Top International Energy Agency (IEA) officials offered a bleak assessment Tuesday of the prospects for global progress on preventing big temperature increases. [The Hill]

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, said Tuesday that he sees “no momentum” on climate, noting that prospects for a legally binding global agreement are currently a “stretch.”

He said climate change is “slipping off the policy radar screen.”

According to study released late Tuesday in Environmental Research Letters the ocean is already rising faster than the most recent authoritative report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was projecting as recently as 2007.  [Climate Central]

The United Nations sounded a stark warning on the threat to the climate from methane in the thawing permafrost as governments met for the second day of climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar. [Guardian]

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest slowed dramatically last year as the government stepped up efforts to detect and halt illegal farming and logging, though some environmental groups warn that recent changes to the law protecting the forest might slow further progress. [Wall Street Journal]

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire on Tuesday ordered state agencies to take initial steps to combat ocean acidification, making it the first state to address problematic changes in ocean chemistry that threaten shellfish farms, wild-caught fish and other marine life. [Los Angeles Times]

Scientists said on Tuesday they had proof that climate change was hitting the Perigord black truffle, a delight of gourmets around the world. [AFP]

Beneath a 50-foot-thick sheet of ice, the salty, frigid Antarctic Lake Vida is somehow teeming with life. That’s according to a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Los Angeles Times]

Gore Derangement Syndrome Lives — But Not Here

The inimitable Dave Roberts of Grist had a good interview with Al Gore this month. The Climate Reality founder discusses “carbon taxes, natural gas, and the ‘morally wrong’ Keystone pipeline.”

Since a carbon price is the sine qua non of reality-based climate policy, and Gore has been way, way ahead of the curve, I’ll excerpt that portion. At the end, I’ll also comment on Grist’s comment policy and Gore Derangement Syndrome.

Q. Did you hear [White House press secretary] Jay Carney this morning?

A. No, God help us, what’d he say?

Q. He said, “We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one.”

A. I don’t think that comes as a big surprise to anyone. Those of us that hold out some hope that we will find a way to get a price on carbon, and know there are multiple ways to do it, have felt that the convergence of the fiscal cliff and the climate cliff could produce some surprising results. And there have been some private comments by some Republicans to that effect. But certainly that’s something you wouldn’t wanna bet money on in Vegas.

Q. What do you think of this idea of a revenue-neutral carbon tax?

A. I have proposed a revenue-neutral carbon tax for a long time, 30 years. I proposed it in my first book, Earth in the Balance.

I supported cap-and-trade because a lot of folks felt that it offered the opportunity for bipartisan consensus. And by the way, it may yet gain altitude globally — China, as you know, is implementing it in five provinces and two cities. They have indicated that they intend to use these pilots as a model for the nationwide program. Many are skeptical, but they often do follow through with what they say they’re going to do. And [cap-and-trade] just started in California yesterday. Australia is now linking theirs to the E.U. system. South Korea’s moving, British Columbia, Quebec — there are a lot of parallel developments that could converge, particularly if China does follow through. It’s premature to write [cap-and-trade] off, even thought it’s has been demonized and so many people are afraid to talk about it.

But from the very beginning, I preferred a carbon tax. (And by the way, I’d be in favor of both; I don’t think they’re inconsistent at all.) And yet, the political environment in the U.S. has not changed to the point where it’s something you’d wanna bet on. But look, we’ve got to solve this. It’s an irresistible force meeting an immovable object, and something’s gotta give. I have enough faith in humanity to believe, against a lot of evidence, that we’re going to solve this.

Q. Does this idea of a carbon/income tax swap make you nervous? The income tax is one of the only places we have progressivity in the U.S. tax code.

A. I have not proposed doing it on the income tax, I have proposed doing it on the payroll tax. I am also friendly to the notion of a rebate scheme, though I doubt they’ll do that. It needs to be progressive — the rising inequality in the country is too serious to run the risk of worsening that.

Q.Do you worry that you getting out in front of this might brand it in a certain way —

A. Well, they come after anybody who speaks up in favor of doing something on climate. It’s not going to surprise any of them that I’m in favor of it. I’ve said it on practically a daily basis for years and years.

Gore’s last answer is dead on. The anti-science crowd demonizes all climate hawks. That is hardly a reason for silence by any hawk on any aspect of climate science, solutions, or policy — quite the reverse. Certainly the public opinion data makes clear that Nobel laureate did not polarize the climate debate – and every leading social scientists in the field I’ve spoken to agrees (see “Public Opinion Study Debunks Claim Al Gore Polarized the Climate Debate“).

Despite the fact that the science continues to support a worse-case analysis than the one Gore advanced in An Inconvenient Truth, the vitriol against him continues to this day, so much so it has its own label “Gore Derangement Syndrome.”

And if you want to see an epidemic of GDS, just go to the comments section of the Grist interview — but put on your head vise first. That may be the best argument I’ve seen in a while for moderating comments, which the overwhelming majority of blogs do. I’m a huge fan of Grist’s — they reprint Climate Progress pieces and we reprint theirs — but I’d urge them to at least put an intern on that job. What really is the point of a comments section if it can be overwhelmed by those spreading disinformation and/or Gore Derangement Syndrome?

by Jackie Weidman

Yesterday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that his state needs $42 billion to recover from Hurricane Sandy and to protect against future extreme weather events.  Three quarters of this sum is just for damage repair and restoration of homes, businesses, and mass transit.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also announced that Sandy caused $29.5 billion in economic costs there, cautioning that the estimate will likely rise after next summer’s tourism season and real estate values take a hit.

