Hey, did you notice that new analysis the Environmental Protection Agency just put out? The one on the economic impacts of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act? No? None of this ringing a bell?
That's just the way the EPA wants it. Like it was putting a scandal-ridden aide out to pasture, the administration quietly released the report on Friday afternoon and has tried to bury the important findings.
But while the release may have been stealthy and the presentation was marked by the White House's typical efforts to make everything look bleak, the results speak loudly, showing we can both tackle global warming and grow America's economy.
Here's the short version: assuming advanced energy technologies hit the market fast, America's economy will grow 80 percent by 2030. If we don't cap carbon emissions, America's economy will grow 81 percent by 2030.
The 80 percent figure associated with a carbon cap doesn't even measure the important economic boom expected from the Climate Security Act's aggressive investment in clean energy jobs. And even that 81 percent no-cap figure has a major question mark, as it assumes that if we don't cap carbon, our economy will not lose so much as one dollar to the impacts of runaway climate change.
Clearly, this is not good news for a Bush administration that's trying to convince America that climate action will wreck the economy. Hence, the quiet Friday release. As the National Wildlife Federation's Jeremy Symons said, "It's not surprising that the Bush administration took steps to disguise the fundamental conclusion that the Lieberman-Warner climate plan is doable and protects our economy."
You can read the full report at the EPA website. Lots more detail and analysis of the EPA report in a joint release from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. John Warner (R-Va.).
John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles
George Voinovich (R-Ohio) [UPDATED]
Al Franken (D-Minn.)
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bigTom Posted 1:06 pm
14 Mar 2008
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dobermanmacleod Posted 5:32 pm
14 Mar 2008
We will have 3 watts of forcing by 2015, which means about a 2 C rise in temperature by 2040, even if the whole world cuts their greenhouse gas emissions to zero in ten years.
Furthermore, that isn't even including carbon sinks becoming carbon emitters, which will signficantly reduce the amount of CO2 nature removes from the air, and dramatically increase natural greenhouse gas emissions.
By the way, the Warner-Lieberman bill only cuts emissions 50% from 1990 levels by 2050. Even if we were to do that (which is too little too late), China is increasing CO2 emissions each year as much as Germany's entire annual total. By 2030, at the present growth rate, China will be polluting as much as the entire world is now (and don't forget about India, which is going down the same path as China).
According to Dr James Hansen of NASA, any feasible planetary rescue plan must include a method of removing CO2 from the air. I suggest the low cost method of biosequestration. Cutting emissions and waiting for a damaged Earth to remove the excess CO2 from the air is a weak (and very expensive) mitigation strategy.
"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Bagdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them. " Dr James Lovelock, Climate Change on a Living Earth
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dobermanmacleod Posted 5:36 pm
14 Mar 2008
"I no longer care much about the science of global warming. To me, the central question, and the one that few are willing to discuss in depth, is: Then what? Fossil fuels now provide about 85% of the world's total energy needs. Even more important is this corollary: Increasing energy consumption equals higher living standards. Always. Everywhere. Given that fact, how can we expect the people of the world -- all 6.6 billion of them -- to use less energy? The short answer: we can't. The developed countries of the world can talk forever about the virtues of solar panels and windmills, but what the energy-poor need most are common fuels like kerosene, propane, and gasoline" --Robert Bryce, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence
"Processes that would normally regulate climate are being driven to amplify warming. Such feedbacks, as well as the inertia of the Earth system -- and that of our response -- make it doubtful that any of the well-intentioned technical or social schemes for carbon dieting will restore the status quo. What is needed is a fundamental cure." (New York Times, Oct. 1, 2007)
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Billhook Posted 9:36 pm
14 Mar 2008
since even to stop adding to the problem of excess airborne GHGs
the IPCC advises a cut of 60% to 80%.
And to reliably avoid the feedbacks taking over, that needs to be over a 90% cut,
plus heavy sequestration,
not by 2050 by by 2030 at the latest.
The poodle-hooker Blair has now been hired to promote this 50% x 2050 fraud internationally, just as Cheyney & co give it the nod from the Whitehouse.
It thus becomes visible as a neo-con firebreak policy.
What it does is to give US corporations the right, and the commercial expectation,
of continuing to add to the problem of excess airborne GHGs for at least two and probably three generations.
And how would that commercial expectation affect the coming negotiation of the Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons ?
At best the treaty would be gutted of any relevance.
At worst the negotiations would collapse.
Either of which outcomes would suit Cheyney & Chevron etc very well indeed.
So no, Lieberman-Warner doesn't tackle GW - it actively obstructs its proper resolution.
The question of the bill's impact on the US economy is thus mere distraction.
Regards,
Billhook
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Miles Grant Posted 11:48 pm
14 Mar 2008
http://www.nwf.org
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:55 pm
14 Mar 2008
Don't say anything but, just for a moment, let's look at the colossal scale and growth of economic activity that can be seen overspreading Earth in our time. Please note the way people in the overdeveloped world conspicuously consume Earth's finite resources as well as the way people in the underdeveloped world are propagating the human species.
Consider, also, that unrestrained consumption, unchecked increases of large-scale production, and unbridled overpopulation by the human species are occurring synergistically in our planetary home.
Could it be that these distinctly human "overgrowth" activities are approaching a point in history when life as we know it, and imagine it for our children, is put at risk by allowing these soon to become, patently unsustainable human overgrowth activities to endlessly grow rather than subjecting them to reasonable, sensible and humane self-regulation?
