Climate Desk

Live: Can Obama—And Congress—Fix Climate Change?

At the third Climate Desk Live event, a panel of experts weighs lawmakers’ next best moves on global warming.

This morning, the third Climate Desk Live briefing will consider a question on many minds: What can we reasonably expect to happen on climate change in the next four years, given the current political state of affairs?

The event, which I am hosting, features a leading member of Congress on the climate issue: Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Markey is not only the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee; he’s also author of the only climate legislation to pass a chamber of Congress—the Waxman-Markey bill.

In addition to Markey, we’ll have a panel of expert commentators weighing the president’s options—and what can be accomplished by the executive branch. They are:

• Eric Pooley, author of The Climate War and Senior Vice President at the Environmental Defense Fund. For some of Pooley’s thoughts on Obama’s climate options, see here.
• Vicki Arroyo, Director of the Georgetown Climate Center. For Arroyo’s popular TED Talk on adapting to climate change, see here.
• Bill Becker, Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, which has just released its 2012 Presidential Climate Action Plan.

Live stream of the event starts at 9:30 a.m. EST today. Watch it here: 

 

The Next Four Years: What Congress and Obama Can Do on Climate Change

Featuring Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Eric Pooley, Senior Vice President at the Environmental Defense Fund; Vicki Arroyo, Director of the Georgetown Climate Center; and Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project 

Tuesday, December 4, 2012
The Mott House, Capitol Hill
122 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC, 20002
9:30a.m.-11:00a.m., breakfast and refreshments served

President Obama has said it: “climate change is real, it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions, and…we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.”

So now what?

What and how much can really be accomplished, either by the administration or in Congress, in the next four years? “A great deal,” posits science writer Chris Mooney, who will be hosting a thought-provoking panel discussion on the topic next week as part of the ongoing briefing series, Climate Desk Live.

Join Climate Desk next Tuesday, December 4, when Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and author of the only climate legislation to pass a chamber of Congress; Eric Pooley, author of The Climate War and Senior Vice President at the Environmental Defense Fund; Vicki Arroyo, Director of the Georgetown Climate Center; and Bill Becker, Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project discuss what likely can, will, and won’t get done. The speakers will outline concrete steps that Congress and the Obama administration can take in the next four years to make significant progress on climate change.

Please RSVP to this space-limited, invitation-only event by Friday, November 30 to CDL@climatedesk.org.

For those unable to attend in person, a live stream will be available at climatedesk.org.

For more information on Climate Desk please visit our FAQ.

What Obama Can Do on Climate Change

Five big steps the president can take—with or without the help of Congress.

It was halting, and hardly eloquent. He seemed rusty talking about the issue, even saying “carbons” at one point instead of “carbon.” But nonetheless, in a White House press conference last Wednesday, President Obama went the farthest he has gone yet in laying out a climate change agenda for his second term.

“I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions,” Obama said, “and as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.” The president then went on to discuss his plans to pursue both short and long term climate solutions—and most of all, emphasized creating “a conversation across the country” to educate Americans and determine what they’re really ready to commit to, policy-wise, on the issue.

There were few specifics of the sort that climate watchers wanted to hear, however—and they were justly incensed the next day, when White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed both the notion of a carbon tax, and tying global warming to Superstorm Sandy (actually, the connection is quite clear and unambiguous). Nonetheless, Obama’s halting words reflect a stark political reality: Thanks to Sandy, we’re only now taking baby steps back towards the political traction that we had obtained four years ago, when cap-and-trade legislation really seemed achievable—before the Category 5 intensification of Tea Party science denial. Before the climate silence.

Despite these setbacks, however, there are many reasons to think that Obama’s administration in its second term can do a great deal to make progress on climate change. And that progress will be much stronger if Obama, as his words on Wednesday seemed to promise, actually takes the lead.

“This is a process,” says Eric Pooley, author of The Climate War and former deputy editor of Business Week, and now a senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund. “It took a while to get to this place where climate silence had settled over our politics, to the point where the issue never came up in the debates. And it’s going to take a while to get back to a grownup conversation about solutions.”

“Obama leading the way back to that grownup conversation is crucial,” Pooley adds. “And he has everything he needs to do that.”

The situation is growing ever more urgent. Sometime in President Obama’s next term, we’re likely to pass a threshold that, for the scientifically attuned, is terrifying: carbon dioxide concentrations of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere. That’s already far more atmospheric carbon than at any time in the modern history of the planet, and well past the 350 parts per million threshold that NASA’s James Hansen has flagged as a crucial marker, beyond which we risk of “irreversible catastrophic effects.” Monitoring stations have already measured 400 parts per million carbon concentrations over the Arctic. The global average is expected to catch up within a few years.

