Pylon Sounds

By David Roberts

"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)

By Kate Sheppard

The Environmental Protection Agency told the White House on Friday that climate change is a danger to public welfare -- a move that takes the administration a step closer to regulating planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The agency's finding -- which the White House will now review -- comes in response to an April 2007 Supreme Court decision that greenhouse-gas emissions could be regulated under the Clean Air Act if the EPA determines they pose a threat to public health and welfare. The Bush administration refused to move forward on this assessment, despite the ruling. The White House even went as far as to refuse to open an email from the EPA containing its finding.

The Obama administration, in contrast, has been pushing ahead on the assessment faster than expected. The Washington Post reports that the EPA completed its finding and sent it to the White House Office of Management and Budget late last week.

"It's an enormous step forward compared to the eight years of denial under the Bush administration," David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel at the Sierra Club, told Grist. "Once endangerment is found, EPA has a mandatory duty to regulate."

OMB will now conduct a three-week inter-agency review of the finding, according to plans leaked earlier this month. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is expected to sign off on the finding on April 16, kicking off a 60-day public comment period before it's finalized.

The endangerment finding increases the pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill, said Tim Telleen-Lawton of Environment America. "Carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants are real threats to our well-being," he said. "We're going to be moving forward on stopping global warming one way or another. Congress should take the lead in passing comprehensive global warming legislation."

Bookbinder agreed that the heat is now on Congress, but he still doesn't think they'll produce a climate bill in 2009. "I believe it's unlikely we'll get it this year, but by the end of next year, either Congress passes that legislation, or it risks becoming irrelevant to this debate and having EPA become the primary drafter of our climate policy," he said.

Enviros and industry types alike tend to agree that it would be better to have new climate legislation from Congress than to have the Obama administration address climate change under the Clean Air Act, which is not particularly well-suited for regulating greenhouse gases. "The mechanism of the Clean Air Act is relatively inflexible, and can lead to really extreme regulations of the pollutant," said Ken Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on climate policy. "If they go ahead, it's going to be very hard on the economy."

The completion of the endangerment finding will kick-start the process of figuring out how to regulate greenhouse gases, but it's not clear how rapidly that will progress. During the presidential campaign, an Obama adviser indicated that the administration would allow about 18 months for Congress to act on the issue first. Bookbinder estimates that there could be regulation of at least the two biggest sources of greenhouse-gas emissions -- coal-fired power plants and automobiles, which together account for more than half of all emissions -- by early 2010.

Green argued that a new bill might actually work faster than regulation under the Clean Air Act, since the latter would almost inevitably get tied up in litigation.

Either way, regulation looks to be coming -- and relatively swiftly, in Washington terms. "We're pleasantly surprised, and very encouraged, by how quickly the Obama administration is doing this," said Bookbinder.

By David Roberts

All day tomorrow (Tuesday) I'll be at Green:Net, a greentech conference sponsored by the excellent blog Earth2Tech.

Specifically, the conference will be about how the tools that created the net and net architecture will help to revolutionize energy. You can check out the line-up here. Looks like there's a big appetite for this stuff -- the event is completely sold out.

The entire day is packed. You can follow the play-by-play on my Twitter feed; I'll try to do some kind of wrap-up on the blog later this week.

By Kate Sheppard

President Obama is giving top billing to clean energy and green jobs as he promotes his $3.6 trillion budget plan.

Addressing a group of clean-tech entrepreneurs and researchers on Monday, the president noted that his proposed budget includes $150 billion over 10 years for direct investments in clean energy and efficiency, as well as $75 billion to make permanent a tax credit for research and experimentation. "At this moment of necessity we need you, we need inventiveness," he told the crowd.

"We can remain the world's leading importer of foreign oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy," Obama continued. "We can allow climate change to wreck unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can create those jobs right here in America." The event was the first in a series of budget pep talks the president plans to give this week.

Obama made similar points on Saturday in his weekly address. He acknowledged that the details of a budget will shift as Congress hashes it out, but said a final plan must meet four basic principles, the first of which centers on clean energy:

[A budget] must reduce our dependence on dangerous foreign oil and finally put this nation on a path to a clean, renewable energy future. There is no longer a doubt that the jobs and industries of tomorrow will involve harnessing renewable sources of energy. The only question is whether America will lead that future. I believe we can and we will, and that's why we've proposed a budget that makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy, while investing in technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and fuel-efficient cars and trucks that can be built right here in America.

In information sent to reporters on Monday, the White House outlined two examples of the types of green projects it wants to invest in -- the Apollo Light Pipe, recently patented by Orion Energy, which collects and focuses sunlight so it can be used indoors; and cylindrical solar panels produced by Solyndra, the first company to receive a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy with funding from Obama's economic stimulus bill.

All of this comes in advance of what will likely be a tense few weeks of budget negotiations as Congress begins formal debate on the proposal that Obama first unveiled almost a month ago.

A climate plan in the budget bill?

One particular hot spot in Obama's budget is a cap-and-trade plan to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. The budget includes $79 billion in "climate revenues" that it projects will be raised from the auction of carbon credits by 2012. It sets aside $15 billion a year from those revenues to develop technologies like wind, solar, and advanced automobiles, and would return the remaining funds to consumers via tax credits.

There's been some talk in recent weeks of Congress following Obama's lead and including a cap-and-trade plan in a budget "reconciliation" bill, which would need only a simple majority of 51 votes to pass, rather than the 60 votes required under normal Senate rules. But the likelihood of that seemed to dim over the weekend as Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told ABC's "This Week" that he doesn't intend to include cap-and-trade in the budget resolution (even though he didn't rule out the option entirely, either).

A number of Republicans have been particularly vocal in opposing a cap-and-trade provision in the budget bill, including the minority members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who called cap-and-trade a "risky, ill defined new energy tax" in a letter to colleagues on Thursday

"The budget resolution is not the right place for the careful bipartisan dialogue we need to get these issues straight, or to account fully for the legitimate concerns of energy consumers, economists, and industry," the Republicans on the committee wrote. "While the budget resolution the Senate will debate is not yet available, we will offer an amendment to strip any climate revenue provision it contains."

Some Democrats don't like the idea either. Eight centrist Dems joined 25 Republicans in sending a letter on March 12 to leaders of the Budget Committee condemning the possible move.

