FOX News evidently agrees with Global Warming Skeptic Trollcat (see above):

Thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit were hacked recently and dumped on a Russian web server. Fox News and right-wing bloggers believe the illegally obtained emails prove that "global warming is a MYTH."

Oops, that's Global Warming Skeptic TrollCat. Here's the take from FOX News.com (actual screenshot):

Here's an unscientific sampling of the reasoned analysis from prominent right-wing bloggers:

Evidently due to this email conspiracy, Arctic sea ice is at historically low levels, Australia is on fire, the northern United Kingdom is underwater, and the world's glaciers are disappearing. Oh yeah, and it's the hottest decade in history.

Related Links:

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

What to make of the new climate poll

Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking

[See update at bottom.]

The big news this weekend was that a coalition of world leaders made it official: there will be no full-fledged, legally binding agreement out of the Copenhagen climate talks. Instead there will be a "politically binding" agreement, pledging to work out a full agreement in 2010 -- "one agreement, two steps." This was Denmark PM (and Copenhagen host) Lars Lokke Rasmussen's way of salvaging a half-win from what was threatening to be a total loss.

Of course opponents of climate action are portraying it as a disaster that augers the death of UNFCCC process; they do that with every setback or delay. Climate activists don't seem to have decided quite yet what to think about it. My take: it's not as bad as it looks. I'd endorse some mix of Broder, Romm, and Schmidt.

NYT's John Broder is right about the main constraint here. Well, almost right. He says "Congress," but the real culprit is the Senate. That dysfunctional body is taking its sweet, preening time as always, letting health care reform drag on into winter and now, in a fit of cluelessness, delaying a deficit-neutral, job-creating clean energy bill to ... focus on jobs and the deficit. Behind the scenes, that bill is getting larded up with enough retrograde energy pork to secure precious conservative votes. Best case scenario, it limps through the Senate, gets a little remediation in conference committee, and passes in April or May. Beyond then, midterm politics take over and reasonable legislating becomes impossible.

This absurdly protracted process is playing out as dozens of countries hang out, tapping their feet, looking at their watches, flipping idly through waiting-room magazines. Concerted international action can't get started without the U.S., and the U.S. can't get started without the Senate -- the Obama administration won't promise anything to which the Senate hasn't committed. So the world waits for the Senate, observing its legislative process with a mix of bewilderment, anxiety, and disdain.

Joe Romm points out that the delay offers some needed breathing room. The sense that the world is waiting will increase pressure on the Senate to pass a bill (there's pressure from Brazil and France already). Conversely, legislation from the U.S. would increase pressure on China and India to step up to the plate with targets and timetables.

NRDC's Jake Schmidt notes that the extra time will be beneficial if a) enough details are settled in Copenhagen and b) world leaders focus on ironing out a final agreement in the intervening months. That's a big if.

Nonetheless, if the world's nations had headed into Copenhagen expecting a legally binding treaty complete with targets and timetables, the result would have been disappointment, acrimony, and worst of all, wasted time. By taking some of the pressure off Copenhagen, the two-steps agreement has avoided disaster and maintained momentum. It's also given the Obama administration time to engage in more climate diplomacy. Now if something could just be done about the Senate ...

UPDATE: I'm hearing from people close to the international process that Rasmussen's deal might not be as official as it's been made to seem by the U.S. media. Apparently Denmark and the U.S. sprang this on their Asian partners and there's been some pushback, from them and from small island states and African nations.

To boot, Rasmussen's agreement seems like a variation on the plan Yvo de Boer has been fronting for a while -- only without de Boer's hard deadlines, thus letting developed countries off the hook.

Anyway, there's a lot more to this story than is reflected in most media reports. We'll bring you updates as events unfold.

Related Links:

China, India, US Commit to Seal Copenhagen Deal

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Lester Brown came to our office today and had a nice chat with us Gristers. (Have you watched my diavlog with Brown? It's must-see tv!) The guy is wicked smart. You really, really should buy his book Plan B 4.0 -- it's the best summation of humanity's converging ecological problems and the best roadmap to solving them, all in one compact package.

One thing from our chat jumped out at me. In the context of a debate about the clean energy bill in Congress (he thinks it's worse than nothing), Brown made the point that there's actually a lot of good carbon policy in the pipeline, which will get us some big gains in the short-term. He cited the boost in fuel efficiency standards from the EPA and DOT; green stimulus spending flowing through DOE and states; EPA's denial of recent coal mining and power plant permits; new federal enforcement of appliance efficiency standards; EPA's new CO2 reporting requirements; and various state-level policies like renewable mandates.

These are indeed good policies! Notice anything they share in common? That's right: they bypass the U.S. Congress.

This gets at one of the few reasons why members of that dysfunctional body might want to muster the will and the votes to change some of the more arbitrary procedural roadblocks preventing them from getting anything done. If they continue being exemplars of pompous, self-important paralysis-by-looking-busy, the country is just going to figure out more and more ways of doing policy around them. They're going to become increasingly irrelevant. Surely they don't want that!

Related Links:

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

FOX News and TrollCat agree: Global warming is BUNK!

