Shooting The Messenger

Boy, do I identify with this cartoon. For more cartoons on Gore, click on post title above.

Gore: Don't single out cars and trucks to solve global warming

Agree with Al Gore in general or not, his advise regarding the automotive industry makes a lot a sense.


Gore: Don't single out cars and trucks to solve global warming

Harry Stoffer | Automotive News / March 21, 2007 - 11:41 am

WASHINGTON -- Automakers have an ally of sorts -- in Al Gore.

In a highly anticipated appearance before Congress today, the former vice president said he supports higher fuel economy standards. But automakers alone should not be expected to solve global warming, he contended.

"Don't single out cars and trucks," Gore said in a lengthy statement before a pair of House subcommittees. He described emissions from motor vehicles as "only a slice of the problem" and not the biggest slice.

Still, the future Gore envisions would be vastly different. He called for an immediate freeze on greenhouse-gas emissions and a 90 percent cut in those emissions by 2050. He did not say exactly how those moves could be accomplished.

The ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, said a freeze, if taken literally, would mean no new businesses, no economic growth and no more people.

Gore also called for:

• Taxes on the carbon in fuels, offset by cuts in payroll taxes.

• U.S. participation in a new international treaty on climate change, which would follow the Kyoto treaty rejected by Congress and the Bush administration.

• Programs that would encourage consumers to generate their own electricity through means that don't release greenhouse gases into the air.

Gore said such steps are needed to deal with "a crisis that is by far the most serious we have ever faced." He has achieved international recognition for his Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

Auto industry leaders who testified last week before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee said they could support a cap on total U.S. emissions. But they said the burden for compliance should be spread across all businesses.

Automakers say that regulators should determine the highest feasible fuel economy standards and that lawmakers should not arbitrarily set tougher standards.

It's About Time, But Don't Be Too Subtle

I am glad that someone is taking the lead here, although more directness and coordination (e.g., through AAMA) stands a better chance of driving change (maybe). To read the rest of the article, click on post title.

Industry chiefs: Higher CAFE is not the only answer

Harry Stoffer | Automotive News / March 14, 2007 - 12:44 pm / UPDATED: 3/14/07 2 P.M.

WASHINGTON -- Government should take steps to boost consumer demand for fuel-efficient vehicles, top auto industry executives told lawmakers today.

Simply raising fuel economy standards is not the answer to the threat of global warming or the nation's energy supply concerns, the executives argued.

In Europe, automakers achieve fuel economy levels that some members of Congress want to require in the United States. But much higher gasoline prices in Europe create consumer demand, Chrysler group CEO Tom LaSorda said in prepared testimony before a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

LaSorda did not call directly for higher U.S. gasoline taxes but said "a new and unique formula" for the United States should include "harnessing of market forces." Other company executives noted that Chrysler has endorsed higher gasoline taxes in the past.

The House panel sought testimony on the industry's role in combating global warming and improving energy security. Called to testify today at the unusual hearing were the CEOs of the Detroit 3; the president of Toyota Motor North America Inc., Jim Press; and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.

'New approach'

U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the full committee, signaled before the hearing that he is receptive to ideas beyond corporate average fuel economy standards. In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, March 13, Dingell said: "We need a new approach." He did not elaborate.

....

Yet Another Sane Voice on Fuel Taxes

An article in today's Detroit News makes the argument for higher fuel taxes, among other useful points. To read the entire article, click on post title.


....

"Fuel taxes move auto market

"The overriding consideration is that it is fuel taxation policies -- not automakers -- that drive consumers to buy differing vehicle types. If gasoline was priced two or three times higher in the United States and if high quality diesel fuel was available here at a lower cost than gasoline, then you can bet Americans would be interested in much more fuel efficient vehicles.

"In the meantime, with our lifestyle and relatively cheap fuel, there is a good reason that full-size pick-up trucks like the Ford-F-150 and the Chevrolet Silverado have been America's best selling vehicles for decades...."

Oil Pumping Innovations: The Whole Story?

There was and interesting article in the New York Times (click on post title to access article) about technologies/techniques which increase the yield from existing oil wells/fields. The article does admit that the costs of recovery using these technologies/techniques cost more than usual pumping, but are still profitable given today's oil market. The article argues that this makes the discussion of "the end of oil" questionable at best.

I am more interested in what the article doesn't say. Not only do these recovery techniques typically cost more, they also often require significant amounts of energy. Thus, the net energy extraction is significantly less than more "normal" techniques.

