EPA Admin Denies California Waiver

Posted by Brad Johnson Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:37:00 GMT

EPA administrator Stephen Johnson’s denial of California’s petition to regulate tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions following the White House energy bill signing ceremony was deservedly front page news from coast to coast. The Supreme Court forced the EPA to consider California’s December 2005 Clean Air Act waiver request in April 2007 (Massachusetts v. EPA). In testimony before the Senate and the House earlier this year, Johnson signaled his lack of desire to grant the waiver. Now that decision has come in, with justifications even EPA’s own laywers and policy staff don’t believe. This is the first time in the history of the Clean Air Act that the EPA has denied a section 209 California waiver request.

[Ed.—Warming Law has superior analysis of the decision, from which I’ll steal some key insights.]

The EPA, which is yet to release the formal denial, announced in its press release that the increased CAFE standards in the new energy law to justify its denial of the California waiver:
EPA has determined that a unified federal standard of 35 miles per gallon will deliver significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks in all 50 states, which would be more effective than a partial state-by-state approach of 33.8 miles per gallon.

Warming Law says “EPA appears to be attempting to add a new test to the Clean Air Act” in requiring that California prove a local interest in addition to the “compelling” and “extraordinary” standards the Supreme Court said this problem meets.

Warming Law’s Tim Dowling notes that Johnson’s claim the waiver would create a “confusing patchwork of state rules” is typical industry rhetoric that is specious—only two sets of standards, national and California, would apply. “Johnson failed to explain how EPA has been able to grant EVERY other 209 waiver request in history without creating a confusing patchwork, but can’t do so here.”

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post reveals that Johnson overrode his staff.
In a PowerPoint presentation prepared for the administrator, aides wrote that if Johnson denied the waiver and California sued, “EPA likely to lose suit.”

If he allowed California to proceed and automakers sued, the staff wrote, “EPA is almost certain to win.”

The technical and legal staffs cautioned Johnson against blocking California’s tailpipe standards, the sources said, and recommended that he either grant the waiver or authorize it for a three-year period before reassessing it.

“Nobody told the administration they support [a denial], and it has the most significant legal challenges associated with it,” said one source, in an interview several hours before Johnson’s announcement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak for the agency. “The most appropriate action is to approve the waiver.”

After Bali – the UN Conference and the Impact on International Climate Change Policy

Posted by Brad Johnson Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will hold a hearing next week on the international climate negotiations now wrapping up in Bali, Indonesia.

Chairman Markey and other members of the Select Committee will host climate experts returning from Bali to discuss the climate conference and suggest an effective path forward on global warming for the United States and the international community.

Witnesses
  • Philip Clapp, President, National Environmental Trust
  • Myron Ebell, Director, Energy and Global Warming Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
  • Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy, Union of Concerned Scientists
  • Ned Helme, President, Center for Clean Air Policy
  • Christiana Figueres, Former Official Negotiator, U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, Costa Rica

The Road from Bali

Posted by Brad Johnson Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Featured Speaker:
  • Senator John Kerry (D – MA)
Introduction by:
  • Melody Barnes, Executive Vice President for Policy, Center for American Progress Action Fund

After years of denial, delay, distraction and distortion, climate change is changing the political climate. Australia’s John Howard recently became the first national leader voted out of office in large measure because of his failure to respond to citizens’ concerns about global warming. Newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made global warming his first priority in office. Australia’s awakening is not an isolated example. Eighty-three percent of Chinese support action on climate change. Between 2006 and 2010 China plans to improve energy efficiency by 20 percent. The dialogue in the United States is also shifting, albeit too slowly. Fifty-nine percent of Americans now endorse taking major steps soon to combat global warming, and 33 percent more think we need modest steps. Unfortunately this 92 percent of the American public is still looking to President Bush for action on this key issue.

Just last week representatives of more than 180 nations met in Bali to chart a course toward a new global agreement to control climate change that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Together – in spite of American obstruction – they produced a roadmap for the new climate negotiations that set a target date of 2009 for the next treaty. How do we avoid the missteps that plagued the Kyoto Treaty? How do we create a framework that includes industrialized nations as well as the developing world? Sen. Kerry – who attended the Bali conference and led the U.S. Senate delegation – will lay out a strategy to follow the Bali roadmap and expand the existing emissions trading market, promote an efficient and effective technology development and implementation program, launch an aggressive effort to protect the world’s remaining forests, and embrace technology transfer. This will require innovative financing and investment – and, if properly implemented, will create major new opportunities for American industry to create the jobs of the future.