"We oppose using the budget process to expedite passage of climate legislation," they wrote. "Enactment of a cap-and-trade regime is likely to influence nearly every feature of the U.S. economy. Legislation so far-reaching should be fully vetted and given appropriate time for debate, something the budget reconciliation process does not allow."

With or without cap-and-trade, the budget will be a highly contentious issue over the next few weeks. Obama is set to promote his budget plan to the nation on Tuesday night in a prime-time address, and he'll continue talking it up at smaller events, while Congress works to hammer out its own version.

By Joseph Romm

The Department of Energy announced on Friday that the first energy loan guarantee authorized by the 2005 (!) Energy Policy Act went to a plant that manufactures solar panels:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu today offered a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, Inc. to support the company's construction of a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for its proprietary cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels. The company expects to create thousands of new jobs in the U.S. while deploying its solar panels across the U.S. and around the world.

"This investment is part of President Obama's aggressive strategy to put Americans back to work and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by developing clean, renewable sources of energy," Secretary Chu said. "We can create millions of new, good paying jobs that can't be outsourced. Instead of relying on imports from other countries to meet our energy needs, we'll rely on America's innovation, America's resources, and America's workers."

[Note to Chu and DOE press team: Next time, please don't issue such big, newsworthy announcements on Fridays. That's when the previous administration would release news they wanted to bury (see "The four global warming impact studies Bush tried to bury in his final days").]

Ironically, this loan program was "established to speed the deployment of low-carbon energy technologies but has been plagued-to the consternation of lawmakers-by delays stemming mainly from policy disputes between the Bush administration DOE and Office of Management and Budget," as Energy Daily ($ub. req'd) noted.

That's right -- for over two years, the Bush administration couldn't even decide amongst itself how to use these loans. But then again all of Bush's pro-technology talk was just that -- talk (see here).

Here are more details from DOE on the company that got the loan:

Solyndra's photovoltaic systems are designed to provide the lowest installed cost and the highest solar electricity output on commercial, industrial and institutional roof tops, which are a vast, underutilized resource for the distributed generation of clean electricity. Solyndra's proprietary design transforms glass tubes into high performance photovoltaic panels which are simple and inexpensive to install. By replacing power generated from fossil fuel sources, the electricity produced from the solar panels will reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Based in Fremont, CA, Solyndra is currently ramping up production in its initial manufacturing facilities. Once finalized, the DOE loan guarantee will enable the company to build and operate its manufacturing processes at full commercial scale.

Solyndra estimates that:

• The construction of this complex will employ approximately 3,000 people.
• The operation of the facility will create over 1,000 jobs in the United States.
• The installation of these panels will create hundreds of additional jobs in the United States.
• The commercialization of this technology is expected to then be duplicated in multiple other manufacturing facilities.

Further details on the potential advantages of their technology are below.

Here are some more details on how this loan will operate:

Secretary Chu is offering the loan guarantee by signing a "conditional commitment" today, following approval this week by the Department of Energy's Credit Review Board. Just as homebuyers who have been approved for a loan are required to meet certain conditions before closing, the conditional commitment will require Solyndra to meet an equity commitment as well as other conditions prior to closing. Today's action signals the Department's intent to move forward on Solyndra's application for $535 million loan guarantee provided the company meets its obligations.

Before offering a conditional commitment, DOE takes significant steps to ensure risks are properly mitigated for each project prior to approval for closing of a loan guarantee. The Department performs due diligence on all projects, including a thorough investigation and analysis of each project's financial, technical and legal strengths and weaknesses. In addition to the underwriting and due diligence process, each project is reviewed in consultation with independent consultants.

Here are comments from Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chair Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.):

After years of watching this program struggle to get off the ground, it's encouraging to see that Secretary Chu's energetic new leadership at the Department is having an effect. This news is especially welcome at a time when our nation's economic problems have made it so difficult for companies to find financing for clean energy projects. Congress soon will be considering a new energy bill, and that legislation is likely to include additional authorities for the Secretary and the Administration to help build a new green energy economy for America."

Scientific American had a good story in October on Solyndra (here).

Energy Daily has more recent details:

Since its founding in 2005 in Fremont, Calif., privately held Solyndra has been developing technology and ramping up manufacturing capacity to produce its proprietary thin film PV system that uses copper, iridium, gallium and selenium (CIGS) rather than silicon.

While thin-film PV typically is about half as efficient as silicon-based PV in converting sunlight to electricity, Solyndra's system offers design features that allow the generation of considerably more electricity from flat roofs, at a lower installed cost, than flat-panel PV systems, the company says.

Solyndra's panels employ cylindrical modules that capture sunlight across a 360-degree photovoltaic surface capable of converting direct, diffuse and reflected sunlight into electricity. This self-tracking design eliminates the need for expensive tilted mounting devices required by traditional silicon PV panels to improve the capture of direct light.

The cylindrical modules consist of two glass tubes, one nested within the other. The inner tube is covered with the CIGS thin film, while the outer tube focuses sunlight on the thin film and protects the PV cell. Solyndra's panels perform optimally when mounted horizontally and packed closely together, making them ideal for the flat roofs found at commercial and industrial facilities throughout the United States and around the world.

Solyndra is currently shipping its systems, comprised of panels and mounting hardware, to fulfill more than $1.2 billion of multi-year contracts with customers in Europe and the United States. A spokesman said Solyndra's existing, fully automated manufacturing facility in Fremont is ramping towards 110 megawatts per year of capacity.

The DOE-guaranteed loan, expected to provide debt financing for about 73 percent of the project costs, will allow Solyndra to begin construction on a second manufacturing plant. When it is completed, the new plant is expected to have an annual manufacturing capacity of 500 MW-which would place the company among the world's biggest thin film panel makers.

Over its lifetime of the project, the new plant will produce enough solar panels to generate up to 15 gigawatts of solar electricity, enough to avoid 300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

The company currently employs more than 500 people, and estimated that construction of the new plant will employ 3,000 workers, while its operation will create more than 1,000 new jobs.

Solyndra's financial backers include CMEA Ventures, Madrone Capital Partners, Rockport Capital Partners and Virgin Green Fund.

Yes -- venture capital has been critical to the recent explosion in U.S. clean energy companies (see here).

Kudos to Chu for jumpstarting the loan program and focusing on the key job creating technologies of this century -- renewable energy.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

By Tom Philpott

When Michelle Obama plunged a shovel into the White House lawn last Friday, she wasn't just preparing a productive vegetable-garden bed. She's was also tilling fertile ground for debate about new directions for the food system.