Obama may not single-handedly solve this problem, but there is much that he can achieve—with or without the cooperation of Congress. That last point is crucial: There is a great deal that the agencies of the federal government can do simply through administrative action. Indeed, that’s just what Bill Clinton did on the environment repeatedly in his second term, preserving millions of wilderness acres as national monuments, saving forests from roads and industry, and advancing clean air and drinking water protections.

“President Obama can have a precedent-setting second term by following the Clinton model, of using existing executive authority to achieve goals that may be unreachable via Congress,” explains Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress.

Herewith, then, a realistic—not over optimistic—list of steps the president and his administration might take to cut carbon pollution, and prepare the nation for climate change, in the next four years:

1. Use the bully pulpit

If there’s one point of consensus about what President Obama can and should do on the climate issue, it’s simply to keep the commitment he made last Wednesday and actually talk about it. Loudly and often—and, at best, in a major policy speech that sets the agenda.

“How about an address to the nation where he talks about the climate threat, and connects the dots between extreme weather and climate change in a scientifically rigorous way?” asks Pooley. “That would be a wonderful moment.”

But when? At his press conference last week, President Obama was understandably consumed with fiscal cliff negotiations. Fine: Suppose he waits a little. As it happens, a process is already underway that, arguably, will give the the president his best opportunity to talk about climate change sometime next year.

It’s called the National Climate Assessment, and it looks, scientifically, at the vulnerabilities of each part of the United States to climate change—from sea level rise affecting Gulf Coast infrastructure, to the growing risk of wildfires in the west. A draft of the next report installment is slated to be out late this year or early next. If Obama wants to convene a “conversation around the country” about climate, it is hard to imagine a better conversation starter.

2. Promote climate resilience

But that’s just the beginning. In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, some of the most important climate policy developments over the next four years are likely to involve adaptation and resilience steps taken by the federal government. And no wonder: The toll from extreme weather on the United States in the past few years has been stunning. In 2011, for instance, there were 14 weather disasters whose damages totaled a billion dollars or more. While official statistics are not in yet, 2012 has hardly been much better, considering that damages from Hurricane Sandy alone could cost $33 billion, according to New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

How can the federal government make us better prepared for this new era of costly mega-disasters? Very thick booklets could be written about the matter, but for just one example, consider the FEMA-managed National Flood Insurance Program, whose purpose is to insure homeowners in vulnerable coastal and low-lying areas. “Federal flood insurance is a way the entire country subsidizes building and rebuilding in places destined for repeated hits,” as the marine scientist and author Carl Safina has put it.

But amazingly, this program has a history of ignoring the growing risks brought on by climate change and sea level rise. “Traditionally, FEMA flood maps have been geared to a 100 year flood based on historic record, rather than looking forward based on climate projections,” says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. In other words, FEMA still bases its planning on the planet of the past, rather than the planet of future in which vulnerability is increasing, rather than staying static.

New legislation passed in June took steps towards modernizing the program, and promoting climate planning—but that’s just the beginning. The flood insurance program went into considerable debt after Hurricane Katrina, and that’s likely to happen again after Sandy—meaning Congress will have to raise its flood “debt ceiling,” so to speak. “In the context of that,” says Arroyo, “ideally you would also see some funds that promote preparation in the future, rather than just dealing with things in ‘disaster mode.’”

Of course, FEMA is just one of many federal agencies that need to modernize in the face of climate change—from the US Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Transportation, the infrastructure and programs that will be impacted by climate are massive. In 2009 President Obama issued an executive order requiring every federal agency to assess its vulnerability to climate change (e.g., low-lying highways, bridges, and other infrastructure). But these reports have not yet been released—in fact, Arroyo charges that they have already been written, but are being held up. Now that he has won reelection, it’s past time for Obama to put them out. “That I hope will be a starting point, looking at the government’s own buildings and infrastructure,” says Arroyo.

3. Eliminate climate-change accelerants

Besides promising to be a communicator on climate change, President Obama also talked last week about huddling with scientists and engineers to figure out if there are any quick, “short term” moves by the government that can help mitigate the warming underway. As it turns out, there certainly are.
Scientist found that capping emissions of soot could halt up to half a degree centigrade of projected warming by 2050.

In a paper in Science earlier this year, NASA scientist Drew Shindell and his colleagues suggested there’s a lot of bang for your climate buck to be gained by capping emissions of soot (sometimes called black carbon) and methane. The researchers found that up to half a degree centigrade of projected warming by 2050 could be halted in this way. What’s more, there would also be very positive public health ramifications of such steps—reduction of asthma and cardiopulmonary disease—because of improvements in air quality.

