Author: Grist – the Latest from Grist

by Tom Philpott

UPDATE: Happy April Fools’ Day!

As a food politics commenter, I get paid to have strong opinions on the issues of the day.

This ass will be eating grass?racineur via FlickrBut this one’s got me flummoxed. First, fast-food giant Wendy’s rolls out its new “pasture on a bun” burger, made with “100% grass-fed beef.” That sort of thing always leaves me cold. Of course, I want mega-corporations like Wendy’s to make more responsible buying decisions. But what I really want to see are new food economies that retain food dollars within communities, and don’t siphon them to distant shareholders.

Do we really want thirty years of food-system activism to amount to just another profit opportunity for Wendy’s? On the other hand, how can I lash out at a massive buyer for making a sourcing choice that could spark a stampede of cattle from feedlots to farm fields?

Then this news really gave me whiplash: Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, the movement’s leading thinkers, have inked a deal to promote the “pasture on a bun.” They’ll be filming a series of commercials for Wendy’s—and appearing at a string of events nationwide.

The authors of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma want us to hop in our cars and head to the nearest Wendy’s drive-through? Does not compute! I’m stuck on this one, and seeking reader guidance. Please comment below.

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Rachel Maddow takes on denial-funding Koch Industries

by Umbra Fisk

Related Links:

McDonald’s responds to April Fools’ story (via Twitter)

McDonald’s scraps composting program because food won’t decompose

What to make of the Pollan/Schlosser agreement with Wendy’s?

by Umbra Fisk

Send your question to Umbra!

UPDATE: Happy April Fools’ Day!

Q. Dear Umbra,

I just finished drinking a soda—actually, I still have a sip or two left but wanted to go ahead and email
you, so I’d have an answer by the time I finish it. What should I do when the
can is empty? Yes, I know I can just recycle it, but it’s really not my style
to take such an easy way out. I’m more of a road-less-traveled kind of guy. Should I bury it? Fill it with water and drop
in a couple goldfish? Lambast myself for having bought a soda in the first
place? Cut it into tiny pieces and decoupage a lamp?

Your friend,
Zack M.
Bayside, Calif.

A. Dearest Mark and all my beloved readers,

In order to further the mission of one of my many mantras, “reduce, reuse,
recycle,” I’ve decided it’s high time I reduce the number of words I use in this
column and the amount of time I spend on the Internet, phone, and out in the
field hunting and gathering for information to answer your queries. Thusly, I’m
opting to henceforth condense my responses to a simple link, which will answer
all your burning questions. So for you, dear Mark, cliquez
ici for your answer. More
info for you, more shuteye in the stacks for me.

Nap timely,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

What’s the deal with the climate
bill?

Thanks,
A.C.
Slaterville, Utah

A. Dearest A.C.,

Here you go.

Lazily,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

Long-time reader, first-time
writer here. I get really anxious whenever I go to the bathroom, even to just
blow my nose, because I know I’m going to be using toilet paper, water (to
flush the toilet and wash my hands), soap (hand washing), and paper towels
(hand drying). It all just seems so wasteful. What can I do to alleviate my
anxiety?

Sincerely,
Jesse S.
Belding, Mich.

A. Dearest Jesse,

You’re welcome. Or there’s this one. Take your pick.

Bonne chance-ly,
Umbra

Related Links:

McDonald’s responds to April Fools’ story (via Twitter)

McDonald’s scraps composting program because food won’t decompose

What to make of the Pollan/Schlosser agreement with Wendy’s?

by David Roberts

The Senate—when does it not leave widespread devastation in its path?

UPDATE: Happy April Fools’ Day!

The climate bill being developed by Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman will
reportedly raise taxes on gasoline in lieu of putting oil refineries under a
cap-and-trade system. This has led to a great deal of speculation about what
might be done with the revenue from such a tax. On Thursday new details leaked, revealing that some of the revenue will go toward tax credits and incentives for the budding U.S. tar sands industry.

Calgary-based Earth Energy Resources recently obtained permits to create Utah’s first large-scale tar sands project, a 62-acre mine expected to pump out some 2,000 barrels of oil per day. The Utah Geological Survey has measured up to 15 billion barrels of oil bound up in the state’s tar sands, and estimates there may be as much as double that volume yet undiscovered. Over the next decade, some $20 billion in gas tax revenue may ultimately go to companies that mine it. “Energy independence is important and pricing carbon is important,” said Graham. “I’m trying to combine them in a business-friendly way.”

The provision has proved to be popular among centrist Democrats and was met with cautious acceptance by mainstream green groups. “Though we generally prefer that tax money not be directed to fossil fuel developers,” said NRDF spokesman Czad Sak, “we remain committed to working with the senators and thank them for their dedication.”

But not all environmentalists were happy with the news. A coalition of liberal groups including GreenOn and Friends of the Biological Diversity quickly issued a statement saying that the provision was “absolutely unacceptable” and threatening to start a Facebook petition.

Related Links:

McDonald’s responds to April Fools’ story (via Twitter)

Obama’s mountaintop-removal crackdown could mean more than offshore drilling

Rachel Maddow takes on denial-funding Koch Industries

by Grist

The WeatherStrippers are good with caulk.Foxtongue via Creative Commons

UPDATE: Happy April Fools’ Day!

The Garden State’s new jobs program, cheekily dubbed “WeatherStrippers,” will utilize Recovery Act funds to create an estimated 450 jobs while also reducing low-income residents’ energy bills through electricity savings. The WeatherStrippers will seek to put caulking guns in the hands of disadvantaged former strippers through a 12-week, hands-on training program focused on efficient building erection and maintenance.

WeatherStrippers program director, Amber Heatless, commented, “A lot of the ‘green jobs’ attention goes to training ex-convicts to install solar panels, but we realized that the downturn in the economy was disproportionately affecting New Jersey’s population of exotic dancers. And in the pilot program, we found that the girls were naturals with caulk.”

Hey Jersey, we also hear they’re not bad with poles.

Related Links:

McDonald’s responds to April Fools’ story (via Twitter)

McDonald’s scraps composting program because food won’t decompose

What to make of the Pollan/Schlosser agreement with Wendy’s?

by Ashley Braun

Jessica Mullen via FlickrBecause if they explode (or are intentionally popped by dairy-bubble party poopers), you could be shit-out-of-muck, like this Indiana farmer. His dairy operation’s waste management system is suffering from indigestion the size of small houses.

