very important, both to bring the costs down, and to allow flows from rich countries to poor countries. The sharing of technologies, I’ve already described. We need explicit mechanisms for doing that. And I’m very happy to discuss those in questions. We have to stop deforestation. It’s responsible for 20 percent of emissions. There’s no way we can achieve these targets without stopping deforestation. China is reforesting, it’s not deforesting. India has declared for a target of 33 percent of the area forested. I think it’s about 22, 23 percent now, isn’t it? So if India makes it, that’s a big change too.

But, of course, it’s the tropical forests which really count—Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Congo, Central America, and so on. Those are the big things that really count there. We have to stop deforestation. That has to be a battle which is integrated into the whole development story. You can’t tackle deforestation in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brazil unless you help those governments create alternative opportunities, more productive agricultural opportunities outside agriculture, improving the ability to develop and enforce property rights and so on. It has to be integrated in the development story. So you’ve got to stop deforestation.

And we need to look, again, at the challenge of the Millennium Development Goals and beyond about financing for development. Because when we did those calculations—and I am partly responsible, it’s a shared responsibility, for not building climate change in as we should have, because I was Chief Economist at the World Bank when the UN had its Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey in 2002, and I led the writing of the Report for the Commission for Africa in 2005. And in each case, we understated the challenge of climate change for development. But we have to face up as a world to the extra costs of meeting development goals in the context of a changing climate.

So there you are. That’s the global deal. The targets, the trading, the technologies, the finance, the deforestation, and the adaptation story. Huge amounts of detail to work on. But it’s the framework that really counts.

Will we get there? I don’t know. But if we say it’s all too difficult, then nothing is ever going to work—and the U.S. is not going to give up its big hydrocarbon cars, and the British are too lazy to do anything, and the Chinese always cheat—you can tell, I can sit in a bar and tell the story. It’s very easy to do. But if you believe that, what is the consequence?

Well, you can’t wiggle out of the science. I mean, it’s basically clear and there. So if that’s what you really believe, you’re saying, well, we’ve got another 50, 100 years to go in terms of the kinds of life that we got used to leading. And we will, over that period so transform the planet, so that we’ll be living actually in very different and much more difficult ways. So if you’re negative and pessimistic about all this, it’s self-fulfilling. We won’t get there if you all say it’s all too difficult. And the consequences will be very severe. We must be honest about those consequences. So,buy a hat, some suntan lotion and write a letter of apology to your grandchildren. If you really want to push the negative part of the story. So the challenge is not, is it ever going to work? Yeah, it’s all too difficult. The challenge is what do we have to do to try to make it work?
Will we succeed? Of course there’s no guarantee that we’ll succeed. But we can see the way in which we have to try and the way in which we have to work together. And we can see the kinds of scale of activity. We can see the kind of technologies. We can see the kind of economic instruments. We know enough to embark down this road with purpose. If we don’t get a strong agreement in Copenhagen at the end of this year—not all the details, the details can be worked out later. But if we don’t get the basic framework, I would really worry about whether we’ll be able to put it together. Because it falls apart, people go away, and, you know, it might take a long time before we get back together again.

In the meantime, you’ve done a lot of damage in terms of increased concentrations. In the meantime, confidence in the markets that are going to sustain these kinds of investments would have been undermined. So not getting an agreement in Copenhagen, with the basic outlines, not all the details, would be very, very damaging. So this is a crucially important few months for the world really in terms of decision making.

And there’s no way that—you can’t negotiate with the basic scientific processes. You can’t negotiate with the concentrations in the atmosphere. They will be what they will be if we’re neglectful.

I’m much more optimistic than I was two or three years ago because you can see and hear the way in which the understanding and commitment on this issue has changed, whether it be in China or India or the United States or elsewhere. You can see the way that’s changed. The pace of change of technology has been quite remarkable. It’s impossible to give a talk like this to business people without going away with a pocket full of cards if somebody’s got some great idea about how to reduce emissions, how to pull the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. If one tenth of these ideas work that are just sort of bubbling through, we can have a whole range of ways of acting, all of which will cost a bit, probably, but, you know, some will be more successful than others.

So in terms of the changing politics, in terms of changing technologies and investments, I’m much more optimistic than I was two or three years ago. I think we’re going to get there in Copenhagen. And the months that follow, I really don’t know. But we’ve got a chance there that we can blow now. And, you know, human beings are not bad at messing up opportunities. But there is an opportunity now to mess up. And one of the reasons I wrote the book was try to reduce the probability that we might. Thank you very much.

——-

Questions and Answers

QUESTION: Lord Stern, thank you so much for a great talk. Are we being maybe even too optimistic? You paint a pretty bleak scenario, if we don’t do this. Should we have contingency plans in place that would suggest that we need not $30 a ton, but maybe $75 by 2015? Because what we are now seeing with the positive feedback loops, positive in a scientific sense, particularly the change in the Arctic, much more emissions of methane from both the tundra, undersea, et cetera, all of these things, which you know, which would suggest that the window we have to get this done may even be shorter. And therefore, we should be, contingency-wise, at least prepared intellectually to pay a higher cost because the time to get it done is perhaps much shorter than we think it is?
NICHOLAS STERN: These positive feedbacks, things like the melting of the permafrost and releasing a lot of methane, the collapse of the Amazon, which could well happen around three degrees centigrade, which we might be at in 50, 60 years, the decreasing acidity, so the increasing acidity of the oceans which decreases the absorptive capacity, all of these things actually are usually omitted from the formal scientific models. Complication, grounds, difficulty in quantification, but they’re very real possibilities. So it actually does look more worrying than when we were writing two and a half years ago, although all of the basic line of argument is the same.

I think that the description that I gave of cutting by 50 percent as a world, 1990 to 2050, is actually quite unambitious, relative to science. And indeed, many scientists will tell you very loudly what you’re doing, you’re telling me to cut by 50 percent? It should be 80 percent globally by 2050. Although, of course, it is quite ambitious in the point of view of the economics. And many people would draw the conclusion that you drew, that we should be acting faster and more strongly. And therefore, you would be thinking of higher, high costs. Because the faster you do it, the more it costs. So I think that relative to the magnitude of the real scientific problem, I’ve erred on the side of caution.

I’ve erred on the side of caution on the economics. I’ve erred on the side of recklessness, if you like, on the science. So if I were to be pushed to shift in a direction from the one I just articulated, I would certainly go in the direction that you described, that we should be stronger than I am describing, not weaker. And you can make that case, and perhaps you should. I should emphasize, I am talking about average costs. A lot of the costs of what we do actually are negative. I mean, if we’re sensible about a lot of the energy efficiency options we have, we save money. But it won’t all be negative costs. And on the margin, it will be, of course, a good deal higher.

–

QUESTION: One problem we face seems to be that we are locked in by the present technology that exists in the U.S., in China, in Europe. Every week, on average, a new coal-fired power plant is being opened in China, with the effect of about 1,000 megawatts. And it’s calculated for over 25 years. And today, as we speak, China is (inaudible) based on clean coal. If they continue to run these, according to their business plan, we will be far off the mark that you have indicated that we need to reach.

So those, the owners, the countries and the private owners of these plants seem, to me, to be unlikely to close down these plants without compensation or to retrofit them. And just imagine what it would cost to retrofit the power of coal fire power plants of this world with carbon capture and storage. It would also increase the energy price by today’s standard by, let’s say, 40 percent . This is, of course, site specific. So what we seem to need is a new set of economic incentives, which means going steps further from the Kyoto mechanisms, which provided some incentives which have worked in some countries, and to provide a larger global scheme that gives the developing countries where the emissions will increase the most, like China, positive incentives for change. And I haven’t seen, so far during the run-up to the Copenhagen, any proposal in pretty language which provides that scene and which links a positive cash flow with achieved reduction targets. I would like to hear your comment on what needs to be done in that direction.