Cuomo urged that mitigating damage from future storms is essential, as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather. “There has been a series of extreme weather incidents,” Cuomo said just days after Sandy’s landfall.  “We have a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns.”

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) warned that obtaining federal funding for recovery efforts could be difficult, especially during the  fiscal showdown. Schumer said that an emergency supplemental appropriations bill will be introduced in December and that it “will be an effort that lasts not weeks, but many months, and we will not rest until the federal response meets New York’s deep and extensive needs.”

Additionally, the House of Representatives hasn’t been friendly to disaster relief. In both 2011 and 2012, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee proposed cutting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) budget by $87 million and an additional $182 million, respectively. 

This isn’t the first time that states have asked Congress for disaster funding, and it certainly won’t be the last. FEMA only has $12 billion in disaster aid to provide annually.  Yet in 2011 and 2012, the U.S. experienced at least $126 billion in direct costs just from extreme weather events that caused $1 billion in damages or more.

A recent Center for American Progress report called “Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower-Income Americans,” finds that the vast majority of U.S. counties – 67 percent – were affected by at least one of the 21 billion-dollar extreme weather events in the past two years.   The report found that lower- and middle- income households are disproportionately affected by the most expensive extreme weather events.

Although New Jersey and New York account for the lion’s share of damages from Hurricane Sandy, they aren’t the only states slammed by extreme weather. Sixteen states were afflicted by five or more extreme weather events in 2011-12.  Households in disaster-declared counties in these states earn $48,137, or seven percent below the U.S. median income.  These states were ravaged by hurricanes and tropical storms, tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, floods and crippling drought.

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Planning officials monitoring rebuilding efforts in coastal New Jersey towns hit by Superstorm Sandy are getting a little worried.

Will the state make permanent decisions about coastal infrastructure that simply make the problem worse down the road? Will developers construct houses, roads, and sewage systems without taking into account sea levels, which are rising faster than average in the Northeast?

Re-building efforts in New York and New Jersey offer a unique opportunity to think about climate resiliency efforts. But in the aftermath of a storm like Sandy, those hard decisions can get swept aside in an effort to build as quickly as possible and bring life back to normal for residents.

As Governors, planners, and residents start putting their communities back together, it’s helpful to look back at a bit of history.

In 1989 — just one year after NASA’s James Hansen testified before Congress about the looming threat of climate change — New Jersey’s Republican Governor Thomas Kean issued an executive order calling on his state to recognize the “scientific consensus” of climate change and to prepare for rising sea levels, intensifying storms, and other threats posed by a warming planet. (Click to enlarge the documents below).

Recognizing those threats, Governor Keane called on the New Jersey government to begin reducing chlorofluorocarbons and take modest actions to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Most importantly, he called on the state to begin planning for the threat of rising sea levels:

It’s fascinating to see how far backward we’ve fallen. In Virginia this year, lawmakers struck any mention of the phrases “climate change” or “sea level rise” from a report on increased coastal flooding, saying they were “liberal code words.” And in North Carolina, legislators passed a bill this summer preventing state agencies from acknowledging the rise of the oceans — even as the state sees rising sea levels at more than three times the global average.

According to research from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, areas around New York and New Jersey could see 20 inches of sea level rise by mid-century. And as a Climate Central analysis shows, there is a one in six chance that storm surge levels could top eight feet by the end of the century, impacting nine percent of New Jersey’s homes.

New Jersey hasn’t slipped into denial. Over the last five years, the state has implemented some pretty aggressive renewable energy programs and carbon reduction efforts. In addition, state officials have reaffirmed their commitment to acknowledging the impact of climate change on coastal areas, and have rolled out resiliency pilot programs in a few communities.

But Sandy revealed how exposed the state and region really are. And now the building process will reveal how committed officials are to true “resiliency” — 23 years after New Jersey’s Republican Governor first warned of the problem.

(Hat tip to Kevin Kirchner for flagging the documents).

Faithful reader have been waiting more than 6 years for reality to catch up to the name of this blog. So I am delighted to report that despite those doomsayers at the New York Times and New Scientist, the United States of America, at least, is finally making some big-time Climate Progress.

How do we know? Because one of our senior negotiators at the international climate conference in Doha, Qatar, Jonathan Pershing, said so:

“Those who don’t know what the US is doing may not be informed of the scale and extent of the effort, but it’s enormous.”

For the uninformed, here is what “enormous” climate progress — in scale and extent — looks like, according to the US Energy Information Administration:

Woo-hoo! All we need is a ten more years like 2009, and we’ll achieve the catastrophe-averting 80% reduction in carbon pollution by mid-century that Obama campaigned on.

Yes, the administration is touting emissions reductions that were due in large part to the economic collapse and subsequent slow economic growth, coupled with the low price of natural gas (which itself was partly due to the unnaturally warm weather last winter and spring, as the EIA notes).

Not that the U.S. has been a total slacker in climate policy. Obama has put in place impressive fuel economy standards and made major investments in clean energy. States have pushed renewable electricity through portfolio standards. For a detailed breakdown of all the reasons for the drop in carbon pollution, see “Shale Gas And The Overhyping Of Its CO2 Reductions.”

