The Climate Post is a weekly roundup of climate news, produced by the The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.

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This week’s climate headlines are reminiscent of an old joke that touted “newspaper headlines the day after nuclear war.”

The New York Times: “Nuclear War, Third World Hit Hardest.”

The Wall Street Journal: “Nuclear War, Effect on Markets Uncertain.”

The Boston Globe: “Tip O’Neill Safe After Nuclear Blast.”

USA Today: “We’re Dead! Full AFC-NFC Box Scores, p. 11.”

You can tell it’s an old joke because concern about “newspapers” and “nuclear war” is very 20th century. Yet when you track this week’s headlines as climate legislation makes its way through the U.S. House, it’s clear not much has changed.

This morning’s Times and yesterday’s Washington Post headlines about the situation emphasize a near-deal among previously sparring Democrats. The Journal eyes new potential breaks for the auto industry and utilities in the bill. The Globe stays local, and writes that a national plan would supplant Massachusetts’ participation in a Northeast climate program.

The USA Today ran an Associated Press story on its Web site, and last week printed an article with the headline, “Celebs use star power to spotlight pet causes; Environmental issues rate high on activist actors’ list.” (The paper reports that Prince Charles, Harrison Ford, Robin Williams and Pele teamed for a MySpace.com video about rainforests.)

Here’s our snapshot, this week: Waxman and his co-sponsor, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), are pressing the House Energy and Commerce Committee to pass their American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The bill would set a nationwide “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions – a limit – that would decline over time, as well as set a Renewable Electricity Standard. After two weeks of hearings in April and intense back-door negotiations with Committee members and their constituents back home, signs of a deal have begun to leak out. We should see a revised version of the bill, called the Manager’s Amendment, within the next few days.

Meanwhile, down Pennsylvania Avenue, the administration in recent weeks has issued new guidelines for biofuels (enflaming parts of industry), set in motion potential EPA regulations of carbon emissions from tailpipes, and backed a Bush administration decision on the inadequacy of the Endangered Species Act to address climate change indirectly, through the declining habitat for polar bears. [See this for biofuels and this for polar bears.]

These headlines have dominated in the Washington environmental world – but just as Americans are not the only people fighting information overload and time-poverty, Washington is not the only capital struggling with climate issues this week:

Citing the recession, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd put off plans to create a national market for industrial firms seeking to buy or sell credits to emit greenhouse gases. His government’s proposal had failed to garner support among environmentalists, who saw the targets as too thin, and industry, which hopes for more concessions.

This conversation plays out against a background of increasing concern about the effects of climate change already being witnessed down-under. The Economist reported this week that the volume of water reaching the Murray River in South Australia is lower than any other time in 117 years. The article is bluntly titled, “In need of a miracle.”

Local capitals are getting in on the action, too. Voters in British Columbia went to the polls and re-elected the Liberal party, giving a vote of confidence in the province’s carbon tax – the first law of its kind in North America. In the U.S., Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, has supported measures that would encourage the development of clean technology. Observers partially credit (or blame) her influence and new laws on Mid-Michigan Energy’s recent scuttling of a coal-fired power plant in Midland. But job-starved regions of the state welcome the work that would come from plant construction – and several remain in the pipeline. An energy company in Washington state pulled plans for a $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant, because it has no way of capturing the emissions.

A paper local to former President George W. Bush’s ranch, the Waco Tribune-Herald, editorialized today, “Dismiss talk of global warming and environmentalism if you must. But these times are changing fast and, along with them, the very way we heat and cool our homes and businesses.” That’s just one take in a state simultaneously encouraging its potential for solar energy while elected representatives to Washington fight the Waxman-Markey bill. When the Bushes visit family in Maine, they’ll encounter a new law in Kennebunkport that prevents cars and trucks from idling at banks, fast food restaurants, and at the beach (The Secret Service probably has pull).

Legislation and rules, scientific predictions and industry product lines are shaping the international response to global warming on a daily basis. We’ll bring you highlights weekly. A thousand words now and then can provide a pretty good picture. See you next week.

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Over the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of hand-wringing about the state of climate policy in the Northwest. Washington's citizen-backed renewable energy standard is in jeopardy and neither Oregon nor Washington appears close to implementing the Western Climate Initiative. Even British Columbia's pioneering carbon tax is taking fire.