Methane, in particular, has a dramatic warming effect in the atmosphere—molecule for molecule, it has 72 times the punch of carbon dioxide over a 20 year time frame. But so-called fugitive methane emissions from gas drilling and other sources are largely unregulated. “There are no state or federal rules limiting methane emissions to address climate concerns,” says Eric Pooley. “There ought to be.”

4. Unleash the EPA

Which brings us to the role of the EPA. Without a doubt, it has by far the largest part to play in battling global warming in Obama’s second term. That’s especially the case now that the courts have largely cleared the way for EPA to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in order to protect public health and welfare.

Considerable progress on this front has already been made during Obama’s first term. According to Resources for the Future, we’re going to come close to reducing our emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, which was President Obama’s pledge at the Copenhagen summit in 2009. The causes behind this not-so-bad news include the recession, tough regulatory actions by states like California, better fuel and energy efficiency—and most of all, strong regulatory steps by EPA.

Empowered by the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which ensured its authority to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, EPA began enacting a suite of ambitious regulatory plans. Most notably so far, new vehicle fuel economy standards are slated to push average efficiency to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

But Obama’s reelection likely ensures another set of big regulatory gains, this time through capping emissions from power plants—particularly the coal-fired ones that, together, are responsible for about a third of total US greenhouse gas emissions.

How stringent regulations will those regulations be? EPA’s rulemaking process requires it to deal with newer and less dirty power-plants first; it has already proposed tough new standards for those. But after that come regulations for the really big existing polluters—which is where the real emissions cuts could be made.

It is hard to understate how big a deal these regulations could be; and while Republicans in the House of Representatives will most assuredly gripe about EPA’s alleged power grabs, it’s less clear that they can stop them. “I think the science compels action to address the single largest source of carbon pollution in our country, and one of the single largest sources on the planet,” says Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund. “The clean energy solutions are at hand. And the administration has ample authority to chart a path forward in addressing this dangerous pollution.”

5. Restart the conversation about pricing carbon—without cutting off EPA

You’ll notice that nowhere—yet—have we addressed all the buzzing noises of late about carbon taxes, which are being pushed by a centrist alliance of thinkers from the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and other outlets. That’s not just because the political feasibility of getting a carbon tax through Congress remains pretty questionable (and as noted, the White House doesn’t seem keen either). It’s also that at least as proposed by some thinkers, a tax on carbon would be intended to replace—or technically, “preempt”—all of these ongoing actions by EPA.

Sure we need to legislate a price on carbon, to help accelerate a shift towards clean energy sources. But ever since Massachusetts vs. EPA, it has been clear that if Congress stalled out in achieving this goal, regulatory actions on carbon emissions would proceed apace at EPA (at least so long as Democrats controlled the presidency). Now, it’s questionable whether it is a good deal to accept carbon taxes or caps in a congressional deal that would wipe out or undermine EPA’s considerable achievements. “Those who are arguing that a carbon tax should displace these bedrock protections under our nation’s clean air laws are seriously misguided,” says Patton.

Now, to be sure, the above is nowhere close to enough action on climate change. But it is still quite significant—and certainly gives the lie to bizarre suggestions that Obama won’t be that different from Mitt Romney on climate change.

To get further still, it will be necessary to push the climate conversation—rekindled by Superstorm Sandy—ever more rapidly forward, all the while goading the president to keep his word and lead. “We’ve just had a shift,” says Eric Pooley, “a surprise moment when the calculus of what is politically possible just changed.” President Obama is a smart enough politician to know that. Let’s see what he’s willing to do with it.

In the DC area? Consider attending Climate Desk Live, hosted by award-winning science journalist Chris Mooney: “The Next Four Years: What Obama Can Do On Climate Change,” featuring Eric Pooley, author of The Climate War and senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, Vicki Arroyo, director of the Georgetown Climate Center. 9:30 a.m.-11:00 a.m., December 4, Mott House, 122 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC. RSVP: CDL@climatedesk.org

Climate Change Made Sandy Worse. Period.

Scientists explain how sea level rise added power to the storm’s wallop.

Superstorm Sandy—and its revival of the issue of climate change, most prominently through Michael Bloomberg’s sudden endorsement—probably aided President Obama’s reelection victory last night. But at the same time, there has been a vast debate about the true nature of the storm’s connections to global warming (as well as plenty of denialism regarding those connections). In fact, there has even been the suggestion, by cognitive linguist George Lakoff, that if we all stopped thinking about causation as something direct (I pushed him, he fell) and rather as something systemic (indirect, probabilistic), then we really could say with full accuracy that global warming causedSandy. Systemically.

Following this debate, I’ve been struck by the strong impression that people are making things too complicated. Here’s the simple truth: Leaving aside questions of systemic causation—and sidestepping probabilities, loaded dice, atmospheres on steroids, and so on—we can nevertheless say that global warming made Sandy directly and unmistakably worse, because of its contribution to sea level rise.