In The New York Times, Andrew Martin helpfully got the ball rolling in a recent piece called "Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?"

I want to focus here on one small part of Martin's piece, one that I've been fixated on since I started to write about food politics a few years ago: the class issue. Specifically, who gets access -- who deserves access -- to healthy food that's been grown and processed in ecologically and socially sustainable ways?

(Another key question raised in Martin's article -- what I call the "Can sustainable agriculture feed the world?" conundrum -- I'll address soon. Quick response: Can unsustainable agriculture feed the world -- for long?)

In Martin's article, Nancy Joseph, a professor of food marketing at St. Joseph's University, addresses the class issue:

... Ms. Childs worries that some of the activists' recommendations for buying fresh, local or organic food cannot be adopted by many Americans because those foods may be too expensive. "By singling out certain lifestyles and foods, it's diminishing very good quality nutrition sources," she says. "Frozen goods, canned goods, they are not bad things. What's important is that people eat well, within their means."

"We'd all love to live on a farm in Vermont, right?" she adds.

Childs' critique can be summed up like this: Fresh, local, and organic food is more expensive than conventional; the U.S. middle class is being squeezed, and there's a large and growing low-income population; and we're in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Therefore, fresh, local, and organic food must be a niche market for the well-off and the food-obsessed (folks willing to make sacrifices in other parts of their lives so they can shop at the farmers market). As one green-products exec tells Martin, "The idea of the true cost of food? ... That's the last thing consumers want to hear right now."

These are important points. Surely, it's unedifying to be lectured by someone who lives on a paid-for Vermont farm -- or a pristine, rustic house in the Berkeley hills -- about the virtues of just-picked produce.  

And I think it's problematic, in a nation wherein real wages have stagnated since the 1970s, to cavalierly demand that people pay more for food.

If we accept our food system as it is, then Childs makes perfect sense. We need an industrialized food system to churn out food that people can afford; the best we can do is nudge the industry to make health and sustainability a bit more of a priority.

From what I can see, the only real way to challenge that logic is to challenge the food system as a whole. Right now, we have an extractive food system -- one that extracts wealth from communities and moves it up the commodity chain to corporate shareholders. We need to create a food system that builds wealth within communities -- and thus broadens access to fresh, local, and organic food. 

What do I mean by extractive? Look at a typical low-income urban neighborhood. In most areas, there's little space for food production, and people generally buy their food at stores owned by folks outside the neighborhood --  fast-food outlets, corner stores, eateries, and (when they exist) large supermarkets.

Here's a good rule of thumb: even in the lowest-income neighborhoods, people spend about $1000 per head annually on food. In a neighborhood of, say, 10,000 people, food expenditures represent a cool $10 million per year.

Now, where does that money go? In our typical urban neighborhood, it mainly flows to the owners of those fast-food outlets, corner stores, eateries, or large supermarkets -- i.e., mainly to distant shareholders.

And what does the community get in return? Well, food -- but generally food that appears to be contributing to a host of diet-related maladies such as diabetes and heart disease.

And there's jobs, but they tend to be low-paid and deskilled. Few industries have seen more relentless pressure on unions than supermarkets since Wal-Mart entered the grocery fray a little more than a decade ago.

As for fast-food jobs, they're  some of the worst work available in the U.S., as Eric Schlosser demonstrated in Fast Food Nation. "While a handful of workers manage to rise up the corporate ladder, the vast majority lack full-time employment, receive no benefits, learn few skills, quit after a few months, and float from job to job," Schosser wrote. He adds: "The only Americans who consistently earn lower wages are migrant farm workers." 

In other words, as currently structured, the food system is a sieve through which a substantial portion of wealth in low-income communities leaks away -- with little of value to show for it.

Yet, that $10 million per year in food expenditures could be deployed in different ways. Imagine productive community gardens spread throughout the neighborhood, that provide fresh vegetables to the folks that tend them, plus a substantial surplus. 

Now imagine that surplus is sold a to restaurant owned by community members -- one that trains and employs real cooks, not McDonalds-style button-pushers. Some of the  profits and wages generated there are spent at a community-owned food coop -- one that sources as much produce as possible both from the community gardens and nearby, exurban farmers (since community gardens can't meet all the needs).

With institutions like these, a large and increasing chunk of that $10 million stays within the community, knocking around, multiplying, and bringing in new forms of industry. Someone realizes that all this local eating is generating food scraps that could be turned into valuable compost for the community gardens -- and initiates a work-composting enterprise in the backyard. And so on.

This is the model, I think, that can address the food-and-class problem in the United States. For too long, food has been seen as an input of, not a tool for, economic development. To broaden access to healthy food, that must change.

These ideas aren't new. Two of my mentors in food-system thinking -- Oakland-based Hank Hererra and Minnesota-based Ken Meter -- have been making these points forcefully for years. Groups like Milwaukee and chicago's Growing Power, Brooklyn's Added Value, and Oakland's People's Grocery have proven they work on the ground.

And you'll also find them hinted at in such much-revered, little read classics as Jane Jacobs' Economy of Cities and E.F. Schumaker's Small is Beautiful.

As the externalized costs of our industrial food system pile up, and the conversation around food policy sparked by Michelle Obama's veggie garden heats up, I hope these ideas come to the fore.

By Joseph Romm

In The U.S. requires a strong climate bill to remain competitive, Part 1, I reprised the thesis first documented by Harvard's Michael Porter -- strong, leading edge, pro-innovation regulations promote national competitiveness. As President Obama said last week:

We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for our lasting prosperity.

It is Obama's final point -- "lasting prosperity" -- that is the focus of this post. Obama is hinting at a point I tried to make explicit earlier this month in my interview with NYT's Tom Friedman and subsequent post (see "Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme"):

"We created a way of raising standards of living that we can't possibly pass on to our children," said Joe Romm.

To perpetuate the high returns the rich countries in particular have been achieving in recent decades, we have been taking an ever greater fraction of nonrenewable energy resources (especially hydrocarbons) and natural capital (fresh water, arable land, forests, fisheries), and, the most important nonrenewable natural capital of all -- a livable climate.

In short, we have failed to design a system capable of lasting prosperity. Quite the reverse.

Like all Ponzi schemes, the system must collapse. When it does, the only jobs left standing will be those that are "green" -- which can be defined as those jobs that do not plunder nonrenewable energy resources and natural capital and/or do not to destroy a livable climate.

