Climate Change Update

Californians Deliver Mostly Victories for Environment and Clean Energy

2010-11-03T22:18:00.000-07:00

Outstanding news of great import: In three key election results yesterday
in California, what won big were our economy, clean energy future, prospects
for a better quality of life, and the urgent need for real action on the
climate change crisis. The election of Governor Jerry Brown, the
reelection of Senator Barbara Boxer, and the overwhelming rejection of Proposition
23 -- the Texas oil companies¹ scheme to kill California¹s seminal 2006
Global Warming Solutions Act -- are together a resounding victory for
Californians and the environment.

It¹s also true that California suffered an economic, taxpayer and environmental setback with the passage of Proposition 26. This was the quiet maneuver by oil, tobacco and alcoholic beverage companies to externalize what are internal costs, i.e., their costs for compliance with legitimate health and pollution regulations and fees. Their escape route is Prop 26's stipulation that such fees must now be approved by two-thirds of the State Legislature rather than the previous simple majority. In pulling off this gambit, these well-funded corporations likely succeeded at off-loading their own costs onto California¹s general fund. Hint: "General fund" means you, me, our neighbors and our kids. They picked our pocket.

To the extent that California continues to still sometimes drive national
debate and policy, the victory over Proposition 23 is a shot and a wake-up
call for the entire country. Other states will now follow California on
climate change and clean energy law.

Californians, Vote No on Prop 23

2010-11-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

Be sure to vote on Tuesday, November 2, Election Day, too much is at stake not to. If you live in California, the results of races for Governor (vote for Jerry), the U.S. Senate (Boxer), and the U.S. House of Representatives, plus several state propositions, will have a collectively enormous impact on California’s environment, economy, quality of life, and future prospects.

In California, it’s critically important that you vote No on Proposition 23.

Prop 23 is an attempt by Texas oil refinery companies Valero and Tesoro, as well as the extremist right-wing Koch brothers, to change the State of California's future by undoing our seminal Global Warming Solutions Act, better known as AB 32. This legislation, approved in 2006 and signed into law by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, will have a profoundly positive impact by significantly reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG’s) and other air pollutants, creating new jobs and spurring innovation in clean technology, renewable energy, and energy efficiency, and improving residents’ quality of life through better air quality and more sensible transportation and housing policies. Prop 23 would unravel these advances.

California’s AB 32 also is extremely important in the national debate over what to do about global climate change, especially given that reactionary conservatives to date have successfully stifled action on the climate change crisis primarily at the behest of oil, coal and electric utility companies. AB 32 will help reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, reduce the nation’s irresponsible emissions of GHG’s, and provide invaluable impetus to the urgent economic and environmental necessity of shifting this nation’s energy dependence to clean technologies and renewable energy.

Everywhere across the country, elected officials and numerous other stakeholders are looking to California and AB 32 as an indicator of where the nation is going. Unless, of course, somehow AB 32 was made to go away. Proposition 23 would effectively kill AB 32, although its dishonest purveyors claim that the proposition would merely “suspend” the global warming law. Indeed, the language in the proposition does say “suspend,” but the conditions attached to this so-called suspension in reality would make it permanent.

See the list at the end of this article for who opposes Prop 23.

As reported by the coalition web site, www.StopDirtyEnergyProp.com, Valero and Tesoro each have oil refineries in California that are among the state’s top ten biggest polluters. AB 32 would force these refineries to reduce their emissions and to pay the costs of doing so, a completely fair and balanced principle known as “polluter pays.” Valero and Tesoro don’t want the hassle and expense of meeting this legal requirement to clean up their refineries. They’ve chosen instead to spend millions of dollars to try to kill AB 32 via their carpet-bagging initiative, Prop 23.

Prop 23 would roll back the clean energy standards put in place by AB 32, with the likely repercussions including a loss of tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments. According to California’s State Legislative Analyst’s Office, the effect of Prop 23 could “…dampen additional investments in clean energy technologies or in so-called green jobs by private firms, thereby resulting in less economic activity.” Thanks in great part to AB 32, “green jobs” in California have grown some 10 times faster than the statewide average since 2005, and today there are more than 12,000 clean tech companies in the state.

If it passes, Prop 23 will suck the air out of this vital growth sector, thus weakening economic prospects for California and its residents and furthering our dependence on fossil fuel. And just as right-wing conservatives desire, Prop 23 would force not just Californians but the entire nation to retreat from our future and to hide from the climate change crisis.

In short, Proposition 23 is an outrage. Its passage would represent an enormous setback to California and to the urgent global imperative to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Vote No on Prop 23.

Who Opposes Proposition 23?

An enormous cross-section of California businesses, religious and health organizations, consumer groups, local chambers of commerce, mayors and municipalities, environmental organizations, academicians, community leaders and elected officials, in spite of their differences on many other matters, stand united in opposition to Prop 23.

Here is a small sampling of opponents of Prop 23:

▪ Former Reagan Administration Secretary of State George Schultz

▪ CA Governor Schwarzenegger

▪ AARP

▪ American Lung Association

▪ Blue Shield of CA

▪ Kaiser Permanente

▪ CA Nurses Association

▪ CA Teachers Association

▪ The Bay Area Council

▪ Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network

▪ Cisco

▪ Gap, Inc.

▪ Google

▪ PG&E

▪ Patagonia

▪ Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD)

▪ Virgin America

▪ League of Women Voters of California

▪ California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO

▪ New Voice of Business

▪ National Venture Capital Association

▪ The Solar Alliance

▪ Solar Energy Council

▪ Silicon Valley Leadership Group

▪ Sustainable Business Alliance

▪ Business Council on Climate Change

▪ U.S. Green Building Council

▪ California Public Utilities Commission

▪ Metropolitan Transportation Commission

▪ (name most any newspaper in CA, they're opposed to Prop 23)

▪ American Farmland Trust

▪ Good Earth Natural Foods

▪ Global Exchange

▪ California Interfaith Power and Light

▪ Commonweal Institute

▪ 1Sky

▪ 350.org

▪ California League of Conservation Voters

▪ Climate Protection Campaign

▪ EarthJustice

▪ Environmental Defense Fund

▪ Greenpeace USA

▪ The Nature Conservancy

▪ Rainforest Alliance

▪ Sierra Club California

▪ Union of Concerned Scientists

For a more complete list, go to www.StopDirtyEnergyProp.com

Are all these individuals and organizations mistaken? No. But Valero and Tesoro are. Vote No on Proposition 23.

Sound the Alarm, Vote No on California Proposition 26

2010-10-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

While you and your friends are marking the “No” box on your ballot for Proposition 23, be sure to do the same for its less glamorous and more underhanded cousin, Proposition 26. If it passes, this proposal will shift enormous costs for pollution and its effects from rich corporate polluters over to California’s cash-strapped taxpayers, i.e., you, me, our kids, and our neighbors.

Proposition 26 is a deliberately disingenuous attempt by oil, tobacco and alcoholic beverage companies to prevent new fees to be levied on the products or consequences of their industries. Oil companies, for example, want to avoid having to pay new fees that would help pay for the clean-up of oil spills they cause. They instead want to force California taxpayers to pay for their oil spills. They cravenly hide this agenda behind the pleasantly mainstream-sounding slogan, “No Hidden Taxes.”

As if you needed further evidence that many CA voter initiatives are advertised as being the exact opposite of what they truly are, the truth of the oil companies’ slogan is more like, “No Taxes for Us, but Hidden Taxes for You.”

The Consumer Federation of CA, the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Assn of CA, the League of Women Voters of CA, and every CA newspaper, city and county are against Prop 26, which is funded by Chevron, ExxonMobil, Phillip Morris, and others.

The language of Prop 26 contained in the CA Attorney General’s official Voter Information Guide states, “Requires that certain State and local fees be approved by two-thirds vote. Fees include those that address adverse impacts on society or the environment caused by the fee-payer’s business...Requires that certain state fees be approved by two-thirds vote of Legislature and certain local fees be approved by two-thirds of voters.....”

Summary of Legislative Analyst’s Estimate of Net State and Local Government Fiscal Impact: “Decreased state and local government revenues and spending due to the higher approval requirements for new revenues.....Increased General Fund costs of $1 billion annually....unknown potential decrease in state revenues.”

In other words, the oil co’s and their allies want to make it dramatically more difficult for the CA State Legislature to approve fees that they, not us, would have to pay for the costs of their products and their pollution. And in the process, this would shift the burden of paying for those costs to we CA taxpayers. As economists would put it, the backers of Prop 26 are seeking to externalize their costs rather than internalize them, thereby shifting those costs to society.

Vote No on Proposition 26, and please urge your friends to do the same. Send Tweets, post notices on your Facebook Walls.

Here are links to more info:

http://www.noonproposition26.com/

http://www.noozhawk.com/local_news/article/102610_megan_birney_propositions_23_and_26_say_no_to_protecting_polluters/

http://www.consumercal.org/article.php?id=1435

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/?q=node/8310

http://ca.lwv.org/action/prop1011/prop26.html

EPA Thumbs Nose at Climate Leaders Program, Corporations

2010-10-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

Read the amazing report below from Paul Baier, Vice President of Consulting for Groom Energy Solutions, regarding how the U.S. EPA not only cancelled its acclaimed Climate Leaders Program without explanation but also butchered how it handled the situation. One wonders what EPA has in mind. With an increasingly conservative Congress successfully stifling legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, working proactively with more enlightened corporations through incentives and market-driven approaches seemed like an intelligent approach. What's next, EPA?