NICHOLAS STERN: I think the ballpark you’re talking about, 40, 50 percent increases in prices of electricity around the world for a few decades, is probably roughly right. If you take a rich country, something like 4 percent of GDP would be primary energy. If you increase that cost by 50 percent , you get back to the 2 percent of national income I’m talking about. So if we’re talking about increasing the price of electricity 50 percent in many places for a while, that is a price that we should be quite ready to pay. And we probably would have to.

My acquaintance with India is much deeper than China. I’ve been living in India, on and off, for different parts of the last 35 years. But I’ve been living in China, again, on and off for 20 years. And the change in China in the last two or three years is quite remarkable in terms of their understanding of the issues. And the 11th five-year plan which finishes at the end of next year, had a a 20 percent reduction target of energy to output, which they probably will reach—of course, if output goes up by 40, 45 percent , and the energy use goes up by 20 some percent, which is what’s happened—but I think the 12th five-year plan, which starts in the end of next year, beginning of the year after—and they’re already working on it and preparing an energy strategy, which would actually precede the 12th five-year plan—I think is likely to have emissions targets rather than energy targets. This is all discussions over the last few months and weeks. But I think that’s where it’s going.

Will countries like China, in terms of growth ambitions, energy ambitions, will they achieve the kinds of transformations we’re talking about without substantial sharing of technology and substantial finance? The answer is no. I described briefly some importance of sharing technologies. But let’s look at the kind of schemes of the trading finance for RT that could do it. Some of you will know about the Clean Development Mechanism, which is a project by project trading arrangement. It’s designed under the Kyoto Protocol, but mostly driven by the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, whereby a firm that has to meet a target under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, can buy a reduction in a developing country. But it’s organized on a project basis. And the firm itself in the developing country, which is selling it to the firm in the rich country, has to show and has to be approved by various committees at the country level in Bonn and so on has to show that it will be cutting its emissions relative to what it might have done.

“What it might have done” is counterfactual. You want to know what I might have done? Well, here is what I might have done. You know, it’s quite difficult to work with this kind of apparatus. And it’s very, very heavy. What we’re going to need for a while, I think for ten or 15 years, possibly more, and we do have to negotiate this at Copenhagen, is a successor to the Clean Development Mechanism, which is one-sided trading, in the sense that you get rewarded if you go down. But you don’t get penalized if you go up. Which can work on a wholesale way.

So the Province of China decides under its program that it’s going to have no further investment in coal-fired without carbon capture and storage. Then we can identify quite clearly the kind of reductions that would involve much more easily than the project by project scheme. And what we should be envisaging is wholesale funds, which arise from the ambitious kind of caps we’ve got in Europe and I trust we will have in the U.S., so that firms combined that fund, and that fund could take a slice of this Province of China that’s embarking on this program.

So I think if we replace the Clean Development Mechanism with something that’s much more suitable for wholesale, that’s programatic, as opposed to project-based, then we could envisage financial flows. And we’ve been modeling them a bit. And they probably would be of the order of somewhere between 100 and 200 billion a year by the 20s under these kind of trading arrangements. That’s the kind of financial structure, trading structure that we would need for a while to support these kinds of investments. And we’ve got to be quantitative and open and direct about what’s involved. There’s another story, of course, in proving that these carbon capture stories technologies work on a commercial scale. And that’s something we have to embark on again, as a world where different countries do different things. The Australians are doing a few, there are a few in the U.K., I’m sure. Canada is doing a few. I’m sure there will be more than a few in the U.S. So at the same time, as we work on the finance, we have to work on the sharing of the technology as well. But that’s exactly the kind of detail we have to work on. And we have to be frank about the scale of what’s involved.

–

QUESTION: Thank you again, Lord Stern, for that magisterial performance, which doesn’t surprise any of us. But since I suspect you’re largely preaching to the converted here, I wonder if I might ask you to rebut two of the more persuasive arguments being made by those who disagree with you and with the global warming, simply so we can get those arguments knocked down. And I hear them all the time.

The first is from sort of the view of the Bjørn Lomborg School of the skeptical environmentalist, who essentially sidesteps the case you’re making by saying that even if what you’re saying is true, with the expenditure required to deal with it now is excessive in relation to how much more good you can do to the world by spending a fraction of that money dealing with other things like Malaria and AIDS and development to stop poverty, and drinking water and things like that, and that this is, therefore, a misplaced sense of priority.

And a second argument is broadly what one might call the American conservative argument that says that expecting the world to organize itself today to impose costs upon itself now for possible dangers 100 years down the road is essentially politically irresponsible, that the technologies will find solutions before things ever get that bad. And in the meantime, we should leave well enough alone and let us take care of today’s people, who, of course, happen to be today’s voters, as well. You are going to be imposing short-term costs on people who are not going to necessarily see visible benefits for the costs and pain you’re inflicting upon them. I think those two arguments do require some sort of response from someone like yourself. And I’d love to hear it.

NICHOLAS STERN: I think the response is actually implicit in what I already said. But the challenge you’ve drawn out is absolutely right because this is what we do here. I know Bjørn Lomborg reasonably well. And he’s a rather engaging fellow. But I think he’s more of a stand-up comic than a serious contributor to this. And he’s not an economist or a scientist.

But that’s by the by. Let’s take the argument. What’s the argument? That there are better ways of investing. There’s a whole collection of mistakes in the argument. The first one, and in many ways, the most important, is to treat these as separate projects. The two defining challenges of our century are overcoming world poverty and managing climate change. I’ve spent the big majority of my professional life on the former. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about climate change is that is for the reasons I described, it would undermine the progress that we’ve made and reverse it. We succeed or fail on these two defining challenges together.

As I described it, most of the effects of climate change and their damaging form on human lives come in water in some shape or form. They’re inextricably interlinked. It is just a simple failure in logic to treat the problems of development and water management separately from those of climate change. So when you set it up as sort of separate investment projects with the internal rate of return, you’re just making a basic analytical mistake in relation to the logical structure of the problem. So the argument is just deeply flawed and deliberately misleading.

He also, very deliberately, understates the magnitude of the problem. And he takes lower estimates. He takes means. He doesn’t look at distributions. And he doesn’t look beyond the end of this century. So within that overall structural logical mistake, there are all kinds of subdiffusions of cooking the books along the way. It’s a kind I just described. Deliberately taking lower estimates, deliberately taking means and not looking at distributions, when this is a risk management problem, and deliberately curtailing the time period. I could go on. I mean, there’s mistake after mistake in there, including the discussions of discounting, in the context of a future that depends on what you do now in a very big way. Most of economics, when it discusses discounting, looks at some assumed growth path and thinks a little (inaudible) associated with investment projects around that path, which, again, is an analytical mistake of huge importance in this kind of context, when what the future looks like, including whether or not we’re better off, depends profoundly on what we do now.

So I could go on. But as I say, Bjørn tells a very good case, and he’s a very engaging guy, actually. You ought to listen to him, it’s worth going to, but just remember, he’s wrong.

The conservative story, as you portrayed it, is partly answered by what I’ve just said. Because implicit in the plausibility of that story is the notion that these effects down the track are not that big. So you’re saying, why should we give up what seems to be a lot now in return for something which, you know, is a bit uncertain and accrues to people who are going to be much richer, much richer than us? And more to the point they don’t have a vote.

Well, the answer to that is that you don’t have to give up that much now. And some of it looks very exciting and positive. I don’t want to say you don’t have to give up anything now. That would be wrong and misleading. You do have to invest now. But it has tremendous returns beyond simply the climate change story, which I described. So I think it’s very important to come back first with two things.

One is, that do you realize the magnitude of the changes that we’re potentially talking about here?