George Voinovich (R-Ohio) [UPDATED]

A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece on what's really killing climate legislation: the absurd procedural chokepoints in the U.S. Senate, coupled with an unprincipled minority devoted to obstruction. I'm happy to report there's been an uptick lately in people trying to draw attention to this problem. From the last week or two:

Here's one thing to add to the discussion. The Copenhagen climate talks are coming up. The Obama administration has been scrupulously careful not to promise anything in international negotiations that it can't deliver -- i.e., that it can't get past the U.S. Senate.

Senate ratification of an international treaty requires not just 60 but 67 votes. Say 34 senators rally to block such a treaty -- senators from, oh, Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, Nebraska, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. Thus can representatives for 22,540,352 people -- 7.4% of the population -- block the will of the other 281,519,372. Indeed, senators representing 7.4% of Americans can thwart the entire world's efforts to address the climate crisis.

Killing a treaty is easier than killing a clean energy bill. Why, killing a clean energy bill requires representatives for 25,289,049 people -- fully 8.3% of the population! -- to thwart the will of the remaining 278,770,675. (If you're keeping score, the guilty parties here would be: Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, Nebraska, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Iowa.) For the record, 15 of those 21 states (71%) voted for Bush in 2004.

Now of course it won't be these precise coalitions of senators that kill the COP15 treaty and the clean energy bill. They'll snag high-population senators like Cornyn and Hutchison from Texas. But the point remains: the Senate, already unrepresentative thanks to the disproportionate influence of rural, low-population states, has become, thanks to the routine use of filibusters and holds, grotesquely undemocratic.

The country just can't be governed this way. And consequently, the world community cannot coordinate to effectively meet the climate threat.

Related Links:

China, India, US Commit to Seal Copenhagen Deal

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Is any piece of nonsense from right-wing opponents of clean energy policy too silly, too outrageous, to get its day in the national press spotlight? It would seem not.

Last week, CBS conservo-blogger Declan McCullagh breathlessly reported: "Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year." That figure spread like wildfire through right-wing blogs, then jumped to Glenn Beck, and eventually reached The Washington Post. Now Republican lawmakers are repeating it.

The number is completely and utterly misleading. At least in reference to current policy options, it's a lie. But now it's out there, forever part of conservative mythology and forever a "controversy" in the eyes of the establishment media. Is there any way it could have been stopped? Is there any way the next lie can be stopped?

A quick look behind the story:

Last week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released (with great fanfare) a document procured from the Treasury Dept via FOIA request. In it, Treasury estimated the total revenue that could be raised by auctioning 100% of the pollution allowances under a cap-and-trade system. The department did no original analysis, it simply reviewed other studies and came up with a range, with $200 billion per year at the high end. (An earlier CBO analysis [PDF] put the high end at $300 billion.) This was done in preparation for the release of Obama's 2009 budget, which incorporated auction revenue. The budget included a conservative estimate of that revenue -- $79 billion a year in 2012.

You may be wondering, so what? Why is this a news story? Obama's proposal would have auctioned 100% of the allowances, yes, but Obama's proposal isn't on the table. ACES begins with just 15% auctions (ramping up to 70% by 2030). Anyway, Obama's program would have returned 85% of auction revenue directly to consumers via payroll taxes, and the 15% remaining wouldn't have been flushed down the toilet; it would have been spent to kickstart clean energy industries. CBO analysis showed that families in the bottom and middle of the income spectrum would come out ahead under the proposal. Similarly, the Waxman-Markey bill passed out of the House also returns most of the allowance value to consumers -- a brand new CBO analysis [PDF] shows that it would cost the average family $160, not $1,761, a year.

The Treasury Department's Alan Krueger said, "Treasury's analysis is consistent with public analyses by the EIA, EPA, and CBO, and the reporting and blogging on this issue ignores the fact that the revenue raised from emission permits would be returned to consumers under both administration and legislative proposals."

In summary, the Treasury analysis looked at revenue raised entirely in isolation from revenue invested or returned to consumers. CEI's spin was transparently, grotesquely misleading. The Treasury document reveals nothing new and casts absolutely no light on current legislative proposals.

This all has been ably chronicled and debunked by others. See: Wonk Room, Media Matters, Pete Altman, and PolitiFact.

What struck me about it is how much it reveals about the way the press works. CEI hack Chris Horner, who filed the FOIA request, pushed it to McCullagh, from whence it spread to other conservative outlets, notably Glenn Beck's show. At that point, "people are talking about it," so it goes to Politico, and eventually The Washington Post. Now, as it happens, Steven Mufson's Post piece on the issue is fairly good, in the usual he-said, she-said sort of way. If you read with your MSM decoder goggles on, you can tell Mufson knows it's a pile of sh*t.

But that hardly makes up for dozens of articles and politicians trumpeting a $1,761 yearly tax; repetition of a fact, even in the context of debunking it, reinforces it. As Politico's Lisa Lerer put it, in a sentence that exquisitely summarizes the attitude of the political press and the state of public discourse, "those types of numbers -- even if they are inaccurate -- could increase doubts already being raised by moderate Democrats about the climate bill."

In other words, the accuracy of what's being fed into the media bloodstream by Horner and his ilk is irrelevant. Lerer not only can't be bothered to get to the bottom of it; she states explicitly that the effect on public discussion will be the same regardless. She knows the media will never decisively call bullsh*t on something like this. She knows the charge will spread, even if only as a "controversy." The poison's been injected, now it will do its damage.