“I keep telling people the one lock you have here is sea level rise,” meteorologist Scott Mandia explained to me recently. “It’s the one thing that absolutely made the storm worse that you can’t wiggle out of.” Mandia is an expert on the subject at Suffolk County Community College, and co-author of the new book Rising Sea Levels: An Introduction to Cause and Impact.

And how do we know Mandia is right? Here’s the logic.

First, according to sea level expert Ben Strauss of Climate Central, the sea level in the New York harbor today is 15 inches higher than it was in 1880. Now, to be sure, not all of that is due global warming—land has also been subsiding. Strauss estimates that climate change—which causes sea level rise both through the melting of land-based ice, and through thermal expansion of warm ocean water—is responsible for just over half, or eight inches, of the total. As it happens, the estimated sea level rise seen globally since the year 1880 is also roughly eight inches.

So how, then, did global warming directly make Sandy worse? Simple: Sandy threw the ocean at the land, and because of global warming, there were about eight inches more ocean to throw. “The footprint of the flood was bigger, based on roughly eight extra inches of depth,” Strauss explains—eight inches more than there would have been in an admittedly hypothetical world in which Sandy arrived without our burning of fossil fuels or heating of the atmosphere.

The next question is whether those eight inches are really significant, in the grand scheme of things. Sandy’s flood height above the average high tide level (a number that also includes the eight inches attributable to global warming) was 9.15 feet. So you might say, who the heck cares about eight inches?

But as it turns out, eight inches matters a lot. First of all, using Climate Central’s Surging Seas tool, Mandia estimated that 6,000 more people were impacted for each additional inch of sea level rise. That means, basically, that they got wet when they wouldn’t have otherwise: one inch wetter for some, eight inches wetter for others, and everything in between. “An inch or two could be enough to get over a home’s threshold and down into the basement, or make it into one more subway entrance,” Strauss explains.

Moreover, there is also reason to think that the second inch, so to speak, is worse than the first one. That’s because of basic physics. Water flowing atop a surface—say, a New York City street—has its energy sapped by the friction of dragging along that street. However, if the water level is higher, it’ll flow faster, because the water higher above the surface experiences less friction. “If you had an inch of water running down the street, you’d see all kinds of turbulence in it, which is basically energy being lost,” Strauss explains. “But if the water were a foot above it, you’d see more sheet-like movement, which is a more powerful motion.”

Speed matters a great deal in the context of a storm surge, because the surge is only temporary and will recede. So how far it penetrates before doing so is partly a function of is speed.

And there are still more reasons to think that increasing the size of a storm surge by eight inches really matters. Consider the US Army Corps of Engineers’ “depth-damage” functions, which the Corps uses to study how much flood damage grows with an increasing water level. The upshot here, says Mandia, is that “the damage is exponential, it’s not linear.”Or in other words, as the water level increases, the level of damage tends to rise much more steeply than the mere level of water itself.

And here’s one more hard reality: If we do nothing about global warming, eight inches of sea level rise is going to look like small beans. As Mandia notes, the New York State Sea Level Rise Task Force estimates up to 2.5 feet of sea level rise by 2050, and up to 4.5 feet by the 2080s. In these scenarios, global warming’s contribution to every storm surge event would be dramatically worse than it currently is. And while those are worse cases, there’s not any real doubt that waters will rise further; the question is simply by how much, and how fast.

None of which is to say, incidentally, that global warming didn’t influence Sandy in other ways, ranging from its rainfall to the impact of warmer seas on the storm’s overall intensity. In all likelihood, such connections also exist.

At the current moment, Strauss’s tools are not precise enough to say that the portion of sea level rise attributed to global warming damaged a particular home in a particular place. Nevertheless, based on the evidence presented here so far, the inference is simple and unavoidable: Global warming upped Sandy’s damage, and did so substantially. Not that Sandy wouldn’t have been very bad anyway—it would have—but that it was worse than it would otherwise have been.

“There is 100 percent certainty that sea level rise made this worse,” says Strauss. “Period.”

After Sandy: The Debate We Should Have Had

Can science shape US policy? A climate expert and a nine-term Republican congressman talk it out in the latest Climate Desk Live event.

This morning, Climate Desk Live is partnering with ScienceDebate.org to bring you the second event in our series: a conversation between Kevin Knobloch—the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists and an expert on climate—and Mike Castle, the former governor of Delaware and a nine-term Republican congressman from the state. Our moderator is award-winning journalist and author Chris Mooney. The question at hand: In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, to what extent can science—and climate science in particular—shape US policy?

Watch it here live at 9:30 a.m. EDT, and check back soon for highlights at climatedesk.org.