Trump's Terrifying Climate Policy

The Hampton Roads region is finally coming out of a period of widespread flooding on the par with what one would normally expect during a hurricane direct hit or close encounter.  Yet, there was no hurricane.  Just steady rain for numerous days in a row combined with high tides - combined with rising sea levels - that block storm drainage systems from doing their jobs.  And it was just Norfolk that suffered major flooding.  Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and other cities were stricken. Indeed, schools were closed because of the impassable nature of many roads.  All is proof positive of the reality of climate change.  Despite such objective proof, Republicans and Donald Trump in particular continue to push policies that will lead to climate disaster.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the terrifying policies favored by liar and vulgarian in chief, Donald Trump.  Here are excerpts:

On Thursday, Donald Trump spoke before an audience full of natural gas and energy industry leaders — and the message was exactly the same as his economic policy proposal from last week: fewer environmental regulations and more land available to fossil fuel companies.

“We need an America-First energy plan,” Trump said. “This means opening federal lands for oil and gas production; opening offshore areas; and revoking policies that are imposing unnecessary restrictions on innovative new exploration technologies.”

If elected president, Trump has pledged to revoke both the Clean Power Planand President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the cornerstones of Obama’s domestic climate agenda, and important signals to the international community of the United States’ commitment to climate action.

 

Trump has also promised to roll back the Waters of the United States Rule, which would extend drinking water protections for millions of Americans. Instead, he said that he would redirect the EPA to “refocus…on its core mission of ensuring clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans.”

Trump does not seem to understand that regulations he so deeply wants to cut are crucial to preserving clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans.

A recent Harvard study found that the public health benefits of the Clean Power Plan are so robust that they outweigh the costs of the carbon standard in 13 out of 14 power sectors within five years of implementation. The same study estimated that the plan could save some 3,500 lives every year. Similarly, the Waters of the United States rule would protect the drinking water for a third of Americans that currently get their water from unprotected sources.

Beyond rolling back crucial protections, Trump’s speech on Thursday showed that he does not intend to back down on his policy proposal that would open up vast regions of the United States to fossil fuel production. 

After Trump’s speech, Sierra Club Political Director Khalid Pitts criticized the Republican presidential candidate’s policies, calling them polluter “talking points.”

“Trump’s dirty-fuels-first plan is pretty simple: drill enough off our coasts to threaten beaches from Maine to Florida, frack enough to spoil groundwater across the nation, and burn enough coal to cook the planet and make our kids sick,” Pitts said in a statement. “In stark contrast, Hillary Clinton is the only candidate in this race who is committed to grow the booming clean energy economy to create jobs and help tackle the climate crisis.”

Are the Days of the Middle East's Oil Dominance Ending?

For much of the last 40 or more year's America's often disastrous foreign policy decisions in the Middle East have been controlled by one thing: oil.  Oil and America's addiction to imported oil, best personified by gas guzzling trucks and SUV's.  Without this addiction and the control it put in the hands of despotic Middle Eastern nations - Saudi Arabia being the most notable, American intervention in the Middle East would likely not have occurred and the rise of ISIS would not have been triggered by the failed policies of Bush/Cheney.  A lengthy piece in Politico looks at the emerging situation where demand for oil will be declining and the ability of false allies like the Saudi's will be dwindling with it.  Here are excerpts:  

Sunday, April 17th was the designated moment.  The world’s leading oil producers were expected to bring fresh discipline to the chaotic petroleum market and spark a return to high prices. Meeting in Doha, the glittering capital of petroleum-rich Qatar, the oil ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), along with such key non-OPEC producers as Russia and Mexico, were scheduled to ratify a draft agreement obliging them to freeze their oil output at current levels. In anticipation of such a deal, oil prices had begun to creep inexorably upward, from $30 per barrel in mid-January to $43 on the eve of the gathering. But far from restoring the old oil order, the meeting ended in discord, driving prices down again and revealing deep cracks in the ranks of global energy producers.