I can't paraphrase better than Baier's original prose so I won't. I'll add one word only: Disgraceful. Here is the report from Paul Baier:

Dear Colleague,

Notes from a Stunning EPA Climate Leaders Meeting

The EPA having just unexpectedly cancelled its voluntary carbon reporting program a few weeks ago, held its annual (and last) Climate Leaders meeting this week in New Orleans. Originally scheduled to be a 2.5 day event, it was hastily shortened to 2 half-days. Here are a few of my observations from the meeting.

It is very clear that the EPA has no interest in receiving input on its decision to cancel the program. It appears that the EPA has decided to change how they wish to engage large companies in voluntary programs going forward. The transition process to sunset Climate Leaders seemed rushed and amateurish. Some specifics of the program wind-down include:

- The EPA Climate Leaders website and brand logo will be retired in September 2011.

- The transition for existing companies has not been clearly worked out.

- The EPA plans to issue an RFP later this year looking for an NGO that could replace part of the program. Specifics of the RFP have not yet been finalized.

Program participants are justifiably at odds with the EPA. During the Q & A session, many companies, including SC Johnson, DuPont, Merck, Ingersoll Rand and UPS, publicly expressed disappointment and frustration. Private conversations were even more heated. No one spoke publicly in support of the EPA's decision or the wind-down "process".

Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, was blunt and unrelenting: "Our relationship with you [corporations] must change."

The EPA has not given clear answers on the reasons behind the program's termination. McCarthy said at one point it was budget, but then said later she and the EPA have plenty of budget for programs that have high impact, implying that this one did not. She left after her talk and some Q&A.

A few of the many issues and questions that were raised are:

- NGOs are not a replacement for the credibility that comes with an EPA program.

- What happens with publicly stated goals? Who will recognize the goals?

- How do we message this transition internally? Companies currently don't have good messaging, especially since the reasons for the program termination are so vague.

- Loss of face and credibility internally for companies. Many sustainability leaders justified budget requests in anticipation of public recognition for meeting GHG reduction goals. This no longer seems to be the case

- Mandatory reporting requirements are different than voluntary reporting. Many invested in voluntary reporting to reduce future mandatory reporting costs.

Companies feel burnt. Companies were burnt.

I think the EPA could have done a variety of things to help ease the transition, including allowing existing program members to use the EPA Climate Leaders logo for the next five years as they achieve their reduction goals, increasing service fees for the technical consulting, and providing more time on the transition.

It seemed very obvious to me, from McCarthy's blunt comments to the absolutely deflated EPA Climate Leaders program team sitting on the dais after McCarthy left, that the EPA has zero interest in maintaining a partner relationship or even a working relationship with large companies.

Executives from SC Johnson, Merck, and Cummings were very articulate in their feedback. One company said they traveled to the conference in the hope of sharing ideas on how to keep the program going, but this was not an option.

Everyone, including the EPA, agrees that the program was very successful for the last eight years. Many also agree that the EPA decision is baffling, especially when you consider President Obama public support of green jobs and recent decision to install solar panels back on the White House.

The EPA now has a very different approach to how it wants to work with businesses.

Buyer beware when participating in future voluntary EPA programs.

World Meteorological Organization Calls Current Decade another Record-Setter

2009-12-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

The title of the December 8 press release from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is "2000-2009, The Warmest Decade." Quoting from the text, "The decade of the 2000s (2000-2009) was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s (1990-1999), which in turn was warmer than the 1980s (1980-1989)." The WMO uses global combined sea surface and land surface air temperatures, a conclusively sound methodology.

The WMO announcement also pointed out that "This year above-normal temperatures were recorded in most parts of the continents. Only North America (United States and Canada) experienced conditions that were cooler than average." The anecdote regarding North America is important, as some U.S. climate change deniers use it out of context to try to confuse the public into believing that global warming isn't happening.

Earth's climbing surface temperatures are only part of the story. The world's scientists, including but not limited to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are continuing to find one disturbing climate change-related development after another. These include melting glaciers, drying rivers, sea level rise, oceanic acidification and an Arctic region in climate turmoil.

And yet more from the press release: "Climate extremes, including devastating floods, severe droughts, snowstorms, heat waves and cold waves, were recorded in many parts of the world," and "The Arctic sea ice extent during the melt season ranked the third lowest, after the lowest and second-lowest records set in 2007 and 2008, respectively."

The evidence is overwhelming -- humans are heating the planet to an alarming degree and so far there is no end in sight.

Copenhagen Climate Change Summit: Good, Bad, Ugly

2009-12-10T14:53:00.000-08:00

With the Copenhagen Summit on climate change ("COP15") well underway and the December 18 finale only days away, a person in my position is supposed to be feeling gung ho. I'm not. At best, I'm ambivalent. My hope is for a binding international agreement to at least begin curbing greenhouse gas emissions. After all, for the first time we have China, India, Brazil and the U.S. making commitments of some sort (or merely "pledges"?) -- a necessary and positive step.

But when many miles need to be traveled, and yesterday, it's hard to get excited by excruciating baby steps. At the moment at least, China and India merely are pledging to reduce the "carbon intensity" of their respective economies. It's a fancy and not entirely honest way of saying they will continue to pursue low-hanging energy efficiency measures already on the drawing board while watching their cumulative greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar. As for the U.S., President Obama is crossing his fingers that his noticeably modest commitment, of 17 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2020, will make it past the woeful U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, opposing blocs of underdeveloped and developed nations continue to point fingers at one another.

In the face of an unprecedented global crisis, baby steps are a form of soft denial. Sort of like mumbling.

Miles above this lackluster performance, carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth's atmosphere have risen to approximately 390 ppm and are plausibly climbing toward 450 ppm, exacerbating the greenhouse effect already underway. And according to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), even if the world brought its carbon dioxide levels back to pre-industrial times, which it won't, it would take "1,000" years or longer for the climate changes already underway to be reversed. This is largely thanks to the long life of carbon dioxide in the world's oceans.

Here are several excellent sources for tracking ongoing developments at COP15. Some of these sites also give you the opportunity to participate in chat groups, Twitter, etc.:

Oneclimate.net
Realclimate.org -- emphasis on climate change science
Climate Progress -- possibly the best climate change site, period. Highly esteemed Dr. Joseph Romm serves as editor in collaboration with the Center for American Progress.
Climate central
Project Groundswell
New York Times
Various national environmental organizations, such as Environmental Defense Fund

Al Gore Advocates for Electric Vehicles and Against Ethanol

2009-12-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore is on tour to promote his new book, Our Choice, which more or less begins where An Inconvenient Truth ended. While touching on the latest science of global climate change, the book nonetheless focuses on U.S. energy policies, sources and uses and on policy solutions to the climate crisis (a term used not only by this author but also in a consistent manner by Gore).

Opening his November 9 remarks at San Rafael's Dominican University with his trademark self-deprecating humor -- "I'm Al Gore, I used to be the next president of the United States" -- the relaxed and good-humored Tennessean immediately had his audience laughing and applauding. To be sure, for Gore, speaking to an ideologically compatible and politically sophisticated San Francisco Bay Area audience about global climate change, the only thing missing from the love would be flowers and kisses.

I've somewhat closely followed Al Gore ever since the 1992 release of his clarion call to save our planet, Earth in the Balance, a New York Times bestseller. And Gore delivered on this evening entirely as I had expected. He was charming, gracious, completely at ease and astoundingly knowledgeable and articulate. He smoothly wove his way through an informal but wonkish presentation laden with statistics, facts, industry observations, greenhouse gas emissions data, and brief tutorials and anecdotes alike regarding an array of clean energy technologies. Carbon dioxide emissions and concentrations, national security concerns, wind energy, solar, biomass, ethanol, electric vehicles, life cycle analysis, carbon capture and sequestration.....the topics breezed by. And of course, delivered entirely without notes.

His oration was almost too relaxed and the plethora of relevant facts were almost too thorough. This was consummate Al Gore -- collegial politician and exceptionally expert advocate for climate change action, able to suffocate climate change deniers with the superiority of his facts while at the same time striving to avoid alarming the rest of us.

A few of the more interesting and far-reaching comments from Gore:

(Referring to groundwater depletion, prolonged droughts, and increased severe storm activity in the U.S.): "The water crisis in many ways is the cutting edge of the global warming crisis."
"Ethanol has not worked out that well. It really doesn't contribute much to the solution." I wanted to shout with relief when he said this. The huge U.S. push into ethanol is an epic blunder and it is refreshing to hear a politician speak out against it.
"The electric car is the future of the U.S. automobile fleet." So think twice about that future hydrogen- or liquid nitrogen-powered car of yours.
Carbon capture and sequestration works, "That's been proven." But Gore's larger point here was that this technology has "yet to be accomplished on a commercial scale," in great part due to the fact that "it takes an enormous amount of energy for a coal plant" to capture and sequester its carbon emissions. And Gore concluded, "A technology that may be good enough as a viable solution beginning in 20 years is not good enough. We need to implement solutions now."
Gore stressed the importance of maintaining the fertility of soil, which largely depends on soil holding on to its carbon. He made three points here: First, the U.S. agricultural sector is facing an enormous problem involving soil fertility depletion. Second, we need to enact measures to keep carbon in soils, such as reducing use of nitrogen-based fertilizers. And third, improving carbon sequestration in soil is part of the answer for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Occupying a healthy concluding chapter in his new book but only a light touch at the tail end of his presentation was the matter of politics. Gore gently introduced the topic of ongoing U.S. political failure on climate change by stating, "The last obstacle I'll address....is our way of thinking." And he correctly noted at the very end of his remarks that, "We have everything we need with the possible exception of political will."

