Despite promises to fast-track development of three electric car models using federal loan dollars to prevent its bankruptcy, Chrysler announced yesterday that it will instead disband the engineering team responsible for the projects.

For decades Chrysler has relied on selling gas hogs like trucks and minivans to turn a profit. As the producer of five out of the top 10 most polluting, inefficient passenger vehicles in America, Chrysler has not surprisingly seen its sales plummet by half in the last few years of volatile gas prices. So the plans to become a leader in the electric vehicles market introduced under pre-bailout CEO Bob Nardelli seemed like a welcome change of direction for this old industrial giant.

However, Chrysler’s new CEO Sergio Marchionne, who took leadership of the company after the government-brokered merger with Fiat, is himself personally skeptical of electric vehicles, stating that E.V.’s will only account for one to two percent of overall production by 2015 – a mere 60,000 vehicles.

The announcement that Chrysler’s electric vehicle program, ENVI, would be scrapped came amidst optimistic projections in the company’s brand new 5-year plan. “Some of you have [assumed] that we are losing money,” said Marchionne, “this is not true.” The 5-year plan promises repayment of the $12.5 billion bailout money by 2015, resting these projections on questionable assumptions that the company would double its sales by 2014, and grow revenue by 20% each year for the next five years. “Today is the first day of the new Chrysler.”

Unfortunately, the “new Chrysler” is going to be one that produces about half a million fewer electric vehicles by 2014 than it promised in its application for the $12.5 billion federal bailout it received from taxpayers. Not only will this slow the growth of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on US roads, it will also have negative supply-chain effects on suppliers of critical components, such as battery manufacturer A123.

These are the technologies that Chrysler promised American taxpayers when it sent its CEO to Washington begging for money to avoid its collapse. To renege from the agreement is unethical at best and downright dubious at worst. As recently as August, Chrysler received $70 million more in federal funds from DOE to support the development of a fleet of 220 test vehicles, which has now been scrapped.

Meanwhile, virtually every other major US automaker is putting a serious down payment on commercializing an electric drive or hybrid vehicle – from small start ups like Tesla, Fiskar, and Coda to giant mega brands like Honda, GM, and Toyota. GM plans to have the first U.S. plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the Volt, on the market next year. GM estimates that it could get 203 miles per gallon.

Maybe Chrysler’s departure from electric vehicles is a sign of an early industry “shake out,” where companies without a competitive advantage tip their hat and exit the market when they foresee an inability to compete. But with more efficient fuel economy standards to contend it seems unwise for a company struggling to define its future to be turning its back on electric drive technology.
– Sean Pool

Related Posts:

• Ford expects 10% to 25% of fleet to be electric by 2020, Toyota plans up to 30,000 plug-ins in 2012, GM to “do the heavy lifting” to help Obama meet goal of one million plug-ins by 2015.
• Climate and hydrogen car advocate gets almost everything wrong about plug-in cars
• Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence
• Plug-in hybrids and electric cars — a core climate solution

Some of this sacred trust is codified in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Some is unwritten and implied. And although the Constitution dictates that we keep government and religion separate, there are places in public policy where secular values and moral values overlap. Stewardship of nature and its resources – called “creation care” in religious circles – is one of those places.

Government’s stewardship responsibility is recognized in the body of laws past congresses developed once we realized that burning rivers, poisoned water, dangerous air, carcinogenic fish and toxic wastes were not in the national interest.  In the  landmark National Environmental Policy Act, for example, Congress declared:

It is the continuing responsibility of the Federal Government to use all practicable means, consistent with other essential considerations of national policy, to improve and coordinate Federal plans, functions, programs, and resources to the end that the Nation may . . . fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations . . .

Some legal experts believe public officials have a fiduciary duty to protect the commons – the air, soil, water and forests on which we all depend.  Prof. Mary Wood at the University of Oregon law school champions the idea of an “atmospheric trust doctrine” under which government officials are held legally responsible for failing to reduce carbon emissions. According to research commissioned by the Presidential Climate Action Project and conducted by the University of Colorado Law School, that type of legal accountability doesn’t exist in federal statutes today. But Wood argues that the common law trust principle underlies the statutes, and the courts should enforce it:

Such litigation rests on the premise that all governments hold natural resources in trust for their citizens and bear the fiduciary obligation to protect such resources for future generations. The courts have the ability to enforce this fiduciary obligation to reduce carbon at all levels of government…

Two-thirds of the greenhouse gas pollution being emitted by the United States is in compliance with government-issued permits, Wood says.  That means government is not fulfilling either its fiduciary or its moral responsibility in regard to climate change and its profoundly destructive impacts. Yet in past court cases, Wood says, we can find the seeds of an atmospheric trust doctrine. For example, in a 1982 case involving a railroad and the State of Illinois, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled:

The State can no more abdicate its trust over property in which the whole people are interested…than it can abdicate its police powers in the administration of government and the preservation of peace…

The Philippines Supreme Court, whose opinions might be less important to us in other countries if the court weren’t discussing a global issue and basic morality, said it even better in a ruling about logging in an ancient forest:

These basic rights need not even be written the Constitution for they are assumed to exist from the inception of humankind…(or else) the day would not be too far when all else would be lost not only for the present generation, but also for those to come – generations which stand to inherit nothing but parched earth incapable of sustaining life.