And while he plans to Pepto-Bismol the situation with a gas mask, a boat, and a pocket knife, the “neighbors worry that puncturing the bubbles could cause an explosion of manure and toxic gases.”

And while that may only happen once in a poo lagoon, you don’t want it to be you who’s launched 40 feet in the air by an attack of the killer cow patties. (Seriously, we can’t fake this shit up.)

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by Tom Philpott

Simply delicious: the sandwich trend takes flight at Butcher in New Orleans.Photo courtesy Jason Perlow, via Flickr. In the late 1990s, if you wanted to go out for a skillfully cooked meal made from top-quality local/organic ingredients, you pretty much had to find to a cutting-edge white-tablecloth restaurant: say, Berkeley’s Chez Panisse or Manhattan’s Savoy.

At such places, you could expect excellent food sourced with top-quality ingredients from the surrounding foodshed—and a pretty steep check. And while such restaurants remain a vital part of the scene and undeniably contribute to the food movement, they don’t do much to dispel the notion that caring about where your food comes from is an elite preoccupation.

Since then, we’ve seen two major economic downturns, and an influx of bright young people into both farming and kitchen work. All of that new energy, and the harsh reality of wealth destruction, has given rise to a trend that I love: the ascent of accessibly priced eateries that utilize carefully sourced ingredients prepared by skilled and creative cooks.

To be fair, Chez Panisse and Savoy have contributed to this trend, too. Years ago, Chez Panisse opened an upstairs cafe, where the food is significantly cheaper (though still not exactly inexpensive) than it is in the restaurant. And back in 2007—while the housing bubble was still puffing up—Savoy chef/owner Peter Hoffman presciently opened Back Forty, which he calls “a burger joint, but a high-quality and responsibly sourced one.” Entrees are priced about a third lower than ones at Savoy.

But in recent travels, where I’ve seen the affordable/excellent/local trend bubble up most impressively is in the sphere of the humble sandwich. In cities across the nation, chefs—typically young ones—are forsaking the white tablecloth, the sommelier, the million-dollar investors, the ruinous lease, and the expense-account clientele. Instead, they’re slinging cold cuts, cheese, and condiments between two slices from neighborhood holes in the wall.

And while their sandwiches aren’t cheap by fast-food standards, they pack a whole lot of culinary skill and ingredient quality into a relatively accessible price.

For me, they’re making a long-time dream start to come true: that everyday fare in the United States not be brutally bad. The stuff of weekday lunches—including a sandwich from a neighborhood joint—can and should be magnificent. Everyday food is fabulous in most of Mexico, and much of Europe. And it can be here, too. Now, my sandwich-making heroes (not to be confused with hero sandwiches) are making it happen.

I first got hip to the possibilities of the sandwich shop a few years ago in Chapel Hill, when I stumbled upon Sandwhich, nestled in a courtyard near the University of North Carolina campus. Co-owner and chef Hich Elbetri made his bones as a cook working in Danny Mayer’s New York City restaurant empire. From his Chapel Hill perch, Hich has estabished himself as a master of proportion: he knows how to put the right ingredients together in the right ratios. I haven’t had one for months, but I remain haunted by his “outrageous BLT,” which balances smoky, crisp artisanal bacon, sweet local tomatoes, and the sharp sting of fresh jalepeno pepper. Such treasures dot the menu. Hich specializes in blunt, powerful flavors that harmonize without losing their distinctiveness.

In recent travels, two other sandwich joints have particularly impressed me.

Bierkraft’s bottled beer selection. Photo courtesy iandavid via FlickrThe first is Bierkraft, in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. Bierkraft has been around a while. It opened when I lived in Brooklyn back in the early 2000s. At first it was known for its encyclopedic bottled-beer selection. Then it added a terrific cheese counter, and began to offer a variety of carefully curated products, from chocolate to coffee beans and bread. And that’s pretty much where it was when I left New York in 2004.

When I went back for the first time late last year, the place was transformed. It still had its vast wall of beer-stocked fridges, featuring craft brews from across the country and globe. But now, even more impressively, in the back of the shop, stood a complex of kegs and taps, offering pints drawn from the northeast region’s thriving craft-brew scene.

More impressively still, a few feet away, stood a counter, of three old-school beer casks—complete with a home-hacked system for drawing pints from these vessels. I don’t want to go down a beer rabbit hole in this post about sandwiches; suffice it to say that cask-conditioned beers, which are still literally alive with yeast, are highly prized by beer nerds like me. The place offers an ever-changing selection of three.

Then I discovered that the cheese counter had mostly disappeared, and that a sandwich counter stood in its place. At first glance, it looked simple and unremarkable—an afterthought in a beer temple. Then I noted that Bierkraft clearly took plenty of pride in its food offerings—lots of house-cured this and house-pickled that. A sign offered a list of sandwich-combo “suggestions,” plus a dizzying array of meats, cheeses, veggies, and condiments from which to construct your own.

Sandwich makers ply their nobel trade at Bierkraft.Along with a pint of cask-conditioned Heavy Seas Loose Cannon IPA, I ordered the pastrami-spice brisket, featuring house-made pastrami and saurkraut, plus arugula, tomato, onion, and grainy mustard. It was divine—each individual element crackled with flavor, yet came together in this balanced, ethereal whole. The bread was crusty and terrific. What may be the greatest bottle shop/beer bar in the nation now has a sandwich counter to match that level of excellence.

Also, I love the space – the way it works in the neighborhood. Hipster dads queue up to buy growlers of beer for an evening at home; a stressed-out lady barrels in to order a bunch of take-out sandwiches for an impromptu party breaking out in her apartment; at the communal tables that take up a third of the footprint, small groups of people—some highly stylish Japanese tourists; an older couple; two guys with lots of piercings and ink—huddle over growlers, blocks of local cheese, shared sandwiches.

Bierkraft is a wonderful, wonderful place to eat and drink—and I hope chef/entrepreneurs from around the country will visit it for inspiration.

More recently, I found myself in New Orleans to attend a board meeting of the Chef’s Collaborative. There’s a great restaurant there called Cochon, which applies traditional Cajun techniques to terrific local and regional ingredients. Cochon chef and co-owner Stephen Stryjewsk recently joined the board, and he and his partners were kind enough to host our gatherings—and cater our meals—at a space above the restaurant.