Freak out! Everybody panic!

Or not. If you take a sober look at regional climate policy, you'll see that it's still percolating.

Yes, it's true: things are not as good as we would like. Legislative prospects for regional cap and trade this year look dim. For the past six months, we have been hoping that the three Northwest jurisdictions -- BC, Oregon, and Washington -- would sign off on the recommendations of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), kick-starting what would be the most comprehensive and progressive carbon pricing program anywhere on earth. Don't lose sight of that: WCI would be the best carbon-reduction plan anywhere in the world. We haven't exactly set a low bar for progress.

(Actually, we have been aiming at an even higher bar. We wanted the Northwest jurisdictions to improve upon the WCI, enhancing equity through full auctioning plus rebates targeted at lower income families.)

In case the Eeyores haven't noticed, the legislature is still in session in Oregon and Washington. And anyone who knows anything about politics knows that it's tough to know anything about politics. Things can change quickly and unexpectedly -- and many of us are still working hard to see WCI become a reality in the Northwest. So let's not start the Monday-morning quarterbacking while there's still time left on the clock.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski remains determined to leave a green legacy, one that includes cap and trade. And this week Washington Governor Christine Gregoire took the unusual step of testifying before a House committee, urging lawmakers to move toward WCI's cap and trade program. Whatever else happens this session, you can bet that Governor Gregoire hasn't played all her cards yet. And if you want to see how serious she is, here's the governor saying in unequivocal terms that she will be fighting for the bill:

You may recall that last year, late in the session, she marched in to arm-wrestle state leaders into signing off on HB 2815. It was a landmark piece of legislation that set Washington's climate targets into law, among other things.

In part, Governor Gregoire's appearance in the House may have been in response to a week's worth of blistering editorials from the state's most respected newspapers, including the Olympian, the Seattle Times, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer(pause for reverential silence). Here's a sample from the Everett Herald:

Take a moment to grok that. We're at a place now where newspaper boards across the state are demanding answers. They want to know why don't we have WCI's cap and trade already.

Astonishing!I should know. My job includes talking to journalists and opinion leaders and I can personally attest that a few months ago, cap and trade did not event register as a faint blip on the radar screens of many major Northwest scribes. And legislators? In preliminary conversations, I considered someone to be on the informed end of the spectrum if he or she had even passing familiarity with the term "cap and trade."

Nowadays, editorial boards are demanding cap and trade. What's more -- in fact, what's most impressive --is that they understand the details. They want assurances about the features of policy design that wonks like me stay up late worrying about, things like auctioning rules, emissions thresholds, and secondary market governance. To me, this is almost as huge a turnaround as if my five-week-old son started sleeping through the night.

That's not all that's changed. Over the last year, climate advocates forced the hands of the region's biggest polluters. Scores of businesses, utilities, and local governments have put themselves on record asking that cap-and-trade programs include transportation fuels, the single largest source of emissions in the Northwest. (Here's one list. Here's another.) Including transportation fuels is a huge win for comprehensive carbon limits; one that will not go unnoticed by federal lawmakers -- especially when we tell them.

Perhaps even more importantly, during the debates in Olympia some of the most outspoken opponents went on the record opposing state policy on the grounds that they prefer uniform federal policy. (I'm looking at you, Western States Petroleum.) You can bet those endorsements of federal cap and trade will make their way to Washington, DC. (Hat tip to the Northwest's National Wildlife Federation office.)

The same sort of shift has occurred in Canada. Though British Columbia's well-crafted carbon tax has become a political liability for the ruling Liberal party in some parts of the province, it also appears to have borne fruit across the country. At the Canadian federal level, there's a robust discussion over whether the future holds carbon taxes or a North American-wide cap and trade program. Though Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains an obstacle, it appears the political tides may have turned, in part because of the four Canadian provinces that have joined the WCI, especially giants Ontario and Quebec, whichare moving to adopt a joint cap and trade program.

That's not to say there aren't lessons from the last half year. Foremost among these is my new axiom: "you can't predict the future."

Two big events changed everything. The first was the economic implosion. It's little wonder that state officials' attention has been diverted. They've already got plenty of fish to fry: multibillion dollar funding gaps that will scorch universities and pre-schools, social services and prisons, road repair and state parks. Given the economic context, the mere fact that the legislatures in Oregon and Washington are still considering putting a price on carbon is remarkable.

