Modeshift

TIANJIN, China – Whatever the differences that irked delegates from China and the United States during the six days of climate negotiations that ended here on Saturday, divisions principally defined by how each would control carbon emissions and measure progress, the unmistakable conclusion reached by most of the delegates and participants is how closely tied the two nations are to each the other.

Lying quietly below the nuanced diplomatic language of frustration and distrust expressed all week by Chinese and American negotiators is an expanse of cooperative projects in and outside government that are expressly designed to help China and the U.S. use energy more efficiently, develop new technology, and lower carbon emissions.

Participants this week toured an advanced coal-fired power plant that is being built by a consortium of Chinese companies and includes an American coal company. Chinese and American partnerships also are being forged in solar and wind manufacturing, and in carbon capture and sequestration emissions control technology. The two countries last year established a joint clean energy research center, with offices in China and the United States.

Coda Electric Car
Another good example is how Coda Automotive, a California-based electric vehicle manufacturer, and Lishen Battery Company, a Tianjin-based manufacturer, are collaborating to build batteries in their joint venture factory for Coda’s all-electric cars for sale in the U.S. starting early next year. The powerful, 800-pound lithium-ion battery pack that will provide the Coda with a 100-mile range between charges, is being built and assembled in Lishen’s joint venture plant on the city’s south side.

The Coda’s drive train and electric engine are American designs built in factories in the U.S. The car’s safety systems were engineered by American and European experts and will be built by American companies. And a Chinese auto manufacturer will receive all of the various parts and assemble them under contract into new cars for shipment to the U.S. The company is planning to build a battery assembly plant in Ohio, where Coda’s chief executive, Kevin Czinger, was raised.

In his blog posts and various interviews in recent months Czinger has expressed his own frustration with energy and climate policy in the U.S. But that is not affecting his company, which he says will sell 14,000 cars in California next year. “The good news is that we can take action,” Czinger writes in his latest blog post. “We don’t need to wait for our leaders.  We can do what we do best –  take new ideas and new technology and create.  The electric car can be the driver of a new economic and energy system.  It can be the driver of a new American mindset and a revived manufacturing foundation.  Within a globally interdependent world that will have increasingly higher shipping costs, we can rebuild our car industry based on a new technology.  And we can replace our foreign oil with clean, secure and affordable electricity generated in America.  We can create a new prosperity for this century.  We have the choice. Now.”

The Coda (see pix right) will be priced at around $45,000, and with federal and state electric vehicle and clean energy incentives, the off-the-lot cost will be closer to the low $30,000′s. Either way, neither the Coda, nor the other all-electric passenger cars making their way to the market – the Nissan Leaf and the Ford Focus – are priced low enough for sale in the world’s largest car market here in China.

Biggest Car Market and Big Oil Demand
Last year, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s number one vehicle market, recording 13.5 million car and truck sales, according to the China Passenger Car Association. Manufacturers, by contrast, sold 10.43 million in the U.S., according to the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Michigan. This year vehicle sales in the U.S. could reach 11.6 million according to J.D. Power.

Sales in China in 2010 are expected to top 16 million units. Xu Changming, a research director at the State Information Center, told reporters in June that the number of vehicles in China could reach 78 million units, up from 63 million at the end of 2009, and surpassing Japan as the second largest nation for vehicle registrations. He also said the number of vehicles in China is expected to eventually rise to about 490 million units, though he did not offer a date for reaching that forecast.

A Coda executive on Saturday said that at the current sales pace China’s vehicle population could reach 200 million by the end of the decade, or roughly 60 million less than the number of vehicles in the U.S. this year.

Electric vehicles, of course, are a staple of transportation in China, though most of them are two- and three-wheel bikes, scooters, and carts fitted with small electric motors. The country manufactures state-of-the-art electric buses, a number of which were used to quietly transport climate negotiators and participants to and from the conference center and their hotels.

The country also is rapidly electrifying its high-speed rail network capable of transporting tens of thousands of passengers on trains, like the one that links Tianjin to Beijing (see pix below and right), capable of speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour. According to Chinese NGO experts at the climate conference, China has built 4,000 miles of high speed rail and is in the process of constructing 6,000 more miles.