It was an amazing experience; but this post will focus on Butcher, Cochon’s side project: a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop/low-key wine bar. Butcher essentially takes Cochon’s array of house-made charcuterie and offers it  to the masses between slices of bread. For lunch one day, Cochon treated us to sandwiches from Butcher: a
superb example of the iconic NOLA sandwich, the muffaletta; terrific
house-made roast beef; and more.  I couldn’t wait to check out the shop myself. On the day the board meeting ended, I had a few hours to kill before my flight. I gravitated to Butcher. The big doors were open, letting the mild, sunny Louisiana spring stream in. The place was laid-back and appealing: a charcuterie case, a sandwich counter, a small selection of wines, a few tables.

Immensely appealling: wine and sandwiches at Butcher.Photo courtesy of Rockdoggydog, via FlickrMy main goal was grab a sandwich to go for the plane. Honestly, after an immense and rich meal at Cochon the night before, I was in the mood for something simple and light. I had my eye on the “house smoked turkey” featuring watercress, grilled onion, lemon thyme, on pecan bread. But I ran into my fellow Collaborative board member Robin Schempp, a hardcore gourmand of the old school. She was scandalized that I planned to order the turkey. She would simply not hear of it. She informed me that Butcher was famous for its house-cured hot dogs, and its banh mi, a famed Vietnamese sandwich featuring various pork products and pickled veggies in a sliced baguette. (I note that the latter is no longer on the menu.)

With a sigh, I manned up and ordered the banh mi to go—and a glass of wine to enjoy with Robin in the afternoon sun. I didn’t want this Hemingway-esque figure to think I was the type of guy afraid to have a drink by daylight! The wine and the company were wonderful—again, like Bierkraft, the Butcher people have created a lovely place to have a bite and a glass of something delicious.

Later, on the plane, I gingerly opened the sandwich. As I feared, the pungent scent of pork-liver pate escaped into the air, enticing or outraging my neighbors. On first bite, I stopped caring. Chewy bread, earthy pork product, the tangy bite of pickled veggies. Heavenly.

I can envision an age when great sandwich shops dot our cityscapes, combining the skills of local farmers, butchers, and cooks, making their wares accessible to all.

Sigh. I love the sandwich trend. Readers, any interesting sandwich joints where you live?

For other accounts of the sandwich-shop trend, see the winter issue of Edible San Francisco. Or this piece in the NYT, which highlights a place I long to try: Saltie, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

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The NYT highlights a key food-system gap: infrastucture

by Emilie Karrick Surrusco

First let me set the scene. Alaska’s Arctic Ocean is vast, even as oceans go. During the summer months, Arctic waters lap up against pebble-lined shores for miles along endless miles. In the winter, that water stops lapping because it turns into ice that is so beautiful and important to the Inupiat Eskimo people, who have lived along its shores for thousands of years, that their language contain close to 100 words to describe it. These people hunt and revere the wondrous creatures that make the Arctic Ocean their home—polar bears, ice seals, walrus, various types of whales—including the bowhead whale, the mainstay of the Inupiat diet, that can live to be 200 years old. It is a world made beautiful, treacherous and bountiful by ice, and today, that ice is melting.

Now picture oil rigs. And roads, and airports, and big ships, and pipelines—where there currently are none. Soon after, picture oil spills (remember those images of the scores of wildlife killed by the Exxon Valdez?) that we lack the technical ability to clean up in the Arctic’s harsh, icy conditions. Not a pretty picture.

Today’s offshore drilling announcement by the Obama administration both preserves that first pristine picture and brings us closer to the dirty, devastating one. Confused? Let me explain.

The Arctic has been open to oil and gas drilling for many years, but for much of that time the oil companies decided it was too expensive to develop there. That changed with the Bush administration, higher gas prices, and dwindling supplies of oil. In the current five-year plan (2007-2012), close to 75 million acres were opened to leasing in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Of that, 2.8 million acres are currently under lease in prime hunting waters for Alaska’s Inupiat people. The rest were just taken off the table by the Obama administration—for now.

They could be put back up for lease as early as 2013, after the Department of Interior conducts two levels of intensive scientific study, because while we know there are polar bears, walrus, whales, ice seals, and millions of migratory birds, we don’t know much more. The Arctic is the least studied area on Earth, according to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. And many Alaska Native groups and conservation groups have said that until there is more information and until the technology exists to clean up oil spills in those far northern waters, there should be no plans for drilling. Today, the Obama administration seemed to agree.

They did this in part because a federal court (in response to a lawsuit filed by the Native Village of Point Hope, Alaska Wilderness League, Pacific Environment, and Center for Biological Diversity) told them a year ago that the environmental analysis prepared by the Bush administration that allowed the 2007-2012 drilling plan to go forward was deeply flawed (it analyzed coastal areas as opposed to offshore areas where the drilling would actually occur). The court ordered the Obama administration to do a whole new environmental analysis, which they released today, and which they used to say that the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are highly sensitive areas that need to be studied before they can be drilled.

So, today, the Obama administration seemed to reverse the agregious wrongs of the Bush administration. That is, until it comes to the 2.8 million acres currently under lease that Shell Oil and others are chomping at the bit to develop. They are hoping to move their 514-foot-long drill ship and fleet of support vessels and aircraft into the Inupiat’s pristine Arctic waters as soon as this summer. And today, the Obama administration said that was fine with them.

We’re not talking about two different oceans here or two different environmental analyses. Nope. We’re just talking about two different standards being applied. So what does this all mean for Arctic Alaska? Hopefully, the courts will do what the Obama administration did not and ensure that the same standard that the Obama administration applied to the future lease sales in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas will be applied to the completed lease sale in the Chukchi Sea. We’re in the midst of a few lawsuits right now that are taking up that fight.

We won’t rest until
that pristine picture is preserved. And the Inupiat Eskimos can keep their ice
and the centuries-old way of life that comes with it.

Emilie Karrick Surrusco is the communications director for Alaska Wilderness League.

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The Climate Post: Read this. Read now. Pay nothing.

Me, in the NYT, on Obama’s drilling plan

by Jonathan Hiskes

Courtesy Reagan Library via Wikimedia Commons“While liberals will never admit it, Ronald Reagan was one of our nation’s greatest climate champions,” argues the new site Conservativeclimate.org, a joint project of ConservAmerica and Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP). It’s clear that no freedom-hating liberal graphic designers were involved in the creation of the site.

David Jenkins, REP’s vice president for government and political affairs, kicks things off with the essay “What Would Reagan Do About Climate Change?”

Jenkins argues that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have made a mockery of the good Reagan’s name, failing to mention his “environmental accomplishments.”

“Reagan is not their compass, but rather a cloak they wrap themselves in for credibility,” he writes.