The second big event is Barack Obama. Obama winning the presidency was hardly a foregone conclusion in the months leading up to the election. Plus, as president, he's giving every indication that he'll go all-out to deliver comprehensive, fully auctioned cap and trade with built-in protections for working families.

Like two storm systems converging, Obama and the economy merged this winter. The result was to a vacuum that temporarily sucked the air out of regional carbon pricing.

Why temporarily? Because there's a corollary to my axiom about not being able to predict the future: "you still can't predict the future."

Yes, prospects seem improved for federal climate action, but we cannot know what will happen in Congress. Already eight centrist denators have raised red flags. And the opponents of carbon constraints are motivated, ruthless, and marinating in cash. So even in the Obama administration, national carbon limits may face an uphill battle.

If federal action loses steam, regional policy will return to the front burner. And there's a feedback loop. Part of the reason why federal legislation is finally cooking is because states and provinces including those in Cascadia have been successful in bringing regional carbon policy to a boil. Set WCI and the other regional programs aside to cool and federal lawmakers may suddenly lose interested in nationwide cap and trade.

Or it may be that federal climate policy is watered down, and regional programs can step up to more comprehensive and fairer versions of cap and trade. We just don't know how regional policy will interact with federal law. As I've said, you can't predict the future.

So chill out, hand-wringers! If WCI doesn't pass legislative muster this spring, I'll join you at the bar for an evening, but then it's right back to work in the morning. Even without a big win this spring, we're still making good progress.

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Some 30,000 farmed Atlantic salmon have escaped from their pen off the coast of British Columbia into the Pacific Ocean. Farmed salmon can harm wild salmon stocks -- which are already declining on the west coast -- by competing with them for food as well as spreading disease. In this case, the escaped salmon are also a different species which is not native to the area. A spokesperson for the company that owns the fish farm explains what happened. "One of the anchor lines ... apparently slipped to a low spot on the ocean floor and in so doing pulled down the corner of the cage so much the fish were able to swim out." However, in the fish-farm equivalent of making lemons into lemonade, the farm's spokesdude emphasized the tastiness of the escaped fish if anglers are lucky enough to catch one. "[Anglers] should keep the fish, clean it, and bake in a 400-degree oven with a ginger and green-onion garnish. Then serve with fresh lemon slices," he said. Mmm, tastes like freedom.

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The Canadian province of British Columbia has announced it will implement a carbon tax beginning in July that could lead to a cut in greenhouse-gas emissions of about 3 million tons in the next five years. The tax is expected to bring in as much as $1.8 billion over the next three years by increasing the price of almost all fossil fuels in the province, though it's designed to be revenue neutral and won't raise funds for clean energy like Quebec's carbon tax. Instead, to enhance its appeal to consumers, B.C.'s carbon tax is being paired with a $100 rebate as well as a range of tax cuts. Officials hope to change consumers' habits for the better. "If you start to change your lifestyle even modestly ... you will have extra dollars in your pocket," said B.C. Finance Minister Carole Taylor. Critics stressed that industrial emissions from oil, gas, and cement production will not be taxed under the plan and that carbon prices will be relatively light at $10 per ton beginning in July and increasing to $30 per ton by 2012.

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British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell has announced a vague plan for reducing the province's greenhouse-gas emissions by a third by 2020. The plan includes requiring all government agencies to be carbon neutral by 2010, factoring in employee travel; institution of a local carbon-offset provider; installation of residential and commercial smart meters to encourage energy conservation; and emissions caps on industries. Critics of the plan asked what the plan is, exactly, as Campbell provided few new, specific details.

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Six Western states, two Canadian provinces agree to regional climate pact

Yesterday, the leaders of six Western states and two Canadian provinces agreed to their own regional climate pact, aiming to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The Western Climate Initiative aims to have a cap-and-trade system in place by August 2008 and wants to partner with other trading systems like the European Union's and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the U.S. Northeast. While the 15-percent target isn't quite ambitious enough for some, greens are hopeful that the growing movement to set even relatively weak state and regional climate standards will eventually influence the feds to adopt a national program. At least half of the U.S. states involved in yesterday's agreement -- California, Oregon, and Washington -- already have state climate standards that exceed the modest WCI goal. The other pact members are Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Canada's Manitoba and British Columbia.