It's hard to know at what point in the media chain one should ascribe responsibility for this state of affairs. Worse, it's difficult to see what could be different next time. No amount of refutation, however fast and decisive (and response from enviros was pretty good on this one), stops the spread; the media just reports what "critics say." The incentives are all wrong. What's stopping Horner et al from feeding an endless stream of lies, exaggerations, misleading numbers, and general hysteria into the discussion? Nothing. There's no firewall. Our civic immune system is broken.

Related Links:

What to make of the new climate poll

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

FOX News and TrollCat agree: Global warming is BUNK!

I just returned to Seattle from Netroots Nation, the yearly gathering of progressive bloggers, journalists, and activists. Last year, in Austin, the atmosphere was absolutely electric, with the election approaching and a clear sense of battle lines drawn, victory within reach. Also, lots of great parties.

This year, at least from my limited perspective, the atmosphere was more muted, the panels less exciting, and the parties both fewer and less fun. Some of this could just be me getting to be an old fart, but others I spoke to had similar experiences.

The tone of the conference was, in part, related to a general frustration among progressives.

I wouldn't say the "netroots" (I hate that damn word) have turned on Obama, this sensationalistic HuffPo story notwithstanding. New pieces from Robert Kuttner and Jane Smiley represent a growing frustration with Obama's pursuit of bipartisanship, but overall, Obama's personal popularity is still plenty in evidence. The sense, rather, is that we are witnessing a tsunami of progressive enthusiasm, organizing, and, um, Hope crash on the shoals of the status quo ... and the status quo isn't budging. Bit by bit, the giddy high of those days following Obama's election is dissipating. It's dispiriting.

The dynamic is most obvious around health care, and in my panel Thursday morning, one of the things I discussed was what that battle portends for the battle over climate legislation when it resumes in the Senate this fall.

Depending on who you believe, heath care is going to come to a vote anywhere between the end of September and Thanksgiving. I'd say there's around a 30-40% chance that enough conservative Democratic senators defect that the whole project crashes and burns in a cloture vote (60 votes are needed to overcome the threat of a Republican filibuster). There's around a 60-70% chance that the Senate produces a watered-down, incrementalist bill that doesn't come anywhere close to the fundamental changes needed in U.S. health care insurance and delivery. (It looks like the public option is the latest thing to be compromised away.) And there's about a 1% chance of a genuinely good bill passing.

How did this craptastic state of affairs come to be? Without dragging this post out forever, here's a short list:

Two notable features of these lamentable facts.

First, they are structural. It's really hard to see what Obama or progressives can do to change them except at the margins. Too frequently people talk as though Obama or House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) just aren't trying hard enough -- the Green Lantern theory of domestic politics. They aren't powerless, of course, and it would be nice if the progressive caucus learned to throw its weight around more. But the fact that the U.S. system of government is riddled with procedural chokepoints is not something one can will away. The filibuster could theoretically be fought, but we seem to be a long way from that being a live possibility. And finally, it's hard to see what leverage Obama has over conservative Dem senators whose states didn't vote for him.

Secondly, on virtually every score, climate change is worse off than health care. The right wing is just as motivated and organized on climate as they are on health, but the progressive coalition is fragmented. The policy options aren't as well understood; there isn't single rallying point equivalent to the public option. On climate/energy there are far more "centrists" in positions of power to appease in order to get to 60 votes. (And it's important to understand that "centrist" is a situational description. When Dems are in power, it means "a little weaker than whatever the Dems come up with" -- see: stimulus bill. When Republicans are in power, it means "a little closer to the Republicans than the other Dems" -- see: Bush tax cuts.) There's even less credible leverage over Dem senators; voting against Obama's climate agenda will not threaten the reelection of a single Southern or Midwestern Dem.

I'm afraid this is a depressing post, but it's just become clear that structural features of American politics make it so change averse that virtually no progressive electoral sweep is enough to do the job. And however difficult those features may be for health care, they're worse for climate. At this point, chances seem to be split pretty evenly between total failure and the passage of an utterly defanged bill.

Or as Jon Stewart put it: "And now, cap-and-trade -- naked, bruised, and humiliated -- is off to the Senate to get skull-f*cked."

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

This column from Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times really pushes my buttons. There's something beneath the surface that is downright pathological, and not at all unique to Rachman. It besets most political pundits on this issue. I'll try to dig it out.

The premise of Rachman's column is that while everyone accuses climate change skeptics of being in denial, in fact climate activists are in denial as well. They keep hanging on to the U.N. negotiation process long after it's become clear that developing countries aren't going to budge. The politics of an international climate accord are incredibly difficult, possibly insoluble.

That's an arguable point, but a fair one. The U.N. process is open to criticism. And the politics really are difficult. But listen to this conclusion:

The state of international negotiations presents a huge dilemma for climate change activists. Most genuinely believe that a failure to achieve an international agreement in Copenhagen would be catastrophic. But they also know that, even if a deal is reached, it is likely to be feeble and ineffective. If they admit this publicly, they risk creating a climate of despair and inaction. But if they press ahead, they are putting all their energy into an approach that they must know is highly unlikely to deliver.

