Carbon Emissions Soar. Will Bush Take Responsibility Again?

Take a few days off and the whole world goes to hell. In this case, literally. No, I don't mean the financial crisis, though I have no interest in looking at my 401(k) balance right now.

I'm talking about the new global carbon emissions figures released last week, which show a shockingly steep rise:

The new numbers, called "scary" by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007. That's an amount that exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.

Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates than in the 20th century, scientists said. If those trends continue, it puts the world on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.

The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which past data show is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output. And while several developed countries slightly cut their CO2 output in 2007, the United States churned out more. [...]

Emissions in the United States rose nearly 2 percent in 2007, after declining the previous year. The U.S. produced 1.75 billion tons of carbon (1.58 billion metric tons).

As soon as we learned US emissions fell slightly last year, President Bush immediately held a news conference and issued a gloating statement taking credit for the fall. I'm still waiting for the news conference and statement admitting he was wrong.

Scientists say we need to be cutting carbon emissions two percent a year. Instead, they rose three percent globally and two percent here in the US.

The richest country in the world that should be taking the lead on energy-efficient technology. Instead, we're leading the way in race to the bottom, and the Bush administration and its Republican allies are leading the way.

Bush's EPA Rewrites Clean Air Standards "Based on the Interests of Polluters"

Some presidents would react to news their popularity was at a historic low by trying to do things that were, y'know, popular. Not President Bush. He's apparently decided to take the opposite approach, instead trying to set a new low for popularity that will stand the test of time, much like the consecutive games streak of Cal Ripken, Jr.

This should help:

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday limited the allowable amount of pollution-forming ozone in the air to 75 parts per billion, a level significantly higher than what the agency's scientific advisers had urged for this key component of unhealthy air pollution.

Administrator Stephen L. Johnson also said he would push Congress to rewrite the nearly 37-year-old Clean Air Act to allow regulators to take into consideration the cost and feasibility of controlling pollution when making decisions about air quality, something that is currently prohibited by the law. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that the government needed to base the ozone standard strictly on protecting public health, with no regard to cost. [...]

With Democrats in control of Congress, the proposal to rewrite the Clean Air Act appears to face long odds. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) called the move "outrageous," adding in a statement, "The Bush Administration would have us replace clean air standards driven by science with standards based on the interests of polluters."

Here in Virginia, even the new weak Bush standard would mean Richmond, Hampton Roads, Roanoke, and outer DC suburbs Caroline and Stafford Counties will be in violation.

Of course, none of this affects us here in Northern Virginia. We haven't met federally required ozone limits for nearly 20 years. And we're adding lanes of highway. Why start now?

Bush: Polar Bears Disappearing? Sell Their Homes to Big Oil!

Few species are as threatened by climate change as the polar bear:

Polar bears are considered marine mammals because they depend on sea ice for hunting seals, but they den on land. As sea ice has retreated, polar bears must swim farther and expend more energy to reach it.

A U.S. Geological Survey study issued this summer found that in the next 50 years, shrinking sea ice will leave only a small population of polar bears in the islands of the Canadian Arctic. Two-thirds of the world's polar bears, including those along the coasts of Alaska and Russia, are projected to disappear.

So when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was faced with a January 9th deadline to on whether to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, it took swift action, right?

Of course not. This is the Bush administration. That's not how they roll.

The Fish and Wildlife Service postponed the decision for a month -- in an amazing coincidence, just enough time for the Minerals Management Service to sneak in yesterday's oil and gas lease sale in prime polar bear habitat:

The Interior Department yesterday announced $2.6 billion in winning bids from companies seeking to drill for oil and gas in Alaska's Chukchi Sea despite protests from environmental groups and members of Congress that oil and gas exploration would endanger polar bears.

Companies made 667 bids for 448 tracts in the 29 million-acre area north of Point Barrow. The winning bids included a record-breaking $105.3 million offer by Shell Oil for one three-by-three-mile leasehold, almost twice as much as the previous high bid for a single offshore U.S. tract.