On stewardship, the faith and environmental communities have found common ground and common cause in urging governments to address climate change. Among the scores of signatories to the Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change, for example, are the Dalai Lama and Herman Daly, Greenpeace and the World Council of Churches, Bill McKibben and representatives of the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Baha’i, Quaker, Buddhist and Hindu traditions.

Scientists, academics and religious leaders also have found common ground, expressed in the statement a group of leading religious and science leaders sent to President Bush and Congress in January 2007. One of the scientists, Harvard’s Eric Chivian, explained:

We (science and religious leaders) share a very deep reverence for life on earth, whether that life was created by God or evolved over billions of years, it exists, is sacred to all of us, and is being endangered by human activity. It doesn’t matter if we are liberals or conservatives, Darwinists or Creationists, we are all under the same atmosphere and drink the same water and will do everything we can to work together to solve these problems.

Last Thursday, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, addressed an eclectic gathering of religious leaders at Windsor Castle in London, telling them “you are the leaders who can have the largest, widest and deepest reach” in educating people about climate change. The Economist covered the meeting and reported:

People close to Mr. Ban say he is frustrated by the reluctance of politicians to stake political capital in next month’s Copenhagen meeting; perhaps spiritual leaders are his last hope.

Will morality or politics-as-usual prevail on the issue of global warming? In Congress, the fate of climate legislation is being played out in a contest between morality and money. That brings us back to money-changers in the temple of democracy.

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that 2,225 lobbyists from energy companies now are working the Hill to influence climate legislation, outnumbering environmental lobbyists nearly 5 to 1.  Spending by lobbyists is on record pace this year, with the oil, gas and utility industries outspending alternative energy industries 10 to 1. In other words, the dominant army of lobbyists represents companies that produce and burn carbon-intensive fuels, protecting their perceived right to pollute and to profit from it.

Meantime, new data from the Federal Election Commission indicates that oil and gas interests already have contributed $6.3 million to candidates for federal office in the 2010 election cycle, with the election still a year away. Electric utilities have contributed about the same; coal interests have contributed more than $850,000.  It’s safe to assume, I think, that the fossil energy sector is not hoping to elect a Congress that will favor a rapid transition away from the fossil-energy era.

Secular law makes this legal. In my opinion, moral law does not.

The climate debate in Congress is testing our morality as a nation, as well as the faith so many other people in the world have in the integrity of American leadership.  It’s a test we should not fail.  The members of Congress who don’t get this, don’t deserve to be there.

– Bill Becker

Polling from 3 key states — and 5 key districts — finds strong support for the climate and clean energy bill.  Every major recent poll has come to the same conclusion (see Swing state poll finds 60% “would be more likely to vote for their senator if he or she supported the bill” and Independents support the bill 2-to-1).  Perhaps that’s why E&E News found “At least 67 senators are in play” on climate bill.

In the new polls, likely 2010 voters were asked:

“Congress is considering an energy plan that has two key parts. One part would require factories and power companies to reduce their emissions of the carbon pollution that causes global warming by 17% (20% in MO) by the year 2020 and by 80% by the year 2050. The other part would require power companies to generate 15% of their power from clean energy sources like wind and solar by the year 2025. Would you favor/oppose this entire plan?”

The results:

• 75% of voters in Michigan favor.
• 68% of voters in Ohio favor.
• 67% of voters in Missouri favor.

And this matches every recent poll:

• New CNN poll finds “nearly six in 10 independents” support cap-and-trade
• Yet another major poll finds “broad support” for clean energy and climate bill: “Support for the plan among independents has increased slightly”
• 63% of likely voters (and 59% of independents) in AK, AR, IN, ME, MI, MO, MT, NC, NV, ND, NH, OH, PA, SD, VA, WV support the bill (see here)
• Public opinion snapshot: Public backs key elements of global warming bill
• Zogby: 71% of likely voters support House climate bill
• Mark Mellman must read on climate messaging: “A strong public consensus has emerged on the reality and severity of global warming, as well as on the need for federal action” — ecoAmerica “could hardly be more wrong”

The same question was asked in five swing House district and the result was the same:

• 61% of voters in Florida’s 2nd district support.
• 69% of voters in New Mexico’s 2nd district support.
• 63% of voters in Ohio’s 16th district support.
• 70% of voters in Virginia’s 5th district support.
• 68% of voters in Washington’s 8th district support.