And secondly, point to the very positive parts of the story as well. But this is something which requires enormous leadership. When we gathered together as a world in 1944 at Bretton Woods, we had seen 30 years of global warfare and great depression. We could see, in a very direct way, what goes wrong if we don’t think ahead and we don’t collaborate. The evidence was, you know, in blood in very recent history.

This one, we’re having to say, look, this is actually much bigger, in many ways, than these World Wars and the Great Depression. But in 50 years, 100 years down the track, some things much earlier, but in terms of its big magnitude, this is a great test of rationality for human beings. It’s not simply that they can get scalded and say, getting scalded is not a good idea, I’ll avoid getting scalded. That’s the evolutionary approach to learning. This is a big challenge for us, in terms of rational human beings. We’ve got to anticipate this one. It doesn’t make it any less real. But it means it’s less real in terms of direct experience.

So that’s the great challenge for political leadership. That’s why communication is so important. That’s journalism communication is so important. I had a long discussion with Rahul Ghandi about how this can become a current political issue in India. In India, of all places, people understand the consequences of water, storms, floods, droughts. If ever there was a place in the world, no necessity to explain that to people, that they know. But it’s linking, linking that to action in India now, linking action in India now to what other people might do as a world. That’s the challenge of communication. I think it’s enormously important that we take that on.

JOANNE MYERS: I thank you really very much for bringing all of these issues to us today. They’re very important. And I want to thank you for making such a strong case. Thank you.

Yesterday morning George Soros spoke at a Wall Street Journal “Viewpoints” Breakfast. In conversation with Alan Murray, he discussed his outlook for the economy and his view of the current debate over regulation and other topics. Click the link below to watch the 40-minute video.

 http://online.wsj.com/video/viewpoints-s…

–

Next Wednesday, July 8th at 3pm (Eastern), George will be a guest on FireDogLake’s book salon; he will be taking questions from readers over the web. Go to http://firedoglake.com to join the discussion.

nbsp;http://thethirdplanet.org/blog/2009/06/a…

June 28, 2009: An open letter to the Senators of the United States
At the Crossroads of Climate Change

My dear, Honorable Senators,
Climate Change and the energy independence of the United States of America are related issues; indeed they are two symptoms of our reluctance to deal both with the facts of how the planet works at a physical level and how our country must make choices about investments for the future good of the country and the disposition of scarce resources.
The good news is that securing the future for our country’s children with concerted and serious action to avoid climate change is also the most prudent and economic option for American energy independence. The two go hand in hand, and when done correctly, will not only produce growing prosperity and security for our own country, but also for all those other countries out there that are already experiencing the devastating effects of Climate Change and the reduced ability to pay for high priced fossil fuels.
It should be emphasized that the prosperity of the U.S. and other freedom loving nations (prosperity being the sum total of freedom, happiness, and security, money being the medium of exchange to help in purchasing prosperity), is a common good that will be squandered if the Congress and the United States government chooses not to take leadership on this truly global issue: The eminent British economist Sir Nicholas Stern has correctly stated that action on Climate Change now will ultimately be cheaper than later action in a warmer world; in other words, it is cheaper to invest in an expensive fire extinguisher now than to rebuild after the fire. Put another way, we should not be asking how much present policies on Climate Change will cost us right now, we should be asking how much money are we willing to spend in order to secure the future for our children? One dollar a year? 100 dollars? 1,000 dollars? Estimates claim the cost of action now will be about 111 dollars per year. Are we not agreed that American parents across this great nation will do what it takes to protect their children, indeed to invest now so as to give them a chance to not only survive, but to still be a great nation in the future? Further, have not the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, and the Secretary General of the United Nations warned us all about the consequences of Climate Change? Shall we not heed the words of these highly paid experts?
My dear honorable Senators, you hold in your hands the key to this United States’ future; do not lead us down the path of the General Motors of the world, who stuck their head in the sand for years and fought tooth and nail to stop efficiency standards for automobiles. Rather, guide us with courage and foresight on the path of exemplary companies like Ford, Dow, Tesla, and many others too numerous to mention, who boldly invested in a future based on doing more with less, providing better products, better quality, better functionality, and basing their business model on the following common sense dictum: The kilowatt (or gallon) saved is money saved, which is a better product or service for the customer, which means that customers would rather buy efficiency than deficiency. The tired, old thinking of yesterday that U.S. companies can survive in the market place based on the old model of making inefficient products with inefficient production processes has already gone the way of the Dodo, so Congress needs to understand what these progressive companies already figured out years ago. In other words, let’s stop burning money, and let’s start making prosperity.
David Benjamin,  Chairman of the Board The Third Planet -

THIRD PLANET • PO Box 3822 • St. Augustine FL 32085
904.810.0789
  Permalink | Printer Friendly |  Email This Article
Posted in Reporting from Washington DC, Florida

del.icio.us Digg Reddit Google Technorati Windows Live Yahoo! | what's this?

Discuss this article

Agenda for a Sustainable America.

John Dernbach

 http://www.agendaforasustainableamerica…..

Published: 01/15/2009
Publisher: Environmental Law Institute
Environmental Law Institute
520 p. 6 x 9
ISBN: 9781585761333
Paperback: $52.95

2009 Island Press | 1718 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 300 Washington DC, 20009-1148 | 1-800-621-2736

“Sustainability” is quickly becoming a household word in the United States. Public alarm over climate change has helped to make sustainable development a major public policy issue and a topic of growing importance in the daily lives of Americans.

This book is a comprehensive assessment of U.S. progress toward sustainable development and a roadmap of necessary next steps toward achieving a sustainable America. Packed with facts, figures, and the well-informed opinions of forty-one experts, it provides an illuminating “snapshot” of sustainability in the United States today. And each of the contributors suggests where we need to go next, recommending three to five specific actions that we should take during the next five to ten years. It thus offers a comprehensive agenda that citizens, corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and government leaders and policymakers can use to make decisions today and to plan for the future.

Sustainable development holds enormous promise for improving the quality of life for Americans over the coming decades. Agenda for a Sustainable America describes what we need to do to make the promise a reality. It assesses trends in twenty-eight separate areas of American life—including forestry; transportation; oceans and estuaries; religion; and state, local, and national governance. In every area, contributors reveal what sustainable development could mean, with suggestions that are specific, desirable, and achievable. Their expert recommendations point the way toward greater economic and social well-being, increased security, and environmental protection and restoration for current and future generations of Americans. Together they build a convincing case for how sustainable development can improve our opportunities and our lives.

For more, go to the web site.

John C. Dernbach is a professor of law at Widener University Law School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  He has divided his career between teaching and government service.

In his teaching role, Dernbach has focused on sustainable development in the United States.  He has edited the only two comprehensive nongovernmental assessments of U.S. sustainable development efforts.  He has written and lectured widely on sustainable development, climate change, environmental law, and legal writing.

In two stints totaling near 15 years, he worked at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (now the Department of Environmental Protection).  During this time, he helped drafted or help implement comprehensive and nationally recognized reforms to Pennsylvania’s mining and waste programs.  More recently, he directed the Department’s policy office.

Quotes

“[This book] covers the gamut from air pollution to zoning regulations in assessing where we stand in sustainability and what we need to do to meet the challenges of the future. A follow-on to Stumbling toward Sustainability, Agenda is a must-read for the next Congress, as well as America’s leaders in business, state and local governments, education, and civil society.”
—Paul R. Ehrlich, coauthor of The Dominant Animal (Island Press, 2008) and Bing Professor of Population Studies and professor of biological sciences at Stanford University.