China, though, could use many more electric cars. Gas and diesel-fueled cars jam China’s highways and urban streets, and contribute to the smog in China’s major cities that is so thick (see pix above in Tianjin) it obscures the tops of buildings. The rapid rise in vehicle ownership also is challenging China’s economic security, just as it is in the United States. China’s oil consumption last year reached 8.625 million barrels a day, or 3.1 billion barrels annually, or nearly twice China’s consumption in 1999, according to the respected 2010 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. U.S. oil consumption is now just under 7 billion barrels annually, according to the Department of Energy.

China produces nearly 3.8 million barrels of oil daily from its own oil fields, which means that it imports 56 percent of its petroleum. That percentage will grow steadily higher. The demand for oil in China grew 539,000 barrels a day from 2008 to 2009, or nearly 7 percent. Meanwhile China’s oil production fell 111,000 barrels a day during the same period, or just under 3 percent.

– Keith Schneider

In calling for a new “national mission” to achieve energy independence during his Oval Office address earlier this week, President Obama was clearly seeking inspiration from his predecessors, a number of whom actually achieved the big technological goals they’d pursued. At various inflection points in the nation’s history, presidents managed to cross the country with a unified rail line, developed the powerful bombs in the Manhattan Project that ended World War Two, and sent men and returned them safely from the moon with the Apollo program.

In pursuit of energy independence the president has described many steps to make the transition to a clean energy economy, but never specified a timetable or a deadline. There’s a reason for that, as Jon Stewart astutely pointed out this week on The Daily Show. Seven presidents before Obama, starting with Richard Nixon, did just that and came up with zilch.

It’s not that he isn’t trying. To his credit, President Obama has acted on his election promise to change the rules of the oil game, and to begin responding to the worst of its economic and environmental consequences, including climate change.

In February 2009 he signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which invests over $100 billion in clean energy equipment, practices, and transit.  In September 2009 the president called on the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions during a speech at the United Nations and was one of the heads of state at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, which issued a formal declaration to eliminate subsidies for fossil fuel.

Two months ago, the administration issued new fuel mileage and carbon emissions standards for cars and light trucks that will take effect in 2012 and over the first five years reduce oil use by 1.8 billion barrels, says the E.P.A., and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 900 million tons. And last month the president ordered up similar new efficiency and emissions reductions standards for heavy trucks. (link to Michigan piece)

Then came the BP Gulf catastrophe, now in its 60^th day, which has turned the nation’s attention to all of the dimensions of what Obama and other presidents have called an “addiction” to oil, but which can also be accurately described as America’s steadfast devotion.

Obama knows that actually producing more energy at home than America imports, and making good on the greenhouse gas reducing commitments the president made last year in the Copenhagen Accord, takes another level of engagement. It means opening a new era of political partnership in Washington and pursuing much more aggressive designs for non-polluting and energy efficient economic growth.

The problem is that America is in a place it’s rarely encountered, which is stuck. Some 24 million gallons of oil – the government’s latest estimate – is gushing every 10 days from a hole at the bottom of the Gulf.  The president is unable to summon the technical skills needed to plug the leak. Instead he’s using legal and policy tools available to him to begin rebuilding the Minerals Management Service, promised more rigorous oversight of deep water drilling, and convinced BP on Wednesday to set aside $20 billion in a precedent-setting disaster restoration fund.

Decent responses as far as they can go. But not to the president’s opponents. Fox News commentators mounted a national right wing broadcast chorus to defend the oil industry and accuse the president of “demonizing” BP. The next day, in an instance as revealing as it was enraging, Representative Joe Barton of Texas, a senior lawmaker who receives more oil industry donations than any other House member, appeared at an oversight hearing on the spill to apologize to BP’s chairman for the president’s action in creating the restoration fund, which he called a “shakedown.”

Never has the United States sustained such a large oil disaster. Never have so many biologically rich coastal estuaries been in the path of so much oil. Never has the United States been so unprepared to respond to a manmade calamity that is producing so much damage to the people, the economy, and the environment of so many states. Never has the U.S. imported more of its oil or been further from achieving energy independence. Representative Barton’s apology, like so many other moments since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, illustrated just how grueling the last decades of the Age of Oil will be.

– Keith Schneider

Late last year when Senator Lisa Murkowski announced she would vigorously oppose any effort to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions, environmental leaders in Washington understood the significance of the Alaska Republican’s challenge. A loyal ally of fossil fuel developers, Senator Murkowski attracts more campaign financing from the oil and utility industries than all but two other Senate lawmakers, according to federal election records.

The months-long skirnishing between Senator Murkowski and environmental advocates is now in its final hours, with both sides asserting they will prevail.