This new polling was done August through October by “by The Mellman Group, a leading Democratic firm, and Public Opinion Strategies, a leading Republican firm” for The Pew Environment Group

“Our surveys consistently find that voters across these three states and five congressional districts support efforts to address global warming and require the use of more clean energy sources,” said Mark Mellman, president of The Mellman Group. “These voters see global warming as a serious threat that is happening now and favor action to reduce carbon emissions.”

It is worth adding that “all respondents heard this argument summarizing the opposition’s strongest case”:

Opponents of the plan say this cap and trade plan is nothing more than a hidden $2,000 per year tax on average families.  This proposal puts a tax on companies which will be passed on to all Americans forcing them to pay more every time they drive, buy groceries, or flip on a light switch. This backdoor tax will make our struggling economic situation worse, costing us hundreds of thousands of jobs and making it harder for average families to survive the recession. And, people in the Midwest and South who rely more on coal will end up paying significantly more for energy. It makes no sense to hurt our own economy as long as China, India, and others continue to build polluting coal plants.

And “after hearing strongly worded messages from both sides,” voters still strongly supported the climate and clean energy bill.

You can find details on the 8 polls here.  The polling reveals the strongest arguments for the climate and clean energy bill and has some interesting implications for messaging, which I will cover in a later post.

Related Post

• Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 2: Opposing clean energy hurts GOP — Mellman

Reuters reports:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has sent its final proposal on whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to human health and welfare to the White House for review, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told Reuters on Monday.

The EPA’s final finding, if it follows the agency’s earlier assessment and is approved by the Office of Management and Budget, would allow the EPA to issue rules later to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, even if Congress fails to pass legislation to cut U.S. emissions of the heat-trapping gases that contribute to global warming.

For background, see New EPA rule will require use of best technologies to reduce greenhouse gases from large facilities when “constructed or significantly modified” — small businesses and farms exempt.

Here’s more:

“We sent the final proposal over to OMB on Friday,” Jackson said in an interview at her EPA headquarters’ office.

She said the OMB has up to 90 days to review the proposal, but the EPA would like a quicker timetable.

“We’ve briefed them a couple of times. So we’re hoping for an expedited review,” Jackson said.

Along with its final endangerment finding, the EPA also sent to OMB the agency’s final finding on whether cars and trucks “cause or contribute to that pollution,” Jackson said.

Such a finding would allow the federal government to regulate tailpipe emissions by increasing vehicle mileage requirement.

Jackson said the government is facing a “hard deadline” of next March to let automakers know of any required increases in fuel economy standards that would affect vehicles built for the 2012 model year.

It remains vital that the administration pursue this less-than-perfect approach in case Congress fails to pass the climate and clean energy bill.

Related Post:

• Murkowski amendment to undermine the Clean Air Act is dead — for now. Feinstein says “we can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand on climate change.”

They are still soaring.  NOAA’s National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center has a good animation of tropical Pacific SST anomalies:

The warming in the Nino 3.4 region of the Pacific is typically used to define an El Niño — sustained postive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies of greater than 0.5°C across the central tropical Pacific Ocean.

Two weeks ago the anomaly was 1.1°C.  Last week it was 1.5°C.  This week it’s 1.7°C, as seen in this figure from NOAA’s latest weekly update on the El Niño/Southern oscillation, “ENSO Cycle: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions“:

If this value is maintained for any length of time, this would be a pretty strong El Niño, as this historical graph of the 3-month running mean SST departures in Nino 3.4 region show:

Technically, we aren’t in a “full-fledged” El Niño episode yet.  NOAA says, historically, that requires the the 3-month running mean SST departure to exceed 0.5°C “for a period of at least 5 consecutive overlapping 3-month seasons.”  As you can see on page 26 of the weekly report, they can’t make that official until the end of this month.

For the rest of us, it’s increasingly clear that this will be at least a moderate El Niño, and many models are forecasting it will last past the winter and through the spring.

And it bears repeating that back in January, NASA had predicted:  “Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”

It still seems likely.  And that will be on top of the hottest decade in recorded history by far.

Related Post:

• Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It’s the oceans, stupid!
• Another major study predicts rapid warming over next few years — nearly 0.3°F by 2014
• Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” Levitt “said he does not believe there is a cooling trend”!!

While the authors of Superfreakonomics, which is riddled with basic scientific errors, have started to issue some retractions, they continue to embrace self-contradictory denial of the basic science.

In mid-October, economist Steven Levitt wrote a blog post titled, “The Rumors of Our Global-Warming Denial Are Greatly Exaggerated,” which asserted:

Like those who are criticizing us, we believe that rising global temperatures are a man-made phenomenon and that global warming is an important issue to solve.  Where we differ from the critics is in our view of the most effective solutions to this problem.