“Sustainability is seldom described with the depth, scholarly detail, and richness of this work.  It is the sector-by-sector primer for what must be done to preserve our grandchildren’s rights to the nation they will inherit.”
—Donald Kennedy, president emeritus of Stanford University

“With chapters from a wide range of leading thinkers Agenda for a Sustainable America blazes a trail toward environmental progress across a broad spectrum of critical issues.  Must reading for the new President - and for all of us.”
—Dan Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, Yale University

“Far more than a report card on the disappointing performance of the United States in fulfilling the pledges made at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Agenda for a Sustainable America tells us where we should go from here.  The book lays out, sector by sector, what is needed to shape a brighter future for the nation and, by extension, the world community.  The next administration would be wise to use this as a guide book for its policies.”
—The Honorable Timothy E. Wirth, president, United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund

“This comprehensive review of the United States’ environmental efforts is a reminder that despite our progress, we have further to travel on the road toward sustainability.  As this book makes clear, we must pursue new, sustainable solutions that will allow future generations, and the environment they will depend on, to thrive.”
—U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (WI)

“John Dernbach and his contributing authors have produced one of those rare volumes on sustainability that reaches out to the corporate, governmental, and academic audiences.  I highly recommend it for classroom use in undergraduate and graduate courses.”
—James Gustave Speth, dean of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and Professor in the Practice of Environmental Policy

“Terrific—a unique and important piece of work, providing a comprehensive roadmap for the journey to sustainability. Policymakers, business leaders, NGOs, and community leaders will all find a wealth of thoughtful assessments and forward looking prescriptions. This is at heart an optimistic compendium that paints a picture of a healthy, secure and prosperous society. “
—Fred Krupp, president, Environmental Defense Fund

“John Dernbach’s Agenda for a Sustainable America could not be better timed. As a smart collection of valuable gems, this book constitutes a worthy and wealthy timepiece on our best options for this time of great change.”
—Bruce Piasecki, author of www.worldincbook.com, and president of the AHC Group Inc

 http://www.bechollashon.org/resources/ne…

Francesca Biller-Safran

Japanese-Jew Doesn’t “Oy Veh” So Much Since Obama.

By Francesca Biller-Safran
Huffington Post
Published: June 4, 2009

As a Japanese-Jew, I have historically used self deprecating humor at my own expense as a way to explain and defend to others who I was and to feel accepted.

My cultural confusion can be summed up in this anonymous quote, “There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?”

Until recently I believed “everything” was my fault.

And I would certainly be the last person I would ever want to visit, with all of my kvetching to anyone kind enough to listen. “Oy Veh,” I would lament. “No one accepts me; I am neither a truly Japanese or Jewish soul, so I will just sit here alone in the dark, eating a knish in my kimono.”

But gratefully, since Obama has become president, not only do I feel more comfortable as the multiracial shikseh that I am, but engage in thoughtful conversations about my heritage and background, without jokes, defense or much self-deprecation.

I only hope that I conduct myself with an ounce of the class, genus and moral fortitude the president has displayed when continually questioned about his cultural identity.

In his keynote 2004 speech to the Democratic Convention, Obama said, “In a sense I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As a child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot of Hawaii, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of race.”

I too was born in Hawaii and attended University High School in Hawaii a few years before Obama just a couple miles from his school, Punahoe High, whose students I shared long bus rides with from remote areas in order to get a good education; a value that my parents, like his, believed was invaluable.

Like my mother and father, Obama’s parents are from two different cultures, yet he never feels the need to defend or justify his background, rather, he consistently responds to questions and assumptions with dignity and forethought.

When asked during the presidential campaign what he considered his ethnicity to be, Obama answered simply that he is an American from two equally rich and diverse cultures.

In a 2004 speech, Obama said, “My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.”

As a blend of cultures with a Jewish-Russian, Irish father and Japanese-Hawaiian mother, I too have faced continual questions as to what I considered my race, people, culture and ethnicity to be.

I was given several names, including three middle names, all five on my birth certificate. One is named after my Jewish great grandmother, Beatrice, the other a Japanese name, Yukari, and the third, Caitlin, named after the wife of my father’s favorite poet, Dylan Thomas. My first name is named after a man — the Italian Renaissance painter, Piero Della Francesca, with his last name chosen for my first.

Who was I, where did I come from, was I merely a mistake, an experiment, and how I might actually exist as a identifiable human — have been relentless questions that have sewn experiences throughout my culturally odd and unasked for politically patch-worked life.

This sentiment from an anonymous quote defines the neurotic dichotomy of my life, “To find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.”

One searing memory I experienced involves a boy who told me on the schoolyard there was no such thing as a Japanese-Jewish person. Afterwards, I ran all the way home from this boy with the piercing blue eyes and looked into the mirror wondering if I really didn’t exist at all; at least in any real identifiable sense that mattered.

This was just one comment amongst countless surreal exclamations that secured my stalwart allegiance to defining myself as a person from different cultures, but never defined by them.

In his keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention, Obama said, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”

I can assume the President Obama has heard countless comments denying his existence as a fortified American as well, but was intrepid enough to remain an honorable candidate despite cultural ignorance on the part of others.

This is the essential definition for any strong person; the ability, will and might to face oppression and hatred and march forward anyway.

No one thought it was truly possible that a man who was Black may become president yet, no one. Some hoped, some feared, some dreamed, and many imagined a courageous, ambitious reality, but not one of us truly believed with full breadth that this young country was ready to make such a fearless and autonomous leap for the betterment of us and for the world.

Like Obama’s parents, the marriage of my parents confounded some, upset others and was dismissed by the rest.

My father was raised in Los Angeles and then attended The University of Hawaii not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He came back with an education and a wife, who was a second-generation Japanese-American known as the Nisei generation, who grew up as a farmer on the coffee plantations of Kona, Hawaii.

My Japanese-American uncles were part of the 442nd Infantry, also known as The Purple Heart Battalion, the most highly decorated fighter pilots in United States History. This includes some 4,000 Bronze stars and nearly 9,500 Purple Hearts.

In this period, many Japanese-Americans were interned throughout the U.S, with land taken away, families torn apart and lives devastated, not unlike Jewish family members of my husband’s during the Second World War with more tragic results.

A lot of anti-Japanese sentiment existed at this time, and yet my parents married, with whispers heard loudly as shouts and bombs from some family, while others chose to keep quiet with disdain; perhaps even more devastating.

Martin Luther King said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

My parents had four children during the 1950’s and 60’s, and thankfully we were raised in Southern California, a region more liberal and tolerant of interracial marriage than many other parts of the country.

A visceral account of the confused cultural identity I experienced in a Japanese-Jewish household can be summed up in the following quotes, the first from a Japanese emperor, “Generally speaking, the way of the warrior is the resolute acceptance of death,” and the second from Woody Allen, “It’s not that I’m afraid to die; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

At least as a writer, my life experiences give me more material to work with than my mother’s hundreds of antique kimonos combined with all the chuppah’s this side of Golden Gate Bridge.

A perfect example of conflicting philosophies learned during childhood includes Buddha’s lesson that “Life as we know it ultimately leads to suffering,” while we were told simultaneously that although Jesus was indeed a suffering member of our tribe, we should never actually worship him.

But nevertheless, I have made it, I have arrived, and I am as they say in Yiddish, I’m “Nisht geferlech,” which basically means “Not so shabby.”

Surely President Obama must realize this profound effect he has had on a nation who soldiers so many different religions, races and cultures while speaking in native tongues more freely understood now at least now in spirit, if not yet comprehended in each syllable, syntax or inflection.

And because we now have a president with a different story than president’s past, who holds his head high with his own proud blend of integral cultural being, each language and culture that is different is now more highly revered, as is each person’s individual journey.

Each story sheds an even broader and brighter light on a nation that not only endures, but empowers; not only inspires but includes, and not only validates, but values each lesson, paragraph and infinitesimal anecdote that boasts the value of us all.

This is now an axiomatic concept for the country, one that is only beginning to change America’s story and each person willing to tell their cultural rhythms on their own.