Jenkins takes pains to draw out those environmental accomplishments, noting that the first cap-and-trade program, to address acid rain, was discussed within the Reagan administration. Reagan also ushered through the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the treaty that phased out ozone-depleting chemicals. He even alluded to it in his 1987 State of the Union address: “We are also developing proposals that make use of market incentives to control air pollution caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions and the causes of acid rain.”

Jenkins goes so far as to tout Reagan’s negotiation of the Montreal Protocol as “the biggest single accomplishment to date in reducing the greenhouse emissions responsible for global warming.” The treaty wasn’t designed to combat climate change, but the CFCs it clamped down on are a greenhouse gas.

All of which leads to Jenkins’ conclusion: “So, how can anyone honestly believe that Ronald Reagan would not rise to the occasion and effectively tackle climate change as well?”

The overall site tries to remind conservatives of the land-, air-, and water-protecting heroes of the Republican Party past. In cases like National Parks champion Theodore Roosevelt, that’s perfectly legit.

But shoehorning Reagan into that role is a joke. He tried to dismantle the EPA, refused to enforce Clean Air and Clean Water Act protections, and did perhaps more than anyone to make anti-environmentalism a tenet of conservative orthodoxy.

The site might do better to focus on bright lights of the present—Republicans at the local and state levels who are governing as sensible environmental stewards. Are there any of those out there? Open question.

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by Jonathan Hiskes

Courtesy

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by David Roberts

During this strange lull in the (endless) development of the federal climate bill, I’ve been mulling over a few political notions.

First: voters don’t generally know much about politics or policy. They have things they do know a lot about (American Idol, baseball teams, accounting software, scrapbooking), but for most voters, politics and policy aren’t among them.  Voters use crude heuristics to assess legislative proposals. This runs somewhat counter to the idealized Enlightenment view, which goes something like this: Voters

gather facts,
draw conclusions from the facts,
form issue positions based on the conclusions, and
choose a political party that shares those issue positions.

The best evidence from political science shows that the process is almost exactly the reverse. Voters:

choose a tribe or party based on value affiliations,
adopt the issue positions of the tribe,
develop arguments that support those issue positions, and
choose facts to bolster those arguments.

(For more on this see “It Feels Like We’re Thinking” [PDF] by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels.)

Though party is the most common tribe and the best indicator of issues positions, there are other heuristics at work as well. One crude way to judge a proposal is by how much support it’s getting from the “other side.” To most voters out in the vast middle, consensus across parties is a very strong indicator of acceptability. Conversely, if there is no support on the other side—if the proposal is controversial—there is something suspect about it.

Notice, however, that heuristic creates a perverse incentive. It’s captured perfectly in this post by John Holbo, who asks you to imagine a two-party system wherein one party has poor discipline (members often stray to the other side on individual votes) and the other iron discipline (always voting as a bloc):

Over time, both parties will push positive proposals/legislation. Quite obviously, the Bipartisan Party will be at a tactical disadvantage, due to its lax discipline. Less obviously, it will have an ongoing optics problem. All the proposals of the Partisan Party will be bipartisan. That is, a few members of the other party will, predictably, peel off and cross the aisle to stand with the Partisans. None of the proposals of the Bipartisan Party, on the other hand, will ever be bipartisan. No Partisan will ever support a Bipartisan measure. In fact, all proposals of the Bipartisan party will face bipartisan opposition—as a few Bipartisans trudge across the aisle (there are always a few!) to stand with the Partisans. Result: the Partisan party, thanks to its unremitting opposition to bipartisanship, will be able to present itself as the party of bipartisanship, and be able to critique the Bipartisan Party, with considerable force and conviction, as the hypocritically hyperpartisan party of pure partisanship.

This is, of course, exactly the tenor of the criticism Democrats have gotten from Republicans and political pundits. Because Republicans refuse en masse to support Democratic proposals, those proposals have been characterized as controversial and extreme. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been uncommonly candid about the strategy:

“It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out,” Mr. McConnell said about the health legislation in an interview, suggesting that even minimal Republican support could sway the public. “It’s either bipartisan or it isn’t.”

Republicans have quite cannily figured out how to manipulate voters’ heuristics.  No matter what Democrats do or propose, Republicans meet it with maximal, united opposition, criticizing it as socialism, tyranny, or appeasement. They’ve accurately realized that all they have to do to render Democratic proposals controversial is refuse to support them.

As a consequence, no matter what Democrats do or propose, they’ll have to deal with the optics of their proposals appearing partisan.

We live in post-truth politics: a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation). This obviously dims any hope of reasoned legislative compromise. But in another way, it can be seen as liberating. If the political damage of maximal Republican opposition is a fixed quantity—if policy is orthogonal to politics—then there is little point to policy compromises. They do not appreciably change the politics.

For Democrats shaping policy, this suggests a two-fold strategy. First, they should pull attention to issues and proposals where the political ground is already favorable, from broad stuff like financial reform to narrow bills on jobs and energy. Second, on those issues that are inevitably going to be controversial, aim for maximally effective policy and deal with the politics separately. In post-truth politics, attempting to change perceptions by weakening policy is a category mistake. Remember, no matter what shape a Democratic proposal takes—a centrist health-care bill full of ideas Republicans supported just a year ago or a cap-and-trade system like the one first implemented under George H.W. Bush—Republican opposition will be maximal.

So: fight the opposition on political grounds and concurrently craft the best, most effective policy possible. The political controversy around a bill, whether it’s over partisanship, back-room deals, or procedural maneuvers, is ephemeral. It will pass quickly. In the end, the policy will be judged by its effects on voters’ lives—whether it solved the problem it was designed to solve.

What does all this mean for the climate/energy bill (and Obama’s offshore drilling announcement)? More on that soon.

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by Jonathan Hiskes

President Obama’s decision to expand offshore drilling leases seems to affirm the power that the “drill baby drill” battle cry holds in the American energy conversation. Turns out a short, simple, much-repeated slogan holds more currency than detailed policy arguments from clean-energy advocates.

I want to tease out a connection between “drill baby drill” and what you might call the forward-looking bright green vision. Sean Casten is fond of a Soviet bread-line metaphor: Hungry Bolsheviks standing in line for bread can probably imagine more of the same stale, dry white bread. When they demand more, they’ll probably call for more of the same stuff. Because when stale bread is all you’ve ever known, it’s nigh impossible to envision a boulangerie with pastries, bagels, sourdough rolls, all sorts of different and better baked goods. It’s a matter of imagination.