Strong climate legislation and a strong clean energy bill are not the only measures needed to avert the collapse, but they are an essential first start. Absent such action, the collapse is inevitable.

When will be collapse begin and what will it look like? I expect most opinion makers and the majority of the public to get desperate about reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the 2020s. But desperation is not collapse. I have tended to think that the inflection point is around 2030.

Now it just so happens that the UK government's chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, laid out something very close to the collapse scenario in his speech yesterday to the government's Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster. He warned that by 2030, "A `perfect storm' of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions," as the UK's Guardian put it.

You can see a five-minute BBC interview with Beddington here. The speech is now online, so I will excerpt it at length (sorry I don't have the graphs):

... last year is the lowest level of reserves that we have had as a proportion of our consumption in years, since 1970 and actually since records were taken of this sort.That means that we've got somewhere like reserves of around 14 percent of our consumption, that implies, give or take, 38 or 39 days of food reserves if we don't grow any more.

As you can see, it's the lowest level that we've actually had. Is that a problem? Well the answer is yes it is going to be a problem. We saw the food spike last year; prices going up by something in the order of 300 percent, rice went up by 400 percent, we saw food riots, we saw major issues for the poorest in the world, in the sense that the organisations like the World Food Programme did not have sufficient money to buy food on the open market and actually use it to feed the poorest of the poor.

So this is a major problem. You can see the catastrophic decline in those reserves, over the last five years or so, indicates that we actually have a problem; we're not growing enough food, we're not able to put stuff into the reserves ...

So, what are the drivers? I am going to go through them now very briefly.

First of all, population growth. World population grows by six million every month -- greater than the size of the UK population every year. Between now and... I am going to focus on the year 2030 and the reason I am going to focus on 2030 is that I feel that some of the climate change discussions focusing on 2100 don't actually grip ... I am going to look at 2030 because that's when a whole series of events come together.

By 2030, looking at population terms, you are looking at the global population increasing from a little over six billion at the moment to about eight billion. What is actually happening to that extra population?

First of all, there is a second trend which is to do with population, which is urbanisation. Now as you can see (*refers to slideshow*) the crossover, for the first time in 2009, the urban population exceeded the rural population. And by 2030 again, looking at this graph, you can see that round about by 2030, the urban population is going to be substantially greater than the rural population: major issues for land use, major issues for providing that large urban population with food, with water and with energy. But the population will be distributed very differently to anything we've seen before. So, urbanisation is the second trend.

Now, the other trend which is actually good and which I spoke about last year and which is still there, is that, despite global recession, significant proportions of the developing world are actually moving out of what would be abject poverty and we are seeing a creation of what you might think of as middle class, particularly in India and China. Now that lifting from poverty is part of the Millennium Development Goals, we wish to see the world out of poverty, but as the world moves out of poverty, consumption patterns change.

I am going to deal with some of those in a little while, but in particular, we are going to see an increase in the demand for food. Looking at the demand for food, you are going to see major changes but particularly in the demand for livestock -- meat and dairy. Now, this is not the West that is doing this. This is largely coming from the developing world as they move from very, very simple diets based on very simple agricultural products to more complex agricultural products, including livestock. [These are] perfectly reasonable and legitimate aims for countries moving out of abject poverty.

Quite clearly, there are issues to the individual, within the UK, about to what extent one eats high production diets, for example like large steaks. Someone gave me an indication that a steak meal has used as much carbon as actually driving a large Range Rover from London to Birmingham, so the next time you're sitting down to your steak and chips, ponder that!

By 2030, the demand for food is going to be increased by about 50 percent. Can we do it? One of the questions. There is a major food security issue by 2030. We've got to somehow produce 50 percent more by that time.

The second issue I want to focus on is the availability of fresh water. If you're looking at this slightly complicated graph, we are looking at the top left for the moment, which is showing that the fresh water available per head of the world population is around 25 percent of what it was in 1960. To give you some idea of this; there are enormous potential shortages in certain parts of the world ... China has something like 23 percent of the world's population and 11 percent of the world's water.

Looking at the right-hand side of the graph, you can see that the massive use of water is in agriculture and particularly in developing world agriculture. Something of the order of 70 percent of that. One in three people are already facing water shortages and the total world demand for water is predicted to increase by 30 percent by 2030.

So, we've got food -- expectation of demand increase of 50 percent by 2030, we've got water -- expectation of demand increase of 30 percent by 2030. And in terms of what it looks like, we have real issues of global water security.

If you look at the graph, the red figures are where there is genuine water stress (this is a prediction of stress in 2025, a little before 2030), so we're seeing it. Look at some of the places you would expect it, I have mentioned China and also parts of India, but look at parts of southern Europe where by 2025 we are looking at serious issues of water stress ...

So, water is really enormously important. I am going to get onto the climate change interactions with it a little bit later but water is the one area that I feel is seriously threatening. It is so important because a shortage of water obviously interacts with a shortage of food, there are real potentials for driving significant international problems -- what do you do if you have no water and you have no food? You migrate. So one can have a reasonable expectation that international migration will occur as these shortages come in.

Now, the third one I want to focus on is energy and, driven by the population increase that I talked about, the urbanisation I talked about and indeed the movement out of poverty, the expectation is that primary energy demand is going to increase. This graph shows that last year, for the first time, the demand of the rest of the world exceeded the demand of energy of the OECD. The shading of green is the rest of the non-OECD and the orange shading is China and India, so you can see the enormous effect that's actually having and you can see the way in which energy demand is actually increasing and going to hit something of the order of a 50 percent increase, again by 2030.

Now, if that were not enough ... those are three things that are coming together. What will the world be like when that happens? But we also have, of course, the issue of climate change. Now, this is a very familiar slide to you all but we are shooting for a target of two degrees centigrade, a perfectly sensible target. There is enormous uncertainty in the climate change models about that particular target. It is perfectly reasonable to say 'shouldn't we be shooting for one degrees centigrade or, oddly enough, it is perfectly reasonable to say 'shouldn't we be shooting for three degrees centigrade,' the only information we have is really enormously uncertain in terms of the climate change model.

Shooting for two seems a perfectly sensible and legitimate objective but there are enormous problems. You are talking about serious problems in tropical glaciers -- the Chinese government has recognised this and has actually announced about 10 days ago that it is going to build 59 new reservoirs to take the glacial melt in the Xinjiang province. 59 reservoirs. It is actually contemplating putting many of them underground. This is a recognition that water, which has hitherto been stored in glaciers, is going to be very scarce. We have to think about water in a major way.