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California utility commits to massive solar buy, B.C. deals with oil spill

Call it the light and dark sides of the energy industry: yesterday, as news spread that a major California utility will make a ginormous solar buy, a British Columbia neighborhood was drenched in crude oil spewing from a broken pipe. Related? Only in the sense that all our global energy interests are tied. But holy visual metaphor, Batman! While officials in Burnaby, B.C., struggled to clean up the mess -- which led to the evacuation of 20 homes, the "voluntary evacuation" of 80 more, and residents complaining of headaches and nausea -- Pacific Gas & Electric execs polished their own image with a pledge to buy 550 megawatts of solar power generated by the world's largest thermal solar array. The planned Mojave Desert facility -- which will use mirrors to focus the sun's rays on pipes containing fluid that will then produce steam that powers turbines, whew -- will start making energy by 2011 or 2012, and is, says PG&E VP for Energy Procurement Fong Wan, "one of the most promising technologies for us."

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Warmer B.C. ravaged by beetles, haunted by dead birds

The flora and fauna of British Columbia, Canada, are having a rough go of global warming. B.C. forests are suffering through a massive insect infestation that's ravaging an area three times the size of Maryland. The mountain pine beetle can't survive severe cold, but milder winters (hmm, what the heck could be causing milder winters?) have contributed to its rapid propagation, and Canada's successful fights against wildfires have allowed the growth of a beetle buffet of lodgepole pines. To date, 411 million cubic feet worth of trees have died, twice the amount annually logged in all of Canada. Some fear the infestation could spread all the way to the eastern seaboard. Meanwhile, thousands of seabirds are washing up dead on the B.C. coast; scientists blame warmer weather (hmm, what the ...) for a trickle-down effect that may have reduced available food for birds. "People say climate change is something for our kids to worry about," says scientist Allan Carroll. "No. It's now."

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The old riddle goes: If a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? The new one might go: If a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, is it worth writing a book about?

The Golden Spruce
by John Vaillant,
W. W. Norton and Co.,
256 pgs., 2005.

John Vaillant thinks so. That's why the first-time author spun a New Yorker essay into the recently published The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed.

The book centers on the dark-of-night destruction, in 1997, of a rare Sitka spruce in British Columbia's rugged, outlying Queen Charlotte Islands. The massive, 300-year-old tree -- which sported golden needles in the midst of a verdant forest -- was revered by the local Haida people, protected by the province's otherwise-voracious logging industry, and gawked at by tourists (who could even stay at the Golden Spruce Motel). But all that came to an end when a disgruntled, semi-psychotic timber surveyor cut the tree down.

Grant Hadwin's action was intended as a protest against unconscionable old-growth logging in B.C. -- the "Brazil of the North" -- but it was met with outrage across the province, and eventually (thanks in part to Vaillant's magazine coverage in 2002) across the continent. Hadwin upped the fascination and furor when he disappeared in a kayak on his way to stand trial for the arbicide; his gear was discovered several months later on a nearby island, and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Using the oddly compelling college-lecture style familiar to readers of The Perfect Storm and Into the Wild, Vaillant transforms one man's misguided act into a tapestry of history, anthropology, biology, and industry. In fact, even though it's marketed as "an astonishing true story of a furious man's obsessive mission against an industrial juggernaut," this book is not about Hadwin -- he doesn't even appear until page 87. True to its title, this book is about a tree.

Once it becomes clear that the first few chapters are not an interminable introduction to the action, but are the action, the setup is easier to savor. The story of a tree becomes the story of people and place and time, and Vaillant -- a Massachusetts native who lives in Vancouver -- takes readers all over the world, from the once-forested limestone slopes of Greece to the pine groves of Maine. His descriptions of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Haida people are, fittingly, the most vivid. He paints a moss-draped world where salmon are stranded in branches and seabirds nest in roots; where a native community struggles to relearn dances and traditions once wrested away; where trees take, as one logger puts it, "800 years to grow, and 25 minutes to put on the ground."

Chainsaw of fools?

Photo: Radek Siechowicz.

