Now there’s leadership for ‘ya…

In April 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection agency has the authority and obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants that contribute to climate change. The ruling also made clear that the EPA could not shrink from this responsibility unless it provides a scientific bases for doing so.

In December 2007, in apparent compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling, the EPA emailed a draft report to the White House that, according to an EPA official, concluded that greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare and should be controlled. The White House refused to open the email and several EPA officials have said the Bush Administration asked for the email to be recalled. It wasn’t. And so the email sat, ignored.

The report also stated that, based on data from the Energy Department, it would be cost effective to set CAFE fuel efficiency standards to 37.7 MPG by 2018. Ten days after the email was sent and left unopened (with no further attempts from anyone to otherwise deliver the information and suggest someone in the Bush White House at least read it), the president signed into law an energy bill requiring CAFE standards at 35 MPG by 2020, less rigorous than the EPA’s ignored recommendation.

This, in conjunction with the EPA/White House fiasco over refusal to comply with numerous subpoenas related to White House influence over EPA administrator Steven Johnson’s decision to deny California’s waiver to set tailpipe emission standards, has drawn increased attention to the EPA’s failure to comply with the Supreme Court ruling.

Despite the failure of the White House to read its email, it apparently knows (of course) what the EPA concluded over six months ago. This past week the White House has successfully pressured the EPA to cut large swaths from the original report, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2trillion in economic benefits to the American economy.

A senior EPA official said the original EPA findings

…showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy to reduce greenhouse gases. That’s not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can’t work.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto refused comment on discussions between the Bush administration and the EPA – why bother? The EPA has now obviously become the tool of George Bush instead of the an agency in honest pursuit of its mandate to protect the environment.

The ongoing charade of leadership from the White House and EPA administrator Johnson has led to the resignation of Jason Burnett, the EPA associate deputy administrator who had broad authority over climate change regulations. Said Mr. Burnett of his decision to resign:

…no more constructive work could be done on the agency’s response to the Supreme Court. The next administration will have to face what this one did not.”

In fact, we all must face the consequences of what this administration has done, and not done, for and to the American people.

As David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, says:

All this does is further underscore that the Bush administration has not done anything, will not do anything, and has stood in the way of anyone else doing anything.”

Sources and Further Reading
New York Times – Dot Earth
US Climate Change Program
Associated Press
The Telegram

 

 

 

 

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Last Friday, with only 15 minutes to spare before the House Oversight Committee was scheduled to vote on holding EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and White House official Susan Dudley in contempt of Congress, the Bush administration invoked executive privilege – thus expressing its own contempt for that pesky concept known as “congressional oversight”.

The impending vote from the committee chaired by Henry Waxman was in response to Johnson and Dudley, the administrator of regulatory affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, refusing to hand over subpoenaed documents relating to the EPA’s denial of a waiver allowing California to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes (along with about a dozen-and-a-half other states with similar laws on their books), and possible interference from the White House influencing the decision.

As has been widely reported, documents and testimony from EPA officials strongly suggest that Johnson was initially in support of at least a partial waiver, in accordance with the unanimous recommendation from his own staff, only to make an about-face and deny the waiver after contact with the White House.  

Waxman’s committee has had access to thousands of documents and sworn testimony from EPA officials, but Johnson and the White House have consistently refused to abide the subpoena for specific documents relating specifically to phone calls or meetings between at least one high-ranking EPA official and an assistant to the the president.

The stonewalling from the EPA and White House begin immediately after Johnson announced his decision and continues with Bush’s claim of executive privilege.

Representative Waxman cancelled the contempt of congress vote Friday upon receiving the letter from the White House invoking executive privilege in order to determine Attorney General Michael Mukasy’s rationale for the claim.

Waxman made clear his doubts as to the motives of the White House and the veracity of its assertion of privilege.

I have a clear sense that their assertion of this privilege is self-serving and not based on the appropriate law and rules,” Waxman said from the dais of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing room.