For this one Japanese-Jewish woman who always thought she was strange; even once given the title of “Shikseh Princess” at a Bar Mitzvah by some nice Jewish boys, my story has now changed for the better and interestingly enough, still interesting all the same.

Finally I can stop commiserating with Woody Allen when he said, “My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.” Except those rare moments when I begin to doubt the integrity and veracity of my own personal story that is just as valuable as anyone else’s.

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote, “This is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can say what we think; write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door.”

The doors for us all now open with greater ease and determination, and the answers and questions we hear on the other sides of each door are purely reflective of a nation that is now more unified in its diversity, and more open to discussion, depth, profundity and inclusion.

Originally published here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francesca-…

——————-

 http://bechollashon.org/resources/newsle…

Judge Sotomayor, a mythic ‘Hispanic’

The supposedly racial term was pushed by Nixon to lump distinct Spanish-speaking groups into one voting bloc. There’s no such thing, and the judge should be appointed on her merits.

By Jonathan Zimmerman
LA Times
Published: June 12, 2009

Here’s a good argument for putting Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court: She’s knowledgeable, respected and deeply experienced. As a federal judge for nearly two decades, she’s heard thousands of cases and written hundreds of opinions.

And here’s a lousy argument for confirming Sotomayor: She would be the first “Hispanic” on the court.

I put the term in quotation marks because it’s a recent invention, dating to the 1970s and ’80s. Before then, when Sotomayor was growing up with her Puerto Rican family in New York City, she was not Hispanic.

And words make a difference. As many commentators have reminded us since President Obama nominated Sotomayor, judges are inevitably shaped by their life experiences. But these experiences are themselves shaped — and, sometimes, distorted — by the terms that we use to describe them.

How did Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Panamanians, Nicaraguans and Guatemalans all become Hispanic?

Amid the African American civil rights struggle of the 1960s, many of these groups joined hands to demand voting rights, bilingual education and social services. Here they received a big assist from an unlikely source: Richard Nixon. Eager to bring Mexicans and other Latino immigrants into the Republican fold, Nixon also saw them as a potential bulwark against black political aspirations.

“All Spanish-speaking Americans share certain characteristics — a strong family structure, deep ties to the church, which makes them open to an appeal from us,” wrote one GOP campaign strategist on the eve of Nixon’s 1972 presidential reelection bid. “The Democratic Party is under suspicion for favoring politically potent blacks at the expense of the needs of Spanish-speaking people.”

So Nixon threw his weight behind bilingual education, which has since become a bête noire for the GOP. He also ordered the Census Bureau to add a query on its 1970 form asking whether respondents were “Hispanic,” hoping to further solidify this new voting bloc.

Census Bureau officials balked, noting — correctly — that the term lacked scientific and historical precision. They also worried that respondents wouldn’t recognize it. So the most commonly used census form in 1970 asked respondents if they were of “Spanish” origin, not whether they were Hispanic.

All that would change in 1977, when the Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agencies to classify Americans as one of four races — white, black, American Indian/Alaskan Native or Asian/Pacific Islander — and also to distinguish between two ethnic categories, “of Hispanic origin” and “not of Hispanic origin.” Since then, the census has asked people their race and whether they’re Hispanic, which is not listed as a “race” per se.

Increasingly, however, Americans thought of it as such. Government agencies used “Hispanic” alongside “Asian” and “black,” making Hispanic into a de facto racial category. Businesses and educational institutions counted Hispanics — or, sometimes, “Latinos” — as a race in diversity and affirmative action reports.

Not surprisingly, then, Hispanics became more likely over time to identify themselves as a separate race too. In the mid-1990s, 60% of the respondents to a study of more than 5,000 Latin American immigrants self-identified as “white,” for example, but only 20% of their children did so.

That’s an unprecedented development, as the United States had continuously absorbed people formerly identified in the census as from nonwhite races into the white majority. Jews, Italians and Slavs were all once classified as separate races; now, they’re white. But Hispanics are moving in the opposite direction — from white to nonwhite. In our minds, at least, they’ve become a minority race.

The language of race is a unifying one, blinding us to the irreducible diversity that a single category can contain. Consider Sotomayor’s now infamous comment that a “wise Latina woman” would render a better judicial decision than a white male. While GOP antagonists accused Sotomayor of reverse racism and Democrats rushed to her defense, nobody pointed out that wise Latina women come in all shapes, sizes and ideologies. Would a wise Cuban woman in South Florida see eye-to-eye with a wise Mexican woman in San Diego, or with a wise Salvadoran woman in Washington, D.C.? Probably not.

Even worse, the idea of race tricks us into seeing “Hispanic” as a biological category rather than a cultural one. I frequently do an exercise with my students, asking them how a scientist would identify their race. The most common reply is also the most troubling one: via a blood test. In fact, that would tell you the opposite: We all come from the same ancestor, in East Africa, and we’re all mongrels. The blood test does not identify your “race,” which primarily exists only in our minds.

As a child, Sotomayor was probably classified as white; now she’s Hispanic. But her DNA is the same. The only thing that has changed is the way we look at her. Belying every shard of evidence, we continue to believe that races are different under the skin.

So let’s hope that the Senate confirms Sotomayor, one of the most qualified nominees in the history of the Supreme Court. Then let’s welcome her as the first person of Puerto Rican descent on the court, not as the first “Hispanic.”

If you think the words don’t matter, you haven’t been listening.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University and is the author of the just-published “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”

Originally published here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-o…

Algae Farm Aims to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel.

By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times, June 28, 2009

Algenol Biofuels
Algenol grows algae in troughs filled with saltwater that becomes saturated with carbon dioxide.

Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels, a start-up company, are set to announce Monday that they will build a demonstration plant that, if successful, would use algae to turn carbon dioxide into ethanol as a vehicle fuel or an ingredient in plastics.

Because algae does not require any farmland or much space, many energy companies are trying to use it to make commercial quantities of hydrocarbons for fuel and chemicals. But harvesting the hydrocarbons has proved difficult so far.
The ethanol would be sold as fuel, the companies said, but Dow’s long-term interest is in using it as an ingredient for plastics, replacing natural gas. The process also produces oxygen, which could be used to burn coal in a power plant cleanly, said Paul Woods, chief executive of Algenol, which is based in Bonita Springs, Fla. The exhaust from such a plant would be mostly carbon dioxide, which could be reused to make more algae.

“We give them the oxygen, we get very pure carbon dioxide, and the output is very cheap ethanol,” said Mr. Woods, who said the target price was $1 a gallon.

Algenol grows algae in “bioreactors,” troughs covered with flexible plastic and filled with saltwater. The water is saturated with carbon dioxide, to encourage growth of the algae. “It looks like a long hot dog balloon,” Mr. Woods said.

Dow, a maker of specialty plastics, will provide the “balloon” material.

The algae, through photosynthesis, convert the carbon dioxide and water into ethanol, which is a hydrocarbon, oxygen and fresh water.

The company has 40 bioreactors in Florida, and as part of the demonstration project plans 3,100 of them on a 24-acre site at Dow’s Freeport, Tex., site. Among the steps still being improved is the separation of the oxygen and water from the ethanol. The Georgia Institute of Technology will work on that process, as will Membrane Technology and Research, a company in Menlo Park, Calif. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an Energy Department lab, will study carbon dioxide sources and their impact on the algae samples.

Algenol and its partners are planning a demonstration plant that could produce 100,000 gallons a year. The company and its partners were spending more than $50 million, said Mr. Woods, but not all of that was going into the pilot plant. The company had applied to the Energy Department for financing under the stimulus bill, but would build a pilot plant with or without a grant, he said.