It is a horrible dilemma. But, in difficult situations, it is best to start by facing facts. The trouble is that -- in different ways -- both sides of the climate change debate are in denial.

This kind of language is so familiar that you have to step back a moment to recognize that there's something bizarre about it.

Climate science indicates that a business-as-usual path will lead to at least 5 degrees of warming by 2100, which represents utter catastrophe. Many scientists believe that we are near (or have passed) tipping points after which positive feedbacks become self-reinforcing and climate changes are irreversible. If we want to avoid that, we have very little time to peak and start reducing global emissions. No one has proposed a credible way of doing that aside from international negotiations.

All that is either true, or it's not. The mainstream science and policy communities think it's true.

If it is true, then millions of people, and possibly civilization itself, are threatened by climate shifts, within the lifetime of people alive today. If it is true, then the difficulty of getting an international agreement is not a "dilemma for climate change activists." It's a dilemma for human beings. "A climate of despair and inaction" is not a risk to activists. It's a risk to the lives and welfare of hundreds of millions of people and future generations.

So I want to ask Rachman, and all the pundits who address climate politics: Do you believe it's true? Do you believe the mainstream scientific consensus that climate change poses massive risks for humanity, and that urgent international action is necessary to reduce those risks?

If so, it is incoherent, even immoral, to go on treating this issue as though it were merely a clash of interest groups. It's not like climate policy is for "climate activists" what card check is for unions, or financial regulations are to the banking sector, or subsidies are to farmers. It's not a parochial issue.

Do you believe it's true? If not, say so, clearly. If so, then it's your fight too. You cannot stand on the sidelines in the pose of a savvy, above-it-all observer. There are no sidelines.

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FOX News and TrollCat agree: Global warming is BUNK!

While I was away on vacation (it was wonderful, thanks for asking), the Washington Post editorial page featured opinion pieces from Sarah Palin and George Will, two of conservatism's leading, um, thinkers, revealing a great deal about the WaPo editorial page and the quality of conservative thinking.

Rebuttal has been ably carried out by many others, including Joe Romm (whose bald pate is belied by his youthful energy!). He demolishes Palin here and Will here.

Rather, a somewhat meta point. The debate over climate/energy legislation, at least as carried out between conservatives and everyone else, has taken on a surreal tinge. One might expect the media to respond, or notice, or react in some way, but outlets like the WaPo just keep carrying on as if the debate is perfectly normal.

The surreality comes from a simple fact: institutionally, as a movement and as a party, conservatives do not believe anthropogenic climate change exists. They don't think the problem the legislation is designed to solve is actually a problem.

You might think this would make for short debates. Conservatives could collectively sign on to a one-line op-ed:

"We do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, thus we do not support legislation to address it."

Period. Done. Right? But that doesn't happen. Instead you get peculiarities like Palin, droning on for 700 words about how the legislation is flawed because it doesn't promote domestic fossil fuel without once mentioning carbon emissions or climate change. You get Will analyzing the challenges of international climate negotiations and then mentioning, almost casually, at the end of his piece, "by the way, climate change isn't real."

But if climate change isn't real, of course we shouldn't be going through the wrenching process of trying to get off fossil fuels in a few short decades. Of course we shouldn't be beating our heads against a wall trying to get China and India to agree to constrain their growth. It's pointless even discussing those things.

If I simply refused to acknowledge the federal deficit, would Fred Hiatt have me on the WaPo editorial page analyzing the merits of deficit reduction proposals? Of course not. I don't believe the $%*# thing exists! Of course I don't support policies to reduce it.

By greenlighting Potemkin arguments about this or that climate policy from the likes of Palin and Will, the WaPo is giving conservatives a pass. Rejection of settled science is treated as a footnote. But without a shared set of facts, there are no rules, no constraints. Republicans can cavalierly demagogue anything Democrats offer, because hell, it's all just funny talk, a game of make believe.

There will never be a policy proposal sensible enough to gain support from people who do not acknowledge the problem the proposal is meant to address. You'd think that fact would merit notice!

So here's my modest proposal for Fred Hiatt and his ilk: Any conservative who writes about climate/energy legislation should be required to begin by stating clearly whether he or she believes the scientific consensus on warming. That fundamental fact colors everything else, so put it up front.

If they do not accept the science, then fine, let them tell us their preferred carbon-insensitive energy policy. Their fellow non-believers can debate the merits.

If they do accept the science, they can't simply reject the moderate (and inadequate) Democratic proposals for addressing the problem contained in ACES. They have to tell us how they would solve the problem. That's the benchmark.

That simple proposal won't make the climate debate sensible -- let's be realistic about our ambitions -- but it would move beyond the pretense that people like Palin and Will are involved in a good-faith debate.

Related Links:

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What to make of the new climate poll

Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking

Felix Salmon blogs at Reuters about the seeming exhaustion of Obama's political capital -- on both climate change and financial regulations, he just can't seem to get what he wants out of Congress.

I think Matt Yglesias and Ryan Avent both have the appropriate response: the problem here is not Obama, but Congress. Indeed, the inability of even as wildly popular a president as Obama to get decent legislation out of Congress only serves to highlight the dysfunctions of that august body. Rural areas are wildly overrepresented in the Senate; there are dozens of committees, each of which can serve as a choke point; there's no organized pressure to push Democrats left. But mostly: the filibuster. Ryan puts it well:

Word. I've been patiently waiting for an Abolish the Senate movement -- or, short of that, an Abolish the Filibuster movement. But neither has been forthcoming. What up, grassroots?