At stake is a vote in the Senate scheduled for Thursday night on a “resolution of disapproval” introduced by Senator Murkowski last January and meant to disrupt the Obama administration’s pioneering work to respond to climate change by limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases in the U.S.

Though the Murkowski resolution faces an arduous route through a Democratic-controlled Congress and White House, the Thursday vote will be the most important Congressional test yet this year on where the United States is going on climate action and clean energy.

The details of what’s been happening look like this: Senator Murkowski’s resolution, which has 41 co-sponsors, would overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s formal scientific finding on December 7, 2009 that carbon dioxide and five other climate-changing pollutants endanger human health and the environment.

The EPA’s “endangerment finding,” introduced at the start of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen last year, was saluted by climate activists and government officials around the world. The finding made it legally possible to use the Clean Air Act, the nation’s primary air pollution statute, to set and enforce new manufacturing practices and emissions limits that tamed the U.S. contribution to global climate change.

Moment of Reckoning For Both Sides
The vote couldn’t come at a more opportune moment for climate advocates and the fossil fuel industry and should provide a helpful sorting out of the relative political influence of both sides.

The last six months have been a period of dismay for the American climate action community, challenged by the disappointing results in Copenhagen, and fighting back against the furious attack by pundits and lawmakers on the validity of climate science.

The last six weeks have been equally dismal for the oil industry, which has attracted new public scrutiny because of the horrendous oil spill in the Gulf, and the equally destructive environmental consequences of mining and processing oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands.

If the resolution passes, an event seen as unlikely by Democratic Senate staffers, it would almost certainly have the effect of putting an even deeper  trench in the already difficult path that comprehensive climate and energy legislation has in the Senate. Conversely, if the resolution fails by a wide margin, that result would likely build new legislative enthusiasm for a climate and energy bill this year.

Important players from both sides are making their cases. Americans United for Change today began three days of cable TV advertising  in Washington, D.C., that explicitly link the BP Gulf disaster to the Murkowski resolution and the assertion that at Republicans are “working to gut the bipartisan Clean Air Act and give big oil a bailout.”

Senator Murkowski issued a statement this week that accused critics of the resolution of misrepresenting her intentions. “There has been a great deal of misinformation spread about my effort by groups — almost all of which are based outside of Alaska — who want to cut the emissions blamed for climate change no matter what the cost,” Murkowski said.  Her spokesman, Robert Dillon, said the resolution is not about debating the science behind climate change. Rather, he told the Associated Press, it’s about stopping an “out of control” government agency.

Senator Murkowski’s conservative supporters contend that using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions is a regulatory overreach by big government. “Every sector of our economy — transportation, power generation and manufacturing — would be subjected to EPA’s bureaucratic reach,” said Tom Borelli director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Endangerment Finding Put to Use
The Obama administration, meanwhile, has moved quickly to put the endangerment finding and its Clean Air Act authority into effect. In April the administration issued trend-setting fuel mileage and emissions standards for light vehicles that the agency said would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and 900 million tons of carbon emissions from 2012 to 2016.

Last month, President Obama ordered similar mileage and emissions reduction rules for heavy trucks. The administration has also made plain its intention to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions from some 7,000 industrial installations – refineries, utilities, manufacturers, and mining sites – but leave small businesses alone.

U.S. climate and clean energy organizations anticipated Senator Murkowski’s challenge and began building support in January to defeat the resolution, which they called the “Dirty Air Act.” Among the allies in the campaign were dozens of environmental organizations, labor unions, governors, President Obama, Democratic senators, and EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

Newspaper editorialists also weighed in, noting that the BP Gulf Spill has made it more urgent than ever to curtail the myriad hazards of America’s addiction to oil. “Murkowski plans to offer a resolution,” said the Washington Post on June 7, “making it less likely we move away from fossil fuels, making it less likely we act to prevent a foreseeable catastrophe (in this case, global warming) from occurring, blocking regulators from doing their jobs, and disrupting one of our best opportunities to prevent climate change rather than scramble to respond after its incalculable effects rip through our atmosphere.”

In an article on Monday for the Huffington Post, EPA Administrator Jackson said the Murkowski resolution “abdicates the responsibility we have to move the country forward in a way that creates jobs, increases our security by breaking our dependence on foreign oil, and protects the air and water we rely on.”

– Keith Schneider

On Friday, May 21, President Obama gathered in the Rose Garden the chiefs of his transportation and environmental departments to take the next big step to leverage federal climate policy and clean energy investment to spur new job growth.

