Public Opposition To Dismantling The EPA
The Natural Resources Defense Council holds a conference call briefing, beginning at 11 a.m., to discuss and release a survey on data that show strong public opposition to “dismantling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) updates to clean-up standards for carbon, smog and other pollution” proposed by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.
Patricipants- Peter Altman, climate campaign director of the Natural Resources Defense Council
- Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling
Contact: Leslie Anderson, 703-276-3256, landerson@hastingsgroup.com
Call-in, 800-860-2442; ask for the “EPA/Energy and Commerce Committee member surveys” news event. A streaming audio replay of the news event will be available at 4 p.m. February 10 online: http://www.nrdc.org
Clean Air Act Advisory Committee
8:00 Registration
8:30 Welcome/Opening Comments U.S. EPA Office of Air And Radiation Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy
9:20 Subcommittee Report Outs Economic Incentives and Regulatory Innovation Permits/NSR/Toxics
10:00 “OAR update on Environmental Justice related Activities” Panel Discussion
BREAK
11:15 “Meet the Members” (Two new members will discuss Air Quality Issues related to their work) A Carrier’s Perspective -Dr. Lee Kindberg, Maersk Tribal Air Quality -Joy Wiecks
12:40-1:45 LUNCH
1:45 – 2:30 Mobile Sources Technical Review Subcommittee Move Model Report
2:30- 3:00 CAAAC Operation/Future Topics
3:00 – 3:15 Public Comments
3:15– 3:30 Next Meeting/Close Pat Childers
Crowne Plaza National Airport
1489 Jefferson Davis Highway
Arlington, VA 22202
The EPA's Ambitious Regulatory Agenda
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is engaged in a series of rule-making proceedings of extraordinary scope and ambition—going well beyond its efforts to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. All major EPA decisions are contentious, but the current flurry of regulatory initiatives raises unusually serious issues of costs and benefits, feasibility, methodology, and agency discretion. This event will begin with a presentation on air-quality trends followed by panel presentations and discussions on current rule-making proceedings and underlying issues of science, economics, and risk assessment.
Agenda
8:15 a.m.
Registration and Breakfast
8:30
Introduction:- CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH, AEI
8:40
Presentation: Trends in Air Quality—1970, Today, and Tomorrow- STEVEN F. HAYWARD, AEI
9:00
Panel I: EPA’s Rule-Making Surge
Panelists:- PAUL R. NOE, American Forest & Paper Association “The Challenge of Boiler MACT and the Cumulative Air Regulatory Burden”
- ARTHUR FRAAS, Resources for the Future “Banking on Permits: A Risky Business”
- JEFFREY R. HOLMSTEAD, Bracewell & Giuliani “The Clean Air Act and the Rule of Law”
Moderator: *KENNETH P. GREEN, AEI
10:30
Break
10:40
Panel II: Science and Economics in EPA Rule-Making
Panelists:- RICHARD A. BECKER, American Chemistry Council “The Blurred Lines between Science and Policy”
- RICHARD B. BELZER, Regulatory Checkbook and Neutral Source “Empirical Analysis of EPA Compliance with the Information Quality Act”
- JANE LUXTON, Pepper Hamilton LLP “Polarization on Science Issues in EPA Risk Assessment”
- BRIAN F. MANNIX, Buckland Mill Associates “Whose Telescope is Defective? The Role of Discount-Rate Arbitrage in Energy and Climate Policy”
- SUSAN E. DUDLEY, The George Washington University
Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
Time to Act? Next Steps for a Climate Bill - A Planet Forward Conversation
Be at GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs for an insider’s guide to America’s next great legislative challenge. We’ll have a one-on-one discussion with top Obama official, Lisa Jackson, and a panel discussion with representatives from media, business and policy to get a picture of what the next stages of the climate debate will be. Will the upcoming Kerry-Lieberman-Graham bill get us on the right path? Or will it happen in the scientific or business sectors? Find out. And find out who really wins and loses when the stakes are this high?
Joining SMPA Director and Planet Forward Host Frank Sesno will be Lisa Jackson (US EPA), Ana Unruh-Cohen (House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming), Andrew Revkin (New York Times), Jim Connaughton (Constellation Energy Group), Dr. Dan Lashof (Natural Resources Defense Council) and Kate Sheppard (Mother Jones). We’ll also feature some of the best videos recently submitted to PlanetForward.org…including films from GW’s very own Planet Forward class!
A Co-presentation of GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs, The George Washington University School of Business and GW’s Environmental Studies program.
Jack Morton Auditorium
School of Media and Public Affairs
805 21st Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
WonkLine: February 2, 2010
From the Wonk Room.
“Strong earnings from Exxon Mobil and bullish comments from coal analysts boosted the energy sector Monday” as climate negotiators say a global deal on climate change in 2010 is “all but impossible.”
“At a time when our country is struggling with a deep economic recession, the last thing I want the EPA to do is start regulating greenhouse gases without specific direction from Congress,” Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) said about the EPA budget plan that allocates $56 million for global warming regulation.