But the “scale and extent of the effort” is minimal, at best, compared to the scale and extent of the problem.

Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe joins the Heartland Institute at the Capitol building this morning to unveil a new campaign to rein in the “rogue” Environmental Protection Agency.

Inhofe is best known for his tirades against established climate science; the fringe Heartland Institute is best known for its billboard campaign comparing people concerned about climate change to the Unabomber.

The Environmental Protection Agency is best known for protecting America’s air and water.

The two partners say they have collected 16,000 signatures from people calling on lawmakers to slash the EPA’s budget by 80 percent and stop it from regulating carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas responsible for warming the planet.

16,000 sounds like a lot of signatures. That is, until they’re compared to the four million comments from people who say they support the EPA.

Over the last two years, as the agency has finalized new regulations for mercury, air toxics, and global warming pollution, groups supportive of such measures have acquired record numbers of comments in favor of the rules.

Earlier this year, environmental and public health groups collected and delivered more than 3.2 million comments supporting EPA’s carbon pollution standard for power plants; in 2011, they collected more than 800,000 comments supporting EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standard; and so far in 2012, groups have collected more than 420,000 comments supporting the EPA’s soot pollution standard.

Environmental organizations say the 3.2 million comments in support of EPA regulation of CO2 is the most of any federal rule, ever.

Once again: that’s more than four million comments in support of new EPA rules versus 16,000 signatures against them.

Considering the outcome of the election earlier this month, that disparity isn’t much of a surprise.

In the two months leading up to the November presidential election, groups specifically touting oil, coal, and gas spent more than $31 million on television ads. Throughout the whole campaign, pro-fossil fuel interests outspent environmental and clean energy interests 4-1.

However, in the end, environmental groups won nearly every single race they targeted, bringing in some key allies to the Senate and keeping President Obama in the White House.

One post-election poll from Zogby Analytics showed that 65 percent of voters say elected officials should act now to reduce carbon pollution. That poll also found that 44 percent of voters believe the government is doing too little to protect clean air, clean water, and other natural resources. Only 14 percent say the government is doing too much in this area.

by Rebecca Lefton and Andrew Light

The next high-level gathering of parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change started this week in Doha, Qatar, and will continue until December 7. In this column we provide an overview of the upcoming talks and discuss what the results of U.S. elections may mean for the Obama administration’s positions during these negotiations.

What to watch for in Doha

The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Doha will continue the progress made to date toward advancing a series of tracks toward a comprehensive international climate agreement. While none of these tracks alone is sufficient to address global climate change, taken together they have gotten us closer than ever to a comprehensive international solution. The biggest items on the three primary tracks of the Doha agenda are:

• The closing of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action
• Agreement on a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol
• Advancement of a work plan for the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action

Closing of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action

During the 2011 climate talks in Durban, South Africa, parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed that the Long-term Cooperative Action should conclude in Doha. The action, which began in 2007 in order to implement the Bali Action Plan agreed to under the Bush administration, gave rise to the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreements.

Though many throughout the world hoping for a binding international treaty viewed Copenhagen as a disappointment, it was never likely that the 2009 U.N. climate change conference could have ended in a binding agreement. The United States would not have signed onto an agreement that did not solve the problem of rising greenhouse gases, leaving out major emitters such as India and China—now the largest emitter in the world, the country’s per-capita emissions are on par with the European Union’s emissions. China even objected in Copenhagen to developed countries articulating their own 2050 emission-reduction targets in a formal agreement, presumably because it would mean that rapidly developing countries would be responsible for the remainder of required emissions reductions to achieve some level of climate safety.

But for all its criticisms, Copenhagen was groundbreaking. For the first time countries at all stages of development agreed to put forward pledges for national actions to address global warming by 2020. Over the past three years, 141 countries, including all the major emitters in the developed and developing world—which are responsible for more than 80 percent of global emissions—have made voluntary mitigation pledges. This was an important step forward, given that until then the only articulated pledges for reductions were made by developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol, which now account for less than 15 percent of global emissions.

Perhaps most importantly, the Long-term Cooperative Action allowed a pathway for a bottom-up approach, bringing pledges from both developed and developing countries to the table. The bottom-up approach, as opposed to a top-down architecture, allows for varying commitments by country. This is significant because it recognizes the different capacities and levels of development of each country. The question is: How do we ensure that the sum of parties’ commitments will keep us on a pathway where it is still possible to hold temperature increase at 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels by the end of the century? This is now the agreed-upon goal of the U.N. process.

Many analyses warn that there is a gap between the total emissions reductions from parties’ pledges under the Copenhagen Accord and where we need to be to meet the 2 degrees Celsius goal by 2020. The current framework allows for parties to start where they are now and assess progress to see what must be done to meet that goal. The pledges—along with agreements on transparency, technology, forestry, and finance—were enshrined in Cancun during the 2010 U.N. climate conference. Parties agreed to report on progress of their unilateral commitments, and the following year in Durban, countries agreed to regular regional reviews beginning in 2013. Work on how to overcome this gap will now move to the new track under the Durban Platform.