The president directed Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to draw up new rules that make heavy trucks much more fuel-efficient and produce less global warming gases.

“This standard will spur growth in the clean energy sector,” Obama said. “We know how important that is. We know that our dependence on foreign oil endangers our security and our economy. We know that climate change poses a threat to our way of life. We know that our economic future depends on our leadership in the industries of the future.”

Three days later, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm was in Ypsilanti, midway between Detroit and Ann Arbor, to praise executives of the Ford Motor Company. Ford is spending $10 million to retool one plant in Rawsonville to assemble battery packs for next generation clean vehicles, and $125 million more in another plant in Sterling Heights to build electric drive transaxles. The $135 million investment, made possible by $62.7 million in federal clean vehicle grants from Obama’s 2009 stimulus act, will lead to 170 new jobs, said Ford, and bring work currently occurring in Mexico and Japan back to the United States.

Not Willing To Just Cut Hair
“In a global economy we are fighting for every single job,” said Gov. Granholm.  “We are not going to turn our back on the manufacturing sector. We are not just going to be a nation that teaches each other to dance or cuts hair. We are going to rebuild this country by having a strong manufacturing sector. And it starts right here. ”

The two ceremonies, occurring 500 miles apart, are the latest public manifestations of a little recognized but exceptionally productive political partnership between the president and Michigan’s governor that is reshaping the American vehicle manufacturing sector, and starting to produce big consequences for energy use, climate action, and job production.

Since Obama has taken office, Michigan has attracted roughly $6 billion in manufacturing investment focused on building batteries for electric vehicles. Last August, after the president announced that the Energy Department was awarding $2.4 billion in grants for battery development and manufacturing, Vice President Joe Biden personally travelled to the Detroit region to confirm that more than half, $1.3 billion, would be spent in Michigan and contribute to developing 19,000 new jobs.

LG Chem, the Korean battery maker, received $151.4 million from the Department of Energy for the $303 million battery plant it is building in Holland, near the Lake Michigan shoreline. The plant will manufacture the power packs for the Chevy Volt, the plug-in hybrid that General Motors says it will introduce later this year.  The LG Chem plant opens in 2012 and is expected to employ 400 people.

Johnson Controls received a $299.2 million federal grant to make nickel-cobalt-metal battery cells and packs, as well as produce battery separators in a plant it also is building in Holland, Michigan in a joint venture with Saft, the French battery maker. The project is expected to employ 550 people by 2014.

New Plants Across Michigan
In all 17 new battery plants are either under construction or nearing groundbreaking in Michigan, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, a state agency. Toda America, a Japanese manufacturer of battery components, broke ground in Battle Creek in April for a $70 million plant that will initially employ 60 people. A123 Systems, an innovator of battery technology incubated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is building two plants just outside Detroit.

It’s understandable that Granholm and auto industry executives are enthusiastic  about the state’s embrace of clean car technology. They also support, after decades of resistance, the new efficiency and emissions reduction rules. The regulatory standards have the effect of producing new markets and force vehicle manufacturers to modernize their thinking to compete. The convergence of new technology, new regulation, and big federal and state investments has produced several thousand new jobs announced to date. Each is viewed as precious in a state overwhelmed by the downsizing of the auto industry and a riptide of manufacturing job losses over the last decade.

In Washtenaw County, where Ford’s Rawsonville plant is located, 14,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared since 2001, according to county figures. The state has lost a total of 800,000 jobs since 2000, half of them in manufacturing according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Michigan has led the nation since the middle part of the last decade in the rate of joblessness, which currently measures 14 percent, but also is improving since it’s high of more than 15 percent late last year.

“These have been a really tough eight years for everybody. We’ve all gone through it,” said Granholm on Monday. Then, brightening, she added, “but today we are sending a message to the world. You can be competitive manufacturing in the US and in Michigan.”

Indeed, at times in her public appearances, Granholm appears almost giddy about the germination stages of what could be a new era of vehicle design and production in Michigan.

Big Markets For Electric Vehicles
First are the market analyses that consistently predict big domestic and global markets for clean vehicles. In 2009, Deutsche Bank estimated that global sales of electric, hybrid, and other alternative fuel and advance technology vehicles stood at 1 million and could rise to 1.3 million this year, a 30 percent increase. J.D. Power and Associates recently estimated that sales of hybrid-electric vehicles could reach about 1.3 percent of an estimated 67 million light vehicle sales worldwide this year.