But the climate change agenda is there and we have to think about it, but this is looking to me like it is getting worse....

I was at a conference yesterday on Arctic ice at the Royal Society. There was a paper presented there by Wang and Overland which indicated that by 2030, they were predicting, the Arctic was likely to be ice-free in the summer. This would have the most enormous impact on the climate change system, big, big serious issues there.

The other area that really worries me in terms of climate change and the potential for positive feedbacks and also for interactions with food is ocean acidification....

As I say, it's as acid today as it has been for 25 million years. When this occurred some 25 million years ago, this level of acidification in the ocean, you had major problems with it, problems of extinctions of large numbers of species in the ocean community. The areas which are going to be hit most severely by this are the coral reefs of the world and that is already starting to show. Coral reefs provide significant protein supplies to about a billion people. So it is not just that you can't go snorkelling and see lots of pretty fish, it is that there are a billion people dependent on coral reefs for a very substantial portion of their high protein diet.

So, this is cheerful stuff, isn't it? What I have said, which I guess is why I have been talking to the media a bit, is I have coined the point that we have got to deal with increased demand for energy, increased demand for food, increased demand for water, and we've got to do that while mitigating and adapting to climate change. And we have but 21 years to do it....

I will leave you with some key questions. Can nine billion people be fed? Can we cope with the demands in the future on water? Can we provide enough energy? Can we do it, all that, while mitigating and adapting to climate change? And can we do all that in 21 years time? That's when these things are going to start hitting in a really big way. We need to act now. We need investment in science and technology, and all the other ways of treating very seriously these major problems. 2030 is not very far away.

Some of this can be avoid or minimized if we act now. Some of it can't. But if we don't act strongly now, then by 2030 we will be in the midst of this "perfect storm" of catastrophes -- and everyone in the world will know we face much, much worse probably for hundreds and hundreds of years to come.

That is the inflection point, "Planetary Purgatory" -- and you'll want to make sure you and your children have a sustainable job by then. What that might be will be the subject of any later post.

By David Roberts

Chu starts about 21 minutes in:

A seven-day focus on the world’s water crunch was winding up here Sunday with an expected pledge to work harder to provide access to clean water and sanitation and tackle worsening scarcity.

By Joseph Romm

Contrary to popular belief, a strong climate bill will not harm U.S. competitiveness. Quite the reverse -- it is our only hope for restoring U.S. leadership in key job creating industries such as solar energy, wind power, and automobile manufacturing, which was lost in large part because of conservative orthodoxy (see "U.S. left in the solar dust" and "Blustery irony" and below).

While the media debate over green jobs and cap-and-trade has begun in earnest (see here and here), most of it misses a key point. Action on global warming and resource efficiency is inevitable. Conservative deniers do not understand that, so they contract out for economic analyses that assume the choice is between action and inaction.

Action always has a significant cost in a traditional economic models (see "Wrong again, part 2"). And since conservatives reject science, they never bother modeling the cost of inaction, the cost of Catastrophic 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path.

That leads to truly inane results, such as the recent conservative economic analysis, "Seven Myths About Green Jobs," which "surveyed this green jobs literature, analyzed its assumptions, and ... found that the prescribed undertaking would lead to restructuring and possibly impoverishing our society." It is staying on the business as usual path that would impoverish our society immeasurably. If "restructuring" means pursuing a low carbon, resource efficient economy and hence avoiding the inevitable collapse of our current Ponzi scheme, count me in!

More than half the time the media simple parrots the conservative perspective on climate action -- some cost, no benefit -- as the searing critique by leading Time magazine journalist Eric Pooley demonstrated (see here).

But there are two key issues that even the best stories tend to gloss over:

1. The huge competitiveness loss from failure to act first on greenhouse gas reductions
2. The inevitable collapse in all non-green employment when the global Ponzi scheme collapses.

President Obama actually understands both of those issues, for he summed up the central argument in his terrific speech yesterday better than I have seen anyone else do it:

We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for our lasting prosperity.

Let's start with the competitiveness issue, because it is nearer term.

Competitiveness

Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter -- arguably America's leading authority on competitiveness -- explained in Scientific American way back in 1991:

The conflict between environmental protection and economic competitiveness is a false dichotomy based on a narrow view of the sources of prosperity and a static view of competition.

Strict environmental regulations do not inevitably hinder competitive advantage against foreign rivals; indeed, they often enhance it. Tough standards trigger innovation and upgrading. In my book The Competitive Advantage of Nations, I found that the nations with the most rigorous requirements often lead in exports of affected products.

Although the U.S. once clearly led in setting standards, that position has been slipping away. Until the grudging passage of the Clean Air Act in 1990, Congress had passed little environmental legislation since the mid-1970s. Today our leadership in setting environmental standards has been lost in many areas. Even Japan, a nation regarded as relatively unconcerned about the environment, has moved ahead of the U.S. in important fields.

As other nations have pushed ahead, U.S. trade has suffered. Germany has had perhaps the world's tightest regulations in stationary air-pollution control, and German companies appear to hold a wide lead in patenting-andexporting-air-pollution and other environmental technologies. As much as 70 percent of the air pollution-control equipment sold in the U.S. today is produced by foreign companies. Britain is another case in point. As its environmental standards have lagged, Britain's ratio of exports to imports in environmental technology has fallen from 8:1 to 1:1 over the past decade.

In contrast, the U.S. leads in those areas in which its regulations have been the strictest, such as pesticides and the remediation of environmental damage. Such leads should be treasured and extended. Environmental protection is a universal need, an area of growing expenditure in all the major national economies ($50 billion a year in Europe alone) and a major export industry.

Even in the broader economy, strict standards may actually foster competitiveness. Exacting standards seem at first blush to raise costs and make firms less competitive. This may be true if everything stays the same except that expensive pollution-control equipment is added.

But everything will not stay the same. Properly constructed regulatory standards, which aim at outcomes and not methods, will encourage companies to re-engineer their technology. The result in many cases is a process that not only pollutes less but lowers costs or improves quality. Processes will be modified to decrease use of scarce or toxic resources and to recycle wasted by-products.

Strict product-regulations can also prod companies into innovating to produce less polluting or more resource-efficient products. As a result of the U.S. proposed phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), for example, Du Pont and other American firms are pioneers in finding substitutes ...