Maybe the same dynamic holds for clean energy. When all that most of us have ever known is auto-centric, gasoline-dependent living, the best change we can imagine is more, cheaper gas that enables more, cheaper driving. Hence the allure of “drill baby drill,” the slogan that caught on during the 2008 GOP presidential campaign, continues to appear in Sarah Palin speeches, and remains a battle cry of the clean-energy-averse right.

It’s more difficult to imagine a world with a dozen appealing flavors of transportation—smart cars built exclusively for zipping around cities, neighborhoods designed for walking, pervasive urban light rail, high-speed rail connecting cities, car-sharing programs for vacations and whatnot. When people sample these, they start asking for more than the stale, dry options of the past.

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by Jonathan Hiskes

The consensus, among People on the Internet anyway, is that Obama’s far-reaching offshore drilling expansion is a bid to win Republican support for clean-energy legislation. More offshore drilling is a major Republican energy priority, after all. So how are GOP leaders responding?

House leaders John Boehner and Mike Pence attack the plan as a job-killing disaster. What?

Said Boehner: “Opening up areas off the Virginia coast to offshore production is a positive step, but keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources off the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’.”

But Obama doesn’t have to be concerned about House Republicans, because they’ve already passed a clean-energy bill in the House.  The Senate is what matters. 

The lead Republican senator on energy negotiation, Lindsey Graham (S.C.), was more diplomatic. “This is a good first step,” he said. “But there is more that must be done to make this proposal meaningful and the game-changer we all want it to become.”

The question is whether Obama’s move is getting him any Republican votes for the Senate bill, which hasn’t even been introduced yet. Nothing’s come to light yet, and environmental groups aren’t happy about the apparent pre-emptive compromise.

Greenpeace chief Phil Radford wants to know, “Is this President Obama’s clean energy plan or Palin’s drill, baby, drill campaign?”

New Sierra Club chief Michael Brune says, “The oil industry already has access to drilling on millions of acres of America’s public lands and water. We don’t need to hand over our last protected pristine coastal areas just so oil companies can break more profit records.”

Pew Environment Group, on the other hand, applauds Obama’s “cautious” approach, which does not allow leases to begin until 2012.

And some Alaska conservation groups say they’re happy that the salmon-rich Bristol Bay gets protected as an “environmentally sensitive” area. Are the marine ecosystems of the Arctic, Gulf, and East coasts not environmentally sensitive?

Responses from the energy industry are fairly temperate (Financial Times has a collection). Says American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard, “We look forward to reviewing the details of the proposal, and we stand ready to work with [the administration] to make this a reality.”

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The Climate Post: Read this. Read now. Pay nothing.

Rachel Maddow takes on denial-funding Koch Industries

by Agence France-Presse

PARIS – Seventy-five countries accounting for more than 80 percent of greenhouse gases from energy use have filed pledges to cut or limit carbon emissions by 2020, the U.N. climate convention said Wednesday.

The promises, made under the Copenhagen Accord, are only a step toward wider action to tackle global warming, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said in its official report on December’s world climate summit.

A total of 111 countries plus the European Union “have indicated their support for the Accord,” the UNFCCC said.

Cobbled together in the summit’s crisis-ridden final hours, the Copenhagen Accord sets the goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), gathering rich and poor countries in action against carbon pollution that causes the problem.

It also promises $30 billion for climate-vulnerable poor countries in the three years up to 2012, and up to $100 billion annually by 2020.

Supporters point out that it is the first accord to include advanced and emerging economies in specified emissions curbs.

Critics retort that it has no deadline for reaching the warming target, no roadmap for reaching it, and its pledges are only voluntary.

The UNFCCC’s report on Wednesday confirms that major emitters, including China, India, and Brazil, have given the Accord their political blessing. After more than two months of foot-dragging, the emerging giants separately aligned themselves with the document in early March.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said the promises were significant but not the final answer. “It is clear that while the pledges on the table are an important step towards the objective of limiting growth of emissions, they will not in themselves suffice to limit warming to below 2 C,” he said. “The climate conference at the end of this year in Mexico therefore needs to put in place effective cooperative mechanisms capable of bringing about significant acceleration of national, regional, and international action both to limit the growth of emissions and to prepare for the inevitable impacts of climate change.”

The Copenhagen confab drew attendance from 120 heads of state or government, the highest for any climate meeting. It was initially touted as the culmination of a two-year negotiation process toward a global pact for tackling climate change beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol’s current provisions expire.

But delaying tactics and textual warfare, reflecting entrenched national interests and concern over the cost of switching out of carbon-intensive fuels, drove the summit to near-collapse. In the end, heads of around two dozen countries, led by the major emitters, huddled together to produce the Accord.

The next official talks under the 194-nation UNFCCC will take place in Bonn, western Germany, from April 9-11. Negotiators will be tasked with breathing life into the Copenhagen deal and seeing how it integrates with the labyrinthine two-track UNFCCC process.

“The meeting … is going to be very important to rebuild confidence in the process, to rebuild confidence that the way forward will be open and transparent on the one hand and efficient on the other,” de Boer told reporters in a teleconference.

To achieve the 2 C goal by 2100, rich countries would have to cut their emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels, while developing countries would have to brake their emissions by 15 to 30 percent below forecast trends.

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by Umbra Fisk

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by Jonathan Hiskes

Updated

President Obama will open large swaths of the Atlantic,
Gulf, and Alaskan coasts to offshore oil and natural gas drilling in a stunning
concession to fossil-fuel companies, the New York
Times, Los
Angeles Times, Wall
Street Journal, and others are reporting.

On Wednesday morning Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced an end to a longstanding
moratorium on oil drilling along the East Coast from Delaware to the central coast of Florida.

The Arctic Ocean north of Alaska will be opened
too, while the Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected—the sole
new protection. New areas of the southeast Gulf Coast would also be opened,
despite bipartisan opposition from political leaders in Florida and Alabama. The
Times has a map of all of this, and you need to see it to comprehend the size of the affected
area.

“This is not a decision that I’ve made lightly,” Obama said (full speech here). “…But the bottom line is this: given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we’re going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.

This is … stunning. Baffling. With the new policy
Obama appears to be taking a major step toward siding with carbon-polluting
industries in the battle to defend the energy status quo.