DTT Global Manufacturing Industry group estimates that by 2020, electric vehicles and other “green” cars will represent up to a third of total global sales in developed markets and up to 20 percent in urban areas of emerging markets. “The drive for e-mobility is on the rise and not only affects the automotive industry, but also other related industries such as energy & resources,” Martin Hoelz, Deloitte Germany partner and Global Automotive Affinity Group Leader for DTT Global Manufacturing Industry group, said in a news release.

Ford alone plans to launch five new all-electric or hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles in the U.S. by 2012 and in Europe by 2013. One is an electric commercial van, the Transit Connect. Two others are plug-in hybid electric sedans.

The second reason for Granholm’s fervor about clean vehicles is the daring new clean energy and climate policies that the Obama administration is steadily delivering to support them. She has personally played a big role in that delivery system.

A Partnership Between Governor and President
Following her 2006 re-election on a promise to produce new jobs, the two-term Democrat seized on clean energy to leverage Michigan’s heavy manufacturing prowess. Michigan approved a renewable energy standard that required utilities to generate 10 percent of their power with clean sources by 2015. It established a 21^st century jobs fund that provided millions for job growth, a good share focused on attracting clean energy development. And it set aside $1 billion for tax incentives to lure battery makers.

In 2008, candidate Obama campaigned on a message that envisioned a transition to the low-carbon economy that would wake up American industrial innovation, generate jobs, make the nation more secure, and reduce the threat from climate change. He introduced his New Energy For America strategy in August 2008 in East Lansing, Michigan, a state that embraced the same ideas and had a governor who could deliver the votes to help send him to Washington.

Their relationship, at least in public, seems genuinely warm. Granholm is routinely on the White House list of candidates for the Supreme Court. Obama is a regular visitor to Michigan, appearing with Granholm most recently on May 1 (see pix with University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman on right) to deliver the commencement in front of 90,000 people at the University of Michigan, the largest crowd the president has addressed since the Inauguration.

The partnership, in policy terms, has been substantive in ways little noted in Washington or the nation. The Obama administration has passed legislation and administrative rules to support the development of a clean vehicle manufacturing sector that Granholm is determined to base in Michigan.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contained over $3 billion for clean vehicle development including $2 billion for battery development, and $1.3 billion for electric and alternative fueled vehicles. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has sent Michigan substantial funds from a $25 billion clean vehicle manufacturing account approved late in the Bush administration. The Obama administration also has supervised the $50 billion investment that taxpayers made to keep GM and Chrysler in business, making it much easier to direct the companies to pursue new product lines since the U.S. essentially owns both.

Rules To Spur Markets, Protect The Planet, Grow Jobs
The president and his advisors, lastly, are ordering up the administrative rules to ensure that the next generation of vehicles do more with less. A year ago, Obama directed Secretary LaHood and Administrator Jackson to develop rules for improving fuel mileage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in light cars and trucks beginning with the 2012 model year. The government issued the rules on April 1 and the EPA estimated the new standards would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil from 2012 to 2016, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 900 million metric tons.

Both are significant. The annual fuel savings, nearly 400 million barrels, represent roughly 7 percent of all the oil used in America in 2006, according to the World Bank. The emissions reductions, roughly 180 million tons annually, represent over 3 percent of all carbon emissions the U.S. produced in 2006. Last year in Copenhagen and elsewhere, the administration said it wanted to cut greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. The clean vehicle rules will help the U.S. reach that goal.

The new heavy truck rules that Obama ordered last week should also produce substantial fuel and emissions savings. Heavy trucks, according to industry analysts, consume more than two million barrels a day, or about 12 percent of current daily use in the United States, and produce a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation.

“America has the opportunity to lead the world in the development of a new generation of clean cars and trucks through innovative technologies and manufacturing that will spur economic growth and create high-quality domestic jobs, enhance our energy security, and improve our environment,” the president said in a memorandum accompanying the May 21 Rose Garden ceremony.

He added in his public remarks: “I believe that it’s possible, in the next 20 years, for vehicles to use half the fuel and produce half the pollution that they do today. But that’s only going to happen if we are willing to do what’s necessary for the sake of our economy, our security, and our environment.”