Then in another red-herring-filled post from last month, “The SuperFreakonomics Global-Warming Fact Quiz,” Levitt asserted that “we believe” it is “TRUE” that “The Earth has gotten substantially warmer over the past 100 years.”  And he writes of that statement — that “fact” — (and 5 others), “It is our impression that none of the six scientific statements above is at all controversial among climate scientists.”

Duh.  In fact, the most recent survey of the scientific literature signed off on by every major government in the world, including the Bush Administration, concluded “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

Unfortunately for the Superfreaks, their book is once again searchable on Amazon, so everyone can confirm it contains the following sentence — the very first one I criticize them for in my original debunking when I broke the story of their error-riddled book:

Any religion, meanwhile, has its heretics, and global warming is no exception.

That is a staggeringly anti-scientific statement.  It should be retracted.  It should certainly not be repeated, as Levitt is now doing on his blog!

Note that they didn’t say something like “belief in climate solutions” is a religion.”  And they didn’t even say, “the theory of human-caused global warming is a religion” — which, in any case, they presumably don’t believe given that they say they believe rising global temperatures are a man-made phenomenon.

No, to Levitt and Dubner, “global warming” itself is a religion.  Except, of course, it isn’t.  Again, actual observations show that “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

The only reason I am bringing this up again is that Levitt has doubled down on this piece of anti-scientific nonsense.  As a eagle-eyed reader pointed out, Levitt blogged last week:

Is Climate-Change Belief a Religion?

By Steven D. Levitt

Actually, yes, at least if you live in the United Kingdom.

So what is it, Levitt?

You can’t simultaneously claim you understand that warming of the climate system is an uncontroversial statement of scientific fact — and then keep repeating the claim that global warming and belief in climate change is a religion.

As University of Chicago Geophysicist Raymond Pierrehumbert has charged, Levitt is guilty of “academic malpractice in your book.”

And for the record, climate change belief is not a religion even in the UK.  It remains a scientific understanding there and everywhere else.

The particular case and the ruling are convoluted — no doubt in part because the judge was the same one who issued that confused ruling on Al Gore’s movie (see here).  I would welcome any experts on British law posting here — and would certainly recommend reading the Guardian piece and an excellent dissection on Salon by Andrew Leonard.  As the Guardian notes:

In today’s ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton decided that: “A belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.”

… The written ruling, which looked at whether philosophy could be underpinned by a scientific belief, quoted from Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and ultimately concluded that a belief in climate change, while a political view about science, can also be a philosophical one.

At least in Britain, science can apparently drive moral imperatives that are protected by the law.  As the winner of the lawsuit put it:

I’m delighted by the judgment, not only for myself but also for other people who may feel they are discriminated against for their belief in man-made climate change. This is a huge issue and the moral and ethical values that I have in relation to the imperative to do something about it, but crucially underpinned by the overwhelming scientific consensus, mean that to have secured protection in this way is, I think, a landmark decision … It’s a philosophical belief based on my moral and ethical values underpinned by scientific evidence and that’s the distinction [with it being a religious belief] I think. The moral and ethical values are similar to those that are promoted and adopted by many of the world’s religions. But one of the key differences I think is that mine is not a faith-based or spiritual-based belief: it is grounded in the overwhelming scientific evidence and it’s the combination of that scientific evidence with the moral and ethical imperative to do something about it that is distinct from a religion.

Levitt, of course, is beyond such nuanced understanding.

He made an anti-scientific statement in the book, and notwithstanding certain half-hearted walk backs, he clearly stands by the statement.

Is calling global warming a religion the same thing as denying global warming science?  You be the judge.

UPDATE:  Noting that the Superfreaks discuss New York’s turn-of-the-century horse manure problem, what she calls, “the Parable of Horseshit,” the New Yorker’s eloquent climate reporter ends her joint review of their book and Al Gore’s “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis”:

To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction. This is the turn that “SuperFreakonomics” takes, even as its authors repeatedly extoll their hard-headedness. All of which goes to show that, while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us.

Can offshore winds spin a market for American-made turbines?

Middle Eastern oil is one energy dependency. Another, looming in the future, could be a growing array of wind turbines, situated along the Eastern Seaboard, manufactured by European companies and feeding electricity to nearby American cities. That’s what government and industry experts are trying to avoid — a new addiction.

The effort here to roll out an offshore wind industry is accelerating, but major gaps are still stopping turbine builders from opening U.S. facilities that could supply East Coast states with homemade blades, towers and nacelles. Experts expressed confidence in the United States’ ability to establish a strong offshore wind manufacturing sector, and also anxiety about the steps that aren’t being taken to get there.

The United States has yet to plant its first turbines in the seafloor, while Europe widens its lead, adding 1-megawatt every day on average, according to its industry group. Europe’s offshore winds now produce a total of 1,471 megawatts, the amount of electricity produced by a very large coal-fired power plant.