More than anything, The Golden Spruce serves as a mildly disguised, highly digestible exploration of the timber industry. It reminds us that wood was once "as valuable as an oil field or a uranium mine today: it was a critical source of energy ... without which a nation could not fully realize its commercial or military ambitions." Through colorful, if somewhat scattershot, interviews with present-day loggers, Vaillant reveals the perils of the dwindling, but still-vital, trade -- both for the forest and for the workers whose livelihoods depend on it. His sometimes wide-eyed excoriation of clear-cutting can be forgiven for the other facts he brings to light: the word "lumber" originally meant something useless and cumbersome, for instance, and lighthouses were once considered for Oregon's Willamette River, to pierce the smoke of forest fires.

Vaillant's language is fresh, at times; we get images like "the long, tree-stubbled lip of the continent," and moments like this: "For generations, loggers have been viewed as a kind of subspecies that requires special handling, like boxers or British football fans." Just as some turns of phrase soar, though, others land with a thud. On the ax: "This crude but effective tool originated in the Stone Age and yet it has remained in wide usage throughout the world ever since." On biology: "Chlorophyll is the green pigment in leaves and needles and it is what makes photosynthesis possible."

Ultimately, reading The Golden Spruce is a bit like visiting a museum: at the beginning, enamored with every splash of color, you pledge to give each piece its due. By the end, you focus on the stuff you like, and hope you'll remember one thing you saw. At one point, Vaillant's description of the islands could just as easily apply to his own work: "a concentration of what one might call geographic essence, as if the nature and spirit of a much larger region were compressed into a space too small for it to plausibly hold."

Like any good curator, Vaillant -- who counts among his influences such mythmakers as David McCullough, Joseph Campbell, and Herman Melville -- says he wants "to invite people who wouldn't ordinarily care and think about this stuff to think and care about it." And that's why this is marketed not as a book about forestry and environmental issues, but a book about myth, madness, and greed. In the end, it's both. A reviewer for Canada's CBC offers the most fitting conclusion: "It seems about right that it should be our homegrown answer to the blockbuster danger book," Andrea Curtis writes. "It's a true Canuck tale: man versus nature, but not too flashy, and hard to define in traditional terms."

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The Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia -- home to the legendary white spirit bear, as well as huge grizzlies, rare wolves, countless salmon, and other wildlife galore -- is one of the only remaining pristine regions of temperate rainforest left on earth. Take a virtual tour through this biological hotspot with the Raincoast Conservation Society, which is fighting to stave off looming threats to the region -- from clearcutting and oil drilling to sport hunting and poaching. Click below to start the show (and note that the photos might be slow-loading for our dear readers with sluggish Internet connections.)

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Almost half of British Columbia's coastal rainforest must be protected in order to maintain the health of its ecosystem, according to a team of independent scientists studying the 42,471-square-mile swath of forest on Canada's western coast. The surprise advice to preserve between 44 and 50 percent of the rainforest is the result of two years of work representing the first comprehensive study of the region. The recommendation of the study, which was commissioned by the provincial government, far exceeds not only the 32 percent of land B.C. has said it will consider conserving but also the amount environmentalists have demanded. The province is awaiting the completion of two other reports, on the region's social and economic needs, before making any land-use decisions.

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The population of California condors is soaring back to relatively healthy numbers. Biologists have counted 222 of the birds, a tenfold increase from 1982, when the species hit its nadir with just 22 condors remaining. "This is the greatest the population has been probably since the 1950s," said Bruce Palmer, coordinator of the California condor recovery program. The $40 million federal program has been underway since 1985 in an attempt to save the endangered condor, North America's largest bird. News is less bright for the spotted owl in British Columbia. Biologists are not optimistic about chances for the species' survival in the province after a young owl re-released into the wild in southern B.C. died last week. As few as 30 breeding pairs of spotted owls remain in B.C., and their old-growth forest habitat is being steadily chopped down.

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To the great joy of Canadian loggers, British Columbia's Liberal government unveiled a plan this week to streamline the approval process for forest cutting by April 2003. "The entire framework asks for a lot of trust and faith in the activities of forest corporations," said University of British Columbia forestry professor George Hoberg. Forest Minister Mike de Jong announced the new legislation on Monday, standing alongside more than a dozen forestry industry leaders. He said the bill would cut 18 steps from the logging approval process while maintaining environmental standards. Under the new self-policing framework, companies would have to prepare stewardship plans to protect rivers, rare species, and so forth, but the plans wouldn't have to be approved by the government. Environmentalists are reeling at the thought of a roll back, warning that the changes could set off a renewed war in the woods.

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