I’m holding out hope that things appear worse than
they are. Because the key isn’t how much offshore drilling is allowed. The crucial issue is whether
oil and gas companies decide it’s worth their money to go out, find, and
retreive the stuff. And things could be brighter on that front, because, as Joe
Romm explains, the payoff in these reserves may not be worth the trouble.
(Nobody knows precisely how much oil and gas are in these places.) GOP
politicians like John McCain and
Sarah Palin have used offshore drilling as a rallying cry, but energy
companies need to keep clear heads, crunch the numbers, and decide if a given project pays.

A few more notes…

On gas
prices and your money:

Not much will change for a long time—estimates figure that new oil won’t be available for 10 to 12 years, with
peak production coming several years beyond that.

On foreign
oil, energy independence, and bankrolling violent extremism:

Not much will change for a long time—again, the
new oil won’t be available for years.

On the West Coast:

Dunno what’s going on here. No mention of it. [Update: The Pacific coast gets no mention because the drilling ban there remains in place.]

On the
politics:

This is supposed to win support for a
climate/clean-energy bill from wavering Senate Republicans. Obama compromises,
they compromise—that’s the hope. But Republican lawmakers have shown very
little interest in compromising on legislation in the Obama era.

So the big question is whether Democrats have
gotten GOP senators to commit to
supporting a bill. Did this win a few crucial votes, or is it a giveway for
nothing? No one seems to know yet. No public vote commitments, at least.

The early
reaction:

On the DailyKos comment
thread, it’s mostly frustration with the apparent giveaway. “There’s no
real level on which this is anything but pandering,” writes one commenter. “We
need more oil like we need a hole in the head. In the ten years it takes
to get it to market we could have renewables. Enough subsidies for big oil.”

The
reporting:

The substances at issue here—oil and natural
gas—will eventually be burned, releasing heat-trapping pollutants that cause
global warming. If that continues unchecked, it could be the most destructive
and unjust phenomena of the coming century. There’s no mention of any of this
in the stories from major news outlets. Just sayin’.

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by Jonathan Hiskes

Greenpeace has a new report out highlighting the climate impact of cloud computing and devices like the Apple iPad that rely on it to stream video, download music, load Greenpeace.org, etc. The “Make IT Green” report calls on Apple and other tech leaders to tackle the problem, noting that carbon pollution from cloud computing is set to triple in the next decade.

Greenpeace wants you to know it’s not “picking on Apple” or “dissing the iPad” by riding their attention wave (the iPad goes on sale this Saturday). In fact, last month it set its sights on Facebook, which plans to open an Oregon data center powered mostly by coal plants.

But the new campaign distorts the big picture, as Worldchanging’s Alex Steffen notes: “Sounds scary, right? Except when you actually look up the numbers. Computing accounts for a bit less than 3% of U.S. energy usage, according to Lawrence Livermore Labs. The global IT industry as a whole generates about 2% of global CO2 emissions.”

Steffen suggests a better if less trendy focus: “Cars, on the other hand, which the vast majority of the people Greenpeace is trying to target also own, are the single largest contributor to climate change, according to NASA, exceeding all other sources in their impacts, and exceeding computing’s global impacts by more than a factor of ten.”

There’s a man-bites-dog appeal to exposing the “dirty” impact of high-tech computing, like the media coverage last year claiming that a Google search requires much energy as boiling a tea kettle. Such stories usually overlook telecommuting, online shopping, and the bazillion other ways the web allows users to bypass fuel-burning activities. These technologies bring far more promise than peril for engineering sustainable societies. Except for robot journalists—those are nothing but peril.

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Senate climate bill to fund Utah tar sands development

What to make of the Pollan/Schlosser agreement with Wendy’s?

Scrounging for a green angle to the Large Hadron Collider experiment

by Daniel J. Weiss

This piece was co-written by Kate Gordon, vice president for energy policy at American Progress.

A critical element of President Obama’s domestic agenda is
transforming the United States to a low-carbon-pollution economy, which
would spur recovery, create jobs, and generate long-term prosperity.
The president also made clear in his State of the Union address this year that we need to ramp up our exports, especially of clean
energy technologies, if we are going to stay competitive in the global
economy. Comprehensive, bipartisan clean energy legislation that
establishes a price on carbon pollution could provide the resources for
a strong clean energy investment agenda. Yet an “energy-only” bill that
excludes pollution limits and leaves carbon unpriced would make it
difficult to raise the investment dollars we need to boost American
competitiveness in the global clean energy market.

Achieving the president’s goals requires comprehensive clean energy
and global warming pollution reduction legislation. Nearly every other
country that has pulled ahead in the race to innovate, develop,
manufacture, deploy, and export clean energy and efficiency systems has
done so through a set of comprehensive policy and investment measures.
For example, Germany has invested heavily in the creation of a domestic clean energy industry, in part due to the European Union’s overall “20-20-20” goal:
20 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels, 20
percent use of renewable power, and 20 percent reduction in energy use.
Germany has responded by spurring market demand; helping to finance
clean energy innovation, production, and deployment; and investing in
the infrastructure necessary to move renewable electricity to market.
As a result, it is the “global
leader in installed solar energy capacity … Germany was the number
one renewable energy system exporter in the world from 2003 to 2008.”

China, meanwhile, races ahead of the United States. A Pew Charitable Trusts analysis found that China leads the world’s major economies in clean energy
investments. According to their research, in 2009 “China invested $34.6
billion in the clean energy economy—nearly double the United States’
total of $18.6 billion.” China is now the world leader in solar PV cell production—a technology that was invented in the United States. It is time for us to catch up.

An effective clean energy investment strategy has two necessary and
interrelated parts. This first is a shrinking limit and a rising price
on carbon pollution to drive the private sector to invest in and deploy
low-carbon technologies. The second is a set of targeted investments in
clean energy technology sectors. These investments would help the
United States overcome short-term barriers such as lack of up-front
financing that have stalled the wind, solar, geothermal, and energy
efficiency sectors from getting to commercial scale. They would also
move forward the energy innovations of the future through research,
development, and commercialization.

A global warming program that establishes a shrinking limit on
carbon pollution and leads to a rising price on carbon would help drive
massive private investment toward these clean energy technologies. Venture capitalist John Doerr and General Electric President Jeff Immelt noted that the United States must “send a long term signal that
low-carbon energy is valuable. We must put a price on carbon and a cap
on carbon emissions. No long-term signal means no serious innovation at
scale, which means fewer American success stories.”