That message has reached deep into Michigan’s reviving vehicle manufacturing sector. Lenawee Stamping, a producer of metal stamping and welded fabrications is expanding a plant in Tecumseh to accommodate more production of GM’s clean electric vehicles and produce almost 140 jobs. Magna Holdings of America, a designer and manufacturer of automotive components and systems plans to invest $49.2 million to expand its operations in four Michigan cities to produce electric car systems and 500 more jobs, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.  Tenneco Automotive, which makes emission and ride control products, is spending $15.6 million in Michigan to manufacture next generation emissions systems that help manufacturers comply with the new federal rules and generate 185 new jobs.

During a conference call with reporters on Friday after the White House announcement, Gov. Granholm praised the new standards and said Michigan was starting down the low-carbon path with promising results. “We are particularly pleased that it will be one national standard and not a patchwork of state by state regulations. That sends the right market signals,” Granholm said, adding that her state is on its way to becoming the “world capital of electric vehicles.”

– Keith Schneider

President Obama on Friday directed the EPA and the Transportation Department to develop a national policy to increase fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from medium and heavy-duty trucks in time for the 2014 model year. The action comes almost exactly one year (May 19, 2009) after President Obama set new fuel and emissions standards for new cars and light trucks sold in the United States beginning with the 2012 model year.

The 2009 standards require manufacturers to raise average fuel economy for cars to 39 mpg , and light trucks and SUVs to 30 mpg by 2016. The EPA estimated the new standards would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil from 2012 to 2016, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 900 million metric tons, the equivalent of closing almost 200 coal-fired power plants.

Clean Car Legacy
Combined with the investments in clean car and new battery technology that were features of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as well as the massive federal aid to prevent General Motors and Chrysler from going out of business, it is clear one of the significant climate action legacies of the Obama presidency is pushing vehicle manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient and much cleaner products.

The White House announcement on fuel efficiency was dropped into an energy and climate news cycle that five months past the Copenhagen climate summit is suddenly spinning with significantly greater urgency.

The Gulf spill, growing larger by the day, is daily evidence of the lengths the nation was ready to take to satisfy its addiction to oil, and the massive economic and environmental damage deep sea drilling can cause.

Pragmatism and Principle
The American Power Act, introduced last week, includes troubling provisions designed to secure more offshore oil. But it also proposes to cap carbon emissions and provide for significant investments in clean energy, clean cars, transit and other energy conserving job-producing practices.

And the National Academy of Sciences published three studies this week that together again confirm that mankind is responsible for the warming earth and conditions are getting more dire.

All of this, and especially the American Power Act, has generated a moment-of-truth within the environmental community that is framed by the contest between pragmatism and principle. The new bill, if it passes, would be the second in as many years to focus substantial federal investment on emissions-reducing, job-producing, clean energy investments. Last year’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act included over $100 billion to jumpstart the transition to a low-carbon economy. The new climate and energy bill, along with proposing to reduce emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, also includes strong federal support for energy-conserving, and alternative clean energy practices and equipment.

President Obama, recognizing the deep division, fear, and skepticism that dominate this era, is nevertheless steadily making progress in responding to climate change. One other step he needs to take is to support the climate and energy bill. But in the tilt between pragmatism and principle it is not clear where American environmentalism will land.

– Keith Schneider

Over 70 years ago, in the General Motors-sponsored Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, an estimated 10 percent of all Americans were transported across a landscape of innovation, creativity, and optimism that became the economic and cultural foundation of the great American century. The Futurama exhibit was a huge diorama of a highway-heavy, congestion-free, car-dependent, time-efficient, leafy green urban and suburban all American pattern of civilization that no one had ever seen before.

What astute observers recognized — among them Lewis Mumford and Walter Lippman — was that GM’s new American geography needed enormous public investments in the roads, sewers, education, research, planning, and industrial infrastructure to make it reality. The vision, though, of an airy, prosperous, shining, and mobile American way of life was powerful and eminently achievable. Over the next two decades voters elected to Congress and the White House lawmakers of both parties who cooperated in steadily enacting big and expensive bills — the GI bill to educate veterans, the 1956 Highway Act to start the Interstate System, water and sewer spending bills, research grants for engineering, just to name a few — to change the way America looked and functioned.

American Power Act Tactics
Last week, Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut introduced The American Power Act, a big and expensive spending bill that is in every way a response to that incredibly accurate 70-year-old GM vision. Its central goal is to preserve American choice and mobility — the two central features of our way of life — in the face of an oncoming train wreck of accumulating economic and environmental consequences.