Indiana officials will not require insurance companies to complete a nationally approved climate risk survey, because it seems to advance a “politically driven agenda,” said Doug Webber, the state’s acting insurance commissioner.
Public Hearing on Proposed Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule 1
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will hold two public hearings on the proposed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions thresholds defining when Clean Air Act permits would apply to new or existing industrial facilities. This program would cover nearly 70 percent of the nation’s total GHG emissions from stationary sources. The nation’s largest facilities, including power plants, refineries, and cement production facilities, that emit at least 25,000 tons of GHGs a year would be required to obtain operating and construction permits.
The hearings will be held on November 18 in Arlington, Va. and November 19 in Rosemont, Ill. Both hearings will begin at 10:00 a.m. and end at 7:00 p.m. local time.
Arlington, Va.
Hyatt Regency Crystal City at Reagan National Airport
2799 Jefferson Davis Highway
Arlington, VA 22202
Note: Anyone attending the Arlington hearing will need to bring photo identification.
EPA Investigating Legality of Coal River Mountain Destruction
EPA is closely examining the company’s compliance with all legal requirements.
As the EPA conducts its legal investigation, the blasting continues.
An Incomplete List of Senate Holds on Obama Administration Nominees 1
Active holds are bolded.
White House- Nancy Sutley, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman – John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
- Cass Sunstein, OIRA director – Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)
- John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), anonymous
- Richard Newell, administrator of the Energy Information Administration – John McCain (R-Ariz.)
- Ines Triay, assistant secretary of environmental management – Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)
- Kristina Johnson, undersecretary for energy – Kyl
- Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science – Kyl
- Scott Blake Harris, general counsel – Kyl
- Lisa Jackson, administrator – Barrasso
- Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for air and radiation – Barrasso
- Robert Perciasepe, deputy administrator – George Voinovich (R-Ohio)
- David Hayes, deputy secretary – Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
- Hilary Tompkins, solicitor – Bennett, Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), and other anonymous Rs
- Jon Jarvis, National Park Service director – Coburn
- Wilma Lewis, assistant secretary for land and mineral management – McCain
- Robert Abbey, Bureau of Land Management administrator – McCain
- Joseph Pizarchik, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement – anonymous D
- Harold Koh, legal adviser to the State Department – Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)
- Susan Burk, Special Representative for Non-Proliferation – DeMint
- Thomas Shannon Jr., ambassador to Brazil – DeMint, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
- Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security – Kyl, released June 25
- Arturo Valenzuela, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs – DeMint
- Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor – anonymous R
- Craig Becker, National Labor Relations Board – McCain
- Jane Lubchenco, director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Menendez, anonymous
- Craig Fugate, director – David Vitter (R-La.), released May 12
- Gary Gensler, chairman – Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), released May 14
Inhofe Calls for Criminal Investigation into Why EPA 'Suppressed' a Global Warming Denier
From the Wonk Room.
Fox News Channel’s Gregg Jarrett introduced a “very big story” that the Environmental Protection Agency “intentionally buried a study challenging some of Uncle Sam’s global warming research.” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) claimed the report, written by economist Alan Carlin of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, vindicates his belief that man-made global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”:The thing is phony. I feel so good about being redeemed after all of these years, because they have been throwing this thing in my face since 1998 when we realized that all of those scientists that Al Gore had lined up – and I’m talking about Claude Allegre in France, David Bellamy in UK, and Nir Shaviv in Israel – all of them used to be on his side. They all said, “Wait a minute, this science is not right.” That’s exactly what Allen Carlin said. We’ve already started a investigation.Watch it:
When asked if there should be a criminal investigation, Inhofe replied, “There could be and there probably should be.” Continuing his attack, he claimed that the EPA “have been suppressing science and coming out with what they want people to say. You might remember – I talked to you about it on this station. When I first realized that this thing was a hoax and I made the statement that the notion that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2 cause global warming, it is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated.”
What Fox News, Inhofe, and right-wing bloggers are promoting as a suppressed EPA report is nothing of the kind. Carlin’s paper, released by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (“CO2: they call it pollution, we call it Life“), is a hodgepodge of widely discredited pseudoscience. Carlin was given permission by the NCEE to cobble the paper together even though he is not a climate researcher, and “the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists.”
The Carlin document cites the usual array of global warming deniers, including Joe D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, William Gray, Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer – all of whom worked with Sen. Inhofe’s former aide Marc Morano to disseminate denials of climate science. Carlin’s references come from denier blogs such as ICECAP.us and Watts Up With That, and plagiarizes publications from the Heartland Institute, the Science & Environmental Policy Project, and the Friends of Science Society, all conservative front groups. RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt summarizes the paper as “a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at.”
Similarly, although the 76-year-old botanist David Bellamy, 72-year-old geochemist Claude Allegre, and 32-year-old astrophysicist Nir Shaviv publicly question man-made global warming, they represent a steadily dwindling number of scientists, few of any of which actively study climate change, that argue fossil fuel emissions are not warming the planet.
Democrats on the Waxman-Markey Fence Worried about RES, Allocations
By SolveClimate’s Stacy Morford.