Now that those leases are all squared away, the Fish and Wildlife Service will likely make a decision on the polar bear in the next few days.

You can tell the Bush administration you're outraged about the decision, but honestly, what good will it do? The Bush administration long ago decided to leave a legacy of using its public office to line the pockets of friends and thwart any efforts to hold it accountable, while passing problems like Iraq, the national debt, and climate change on to the next administration.

FutureGen: The Bush Administration's Version of Morgan from "Good Will Hunting"

After five years of proclaiming its FutureGen demonstration plant in Illinois would show the world that "clean coal" wasn't just greenwashing, the Bush administration pulled a 180 this week and suddenly shelved the plans:

Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said the administration was dropping the FutureGen Alliance project because costs for the planned 275-megawatt coal-fired plant had risen to $1.8 billion and because of advances in technology. Instead, the department said it would be willing to pay the cost of adding carbon capture and storage technology to new or existing coal plants bigger than 300 megawatts. Sell said that would lead to multiple projects and more sequestration. [...]

As recently as December, administration officials were calling it a "centerpiece" of their strategy for clean coal technologies.

Let me put this in bold letters: There is no such thing as clean coal. Virginia's proposed Wise County coal-fired power plant, with the latest emissions-reducing technology, would still emit more than 12,500 tons of pollution each year, including nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, the latter a cause of serious breathing problems for people with respiratory illnesses. There is no method of affordable carbon capture and storage currently available. Even the energy industry admits affordable CCS is, at best, decades away.

But I gotta tell you, I did get a laugh out of the headline of the press release:

DOE Announces Restructured FutureGen Approach to Demonstrate Carbon Capture and Storage Technology at Multiple Clean Coal Plants

Covering up the fiasco by calling the plans "restructured" reminded me of the scene in Good Will Hunting where Casey Affleck's character explains how he got fired from a janitorial job:

MORGAN: Management was restructurin'.

BILLY: Yeah, restructurin' the amount of retahhds they had workin' for 'em.

Fortunately for us, the White House is due for a similar restructuring on January 20.

Bush's Final SOTU: One Last Blast of Hot Air on Global Warming

Today I'm going to try for the rare pre-work, pre-coffee blog post. Short and likely not sweet. Buckle up.

So this guy gave this big speech down the street last night:

Together we should take the next steps: Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions. (Applause.) Let us increase the use of renewable power and emissions-free nuclear power. (Applause.) Let us continue investing in advanced battery technology and renewable fuels to power the cars and trucks of the future. (Applause.) Let us create a new international clean technology fund, which will help developing nations like India and China make greater use of clean energy sources. And let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases. (Applause.)

After that last line, a couple of friends at the Arlington Young Democrats State of the Union watching party turned around and gave me the Fonzie. Bush said he supported an international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions, right? Awesome!

Unfortunately with Bush you have to pay attention not just to what he says, but the loopholes he leaves himself. An agreement that has the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions (no mandatory caps). And then it got worse:

This agreement will be effective only if it includes commitments by every major economy and gives none a free ride. (Applause.) The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more energy-efficient technology. (Applause.)

Every economy. So if Turkey won't act, neither will we. And isn't the White House helpful to point out when people applauded? It's like the State of the Union with a laugh track.

How far have we come on regulating our greenhouse gas emissions since Bush's last State of the Union address? Since then, as ThinkProgress via Gristmill points out, Bush has blocked progress on many of the very topics he mentioned last night.

OK. Coffee's ready. And this thing isn't worth any more of our time.

Bush to NoVA: Drop Dead

Hate sitting in traffic on Interstate 66 or the Dulles Toll Road? You ain't seen nothin' yet. Yesterday the Bush administration's Federal Transit Administration pulled the rug out from under the plan to extend Metro to Dulles Airport.