Kerry and Lieberman propose to execute this impossible task by laying out two paths for legislative action that need to be achieved simultaneously. The first is to generate more supplies of conventional energy sources — oil, coal, and nuclear — in order to stave off the slow demise or even the collapse of America’s convenient, have it your way, drive through economy.

The proposal provides incentives to coastal states to pursue more offshore oil and gas development, while also giving neighboring states the power to block development within 75 miles of their shoreline. It includes $2 billion-a-year in research grants to coal-burning utilities to test carbon capture and sequestration. It proposes to invest tens of billions in loan guarantees and other support to encourage the construction of 12 new nuclear plants.

The second tactical step in the legislation is to push America as insistently as politically practical toward more energy-efficient transportation, and home-grown, renewable, and much cleaner sources of energy. The idea is to spur innovation, new patterns of compact development, and new industrialization that also generates much less carbon pollution.

Kerry and Lieberman proposed spending $70 billion over 10 years on transit, clean vehicles, energy efficiency and other Smart Growth innovations. They lay out a plan for farmers to gain income by siting renewable projects on their land and to grow biofuels. There is money for solar and wind development. And the bill contains provisions to reduce carbon emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and over 80 percent by 2050.

Carbon Pricing and Pragmatism
The bill envisions putting a price on carbon, and providing for trading carbon allowances that applies to large polluters and could generate billions of dollars annually, a portion of which would be rebated to citizens.

As a study in pragmatism, the American Power Act does pretty well. The legislation addresses most of what’s possible and practical in the place where energy, economy, the environment, and politics now meet. It’s as big and bold as it dares in an era when the boom-boom-boom of dire risks to our way of life — climate change, declining competitiveness, rising energy costs — is greeted in political circles with the squeak of small ideas and the clanging of ideological idiocy and anger from every side.

In almost every instance, environmental organizations and business groups commended Kerry and Lieberman for such a solid first draft. And in almost every instance — the exception was the Smart Growth community’s enthusiasm for the $7 billion-a-year investment in transit, clean car, and other transportation and efficiency measures — groups said the intricacies of the bill needed serious reworking.

Environmental groups are not thrilled with the oil, coal, and nuclear provisions. They aren’t thrilled with a section that would withdraw some authority of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions from certain sources. And climate groups are concerned that the bill’s proposal to start in 2019 to dedicate some of the revenue from carbon allowance trading to helping developing nations make the transition to a low-carbon economy is too little and too late.

Many business executives, meanwhile, are nervous about the carbon emissions limits. Democratic lawmakers from the Midwest want more investment in clean tech manufacturing. And the bill’s former sponsor, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham who dropped out following an ideological fit, said the proposal would not survive the — so far — uniform Republican opposition.

Transition and Trouble
America, of course, has not always had such trouble responding to change and transition. The America that resulted from executing the Futurama vision was industrious, optimistic, and capable of reacting to favorable market trends. The suburbs and highways, cul-de-sacs and three-car garages, homes with more bathrooms than TVs were made possible by cheap energy (most of which we generated ourselves), cheap land, core competitiveness in major industries, reasoned population increases, growing personal income, wealthy governments, and a willingness of taxpayers to invest in the nation’s future.

We’re not dealing well with the new market trends of the 21st century. Energy prices are steadily rising. Land is expensive. Whole industries have moved beyond our borders. The U.S. is the third fastest growing industrialized nation in the world. Incomes are declining. Governments operate with enormous deficits. Taxpayers are unwilling to invest in a collaborative future.

The result is a nation that is uncharacteristically hesitant and operating in fear. And while ideologues on all sides shout past each other, and make holding office at any level a thankless and grueling experience, the real danger in our governing circles is the entrenchment of the politics of stasis. Doing nothing. Holding the line. Not deciding. Not acting.

The American Power Act contains a suite of reasoned ideas that make sense. Hopefully it not only survives the blizzard of amendments but is strengthened. The sole provision that could be considered a breakthrough, and needs to survive intact, is the bid to put a price on carbon and then to generate revenue by trading allowances. By itself that provision sets the basic foundation to reduce emissions, spur clean energy investment, and prove to the world that the United States is serious about being a leader in the global work to solve climate change. Taking into account the political and economic context, the bill’s passage would be a step, arguably a big step, for America’s future.