The usual court jesters shot off verbal fireworks as a week of hearings got underway on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, but the real attention on Capitol Hill was tuned to a few moderate Democrats who have the power to make or break the bill.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman acknowledged their concerns this morning as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood were being questioned by the committee.
Praising one of those moderates, former committee chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), Waxman said he had hoped to see his legislation pass with something like the committee’s 42-1 vote that had secured amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990. But he added,
“I have my suspicions after listening to the opening statements here that we may not be able to succeed in the same way.”
The statements and questions so far from the committee’s moderate Democrats suggest that winning enough votes will likely mean rewriting the bill’s proposed renewable energy standard to account for regional differences. It may also require free emissions permits and other aid for industries – particularly automotive and energy – that will need to evolve to survive in a carbon-constrained world.
The RES currently proposed in the draft legislation would require utilities to derive 25 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2025.
Mike Ross (D-Ark.) and Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) both expressed concerns that that level would penalize states like theirs that lack the wind power of Texas and the sunshine and geothermal reserves of California. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) said his state could probably reach its current target of 15 percent by 2025, and possibly do better if nuclear and biomass could count, but 25 percent was out of the question.
Jim Matheson (D-Utah) asked Chu if he thought Congress would be overprescribing if it required both an emissions cap and a national renewable energy standard.
Chu has been outspoken in his desire to restore the United States’ place as the world’s leader in energy technology. The RES, he said, is a necessary interim driver of innovation and renewable energy use. The cap won’t start until 2012, and industry will need time to adjust. The RES, meanwhile, will drive renewable energy development by guaranteeing a marketplace. Energy executives who testified later in the day echoed that argument, saying federal rules would create stability and expectations that businesses could bank on.
That doesn’t mean that that the RES has to be uniform nationwide, though. A few committee members questioned whether Congress could instead require each state to set a minimum standard, which could then be met in ways tailored to that state’s own resource mix. Twenty-eight states already have renewable energy standards.
Dingell also questioned the “aggressive nature of the renewable electrical standard,” but he and Gene Green (D-Texas) were more focused on aid for industries, particularly the U.S. automakers and refiners.
Green, worried about job losses in the Houston ship channel area that he represents, urged the committee to provide ample free emissions allowances from the trading program for energy-intensive industries, as well as financial support for consumers facing higher electricity prices.
“We must protect our energy–intensive industries, including refineries, so we do not simply export those jobs abroad to nation without carbon controls and lax environmental regulations,” Green told the committee.
Dingell called for doubling the incentives for the Department of Energy’s advanced technology vehicle incentives programs to help the auto industry in his home state. He added:
“Of course, the question of auction versus allocation still lies before us, and that is a very serious question. Some might say ‘deal breaker’ for many members.”
The auction details from the cap-and-trade portion of the bill have yet to hammered out, which has created an easy target for fiscal fear mongering among opponents. Without knowing how the money from cap-and-trade auctions would be distributed, the Congressional Budget Office can’t accurately gauge the bill’s financial impact.
Jackson offered the committee the EPA’s newly released cost assessment: The energy bill for an average family would rise between $98 and $140 per year.
However, the EPA’s analysis looked only at the cap-and-trade portion of the bill, and with so many details yet to be determined by the committee, the EPA had to make assumptions about the price of carbon ($13-17 per ton in 2015) and the percentage of revenue that would be returned to consumers (40 percent).
The 40 percent rebate for consumers, a number recommended by the bill’s authors, did offer more insight into how Waxman and Markey might propose divvying up the revenues, but it was still only an estimate.
The committee’s 23 Republican members asked Waxman in a letter this week for more hearings to flesh out the details before the committee begins marking up the legislation for a vote.
“Your discussion draft lacks any decision on permit allocations versus auctions,” they wrote. “The manner in which you will address this issue is the cornerstone of the legislation; without it the bill is simply not finished and not ripe to be marked up or accurately discussed in the context of a hearing.”
In the absence of stronger data, some opponents have resorted to inventing their own numbers.
Two of the most outspoken opponents of the bill – Reps. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) – suggested that the lack of details was a conspiracy to prevent the committee from knowing the true cost. They repeated the GOP’s manipulation of a recent MIT study, saying the increase would be $3,100, a number the study’s own author says is 10 times too high.
It was a fellow Republican, LaHood, who spoke up today about the continued abuse of the MIT study.
LaHood held up a letter from the study’s author correcting the GOP’s use of his numbers. But when he asked to enter the letter into the committee record, Shimkus objected. If the MIT letter was submitted, then Shimkus wanted to submit a story written by the Weekly Standard, too. Waxman agreed to both.
Shimkus was clearly playing to the cameras this morning. He vowed that “those of us who want jobs are going to try to defeat this bill” and went on to declare cap-and-trade a greater danger than terrorism:
“I see this as the largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country as I’ve ever experienced. I’ve lived through some tough times in Congress. I’ve seen two wars, terrorist attacks. I fear this more than all of the above.”
Like it or not, economics will be the issue for members of Congress. Their re-election campaigns are built on numbers – how many jobs they created, how much federal bacon they brought home – and their campaigns are always on.