Center for American Progress Action Fund
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

RSVP

The Frame and Scale of the Climate/Energy Challenge: Issues and Implications

Posted by Brad Johnson Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

“Does the current framing and scaling of the climate/energy issue adequately capture the challenge posed? If not, what might be a more appropriate frame and scale?”

Speakers
  • Dr. James G. Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
  • Dr. Daniel Schrag, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard University

The issues of global energy demand and climate response are, at one level, complex and contentious. However, they are joined by simple but important considerations. While the flow of energy is important to the global economic infrastructure, the flow of energy within the Earth’s climate system reveals simple but compelling conclusions. These will be explored in this briefing.

Biographies

Dr. James B. Anderson joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1978 as the Robert P. Burden Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry. In 1982 he was appointed the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry. Professor Anderson served as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard from July 1998 through June 2001. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a frequent contributor to National Research Council activities. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a recipient of two United Nations Environment Programme Ozone Awards (1997, 2005); the National Academy of Sciences Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship; the E. O. Lawrence Award in Environmental Science and Technology; the American Chemical Society’s Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest; and the University of Washington’s Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumnus Achievement Award. In addition, he received the United Nations Earth Day International Award; Harvard University’s 1989 Ledley Prize for Most Valuable Contribution to Science by a Member of the Faculty; and the American Chemical Society’s National Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology.

Dr. Anderson’s research group addresses three domains at the interface of chemistry and Earth Sciences: (1) mechanistic links between chemistry, radiation, and dynamics in the atmosphere that control climate (2) chemical catalysis sustained by free radical chain reactions that dictate the macroscopic rate of chemical transformation in Earth’s stratosphere and troposphere; and (3) chemical reactivity viewed from the microscopic perspective of electron structure, molecular orbitals and reactivities of radical-radical and radical-molecule systems. Research addressing Earth’s climate focuses on establishing the primary mechanisms that couple chemistry, dynamics, and radiation in the climate system, the establishment of a high-accuracy record of climate change using interferometry from low Earth orbit, and strategies for testing long-term climate forecasts using absolute spectrally resolved radiance in the infrared.

Dr. Daniel Schrag is Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University and the Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Dr. Schrag studies climate and climate change over the broadest range of Earth history. He has examined changes in ocean circulation over the last several decades, with particular attention to El Niño and the tropical Pacific. He has also worked on theories for Pleistocene ice-age cycles including a better determination of ocean temperatures during the Last Glacial Maximum, 20,000 years ago. He also helped develop the Snowball Earth hypothesis, proposing that a series of global glaciations occurred between 750 and 580 million years ago that may have led to the evolution of multicellular animals. He is currently working with economists and engineers on technological approaches to mitigating future climate change. Among various honors, Dr. Schrag was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2000. Dr. Schrag came to Harvard in 1997 after teaching at Princeton, and studying at Berkeley and Yale.

Energy Security, Energy Urgency: Key Issues Facing the Next President

Posted by Brad Johnson Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:00:00 GMT

On December 18, the Brookings Institution will host Senator Richard G. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for a conversation on the lack of action on U.S. energy security and the challenges the next president will face on this issue. Indiana’s longest-serving senator, Lugar was first elected in 1976, and is recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on foreign relations and national security.

U.S. dependence on increasingly scarce fossil fuels threatens U.S. security while also undermining international stability. Absent revolutionary changes in energy policy, U.S. foreign policy goals may be undermined, living standards may erode, and the U.S. may become highly vulnerable to the machinations of rogue states. These are the urgent security questions facing the next U.S. president.

In his address, Senator Lugar will discuss the need for leadership by the next president in combating energy threats to U.S. national security. Brookings Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Carlos Pascual will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion. After the program, Senator Lugar will take audience questions.

Participants

Introduction and Moderator
  • Carlos Pascual, Vice President and Director
Featured Speaker
  • Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.)

Location

Falk Auditorium The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

Gore, Congress, Europe Assail U.S. Stance in Bali

Posted by Brad Johnson Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:02:00 GMT

The United States delegation to the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali has led Japan, Canada, and Russia in rejecting the nonbinding EU proposed roadmap of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by wealthy countries 25 to 40 per cent by 2020. (By way of comparison, Lieberman-Warner (S. 2191) proposes a four percent cut from 1990 emissions levels by 2020.) The U.S. team is also opposing including references to the IPCC’s conclusions on the emissions reductions needed to avoid dangerous global warming.

In a speech today at the conference, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore said “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali . . . One year and 40 days from today, there will be a new inauguration in the United States. I must tell you candidly that I cannot promise that the person who is elected will have the position I expect they will have, but I can tell you I believe it is quite likely.”

