http://gristmill.grist.org/tag/muckraker/ Grist on Politics en-us Copyright 2006 - Grist Magazine 2008-07-25T08:39:31Z Grist Magazine Gristmill http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/24/101933/347 Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has been foiled in her attempt to obtain and make public a U.S. EPA document on the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases, thanks to Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee that she chairs. The document in question is an endangerment finding that the White House refused to accept when the EPA emailed it to the Office of Management and Budget in December 2007. EPA staffers have said that their findings -- that global warming poses significant threats to human health and welfare, and that greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act -- were rejected by the OMB, which declined to even open the email containing the document. Earlier this week, former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason Burnett testified to Boxer's EPW committee that the White House feared the agency's conclusions would force the administration to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions -- not a legacy it wants to leave behind. The White House has been blocking public release of the document. Boxer convened her committee this morning to vote on whether to issue a subpoena for the document, but Republicans on the committee boycotted, depriving Boxer of the two GOP votes she would have needed to push the subpoena through. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/07/24/1025/8108 • Voluntary programs to cut greenhouse-gas emissions not working, says watchdog.• Judge allows some haying and grazing on conservation land.• California requires ships to cut pollution.• Brooks introduces running shoe with biodegradable midsole.• Motor fuel made from waste gets running.• E.U. says level of BPA in baby bottles poses no risk.• Big Ag defends ethanol. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/24/11580/0339 Carbon Retirement -- you read it here first (or maybe second). I don't normally endorse individual companies. But I have long thought European allowances were the best alternative to offsets and am delighted someone has made a business out of it. The business opportunity is clear -- offsets suck. At a policy level, they can destroy the environmental value of climate legislation. At a personal level, lots of vendors are selling very dubious offsets, including CCX. I can't imagine why you would waste your money on the most popular offsets, trees (certainly not a Northern forest -- heck, even offset seller Terrapass disses trees). And don't get us started on the other popular offset, RECs. But I know some of you out there really want to be carbon neutral, and while you have bought 100 percent renewable power for your superefficient home that uses a geothermal heating and cooling system to replace natural gas, and you bought a Prius for the family car and you telecommute, you just haven't figured out how to avoid some driving and flying. What to do? Buy real emissions credits from the European market and retire them permanently! Now that is the best idea since solar baseload. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/24/143259/352 The McCain campaign held a press call this morning with senior policy advisers Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Nancy Pfotenhauer on the candidate's energy plan. The subjects of yesterday's tanker spill near New Orleans and McCain's canceled trip to an offshore rig because of Hurricane Dolly came up during discussion of McCain's call for more drilling. "This [offshore drilling] is the right thing for the economy, it is the right thing for national security. And, as [McCain] is always committed to pursuing these endeavors in an environmentally friendly way, it's the right thing for the environment in the long run as well," said Holtz-Eakin. "It is a reality if you talk to any kind of environmental community, everything has to be on the table. You have to have coal, you have to have natural gas, you have to have oil, you have to have nuclear power, you have to have every power source as part of the portfolio if the United States is going to achieve its environmental goals and achieve its national security goals," Holtz-Eakin continued. "John McCain has laid out a common-sense course and allowed himself to solve the problems as opposed to being trapped by ideology." The idea that offshore drilling is "the right thing for the environment" will be a tough point for the McCain campaign to prove. McCain has also maintained that offshore drilling is "safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston." But according to government figures, the storms in 2005 caused 146 small spills in federal waters. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita completely destroyed 113 oil rigs and damaged 457 pipelines, and Katrina alone spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Mississippi River. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/07/24/1025/6881 A giant tract of land in southeastern British Columbia will become protected habitat, the Canadian government and Nature Conservancy Canada announced Thursday. The so-called Darkwoods area, purchased from a private forester, adds up to 550 square kilometers of mountains, valleys, and wetlands (that's 212 square miles, for metric-system hatas). The area is home to endangered mountain caribou, grizzly bears, bull trout, red-tailed chipmunks, and 100,000 migratory birds of 265 different species. The Canadian government and the Nature Conservancy Canada jointly paid $125 million to both purchase the land and pay into an endowment fund to ensure the area continues to be protected in the future. "Darkwoods is a conservation initiative of global significance," says the Nature Conservancy's John Lounds. "It's part of a greater vision that will set new standards for conservation success." sources: Canadian Press, Nature Conservancy of Canada, MarketWatch, The Vancouver Sunsee also, in Grist: Ontario protects gigantic forest area http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/24/11412/5153 Energy efficiency is the most important climate solution for several reasons: It is by far the biggest resource. It is by far the cheapest, far cheaper than the current cost of unsustainable energy, so cheap that it helps pay for the other solutions. It is by far the fastest to deploy. It is "renewable" -- the efficiency potential never runs out. This post focuses on number one -- the tremendous size of the resource. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/24/14534/5465 Republicans have mastered a political technique that seems to work on Democrats every time: the projection of strength. No matter the issue, when it comes up for dispute Republicans claim that Americans support their position; they claim that Democrats are out of touch with ordinary folk; they claim that Democrats are on defensive; they put forward bill after bill, press release after press release, stunt after stunt, trumpeting their alleged advantage. Faced with this predictable and oft-repeated tactic, Dems cave again and again. Told they're on the defensive, they go on the defensive. They start trying to split the difference with the Republican position and shift the focus to other issues. And the public notices. Faced with a choice between bold wrongness and mealy-mouthed hedging, they'll go with the wrongness. It's a weird form of hypnotism, and it's playing out before our eyes in the energy debate. Republicans are widely loathed, they're getting creamed on the economy, and with Obama's overseas trip, creamed on national security, they know their presidential candidate is a dud, they've got no new answers on the energy crisis they helped create ... yet they've got the entire D.C. establishment convinced that their drill-and-burn message is a winner. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/24/102111/841 Draft is here [PDF]. Just the major points. First off, the proposal is basically pretty good. We should keep in mind that what WCI is doing represents a big -- gigantic -- step in the right direction for the climate. So I'll raise a glass to everyone who's worked so hard on the WCI proposal so far. But there's room for improvement. Below, I highlight the core areas of the proposal. These are bedrock issues that make me concerned. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/22/152358/259 Caring for the world is good for geezers -- and the world too! (I can use "geezer" because ... hey, you kids, get off my lawn!) http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/23/18056/2918 If you love starfruit, you may want to consider giving your habit a rest for a while. A friend emailed me this bit from [PDF] from Wednesday's Federal Register. Declaring an "emergency," the EPA has established a "time-limited tolerance" for residues of fludioxonil, a pesticide, on starfruit. According to the EPA, Florida starfruit is being scourged by a fungus that evidently can only be repelled by fludioxonil. I'm in the process of figuring out exactly how toxic fludioxonil is. In the meantime, I find this interesting: Consistent with the need to move quickly on the emergency exemption in order to address an urgent non-routine situation and to ensure that the resulting food is safe and lawful, EPA is issuing this tolerance without notice and opportunity for public comment. Given the clear and truly egregious way the EPA has been acting in service of industry interests rather than public ones, this news can bring little comfort to the folks who eat starfish or tend them in Florida's farm fields. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/07/24/1025/7919 The Western Climate Initiative has unveiled a draft proposal for a regional cap-and-trade program that would kick off in 2012. The 11 states and provinces involved -- Arizona, British Columbia, California, Manitoba, Montana, New Mexico, Ontario, Oregon, Quebec, Utah, and Washington -- would impose an as-yet-determined greenhouse-gas emissions limit on industries and utilities, then allow laggards to purchase carbon credits from those that cleaned up their acts. States and provinces would decide individually whether to freely hand out credits or to auction them. Reactions to the draft proposal were mixed; industries craved more detail, while environmentalists expressed concern that companies would be allowed to offset up to 10 percent of their emissions and that transportation and heating fuels would not be regulated until 2015. After a period of public comment, the final proposal is due in September; state and provincial governments will have to OK the plans before they become official. sources: Reuters, Associated Press, The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencerstraight to the plan: Draft Design of the Regional Cap-and-Trade Program [PDF] http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/23/152839/814 The League of Conservation Voters announced its endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday, touting his energy and environment plans as the "most comprehensive" ever from a presidential nominee. While LCV President Gene Karpinski credits John McCain -- whom LCV endorsed in his 2004 Senate race -- for taking the challenge of global warming seriously, Karpinski says that the "solutions that he suggests aren't nearly good enough." Grist caught up with Karpinski this week to talk about the endorsement, differences Obama has had with green groups in the past, and the role energy and environmental issues will play in this election. Grist: So what made LCV decide to endorse Barack Obama? Karpinski: Our top priorities are the related issues of global warming and a new energy future, and Obama has put forward the most comprehensive, most aggressive, most ambitious plan of any nominee in history. No. 2, you compare [Obama's and McCain's] lifetime scores. LCV's report card is one of the most important barometers of how good somebody is on the environment. McCain's lifetime score, going back to 1983 with nearly 300 votes that the League has deemed important, is an embarrassing 24 percent. Sen. Obama, in his three years in the Senate, scored 86 percent. So Sen. Obama is much better on meeting the challenges of global warming and a new energy future. Gene Karpinski. Photo: Chris Kleponis And then when you look at the specific policies, Sen. Obama supports a much more aggressive increase in fuel-economy standards, a mandatory renewable-electricity standard of 25 percent by 2025, cutting global-warming pollution by 80 percent, and making polluters pay for permits. And on each of those issues, Sen. McCain is in a different place. He's opposed mandatory fuel-economy standards, opposed a renewable-electricity standard, and his global-warming plan falls far short of what the science says we need to do. Grist: LCV endorsed McCain in his Senate race in 2004. Karpinski: Clearly John McCain is better than President Bush, but that's an extremely low bar and not the way you measure someone. When we endorsed him in 2004, it was related to the field, and at the time he had a leading plan to address global warming. But when you compare him to Sen. Obama, there's no comparison that makes sense. Sen. Obama is head and shoulders above in terms of his plan, in terms of his lifetime score, in terms of his specific policies. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/23/112714/859 Putting aside the causes of the oil-price rise and what the future holds, I am concerned that progressives are losing the public debate about what to do about it. Like David, I was extremely disappointed with Gore's interview on Meet the Press this past week, both with respect to the ridiculous questions from Brokaw and Gore's complete inability to get the right message across. And now we have an editorial from The Wall Street Journal (as well as John McCain himself) making the absurd claim that Bush's lifting of the offshore oil drilling ban is responsible for the recent drop in oil prices. Since I am assume both McCain and the op-ed writer are smart enough to know that this is false, one can only assume they are willing to lie because they think that this presents an opening for the rightwing in a season when they look doomed. Unfortunately, data exists to back up this belief, as the public's support for offshore oil drilling is rising. The simple fact is that when costs of energy go up, most people are willing to put aside environmental concerns, including global warming. This is why it is crucial that progressives, and especially the Obama campaign (who brilliantly won the gas tax holiday debate during the primaries), need to adopt an aggressive strategy for winning over the public on energy issues.Here's what I think should be the central message: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/23/111520/345 It's not news that Amory Lovins opposes the expansion of nuclear power (unlike Obama and McCain) -- it was gnawed over here at Grist quite a bit. But in case you'd like to hear, rather than read, his arguments against (which are largely economic), then Democracy Now! radio has it all for you here. There's a transcript, too, for you bibliophiles which simply insist on reading. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/07/24/1162/2134 Al Gore's got big energy plans, gray wolves back on endangered list, and more string http://gristmill.grist.org/search/