The Arctic in Crisis -- Global Warming Reverses Long-Term Cooling Trend

2009-11-08T03:19:00.000-08:00

A recent study published in the September 4 issue of Science magazine is yet another indicator that the Arctic is in crisis. A team of scientists found that temperatures in the Earth’s vast northernmost region – which includes the Arctic Ocean and parts of Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland, and the Scandinavian countries in Northern Europe – have reversed a long-term cooling trend and are now the warmest they’ve been in at least 2,000 years.

The study’s authors include the renowned Darrell S. Kaufman, of the School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability at Northern Arizona University, and David Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

The Arctic cooling period had lasted for 2,000 years and was reversedduring the 20th century, with four of the five warmest decades in the region occurring between 1950and 2000.

Moreover, the warmest decade was from 1999 to 2008, with Arctic temperatures averaging 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than would have been expected if the cooling trend had continued, said Kaufman, the study’s lead author.

According to the study, the 2,000-year cooling trend was largely the result of a “wobble” in Earth's rotation that has been increasing the distance between the sun and Earth and decreasing Arctic summer sunshine. (The Earth is approximately 600,000 miles further from the sun during the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice than it was in 1 B.C.)

Kaufman stated that the recent warming trend is directly correlated to a continuing buildup of human-induced greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And, according to Professor Gifford Miller of CU-Boulder's Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, a study co-author, greenhouse gases began "overriding" the natural cooling period in the middle of the last century.

Scientists previously had determined that the Arctic is warming more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth, a phenomenon called “Arctic amplification.” And a report published earlier this year by the Obama Administration’s U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) concluded that warming in the Arctic will continue at a rapid pace in the coming decades given human-induced changes in Earth's atmosphere.

In a classic example of nature’s remorseless feedback loops, warmer temperatures in the northernmost regions are causing the permafrost to thaw. The decomposing soil, in turn, is releasing vast quantities of methane, one of the most virulent greenhouse gases, thus further exacerbating warming.

Methane has a global warming potential (GWP) far greater than carbon dioxide, meaning it is more effective as a greenhouse gas. Over a 20-year time span – viewed by experts such as Stan Rhodes of Scientific Certification Systems as a more relevant timeframe for analysis rather than the standard 100-year timeframe used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – methane has a GWP 72 times greater than carbon dioxide. Everyone focuses on carbon dioxide as the issue, but methane, pound for pound, is far worse. And it’s relentlessly spewing into the Arctic air.

Why care? According to NCAR’s Schneider, "… the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change … greenhouse gases from human activities are overwhelming the Arctic's natural climate system." Study co-author Miller stated that impacts will include loss of land-based snow and ice, thus adding to sea-level rise. Rising ocean waters pose a grave threat to island and coastal communities worldwide.

In addition, scientists were startled to discover earlier this year that Arctic sea ice is thinning to a much greater extent than previously anticipated. The decreased sea ice, in turn, causes increased absorption of the sun’s heat by the increasingly exposed ocean water.

Finally, the region’s remarkable temperature increases could hasten a disturbing possibility known to researchers as “abrupt climate change.” This is generally described as nature’s point of no return, i.e., when even reducing greenhouse gas emissions would have no effect on runaway, nonlinear global climate shifts.

Sources for this article include the following: September 4 issue of Science magazine; an article by Rachel Zurer in the Fall 2009 issue terrain magazine, “Climate Change May Be Abrupt – and Unstoppable”; Stan Rhodes of Scientific Certification Systems; the web site, EurekAlert; and, a September 3 University of Colorado press release.

See future articles in Climate Change Update for more information regarding the Arctic in crisis and abrupt climate change.

Federal Agencies Roll Out Greenhouse Gas Regulations, Initiatives

2009-11-08T02:46:00.000-08:00

The 1990s was a lost decade on the climate change issue in the U.S., mostly thanks to the hidebound U.S. Senate. In 1993 it defeated President Clinton’s BTU tax proposal, in 1997 it repudiated the Kyoto Protocol (which at that time still technically was only a draft, not a final accord) with its 95-0 vote in favor of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, and in 1998 it defeated “America’s Climate Security Act of 2007,” also known as the Lieberman-Warner bill.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner, in choosing to be MIA, also served as an obstacle, albeit a quiet and passive one. So President Clinton and Vice President Gore essentially limited the administration’s remaining climate change efforts to signing up corporate partners to its voluntary Climate Change Action Plan, supporting research, and launching an earnest but low-level public awareness effort that made a point to avoid the media, in which this writer participated. Of course, the U.S. and the world community then lost another precious eight years under Dubyah and his administration, no need to elaborate.

Today, 16 years after the U.S. Government should have started mobilizing the country to address global warming, we finally have a White House, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and a Department of Energy (DOE) moving forward with meaningful measures to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

In the face of the biggest crisis facing humankind, the current proposals are belated and relatively modest but nonetheless signify firm, positive steps.

The greenhouse gas regulatory genie finally is out of the bottle thanks mostly to two developments that have changed the legal and political landscape. First, on April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court found that "greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of air pollutant," and the Court ruled that the EPA does have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases in automobile emissions. And regarding air pollution that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare, the court further ruled that the EPA must regulate in this area unless it provides a scientific reason for not doing so. The Supreme Court decision resulted from a petition for rulemaking under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act filed by a coalition of nonprofit organizations.

The second game-changing development, of course, is the fact that the U.S. has a President Obama who not only gets it, he’s willing to take action. The powerful obstructionists in the oil and coal industries and the right-wing deniers in Congress lost their backstop that had collectively stifled the climate change issue on their behalf – no more Dick Cheney, no more Steve Johnson at the EPA, no more oil industry shill Philip Cooney at the Council on Environmental Quality.

In a tellingly swift response to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision, the EPA officially proposed a finding that GHGs do contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare. Specifically, the EPA Administrator signed “The Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act” on April 17, and on April 24 the EPA published its proposed rule in the Federal Register. A 60-day comment period followed, ending on June 23.

Here are the key regulatory and policy initiatives that have ensued:

EPA Rule Mandating Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: With EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson signing the “Final Mandatory Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Rule” on September 22, the EPA will, for the first time, require large U.S. emitters of greenhouse gases to begin collecting and reporting their GHG emissions data. This new program will apply to approximately 10,000 facilities across 31 different source categories that collectively account for approximately 85 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

This unprecedented requirement in and of itself does not reduce one ounce of carbon or methane. But you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Facility operators forced to report voluminous emissions will notice that their newfound limelight ultimately will have an invigorating effect on their wherewithal to “manage” those emissions.

Facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more per year of GHG emissions (measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, or C02e) are required to submit annual reports to EPA. The gases covered by the rule include the six greenhouse gases identified in the Kyoto Protocol – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. Although mobile sources are exempted from this rule, businesses such as vehicle and engine manufacturers and fuel suppliers do fall under the requirement. An additional 11 source categories, including for industrial landfills and underground coal mines, were not included in this final rule but are being considered for future inclusion pending resolution of technical issues.

The rule takes effect beginning January 1, 2010, with the first annual reports due on March 31, 2011. The rule is a result of a congressional mandate contained in the FY2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2764; Public Law 110–161).

Two words best describe this development: “modest” and “necessary.” Regrettably, it’s even more modest given that facilities are allowed to self-certify their emissions data, when instead they should be required to use accredited third-party certifiers, but EPA has decided that that is a battle for another day.

EPA Proposed Rule, “Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule”: This proposal, announced by the EPA on September 30, would impose new regulations on large stationary sources emitting more than 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year (measured in C02e). The GHGs covered by this proposed rule are the six Kyoto gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.

According to the EPA, it’s expected to affect approximately14,000 power plants, refineries, manufacturing, and cement production facilities, including some 400 coal-burning power plants that collectively are responsible for roughly 70 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Most businesses, including farms, office buildings, hospitals, bakeries, dry cleaners, and other retail outlets, will be unaffected.

The affected facilities would have to obtain construction and operating permits demonstrating that they are using best available practices and technology and energy efficiency measures to minimize their emissions. Most of these facilities already are regulated under the Clean Air Act (CAA) because of other pollutants they emit. This new EPA proposal is designed to fall under the auspices of the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) portion of New Source Review (NSR) and Title V operating permits programs of the CAA, which pertain to new sources and existing sources making major modifications. The proposed rule should be published shortly in the Federal Register and followed thereafter by a 60-day comment period that promises to be quite colorful.

This proposed rule immediately became highly controversial, an indication that it actually would make a real difference. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and other climate change obstructionists have voiced their opposition, questioning the legality of using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases, and undoubtedly will seek to bury the proposal in time-consuming litigation.

EPA and Department of Transportation Proposed Regulations to Increase Vehicle Fuel Efficiency Standards: According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) www.eia.doe.gov, of the roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day that the U.S. engorges, some 71 percent is from our transportation sector. Accordingly, any serious attempt to reduce U.S. GHGs needs to reduce consumption from our beloved automobiles, something the State of California attempted to do but got rope-a-doped by Dubyah in the last years of his administration.