“If we don’t get on the ball and do it, the Europeans are going to do it,” Bob Thresher, a wind power expert with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said of turbine manufacturing. “They’ll gain all the experience, and they get the privilege of selling us all their equipment. So sitting on our butts and doing nothing is just gonna cost us.”

To people like Thresher, the United States needs to hurry up and allow someone to build the first wind facility in the ocean. That, in all likelihood, would be Cape Wind, a 130-turbine project proposed 5 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. It has been stuck in regulatory quicksand for eight years — a signal that has not helped to attract manufacturers or financing sources.

“They need to see there’s a critical mass of megawatts that are sort of in the pipeline or committed,” Greg Watson, the top renewable energy advisor to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, said of parts builders. “You’re not going to make a commitment to build a manufacturing facility unless you have some sense that there’s going to be a workload, or an anticipated number of projects.”

“We’ve had some frank discussions” with manufacturers, he added. “They might give you a quote that they need to see five or six more Cape Winds in the pipeline.”

Others say the bar is higher. Jim Lanard, managing director of Deepwater Wind, which has three offshore projects proposed in Rhode Island and New Jersey, said manufacturers want to see a decade-long outlook promising that 1,000 turbines will be installed.

“Instead of sending our dollars to countries that export oil, we’re now going to send our dollars to countries that export offshore wind equipment,” Lanard warns. “It’s billions of dollars being sent overseas. That’s thousands of jobs.”

Exelon boss Rowe thinks Senate will act on climate bill by spring

Exelon Corp. Chief Executive John Rowe, speaking last week after Senate action on a cap-and-trade bill aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, sounded upbeat as ever.

Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted the discussion, prompting Committee Chair Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to push through the so-called Kerry-Boxer bill on an 11-1 vote without a single Republican present. Democrats from Southern and coal-producing states got no chance to amend the measure, as they wanted, and the tactics alienated GOP moderates.

Speaking before the Economic Club of Chicago, however, Rowe delivered the same sunny talk as ever, saying a consensus has emerged for a cap on carbon, and a market mechanism for regulating it.  “At that level of generality, there is strong support for a bill,” he said. “There is a very good chance we will see action either this fall or next spring.”

As the nation’s top nuclear-power producer, Exelon has a lot to gain from cap-and-trade. But some stalwart supporters are starting to worry, as here, and its enemies here smell blood. Even the phrase “cap-and-trade” is being viewed as a political liability.

Rowe is undaunted: “Most other solutions are simply more expensive for the economy than cap-and-trade,” he said. “You have to put a cap on it, you have to put a price on it, and you get the marketplace to work.”

Or — as appears increasingly likely — the Environmental Protection Agency could be writing the rules for controlling emissions. And if that happens, forget about the “marketplace” working.

Climate bill will save households money — ACEEE

Cannons are firing in the battle to explain what cap and trade will cost, and one group thinks it has pierced the hull with its latest estimate.

According to a report released last month by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, climate legislation won’t just have a low cost. Once the energy efficiency programs kick in, it says, the average household would actually save more than $300 a year, and the economy would gain 1 million net jobs.

See study here.  See also “New EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency — plus 22 GW of extra coal retirements and no new dirty plants.

Strengthen the bill, the report says, and the benefits multiply. In the best case, households save triple the original amount, and the economy gains two and a half million jobs.

The finding differs vastly from the growing body of cost studies that have become a political turf war in the climate debate.

In June, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that House-passed climate legislation, H.R. 2454, would cost the average household $175 a year — a cost the administration likened to buying a postage stamp a day.

“It depends on how you write the bill,” said Paul Werbos, a legislative fellow for Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.). Werbos said his remarks were made on his own behalf, not the senator’s.

“If you write a carbon bill the wrong way, you’re going to make it a job killer. If you write it the right way, you’re going to create a lot more jobs than you lose,” he said.

Skip Laitner, senior economist at ACEEE and the author of its October study, echoed Werbos’ sentiment. He said that if climate legislation only raises energy prices and consumers don’t respond by making more efficient choices, then the economy will suffer.

Laitner and other efficiency boosters, however, have said most of the cost analyses of climate legislation have only focused on the cap-and-trade policy, not on the host of other programs, like energy efficiency, that the legislation includes.

When the price of electricity goes up, consumers and businesses can make choices to use less energy, Laitner said at the Capitol Hill briefing. The more a climate bill incentivizes these choices — through utility programs and building codes, for example — the less the bill costs, and the more jobs result from building in that efficiency.

The result: a report that finds the bill won’t come with a price tag, but that it will bring a net gain.

Warming of Sino-Japanese ties with green fight

Forty-two projects related to energy-saving and environmental protection were signed between China and Japan on Sunday.

The effort to deepen cooperation in tackling environmental change and the economic downturn comes ahead of the climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, next month.

