Cross-posted from Wonk Room.
Last week, over a hundred CEOs of American companies broke with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to lobby Congress to “pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year.” The U.S. Senate is now considering the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, which would set a market-based limit on global warming pollution. Participants in a Clean Energy Economy Forum at the White House included J. Wayne Leonard, the Chairman and CEO of Entergy Corporation, the utility giant based in New Orleans, La. Speaking at the White House event, Leonard called for action on climate change and clean energy not just for economic reasons but starkly moral ones:
We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man’s activities. We’re virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad. There’s no good things that’s going to come of this. But what’s uncertain is exactly which one of those things are going to occur and in what time frame. In the probability distribution curve is about a 50 percent probability that about half of all species will become extinct or be subject to extinction over this period of time. What we will never know on an ex ante basis is whether or not man be one of those casualties or not.
We condemn Wall Street for taking risks with our economy—risks that all of you are trying very hard to reverse—but at the same time we’re taking exactly the same kind of risks, with no upside whatsoever, with regard to our climate, failing to practice even the basic risk management techniques in terms of climate change reduction.
Watch it:
In a powerful speech, Leonard called a national system to cap carbon pollution “an investment that by all facts, figures, and analysis pays back many times over,” and warned that “history will judge us if we don’t pass comprehensive climate and energy reform now” for “cheating [our children] out of their future.”
Entergy serves “two-and-a-half million customers in the mid-South and the Gulf South portion of the country, some of the poorest people in the country,” Leonard noted. These customers already suffered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which global warming likely fueled.
Although Entergy’s website warns that the “ramifications of global climate change, while uncertain, paint a devastating portrait of an unsustainable world” and that what “the United States does now is critical to eliminating or at least reducing the possibility of catastrophic outcomes for future generations,” the corporation is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is spending millions of dollars to fight the regulation of climate pollution. Entergy plans to remain in the climate-denial organization in an attempt to “convince other members to agree to emissions limits.”
NYT: U.S. Chamber has not expressed support for any proposals to cap emissions
Comments
View as Flat
drfredc Posted 6:49 pm
14 Oct 2009
Permalink
stk Posted 7:48 pm
14 Oct 2009
Permalink
Mike_G Posted 8:19 pm
14 Oct 2009
I don't think "humanity’s extinction" is at hand, but it makes sense to transition away from fossil fuels instead of continuing this insane uncontrolled chemistry experiment on our only planet. We can do that, create lots of green jobs, make our planet cleaner, and not have to keep buying oil from people who want us dead. We just have to convince some people that changing jobs is easier than changing planets.
Permalink
drfredc Posted 10:13 pm
14 Oct 2009
Bottomline, C02 isn't a poison to life at today's atmospheric concentrations -- within realistic levels, having more (man-made or not) C02 would create more abundance of green life, not less -- this would help food stocks to fight hunger.
Nor is C02 the cause of global warming -- hence the growing body of evidence that the earth is entering a cooling phase. At best C02 appears to be the result of warming related to changes in solar activity. The hockey stick is dead -- it was a hoax created by cherry picking data that has mysteriously disappeared and can't be confirmed... That's not how science works.
Permalink
stk Posted 11:39 pm
14 Oct 2009
On the other hand, the IPCC is the largest peer reviewed science of all time.
Who do you believe? Boy, now that is a tough one.
Permalink
drfredc Posted 10:08 am
15 Oct 2009
I gather from your lack of response to my primary point is there is no template green answer for the earth being filled with carbon based life forms that as a group are very capable of absorbing C02 at all sorts of levels?
I will grant the IPCC is a mixed bag of peer reviewed (politically focused and funded) research with an vested interest in obtaining specific outcomes to match the beliefs of the funders and a strong history of blackballing anyone who comes out to counter to the template. Real science isn't done that way.
Witness how "Global Warming" has morphed itself into "Global Climate Change" over the past year as research starts to punch holes in the Global Warming theory and show how there are layers upon layers of complexity to the entire issue of the Earth's natural Climate management mechanism's. In other words, the Earth's eco and climate systems are much more resilient than is commonly believed. It's not a house of cards that crumbles when a bit more C02 shows up in the air, when it's concentration is less 400 PPM.
Why not be truthful about the true goal being to just place a global social engineering tax on carbon based energy for the purpose of promoting (rather than mandating) a market based switch to other forms of energy? Then get out of the way and let the markets sort this all out instead of attaching all this (potentially unproductive and economically harmful) bogus "political science" plus cap and trade BS on top of it all. It's not like one can ever really expect man to control the earth's climate by not driving SUVs. Folks who think that need to get out of their over civilized and self limited niche a bit more...
Permalink
Mike_G Posted 3:41 am
15 Oct 2009
Permalink
Steven Earl Salmony Posted 7:32 am
15 Oct 2009
It appears as if the adoption of politically convenient half measures and paltry economically expedient proposals could end up making bad matters even worse. Big problems require binding commitments and bold action.
Are our noticeably spectacular, recent failures to reasonably and sensibly confront the human-induced global challenges already visible to the human family in the offing not the fully expected, all-too-human-driven result of arrogance and greed ruling.........and ruling in the world so absolutely because these pernicious traits are dominant in many too many leaders in our time?
After 8 long dark years of avoidance, denial and extreme foolhardiness, perhaps new leadership will give rise to the occurrence of necessary change before it is too late for human-forced change to make a difference. Before nature takes its inexorable course, whatever that may be.
At least consider accepting more fully human limits to the unbridled growth of global overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities (as well as Earth's biophysical limitations) and then make the choice of behaving accordingly.
Permalink
realitybite Posted 3:06 pm
15 Oct 2009
Entergy has much to gain from government's efforts to increase the cost of American's energy use. But the end of this will make America a nation of equally poor people. Manufacturing will leave America and go to China and India, where they will not fall for this line of misinformation and continue to grow.
What we should focus on is being adaptive. A far worse human disaster would be global cooling, i.e., another ice age. If the glaciers returned to the levels of only 10,000 years ago, the bread basket of the world (the midwest corn belt) would no longer provide the food that millions upon millions of people need.
Let's continue to clean up the earth by not emitting really bad stuff like mercury and lead? That will destroy our oceans food chain. By the way that can be done without too much adverse impact on the global position of the American economy. Our "friends" in China and India are NOT thinking about that either.
Permalink
stk Posted 3:32 pm
15 Oct 2009
You say: let's eliminate mercury.
OK, to do that, we should replace our coal plants with clean sources like nuclear and renewables.
So the solution is the same as if you believed in climate change. Which you should since the IPCC report is the largest peer reviewed science ever done.
Permalink
realitybite Posted 6:21 am
16 Oct 2009
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 4:35 pm
15 Oct 2009
Erik, Orion Grassroots Network
Permalink
vbstenswick Posted 8:13 pm
15 Oct 2009
Permalink