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Canada’s ruling Conservative Party government has been leading a slow and systematic unraveling of environmental and climate research budgets, according to local scientists—including shuttering one of the world’s top Arctic research stations for monitoring global warming. [Inside Climate News]

As global temperatures continue to rise — nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000 — the threat of a milder climate looms over the ski industry. In New England, the outlook is worse than in the West, climate researchers say, and independently owned resorts at lower elevations are at the greatest risk. [Boston Globe]

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, making a case for tens of billions of dollars in federal aid, declared on Monday that Hurricane Sandy had been “more impactful” than Hurricane Katrina, the deadly storm that struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. [New York Times]

In September, Gov. Paul LePage cited a report that said Maine’s renewable energy mandate would cost electricity ratepayers $145 million and nearly 1,000 jobs by 2017. The study was immediately challenged for its conclusions, and now its motives are under scrutiny. [Morning Sentinel]

Researchers have found that exposure to traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy is associated with autism, according to a new study released on Monday. [San Jose Mercury News]

Lake Lanier is at its lowest level since the historic drought of several years ago, and if much-needed rain doesn’t arrive soon, metro Atlanta could revisit the days of sweeping water restrictions and recreational nightmares. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Republicans stopped Sen. Jon Tester’s (D-Mont.) Sportsmen’s Act dead in its tracks Monday evening. The Sportsmen’s Act, S. 3525, would have increased access to federal land for hunters and fishermen, while also supporting conservation measures, but Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) raised a budget point of order, saying Tester’s bill violated the Budget Control Act. [The Hill]

China’s position on its rising greenhouse gas emissions may seem contradictory. While the country flaunts ambitious green-tech investments and energy consumption targets, its officials continue to prioritise GDP growth over many environmental concerns. [Guardian]

The meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change this year, which opened Monday in Doha, Qatar, promises to be a more staid affair than the three previous sessions. [New York Times]

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) released a report early Tuesday morning that recommended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) address the impact of warming permafrost and the large volume of methane and carbon dioxide that will be emitted from the ground if permafrost continues to melt. [Climate Central]

The NY Times isn’t the only major publication going apocalyptic on climate change. New Scientist has a new dedicated issue that makes the Times’ stories seem down-right Pollyannish.

Nearly 3 years ago, the late William R. Freudenburg discussed in a AAAS presentation how new scientific findings since the 2007 IPCC report are found to be more than twenty times as likely to indicate that global climate disruption is “worse than previously expected,” rather than “not as bad as previously expected.” As he said at the time:

Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss ‘both sides’ of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate ‘other side’ is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date.

So it’s good to see New Scientist make just that point in its special issue on climate change:

Five years ago, the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a gloomy picture of our planet’s future. As climate scientists gather evidence for the next report, due in 2014, Michael Le Page gives seven reasons why things are looking even grimmer

The 7 reasons are below, with links to their respective articles. Since they are all behind a paywall, I’ll provide links to Climate Progress articles on the same subject:

1. The thick sea ice in the Arctic Ocean was not expected to melt until the end of the century. If current trends continue, summer ice could be gone in a decade or two. Read more (or see “Death Spiral Watch: Experts Warn ‘Near Ice-Free Arctic In Summer’ In A Decade If Volume Trends Continue“).
2. We knew global warming was going to make the weather more extreme. But it’s becoming even more extreme than anyone predicted. Read more (or see “NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather“).
3. Global warming was expected to boost food production. Instead, food prices are soaring as the effects of extreme weather kick in. Read more (or see “Oxfam Warns Climate Change And Extreme Weather Will Cause Food Prices To Soar” and links therein).
4. Greenland’s rapid loss of ice mean we’re in for a rise of at least 1 metre by 2100, and possibly much more. Read more (or see “Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Nearing Critical ‘Tipping Point’” and links therein).
5. The planet currently absorbs half our CO₂emissions. All the signs are it won’t for much longer. Read more (or see “Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4°F – 1.5°F To Total Global Warming By 2100” and “Drying Peatlands and Intensifying Wildfires Boost Carbon Release Ninefold“).
6. If we stopped emitting CO₂ tomorrow, we might be able to avoid climate disaster. In fact we are still increasing emissions. Read more (or see “The IEA And Others Warn Of Some 11°F Warming by 2100 on current emissions path”)
7. If the worst climate predictions are realised, vast swathes of the globe could become too hot for humans to survive. Read more (or see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts“)

Actual New Scientist image accompanying bullet #7!

And people say Climate Progress has too much gloom and doom! Still, if we didn’t add that all of the above impacts will be happening simultaneously and “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” then we wouldn’t be true to our name, would we? [Note to self: Look up "progress" in dictionary.]

It’s too bad the articles are behind a paywall, but at least the accompanying editorial plea, “Obama should fulfil his 2008 climate promises,” isn’t. The editors’ bottom line is inarguable:

What’s needed is very clear: emissions cuts, and soon. The best way to do that is to change our economic systems to reflect the true long-term cost of fossil fuels. That means ending the $1 trillion of annual subsidies for fossil fuels and imposing carbon taxes instead.

by Mike Casey, via Scaling Green

In our first post on the Clean Energy Forum we held recently at Tigercomm, we noted that there’s an aggressive, ongoing effort by the fossil fuel lobby to push clean energy policy into the culture wars (hat tip to J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun).  How to combat this assault is a pressing question not just for those of us in the clean economy, but also for politicians who get the urgent – even existential – need for our country to develop abundant energy that’s clean and cost-effective.