Vice-Premier Li Keqiang called for cooperation on key projects and strengthening technological cooperation at the fourth Sino-Japan Energy-saving and Environment Protection Forum in Beijing Sunday.

“Japan has a lot of experience in solving energy and environmental issues, while China has put years of effort into forming its energy saving industry. China’s potential market and Japan’s technology complement each other,” said Xie Zhenhua, deputy minister of the National Development and Reform Commission.

The two sides have worked together in building recycling eco-cities and personnel training, Xie said. About 300 Chinese experts were sent to Japan for training, while more than 300 Japanese experts came to China to help nurture local talent.

The Chinese central government has arranged 58.1 billion yuan ($8.5 billion) to support 10 major energy-saving and emission reduction projects, including sewage treatment and industrial pollution control. China will also help qualified environmental-friendly companies expand their financing channels, Xie said.

Masayuki Naoshima, Japan’s minister of economy and trade, said in the near future Japan can assist China with water treatment and carbon emissions control.

China pledged to “strengthen efforts in intellectual property protection” to create a healthy environment for technology transfers, said Chen Jian, deputy minister of commerce.

API hires Sen. Durbin’s nephew for government affairs post

The American Petroleum Institute has hired Martin Durbin, a top lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council, to be the oil industry trade group’s executive vice president of government affairs.

Durbin, who has worked for Democratic lawmakers, will have his hands full as the industry aims to influence — and in some cases thwart — congressional and White House energy initiatives.

Durbin — the nephew of Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat — will join API next month.

“I know he will proudly represent the interests of the thousands of companies and the millions of employees in the oil and natural gas industry, and stand up for policies that promote jobs and affordable energy,” API President Jack Gerard said in a statement yesterday. Gerard, who once ran the chemical industry group, worked with Durbin there.

API also issued a statement from Durbin: “I will work hard to ensure that policymakers in both houses and parties understand the industry’s perspective on key policy issues, and that they appreciate the industry’s many contributions to America’s economy and society.”

Durbin is coming to API as lawmakers are considering climate and energy legislation that will have major implications for the institute’s members. The group opposes the major House and Senate cap-and-trade bills, alleging they would raise fuel prices and cost jobs.

Refiners in particular allege the plans provide an unfairly small number of free emissions allowances to the sector and warn that they would create a competitive advantage for foreign refineries and thereby increase reliance on imported fuels.

At the same time, the group is fighting White House proposals to eliminate tax incentives for domestic production. The industry is also pushing the Interior Department to offer more offshore areas for leasing following the lapse of decades-long outer continental shelf leasing bans last year.

China Pledges $10 billion to Africa

China offered African governments a multibillion-dollar package of financial and technical assistance on Sunday, stepping up a courtship that already has gained Beijing wide access to oil and minerals across perhaps the most resource-rich continent in the world.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao pledged to grant African countries $10 billion in low-interest development loans over the next three years, to establish a $1 billion loan program for small and medium-size businesses, and to forgive the remaining debt on certain interest-free loans that China previously granted less-developed African nations.

Besides the financial assistance, Mr. Wen also promised to form a partnership to address climate change in Africa, including the building of 100 clean-energy projects across the continent. Beijing will also remove tariffs on most exports to China from the least-developed African nations that do not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and sponsor an array of other programs in health, education, culture and agriculture.

The gestures are likely to further cement China’s good relations with many African nations, and may help address rising concern in some quarters that China is merely replacing Europe as a colonial power.

China’s focus on extracting oil and minerals from Africa has drawn some criticism from African scholars, and labor and safety conditions at some Chinese-run mines and smelters have set off outcries by African workers. Some critics say that the flood of low-cost Chinese goods into African cities has displaced products once made by local workers.

China lower risk than UK for green investors, claims Deutsche Bank

Britain’s claim to be a world leader in green energy investment has been called into question by an authoritative new study that will embarrass ministers as they prepare to launch an important climate change initiative tomorrow.

A report from Deutsche Bank says that the UK does not have the right climate change strategy to attract international investment and is lagging behind other countries, such as Germany, France and China.

Britain’s energy strategy lacks the level of transparency and certainty required to encourage investment, according to Deutsche Bank’s study on the best places to do business. It comes as ministers prepare to launch six draft national policy statements on energy and climate change policies tomorrow.

“What investors want is transparency, longevity and certainty – TLC – in policy regimes to mobilise capital,” said Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Bank’s asset management division, which is based in New York.

“Many major emitters such as the US and the UK do not have enough TLC in their policy frameworks. Our rankings show that China has a lower risk for climate change investors, as does Germany, but the research also shows that in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, they have demonstrated their ability to deliver scale.”

The Department of Energy and Climate Change said its host of new initiatives to streamline planning and ensure the building of new infrastructure, such as clean coal plants, is proof of its positive commitment to moving to a low-carbon economy.

“You will have seen [from] the recent announcement from RWE and E.ON about spending £15bn and creating thousands of jobs here in new nuclear plants that investment does seem to be coming,” said a DECC spokesman.