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

West Virginia gets more of its electricity from coal than any other state. To celebrate that fact, yesterday WV Gov. Joe Manchin (D) declared coal the official state rock.

Yes, really. Coal is now the state rock of West Virginia.

But why should Manchin stop there? Having a coal-based economy has given his state so many other reasons to celebrate!

For instance, West Virginia has the lowest median household income in the U.S., and offers the least low-income weatherization assistance of any state, so perhaps Manchin could declare Sweltering in a Shack the official state pastime.

WV has the most casual and heavy drinkers, so it only makes sense to declare bourbon the official state beverage. [Gah! Mountain Mama is right in comments -- I completely misread this chart. WV has the fewest drinkers.]

Manchin's state comes in dead last in educational services and social assistance, but leads in citizens with disabilities, which suggests an official state motto: You're On Your Own. And with the lowest number of college graduates of any state, and among the lowest adult literacy rates, WV definitely needs a short motto.

The state is winning the race in tooth loss and obesity, so it's a no-brainer for Manchin to declare milkshakes the official state dessert.

You might think all this coal-economy goodness would drive West Virginians a little crazy, but with the lowest expenditures in any state on mental health services, let's hope not!

Yes, the coal economy has been very good to West Virginia. Yay for coal!

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Stop what you're doing and proceed immediately to the current issue of GQ magazine, which contains a blockbuster piece of investigative journalism: "Black Tide," by Sean Flynn. Here's the slug:

Just days before Christmas last year, an environmental disaster one hundred times the size of the Exxon Valdez (yes, you read that right) unfolded on a riverbank in Eastern Tennessee. A wave of poisonous sludge buried a town ... along with the myth of Clean Coal.

Flynn traces the history of the people and land affected by the Kinston, Tenn. coal ash spill, and uses that as a jumping off point for a searing look at the damage coal is doing to Appalachia. It's criminal that there have been so few follow-up stories on this disaster, especially given that the problem of the spilled ash remains unsolved and possibly insoluble. (Thus far TVA has ... sprinkled hay on it.) Some 1,500 similar coal ash storage sites remained scattered across the Southeast, largely unregulated.

Flynn's piece is comprehensive, precise, and devastating.

And difficult to sum up in a blog post. I particularly enjoyed this passage, though, which comes late in the story:

The Term clean coal entered the lexicon in its current faux-eco-activist incarnation—with the implication that coal can be a source of nonpolluting fuel, that it can be scrubbed of its toxins and its carbon dioxide rendered harmless—with stunning speed, largely in the past two years through the expensive efforts of two groups: the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a lobbying group for coal-burning industries, and the Hawthorn Group, a marketing firm hired by ACCCE.

They are quite proud of their success, too. In December, about the time of the Kingston disaster, Hawthorn posted a newsletter on its Web site extolling the “highlights of a recent grassroots campaign Hawthorn created and managed” for ACCCE. Leaving aside the fact that grassroots campaigns typically are not created and managed by hired flacks, Hawthorn did have much glad news to report. Throughout the presidential campaign, it had focused on “finding creative ways to increase the visibility of the issue and…demonstrating strong voter support,” which is marketing-speak for littering crowds with fresh-faced human props in shirts and hats screened with clean coal. Do that with enough “branded teams,” as Hawthorn calls them, at enough rallies; buy enough TV spots; plead your case to enough reporters, and eventually the idea spreads that coal is downright pristine—that it can even, as Hawthorn puts it, “be part of the solution to climate change.” It was genius, and extremely effective. By the fall of 2008,

President-elect Obama and Senator McCain, their running mates and their surrogates adopted our language and included it as part of their stump speeches. ACCCE shaped the debate by finding supporters of the candidates and turning them into clean coal advocates.

Obama still talks about it, and he gets cheers every time. Because the public now believes in clean coal. Hawthorn polled what the firm considered “public opinion leaders” in September 2007 and again at the end of 2008 on, among other things, whether they favored burning coal to generate electricity. The first go-round was a split: 46 percent in favor, 50 percent opposed. But after a year of Hawthorn bleating “clean coal” over and over, support rose to 72 percent—and opposition nose-dived to 22 percent.

Results such as these would be impressive no matter what the issue. Yet they are especially so in this instance, because the idea Hawthorn is selling—Coal is clean!—is complete horseshit.

Indeed.

Please go read the story. Buy the issue on newsstands. Pass it along to your friends.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Memo to House GOP:  We get it.  You don’t believe in clean, safe sources of energy that never run out or in protecting our children and grandchildren from catastrophic global warming or in competing with China, Japan, and Europe for the jobs and industries of the future or in making polluters pay (see House GOP pledge to fight all action on climate).

But your list of 450 planned amendments to Waxman-Markey during the markup next week — [insomniacs can download the list here] — goes beyond principled opposition to petty politics.

Two dozens amendments removing the tax benefits for each and every corporate member of the US Climate Action Partnership (which served as the basis of Waxman-Markey)?  How proud the founding fathers would be to see you try to use the tools of governance for meaningless attempts at retribution.