This means that the net effect on the total amount of energy available is less than one might think, although maybe more oil becomes available if alternative forms of power are used to drive these approaches. However, in most cases, we would probably find that significant amounts of CO2 are generated to increase the extraction of this additional oil, in addition to the CO2 that is generated when the oil is utilized. Thus, the effects on global warming of these "high-tech" extraction techniques is almost certainly adverse.

Ignatius: The Climate Change Precipice

I strongly recommend David Ignatius' column in today's Washington Post entitled "The Climate Change Precipice". Click on post title to read column.

In that article, Ignatius refers to a report by Peter Schwartz of the Global Business Network on this subject: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/documents/gbn_impacts_of_climate_change.pdf

I have just scanned the report, but at first glance it looks excellent. I have been a fan of Peter Schwartz and his approach (systems- and scenario-based) for many years now.

Jerry Brown: Automotive Champion?!

Let's assume that Jerry Brown wants to be constructive. He admits that he has no idea how to change consumer behavior. Let the automakers wave their magic technological wand. I will still argue that suitable purchase and use taxation will be the most effective aid to changing automotive consumer behavior, giving a realistic chance of California's concerns with Global Warming to be addressed in the real world. (click on post title for rest of column.)

EYES ON THE ROAD By JOSEPH B. WHITE California, Auto Makers Battle Over Vehicle Emissions Flurry of Litigation Over Efforts to Reduce The Environmental Impact of Cars, Trucks February 24, 2007, Wall Street Journal When it comes to automobiles, California isn't just another state. It's something close to a sovereign nation -- a nation currently at war with a fair chunk of the auto industry. California's recent efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant, and to mandate reductions of CO2 emissions, including gases coming out of vehicle tailpipes, has provoked a flurry of litigation with big auto makers. The car companies contend California's efforts to clamp down on CO2 amount to an effort to regulate fuel economy, and states have no right to supersede federal fuel efficiency laws. The state has countered that car makers, by persisting in selling gas guzzlers to Californians, are creating a public nuisance by contributing to the ill effects caused by global warming -- including rising sea levels that could threaten California's 1,075 miles of coastline and dwindling mountain snows that could undermine the state's water supply. (Read the complaint1) Into this fight comes now California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown -- yes, that Jerry Brown, the former California governor who ran for president three times and more recently was Mayor of Oakland. Mr. Brown inherited the litigation with the auto industry when he took his current office in January. Some have called on Mr. Brown to quit the state's legal fight with the auto industry. But Mr. Brown has chosen a different tack. He has called on the chief executives of the six biggest auto makers in the U.S. market to meet with him to find "cooperative approaches" to the global warming issue. (Read his letter2) So far, the auto makers have declined, through their attorney, to schedule a CEO summit. Instead they have offered to send "legal representatives" to brief Mr. Brown on the industry's "multi-faceted efforts to improve fuel efficiency." So what does Jerry Brown really want? In a telephone interview, the attorney general says his real goal is to help the car companies. "This is not a problem that is going to be swept under the rug," he says. "It is getting intense scrutiny. Even a year ago, people would not expect we would be as far into this issue as we are." .... Mr. Brown also remembers that when he was governor, the auto makers fought seat belts. And he says electric cars, once mandated under California law, "died because the car companies wanted (them) to die." Industry executives counter that electric cars died because they were exorbitantly expensive, and the vast majority of consumers had no interest in buying them, preferring instead the larger, heavier vehicles Mr. Brown is denouncing. But Mr. Brown's point is that the auto industry has a long history of insisting that it cannot profitably build cleaner, safer cars -- only to be shown up when such advances turn out to be both possible and profitable. .... To a significant degree, the dispute between California and the car makers is a culture clash. California has a long history of using its special status as the nation's biggest car market to press for risk-taking on advanced technology. This is what you'd expect from a state whose economy is based to a great degree on nimble, high-tech entrepreneurship. Auto makers, by contrast, are stuck with a business that involves sinking enormous chunks of capital into machinery and factories staffed by thousands of workers whose labors will yield a return only after several years. Those returns will come only if the car makers haven't misjudged, while planning their vehicles three to five years earlier, consumer tastes or the price of oil. The risks inherent in auto making breed a certain conservatism -- all the more so given the inconsistent track record of various on-board gadgetry. The other problem is that car makers don't create CO2 emissions by driving cars. People do. Mr. Brown, who says his last car was a Mercury Sable purchased in 1991, concedes that changing Californians' motoring habits won't be easy, he says. ....