President Obama quickly followed the EPA’s April “Endangerment” finding with a May 19 announcement that the administration would establish standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles by 30 percent and achieve an average fuel economy of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. The Administration crafted the announcement as an agreement with automakers, environmentalists, the United Auto Workers Union, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In September, the EPA and the Department of Transportation proposed the first-ever uniform standards to improve fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gases from new passenger vehicles. The proposed standards would apply to new model year 2012 to 2016 vehicles. The final rule and regulations are expected to be issued in March 2010.

An October 20 press release from the Environmental Defense Fund states, “The vehicles subject to these proposed standards are responsible for about 40 percent of all U.S. oil consumption …,” and “…account for 60 percent of heat-trapping emissions from the transportation sector and about 20 percent of all U.S. heat-trapping gases…” The proposal will achieve “… a 5 percent annual improvement in fuel efficiency for the nation’s passenger vehicle fleet,” and, “… would cut carbon dioxide pollution from passenger vehicles approximately 21 percent by 2030, reducing emissions by 950 million tons.”

DOE Boosting Energy Efficiency with Stimulus Money, Standards and Regulations: If you weren’t already aware, you may need to lie down after reading this, but Dubyah actually helped in this regard. In December 2007 he signed the “Energy Independence and Security Act,” which is just beginning to demonstrate its enormous potential impact on U.S. energy use. The bill includes funding to strengthen building codes, support “zero energy buildings” and solar photovoltaics, and also begins phasing out traditional incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescents and LEDs (light emitting diodes).

In March of this year, the Obama administration announced that it was appropriating $3.2 billion from federal stimulus funds (Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) for the DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants program for states and municipalities. Grants are for projects that reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy efficiency. Examples include energy retrofits for residential and commercial buildings, energy audits, tougher building codes, methane capture from landfills, renewable energy for government buildings, and financial incentives to promote energy efficiency. Then, in October, DOE Secretary Steven Chu announced plans to add another $750 million in stimulus funds to support loan guarantees for clean energy companies.

As Chu understands, most of these initiatives are new and long overdue, meaning there remains plenty of low-hanging fruit to pursue. Results ultimately should show a decrease in overall U.S. energy consumption, as well as a decrease in the percentage of consumption coming from fossil fuels.

See future issues of Climate Change Update for more information on energy efficiency initiatives nationwide, including the resurgence of white roofs and the green technology revolution in lighting.

Republicans Sneer, Democrats Fidget, Copenhagen Looms

2009-11-08T02:13:00.000-08:00

Three cheers for Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry. In September they introduced S. 1733, “The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” the Senate’s legislative vehicle to realize President Obama’s climate change ambitions, and on November 5 it passed Boxer’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. So much for the good news.

The 959-page bill passed the Democratic wing of the committee by 11-1, with Democrat and Finance Committee chair Max Baucus opposing and Republicans unanimously boycotting. Baucus is not the only Democrat loath to address global warming, and in the U.S. Senate, with its labyrinth of arcane rules and procedures, having just a tiny handful of your own party’s members opposed while the other party is united against can signify imminent defeat.

It’s the same woebegone domestic politics bedeviling the climate change issue as before, with Democrats fearful and divided about responding and Republicans united in their intransigence. President Obama’s original game plan – to have a robust, new climate change law in hand to show global climate negotiators at Copenhagen that the U.S. finally means business – is looking like yesterday’s news and today’s fish wrap.

Much work remains undone for the December 7-18 Copenhagen summit, but world leaders are sitting on their hands. They remember the U.S. Senate’s refusal to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, so they’ve decided that this time they’re going to wait for the Senate to act first. Todd Stern, President Obama’s climate envoy, told reporters in September that due to the Senate’s lack of alacrity he expects that work to complete an international climate framework will be pushed into 2010, well after Copenhagen’s hotels empty out.

Even if a climate change bill passes Congress, it will be threadbare. Both the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House and the draft Boxer-Kerry bill contain weak emissions reductions targets, with the former calling for an “excuse me” 17 percent reduction of carbon dioxide from 2005 levels by 2020 and the latter currently calling for a 20 percent reduction. Both bills provide years of free pollution permits to fossil fuel-burning utilities.

President Obama, in response, has been alternately determined and distracted. A special United Nations summit on global climate change, called in late September by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, represented Obama’s first opportunity for a speech before the august gathering. As reported in several New York Times stories on September 22 and 23, Obama made a stark departure from the previous Bush administration, speaking forcefully about the threat of global climate change and exhorting the other world leaders to action. But he also tacked on something of a disclaimer. He mentioned that the world was grappling with a recession, followed by stating, “And so all of us will face doubts and difficulties in our capitals as we try to reach a….solution to the climate challenge.” Was Obama trying to lower expectations for Congress? For Copenhagen? Was this, in fact, his first public cave-in to desultory climate change politics? Or was he instead innocently demonstrating to other world leaders that he understood their pain?

What we do know is that this is a time for some high-pressure, Lyndon Johnson-style pressuring, admonishing, cajoling, and hammering of individuals in Congress. History will render judgment on the far too many of them who refuse to accept the responsibilities of leadership. Environmental organizations are urgently doing what they can, but will anyone rescue the world from Congress’s climate change torpor?

California Carbon Label Bill Left Face Down in the Dark

2009-11-08T01:38:00.000-08:00

For all intents and purposes, California Assembly Bill 19, the Carbon Labeling Act of 2009, was quietly eliminated in the State Senate.  A fair number of corporations and business associations, including the California Chamber of Commerce, the Consumer Electronics Association, and the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, publicly opposed the bill, and it would be surprising if that opposition didn’t play a substantial role in the bill’s demise.

AB 19 called for a State-authorized vvoluntary carbon footprint label for products bought or sold in California. Sponsored by Democrat Ira Ruskin, the bill was first approved by the full Assembly and then by the Senate Environmental Quality Committee. Since it carried a program cost, however nominal, it subsequently was sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is chaired by Democrat Christine Kehoe and co-chaired by Republican Dave Cox. The bill was assigned to the “suspense file,” a normal legislative procedure. But there it was left to languish as the State’s legislative session ended rather than being removed, effectively killing it.

The Carbon Labeling Act proposed much the same consumer-oriented, market-driven approach that has proven popular with hundreds of corporations in dozens of industries nationwide ranging from fruit, coffee and restaurants to appliances, wood products and building materials. In California, a state which has firmly established itself as a high-profile leader on the climate change issue, a state-sponsored carbon label presumably could become a popular element in the marketplace – a viable new reason for possibly a great many customers to choose one product over another.

This would present both risks and opportunities for corporations, even for those deciding not to participate. And generally speaking, all corporations shudder at developments such as uncertainty, additional costs, and market confusion, all of which were possible side effects, at least initially, if AB 19 were to become law and shake things up.

Moreover, in California, large corporations in particular, with valuable market shares and reputations to protect, would be anxious to avoid being seen or even being perceived as opposing action on climate change. They would be anxious to avoid the following lose-lose scenario that they probably felt the Carbon Labeling Bill held in store for them:

Either incur new costs to pursue the new carbon footprint certification from the State and to then display the label on their products, thus making their products’ greenhouse gas emissions transparent – and risking public criticism for those greenhouse gases and public pressure to spend gobs of money to clean up their manufacturing processes and/or their supply chain. Or, avoid the aforementioned dilemma by taking a pass on the voluntary certification and label, thus risking a newfound competitive disadvantage from a direct competitor that would display the carbon label, as well as ever-mounting criticism for their lack of transparency.

If a sufficient number of corporations and industries decide they're against a bill in the California State Legislature, all that's left is the epilogue. So they avoided the dreaded lose-lose scenario by instead achieving their best-case scenario: As dues-paying members of the three above-mentioned business associations that came out against AB 19, they had others do the grubby work of publicly lobbying against the bill, and they noted the silence that accompanied the bill's quiet demise.

How Many Climate Change or Sustainability Events is a Good Thing?

2009-11-05T18:22:00.000-08:00

There are so many climate change and/or sustainability conferences taking place in California that it is impossible to keep track of all of them. In just a two-month period I had the good fortune to attend the recent Bioneers and Tides Momentum conferences, as well as the inaugural Next Agenda climate change event, and, most recently, a sustainability tour event in Berkeley hosted by East Bay Green Tours. Other recent prominent events that I happened to miss included San Francisco’s annual West Coast Green and the October 19 Social Media for Sustainability Conference.

A day or even half a day to attend an event is an enormous investment of valuable time. Is every event really worth it?
A simple answer would be “no,” but that’s not completely true. It depends on what knowledge and motivation you bring to the event and what you wish to get out of it. It brings to mind a favorite axiom of market economists: The question goes “What is (product X) really worth?” And the answer is, “Whatever price someone is willing to pay for it.”

The Bioneers conference in October was rich in thought-provoking speakers and panel discussions, and I wished I had more time to spend there. On the one day that I attended, I was deeply impressed with the visionary knowledge evidenced by Bioneers CEO and founder Kenny Ausubel and the amazing expertise and sharp mind of watershed expert Brock Dolman. I was privileged to see a presentation by world-famous food expert Michael Pollan, and I also learned some interesting ideas large and small about breakthrough sustainability practices, trends, and obstacles for businesses during an afternoon panel discussion. However, three other speakers during the morning plenary, while engaging, were essentially a waste of time if one was hoping to learn hard new facts.