With a stimulus grant, he said, the division of spending would be slightly more than 50 percent from the private sector, although the normal level was 20 percent. The project would create 300 jobs, he said, adding that Algenol and Dow were “incredibly hopeful” of getting the grant, partly because they had a combination of an innovative start-up company, a major company with extensive experience in industrial processes, a university and a national laboratory.

At Dow, Peter A. Molinaro, a spokesman, said that the ethanol was “intriguing to us as a feedstock, because the chemistry is simple.” Dow is already working on using ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane as a replacement for natural gas as an ingredient in plastics.

When Congress created a tax subsidy for ethanol, it raised the price for nonfuel users like Dow, he said. “We’re looking at options, and this is one,” he said.

————

See also:

“The Alga Dunaliella” editors - Ami Ben-Amotz, Jurgen E.W. Polle, D.V. Subba Rao, Science Publishers, Enfield (NH), Jersey, Plymouth, printed in India, 2009 - 555p. - www.scipub.net

————————–

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill to limit greenhouse gases. The White House lobbied hard for it: “A bold and necessary step,” said Barack Obama. Many hailed its passage as a triumph. In fact there is little to celebrate.

Recall that cap-and-trade was expected only recently to pass in the House without difficulty. It scraped through by 219 votes to 212, with 44 Democrats voting against. Opposition to cap-and-trade in the Senate is stronger, so the chances of this bill or anything like it becoming law look slim.

To make matters worse, the bill makes political compromises that undermine its effectiveness. Even so it passed by just seven votes. What this says about the prospects of a more forceful measure – one that dares to confront consumers with significantly higher energy costs – is discouraging.

To curb climate change, the world needs to cut carbon emissions. It needs US leadership on the issue too. But this bill is not the way. A bewildering combination of cap-and-trade, mandates, new regulation, and every kind of open and disguised subsidy, it is too complicated, too prone to subversion and in many ways downright self-defeating.

To soften its impact, the House first adopted undemanding targets for emissions. Debate made them milder still. Instead of auctioning emissions permits, the bill would give nearly all of them away, so the measure does little to raise needed revenue. Permits will be handed to electricity producers on condition that the windfall be passed to consumers, many of whom would see their electricity bills fall as a result.

Learning nothing from Europe’s experience, the bill relies heavily on offsets, which let companies pay someone else to plant trees or cut emissions, so they do not have to. The still-unsolved problem is policing the system to ensure the offsets are real. The bill gives oversight of domestic offsets in farming to the Department of Agriculture – good news for farmers seeking a new trough of subsidy. To defend US competitiveness, it proposes subsidies for exporters and penalties on importers. In principle, cap-and-trade does require border adjustments, but the bill is careless and creates a gateway for protectionism.

In short, it is a mess. The key to a better plan is understanding that you cannot cut carbon without making carbon-based fuels more expensive – an obvious point, you would think. But it is one that US policymakers still cannot face.

In depth: Climate change - Mar-31

Annan and Geldof launch climate campaign - Jun-26

Brown calls for £60bn climate fund - Jun-26

Europe moves to reduce pollutants - Jun-26

EU invests in China carbon capture facility - Jun-25

The votes were strikingly similar. In 1993, the legislation containing the Clinton energy tax was adopted on a 219-to-213 vote with 38 Democrats defecting.

On Friday, the House bill was approved 219 to 212, with 44 Democrats defecting.

We watched part of the House-debate on C-Span  and were fortunate to catch the actual scene when Rep. John Bohner managed to turn his allocated 2 and a half minutes to a full hour diatribe that we summarize in essence as “All pain for the US Citizens and no gain.” He contended that this bill is why the Americans think the government “is out of touch.”  It boils down to FREEDOM he said - “freedom from tax and the right to live their life as they want.” The honorable gentleman seemed clearly floating on a demagoguery streak that bored even his co-partisans we saw on the TV screen - but then this was clearly meant for the folks back home - “the base” - and how will they push US politics in the very near future? The Republicans asked for a roll call and 15 minutes turned into three hour for them to herd their own people to the House, then when Ms. Pelosi called the question, they shouted so loudly that their noise won out and the Democrats had to ask for an actual vote which as said they won. We hope this victory will carry over also to the Senate, and we hope the Senate Bill will be even better - but who knows? At this stage we can only say that the game has started!

——————-

 Analysis: Climate Bill May Spur Energy Revolution.

Washington, Saturday 27 June 27, 2009.
by: H. Josef Hebert  of Associated Press
Congress has taken its first step toward an energy revolution, with the prospect of profound change for every household, business, industry and farm in the decades ahead.

It was late Friday when the House passed legislation that would, for the first time, require limits on pollution blamed for global warming - mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. Now the Senate has the chance to change the way Americans produce and use energy.

What would the country look like a decade from now if the House-passed bill - or, more likely, a water-down version - were to become the law of the land?

“It will open the door to a clean energy economy and a better future for America,” President Barack Obama said Saturday.

But what does that mean to the average person?

Energy touches every corner of the economy and in countless ways can alter people’s lives.

Such a law would impact how much people pay to heat, cool and light their homes (it would cost more); what automobiles they buy and drive (smaller, fuel efficient and hybrid electric); and where they will work (more “green” jobs, meaning more environmentally friendly ones).

Critics of the House bill brand it a “jobs killer.” Yet it would seem more likely to shift jobs. Old, energy-intensive industries and businesses might scale back or disappear. Those green jobs would emerge, propelled by the push for nonpolluting energy sources.

That could mean making or installing solar panels, repairing wind turbines, producing energy-efficient light bulbs, working for an environmental engineering firm or waste recycler, making equipment that harnesses carbon from coal burning and churning out energy-saving washing machines or air conditioners.

    Assembly line workers at factories that made gas-guzzling cars might see their future in producing the next generation of batteries or wind turbine blades - an emerging shift, though on a relatively small scale today. On Wall Street, commodity brokers would trade carbon pollution credits alongside oil futures.

Farmers would see the cost of fertilizer and electricity go up. More windmills would dot their pastures. And a new source of income could come from selling pollution credits by planting trees or changing farming methods to absorb more carbon dioxide.

Energy would cost more because it would become more expensive to produce. For the first time there would be a price on the greenhouse gas pollution created when coal, natural gas or oil are burned. Energy companies would have to pay for technologies that can capture the carbon emissions, purchase pollution allowances or shift to cleaner energy sources.

It all costs.

Investors would see a new line item on companies financial reports: the cost of carbon permits.

Some increases would be reflected in the prices of goods and services, economics say. It might mean shelling out more for a toy because plastic, a petroleum based product, is more expensive, or paying more for a house because of new efficiency requirements.

Not all the higher energy cost would show up in people’s utility bills. Households, as well as business and factories - including those, for example, making plastic for toys - could use less energy, or at least use it more efficiently. The poorest of homes could get a government check as a rebate for high energy costs. That money would come from selling pollution allowances for industry.

Energy experts in government and industry say a price on carbon pollution would lead to new ways to make renewable energy less expensive, while emphasizing how people can use it more wisely.

Potential changes to how homes are built and even financed seem likely as energy efficiency is taken into account in building codes and the cost of mortgages. With the cost of energy increasing, homeowners and businesses would have greater incentive to use more energy efficient lighting, windows and insulation.

But don’t think that the traditional sources of energy would disappear.

Coal, which today accounts for half the electricity produced, would continue as a major energy source, though a less polluting one, energy experts forecast. That would mean capturing the carbon released when coal is burned.

It’s a technological hurdle with a complication: “not in my back yard” complaints over what to do with the billions of tons of carbon dioxide captured from power plants and pumped beneath the earth. Would people feel comfortable having it stored near or under their homes, factories and businesses?

Scientists studying climate change say carbon capture from power plants is essential if the country is to take up the challenge against global warming.