The strongest proof that environmental protection does not hamper competitiveness is the economic performance of nations with the strictest laws. Both Germany and Japan have tough regulations. In America, many of the sectors subject to the greatest environmental costs have actually improved their trade performance, among them chemicals, plastics and paints. Japan has become a world leader in developing pollution-control equipment and cleaner, more efficient processes.

Turning environmental concern into competitive advantage demands that we establish regulations that stress pollution prevention rather than abatement or cleanup. They must not constrain the technology, or else innovation will be stifled. Because U.S. environmental regulations have traditionally violated these principles, the substantial amount we spend on protecting the environment has not yielded the benefits it could have. The resurgence of concern for the environment, then, should be viewed as an important step in regaining America's preeminence in environmental technology and its competitive edge in the international marketplace.

Perhaps it is no accident that the 1990s saw a record economic and job growth while environmental regulations were tightened, while the 2000s saw low jobs growth a no net wealth created while environmental regulations were loosened or ignored entirely.

Porter updated his analysis a few years later for Harvard Business Review, with "Green and Competitive: Ending the Stalemate." [PDF] He has many terrific examples in that piece, most presciently:

It is no secret that Japanese and German automobile makers developed lighter and more fuel-efficient cars in response to new fuel consumption standards, while the less competitive U.S. car in industry fought such standards and hoped they would go away. The U.S. car industry eventually realized that it would face extinction if it did not learn to compete through innovation. But clinging to the static mind-set too long cost billions of dollars and many thousands of jobs.

This static mind set was, of course, enabled by conservatives who lined up with automakers to block aggressive efforts to strengthen fuel economy standards for nearly three decades, ultimately helping to ravage the industry (see "Is Detroit worth saving?").

On the other hand, regulation-driven innovation can achieve remarkable benefits, when the companies being regulated have a dynamic mindset:

3M also improved resource productivity. Forced to comply with new regulations to reduce solvent emissions by 90%, 3M found a way to avoid the use of solvents altogether by coating products with safer, water-based solutions. The company gained an early-mover advantage in product development over competitors, many of whom switched significantly later. The company also shortened its time to market because its water-based product did not have to go through the approval process for solvent-based coatings

3M found that innovations can improve process consistency, reduce downtime, and lower costs substantially. The company used to produce adhesives in batches that were then transferred to storage tanks. One bad batch could spoil the entire contents of a tank. Lost product, downtime, and expensive hazardous-waste disposal were the result. 3M developed a new technique to run rapid quality tests on new batches. It reduced hazardous wastes by 110 tons per year at almost no cost, yielding an annual savings of more than $200,000.

It is worth noting what Porter says are some key features of "innovation-friendly regulation":

• Enact strict rather than lax regulation.
• Focus on outcomes, not technologies
• Use market incentives.
• Harmonize or converge regulations in associated
  fields
• Make the regulatory process more stable and predictable.

Sounds like precisely what progressives want in a good cap-and-trade bill.

I will discuss the jobs and prosperity issue surrounding the inevitable collapse of the global Ponzi scheme in Part 2.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

By biodiversivist

Rocket scientists Governors Gregoire, Kulongoski, and Schwarzenegger are supporting a brilliant idea to grab some of the stimulus funds. From a Seattle Times article that garnered 140 comments:

The three governors envision a series of alternative fueling stations stretching from the Canadian border to Mexico, creating what has been dubbed a "green freeway." They also would be able to charge, or swap out, their electric-vehicle batteries or fill their tanks with biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen or compressed natural gas.

Here's what supporters are saying:

... the plan would fit with the nationwide push for green jobs and alternative-energy development, and put the states in line for some of the $15 billion in federal stimulus money dedicated to energy-related programs.

Somebody please send these people copies of the following three lay press articles published last year by Time, the New York Times, and Newsweek, respectively: "Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat," "The Clean Energy Scam," and "Doing it wrong."

And since you can't trust anything in the lay press, also send them a copy of this link which collects the actual studies that show today's agriculture-based biofuels exacerbate global warming.

Include a link to this graphic showing that one-third of global warming is caused by the direct destruction of carbon based lifeforms (exacerbated by biofuels) and a copy of this easy-to-comprehend graphic showing why taxpayer money should not be spent propping up hydrogen for transport (300 percent more expensive than other options). Alright, so much for the ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen pumps.

That leaves natural gas and electric. I'm a big proponent of further electrification of transport. But I have to say that building charging stations along an interstate is the ultimate case of putting the cart before the horse (and one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard).

Jeff Miller, who works in global development at Better Place, said that if the company were hired it would build charging stations in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and battery switch-out stations at rest areas about every 40 miles along the I-5 corridor. Electric vehicles, he said, have a battery life of about 100 miles.

So, assuming you were leasing one of their electric cars, you would have to stop and swap batteries roughly every hour (because the 100-mile claim is almost certainly BS at highway speeds). Electric cars are a long way from being used for long distance interstate travel. That is what plug-in hybrids are all about. You use electric power for shorter, lower speed missions, and use the engine for rarer long distance trips.

The natural gas pumps suffer a similar problem as electric vehicles in that their range is very limited, not to mention there are almost no cars running on the fuel.

God save us from our politicians and the dolts advising them.

By David Roberts

I didn't follow the George Will Climate Crank Controversy very closely on this blog. You can read a comprehensive play-by-play from Adam Siegel here.

The good news is, two new shots were fired today by the forces of sanity, in the pages of the Washington Post, which hosted Will's original idiocy. The first is an op-ed from science writer Chris Mooney: "Climate Change Myths and Facts." It's a piece-by-piece dismantling of Will's deceptions, attended by a plea for more serious journalistic standards.

Then there's a letter to the editor from Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization: "Understanding Climate Change." It begins:

Data collected over the past 150 years by the 188 members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through observing networks of tens of thousands of stations on land, at sea, in the air and from constellations of weather and climate satellites lead to an unequivocal conclusion: The observed increase in global surface temperatures is a manifestation of global warming. Warming has accelerated particularly in the past 20 years.

Boom.

I'm sure we can expect an embarrassed apology from George Will any second.

By Ken Johnson

For an $80 billion program, President Barack Obama's cap-and-trade proposal is very short on specifics. His budget plan [PDF] provides only the briefest policy rationale for cap-and-trade, describing it as "a policy approach that dramatically reduced acid rain at much lower costs than the traditional government regulations and mandates of the past."