All too often, though, we have had to choose between one candidate who might support us and one who is cheering our demise (go figure!).  Former Virginia Governor  Tim Kaine recently ran for, and won, a U.S. Senate seat from Virginia. A few weeks earlier, Kaine was willing to sit with some of the sharpest minds and most dynamic companies in the mid-Atlantic region’s clean economy community (note: also see our first and second posts on the forum). He actually wanted to hear from us and had an understanding of what we’re doing.

During the roundtable, Kaine made a number of astute observations, but one particularly jumped out at us regarding the phony Solyndra “scandal.” According to Kaine, demonizing the entire solar industry over one particular company’s demise would be analogous to people arguing that the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill should make us stop using oil completely.

More Kaine:

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A bizarre headline, I know. But even stranger is that someone actually made that comparison.

Speaking about China’s demand for Canadian tar sands at a conference in Beijing earlier this month, a Chinese energy researcher compared unused tar sands to “unmarried single women.”

“It’s the same situation as the leftover single women. … It will be the same for the oil sands, they will be outdated just like unmarried single women,” said Chen Weidong, a chief energy researcher at the CNOOC Energy Economics Institute.

That sparked a new piece of satire from the folks at Deep Rogue Ram, the creative group behind the rogue weathergirl series. One of the people who produced the video, Heather Libby, also wrote another great skit comparing the Keystone XL pipeline to an annoying ex-boyfriend who won’t take “no” for an answer.

Watch the Tar Sands Love Line:

by Craig A. Severance, via Energy Economy Online

Right now the climate and energy community is stuck.  There is a growing consensus, including among conservatives, that it is finally time for a carbon tax.  Yet, no politician — especially President Obama — seems ready to advance the proposal.

The previous proposal to do something about climate — cap&trade — failed to gain wildly popular public enthusiasm (and we need this level of support).  While economists thought cap&trade was the best way to address the carbon pollution that is causing extreme climate disruption, it wasn’t seen as “giving back” enough to the public.

We Need Work not Wonk.  A recent American Enterprise Institute conference on a carbon tax showed broad support for the idea among both Republicans and Democrats.  Conservatives have long wanted to lower taxes on earnings, and many have called for taxing consumption or pollution to achieve this.  A properly structured carbon tax can also bring investment and jobs, and effective action on climate.

However, the conference showed how quickly the discussion can fall into a “wonky” technical morass of various ways to carry out a carbon tax.  There are a host of different and complex ways to assess a carbon tax — but that is not where the discussion needs to begin.

To gain wildly enthusiastic public support, we must first discuss the economic prosperity that can flow from a carbon tax.

No “Bitter Pill.” As much as Americans now want action on extreme climate disruption, the public just won’t take any “bitter pill” to solve the problem.

Climate economists know preventing loss of life and economic damages from superstorms, droughts, floods, and wildfires more than justifies taking action now.  This is all very true and rational, but President Obama knows the public wants action on the economy.

The nation’s main focus is still “jobs, jobs, jobs”.  The President has his ear keenly attuned to the public voice, and he is right to insist economic prosperity must flow from any climate proposals.

The price of climate action will be acceptable if it is used to deliver what the public wants.  Salespeople never begin by focusing on price, but rather strive to meet what the customer wants.  Once the customer decides they want something, they are willing to pay the price to get it.

To gain wild enthusiasm from the public, we must learn to talk about climate action smartly, and show that action on climate is also a way to achieve very popular and tangible economic proposals the public wants.

Fortunately, this won’t be hard.

Top 10 Ways Economic Prosperity Can Flow From Carbon Tax:

Depending on the level of tax placed on carbon and the amount of revenues thus raised, the following “Top 10″ benefits can flow to the public:

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The campaign to kill renewable energy, brought to you by the organization that gave you this billboard.

Six months after rolling out a disastrous billboard campaign that linked people who care about global warming to the Unabomber, the Heartland Institute is looking for another project to boost its profile.

And what better way for the organization to mend its tarnished image than to go after a policy that Americans overwhelmingly support?

The Heartland Institute, known for its campaigns to cast doubt about the science of climate change, is now teaming up with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to craft laws repealing state-level renewable energy targets. ALEC is best known as a “stealth business lobbyist” that helps corporate interests write and pass legislation friendly to their interests. This spring, the organization came under fire for its role in pushing Stand-Your-Ground laws that opponents blamed for the shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. Both the Heartland Institute and ALEC lost major funders throughout the spring as a result of the separate controversies.

The campaign to dismantle these types of laws isn’t new. Last summer, Bloomberg News reported on tax documents showing that Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil and other energy companies paid membership fees to ALEC in order to help write legislation repealing carbon pollution reduction programs in states around country. But after getting beat on the issues in national elections earlier this month, these groups are doubling down on their efforts to kill clean energy on the state level.

The Washington Post reported this weekend on how the embattled Heartland Institute is joining the campaign:

The involvement of the Heartland Institute, which posted a billboard in May comparing those who believe in global warming to domestic terrorist Theodore J. Kaczynski, shows the breadth of conservatives’ efforts to undermine environmental initiatives on the state and federal level. In many cases, the groups involved accept money from oil, gas and coal companies that compete against renewable energy suppliers.