The cleaner energy economy also put nuclear energy front and center. Does the U.S. build new power plants? If so, where, and where does all the waste go? Nuclear energy makes up about one-fifth of the nation’s electricity today.

The House-passed bill contains provisions to make it easier to get loan guarantees and expands the nuclear industry’s access to loans for reactor construction. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis that shows modest future costs from a low-climate energy world assumes a significant expansion of nuclear energy. The Senate could add more incentives for the nuclear industry.

The new energy world would rely more on natural gas. This abundant fossil fuel emits carbon but is relatively clean when compared with coal. But people would have to decide whether to accept new pipelines that are needed to ship the gas around the country - just as they would have to deal with the need for new power lines to move solar and wind energy to where it’s needed.

——-

H. Josef Hebert has covered energy and environmental issues for The Associated Press since 1990.
===========

but in New York Times “Congressional Memo” a warning:

Climate Change Bill May Be Election Issue.

By CARL HULSE
Published: New York Times, June 27, 2009.
WASHINGTON — As Democrats strained to win over crucial holdouts on the way to narrow, party-line approval of global warming legislation, they were dogged by a critical question: Has the political climate changed since 1993?

Related in New York Times online:
Energy Bill Drives Out Health Care From Address (June 28, 2009)

House Passes Bill to Address Threat of Climate Change (June 27, 2009)

Dot Earth: The Climate Bill in Climate Context

Dot Earth: The Specter of the ’93 Energy Tax (June 28, 2009)

House Roll Call Vote on Climate Change

Veteran members of both parties vividly remember when many House Democrats, in the early months of the Clinton administration, reluctantly backed a proposed B.T.U. tax — a new levy on each unit of energy consumed — only to see it ignored by the Senate and seized as a campaign issue by Republicans, who took control of the House the next year.

“A lot of Democrat members got burnt on that vote,” warned Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, who called the climate change measure the defining vote of this, the 111th, Congress.

In a Congress likely to consider a health care overhaul, new ways to govern the financial sector and immigration changes after already approving a $787 billion economic stimulus, there is serious competition for the title of defining vote.

But the climate change measure, a high priority of President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will no doubt be right at the top of the list. Interest groups on both sides of the issue promise to hinge their support on how lawmakers vote on the bill and actively oppose those who go the other way.

The moment the House approved the bill, Mr. Obama took the opportunity to start increasing pressure on the Senate, where the legislation again faces tough opposition. He had already recorded and distributed the text of his weekly Saturday address, on the urgency of doing something about health care this year. But he pulled it back and substituted a message focusing on the climate victory.

“I want to congratulate the House for passing this bill,” he said, “and I want to urge the Senate to take this opportunity to come together and meet our obligations — to our constituents, to our children, to God’s creation and to future generations.”

Leading Democrats say they are more than happy to have the energy bill serve as a signature issue. They say it represents a transformative moment — their party’s effort to take on a genuine threat to the planet. They say voters will appreciate the legislation as an overdue effort to lessen the nation’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil while creating millions of new jobs in the production and distribution of cleaner energy and in energy conservation technology.

“The American people understand that we can no longer sweep big national problems under the rug and that we had to have an energy policy for the 21st century,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The two parties have dueled for months over the costs and benefits of the measure, and that debate is certain to continue into the midterm elections of November 2010. But it will mainly be a message battle because even if a climate change bill is passed and signed into law this year as Congressional Democrats and the White House hope, the practical effects will not be felt until after the election.

Republicans obviously saw the parallels between the 1993 vote and the one Friday. As the gavel came down on their failed push to derail the bill, Republicans chanted “B.T.U., B.T.U.” and seemed almost in a celebratory mood.

“On the floor, it felt like we won,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a party political strategist. “They put a lot of guys on the line.”

The votes were strikingly similar. In 1993, the legislation containing the Clinton energy tax was adopted on a 219-to-213 vote with 38 Democrats defecting.

On Friday, the House bill was approved 219 to 212, with 44 Democrats defecting.

In an indication of the queasiness among some Democrats, House approval came only after a determined campaign to sway wavering lawmakers. It took personal intervention by the president and vice president; members of the cabinet; the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel; Ms. Pelosi; and even last-minute agreements were struck on the House floor.

It was a significant victory for both the president and Congressional Democrats, and it came on an issue that many expected could prove tougher than a health care overhaul. But as progress on health care legislation slowed and consumed much of the attention, Democrats were able to ease the climate change legislation forward, almost under the radar.

Top Democrats say they believe the victory on climate change — setting up a tough summer debate in the Senate — can translate to progress on other difficult issues as lawmakers see Democrats can advance even the most problematic measures.

“Momentum builds on momentum,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Still, the vote represents a significant risk. As on the economic stimulus and potentially on a health care bill, Republican votes were scarce, creating a clear contrast between the two parties.

And Republicans — who last year made “drill, baby, drill” their slogan for more, not less, production of the fossil fuels that generate heat-trapping gases along with power, and scored some political gains before the price of oil and gasoline plunged from historic peaks — believe that energy is an issue where they have shown the ability to get some traction.

They also intend to pound home the prospect that the legislation could put the United States at a competitive disadvantage and drive more jobs overseas.

But Democrats view the measure as a singular achievement, with Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and one of its authors, comparing it to a combination of the Apollo Project and the Civil Rights Act.

Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, said that he believed the political impact of the B.T.U. tax had been exaggerated and that he expected no serious fallout over the new measure. Also, many of the most vulnerable Democrats voted against the measure.

“Mark this day, June 26, 2009,” Mr. Hoyer intoned on the floor just before passage of the climate bill.

No doubt both parties already have.

——————–

Kevin Knobloch, President of The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) writes:

This legislation does not include everything we wanted—nor did we expect it would—but it establishes a critical first step in building the foundation to rein in global warming pollution, reduce our dependence on oil, and transition to a clean energy economy.
 
What’s more, in a clear victory for science, the bill includes key provisions ensuring these policies can be strengthened in the future in response to emerging climate science—provisions UCS helped write and win support for. 
 
History has shown that when it comes to cleaning up our environment, getting a national policy in place makes an enormous difference. Again and again, we have shown that we can rise to the challenge set by these national policies by meeting and surpassing environmental standards through innovation, smart science, and American ingenuity. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act made possible the healthier environment that we take for granted today. When people saw that these vital pieces of legislation were saving lives and helping us breathe easier and drink safer water, they pushed for more. And then we were able to make these protections even stronger.
 
But we have a long, up-hill battle before us to ensure this groundbreaking legislation becomes law—and the scientific and technical expertise UCS brings to these issues will be essential in this fight. The House of Representatives has shown the way forward, but now our work moves to the Senate where we’ll once again be up against the coal and oil industries and the legislators who support them.
 
President Obama has already expressed support for this bill. But we will need your help to put a strong bill over the finish line. Specifically, you can help turn up the heat on the Senate to act quickly and ensure that we enact a final bill that helps build a revitalized clean energy economy, while reducing the threat of global warming.

————–

Kate Shepard of GRIST evaluates the achievements in above vote as follows:

A number of politically vulnerable first- and second-term Democrats voted against the bill. And some Democrats from farm states joined the opposition, even after the Agriculture Committee managed to secure major concessions blocking the EPA from overseeing the carbon offset program for farmers.

And the narrow win came after much coercion from Democratic leaders in the House and White House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) met with a number of lawmakers who were on the fence this week, and a team of seven whips were deployed to meet with fence-sitters to allay their concerns.

Top administration officials and the president himself were also lighting up Capitol phone lines to lobby for votes. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said he received calls from both Obama and climate czar Carol Browner asking him to support the bill, which he ultimately did. Freshman Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) also said she shifted to a “yes” vote after a chat with Obama.