Forty-five members of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition recently urged Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) to
ensure that “comprehensive energy legislation includes reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions necessary to spur private investment in
American clean energy technologies.” They also noted that “billions of
dollars of private capital sit on the sidelines in the United States as
investors and banks wait for the price signal that a limit on
greenhouse gas emission [sic] will provide.”

And the head of New England’s power grid sounded a sobering note last week when he argued that renewable energy projects in the region
are popular but on hold, mostly due to market uncertainty. “The single
greatest issue facing the operation, expansion, and regulation of the
power system is the uncertainty about national energy policy,” he said.

In short, these leaders are all saying that there is little
short-term economic incentive to abandon the status quo absent a
pollution price-even if that course leads to a long-run economic
disaster.

Setting a price on carbon is not only critical for America’s
long-term competitiveness; it is necessary to pay for the energy
programs that will help companies, consumers, and workers make a smooth
and swift transition to a low-carbon economy. The House and Senate have
already proposed some very effective policies and programs to help with
this transition, all of which carry significant costs.

House and Senate low-carbon economy proposals

Program

Bill #

Estimated cost

Clean Energy Deployment Administration
S. 1462
$10 billion

HOME STAR Program
S. 3177
$6 billion

Building STAR Program
S. 3079
$6 billion

Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology Act
S. 1617
$30 billion

State and local energy efficiency programs (2012-20)
H.R. 2454
$65 billion

Cash for Coal Clunkers
n/a
n/a

NAT GAS Act
S. 1408
unspecified

Siting of Interstate Transmission Lines
S. 1462
unspecified

Total
 
$114 billion

Taken together, these programs could cost at least $114 billion.
This excludes the costs for the NAT GAS Act and the siting of new
interstate transmission lines, which could add billions more to this
price tag. Yet these investments are essential to provide the start up
capital for some new technologies and speed commercial deployment of
others.

Most global warming bills would use a small amount of revenue from
the sale of global warming pollution permits to fund these and similar
clean energy investment programs. The House of Representatives took
major strides to spur investment in June 2009 by passing the American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454.
This bill establishes a price on carbon pollution—a critical market
driver that makes low-carbon technologies cost competitive with
traditional fossil fuels. ACES combines this pollution price with a $24 billion investment  in
specific incentives for research, development, and production of these
technologies. These programs would create demand for low-carbon
technologies with essential investment dollars that would enable the
alternative and efficient energy industries to scale up and make their
products as affordable and available as possible.

The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, S. 1733,
which passed the Senate Environment Committee on Nov. 5, 2009,
would also invest at least $6.5 billion in clean energy programs.

Both these bills generate enough revenue to provide seed capital for
clean energy investments, protect ratepayers from price increases, and
even reduce the federal budget deficit. The Congressional Budget Office
projects that ACES would reduce the deficit by $24 billion from 2010-19, while S. 1733 would reduce it by $21 billion from 2010-19.

The Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal Act, S. 2877,
which is pending in the Senate but with no action scheduled, would also
invest in clean energy technologies. It would return to taxpayers three
quarters of the revenue generated by its “cap-and-dividend” program,
while using the other quarter for a Clean Energy Reinvestment Trust Fund for investments including “clean energy R&D … and need-based, regionally-specific assistance for communities and workers transitioning to a clean energy economy.”

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman
(I-Conn.) are drafting a comprehensive bipartisan energy bill, expected by
mid-April. According to Sen. Graham,
this legislation could invest as much as 40 percent of the funds
generated from its limits on carbon pollution from utilities and
industrial sources back into clean energy.

Yet some senators are opposed to such legislation despite the pressing need to move forward with a clean energy
investment agenda. These senators instead advocate passage of an
energy-only bill that would not adequately spur investment in clean
energy technologies-even though there is little hope of catching up to
our global competitors in the clean energy race without a strong
investment strategy.

The fundamental flaw in an energy-only bill is that it would not
include a price signal to favor investments in low-carbon energy or any
revenue-raising elements to provide seed capital to invest in the
transition to a clean energy economy.

For instance, the American Clean Energy Leadership Act, S. 1462,
which passed the Senate Energy Committee on July 16, 2009, would not
limit or put a price on carbon pollution. Potential investors in clean
energy technology would continue to lack certainty about the future
market for clean energy, and investments in underpriced dirty fossil
fuels would remain relatively attractive.

ACELA does include several important clean energy investment
programs, including the Clean Energy Deployment Administration, or
“Green Bank,” and assistance for manufacturing to become more energy
efficient and competitive. It would also provide financial assistance
to the nuclear energy industry and has a renewable electricity standard
that could increase investments in wind and solar if it were enhanced.
Yet CBO estimates that ACELA “would increase budget deficits by about $13.5 billion over the
2010-2019 period.” Put simply, the clean energy programs included in
this bill are not paid for.

Any energy bill that does not include revenue raisers to pay for
investment programs will only add to the budget deficit. One potential
revenue raiser is the elimination of tax breaks for big oil companies,
which could generate $36.5 billion over 10 years. Comprehensive energy
bills also create revenue from their limits on carbon pollution. Yet
energy-only bills do not include such a provision or establish a price
on carbon pollution, and would therefore have to increase the deficit
to pay for its investments.

Basing investment programs on the assumption that Congress will
continue to borrow to pay for them is a high-risk proposition that
could create uncertainty about these programs. And companies may shy
away from such investment programs if funding is uncertain or unstable.

The United States must promptly take steps to boost its investments
in clean energy technologies to keep up with our economic competitors.
A price on carbon pollution is an essential ingredient in this strategy
to level the economic playing field between dirty, old fossil fuel
energy and new, cleaner efficiency and renewables. A carbon pollution
price is also essential to provide the funds for an investment agenda.
An energy-only bill lacks these two elements.

Sen. Graham worries that: “Every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy.” He warned that an energy-only bill is a “‘kick the can down the road’ approach
… It’s putting off to another Congress what really needs to be done
comprehensively. I don’t think you’ll ever have energy independence …
until you start dealing with carbon pollution and pricing carbon.”

An energy-only bill might address some important energy needs, but
is unlikely to provide the investments essential to transforming of our
economy or help us catch up in the clean energy technology race for the
future.

Provisions necessary in a comprehensive clean energy bill

We believe that a truly bipartisan, comprehensive clean energy bill
should include these important energy provisions, along with a
mechanism to raise the revenue to pay for them.

Clean Energy Deployment Administration: $10 billion

The creation of a federal Clean Energy Deployment Administration would provide the initial public investment to help drive the market
commercialization of clean energy technologies. CEDA would provide loan
guarantees, so the federal government would only need to fund the cost
of any potential default, rather than funding the entire cost of a
direct loan or grant.  This subsidy would
leverage private investments, and a $10 billion appropriation—the
amount included in the Senate bill—would actually produce about $100
billion in investments.