The Next Agenda climate change event, "Clean Energy Challenge," hosted in September by the charismatic and articulate Peter Leyden, featured impressively accomplished speakers and was moving, inspiring, and potentially groundbreaking. Not one to reach for melodrama, I nonetheless found myself at day’s end standing up and speaking about my love for my two small children and my genuine fear for the safety of their generation. Other fathers, eyes moist, came up to me afterward to thank me for my heartfelt words. My life normally isn’t so emotionally charged. But conference participants with whom I spoke afterward all agreed that, good as it felt, the Next Agenda event was much ado about nothing within the context of the great climate change debate if Leyden and his team couldn’t deliver on their planned next steps for collective action. The jury is out.

The October 28 Berkeley Green Corridor Tour, hosted by East Bay Green Tours, was an intimate, informal and less evocative event. I also sense that it represented an interaction with others that ultimately will mean far more to me and my life than the more highly produced conferences mentioned above. Marissa LaMagna, founding director of East Bay Green Tours, is a native of New York City and has a background in environmental activism. She’s also smart, articulate, good-humored and efficient. Marissa’s tour, low-key though it may be, provides myriad benefits, education and inspiration for most anyone – whether for officials from other municipalities interested in program models, business owners seeking best practices, social entrepreneurs looking for collaborative opportunities, values-driven consumers looking for businesses to patronize, building owners looking for money-saving energy efficiency measures, CSR organizations looking for partnerships, and yet more. The list of inspiring and hard-working people and organizations that this one-day tour offers is far too long to list here. This well-thought and well-organized tour is a gem.

LEED: The Emperor Has No Clothes

2009-09-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

The highly touted LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification program for energy performance of new homes, schools, and commercial buildings has until now outrun its mostly hidden flaws.  LEED has been a resounding green business success story, enticing thousands of building owners clamoring for certification, spawning a thriving cottage industry of designers and accredited certifiers, and attaining most favored status among climate-conscious municipalities and politicians nationwide. Saving energy is LEED's raison d’être, with the resulting projected decreases in greenhouse gas emissions the reason for the program's sex appeal among the serious-minded. LEED's commercial successes may continue but its flaws have finally begun catching up to the hype.

As reported by Mireya Navarro in the August 30 New York Times, in addition to other sources, a recent review by the program's administrators, the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), found that a stunning 25 percent of LEED commercial buildings sampled did not live up to expectations for energy efficiency. Further, most certified buildings had not even been monitored for actual performance. A smart-looking green design suffused with good intentions and energy- or water-saving features was generally all that was needed (along with an ability to count points) for your office building to score one of those snazzy LEED certification plaques.

For those of us who have worked in the environmental certification business, LEED's overblown claims of energy savings have been an open secret.
The only questions were whether and when USGBC would do anything about it. Until their recent bad press they were too preoccupied with certifying their more than 1,900 new commercial projects to stop and reflect on their program's lack of integrity. Now, the USGBC will finally at least track every certified building's energy performance, as well as impose "minimum project requirements" -- no such requirements before -- but the information will be kept confidential.   The underlying problem brought to light is that LEED certification is awarded before buildings would have to earn it through actual performance -- you know, when actual tenants are turning on the lights, fiddling with the air conditioning, and flushing toilets. The unsurprising consequence is that performance falls short of advance pledges, with many LEED buildings registering barely any improvement over traditional non-certified buildings.

The New Buildings Institute (NBI), which did the recent research that has set off such a reaction, did a similar-sounding study in 2008, in that case examining 121 LEED new construction (NC) commercial buildings. From the 2008 report's Executive Summary, "One quarter [of LEED buildings surveyed]...had [Energy Star] ratings below 50, meaning they used more energy than average for comparable existing building stock."

For here is another ugly truth about LEED:  One of the One of the primary drivers of most commercial buildings' gluttonous energy consumption is their HVAC system (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning). So LEED encourages more efficient heating and cooling systems, right? Not necessarily. Certification can be earned by using measures such as bicycle racks, nontoxic paint and desert landscaping. Building owners can ignore their energy gobbling HVAC systems and still reap a public relations bonanza by hosting a "Our Building is LEED-certified" party.

There are other fundamental problems with LEED's approach, such as the methodology of its points system that determines certification.  Points for various environmental and efficiency measures are added up into one cumulative score. Score enough points and you achieve a certain level of certification. Since certification is promoted as having meaning, the score that earns it also must then have meaning. In other words, the score achieved is supposed to connote environmental accomplishment. But does it? Does the score mean anything?

Think of the ingredients labels on any of the thousands of products you find at your local grocery store. Ketchup, sliced bread, soup, you name it. These labels provide a breakdown of elements found in the product such as calories, grams of sugar and fat, and so forth, as well as the weight or percentage of that ingredient. This generally is helpful to consumers -- info on the label is transparent, detailed, and logical. What if, instead, these ingredients labels said "112"? Or "76?" Or "850?"

Now think again of whatever LEED building you have in mind. What does its score tell you about that building's "ingredients" and, thus, its energy performance? Nada.

LEED, to be sure, has fostered legitimate energy efficiency gains for buildings, and its supporters include those currently residing in the White House. But its exaggerated reputation make the certification something of a sham. Any program that bestows awards without demanding accountability from its awardees cannot be considered a leadership standard. LEED is another lightly salted "fat free" snack food ingested by overweight Americans who prefer the couch to the gym and the car to a 3-block walk.

Obama's Climate Change Bill: Don't Look Next If You're Squeamish

2009-08-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

As you might recall, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), better known as President Obama’s climate change bill, on Friday night, June 29. The bill squeaked by on a 219-212 party-line vote, with the opposition including 44 Democrats and all but eight Republicans. Supporters hailed the bill’s passage in the House as a historic achievement and a tribute to the uncanny political skills of Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the bill’s authors Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA).

The Senate will take up the Waxman-Markey bill sometime in fall, probably in conjunction with Senator Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) less ambitious American Clean Energy Leadership Act, a mixed bag of something for everyone, including fossil fuel and nuclear energy proponents, which passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on June 17.

However, if you’re looking for climate change legislation that boldly whips the nation forward by aggressively curbing our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, don’t look here.

Members of the House took a buzz saw to hard-hitting provisions of H.R. 2454 such as the auctioning of pollution permits within the cap-and-trade system, converting an overwhelming majority of them to freebies until well past 2020. Think of the permits no longer as tools to change environmentally destructive behavior and more as candy being tossed from a holiday parade float. Further, almost as an apology for any inconvenience caused, the bill’s short-term target for emissions reductions now calls for a de minimis 17 percent reduction in GHG emissions from 2005 levels by 2020.

Hollowing out of climate change ambitions has only begun. U.S. Senators, already more conservative than their House counterparts and now given fits of anxiety thanks to today’s fiery health care reform debate, will make the House buzz saw look like a nail file. There are only two possible fates awaiting the Waxman-Markey bill in the Senate, one more ugly than the other.

Scenario #1: It’s 1993 All Over Again

Who remembers what happened with the climate change issue in 1993? Then, as now, we had a visionary young Democratic President determined to change America’s misguided course on energy and climate change. Members of Congress were debating the merits of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, a non-binding pledge to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases that was signed by 154 nations during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. (The U.S. signed and ratified the accord that year under the first President Bush.) Warnings of potential climate change impacts from the newly prominent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and from Vice President Al Gore’s 1992 best-seller, Earth in the Balance, helped prod this new debate.

Most notably, President Clinton in his proposed five-year budget plan included a tax on the heat content of fuels as measured in British thermal units. The significance of the Btu proposal was its landmark attempt to apply sound economic principles while achieving pollution reduction. Polluters would be forced to internalize the costs of what heretofore had been an externality – pollution from fuel combustion. The Btu tax was to have applied to coal, crude oil, natural gas, hydropower, and nuclear power.

Republicans were hyperbolic and united in their opposition, fossil fuel-based industries were vehement and unstinting in their warnings of economic doom, and nervous centrist Democrats were unresolved in their misgivings. After urgent White House lobbying, the U.S. House of Representatives on May 19, 1993 barely passed Clinton’s Btu tax proposal, 219-213. Does any of this sound familiar?

The Btu tax then limped over to the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans alike dismissed it as a non-starter before getting down to the business of obliterating it and shoving the carcass into a corner. Its proposed costs were shifted to individual consumers and then ceaselessly whittled away until what was left were faint traces of taxes on gasoline and aviation fuel and a more enthusiastic tax on, jeepers!, personal motorboat fuel. My summer job as an environmental policy analyst for the Democratic Leadership Council’s Progressive Policy Institute gave me a front row seat to the ever-disappearing Clinton Administration proposal. My last two of several legislative impacts analyses were regarding the nil impact on consumer driving behavior of first a proposed 6.5 cents-per-gallon gasoline tax and then a proposed 3.4-cent tax.

Now we're back to the future.  Although the truth-challenged Global Climate Coalition – a highly potent and influential lobbying organization during the 1990s that denied the reality of climate change on behalf of the oil and coal industries – is mercifully dissolved, many of the organizations that once led it are lobbying as loudly, expensively and effectively today against the Waxman-Markey bill as they did 16 years ago against the Btu tax. These enormously powerful stakeholders include the coal industry, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the utilities that mostly rely on coal. They’ve already succeeded at killing most of the forced purchases of pollution permits, one of the few incentives for industry to reduce fossil fuel use.

Conservative Republicans in Congress remain as bellicose, as impervious to scientific data, and as virulently opposed to addressing the hard facts about climate change as they were in 1993. In dishonest but compelling terms, Republicans are excoriating the Waxman-Markey bill as “the biggest” job-killer and tax increase “in U.S. history.” That is, when they’re not busy still amazingly asserting publicly that climate change is a hoax.