It is hard to overstate the significance of the Doha debacle. At the very least, it will perpetuate the low oil prices that have plagued the industry for the past two years, forcing smaller firms into bankruptcy and erasing hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in new production capacity. It may also have obliterated any future prospects for cooperation between OPEC and non-OPEC producers in regulating the market. Most of all, however, it demonstrated that the petroleum-fueled world we’ve known these last decades — with oil demand always thrusting ahead of supply, ensuring steady profits for all major producers — is no more.  Replacing it is an anemic, possibly even declining, demand for oil that is likely to force suppliers to fight one another for ever-diminishing market shares.
 This is no theoretical construct.  It’s reality itself.  Net consumption of oil in the advanced industrialized nations has already dropped from 50 million barrels per day in 2005 to 45 million barrels in 2014. Further declines are in store as strict fuel efficiency standards for the production of new vehicles and other climate-related measures take effect, the price of solar and wind power continues to fall, and other alternative energy sources come on line. While the demand for oil does continue to rise in the developing world, even there it’s not climbing at rates previously taken for granted. With such countries also beginning to impose tougher constraints on carbon emissions, global consumption is expected to reach a peak and begin an inexorable decline.According to experts Thijs Van de Graaf and Aviel Verbruggen, overall world peak demand could be reached as early as 2020.

In such a world, high-cost oil producers will be driven out of the market and the advantage — such as it is — will lie with the lowest-cost ones. Countries that depend on petroleum exports for a large share of their revenues will come under increasing pressure to move away from excessive reliance on oil. This may have been another consideration in the Saudi decision at Doha. In the months leading up to the April meeting, senior Saudi officials dropped hints that they were beginning to plan for a post-petroleum era and that Deputy Crown Prince bin Salman would play a key role in overseeing the transition.

On April 1st, the prince himself indicated that steps were underway to begin this process. As part of the effort, he announced, he was planning an initial public offering of shares in state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world’s number one oil producer, and would transfer the proceeds, an estimated $2 trillion, to its Public Investment Fund (PIF). “IPOing Aramco and transferring its shares to PIF will technically make investments the source of Saudi government revenue, not oil,” the prince pointed out. “What is left now is to diversify investments. So within 20 years, we will be an economy or state that doesn’t depend mainly on oil.”

For a country that more than any other has rested its claim to wealth and power on the production and sale of petroleum, this is a revolutionary statement. If Saudi Arabia says it is ready to begin a move away from reliance on petroleum, we are indeed entering a new world in which, among other things, the titans of oil production will no longer hold sway over our lives as they have in the past.

This, in fact, appears to be the outlook adopted by Prince Mohammed in the wake of the Doha debacle.  In announcing the kingdom’s new economic blueprint on April 25th, he vowed to liberate the country from its “addiction” to oil.”  This will not, of course, be easy to achieve, given the kingdom’s heavy reliance on oil revenues and lack of plausible alternatives.  The 30-year-old prince could also face opposition from within the royal family to his audacious moves (as well as his blundering ones in Yemen and possibly elsewhere).  Whatever the fate of the Saudi royals, however, if predictions of a future peak in world oil demand prove accurate, the debacle in Doha will be seen as marking the beginning of the end of the old oil order.

I have long advocated for a movement to non-fossil fuels - something that could be good for the environment and take away the power of those who hate us to blackmail us and other western nations. 

The Vatican Issues a Warning on Climate Change

While I hold the Vatican in less than high esteem, in one of his "Dr. Jekyll" phases Pope Francis has issued an encyclical on climate change that has immediately garnered attacks from Rick Santorum and Jebbie Bush, both of whom like to wear their Catholicism on their sleeves, especially for campaign purposes, and reactions from the GOP that make the party faithful seem either severely constipated and/or in need of extra strength Midol.  As much as the Koch brothers and their allies in the carbon fuels industry spin out misinformation - a polite term for lies - most Americans do seem to be catching that the climate is indeed changing.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Poper Francis' encyclical and things that can be done to begin to make a difference in mankind's contribution to climate change.  Here are highlights:

The document is eloquent and intelligent, especially in its handling of science. “Most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity,” it says. “Concentrated in the atmosphere, these gases do not allow the warmth of the sun’s rays reflected by the earth to be dispersed in space.” That is as lucid a two-sentence description of the mechanism of global warming as I have read.

The encyclical is gloomy. But in fact, remarkable changes are taking place that could put the planet on a much more sustainable path. You get a sense of them if you read another important report that was issued this week, to much less fanfare than the pope’s missive — the International Energy Agency’s special report on energy and climate change.

The report points out that last year the global economy grew at 3 percent but that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions stayed flat, the first time this has happened in 40 years. Renewables accounted for nearly half of all new power generation last year, and the energy intensity of the global economy dropped by twice as much as it has on average annually over the past decade. With concerted action, we could actually push global emissions downward in the next few years.