Would rail to Dulles cut the current congestion on Northern Virginia highways? Probably not. The region is growing so fast, the "Silver Line" as it's referred to would likely just keep things from getting a lot worse. Which is what they're going to get every year this project gets put off.

Was the plan perfect? Of course not. It would've been very expensive and without a dedicated funding source. The tunnel through Tysons was scrapped in hopes of cutting costs, ironically enough, to please the FTA. The line would've been built by Bechtel, one of the contractors that botched Boston's Big Dig.

But in a region that's already in violation of federal air quality standards, the project would take thousands of cars off the road every single day. And as Marc Fisher points out, "the feds were only asked to contribute 20 percent of the cost of this project, compared to the usual 50 percent or even 80 percent on other big transportation jobs around the country."

So why did the Bush administration move to kill the project? Just three days before the FTA's announcement, the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt hinted at the true motivation -- an ideological opposition to federal funding for transportation:

"We believe, however, that a failure to properly align supply and demand, not a failure to generate sufficient tax revenues, is the essential policy failure," the Bush dissenters wrote. "When consumer demand determines supply, it will engender funding sufficient to meet the demand."

This is an astonishingly radical view of government's role in transportation. Cast backward, it would suggest that President Dwight D. Eisenhower never should have built the interstate highway system; it should have been left to private companies to build roads wherever tolling could generate a profit, and nowhere else. The result -- an incomplete, disconnected patchwork of highways -- might indeed have suited [Secretary of Transportation Mary] Peters, given that another of her goals is a reduced federal role in transportation policy. But the country would have been poorer for it.

Hiatt took that ideology to its logical conclusion, giving him a premonition of the project's death:

You can see the effect of the Bush ideology in recent reports, as recounted by The Post's Amy Gardner last week, that the administration is yet again looking for excuses to kill rapid transit rail to Dulles Airport. Having jumped through every hoop demanded -- giving up on a tunnel through Tysons Corner, cutting $300 million in costs -- the region finds itself facing another, unexplained roadblock. But if you understand the Bush philosophy, the roadblock isn't so hard to explain: If profit alone -- and not clean air, or joining the rest of the civilized world in connecting airports to cities, or any other consideration -- matters, then Dulles rail no doubt slides down the priority list.

But Marc Fisher sees a light at the end of the tunnel:

A pause of a year or two might be good for the project's future--if the Dems regain the presidency. ... a transit-friendly Democrat in the White House would likely be far more aggressive about making sure Metro found a way to get the new rail line.

I hope Northern Virginia voters keep that in mind in November. In the meantime, I'm glad Gov. Tim Kaine and Sen. John Warner have pledged to keep fighting for Dulles rail, and I'm sure the next Sen. Warner will do the same.

Top US Climate Negotiator on Lieberman-Warner: "I don't know the details"

We know the Bush administration has fallen behind the rest of America and the world on climate change. How far? The Associated Press has the embarrassing details:

First, newly installed Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd reversed his country's long-standing policy by signing the Kyoto pact Monday, leaving the United States as the only major industrialized country to reject the agreement. Rudd called on the U.S. to follow his lead, and the Australian delegation basked in applause and accolades at the opening of the conference in Bali.

The next blow came from a domestic source: Congress. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bill Wednesday to cut U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050 from electric power plants, manufacturing and transportation, defying the administration's opposition to mandatory caps. [...]

On Thursday, Watson was adamant the Bush administration would stick to its guns, no matter what Australia or the Senate did.

"In our process, a vote for movement of a bill out of committee does not ensure its ultimate passage," he told reporters. "I don't know the details, but we will not alter our posture here."

That last line had me doing a Scooby Doo-style "Wha-huh?" Dr. Harlan L. Watson doesn't know the details of the Climate Security Act, also known as Lieberman-Warner? The Bush administration's senior climate negotiator doesn't feel the need to keep himself appraised of such things?

Breaking News: Supreme Court Rebukes Bush on Global Warming

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.