At the same time, according to Columbia University sociologist Dana Fisher as reported by David Craig in the university’s Fall 2008 magazine, there are 52 senators from coal-mining states and they “…overwhelmingly vote against bills that would regulate greenhouse gas emissions.”

How will the U.S. public weigh in? Somebody get Stanley Greenberg to the rescue. Americans are divided along partisan lines about global warming. Further, the Pew Research Center in April 2008 found that fewer than half of Americans believed that pollution is warming up the planet. And while a survey in March of this year found that 59% of the public favored “setting limits on carbon dioxide emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if that may mean higher energy prices,” surveys are notorious for respondents’ willingness to tax themselves in theory and for the yawning disconnect between responses now and action later. Large segments of this same public are reeling from the housing and financial collapse and ongoing recession. So a conflicted and distracted general public will not exert much influence on the U.S. Senate.

Who will? Residents across the 26-plus coal- or oil-producing states, plus states where coal is utilities’ dominant fuel. Residents were whipped into opposition in 1993 and they’re rallying again in 2009. Then we have this year’s media darlings – angry, right-wing conservatives, Pat Buchanan’s peasants with pitchforks come to life. They’ll soon pivot from yelling ignorantly against health care reform to yelling ignorantly against addressing climate change. The politically weak and somewhat divided environmental ngo community, despite its millions of members, doesn’t seem to be much of a counterweight.

Think of the resounding political pratfall of 1993 – Hillary’s health care debacle. What is it about improving health care and fighting climate change? Renewing their shared moribund history?

It’s déjà vu all over again.  The U.S. Senate will kill President Obama’s signature attempt to pass a new law to finally begin reducing U.S. GHG emissions.

Scenario #2: Victory Trumps Substance

Democrats in the Senate, for all their shrinking resolve, don’t wish to hand the obstructionist Republicans a major victory, nor do they wish to embarrass their party’s president on one of his highest priorities. Further, while the similarities are striking, there are enough significant differences with the dynamics of 1993 to provide the Obama Administration with the muscle and margin needed to steer a climate bill past a grudging U.S. Senate.

Five key differences from 1993:  First, the scientific data on climate impacts not only is more certain and more dire, in some cases it’s already here right before our eyes.  Examples, unprecedented in recorded human history, include the melting of permafrost in Alaska and Siberia, melting of Arctic summer ice that is much faster than anticipated, and the melting of the glaciers astride the European Alps. In the U.S. Senate, such disturbing facts don’t bother the right-wingers in denial, but they do have weight with sober-minded moderate Democrats, which in 1993 was the cohort that sealed Clinton's demise on his Btu tax.

Second, the threat that global climate change poses to U.S. national security is being seriously considered by policy makers for the first time.  A recent official Pentagon report cited potentially significant national security risks caused by possible droughts, flooding, and water shortages, which could lead to mass migrations of refugees, outbreaks of illness, and competition for scarce freshwater resources. This provides one more reason for an undecided Democratic Senator or two to throw their support to Obama on this issue.

Third, corporations universally opposed the Btu tax. Today, they are mostly split on the Waxman-Markey bill.  As reported in the New York Times, companies that have gone on the record supporting the legislation include General Electric, Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, DuPont, and PG&E. While the political calculations behind such support are usually more subtle than what appears before the naked eye, it is still true that pragmatic and clear-minded business leaders have come to understand the dire risks, including to their profits, posed by global climate change. In addition, business entrepreneurs and many business associations understand that embracing innovation in cleaner fuels, energy efficiency, and green technologies will kindle, not kill, profits and jobs. In the Bay Area alone, such corporate organizations or initiatives include Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network's "Climate Prosperity," the Bay Area Council, New Voice of Business, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Fourth, the media no longer serves as enablers to climate skeptics as it did in the 1990s, when almost no reporters understood the issue or in particular the science. Focused on journalistic balance in which all supposedly legitimate points of view are equally represented, reporters a decade ago continually gave as much weight in their reportage to the mostly baseless claims of climate skeptics, including fossil fuel industry shills, as they did to the IPCC, the intergovernmental body of scientists formed by the United Nations and 2007 Co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

And fifth, this time we have an administration whose leaders seem truly united and committed on the issue.  That wasn’t the case in 1993. Then, Energy Secretary nominee Hazel O’Leary stated in her confirmation hearings that she was opposed to energy taxes. And once confirmed by the Senate, Energy Secretary O’Leary further undermined President Clinton during a television interview by providing a per-family cost estimate of the Btu tax that was 50 percent higher than the White House’s own estimate. No such treason so far from current Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Carol Browner is another example. As Obama’s climate change “czar” (officially the Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change), Browner presumably is applying her highly acclaimed skills to advancing Obama’s climate agenda. Isn't that a given? Well, as Clinton’s EPA Administrator in the 1990s, Browner ran as far and as fast as she could from the climate change issue. This included eliminating the EPA’s Climate Change Division and muzzling everyone at the agency, including herself, from talking to the media on the subject. And while Clinton and Gore were desperately seeking allies during the public evisceration of the Btu proposal, Browner’s silence was deafening.

So the landscape has changed. But right now fear is rippling among Senate Democrats. Specifically, fear of public backlash against Obama’s financial and health care initiatives, against Senators’ votes on these matters, and in the future against a supposedly costly energy plan. Senators don’t want to be perceived during our recession as causing economic harm to anyone in the form of higher energy costs. Democrats are especially terrified of super-heated Republican diatribes against this new energy “tax,” the dreaded “T” word.

Senators know that Obama needs passage of a climate change bill, while they basically do not. This gives them the leverage to extract maximum concessions from the bill’s supporters before giving it their “Aye” vote. So they will quietly emasculate many of the bill’s remaining tougher provisions and replace them with industry sweeteners in the form of exemptions, subsidies, and regulatory delays.

The Waxman-Markey bill will be less a coherent framework for meaningful policy and more a helping of tired political hash.  Requirements for utilities to purchase renewable energy, already modest, will be further eroded. Cap-and-trade will be disemboweled, with the overall cap on pollution being eased and the auctions of pollution permits being further reduced and delayed. The farce of clean coal will get more funding.

But a bill will survive and President Obama will sign it. Members of Congress will pat themselves on the back for passing such “transformational” legislation, as Obama has described it.

Prediction:  Some kind of climate bill, perhaps only a passing resemblance of its original self, will make it through the Senate and be signed into law by President Obama. Why? Because failure is not an option. Obama desperately needs passage of a new law as his platform for demonstrating U.S. leadership during the global climate negotiations underway this year. Obama knows that such a bill is his minimum requirement for prodding China, India, and the other recalcitrant major developing countries to make the “meaningful” GHG reductions they promised at the recent G-8 Summit.

U.S. credibility with other countries has been badly damaged during eight years of President George Bush. If the Senate defeats Waxman-Markey, nearly all remaining U.S. credibility would be gone. Any leverage that the U.S. otherwise might have had in this year’s climate talks would be sapped. The U.S. would be exposed as a pampered hypocrite on the issues of energy and climate. Again. China would get a free pass to keep building its weekly coal-fired power plants. It would be a political and policy disaster on an epic scale. Obama and his advisors understand this. They will find a way to get a bill past the Senate. And U.S. GHG emissions will continue rising precipitously.

The good news: There is some. An eventual U.S. climate change law, regardless of how toothless, has more than one purpose. For one, it will represent historic if initially modest changes to the status quo. Clean energy, energy efficiency, green technologies, and a modernized energy infrastructure will begin over time replacing the fossil fuel-based approaches of the past. Two, political momentum will build for further domestic action on climate change. Three, it will be easier in ensuing years to enact strengthening amendments to an existing climate law. And fourth, Obama will use the law as leverage to begin prodding China and other developing countries to reduce their own emissions. Real, if insufficient, progress.

2009-06-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

Can a Carbon Footprint Label Make a Difference in Reducing Greenhouse Gases? Yes, If You Believe in the Power of the Marketplace

Reflecting growing concern about global climate change, as well as the growing prominence of market-oriented environmental performance ratings for products, carbon footprint labels probably soon will be coming to your store shelves. The World Resources Institute (WRI) and Carbon Trust are but two of the organizations developing voluntary carbon labels for products.

Another carbon footprint label quite possibly will be coming from the State of California in the form of Assembly Bill 19, the Carbon Labeling Act of 2009, which passed the State Assembly on June 2 with no real concerted opposition and currently awaits Senate action. AB 19 was authored by Assemblymember Ira Ruskin (D-Redwood City) and is promoted by the group Carbon Label California (www.carbonlabelca.org), which primarily has received funding from Silicon Valley philanthropist Noel Perry.

The purpose of AB 19? Carbon Label California and other supporters of the legislation hope that a prominent label bearing the imprimatur of the State of California and explaining that product's carbon footprint will be meaningful and credible enough to consumers to help sway their purchase decisions toward a preference for low-carbon products. Further, much as it has done with other recent global warming legislation and policy, this bill presents another opportunity for the Golden State to prod the rest of the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A product's carbon footprint is meant to denote the amount of GHGs, converted into pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent, that were emitted in order for this product to be produced and shipped for sale at your store.