Well Worth Considering

Zakaria emphasizes a very good, and often forgotten, point. If we are to develop a robust global warming strategy, we have to cover both mitigation and adaptation. For rest of article, click on post title above.


Zakaria: Unfortunately, We Can’t Stop Global Warming

Even if we adopted the most far-reaching plans to combat climate change, we would still watch greenhouse gases rise for decades.

By Fareed Zakaria

Newsweek

Feb. 19, 2007 issue - The most inconvenient truth about global warming is that we cannot stop it. Please don't mistake me for a skeptic. I'm fully persuaded by the evidence that climate change is real and serious. Of the 12 hottest years on record, 11 have occurred since 1995. Temperatures have risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past century. (If that seems small, keep in mind that the difference in temperature between the ice age and now is about 5 degrees C.) And human activity appears to be one important cause. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has risen dramatically since the industrial revolution. Methane has doubled and carbon-dioxide levels are up 30 percent since 1750. The projections going forward are highly plausible scientific estimations. The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that by 2100, temperatures will have risen by somewhere between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees, and as a result, sea levels will rise by 18 to 59 centimeters. The trouble is, if you accept all these facts and theories about global warming, it is difficult to see how any human response launched today can avert it....

... in addition to our efforts to prevent and mitigate climate change, we need to employ another strategy—adaptation.

No one likes to talk about adapting to global warming because it seems defeatist. But the result is that, as we debate the meta-theories about global warming, we're increasingly unprepared to deal with its consequences. Whether or not CO2 emissions are triggering certain reactions in the atmosphere, we can see that sea levels are rising. What are we going to do about it?

In an intelligent, practical speech last September, the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Frances Cairncross, urged that we begin such a discussion. "We need to think about policies that prepare for a hotter, drier world, especially in poor countries," she said. "That may involve, for instance, developing new crops, constructing flood defenses, setting different building regulations or banning building close to sea level." She points out that adaptation programs could move forward fast. Unlike plans to slow down global warming, which require massive and simultaneous international efforts, adaptation strategies can be pursued by individual countries, states, cities and localities.

Three years ago the Pew Foundation sponsored an excellent study, "Coping With Global Climate Change," which focused on the role of adaptation. The report found that moving in this direction would be costly and fraught with uncertainty and error. Yet, the authors point out, humankind's long history has shown it's possible; we have adapted as the environment around us has changed. The costs of relocating seaside communities are extremely high, but they will be even higher if we wait 20 years. The most important conclusion of the Pew study was that early planning is far more effective than managing the consequences of a breakdown. In other words, strengthening the levees in New Orleans costs much, much less than rebuilding the city.

Many environmental advocates fear that talking about coping with global warming will hamper efforts to slow it down. In fact, we have no alternative but to do both. Mitigation and adaptation complement each other. In both cases, the crucial need is to stop talking and start acting.

Putting the Heat on Global Warming

Yet another voice of reason. To read complete article, click on post title.

John McCormick

Putting the heat on global warming

Detroit News, February 12, 2007

....

All these considerations aside, the rational minds running Motown's automakers are left facing a dilemma. On the one hand they know that the modern automobile is actually responsible for a relatively small part of the emissions 'load' that mankind's activities impose on the earth. At the same time they recognize that cars - versus coal-fired power plants, heavy industry or even the hundreds of jets streaking across our skies daily - are far more visible to the general public. Unjust though it is, the automobile's exhaust pipe has become the poster child for air pollution and, by extension, global warming.

As a consequence, environmentalists repeatedly attack the auto industry as if it is single handedly to blame for the planet's climatic problems, real or imagined. The so-called 'greens' argue that the carmakers must sell vehicles that they think people should buy, rather than the vehicles people want to buy, thus ignoring the most basic tenet of a market driven economy.

These same activists point to General Motors' withdrawal of the plug-in electric car, the EV1, during the 1990s, as proof that the auto industry is not serious about producing environmentally sensitive vehicles. The absurdity of this argument is self-evident. Does anyone truly believe that GM chose to waste billions of dollars on a vehicle that would not succeed? The fact that only a few people bought the EV1 (or any other electric vehicle of the time) was because they were impractical. Consumers in a free market economy buy what they wish to buy; be it a Hummer, Toyota Prius or anything in between.