But Deutsche Bank says Japan and Australia are among the countries that represent lower risk profiles than the UK because they have more comprehensive and integrated government plans.

Wells also produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas thought to contribute to global climate change.

C’mon.  I think we are at least one decade, if not two decades or more, passed a time when the words “thought to” are justified.

Note to Beardon:  Why exactly do you think it is called a greenhouse gas?

This hedge remains all too common in the media — see Memo to Wall Street Journal: You can do better than “greenhouse gases, which are believed to contribute to climate change.”

As I wrote in that earlier post, this hedge is especially pointless and misinforming because of the second hedge — “contribute to.”  All but the most extremist deniers of the basic climate science accept that carbon dioxide contributes to global climate change.

So perhaps the NewsHour might catch up with the scientific understanding and write some variation of:

… carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes the global climate to change.

And people wonder why the public is still underinformed on this subject.

Related Posts:

• Note to media: Enough with the multiple hedges on climate science!

The California Highway Patrol say a man stole a car to make a court appearance on a previous auto theft charge.

Patrol investigator Chris Linehan says he arrested Samuel Botchvaroff Tuesday as he sat inside a stolen 2000 Range Rover at the Vallejo courthouse. The 24-year-old Botchvaroff had just left his arraignment on auto theft charges stemming from an Oct. 31 arrest.

Linehan said the Range Rover’s LoJack system helped him locate the vehicle, which had been stolen from Oakland earlier Tuesday morning.

Authorities say Botchvaroff told officers his car had been impounded, and he had no other way to get to his arraignment.

He was booked into Solano County Jail on suspicion of auto theft and possession of stolen property.

Okay it doesn’t have a lot to do with global warming directly, but for some reason, when I first read the story, I immediately thought of this:  “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?“

Rob Hopkins, “The Transition Handbook”

During his 10 months in office, President Barack Obama and his team have assembled an impressive list of accomplishments on energy and climate policy.  Some might conclude the President has done about all he can do with the powers of his office.

One would be wrong. What energy and climate security require — what the future of the American Dream demands — is audacious big-picture ideas that capture the imagination, stir the emotions, speak to the souls, rally the support and win the involvement of the American people. That’s been lacking so far in the President’s climate leadership.

I suspect there is a sizeable segment of the American people waiting to be engaged, waiting to have their imaginations triggered, waiting to understand what a new energy economy looks like and what they can do to build it.  I’m not saying that citizens can’t act without top-down leadership. Indeed, as President Obama hinted recently in his “Grab a Mop” speech, there’s fundamental unfairness, guaranteed stasis and more than a little buck-passing when we citizens stand on the sidelines, some expecting the White House to do everything, others protesting it is doing far too much.

In regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, each of us is capable of grabbing a mop and mopping. It’s as easy as turning off the lights. But there is tremendous motivation in knowing that we’re part of a mop uprising, a society-wide mopping mission, with a common understanding of why we’re mopping.  Dedication to visions and common causes is what got us through World War II, landed us on the moon, secured the legal rights of women and minorities, and built the interstate highway system.

The leader who first steps forward to communicate a clear vision of a sustainable world and who stirs us to act as a nation — he or she will be a leader for the ages.  That’s because the climate challenge isn’t just about the weather. It’s about a fundamental reordering of our species’ relationship with nature. It’s about ending an epoch of mankind as megalomaniac. It’s about accepting our dependence on natural systems and other countries.

If interdependence sounds like Gaia-speak, then think of the swine flu pandemic; the global recession; food riots; and climate change itself.  It really should not take islands disappearing under the sea to convince us that no man is an island.

If we must fight a war of ideas to win support for sustainable human society, then so be it.  Unless America has lost its soul, that war would be no contest. On one side is the army of hope, fighting for a future that is more secure, moral and genuinely prosperous, where resource conflicts and extreme poverty are distant memories.

On the other side is the Army of No, the foot soldiers of a “no-can-do” society, the paid purveyors of fear, the scalp-hunters and character assassins, rumor mongers, professional dividers and the false prophets of a “business as usual” world that no longer is possible. They use scare words like Hitler, socialism and taxes.  They tell us that in a low-carbon society our showers will go cold, our beer will go warm, our jobs will disappear, and our energy bills will bankrupt us.

None of that is true, of course, and it appeals to the worst in us. But we are still a can-do nation. We can build a low-carbon economy that is a low-cost economy. We can have hot showers and cold beer without heating up the atmosphere. We can send our kids off to college rather than sending them to die in oil wars. We can build a new economy and achieve a new and improved American Dream. It’s damned un-American to suggest we can’t.

