How Big Coal Gave Us The Clean Power Plan

As polluters and their political allies decry President Obama's Clean Power Plan, it's understandable they're ignoring the reality that they created it. As Kate Sheppard recounts at Huffington Post, friends of the coal industry, namely the minority of Republican and coal state Democrat senators, filibustered the 2010 clean energy & climate bill, which contained the ungodly sum of $177 billion to subsidize carbon capture & storage at coal-fired power plants.

Despite that massive giveaway offer negotiated by coal ally Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), despite President Obama making clear that if the bill died he'd use the Clean Air Act to limit carbon pollution, coal allies blockaded the bill anyway. And then they voted their powerful Democratic ally Boucher out of office, replacing him with an inept, back-bench Tea Party Republican.

Coal and its allies were gambling they could kill the climate bill and block the Clean Power Plan. Here in 2015, it's breathtaking to look at just how spectacularly that plan blew up in Big Coal's face.

Even at the time, it was clear the climate bill's death also killed any hope coal could ever be clean. But just five years later, even the old-fashioned coal-fired power that's allowed to dump carbon pollution into the atmosphere for free is now in a death spiral - well before the Clean Power Plan takes effect.

I talked about the Clean Power Plan with Bruce DePuyt on News Channel 8's Newstalk:

Northeast Climate Change Compact Keeps Proving Carbon Cap and Trade Works Really Well

The U.S. Senate Republican minority used the filibuster to block the majority from passing a carbon cap and trade program in 2010, because FREEDOM, or something. So a group of Northeast states went ahead with it anyway and it continues to prove cap and trade works really, really well:

Massachusetts and eight other states – Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont – are part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which is the nation’s first “cap-and-trade” program. Power plants in the RGGI states must purchase “allowances” that allow them to emit carbon dioxide. The states auction off these allowances and use the proceeds for public purposes, especially investments in energy efficiency, which create jobs and keep energy spending local.

The revisions to the Commonwealth’s RGGI program, as well as similar changes in the other eight states, will lower the existing “cap” on power plant emissions in the RGGI states from the current level of 165 million tons per year to 91 million tons per year starting in 2014. The cap will then be lowered by 2.5 percent each year thereafter until 2020. This reduction will ensure that in 2020, power plant emissions from these nine states will be half of what they were in 2005, when RGGI was initiated.

The lower cap is also expected to generate an estimated $350 million in additional revenue for the Commonwealth by 2020. These revenues will be invested primarily in programs to improve energy efficiency in Massachusetts’ municipalities, businesses and residences, which will, in turn, reduce energy costs and lower carbon dioxide emissions.

$350 million in revenue for Massachusetts alone? I wonder how much his state would be raking in if Gov. Chris Christie hadn't pulled New Jersey out of the program. What's the opposite of fiscal conservatism? Christie's pander to the Tea Party was that.

But cap and trade is supposed to bankrupt families and leave children shivering in the dark ... uh, right?

Before making these revisions, the RGGI states conducted extensive modeling on the impacts of these changes on consumers. The modeling shows that the impacts of the reduced emissions cap will be very modest, less than one percent in consumer bills. The average Massachusetts residential customer’s monthly electric bill of $72 will rise by 39 cents; the average commercial customer’s monthly bill of $455 will rise by $3.89; and the average industrial customer’s monthly bill of $6,659 will rise by $83.

A little over a penny a day to curb superstorms like Sandy and make sure we pass on a stable climate to our children and grandchildren? Seems like the biggest doorbuster bargain of the holiday season.

Destroying the Planet is Incredibly Economical!

I just booked a round-trip flight from Dulles to Boston on JetBlue for $185. That figure includes taxes & fees. 

I don't mean to complain about a cheap flight. But considering all of the negative societal costs of flying -- intensive reliance on imported fuel, massive climate pollution (not to mention asshole passengers driving flight attendants to leap from their planes) -- it's an incredibly low out of pocket cost.

The Green Miles offsets his carbon footprint through TerraPass, but how many air passengers do that? Maybe a few per plane? Why should I have to pay for my carbon pollution when others can pollute for free? And if JetBlue cared about being accountable for its pollution, wouldn't it work to offset its emissions on its own, or at least offer an offset option at checkout?

That's why we need a national price on carbon pollution -- either through cap & trade or a carbon tax. It's simple, it's fair, it cuts pollution.

New Video: How Cap & Trade Works

Clean Energy Works has put together a short video with Nat Keohane, Environmental Defense Fund environmental & economic policy expert. It explains how a carbon cap & trade system to curb global warming pollution would work. Watch the video & learn more at CarbonCapFacts.org:

The Facts of Cap-and-Trade from Clean Energy Works on Vimeo.

WaPo Can't Be Bothered to Read Things Like "Polls"

As Lowell details at Blue Virginia, there are many many many things wrong with today's Washington Post article on Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA). But I'll focus on just one:

By all rights, Tom Perriello should have almost no chance to win reelection to Congress. He's a stimulus-backing, health-care-reform-loving, cap-and-trade-supporting liberal Democrat who represents a conservative central Virginia district where antipathy to the president and all things Washington runs high.

So according to the Washington Post, whatever the GOP says must be true. There's just one problem: Rep. Perriello's constituents disagree with the Republican talking points. The Washington Post could have found this out for itself with a simple Google search. From September:

Politico has just published the results of a new poll indicating that - in spite of the teabaggers - citizens of Rep. Tom Perriello's district (the 5th) support cap and trade legislation by a 17-point (42%-25%) margin.