And 50 separate amendments to let each individual state opt out?  [Plus a DC-opt-out amendment! It's nice to know you thought of us, too, even though you won't let us have any representation in our government, but, thank you, no, we want clean energy jobs and a livable climate.]

I am interested to see details of the “American Hero Exemption and Credit,” but since it follows the “Defense Department Exemption,” I’m guessing it would be an amendment to exempt veterans from the bill.  Of course, if America keeps following your all of the above more-of-the-same energy policy, then we’ll end up with lots more veterans as it would mean our dependence on oil from unstable regions would keep rising and rising.

And what is the point of more than 100 amendments of the form:

What can one say but, Joe ‘get shade’ Barton and House GOP plan to fiddle furiously while planet burns.

And speaking of letting the planet burn, the House GOP has introduced its alternative bill (summary here).  You can’t really call it an alternative climate bill, since it doesn’t stop US greenhouse gas emissions from rising and the words “climate change” and “global warming” hardly appear in it at all — except to strip any authority from the EPA to address the problem.  The bill doesn’t define the GOP position so much as redefine it or rather undefine it — the bill would undefine the word “pollutant” so that it doesn’t include greenhouse gases, and undefine renewable energy so that it does include nuclear power.

Indeed, the plan is almost indistinguishable from the infamous Cheney energy plan.  You’ll remember that at the beginning of the Bush administration Cheney developed a “comprehensive” energy plan after consulting with a vast array of stakeholders — from “Exxon to “Mobil” as one pundit quipped.  Well, the House GOP remove the staples and replaced the cover.

Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, has an excellent critique first published by Wonk Room, which I reprint below:

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, today unveiled a cynical Republican alternative to the clean energy jobs legislation being developed by committee Democrats. Barton is arguing that his legislation is a “viable alternative to a mandatory cap and trade plan” that sets economy-wide standards for global warming pollution.

In reality, it’s hardly a viable alternative — only something that can be presented as one. This is basically a PR stunt aimed at conning the public to stay stuck in the same dirty energy rut that is destroying our economy and environment.

The Barton plan summary I’ve reviewed includes such choice items as:

– Repealing the Supreme Court decision which said the US EPA could limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

– Preempting state authority to reduce climate-related emissions. This is a direct attack on California and other states that have sought to avert the threat of catastrophic global warming and create green jobs.

– Providing regulatory and financial rewards to coal-burning power plants that use “currently available technology.” In other words, more dirty coal-fired plants that kill and sicken our children and grandparents.

– Providing new subsidies for hazardous nuclear power plants.

– Defines nuclear power and advanced coal technology as “renewable.”

– Repealing “decoupling” mandates that reward utilities for reducing wasted energy.

– Promoting more oil drilling off the coasts and Luntzian “environmentally sensitive American energy exploration” in the Arctic wildlife refuge.

– Subsidizing climate-killer fuels produced from coal, oil shale, methane hydrates, and tar sands.

While not quite ignoring the threat of climate change, Barton’s bill does spit in the face of science. The bill includes a provision that establishes emissions performance standards for new coal plants — but “all existing generating facilities are grandfathered.” Unsurprisingly, Barton’s proposed standards are laughably weak, onlying require coal plants to be as efficient as less-polluting natural gas plants by 2030. This proposal, combined with the incentives for new drilling, the reversal of fuel economy standards, and promotion of highly polluting alternative fuels, would guarantee that U.S. emissions would continue to increase without bound for the foreseeable future.

Barton is just blowing smoke: new subsidies for oil, coal, and nuclear, rollbacks of environmental standards, Orwellian language, and denial of the science of climate change. Wasn’t eight years of planetary and economic destruction enough?

Wasn’t 8 years of Cheney-Bush enough?

Related head-in-the-sand conservatives:

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Mark Mellman, a leading pollster for progressives since 1982, has written a must-read op-ed slamming the latest dubious messaging advice:

Some progressives seem unwilling to take yes for an answer.

Just as the long battle for public opinion on global warming is being won, along comes a well-meaning Bob Perkowitz and his ecoAmerica with a politically naïve, methodologically flawed and factually inaccurate study, which he apparently interprets as telling us that voters do not care about global warming.

He could hardly be more wrong.

In fact, most Americans believe global warming is real, is happening now and constitutes a serious threat, particularly to future generations.

Last week, I was very critical of ecoAmerica’s advice on climate messaging after sitting through the full two-hour presentation (see “Messaging 101b: EcoAmerica’s phrase ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’ isn’t going to replace ‘global warming’ — and that’s a good thing“).

Perkowitz, in the comments, questioned “What background do you have in the cognitive sciences or marketing?“ Although it is my full-time job — and has been my part-time job for nearly two decades — and although I have followed all the polling and messaging reports closely, I’m just a lowly messaging amateur.

On the other hand, Robert J. Brulle, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science, Department of Culture and Communications, Drexel University — and a widely published expert on environmental messaging — emailed me about my analysis:

I liked your blog post today.   I think we agree at about the 95% level across the board.