The Heartland Institute received $736,500 from Exxon Mobil between 1998 and 2006, according to the group’s spokesman Jim Lakely, and $25,000 in 2011 from foundations affiliated with Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, whose firm Koch Industries has substantial oil and energy holdings. Lakely wrote in an e-mail that the Koch donation was “earmarked for our work on health care policy, not energy or environment policy.” He added the institute had received financial support from the Koch brothers before 2001, but did not specify how much.

James Taylor, the Heartland Institute’s senior fellow for environmental policy, said he was able to persuade most of ALEC’s state legislators and corporate members to push for a repeal of laws requiring more solar and wind power use on the basis of economics.

So far, 29 states have renewable energy targets in place. And with years of experience in these states, multiple analyses have shown that these laws have had virtually no impact on rate increases.

Heartland and ALEC are building their campaign around economic research from the Beacon Hill Institute, a free-market think tank that has received money from Koch-backed groups:

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by RL Miller, via Daily Kos

Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times has published yet another anti-solar piece in the Los Angeles Times. This time, in Solar power plants burden the counties that host them, she discovers that sprawling rural counties that vote Republican would like more money from the federal government, please, and it’s all the fault of Big Solar. And when a sprawling rural county that votes Republican tries to tax just the solar industry alone, solar advocates organize opposition to a Sun Tax.

The horrors!

Among other journalistic nuggets, she reports that construction workers laboring near the California-Nevada state line are more likely to spend their money in Nevada (i.e., Las Vegas) than in the middle of California’s Empty Quarter. Because Joshua trees don’t take ATMs.

And she indulges Republicans opposed to the Obama administration’s treatment of renewable energy:

“The solar companies are the beneficiaries of huge government loans, tax credits and, most critically for me, property tax exemptions, at the expense of taxpayers,” said county Supervisor John Benoit, referring to a variety of taxpayer-supported loans and grants available to large solar projects as part of the Obama administration’s renewable energy initiative. “I came to the conclusion that my taxpayers need to get something back.”

Republican John Benoit, shorter: If they’re going to get special treats, I want a cut.

Among Benoit’s recent campaign contributors: Occidental Petroleum, California Independent Petroleum Association, Chevron, Valero Energy… but no solar folk. (That information is not in Julie Cart’s story. I did the research.)

Also missing from Cart’s story is any sort of perspective or critical analysis. If a plant will end up with only five permanent workers, then how accurate is the county’s claims of wear and tear on its roads and increased emergency room services?

Julie Cart has been assigned to the California desert solar beat for several years. Anyone whining about Big Solar finds her writing a sympathetic story.

Her reporting that Taxpayers, ratepayers will fund solar plants was widely criticized as getting the facts wrong, very wrong.

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by Anne Polansky

Conservative Republican Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, known internationally for his denialist viewpoint on climate change, and nationally for being a defense hawk, may soon be faced with the problem that his stubborn stance on the former conflicts with his ability to credibly pull off the latter.

When he returns for the 113th Session of Congress in January, Sen. Inhofe will give up his role as Ranking Minority Member on the Environment and Public Works Committee (forced by Senate rule) and take up the same role on the Senate Armed Services Committee, replacing Sen. John McCain. Though he’s served on this Committee since 2009, his new position will give him more power and responsibility; he’ll be leading the Republican members and working alongside Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) to oversee, direct, and authorize key military programs in the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. He’s looking forward to it: “My focus on the committee will be on military readiness, acquisition reform, and preventing the potential hollowing out of our forces,” he’s said in the press.

Let’s talk about military readiness, through the lens of a new analysis conducted by the National Academy Sciences at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis is a thoughtful 218-page brief that makes the case that the military should boost its overall readiness for, and understanding of, the threats that a disrupted global climate could pose to US national security. It builds on and verifies previous studies with similar conclusions, and elaborates on the destabilizing effects of restricted access to, or prolonged shortages of, essential resources, such as arable land and potable water. Competent staffers should place this report on Senator Inhofe’s must-read list for the winter recess.

On Climate Progress and elsewhere, much ink is dedicated to the nonsensical mutterings and obstructionist shenanigans of Sen. Inhofe on the topic of global warming and climate change. As Chair of Environment and Public Works from 2003-2007 and Ranking Minority Member under the chairmanship of Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) since 2007 when Democrats regained control of the Senate, Jim Inhofe has made every attempt to quash meaningful legislative proposals to cut carbon and deal with climate impacts.

He’s taken every opportunity to spout off about how climate change is one of the “biggest hoaxes ever played” on the American people (and even published a book about it); how NASA scientist James Hansen is not a real scientist and is not to be believed (but that his own cherry-picked but poorly credentialed scientists are); and how anthropogenic global warming is impossible anyway since, well, “God is still up there” and it’s “outrageous” and arrogant to believe human beings are “able to change what He is doing in the climate.” Check, check, and, uh, check.

In early 2008, soon after the Democrats had retaken the Senate and Sen. Barbara Boxer had taken back the gavel, she invited former V.P. Al Gore to testify on climate change, and brought a full hearing room to rare applause when she skillfully intercepted another typical Inhofe filibuster by reminding her colleague that, indeed, “elections have consequences” and she was now enforcing the rules. (Translation, he should shut up now.) Many had high hopes that the Congress would finally take on and pass serious carbon-cutting provisions, but it was not to be. While the demise of the 2009 House-passed comprehensive climate change “Waxman-Markey” bill (named the American Clean Energy and Security Act) in the Senate can’t be blamed just on Inhofe, he incessantly urged his colleagues to defeat the bill and repeated his mantra that a cap-and-trade bill will never pass into law in the US.