I don’t think we’ve had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was president when the president of the United States may have been involved in acting contrary to law, and the evidence that would determine that question for Congress in exercising our oversight is being blocked by an assertion of executive privilege.

The battle rages on.

 

 

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Strong language perhaps, but this is no time to mince words. 

When Dick Cheney claims that the only impediment to increased domestic oil and natural gas production is the refusal of Congress to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, he isn’t telling you the truth.

When Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Henninger publishes an article using phrases like “environmental moralisms” for a reality he fails to comprehend, instead invoking fear (“Nikita Khrushchev said, ‘We will bury you.’ Forget that. We’ll do it ourselves”) and political dogma for his false argument that the only thing blocking the United States to Drill! Drill! Drill! is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he is either ignorant of or simply does not care about the truth.

Dick Cheney’s time is long past (not too many people believe what he says anyway). The Wall Street Journal doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Stuck in reverse with the thought that the key to our energy needs lay in the “moonscape” of the Arctic Reserve (as Henninger, who likely has never even been to Alaska, let alone ANWR, puts it) Dick Cheney and  Daniel Henninger do us all a grave disservice.

This is, or course, the sort of non-leadership, vision-less tripe we expect from Cheney and the Journal. It isn’t the first time they’ve lied to us, and it sadly won’t be the last.

But let’s imagine for a moment that the vice president and Henninger actually told us the truth:

Imagine that they told you the hard truth that increased domestic drilling does not, in fact, correlate into lower gas prices.  

Since the 1990’s, the federal government has consistently encouraged the development of its oil and gas resources and the amount of drilling on federal lands has steadily increased during this time. The number of drilling permits has exploded in recent years, going from 3,802 five years ago to 7,561 in 2007.

Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%, yet gasoline prices have risen dramatically contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices. There is simply no correlation between the two” (emphasis mine)

And what if they told you that oil and gas companies aren’t using a significant portion of federal lands already open to energy development?

Even if increased domestic drilling activity could affect the price of gasoline, there is yet no justification to open additional federal lands because
oil and gas companies have shown that they cannot keep pace with the rate of drilling permits that the federal government is handing out.

In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land; yet, in that same time, 18,954 wells were actually drilled. That means that companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 extra permits to drill that they are not using to increase domestic production.”

These are the some of the conclusion from the House Natural Resources staff committee report The Truth About America’s Energy: Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits (pdf). 

Representative Nick Rahall of West Virginia, chairman of the Natural Resources committee introduced the Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act of 2008 that would force Big Oils hand – “use it or lose it” as David Sassoon characterizes it in his article at SolveClimate.com.

The bill would impose the same requirements that coal has had with their 20–year leases – show that they are “diligently developing” resources with them.

As it is now oil and gas companies are sitting on leases and 68 million acres already leased for energy extraction go undeveloped.

It makes you wonder why Cheney and Henninger aren’t telling us the truth.

 

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In a rare showing of bipartisan support, The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 (H.R. 6049) overwhelmingly passed the House on May 21^st with a vote of 263–160.

As we reported on May 19^th, the bill would have extended tax credits for wind, solar, and other renewable and alternative energy development projects.

All that was needed to help insure a path for commercial scale renewable energy development was that same spirit of bipartisanship from the Senate acting in the interest of the people.

A Republican filibuster and failed cloture vote today to stop it made sure that didn’t happen.

Renewable energy development stands poised to help move the country move toward a sustainable energy future. Wind energy grew 45% last year. The Department of Energy reported last month that wind could provide up to 20% of the nation’s energy needs by 2030. But with a start-stop strategy of lukewarm support (at best) from government, renewable energy development finds it difficult to find an economic footing in the face of well established subsidies for fossil fuel.

And that wasn’t enough for one day. Republicans also blocked debate on the Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008 (S.3044) with another rejected cloture motion that would have ended a filibuster.

The Consumer-First Energy Act is aimed at curbing price gouging, would deny large oil companies (those that produce at least 500,000 barrels of oil per day) the manufacturing tax deduction, impose a windfall profits tax, and collect new tax revenues for an energy independence and security trust fund. The bill would also limit commodities speculation by effectively raising margins for futures contracts.