And now we have Mark Mellman, president of The Mellman Group, whose “current clients include the majority leaders of both the House and Senate.”  Mellman is one of the most respected pollsters and messaging gurus in the progressive world.  Here’s his take on the public view of global warming based on all the recent polling, including his own:

A survey we completed in March reveals that nearly eight in 10 voters believe global warming is either happening now or will happen in the future, with 53 percent seeing evidence that it is happening right now. Gallup uncovered similar attitudes, as 53 percent told them global warming has already begun, while just 16 percent are deniers, expecting it will never happe.

Over two-thirds of the electorate believes global warming constitutes a serious threat. In response to a different question, posed by researchers from Yale and George Mason universities, a similar number said they “worry” about global warming. A third believes it will harm them, while 61 percent foresee harm to future generations.

Perhaps more importantly, voters are demanding action to reduce the carbon pollution that causes global warming. In the Yale/George Mason poll, two-thirds urge Congress to do more on the issue, and in our survey, 77 percent favor action to reduce carbon emissions. In an April ABC/Washington Post poll, 75 percent supported federal regulations on the release of greenhouse gases.

In short, a strong public consensus has emerged on the reality and severity of global warming, as well as on the need for federal action.

Put another way, most of the public gets this — and in particular they understand things are going to get much worse on our current emissions path.  That’s why it is so crucial we keep messaging on climate science and impacts, and keep warning people about what is to come — although we can definitely do it better and smarter, as I’ll discuss in future posts.

Mr. Perkowitz devalues that consensus, suggesting Republicans stand outside it because they express less concern about the problem than Democrats and independents. That is true and lamentable, but Republicans are also less concerned about jobs and we have not shied away from trying to create them, nor started calling them “income generating opportunities” in a desperate attempt to solicit GOP support. Republicans also care less about healthcare than other Americans, but no one is using that as an excuse to avoid action.

Indeed, part of the Republicans’ problem with the majority of America is their failure to take seriously voters’ real concerns on issues ranging from jobs to healthcare to energy and global warming.

While some Republican leaders, like John McCain and John Warner, have been forthright in recognizing the need to reduce global warming, others, who deny the problem and discourage solutions, are out of touch with their own base.

Yes, Democrats are more concerned about the problem than are Republicans, but that does not mean Republicans are unconcerned. Far from it — as Mr. Perkowitz’s own data conclusively demonstrate. While 90 percent of Democrats believe global warming is happening, so does a 54 percent majority of Republicans. While 84 percent of Democrats believe global warming is harmful to people, so do 56 percent of Republicans. While 87 percent of Democrats call it their “duty” to stop global warming, 60 percent of Republicans also feels duty-bound to join the battle.

When 84 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents and 56 percent of Republicans think global warming is harmful to people; when 86 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents and 62 percent of Republicans favor action to reduce the carbon pollution that causes global warming — it is time to take yes for an answer; it is time for elected officials to recognize the consensus and act, instead of heeding those who, inexplicably, regard a nearly unprecedented level of public unanimity as a prerequisite for legislative accomplishment.

Hear!  Hear!

If you wonder why I keep blogging on this, consider that the Wall Street Journal (subs. req’d), reported on Tuesday:

Seeking to bolster public support for climate legislation, the Obama administration is consulting pollsters who advocate avoiding phrases such as “cap-and-trade” and “global warming.” On Monday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality was scheduled to meet with Robert Perkowitz, president of ecoAmerica, a Washington-based nonprofit that uses “psychographic research” to “shift personal and civic choices of environmentally agnostic Americans,” according to its Web site.

“We’re trying to give them phrases that work,” Mr. Perkowitz said in an interview. He said that in a survey of some 2,000 Americans conducted by his group in March and April, less than half of the respondents said they would support a “cap-and-trade” policy, and that only 24% said they knew what the phrase means. “If you call it ‘clean energy dividend’…almost anything other than ‘cap and trade,’ you’ll get people responding a lot more favorably,” he said.

Now E&E News PM (subs. req’d) did report later that day:

Veteran Democratic pollster Mark Mellman will meet tonight with the entire House Democratic caucus to outline strategies for how the party should engage with the public on energy and climate change issues….

Mellman’s presentation comes a day after a White House Council on Environmental Quality official met for the second time with Washington-based nonprofit ecoAmerica to discuss communication strategies on climate change. CEQ spokeswoman Christine Glunz said the meeting was one of many with outside groups, adding, “The administration is not making any changes in the way it communicates about climate change.”

Mellman also met this morning with Senate Democratic leaders to present polling work on climate and energy.

I will add that I have credible sources who tell me that some White House political types have been urging progressives politicians not to talk about climate science.  So far, Obama has ignored them, and hopefully Mellman will prove persuasive with Congressional leaders.

Now is not the time to be back on our heels.

Now is not the time to be self-censoring — the status quo media does enough of that for us!

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Tax! Cap! Tax! Cap! Pant ... I find it really hard to believe, but the perennial "carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade" debate is still going on. It goes on and on and on and it never changes. It's like everyone's following a script now.

I've been over this territory so many times that I hardly know what to say any more. So here's what some other people are saying:

Joe Romm started this off by asking James Hansen to drop his quixotic and politically toxic campaign against the Waxman-Markey climate/energy bill. Kevin Drum chimed in, supporting Romm.