In a rare appearance earlier this year on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show, he admitted: “I was actually on your side of this issue when I was chairing that committee and I first heard about this. I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.” Oops. The truth, outed.

But from what I read in the CIA-requested National Academy of Sciences report, drawn from a panel of top experts, higher-ups in our military forces are worried about the costs of failing to deal squarely with a climate-change-disrupted world:

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All eyes are on Doha, Qatar, this week as world leaders, politicians, academics and environmentalists gather to work on a global solution to climate change at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. [International Herald Tribune]

Doha will host the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change. But can a major oil and gas hub with the highest carbon footprint per person in the world lead the way on a switch to a green economy? [The Telegraph]

This year marks the end of the first commitment period of the 1997 Kyoto protocol. But it was never ratified by the US, contains no obligations for developing countries and has been abandoned by others. [Guardian]

Industrialised countries have failed to provide the promised $30 billion to tackle climate change in developing nations particularly the poor and least developed countries, hindering a global agreement on climate, according to an independent non-profit research institute. [Economic Times]

Newly published research suggests mountain pine beetles have become so widespread that they’re not just benefiting from global warming, they’re starting to contribute to it. [CTV]

China expects US President Barack Obama will give climate change more attention in his upcoming second term, top climate change negotiator Su Wei said ahead of the climate change talks in Doha, Qatar. [China Daily]

Two major organizations released climate change reports this month warning of doom and gloom if we stick to our current course and fail to take more aggressive measures. [The Atlantic]

Some advocates fear that rebuilding efforts could take shape on New Jersey’s storm-devastated shore before thoughtful decisions can be made about just how the area should be rebuilt. [Associated Press]

Maine snowmobilers love to have destinations for their wintertime rides, and they are working with the wind power industry on a plan to link perhaps 10 of the state’s wind farms with trails in a unique addition to Maine’s outdoor tourism menu. [Associated Press]

The NY Times (finally) goes apocalyptic on climate change. Here’s the cover image of their big Sunday Review piece, “Is This The End?”

The sub-hed of the print story is “Whether in 50 or 100 or 200 years, there is a good chance New York City will sink beneath the sea.” The story begins:

WE’D seen it before: the Piazza San Marco in Venice submerged by the acqua alta; New Orleans underwater in the aftermath of Katrina; the wreckage-strewn beaches of Indonesia left behind by the tsunami of 2004. We just hadn’t seen it here. (Last summer’s Hurricane Irene did a lot of damage on the East Coast, but New York City was spared the worst.) “Fear death by water,” T. S. Eliot intoned in “The Waste Land.” We do now.

There had been warnings. In 2009, the New York City Panel on Climate Change issued a prophetic report. “In the coming decades, our coastal city will most likely face more rapidly rising sea levels and warmer temperatures, as well as potentially more droughts and floods, which will all have impacts on New York City’s critical infrastructure,” said William Solecki, a geographer at Hunter College and a member of the panel. But what good are warnings? Intelligence agents received advance word that terrorists were hoping to hijack commercial jets. Who listened? (Not George W. Bush.) If we can’t imagine our own deaths, as Freud insisted, how can we be expected to imagine the death of a city?

Yes, there is a strain of fatalism in this piece. The media often treat global warming like a progressive illness whose ever-worsening symptoms have been ignored too long — which, of course, they share culpability for (see “Silence of the Lambs 2: Media Herd’s Coverage of Climate Change Drops Sharply — Again“).

A companion piece, “Rising Seas, Vanishing Coastlines,” does a better job of spelling out the choices:

There are two basic ways to protect ourselves from sea level rise: reduce it by cutting pollution, or prepare for it by defense and retreat. To do the job, we must do both. We have lost our chance for complete prevention; and preparation alone, without slowing emissions, would — sooner or later — turn our coastal cities into so many Atlantises.

Precisely. And the Times includes an excellent interactive graphic of the nation’s major cities with 5 feet, 12 feet and 25 feet of warming, “What Could Disappear.”

Still, the fatalism in the main piece is over the top:

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by Ryan Matley, via Rocky Mountain Institute

George W. Bush, the Queen of England, Sir Elton John, and Sir Richard Branson probably don’t have much in common, but they all have installed ground source heat pumps. And it’s not just a technology for the rich and famous. Habitat for Humanity installed heat pumps in its Oklahoma City development, Hope Crossing, because the low operating costs would help future residents save on their utility bills.

Sixteen percent of America’s 18.8 million barrel per day oil consumption is burned to heat our homes and businesses, and two-thirds of that demand is in the Northeast (New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). Swapping out oil consumption for electric ground source heat pumps offers a low cost, low pollution heating source that can generate $20 billion in savings and is a crucial step to achieving RMI’s Reinventing Fire vision in the Northeast.

The region spends over $14 billion every year on fuel oil—consisting of both distillate fuel oil, which is nearly identical to diesel fuel, and residual fuel oil, which is a heavy, viscous fuel also called “bunker fuel.” That means the six million residential and 450,000 commercial customers who use oil spend an annual average of $1,700 and $8,900, respectively, to heat their homes and businesses.

Along with the economic drag from using this high-priced fuel, 43,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, 69,000 tons of sulfur oxides, and 57 million tons of CO2 are added to our atmosphere every year, negatively impacting our health, air, water, and climate.