For AB 19 to be both an environmental and marketplace success, enough corporations will have to find it in their self-interest to go to the trouble and expense of determining, then reducing, and finally publicizing their product's carbon emissions. In this manner, they meet evolving consumer expectations, strengthen their environmental credentials and their brand, and gain competitive advantage. At the same time, sufficiently growing numbers of consumers will need to presumably change their purchasing behavior to reward those companies that have lowered their GHG emissions and punish those that haven't.

Success will depend in part on effective branding, marketing, advertising, and merchandising by participating corporations. But success also very much hinges on widespread consumer acceptance of a yet-to-be determined carbon measurement protocol and rating system.

If AB 19 becomes law, the choice of which measurement protocol to use -- there are both lenient and stringent approaches -- belongs to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Presumably, consumers would attach more value to a more stringent carbon footprint protocol. On the other hand, the tougher the requirements the more expensive the whole process for businesses, thus serving as a barrier to market entry and limiting overall marketplace impact. Many businesses and other supporters are likely to prefer an easier approach for measuring their GHG emissions.

Tougher emissions measurement protocols utilize a life cycle analysis (LCA) approach, which generally captures both direct and indirect carbon emissions throughout the product's supply chain. This can include: use of raw materials and their transportation; manufacturing; distribution; energy use; and, with the most comprehensive GHG measuring approach ("Scope 3"), vendor performance. Even with differences in difficulty among different LCA approaches, LCA nonetheless is a fuller and more realistic accounting of a product's carbon performance than non-LCA approaches. The latter methods are easier, as they measure fewer impacts, but they would still end up as numbers on a label.

So, given different approaches and assumptions in measuring greenhouse gases, how does a concerned but somewhat bewildered and harried shopper readily understand what the numbers on a carbon label are supposed to really mean? How does one compare the carbon footprint for one product to another if both display certification labels from credible third-party organizations?

Most carbon and sustainability experts probably share these concerns. One, Nancy Hirshberg, vice president of Stonyfield Farm, was quoted in the New York Times that measuring a carbon footprint is a "fabulous tool" for identifying an organization's emission reduction opportunities. But she also said that, given the variables in determining a footprint, assigning a single number to a package was "misleading at best."

This methodological quandary does potentially confuse consumers. At the same time, Matt Newman, co-founder of Carbon Label California, points out at least two key benefits of a carbon footprint product label:

First, if provided by a credible third party certifier, and assuming no one commits market suicide by advertising a product with high emissions, a carbon footprint label does distinguish products that reduced their greenhouse gases compared to times past, their competition, or both. Other products on the shelf making either an unsubstantiated or vague claim -- ("Our internal investigation discovered we're green, we can all feel good") -- or no claim whatsoever fare poorly in comparison. In the case of AB 19, the third-party certifier would be CARB, which consumers should find reassuring and possibly even compelling.

Second, a carbon footprint label highlights the inherent environmental advantage of buying locally produced products. It's easy to understand that fruit, vegetables and flowers produced at farms within two hours' drive of the Bay Area, compared to like products produced in Latin America and shipped here via airplanes, cause far fewer greenhouse gases by the time you're buying them at your local grocery or flower store.

Stay tuned for more information at Climate Change Update regarding AB 19, and regarding the realm of voluntary environmental and sustainability standards and certification.

2009-06-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

National Academy of Sciences Sounds Alarm Bells with New Projections of Climate Change Impacts

At present, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are roughly 390 parts per million (ppm). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), as reported earlier this year in the Los Angeles Times, stated that even if the nations of the world could bring carbon dioxide levels back to those of the pre-industrial era -- a fantasy miracle we aren't going to see -- it would still take 1,000 years or longer for the climate changes already triggered to be reversed. According to the NAS, this is primarily due to the long-term impact of carbon dioxide on oceans. The NAS further reported that in the nearer future the world will experience greater melting of the polar ice caps than previously estimated and droughts in some regions, including southwestern U.S., comparable to the 1930s U.S. Dustbowl.

2009-06-15T20:08:00.000-07:00

Population Growth Helping Drive Surge in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Today’s global population is 6.5 billion. It took the entirety of human history until 1830 to reach the first one billion people in population, but at present it's taking us a mere 12 or 13 years to add each new billion. Our annual growth is 80 million people. This explosive growth in the sheer numbers of people consuming resources, energy, and water, producing waste, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions is without historical precedent and significantly impacts Earth's carrying capacity.

2009-06-08T09:57:00.000-07:00

Some Hits, Some Misses, as Friedman Discusses Climate Change and Energy

This is a summary and review of the keynote address delivered by author and columnist Thomas Friedman at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s (BAAQMD) May 4 Climate Action Leadership Summit.

Friedman’s presentation and discussion, based upon his recent book, ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded,’ was in parts an insightful tutorial on global energy issues, an accurate and thus ominous review of climate change-related developments and challenges, and a self-indulgent exercise in name-dropping (repeating for the audience that he was “a close friend” of Al Gore, as one example).

He also devoted part of his presentation to a snappy slogan -- “Change your leaders, not your light bulbs” – that he masqueraded as a strategic approach for curbing greenhouse gases. The first half of his slogan was Friedman committing the public speaker’s sin of not knowing his audience. The latter half brought to mind Dick Cheney’s widely panned remark several years ago that energy conservation was an admirable personal ethic but not a legitimate component of an energy policy.

Summary of Friedman’s key points and premises:

The world is getting hot, flat, and crowded. Friedman is correct, of course. Regarding temperatures, this writer notes that despite 2008, when average surface temperature in the lower 48 states was 1.34 degrees Fahrenheit lower than in 2007, average global surface temperatures increased over the last 100 years by about 1.1 degrees. Regarding “flat,” Friedman explained that this is a metaphor for the growth in the ranks of the world’s middle class and thus, in global appetites for American lifestyles and consumer amenities. “There are too many Americans in the world today,” Friedman joked. And as for crowding, this writer notes that today’s global population is 6.5 billion and that while it took all of human history until 1830 to reach the first one billion people we are now adding 80 million people per year, or, another billion every 12 or 13 years.

Five global energy mega trends today, with each contributing to serious global problems and challenges, are:

First, energy and natural resource supply and demand and its impact on human freedoms, or what Friedman labeled “the first law of petropolitics.” Friedman examined four countries almost totally reliant on oil for their GDP -- Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Nigeria – and discovered that when the price of oil went down, his “freedom index” regarding living conditions in those countries went up. When the price of oil went up, the freedom index went down.
Second, petrodictatorships are flourishing.
Third, human-induced climate change is occurring. Further, we won’t come remotely close to halting and reversing levels of greenhouse gas emissions if nations such as China and India and in South America and South Asia continue to power their growing economies with enormous amounts of relatively cheap fossil fuels, which of course is the U.S. model. The comparatively modest reductions in emissions currently being contemplated in the U.S. and Europe would be completely overwhelmed by the concurrent growth in emissions from the world’s underdeveloped nations if current trends continue.
Fourth, some 1.6 billion people today are suffering from “energy poverty,” i.e., they have no access to electricity and thus are denied the economic and quality of life benefits that electricity provides. Living in already deprived conditions in underdeveloped countries, they likely will suffer disproportionately as climate and weather patterns change.
And fifth, we are in the midst of a mass phase of biodiversity extinction so pronounced that we’re entering what Friedman and others call the “Age of Noah.” We are the first human generation like the biblical Noah, necessitating that we act strategically and aggressively to protect the last remaining pairs of many species of animals that are fast becoming extinct.

The answer to each of these global problems is the same: widespread use of abundant, cheap, reliable clean energy. But curbing the world’s voracious appetite for fossil fuel, and switching it to clean energy such as wind, solar and biomass, requires nothing short of revolution. The good news, according to Friedman, is that revolution is coming. Namely, innovation involving the environment, clean energy, and green technology is soaring, creating an Energy Technology (ET) revolution that will permanently alter the world’s economies and industries. Friedman predicted that this will be the world’s “next great revolution” but also noted that getting there will be extremely difficult, as there will be winners and losers.

This writer notes that, policy and financial interventions aside, the “losers” in a switch to clean energy are politically powerful stakeholders that include: the coal industry overall, as well as coal-producing regions in the U.S.; most U.S. utilities; petroleum-exporting nations such as Russia, Iran, and Venezuela; and, manufacturers that rely heavily on oil in their production processes.

The U.S. needs to position its economy and business enterprises at the forefront of this coming ET revolution or risk losing a generation’s worth of economic opportunities. If the U.S. can achieve ET leadership, says Friedman, we will garner economic security, environmental security, energy security, and national security. To have a chance to attain leadership of, and gain advantage from, the ET revolution, the U.S. must undergo three institutional changes: First, businesses must change their practices. Second, “green” has to become the norm, not the advertising novelty that it is today. And third, there must be a significant and lasting increase in the price of carbon-based fossil fuels.

Price matters. Permanently assigning a significantly higher price to carbon-based fuels -- one that internalizes their current environmental externalities and reflects their true environmental and societal costs – is a necessary step in weaning societies off fossil fuel. By first taking this step, “forces will be set in motion” unleashing investments in renewable energy, alternative fuels, and clean technology. These innovations will realize their tremendous market potential and the world’s economic and energy landscape will change forever. Without this price signal for coal and oil, the ET revolution will be minimized and the unprecedented growth in global GHG emissions will continue.

We haven’t yet taken the serious steps in the U.S. that would impel the ET revolution. Instead, “we’re having a green party,” which Friedman gleefully mocked as consisting partly of corporate “green” advertising pitches and the seeming over-abundance of “how to save the environment” books.