In a letter to the President, 52 members of Congress, including a handful of Republicans, criticized the U.S. negotiating stance:
The clear implication is that the United States will refuse to agree to any language putting the United States on an established path toward scientifically-based emission limits. . . We write to express our strong disagreement with these positions and to urge you to direct the U.S. negotiating team to work together with other countries to complete a roadmap with a clear objective sufficient to combat global warming. The United States must adopt negotiating positions at the Bali Conference of the Parties that are designed to propel further progress – not fuel additional delay.
E&E News reports on EU threats to boycott a U.S.-led climate meeting:
Upset with the U.S.-led stance, senior officials from the European Union, France and Germany have threatened to boycott Bush’s plans to hold climate talks Jan. 30-31 in Honolulu.

“Without a roadmap and without a destination, it would be senseless,” said Stavros Dimas, the top environmental official for the European Commission. Dimas told reporters he made the same statement earlier today to Paula Dobrianksy, the lead U.S. negotiator at the climate meetings on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Karsten Sach of Germany’s environmental department and French negotiator Brice Lalonde both confirmed their countries also would stay away from Bush’s “Major Economies Meeting” if there is no agreement in Bali.

White House spokeswoman Kristen Hellmer didn’t take well to the E.U. threats. “Such comments are not very constructive when we are working so hard to find common ground on a way forward,” she said.

Perspectives on the next phase of the global fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria

Posted by Brad Johnson Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:30:00 GMT

Global Maritime Strategy Initiatives

Posted by Brad Johnson Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:00:00 GMT

The full committee will meet to receive testimony on global maritime strategy initiatives. In October the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps released A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.

Witnesses:
  • Admiral Gary Roughead, USN, Chief of Naval Operations
  • Admiral Thad W. Allen, USCG, Commandant of the Coast Guard
  • General James T. Conway, USMC, Commandant of the Marine Corps
EE News:
The hearing comes amidst growing concern over climate change in the Arctic and its effect on national security and international relations, as new shipping routes open and the area becomes more accessible for oil and gas extraction.

The issue has not escaped the notice of the U.S. military. In mid-October, the Coast Guard announced plans for an operational base in Barrow, Alaska, to deal with increased shipping in the North Pole region.

Later that month, the Navy, Coast Guard and Marines released an updated national maritime strategy, which for the first time includes global warming – particularly its effects in the polar region – as a concern for the U.S. fleet.

It is that strategy that is at the center of Thursday’s House hearing.

“As we look at maritime strategy on a global basis, we can’t ignore the future of the Arctic, the implications of access to the Arctic, national security issues, environmental issues, energy issues associated with it,” Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said in September at a Washington, D.C., conference on national security sponsored by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. “Where do we invest our money? How do we develop policies?”

Allen, one of three top military officials scheduled to testify at the hearing, also drew a link between climate change in the Arctic and U.S. participation in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a hot-button issue this fall on Capitol Hill.

The United States is the only major industrialized nation that has failed to ratify the 25-year-old agreement, which governs how countries manage their exclusive economic zones and seabed mineral rights, sets rules for navigating international waters, and addresses species protection and other environmental issues.

“The United States must ratify the Law of the Sea treaty,” Allen said. “We must become an international player. We must be at the table.”

The role of speculation in recent crude oil prices

Posted by Brad Johnson Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Draft Oversight Report: Systematic White House Climate Change Censorship

Posted by Brad Johnson Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:54:00 GMT

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), today released a draft report entitled Political Interference with Climate Change Science Under the Bush Administration.

The report is based on the committee’s January 30 and March 19 hearings, depositions, and interviews of government officials on White House censorship and manipulation of governmental climate change science over the last 16 months.

Scientists, reports, and testimony from NOAA, NASA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Climatic Data Center, and the Environmental Protection Agency were affected.

Findings include:
  • Media requests to speak with federal scientists on climate change matters were sent to Council on Environmental Quality for White House approval
  • The White House edited congressional testimony regarding the science of climate change
  • CEQ Chief of Staff Phil Cooney and other CEQ officials made at least 294 edits to the Administration’s Strategic Plan for the Climate Change Science Program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties or to deemphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming
  • The White House insisted on edits to EPA’s draft Report on the Environment that were so extreme that the EPA Administrator opted to eliminate the climate change section of the report
  • CEQ eliminated the climate change section of the EPA’s Air Trends Report
  • CEQ Chairman James Connaughton edited the August 2003 EPA legal opinion disavowing authority to regulate greenhouse gases

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