What influences the vehicle buyer's decision is a subtle combination of desire, practical considerations and dollars and cents. And it is this last factor that should be given the biggest weight as we debate the relationship between the automobile and the world's environment. It is not the job of the automobile industry to tell buyers what to purchase, any more than it is the job of house builders to promote smaller homes. This role is best played by the government, not by direct edict, but by exerting financial pressure on a vehicle purchaser's decision.

The most obvious example of this process in action is Europe's vehicular tax strategy. For example, European governments tax fuel in a manner that encourages diesel, which is much more energy efficient and therefore lower in CO2 emissions than gasoline. They also tax higher displacement engines, leading consumers and therefore automakers to concentrate on smaller, more efficient vehicles. This policy does not prevent consumers from buying larger cars and trucks, it simply makes the choice more expensive.

If a US administration, now or in the future, is ever to make a serious effort to curb this country's appetite for the world's energy resources and corresponding imbalance in overall emissions, then attacking the auto industry with legislation is not the answer. Nor is the misguided focus on grossly inefficient corn-based E85 production. It's wiser to concentrate on producing cellulosic-based ethanol, or much better still, to give major financial assistance to the development of advanced batteries for a new generation of electric cars.

But in the short term, the answer, as tough and unpalatable as it may be in some quarters, is to use taxes, not half baked rhetoric, to persuade consumers to modify their vehicle choices.

John McCormick is a columnist for Autos Insider and can be reached at john.mccormick@detnews.com

Energy Progressivism

Well worth a read. To read complete article, click on post title. The link to the McKinsey Global Institute report is:

http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/Global_Energy_Demand/index.asp

December 12, 2006, New York Times

The Energy Challenge

The Cost of an Overheated Planet

By STEVE LOHR

The iconic culprit in global warming is the coal-fired power plant. It burns the dirtiest, most carbon-laden of fuels, and its smokestacks belch millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.

So it is something of a surprise that James E. Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, a coal-burning utility in the Midwest and the Southeast, has emerged as an unexpected advocate of federal regulation that would for the first time impose a cost for emitting carbon dioxide. But he has his reasons.

“Climate change is real, and we clearly believe we are on a route to mandatory controls on carbon dioxide,” Mr. Rogers said. “And we need to start now because the longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive this is going to be.”

Global warming is not only an environmental hazard, but also a great challenge for economic policy. Without economic incentives, analysts say, the needed investments in industrial cleanup, innovative low-carbon technologies, fuel-efficient cars and other ways of reducing energy waste will not occur.

Mr. Rogers’s stance is far from universal within the power industry, but it has surprising support, particularly from those, like him, who also produce electricity from carbon-free nuclear reactors.

And despite the Bush administration’s adamant opposition to any limits on fossil fuel emissions, the idea is beginning to pick up momentum in the American political arena as well. Already, California has adopted a policy aimed at reducing the state’s contribution to global warming by 25 percent in the next 14 years.

In Washington, several influential lawmakers, including Senator John McCain, a leading Republican contender for president in 2008, have introduced legislation intended to limit the nation’s carbon dioxide output.

But how would those goals be achieved? Global warming can be seen as a classic “market failure,” and many economists, environmental experts and policy makers agree that the single largest cause of that failure is that in most of the world, there is no price placed on spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Yet it is increasingly clear that there is a considerable cost to carbon dioxide emissions, especially to future generations, as climate specialists warn of declines in farm output in poor tropical countries, fiercer hurricanes and coastal floods that could make many people refugees....

The Supreme Court and Global Warming

The following article raises some interesting points of the hearing last week regarding EPA regulation of CO2. Some other interesting articles include:

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30A14F8355A0C738FDDA80994DE404482

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/29/AR2006112900169.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6556413

As the article which follows points out, we will probably need additional legislation. However, even this won't do much, in my opinion, until we motivate individuals and industries to change environmental behavior. Both carrots and sticks (or what I like to call "pull-push" policy) are in order.

COMMENT

HOT AND COLD

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Issue of 2006-12-11
Posted 2006-12-04

Thirty-six years ago this month, President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act in a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. The act—the product of a bipartisan effort extraordinary even for a day when bipartisanship was unexceptional—had been hammered out by a group of senators that included Democrats Edmund Muskie, Birch Bayh, and Thomas Eagleton, and Republicans Bob Dole, Howard Baker, and Robert Packwood. The bill passed the Senate unanimously, prompting Senator Eugene McCarthy to tell Muskie, “Ed, you finally found an issue better than motherhood.” At the signing ceremony, Nixon called the Clean Air Act a “historic piece of legislation,” but he stressed that it was only a first step. “I think that 1970 will be known as the year of the beginning,” he said.