If residents and business owners in the Northeast switch entirely from oil to heat pumps they could save a total of $5.5 billion per year in heating costs, which is more than the healthcare expenditures of the entire state of Vermont. Over the lifetime of a heat pump system, each resident in the state could save $3,000 (present value), and each business could save $50,000 (present value). Emissions of NOx, SOx and CO2 would be reduced by 81 percent, 66 percent, and 81 percent, respectively. Those CO2 emissions reductions alone are equivalent to taking 8.2 million cars off the road.

How Does it Work?

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by Mary Anne Hitt, via the Sierra Club

Now that the presidential election is over, the people of Ohio are facing another important choice — whether their state will embrace clean energy measures that will save money and lives, or continue wasting energy from polluting coal plants. To help get the message out far and wide, the Ohio Sierra Club is launching new billboards that are taking energy efficiency to the street. There’s a big question mark hanging over the state’s energy direction. Will the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio choose a future of unnecessary and expensive coal and gas generating plants that make people sick or, instead, a twenty-first century path that reduces energy waste and creates jobs?

To help steer Ohio toward clean energy, the billboards call out one particular utility that keeps trying to take the dirtiest path possible: FirstEnergy, which serves more than 2 million Ohioans.

We’ve placed three billboards in Akron and two in Columbus, with one near the offices of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. The Commission will decide next month whether FirstEnergy’s plan to meet the state’s energy efficiency goals is sufficient. The Sierra Club and our allies have shown them that it is nowhere near that.

FirstEnergy’s plan is just like its track record on renewable energy. Unlike Ohio’s other energy companies, FirstEnergy discourages its customers to save energy and lower their electric bills. For example, earlier this year, an audit of FirstEnergy found that they had paid nearly 15 times a reasonable price for renewable energy to its subsidiary company, FirstEnergy Solutions. The confidential audit report is being released for further review to get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, when FirstEnergy retired coal plants earlier this year and had the opportunity to support its workforce by transitioning to clean-energy projects, it did nothing. FirstEnergy’s record with efficiency programs is no different. 

And right now, FirstEnergy is trying to eliminate energy savings from efficiency programs by lobbying for a removal of the state’s energy efficiency savings targets. But this is not the first attempt by FirstEnergy:

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by Michael Conathan

On November 7 the American people woke up to a post-election Washington, D.C., that looks an awful lot like pre-election Washington, D.C. President Barack Obama earned a four-year extension on his lease at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and his Democratic colleagues retained their hold on the Senate, and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and his Republican colleagues still control the agenda in the House of Representatives.

Despite historically bad approval ratings for Congress, which actually dipped down into the single digits as recently as last month, 21 of the 22 senators seeking re-election held onto their offices in general elections—10 others retired, and one incumbent lost in a primary election. And with four House seats still awaiting decisions as of this writing, only 25 of the 382 incumbent representatives in general elections lost their races—40 others retired, and 13 were beaten in primary elections—and five of them were running against other incumbents as a result of redistricting changes.

Yet even with the outward appearance of status quo, a deeper look inside the results of last week’s elections shows that when a few key seats change hands, the effects on our oceans and coasts may be striking. There are some new obstacles to overcome, as well as some great opportunities to cultivate new leaders who will prioritize these issues in the 113th Congress.

The president of the United States

On November 6 all eyes gravitated to the Obama/Romney ticket-topping tilt-a-whirl. Coming as a surprise to no one, oceans—besides former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s mockery of their rise at the Republican national convention in Tampa and a brief rebuttal from President Obama in Charlotte—were absent from the campaign trail. Aside from this one brief thrust-and-parry neither candidate bothered to talk much about climate change at all.

Now, however, following President Obama’s surge to victory in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, climate change is gaining prominence in the national political dialogue. A new Rasmussen poll released the week of the election showed that 68 percent of Americans now view climate change as a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem, up from just 46 percent in 2009, continuing a trend that has been emerging in other recent polling showing greater awareness and belief that climate change is a contributing factor to the recent uptick in extreme weather events.

While the two presidential candidates spoke little about climate change during the race, their positions differed greatly. The White House website’s climate change page touts the president’s efforts to combat the problem through efforts including international negotiations, reduction of emissions through a commitment to clean energy, and Environmental Protection Agency regulatory overhauls. By contrast, Gov. Romney’s efforts to downplay the seriousness of the problem came back to bite him in the closing days of the campaign as voters watched dire predictions about the vulnerability of infrastructure in New York City and New Jersey come true with tragic results.

In addition to climate change, President Obama’s re-election means that there is life for his National Ocean Policy—an effort launched by executive order and designed to bring a semblance of cohesiveness to the multitude of federal agencies that have a role in the management of issues that affect our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes. Despite the policy’s intention to streamline and reduce redundancy in government activity and enhance states’ rights by providing support for individual states and regions that opt to manage their coasts according to the policy’s core set of principles, many Republicans, particularly on the House Natural Resources Committee, lambast the policy as another example of “job killing regulations” handed down by the White House. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It was widely anticipated that under a Romney administration, the policy and the National Ocean Council established to support it would have been shelved. With President Obama still in the White House, the policy’s supporters have at least another four years to prove the value of its underlying principles, primarily comprehensive ocean planning.

The Senate

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