At least one other Democrat who looked like a “no” vote this morning, Lloyd Doggett of Texas, declared late in the day that he would support the bill. Pushing aside concerns that Waxman-Markey is too weak, Doggett said he decided to vote for it after listening to Republican lawmakers repeatedly deny that there is a climate crisis.

“I believe there is still some hope to make improvements to this bill once it gets out of the House,” said Doggett. “Better to have a seat at the table to try to influence the change that is needed to this legislation.”

Just eight Republicans voted in favor of the measure: Mary Bono Mack (Calif.), Mike Castle (Del.), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.), John McHugh (N.Y.), Dave Reichert (Wash.), Chris Smith (N.J), Leonard Lance (N.J), and Mark Kirk (Ill.). Without those GOP votes, the measure would have failed.

Now, to the Senate!

President Obama immediately praised the passage of the bill on Friday night, and called on the Senate to follow suit.

“Today the House of Representatives took historic action with the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act,” said Obama. “It’s a bold and necessary step that holds the promise of creating new industries and millions of new jobs, decreasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.”

“Now it’s up to the Senate to take the next step,” he continued.

As Grist reported earlier this week, environmental groups are already working to secure improvements in the Senate.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, issued a statement congratulating House leaders for the landmark passage. Boxer has pledged to have her own climate bill, likely based on Waxman-Markey, passed out of committee in August.

“There are very few bills that we pass that trigger so many benefits for the American people—energy efficiency, new jobs, cleaner air, healthier families, and energy independence,” said Boxer. “This bill gives us the momentum we need in the Senate, and signals that when we promised change for the better in America, we meant it.”

Senate Democrats’ last attempt to pass a climate bill failed by a large margin in June 2008, and senators have already rejected an attempt to exempt the climate bill from being filibustered.  It takes 60 votes to end debate on legislation in the Senate; Democrats hold 59 seats in the Senate (60 if you count Al Franken, of course). But a number of Midwestern and Southern Democrats have expressed concerns about passing the legislation, and few observers expect more than two or three GOP lawmakers to vote for a climate bill.

Meanwhile, the energy bill approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week was significantly weaker than provisions in Waxman-Markey. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he wants every committee in the Senate to complete work on climate and energy legislation by mid-September, so there is still a good deal of time left to shape legislation before the Senate adjourns for the year in November or December.

Praise for passage rolling in

Today’s victory in the House kicked off celebrations in the environmental community.

“The House of Representatives has made a dramatic breakthrough for America’s future by choosing to create jobs, move to clean energy, and reduce global warming pollution,” said a statement from Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “While passing the bill through the House took hard work and compromises on many sides, this is strong and vital legislation that Congress needs to deliver to the President’s desk this year.”

“Today’s vote creates momentum for our country to reduce global warming pollution and advance clean energy solutions,” said Howard A. Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center.  “We appreciate the Midwest and Great Plains legislators who stood up for the future and voted in favor of this vital legislation.”

————–

“This bill sets the stage for the dawn of the clean energy future. While imperfect, it sets forth a set of goals America must achieve—and exceed,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.

“We urged the House to pass this bill so that we could work to strengthen it before it reaches President Obama’s desk,” said Pope, emphasizing that the group wants to see the provisions dealing with old coal plants, energy efficiency, and portion of credits polluters will have to buy adjusted.

————-

Greenpeace, however, stuck to its guns on opposing the bill as too weak. The group issued a statement from deputy campaigns director Carroll Muffett calling the “passage of the inadequate ACES bill … a victory for coal industry lobbyists, oil industry lobbyists, agriculture industry lobbyists, steel and cement industry lobbyists, among many others.”

“[I]t is a tremendous loss for the American people or for the world in our common fight to avert climate catastrophe,” said Muffett. 

==============

The 8 Republicans that voted for the Waxman-Markey Bill:   Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), John McHugh (R-N.Y.), David Reichert (R-Wash.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.) Those are on the correct side of the angels.

But among  the “Naysayers” we have 44 Democrats voting against the Waxman-Markey Bill - what was the risk they took?

We know at least of one who thought the bill was not good enough  - that was Congessman Dennis Kucinich. We do not know if there were others that thought like him, or if all other 43 gambled their political future on the Republican side?

Jason Altmire (D-Pa.)

John Barrow (D-Ga.)

Marion Berry (D-Ark.)

Dan Boren (D-Okla.)

Bobby Bright (D-Ala.)

Christopher P. Carney (D-Pa.)

Travis W. Childers (D-Miss.)

Jim Costa (D-Calif.)

Jerry Costello (D-Ill.)

Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.)

Artur Davis (D-Ala.)

Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.)

Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.)

Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.)

Chet Edwards (D-Texas)

Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.)

Bill Foster (D-Ill.)

Parker Griffith (D-Ala.)

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.)

Tim Holden (D-Pa.)

Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.)

Larry Kissell (D-N.C.)

Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)

Jim Marshall (D-Ga.)

Eric Massa (D-N.Y.)

Jim Matheson (D-Utah)

Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.)

Charlie Melancon (D-La.)

Walt Minnick (D-Idaho)

Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.)

Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.)

Glenn Nye (D-Va.)

Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas)

Tom Petri (R-Wis.)

Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.)

Tom Price (D-N.C.)

Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.)

Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas)

Mike Ross (D-Ark.)

John Salazar (D-Colo.)

Fortney Pete Stark (D-Calif.)

John Tanner (D-Tenn.)

Gene Taylor (D-Miss.)

Charles Wilson (D-Ohio)

Not voting: Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), and John Sullivan (R-Okla.).

—————–

New York Times Editorial
The House and Global Warming.

Published: June 25, 2009

American politicians, from both parties, insist that they want to combat global warming and reduce this country’s dependence on fossil fuels. Members of the House will soon have a chance to show they mean it. Voters should watch carefully to see what they do.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act would, for the first time, put a price on carbon emissions. The bill has shortcomings. But we believe that it is an important beginning to the urgent task of averting the worst damage from climate change. Approval would show that the United States is ready to lead and would pressure other countries to follow. Rejection could mean more wasted years and more damage to the planet.

The outcome depends on perhaps 30 Democrats who fear higher energy costs for businesses and consumers, and a dozen or so Republican moderates who also worry about costs and who have been pressed by their leadership not to give President Obama a victory.

We urge all to examine several recent studies showing the costs of the legislation to be minimal.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects average costs of $175 a year per American household by 2020 — vastly lower than the $3,000-plus figure bandied about by Republican leaders. We also urge them to read the scientific analysis forecasting the catastrophic costs to the planet, this country’s security and its economy if global warming is left unchecked.

The centerpiece of the legislation is a provision that aims to cut America’s production of greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by midcentury — the minimum reductions scientists say are necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Its mechanism for doing so is a cap-and-trade system that would place a steadily declining ceiling on emissions while allowing emitters to trade permits, or allowances, to give them flexibility in meeting their targets. The point is to raise the cost of older, dirtier fuels while steering investments to cleaner ones.

The two seasoned politicians behind this bill — Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts — have also insisted on provisions that would mandate more efficient buildings, require cleaner energy sources like wind power and provide subsidies for new technologies. They have tried hard to shield poor consumers from higher energy costs. The C.B.O. estimates that, with rebates, the bottom 20 percent would actually come out ahead.

They have bent over backwards — too far backwards, according to some critics — to ease the cost of compliance for polluters by giving them relatively inexpensive ways to satisfy their emissions quotas before they have to invest heavily in cleaner energy sources and new technologies.

The C.B.O. (Congressional Budget Office) did not factor in the potential cost savings to consumers from other parts of the bill — the energy efficiency provisions, for instance. Nor was it asked to quantify the costs of doing nothing.

But we know the answer to that. By any measure — drought, famine, coastal devastation — the costs of inaction, of clinging to a broken energy policy, will dwarf the costs of acting now. It is this truth that the House must keep firmly in mind as it votes.