The acid-rain program's regulatory costs were indeed low, partly because emission allowances were freely allocated to industry. But Obama's plan calls for 100 percent auctioning of allowances, which erases the perceived cost advantage and puts cap-and-trade on par with carbon taxes in terms of political viability.

To ameliorate cost impacts, the plan would allocate most (80 percent) of the auction proceeds to a permanent $800 "Making Work Pay" tax cut for working families; but with cap-and-trade nothing is ever "permanent." Carbon trading prices in Europe have dropped from over $30 to $10 per ton CO2 over the last year, and in the U.S. northeastern states allowances are currently selling at a meager $3 per ton. Obama's plan is betting on $20 per ton, but linking the nation's tax system to an erratic revenue source would be imprudent.

The obvious, but unanswered, question is why a 100-percent auction would be preferable to a fixed-price sale of allowances, i.e. a carbon tax, which could simply be set at $20 per ton. There would be no price volatility.

Regarding the claim that cap-and-trade "dramatically reduced acid rain," the reduction was not sufficiently dramatic to actually solve the acid rain problem. Further reductions would yield an estimated societal return-on-investment of 2,500 percent from health and environmental benefits, and yet emission trading creates no incentive for such further reductions even when costs are far below initial expectations. The EPA has been trying for years to institute rules for more stringent acid rain regulations, but under the current cap-and-trade regime the rules cannot be strengthened without an Act of Congress -- or a very protracted court battle. The implications for global climate policy should be clear.

A carbon tax would create a stable price signal and a predictable investment climate that would be more conducive to long-term investments in clean-energy technology and infrastructure. Alternatively, a price floor applied to allowance auctions would avert the kind of price erosion and collapse that has characterized prior trading systems. Had a price floor been applied in the acid rain program, there may have been no need for the EPA's new rules.

Irrespective of whether carbon pricing revenue comes from an auction or from a fixed-price sale of allowances, the allocation of the revenue to a Making Work Pay tax cut would be problematic because consumers would not be equitably compensated for high energy costs. The tax burden would shift, not just onto wealthy taxpayers, but also onto low-income groups such as retirees on fixed incomes or people who expend a relatively large portion of their income on energy. The tax cut would have to somehow be linked to energy consumption to make it equitable.

A simpler and more direct way to mitigate energy costs -- one that is not discussed or considered in Obama's plan -- would be to apply most of the carbon pricing revenue to subsidize energy prices, e.g. at a uniform cents-per-kilowatt-hour rate for electricity. If the revenue is allocated to industry as an energy production subsidy it would have much the same cost-cutting effect as free allocation of allowances -- but with one crucial difference: Clean and renewable energy technologies would also qualify for the subsidy, and would therefore not be disadvantaged by the allocation method. Competition from subsidized clean energy would deter polluting industries from passing their costs onto consumers, and would make fossil-fuel energy progressively less economically viable as clean energy attains economies of scale and gains market share. (By contrast, free allocation is equivalent to giving all of the revenue to polluters.)

For example, if the electricity industry comprises 90 percent fossil-fuel energy and 10 percent renewable, then the subsidy would reduce the net tax on fossil fuels by a factor of ten while providing a per-kilowatt-hour subsidy of nearly ten times that amount to renewable energy. The same net tax could even support a much greater subsidy if the subsidy were focused on new renewables, excluding legacy hydroelectric and nuclear power. Eventually, as carbon is phased out of the electricity industry, the clean-energy subsidy would automatically diminish and the net tax on fossil-fuel energy would increase until the latter becomes uneconomical.

In essence, the subsidized-energy approach replaces the big "stick" of a high tax with a big "carrot" of high subsidies, which can be equally effective at incentivizing clean energy deployment. Carrots might succeed where sticks have so far failed to achieve political consensus on federal climate policy.

[Revised 3/22/2009]

By David Roberts

Listen Play "ABCs (f. Chubb Rock)," by K'naan

K'naan is a hip-hop MC out of Toronto, Ontario. (That's in Canada!) He was born and raised in Somalia, in truly horrific conditions of war and deprivation. He learned to rap -- before he even learned English -- by imitating the flow of American rappers on bootlegged CDs.

His 2008 debut album, The Dusty Foot Philosopher, created a minor sensation, for good reason (even outside the personal backstory) -- it contained a lively mix of styles, some funky live instrumentation, and truly impressive flow. It won Canada's prestigious (quit giggling) Juno award for rap album of the year.

I've noticed that his recently released second album, Troubadour, is producing a bit of grumbly backlash in some quarters. It's too "pop," apparently. Not "real" hip-hop. As always, that kind of criticism is wanky circle jerking from purists with too much time on their hands. As far as I'm concerned, if a guy can survive growing up in Somalia he pretty much gets credibility for life. And I happen to think the album is a joy, and quite thought provoking to boot.

This song, "ABCs," is the first single, and boasts a verse from Chubb Rock, who I also love.

By Joseph Romm

Monday I wrote "Ignore NYT's Green Home column."

I was critical both of the author Julie Scelfo and Eric Corey Freed, the author of Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies. But having corresponded with Freed, it seems that his recommendations were taken somewhat out of context. He in fact provided a rough list of 20 things to do.

So I asked him for his list, which he cleaned up a bit (reprinted below). I am not going to number this list because the list is not in any particular order and in any case every home is different.

The list pretty much covers the vast majority of my recommendations. I do think that for those who want a truly green home, you'll want to get 100 percent renewable power from a local certified provider if you can, but that should be done in concert with the efficiency measures below. I also recommend getting your home tested for dangerous pollutants.

Finally, there is one technology I had never heard of until I hired someone to help green my home a few years ago. That is a "Drain-Water Heat Recovery" system, featured in the picture. It costs a few hundred dollars and pays for itself in a few years -- and everything you could possibly want to know about it can be found here.