Generally speaking, I mostly agree with Friedman’s point but his examples were rather poor. Friedman is correct that a great many corporations are exaggerating their supposed environmental accomplishments, and very publicly so. Consumers are being flooded with green advertising, some of which is completely true and meaningful, some of which is not. Just the other night I watched a TV commercial by a company advertising itself as “the Greenest” junk removal service – meaning what? – and we’re all being subjected to Chevron’s irritating and disingenuous advertising campaign. We could go on and on with “greenwashing” transgressions that include exaggerations, intellectual dishonesty, portraying modest actions as major, and touting environmental certifications that in some cases rest on flimsy requirements. But this isn’t universally true of corporations, hundreds of which voluntarily are going to the trouble and expense of making meaningful changes and meeting what are sometimes tough environmental performance standards.

Regarding the books, was Friedman suggesting that a seemingly excessive number of books on individual empowerment was some sort of denial of the big picture? Good thing he wasn’t an opinion leader in the U.S. prior to the American Revolution. Was he implying that the environmental benefit of numerous individuals taking relatively modest steps was a waste of time? Illogically, Friedman’s answer to both questions seemed to be “yes,” as he made clear with the final main point in his presentation.

“Change your leaders, not your light bulbs”

From a national perspective, the first half of this message, “Change your leaders,” was obvious. In order for Americans to fundamentally shift our economy into one based on clean energy, we can’t miss the fact that only elected officials and others whom they appoint to agencies can make laws, change laws, and craft and implement regulations. Further, members of Congress to date have been a dismal failure on the daunting challenges of energy use and climate change. “It all comes down to leadership,” Friedman reminded us, and this writer’s own reminder is that historically this has meant a lack of leadership and currently this means an opening awaiting leadership.

But this message for this audience was misdirected. Many of those seated around me were policy or political leaders who recently had played substantial roles in what are enormous accomplishments on the climate change issue, namely AB 32, SB 375, and California’s toughened automobile fuel efficiency standards. As opposed to most elsewhere in our nation, Bay Area residents indeed have elected the right political leaders for effective action on energy, the environment, and climate change.

The latter half of his policy prescription, “Change…not your light bulbs,” was a puzzler. Friedman, a smart and educated man, couldn’t be more misguided in his disdain for the collective positive environmental impact of numerous individual actions. It’s a fact that enormous quantities of carbon dioxide equivalent have been avoided thanks to numerous individuals each taking some of the same mundane steps, such as recycling, increasing building insulation, telecommuting, purchasing energy efficient appliances, conserving water, using video conferencing in lieu of airline travel, and more. Friedman also was ignoring the power of the consumer-driven marketplace, in which increasing numbers of environmentally aware consumers are driving real changes in corporate behavior.

Even given the weight of many of Friedman’s observations in his prepared presentation, his most concerning statement occurred during the Q&A session. A pesky questioner in the audience extracted from Friedman the reluctant admission that we are “probably too late” in the fight against human-induced global warming.

What “too late” truly means is best explained by expert scientists. To cite only one alarming example, recently published Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reported that even if reality were turned on its head and the nations of the world could bring carbon dioxide levels back to those of the pre-industrial era (currently we are at roughly 365 parts per million), it would still take 1,000 years or longer for the climate changes already triggered to be reversed. This was mostly due to the long-term impact of carbon dioxide on oceans. What the world will experience in the meantime, according to the NAS, will include greater melting of the polar icecaps than previously estimated and droughts in some regions comparable to the 1930s U.S. Dustbowl. We’ll end this edition of Climate Change Update on that sobering note.

ABAG Meeting re SB 375 Climate Change Law and Bay Area Response

2009-05-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

This first Climate Change Update is regarding SB 375 and last week’s Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) Spring General Assembly and Business Meeting with “Call to Action” concerning “SB 375: Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Land Use and Transportation Planning.”

Meeting Agenda, Participants: The meeting took place on Thursday, April 23 and was presided over by Rose Jacob Gibson, ABAG President and San Mateo County Supervisor. The morning session included an audience of some 80 people, most of whom were elected city and county officials and local planning, transit and environmental department managers. The agenda included: David Chiu, San Francisco Supervisor and Board President, who gave the host city welcome; Nancy McFadden, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for PG&E Corporation, who gave the morning keynote; a three-person panel on “Setting the Stage” that included moderator Scott Haggerty, Alameda County Supervisor; and, a five-person panel on “Implementing SB 375” that included moderator Dave Cortese, Santa Clara County Supervisor.

SB 375 Purpose, Approach: SB 375 was signed into law by the Governor on September 30, 2008, and mandates that regions pursue an integrated land-use and transportation planning approach for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks. SB 375 implements provisions of California’s AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which calls for reducing the State’s GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

SB 375 requires California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) to assign a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target to each of the state’s metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) for the years 2020 and 2035. ARB must propose draft reduction targets by June 10, 2010 and adopt final targets by September 30, 2010.

SB 375 Key Elements: 1. Established a Regional Targets Advisory Committee (RTAC), through which stakeholders can recommend factors and methodologies for ARB to consider in setting the targets. 2. Requires each MPO to meet its emission reduction targets by developing a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) for its region, i.e., a regional growth plan designed to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Of key importance, the SCS will be part of each region’s Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), thus linking its new growth strategy to transportation planning law. In addition, regional transportation funding decisions must be consistent with the SCS. 3. Requires MPOs to align their Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process and requirements with their RTP, thus for the first time linking regional transportation and housing planning. 4. If a region does not meet its reduction target, the MPO is required to create an Alternative Planning Strategy (APS) containing more aggressive reduction measures. 5. Provides “CEQA Exemptions and Streamlining” for two types of development projects that conform to the SCS and help reduce VMT even if they conflict with a local community’s plans: residential or mixed-use projects, and “transit priority projects.”

The Nine-county Bay Area: The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) are the region’s two formally designated MPOs. More important, these two agencies, together with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), formed a regional planning consortium, the Joint Policy Committee (JPC), and it is the JPC that will serve as the primary policy-making body that will draft the Bay Area’s Sustainable Communities Strategy. Already in 2007, the JPC approved a “Bay Area Regional Agency Climate Protection Program” with a stated goal to “employ all feasible, cost-effective strategies to meet and surpass the State’s targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.”

The MTC on April 22 produced its updated Regional Transportation Plan, “Transportation 2035 Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area,” which outlines how more than $200 billion in federal, state, and local transportation funds will be spent over the next 25 years. “Transportation 2035” contains major elements that should contribute to VMT reductions and will be included in the Bay Area’s SCS, such as “FOCUS,” an incentive-based regional planning initiative, and the launch of a “Transportation Climate Action Campaign.”

SB 375 Analysis: For the most part, regional and municipal leaders across the U.S. barely have begun to use local planning as a strategic tool to seriously address global climate change, which is why SB 375 is groundbreaking. But the success, or lack thereof, of SB 375 likely will vary on a region-by-region basis according to the wherewithal of each region’s planners and local elected officials. To even have a chance of crafting an effective SCS, regional planning, transportation and local government leaders will have to cooperate and compromise to an unprecedented degree even though our political processes are not set up that way.

Moreover, SB 375 does not tie state or federal funding to land use decisions, does not confer land-use authority onto the MPOs, and does not force local governments to comply with their region’s SCS. There are other caveats and exemptions in the bill that potentially undermine its intent.

The CEQA exemptions are controversial to some, but SB 375 contains language watering down the impact, such as the fact that they can’t be granted until the SCS is adopted. At the same time, state legislators are considering clean-up legislation that would increase CEQA streamlining.

Requiring regional leaders to incorporate their RHNA requirements into their RTP introduces a healthy dose of realism regarding the imperative to cut GHG emissions even as regions plan for population growth.

Bay Area Perspective: One speaker after another at the April 23 meeting extolled the need to “work together.” More than an obvious platitude that one expects to hear from elected officials, this chorus highlighted the enormous challenge of achieving meaningful regional cooperation on nitty-gritty matters such as which constituencies will get which incentives, dollar allocations, and development and transit projects. And of course, the end result needs to be less driving, less traffic, greater use of more easily accessible public transit, and pedestrian-friendly downtowns that are good for business and residents.

Thanks primarily to the leadership of ABAG, MTC, and the JPC, as well as numerous stakeholders involved with shaping MTC’s “Transportation 2035” plan, the Bay Area’s effort to produce a robust strategy that will reduce VMT is well underway. Several of the speakers cited examples of mostly nascent or pilot projects that have potential to significantly reduce GHGs if scaled up, such as Berkeley FIRST, which provides cheap loans with favorable terms for residents installing solar energy for their homes, and a proposed Regional HOT network consisting of 800 miles of HOT (high-occupancy and/or toll) lanes that promise to reduce traffic congestion while raising revenue for public transit.

In addition, FOCUS has the potential to be a highly effective tool, as it “directs financial assistance and other resources to Priority Development Areas (PDAs) and Priority Conservation Areas (PCAs)” to foster infill development near transit and provide long-term protection to “regionally significant open spaces.” These PDAs and PCAs already have been identified, and at least one prominent panelist at the meeting felt that PDAs are the “backbone” of the Bay Area’s pending Sustainable Communities Strategy.

Next up: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District hosts a “Climate Action Leadership Summit” on Monday, May 4 at the Fox Oakland Theatre with the keynote provided by acclaimed author, columnist, and foreign affairs expert Thomas Friedman.