To accomplish those things, we need big changes motivated by big ideas we can understand and believe in. Here for an encore are a few I’ve proposed in the past:

A National Clean Energy Surge: In a speech to a conference in Appalachia last week, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers proposed that the United States become the most energy-efficient nation on the planet.  If the chief executive of the country’s third-largest carbon polluter can embrace that big idea, then the White House and the rest of us surely can.

President Obama pointed out during his campaign that 21 countries are more energy-efficient than the United States. We gave up our leadership long ago in key renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar power. That doesn’t bode well for our economy, our carbon emissions, or our international competitiveness.  The President should set specific stretch goals to improve energy efficiency in every sector of the U.S. economy and to make America the world’s leading consumer and producer of renewable energy.

The Administration has taken a number of steps toward that goal, some small and some more significant:   new efficiency rules for vehicles, major new funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program, a directive that new federal buildings require zero-net-energy by 2030, to cite just a few examples. President Obama should bundle up these efforts along with the money in the stimulus bill and the incentives contained in recent energy bills, for an unprecedented campaign that engages every red-blooded American in making our nation the cleanest and most resource-efficient on the planet.

Energizing Rural America: Rural America has a central role to play in our sustainable future. It will be the nation’s principal supplier of low-carbon energy.  Farmers, residents and rural small businesses will flourish with new jobs, new income and new tax base from green energy production.

Food and fiber will grow alongside wind farms and solar farms. Feedlots and landfills will capture methane to help power the rural economy.  Farmers will grow feed-stocks for cellulosic ethanol on land considered marginal for conventional crops. Farm equipment will run on locally grown low-carbon fuels. Carbon-conscious tillage and forestry management will be a new source of farm revenues in a cap-and-trade economy.

In Congress this year, prominent elements of the farm lobby have fought against this vision, worried that fuel and fertilizers will cost more when we put a price on carbon. But that would only be true if farmers continue relying on carbon-intensive fuels and products, fail to adopt more fuel-efficient equipment and agricultural practices, and decide not to offset higher fossil energy prices by capturing the new income opportunities in green energy. Even then, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the Waxman-Markey bill would reduce annual net farm income only 0.9 percent in the short-term.

That’s a very small price to pay to avoid agriculture’s real parched-earth scenario: climate-induced drought, extreme weather, changed growing patterns, and more pests and plant diseases.

One year ago, the Presidential Climate Action Project gave Obama’s team a policy agenda for rural America’s dynamic role in a new energy economy. Among its ideas are re-missioning the Cooperative Extension Service, rural electrification programs and other applicable federal farm programs to retool rural communities and farms.  In the past, rural areas have been the economically distressed stepchildren of the industrial economy. In the future, they will be the powerhouse of our new energy economy.

The Future We Want: Despite the strange box-office appeal of apocalypse, we’re in danger of becoming emotionally battered these days by Hollywood’s versions of civilization’s collapse. The Eleventh Hour, The Day After Tomorrow and now 2012 threaten to scare the living optimism out of the American people.

Understanding the terrible consequences of inaction is important.  Conservatives use fear as a tool to resist change; climate activists use it to urge change. The problem is, by focusing on collapse with too little counter-focus on what we can build, we are in danger of creating the future we fear.

I believe we are poised for hope. We want hope. We hope for hope. Hope is what got President Obama elected; it should be the foundation on which he rallies us to build an historic legacy at this turning point in the American story. Fifty or 100 years from now, the history books will not say much about health care reform. They will have a great deal to say about what we did or did not do about climate change.

We see trace evidence of our latent hope in the UN’s Hopenhagen campaign, the America 2050 project of the Regional Plan Association in New York, and in the viral video of a yes-we-can speech by Drew Jones of the Sustainability Institute. There’s The Future We Want, in which I and several colleagues will use state-of-the-art communications techniques to show the American people what a sustainable society will be like, and to involve them in designing it.

Legally, the President of the United States has limited power, only what Congress has delegated, the courts have ruled or precedent has established.  Emotionally, President Obama has enormous power to inspire. He has a special gift for that, but he has not yet fully used it to enlist us in building a sustainable 21^st Century society.

– Bill Becker

* Thanks to the late William Safire for this newly appropriate phrase.

List of Accomplishments: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ william-s-becker/ dressing-for-copenhagen_b_325070.html

Grab a Mop speech: http://www.grabamop.com/

Stretch goals: http://climateprogress.org/ 2009/ 05/ 02/ the-next-100-days-green-fdr/ #more-6201

Farm lobby: http://www.economist.com/ world/ unitedstates/ displayStory.cfm?story_id=14700744

PCAP ag policy agenda: http://www.climateactionproject.com/ docs/ pcap/ Chapter_5_Agriculture_11_10_08.pdf

Hopenhagen: www.hopenhagen.org

America 2050: http://www.america2050.org/about.html

Drew Jones video: http://livingclimatechange.com/ index.php/ 2009/ 10/ simulating-climate-hope/

Future we want: www.futurewewant.org