In closing, do not forget to remember the rule that rules, "speak no truth (see no truth and hear no truth)". Only that which is politically convenient, the economically expedient, the socially agreeable and self-serving is to be openly acknowledged.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustaiabilitysoutheast.org/
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bigTom Posted 12:45 am
15 Mar 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080314/ap_on_re_eu/eu_summit ...
"BRUSSELS - European Union leaders threatened the United States and China with trade sanctions Friday if the world's two biggest polluters don't commit to ambitious cuts in greenhouse gases by next year."
Even business leaders who think climate change is a fraud, would I think be concerned about this.
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katwink Posted 5:58 am
15 Mar 2008
Second, 50% is too little as many of us know, but what prohibits future legislators from increasing reductions? There are lots of elections between now and 2050 - who knows what policies future representatives will craft?
True, it may all be futile; we may all succumb to the ravages of climate catastrophe. But I will not go down without doing my utmost to make things right with Nature. L-W and the aqssorted state, national and international arrangements are at least attempting to address the climate challenge.
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Billhook Posted 1:16 pm
15 Mar 2008
the naive folly of isolationism is so prevalent ?
Katwink's post is a case in point,
amplifying the complacency of the article above.
We have UN negotiations coming to a head in the next two years and,
far from demanding policy to optimize their outcome,
an utterly irrelevant and potentially critically obstructive bill
is declared to be "a start".
As if we have 95% of the world just longing to fall into line and solve the problem by hacking their economies when America deigns to make even a gesture-scale cut ?
America will have to commit to a radical rate of GHG cuts (X% by Ydate)
if developing nations are going to commit to contracting their emissions sufficiently
to avoid catastrophic climate destabilization.
Likewise, as China has recently indicated,
the allocation of national emission-entitlements under that annually declining budget
will have to converge over a period of years from reflecting GDP to reflecting population size if developing countries are to sign on to a treaty.
To have as new US law a mere 50% cut by 2050 means US negotiators would be hamstrung in the UN talks,
thus minimizing the chance of their agreeing an effective treaty.
And, be it clearly understood,
the treaty is pre-requisite for the utility of any national actions whatsoever.
Without all nations' commitment to its annually declining global emissions budget,
one nation's cuts are just another nation's cheaper fuel supplies.
Thus the L-W bill is a neat spoiler, not "a start".
So wake up and smell the genocide that your country has been leading the world into.
Regards,
Billhook
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frankbi Posted 4:37 pm
15 Mar 2008
"To have as new US law a mere 50% cut by 2050 means US negotiators would be hamstrung in the UN talks"
Actually, now that I think about it, the law may actually have precisely the opposite effect. You see, if the weak law gets passed, and if nothing bad happens to the economy as a result, then the denialist FUDsters will have one excuse less to predict economic doom and gloom.
And there'll be much less resistance to the idea of imposing even more stringent carbon caps, and much less resistance to the idea of cooperating with other nations to do the same.
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Billhook Posted 12:14 am
16 Mar 2008
your wishful thinking has required you to ignore salient points both of my post and of the current economic outlook.
First, the urgency of serious commitment. L-W would have been in operation for less than one-fortieth of its lifespan when the UN negotiations reach their climax next year.
It is thus sheer nonsense to suggest that the status quo will declare this is a fair test of climate bills' economic impact and thus be less vociferous in opposing further bills.
Second, "further bills" are simply irrelevant to the UN treaty, which will be agreed or not agreed in 2009.
Your proposal of "Further Bills" is thus a blatant diversion from addressing the argument.
A third point is that severe economic impacts are coming in the next year, entirely without the help of any climate bill.
See : "Wall Street fears for next Great Depression
at
http://www.independent.co.uk
for a leading UK broadsheet's view.
So I'm left wondering why you'd post so feeble and shill-worthy an argument for the L-W bill ?
Regards,
Billhook
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frankbi Posted 2:28 am
16 Mar 2008
Not true. There's also the possibility that the US doesn't join the treaty now, but decides to join later -- as Australia did with the Kyoto Protocol when Kevin Rudd came to power.
"A third point is that severe economic impacts are coming in the next year, entirely without the help of any climate bill."
Well, then whether with or without the UN, we're screwed... so what's there to lose?
Look, the denialists are now down to arguing that carbon caps lead to Economic Hell. We can sit here and keep talking about how the "Green Economy" is actually going to be well and good, but at the end of the day, the best way to debunk the denialists is to simply show them.
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Billhook Posted 9:38 am
16 Mar 2008
as anyone with a basic grasp of the last 16 years of climate negotiations is well aware.
I have explained just what we have to lose in seeing L-W signed off by Bush.
If you choose to ignore that reality for your own interests, then that's your affair;
it's of no further interest to me.
Regards,
Billhook
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frankbi Posted 12:13 pm
16 Mar 2008
I'm sure anyone who knows anything about the subject remembers that the Kyoto Protocol went ahead without US ratification.
You can go on all day spewing big words like "isolation" and "integration", but at the end of the day, abstract abstractions are not facts.
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David Roberts Posted 4:57 pm
16 Mar 2008
grist.org
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bookerly Posted 7:24 pm
16 Mar 2008
Dear Frankbi,
The goals of Kyoto were largely unmet by the European powers. The next treaty will require even more serious cuts. It is unrealistic to expect that the rest of the world will be able to agree to sacrifice if the US refuses to do so.
The US can't just wait and join later. To have any credibility, it must be involved from the beginning. Most people don't say so, but the date of 2009 was picked hoping for a regime change in America.
patrick in Beijing
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Billhook Posted 8:20 pm
16 Mar 2008
I'm sorry you see the term waffle as insulting - to a Briton it is merely descriptive of prolonged verbal padding of an untenable position, and is applied when the user is unwilling to acknowledge that weakness.
I was in two minds whether to use "filibuster" instead, which I gather is the American equivalent, but it seemed rather too formal.
Regards,
Billhook
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