The cost of solar cells has plummeted, leading to their widespread use. Cars, buildings and machines are becoming much more energy efficient. And over the horizon, one can see progress in batteries, nuclear power and biofuels, which could collectively produce a new energy ecosystem.

We need a revolution in public policy as well. Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund, points out that most of the improvements that have been made in technology and efficiency would not have happened without rules and laws. And a series of smart policies — which are not very costly or disruptive — could dramatically accelerate the shift to a cleaner economy. First, stop doing harm. 

Even Bjorn Lomborg, a skeptic about many efforts to tackle global warming, argues for a reduction in the massive, market-distorting subsidies for fossil fuels. The IEA estimates that last year these subsidies globally amounted to $510 billion, about four times those provided to renewable energy.

[S]olar power could become far more widespread if governments were not as beholden to utility companies and their phalanx of lobbyists. “There are lots of nonmarket barriers to renewables, placed at the behest of the established players,” he said. 

Natural gas is better than coal, but its production, transport and use release significant amounts of methane, which has much worse effects on the climate than carbon dioxide. The good news is that serious studies have found that these emissions could be reduced relatively cheaply with new regulations. 

The smartest new policy would be the simplest, . . . a carbon tax — effectively putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions to encourage companies to adopt cleaner technologies. This seems impossible to imagine — yet this month, several major oil companies in Europe [BG Group, BP, Eni , Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and France's Total] came out in favor of a price on carbon, whether through a tax or an emissions trading system like those used in California and Europe.

Technology and policy innovations are happening, just not on the scale that they need to be. That’s why the pope’s warnings are so useful and important . . . .

The China-America Climate Summit: Expect Right Wing Hysteria

The Koch brothers - perhaps the foulest excuses for human beings out side of the leadership of ISIS and perhaps Vladimir Putin - have spent huge amounts of money to fight (i) any recognition that climate change is happening and (ii) any regulatory changes that would limit the rapacious greed and polluting inflicted on the nation by the fossil fuel industries.  Sadly, there are many in the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party only too happy to believe these lies even as the Kochs and their allies work against the long term best interests of these cretins of the GOP base.  A column in the New York Times looks at the Kochs agenda in the light of the initial agreement between China and America to face the reality of climate change and to do something about it.  Here are highlights:

The agreement between China and the United States on carbon emissions is, in fact, a big deal.

To understand why, you first have to understand the defense in depth that fossil-fuel interests and their loyal servants — nowadays including the entire Republican Party — have erected against any action to save the planet.

The first line of defense is denial: there is no climate change; it’s a hoax concocted by a cabal including thousands of scientists around the world. Bizarre as it is, this view has powerful adherents, including Senator James Inhofe, who will soon lead the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Indeed, some elected officials have done all they can to pursue witch hunts against climate scientists.

Still, as a political matter, attacking scientists has limited effectiveness. It plays well with the Tea Party, but to the broader public — even to non-Tea Party Republicans — it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, because it is.

The second line of defense involves economic scare tactics: any attempt to limit emissions will destroy jobs and end growth. This argument sits oddly with the right’s usual faith in markets; we’re supposed to believe that business can transcend any problem, adapt and innovate around any limits, but would shrivel up and die if policy put a price on carbon. Still, what’s bad for the Koch brothers must be bad for America, right?

Like claims of a vast conspiracy of scientists, however, the economic disaster argument has limited traction beyond the right-wing base. . . . The real war on coal, or at least on coal miners, was waged by strip-mining and natural gas, and ended a long time ago. 

Which brings us to the last line of defense, claims that America can’t do anything about global warming, because other countries, China in particular, will just keep on spewing out greenhouse gases. This is a standard argument at think tanks like the Cato Institute and among conservative pundits.

But now we have it straight from the source: China has declared its intention to limit carbon emissions.   I know, I know. The language is a little vague, and the target levels of emissions are much higher than environmental experts want. 

But consider the situation. America is not exactly the most reliable negotiating partner on these issues, with climate denialists controlling Congress and the only prospect of action in the near future, and maybe for many years, coming from executive orders. 

But the principle that has just been established is a very important one. Until now, those of us who argued that China could be induced to join an international climate agreement were speculating. Now we have the Chinese saying that they are, indeed, willing to deal — and the opponents of action have to claim that they don’t mean what they say.

Needless to say, I don’t expect the usual suspects to concede that a major part of the anti-environmentalist argument has just collapsed. But it has.