That’s two filibusters this week and one last week.

The Senate is 0 for 3.

Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club said in a statement, in part, that 

The Senate Republican Leadership has now proved it has no interest whatsoever in even discussing the solutions to our mounting energy and economic crises”.

By blocking debate on these two critical issues, the Senate has once again failed to show the vision and leadership required of it as we move into a changing energy future.

We can embrace that change, or find it as a very rude awakening, kicking and screaming the whole way. It appears that the Senate has been kicking and screaming a lot lately, with little to show for it.

 

Sources and Further Reading
Oil & Gas Journal
SolveClimate.com

 

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The cloture motion voted on yesterday in the Senate would have moved the Climate Security Act forward, thwarting the Republican filibuster and allowing for more substantial debate on the proposed cap and trade legislation.

As we reported yesterday the motion was rejected.

Find out how your senator voted on the cloture motion on amendments of the Lieberman–Warner Climate Security Act. (a yea vote means continuing debate on the bill, a nay vote effectively kills it)

 

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We did say with a thud earlier this week didn’t we?

And thud it did.

Unable muster the required 60 votes to stop a filibuster, the Senate debate over the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Security Act is over even as it barely had a chance to begin.

Hopes of a substantive debate over climate change and laying the groundwork for the next president (it was never expected that George Bush would ever allow the bill to become law) collapsed into partisan bickering and dysfunction, with each side accusing the other of obstruction.

Expressing disappointment, Chairman Barbara Boxer of the Environment and Public Works Committee said

We really didn’t expect to have such a truncated debate. We are working colleague to colleague to see how many votes we have to stop the filibuster”

Not enough apparently.

An unrelated fight over federal judges halted debate on the issue only two days after it began.

While I didn’t expect the bill to pass the Senate, let alone make it past George Bush, it doesn’t bode well that even a semblance of a real debate on climate change can’t get off the ground. It seems as yet another example of the failure of government to deal with tough issues.

We should expect and demand better from Congress. Time is short and leadership is lacking.

————

In reaction to the developments this week in the Senate, Dr. Richard Moss, vice president of WWF released the following statement:

The Senate’s consideration of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act this week marked a significant milestone in the effort to turn the tide on global climate change. Fifty-four senators, including Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), publicly expressed their support for advancing the strongest climate change bill to ever come before Congress. And in a clear sign of the changing political climate in Washington, ten senators who opposed the previous climate bill in 2005 voted in favor of advancing Lieberman-Warner – a much stronger bill.

While I applaud the advances we’ve seen, we need immediate concrete actions to reduce emissions. Time is not on our side. Last week, the administration released two reports examining current and future impacts of climate change. The reports indicated that we are already feeling the effects of climate change in every region of the country. And these will only worsen with each additional political cycle of inaction.

As we delay, we further load our atmosphere with greenhouse gases and place ourselves in greater jeopardy. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines. We must continue to refine our approach to combating climate change.

During debate on Lieberman-Warner, WWF worked to build support among key senators for important provisions that will help us reduce climate change and prepare for its impacts by supporting a global treaty on climate change, funding international adaptation, combating tropical deforestation, and improving climate change science. WWF also gathered a coalition of 11 major corporations in support of cap and trade legislation, sending a powerful message that addressing climate change is completely consistent with robust economic growth.

We are also focused on encouraging the U.S. to show leadership in the negotiation of a new international climate treaty that will start the global community on the path to avoiding catastrophic climatic change. In the near-term, we must reduce emissions in the U.S. through measures such as energy efficiency – which offers the greatest opportunity for immediate reductions while providing considerable savings to consumers – and developing renewable energy sources.

We do not have time for further delay. We must seize every opportunity to ensure a cleaner, safer, more secure future.”

 

 

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The video here is of the full 35–minute press conference Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, at the start of the floor debate over the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Security Act.

Thanks to EnergyEnvironment.TV, you can keep up with the debate as it it winds its way through the Senate. Check out what your Senator is saying as they debate climate change – let them know you’re watching.

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