But these days, the Washington Post doesn't seem to have any interest in challenging Republican talking points on clean energy & climate legislation -- or on anything else for that matter.

In a related story, check out The New Republic's must-read article, Post Apocalypse: Inside the messy collapse of a great newspaper.

New Poll: Plurality of Perriello Constituents Want Climate Action Now

The Beltway conventional wisdom is wrong. I know, shocking, right?

From Greg Sargent at The Plumline:

I’ve obtained a new poll done for the Environmental Defense Fund which found that in three conserva-Dem districts, backing cap and trade vote may not be a huge risk, after all. [...]

“We went into three districts where conventional wisdom held that Demorats took a tough vote on cap and trade,” Allan Rivlin, a partner with Garin Hart Yang, told me. “The poll shows that it didn’t hurt these members in these districts. It actually helps them. Even in districts that are represented by moderate or conservative Democrats, supporting action on climate change is the popular position to take.”

Environmental Defense Fund specifically polled Rep. Tom Perriello’s 5th Congressional district. Even in that district, seen as center-right, cap and trade is supported by 42% of voters. Only 25% oppose it. You can see the full results at EnviroKnow.

For Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb, the message is clear. The political risk isn't supporting clean energy & climate action -- it's in continuing our energy status quo.

Nothing Ruins Baseball Like Astroturf

Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen many awesome videos from polluter-funded Astroturf groups. But this may be the most awesomest of all.

First, there's your host, who seems as excited to be attending a baseball game as I would be attending a Jonas Brothers concert. Now the video:

Premise: What if you combined confusion about sports salary caps with confusion about how a global warming pollution cap-and-trade system works?

Result: Two minutes of people babbling so incoherently it seems like they'd just finished a kegstand (specifically the poor woman at 1:10)

OK, so a major problem leaps off the page with this video. It asks "What do baseball salary caps have in common with cap and trade?" But baseball doesn't have a salary cap. And most baseball fans want one. It would help up-and-coming teams compete with the established heavyweights.

The analogy actually does a much better job of explaining both why baseball doesn't have a cap and why America hasn't started the transition to clean energy through cap-and-trade. The organizations that already have the most money and power are blocking progress for the rest of us. Yes, I just compared the Yankees to Big Oil. That just happened.

To learn more about the polluter front group that produced the video, check out DailyFinance.com.

Genuine or Greenwashing: Warner's Climate Bill

After Sen. John Warner's announcement last week that he won't seek another term, National Wildlife Federation President Larry Schweiger released this statement:

Senator Warner is poised to end his nearly 30-year Senate career tackling the biggest challenge of our time: global warming. This year, Senator Warner has taken a leadership role to advance legislation to address global warming as a national security priority. He has recently outlined a bi-partisan proposal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) that would reduce the pollution causing global warming and provide resources to help protect the Chesapeake Bay and other fish and wildlife habitat from climate change. The two senators lead a Senate subcommittee that can advance action on this critical issue this Congress.

No topic splits environmentalists right now like the Warner-Lieberman bill being drafted in the Senate. Some groups are hopeful Warner-Lieberman will be tough enough that it's worth supporting, while others think Warner-Lieberman will be so soft it deserves to die in committee. They want the bill sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) -- the toughest bill in the Senate -- or nothing.

Marc Guenther at Huffington Post recently called Warner a lynchpin on climate change legislation:

Warner could be the key to getting a bill out of the Senate Environment Committee, where Democrats hold only a one-vote edge. He comes from state where, it's safe assume, there are strong, conflicting opinions about climate change; the commonwealth includes both coal mines and the coastline along the Chesapeake Bay. But he's also a national security geek, and he has said that he's worried that global warming could lead to environmental refugees and political instability.

Meanwhile, to deal with fears that carbon caps will damage the economy, four Senators -- Republicans Warner and Lindsey Graham of South Caroline and Democrats Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana (the land of oil & gas & Katrina) -- introduced legislation that would aim to protect consumers and business from the potential costs of carbon regulation.

The four senators want to create something called a Carbon Market Efficiency Board, modeled on the Fed, to build some flexibility into the regulatory scheme. This board could ease up on an emissions cap if the economy is suffering, but only by lowering the cap in the future. In effect, it would give industry the freedom to pollute more now so long as it pollutes less later, once economy rebounds. (emphasis added)

Open Left's Matt Stoller has offered the most stinging criticism of Warner-Lieberman (thanks to Lowell for the tip). However, I'm not sure how Matt can say "it's a terrible legislative package coming to the floor in the fall" when we don't know all the details yet.

Some environmentalists counter that it doesn't matter which bill comes up for a vote -- President Bush will surely veto any serious global warming legislation and the Senate doesn't have enough votes to override -- it's the roll call itself that matters. Force all one hundred senators to go on the record on a serious bill. No more equivocating. Do you recognize the settled science or are you an unrepentant denier? Then the voters can be clear about their choices in 2008.

But Matt is right when he says, "We get one bite at this apple." If soft legislation passes and we try to firm it up later, Republican climate change deniers will say, "See? We told you so. They won't be satisfied until the economy is crippled."

Cross-posted from RaisingKaine.com