Nostalgia for the Nixon Administration is an increasingly acceptable emotion these days, and it was hard not to feel it last week, when oral arguments were heard in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency. The suit, which has been described as “one of the most important environmental cases ever,” is the first on global warming to reach the United States Supreme Court. The plaintiffs—a group that includes, in addition to Massachusetts, eleven states, three cities, and thirteen environmental groups—hope to compel the Bush Administration to impose limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. If they are successful, the operation of every power plant and factory as well as the design of every new car in the country could potentially be affected. At the center of the suit is the Clean Air Act, and the question of just how ambitious its authors intended it to be.

The Bush Administration’s position, in keeping with its general stance toward regulation but in contrast to its general stance toward executive power, is that its hands are tied. The E.P.A., it argues, lacks the authority to limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, because when the act was drafted global warming wasn’t yet recognized as a problem. The “relevant provisions of the law,” it states in its brief to the Supreme Court, are “best construed not to authorize regulation . . . for the purpose of addressing global climate change.” Furthermore, the Administration asserts, even if the Clean Air Act did grant the E.P.A. the power to treat CO2 as a pollutant, the agency shouldn’t—and wouldn’t—exercise it.

Just about anyone familiar with the Clean Air Act can see the White House’s narrow reading of the law for what it is: a deliberate misreading. The act was expressly constructed to allow the E.P.A. to regulate substances known to be dangerous and also substances that might in the future be revealed to be so. Danger was defined as broadly as possible; among the many possible hazards listed in the statute are “effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, manmade materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and climate.” In a friend-of-the-court brief for the plaintiffs, four former E.P.A. administrators—including Russell Train, who headed the agency under Nixon, and William Reilly, who led it under George Bush senior—point out that Congress clearly directed the E.P.A. to “regulate air pollution based on new and changing scientific information.” The four go on to note that the E.P.A. has, many times in the past, used its authority to control pollutants whose dangers could not have been foreseen in 1970; for example, in the early nineteen-nineties, faced with data on ozone depletion, the agency issued a timetable for phasing out chlorofluorocarbons.

But just because the Bush Administration is willfully misconstruing the Clean Air Act doesn’t mean that it will lose. Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency comes to the Supreme Court via the D.C. Circuit Court, whose three-judge panel issued three disparate opinions on the case. One of the judges ruled for the states. The second ruled for the E.P.A., on the ground that the agency could decline to regulate greenhouse gases if it chose. The third sided with the second, but gave different reasons: the plaintiffs, he asserted, lacked the standing to sue, since they were suffering no particularized harm (beyond the danger to humanity at large). During last week’s oral arguments, the plaintiffs’ standing was the focus of fully half the questions. James Milkey, the Massachusetts assistant attorney general who argued the case on behalf of the states, was midway through an explanation of how coastal regions would be especially hard hit by global warming when Justice Antonin Scalia interrupted him.

SCALIA: I thought that standing requires imminent harm. If you haven’t been harmed already, you have to show the harm is imminent. Is this harm imminent?
MILKEY: It is, Your Honor. We have shown that [rises in] sea levels are already occurring from the current amounts of greenhouse gases in the air, and that means it is only going to get worse as the—
SCALIA: When? I mean, when is the predicted cataclysm?

Meanwhile, from the plaintiffs’ perspective, even a victory could be vexed. Should the court decide that the states have standing and that the E.P.A. has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, responsibility for writing those regulations would still fall to the agency. Given who’s in charge of the E.P.A. these days, it’s hard to see how this would represent a solution. (Imagine entrusting campus alcohol policy to the guys at Delta Tau Chi.)

The Bush Administration’s indifference to global warming might seem at this point like just one of many failures—of will, of imagination, of leadership. In future decades, it will come to seem more significant: at a moment when there was still a chance to avert the worst effects of climate change, the United States couldn’t be bothered to.

The plaintiffs in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency have brought the suit out of desperation. What is really needed, as they would be the first to acknowledge, is immediate action on a scale commensurate with what’s at stake: not an invocation of the Clean Air Act but a new law of comparable vision that would lay out clear—and aggressive—targets for greenhouse-gas reductions. The Democrats should use their newly won congressional majorities to pass such legislation, and President Bush, following Nixon’s example, should sign it. That, at least, would be a beginning.