The House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454,
includes CEDA. The Senate Energy Committee passed American Clean Energy
Leadership Act, S. 1462, includes a slightly different version of it.

HOME STAR program: $6 billion over 1-2 years

The HOME STAR program would create incentives for American homeowners to quickly cut their
monthly energy bills by 20 percent or more by improving the energy
efficiency of their homes. It would establish a $6 billion rebate
program over the next one to two years to encourage immediate
investment in cost-effective energy efficient products and services as
well as whole-home energy efficiency retrofits. The program would be
facilitated and coordinated through existing state programs using
federal standards and incentives as a common platform to keep program
costs as low as possible. It could create thousands of construction
jobs.

The House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment passed a bipartisan HOME STAR bill on March 24. Sens. Jeff Bingaman
(D-N.M.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a
similar proposal, S. 3177.

Building STAR Program: $6 billion over one to two years

Building STAR would provide rebates and tax incentives to quickly
put hundreds of thousands of people to work conducting energy efficient
retrofits of commercial and multi-family residential buildings. It
would rebate approximately 30 percent of the cost of installing energy
efficient products and/or providing energy efficiency. The program
would leverage $2 to $3 dollars of private investment for every $1 of
federal investment. Every $1 billion investment would create 25,000
jobs-many in the hard hit construction industry. And it could reduce
industry energy costs by $3.3 billion annually. Sen. Jeff Merkley
(D-Ore.) introduced the Building Star Energy Efficiency Act, S. 3079 on March 4, 2010.

Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology Act: $30 billion

The Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology Act,
S. 1617, would authorize $30 billion for state-revolving loan programs
to assist small- and medium-sized firms in retooling, expanding, or
establishing domestic clean energy manufacturing operations, and to
improve energy efficiency in industrial operations. IMPACT also
provides funding to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program to
provide technical assistance to these firms in entering the clean
energy supply chain.

The House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454,
includes a version of IMPACT; IMPACT is also included as a pilot
program in S. 1462, but there is no funding authorization level for the program in that bill.

State and local energy efficiency programs: $65 billion over 8 to 10 years

ACES would provide significant resources to state and local energy efficiency programs by providing them with “pollution permits,” or allowances, that they
could sell on the carbon market. A CAP analysis projects that this
would generate a total of $65 billion between 2012-2020. These revenues
could fund investments such as insulating and weather stripping homes,
constructing “green” rooftops, replacing leaky windows, installing
efficient heating and cooling systems, and replacing inefficient
appliances with those that have high Energy Star ratings. This would
save consumers $63 billion on their electric bills and create up to
137,000 jobs in 2015.

Cash for Coal Clunkers: No authorization level

This program would create incentives to retire or reduce utilization
of dirty, aging coal plants, and increase the use of cleaner power from
natural gas or other cleaner sources. Such a program has not yet been
introduced.

NAT GAS ACT: No authorization level

The New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions, S. 1408,
and H.R. 1835, would create tax incentives to power heavy trucks and
fleet vehicles with natural gas instead of diesel or gasoline. This
bill would save the United States millions of barrels of oil over time.

Siting of interstate electric transmission facilities: No authorization level

The United States must enhance its transmission system to increase
its efficiency and reliability. And the expansion of the grid is
essential to transmit electricity from wind and solar power generated
in the more rural or remote places to urban areas where electricity
demand is highest. S. 1462 would strengthen “the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s role in
siting interstate electric transmission facilities.” This includes the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s coordination of regional
planning and back stop authority for federal action if states fail to
plan and construct essential transmission lines, and it would “ensure
just and reasonable allocation of the cost of high-priority national
transmission projects.”

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by Jonathan Hiskes

Portland, where else?Courtesy

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by Jonathan Hiskes

This week in TV-news bashing, we learn that significant numbers of TV weathercasters are serving as climate-change experts, without training in climatology but with lots of confidence in their ability to opine on the subject. Here’s what it means for your weekend. Here’s why this forms a perfect storm of poor understanding:

Meteorologists tend to be skeptics. Of 571 TV weathercasters surveyed in a George Mason University study, only 31 percent understand that climate change is happening and is mostly human-caused. Twenty-seven percent consider it a “scam,” though virtually all well-respected scientific institutions affirm the reality of the phenomenon.
This isn’t their specialty. Meteorology (studying near-term weather) and climatology (studying long-term patterns) are completely different fields, remember.
They consider themselves qualified. Large majorities of surveyed weathercasters said they are fairly or very well informed about the causes of global warming (93 percent), the consequences of it (89 percent), and the ways to reduce it (86 percent).
They don’t all trust climatologists. Only 44 percent said they trust the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s foremost body for weighing and assessing climate science. The New York Times suggests a populist tension shapes this—climate researchers have doctorates and work at universities; TV meteorologists can get hired with a bachelor’s degree.
But Americans trust their weather person. A study earlier this year found that 56 percent of Americans trusted weathercasters to tell them about global warming, says the Times. That’s far more trust than, say, Al Gore or Sarah Palin enjoy on the issue.
Nobody else does it. Ninety-four percent of the surveyed meteorologists said their stations had nobody reporting full-time on environment or science.

So it’s a problem. Heidi Cullen, a former Weather Channel climatologist now with Climate Central, tells the Times why the two professions aren’t really in conflict. “They are not trying to predict the weather for 2050, just generally say that it will be hotter,” she said. “And just like I can predict August will be warmer than January, I can predict that.”

And Joe Romm reliably flips his lid on media outlets that treat meteorologists as climate experts: “Memo to rest of media:  Asking a meteorologist to opine on the climate is like asking your family doctor what the chances are for an avian flu pandemic in the next few years or asking a mid-West sheriff the prospects for nuclear terrorism.”

Charles Homans wrote a lucid piece in the Columbia Journalism Review earlier this year on why and how weathercasters became skeptical of climate science. The George Mason study mostly confirms what he uncovered. If you’re interested in how climate information arrives in modern American homes, Homans’ story is worth reading.

If you’re interested in constructive responses, the National Environmental Education Foundation has an Earth Gauge program that provides tip sheets for meteorologists on how to show the connections between weather and climate (and other environmental issues).

Here’s some lovely Lou Dobbs footage with meteorologist-skeptic Chad Myers:

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