Michael O'Hare responded with a heated defense of carbon taxes (or as he calls them, carbon charges), premised mainly on a basic misunderstanding of Romm's post. (Joe wasn't defending cap-and-trade as such against the carbon tax alternative -- he was defending Waxman-Markey, including all its complementary policies, against the tax alternative.)

Ryan Avent says taxes and caps are not that different in effect and only one has a chance of passing, so carbon taxers should STFU. Andrew Sullivan responds that he thinks the tax will work better, and so no, he won't STFU. Kevin and Ryan both respond to Sullivan, pointing out that he seems to be suffering from some serious misunderstandings about cap-and-trade systems. (In this he has, to put it mildly, plenty of company).

Meanwhile, Yale 360 has rounded up a group of "experts" to weigh in on the issue, though several of the purported experts seem to understand very little about the policies and/or the politics at hand. The submissions from Jeffrey Sachs and Roger Pielke Jr., in particular, are so poorly argued as to defy explanation. Michael Tobis says that Jeffrey Sachs' argument for a tax "makes sense" to him, but Kevin points out that Sachs' argument is somewhat hampered by the fact that virtually every single sentence is head-slappingly false.

Is that it? I think that's it. For now, anyway. I'm sure the entire roundelay will repeat itself soon enough.

Rather than tread all this ground yet again, here are what I take to be the three key points:

• The policies are, or can be made, roughly equivalent. With a tax you get certainty about prices but uncertainty about emission reductions; with a cap you get the inverse. You can tweak a tax to shift the balance; you can do the same to cap-and-trade. Both can be weakened with loopholes and favors for special interests. Political reality being what it is, either is likely to impose a fairly low price on carbon for the first decade or so. Which means ...

• In the short-term, complementary policies will spur the most action. The never-ending, chin-stroking carbon pricing debate perpetually overlooks this basic fact. (See: “Cap and Trade is Not Enough: Improving US Climate Policy” [PDF] from Carnegie Mellon.) What's going to knock us off the status quo path in the next decade is, above all, new targets and standards for energy efficiency. Also: a renewable energy standard, a low-carbon fuel standard, smart-grid standards and funding, government procurement policies, direct government investment, etc. etc. These are the policies that could get things rolling immediately. And guess what?

• The Waxman-Markey bill contains those complementary policies. Also, it exists. Both these characteristics set it apart from the Alternative Universe Carbon Tax Pony Bill. Carbon taxers seem blinded by a misguided obsession with the specific mechanics of carbon pricing. By bashing Waxman-Markey, they are aligning themselves with people who want to block the best opportunity for climate/energy action in a generation. They're aligning themselves with people who want to block it not in favor of a pony alternative, but in favor of doing nothing, to protect corporate donors. In many cases, they are adopting the exact same rhetoric as conservative obstructionists.

If taxers want to engage productively, they should advocate for tax-like features in the cap-and-trade provision of the Waxman-Markey bill -- price floors and/or ceilings, fully auctioned permits, expanded banking and borrowing, etc. Bashing the whole bill in order to argue endlessly and fruitlessly in favor of a hopeless alternative, the advantages of which exist entirely in the whiteboard fantasies of economists, is politically daft.

The focus should be twofold: a) get complementary policies up and running quickly, and b) get some kind of carbon pricing scheme in place, which in future years -- as the depredations of climate change become clearer to the public -- can be tweaked and improved. Passing the Waxman-Markey bill would achieve both.

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If I told you that my cross-over dribble was better than Stephen Hawking's, would you build an NBA franchise around me?

If I told you I was better looking than Ernest Borgnine, would you pick me as the leading man for your movie?

If I told you that my lifestyle makes Iggy Pop look like a heroin junkie, would you let me babysit your kids?

Peabody Coal is hoping that all those arguments play in their new ad, trying to make the case that the public should support coal with CCS: Clean Green Coal (PDF), touted as "less expensive than natural gas with CCS." Also less expensive than nuclear! And wind!

Setting aside whether even those claims are true, that's a heck of an admission of failure -- it's not even attempting to claim that coal with CCS is cost-effective; just that it's cheaper than more expensive things. Which is sort of like fantasizing about Bea Arthur because she so much hotter than Estelle Getty.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Chris Hayes has a blockbuster scoop up on The Nation: "Pulp Nonfiction," about how the U.S. government will pay the paper industry up to $8 billion this year to emit more carbon dioxide.

Yeah, you read that right.

The horror begins, as it so often does, with well-meaning efforts by Congress to encourage biofuels. The $244 billion transportation bill signed into law in 2005 contains a $0.51/gallon tax credit for "mixed fuels" -- that is, "taxable fuel" like gasoline or diesel mixed with an "alternative fuel."

Funny story. See, for years the paper industry has relied on a biofuel derived from the process of removing fiber from wood. It's called "black liquor." The fuel runs the process -- a nice little closed loop.

But oops! It's not "mixed." So, since 2005, the industry has been adding diesel to the fuel in order to qualify for the tax credit.

So they're emitting more greenhouse gases and pulling down billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Awesome.

Read Hayes' piece for the gory details.

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"I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us 'having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,' and the people -- we the people -- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States."

-- Rep. Michele Bachmann, on the existential threat of a cap-and-trade program (via)

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