If you want to know more about Freed, buy his book, or even hire his services, go to OrganicArchitect.com. Here is the list:

• Insulate and turn down your hot water heater. It only takes 123 degrees needed to kill Legionnaires Disease. You can save up to 10 percent off your water heating bill.
• Insulate your hot and cold water pipes, especially the first 10 feet from the water heater. You'll get a 5 percent savings off your hot water bill.
• Install a dual flush (ie: Brondell) kit into your toilet, or at least insert a 2 liter bottle into the back of the tank.
• Install occupancy sensors on select rooms around the house. Look for rooms where lights are left on. The California Energy Commission estimates 35-45 percent savings.
• Use smart strips (or manually unplug devices) to kill vampire loads. $3 billion a year lost from Vampire loads.
• Replace your thermostat with a programmable model. Look for EnergyStar pre-programmed model. Save $180 a year off your heating bill.
• Seal your ducts with mastic. Most homes average 30 percent duct leakage. $300 a year in potential savings.
• Install a simple greywater system, ie: Aqus or SinkPositive. Stop flushing fresh drinking water down the toilet.
• If you repaint, use only zero (not low) VOC paints, or try earthen plaster finishes instead. The plaster potentially adds thermal mass to your wall and maintains a consistent temperature.
• Caulk and seal around your windows and exterior doors. Most homes average a 20 percent air leakage. Replace leaky single paned windows with low-e, double glazed ones.
• If you have a pool, install a solar pool heater. Save water and energy by using a pool cover.
• Skip the sprinklers, install a drip irrigation system. Better yet, plant xeriscaping plants to avoid the need for additional watering altogether.
• Install an ultra low flow showerhead. (ie: Evolve, Bricor or Oxygenics.) You can jump from the standard 2.5 gallons per minute down to 0.5 gpm.
• Install a whole house water filter and never buy bottled water again.
• Install a solar powered clothes dryer (aka a clothesline). Your dryer consumes 10 percent of home energy use.
• Recycle AND compost at home.
• Explore solar leasing programs (ie: Sungevity, Citizen RE, Solar City, et al).
• Install a whole house fan into your attic to avoid using air conditioning on all but the hottest of days. Add a solar powered attic vent to flush the heat out. Cut AC bill by 30 percent. Install ceiling fans to help. Cooling is really the feeling of cooling, not cold air.
• Insulate your attic. Be careful to not block the soffit vents. Add a radiant barrier if you re-roof. Use light colored roofing (ideally reflective) to create a cool roof. Lowers temperature at roof by 70 degrees.
• Upgrade old appliances to smaller, EnergyStar models. Target your refrigerator, dishwasher, washer/dryer first. Move fridge away from oven. Replacing a fridge older than 1991 will pay for its replacement in less than a year.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - EU leaders refused Friday to put a figure on aid for developing nations to cut greenhouse gases, saying they wanted to wait to see what the United States, China and others have to offer.

This week, as I sorted through my inbox and overflowing number of “google alerts,” one particular story from Fox News caught my attention. In a decidedly personal yet informative piece, Andy Kroll of Fox News outlined the reasons why he was going to reduce his meat consumption by 75 percent in the upcoming months. The tipping point for him? The significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with animal production globally.

By Guest author

This is a guest post by Michael A. Livermore, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law and the coauthor, along with Richard L. Revesz, of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health.

-----

As a climate change policy, President Obama's carbon cap is a winner. It gets greenhouse reductions at the lowest possible cost and spurs the innovation and invention that will drive us to a clean-energy economy.

But if folks are eyeing the carbon cap as a way to raise money to pay for clean energy programs, they are barking up the wrong tree. Unless these funds are returned to the American public, the cap will have severely regressive effects on lower-income Americans. And in the end, it would come back around to bite us by sapping support for environmental spending in the future.

The most important principle of the President's plan is that it keeps working families financially whole as we transition to energy efficiency. It's a piece of the puzzle that shows that it is both unnecessary and unwise to sacrifice equality to reach green goals.

If Obama's plan is adopted, a carbon cap will be set and 100 percent of pollution permits will be auctioned off to energy companies (rather than giving them billions in freebies as some have suggested). The vast majority of the revenue from the auctions will be refunded back to the American public through a tax credit for 95 percent of working individuals -- essentially reimbursing them for the increases on their energy bills. Each year, $15 billion would be set aside for investments in green infrastructure, clean energy, job training, and research and development.

Of course, we could always do more green investment. But, to avoid an unfair burden on those who have the least, additional spending should come from general revenue, not the auction proceeds.

With any carbon cap, energy companies will recoup the value of their pollution permits by passing the cost on to consumers. Americans on the lower rungs of the economic ladder will be disproportionately hurt by these increases in price because electricity accounts for a bigger percentage of their expenses. So if they don't get the auction revenue as a refund, they end up with a painfully regressive burden.

Environmentalists should not accept this terrible compromise. Burdening the poor is not the right way to raise money for environmental programs. Beyond being unfair, it is a deal that would drain the political capital right out of the green movement. We need to pay for our programs through progressive taxes or risk contributing to inequality and eroding support for environmental spending in the future.

The president's stimulus plan included over $80 billion to upgrade the energy grid and other green energy infrastructure improvements and incentives. Coupled with the $15 billion per year set aside from the auction revenue, there is already significant green investment on the table. Toss in the flood of private investment in clean energy and energy efficiency that would come in when we have a price on carbon and we will be in pretty good shape. Certainly there will be enough investment that we will not need to raise money on the backs of low-income Americans by keeping more of the carbon auction revenue.

It's clear we need to put a price on carbon, but who should pay? Obama answers the question correctly: we must all share in cleaning up our mess, but we cannot push the brunt onto those who can least afford it. If anything, his plan should be augmented with protections for non-workers, not trimmed down to pay for additional spending.

By auctioning off 100 percent of the pollution credits under a carbon cap, and returning most of the money to working Americans, the President strikes a good balance: driving incentives for energy efficiency and renewables for all businesses and individuals while protecting lower-income families from the shock of increases in prices.

By Jonathan Hiskes

Los Angeles citizens voted on a citywide solar energy plan on March 3, but the very narrow results didn't become official until yesterday: It lost (by about 1 percent).

That doesn't mean the city's electric utility won't proceed with rapidly expanding its solar voltaic energy portfolio -- it still has the authority to do so. Nor does it mean citizens don't want solar investment. The lead opponents of "Measure B" said they want to see more solar panels in the city, just not through this plan that gave the utility's employees a monopoly on the installation work.

The defeat does mean a financial setback for reelected Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who spent $145,000 of his campaign cash to support the measure.

By David Roberts

George Stephanopoulos says Dems can't possibly pass both healthcare reform and cap-and-trade, and they've effectively chosen healthcare. Dems have supported a plan to push healthcare through via budget reconciliation, which requires only a 50 vote majority. They have not supported a plan to do the same with carbon policy, and "there are nowhere near 60 votes for it," so it's effectively dead this year.

As much as Stephanopoulos bugs me, I fear he's pretty much right about this. Given what we've seen so far, a carbon bill that could get to 60 votes in the Senate would have to be utterly emasculated.