– Keith Schneider

In a long-awaited proposal designed to secure existing domestic energy sources and develop new ones that begin to reverse the damaging effects of global climate change, New England Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman today introduced comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

The co-authors of the bill, one a Democrat from Massachusetts and the other an Independent from Connecticut, insisted that its vision is to change the direction of some of the nation’s toughest systemic problems — economic competitiveness, energy security, job loss, and environmental safety. Indeed, the 900-plus page bill’s expanse, encompassing development of the full menu of conventional and alternative energy sources, as well as international finance to help developing nations respond to climate change was widely commended by environmental and business organizations.

Support and Specific Concerns
But in nearly every statement issued today, by organizations as diverse as Oxfam America, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, executives expressed concern about specific provisions and vowed to work with Senators of both parties to fix them. Environmental organizations principally focused their critiques on provisions to expand offshore drilling, provide federal incentives to build new nuclear power plants, and support the coal and utility industries with grants to prove technology to capture and store carbon.

Environmental organizations also said they would work to improve or change provisions that would limit the reach of the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon emissions in new coal-fired utilities, and eliminate the ability of states to establish carbon-emission reduction programs. Oxfam said it was concerned that the international finance provisions of the proposal would not become effective until 2019, and did not include nearly enough federal investment to meet the commitment the Obama Administration made in Copenhagen in December to help establish a $100 billion-a-year global climate action fund to assist developing nations.

“If the proposal introduced today by Senators Kerry and Lieberman stays true to its goals,” said Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director, “it can serve as a foundation on which we can build an America free from oil dependence, with millions of new clean energy manufacturing, construction and service jobs here at home, less wasted energy, and less of the carbon pollution that is threatening our economy, our health and our climate. But this proposal will only serve as a solid foundation if the Senate both improves and completes it.”

According to Senator Kerry, who blogged about the bill’s contents on Grist and Huffington Post today, The American Power Act proposes to put a price on carbon emissions from roughly 7,500 power plants and other industrial facilities. The bill proposes to establish a market to trade emissions allowances in order to reduce carbon emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.

Returns to Citizens
Moreover, a provision that borrows from a separate climate and energy measure proposed by Senators Maria Cantell and Susan Collins, provides proceeds of the sale of allowances as rebates to citizens. “None of it stays with or grows government,” said Kerry. “Those rebates rise over time until it all goes straight back to Americans.”

The American Power Act also takes into account the environmental and political consequences of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The bill’s co-authors inserted a new provision that gives states the authority to veto drilling less than 75 miles off their border, although it also gives states that decide to drill access to a percentage of the lucrative federal royalties generated by oil and gas production. The proposal introduces new regulatory safeguards that require oil developers to much more thoroughly assess the risks and consequences of drilling offshore, and to more accurately predict the potential of a spill.

A third provision that environmental organizations considered crucial is the bill’s influence on the Clean Air Act, which the Obama administration is applying for the first time since its passage in 1970 to limit carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the legislation limits the Environmental Protection Agencies’s ability to clean up new coal plants. Maintaining the ability to use the Clean Air Act to reduce global warming pollution is critical, especially if the federal program is found to be ineffective in future years. The bill does call on the EPA to continue setting tough emissions standards to reduce global warming pollution from cars and trucks and continues EPA’s ability to set some performance standards for old power plants to make sure they operate more cleanly.

Other provisions of the American Power Act, designed to both gain political allies in the Senate and encourage development of alternative sources of energy and fossil fuels, include:

• Providing incentives for farmers to base wind and other clean energy projects on their land.
• $2 billion in annual investment in carbon capture technology for coal-fired utilities.
• $7 billion in annual investment for public transit, clean car technology, and clean energy research.
• Federal incentives, including loan guarantees, to encourage the construction of 12 new nuclear power plants

White House and Graham Respond
The White House issued this statement today from President Obama: “The challenges we face — underscored by the immense tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico — are reason to redouble our efforts to reform our nation’s energy policies. For too long, Washington has kicked this challenge to the next generation. This time, the status quo is no longer acceptable to Americans. Now is the time for America to take control of our energy future and jumpstart American innovation in clean energy technology that will allow us to create jobs, compete, and win in the global economy.”

The introduction of the American Power Act, initially scheduled for April 26, was delayed until today due to the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s decision to withdraw as a member of the three-member Senate team that wrote the bill. Over the last two weeks, as Senators Kerry and Lieberman amended provisions, Senator Graham has consistently expressed his view that the proposal could not pass without his help.

Today Graham issued a statement that described his support for a comprehensive energy bill, but also warned that its Senate approval would be a struggle: “I want America to lead the world in the coming energy revolution, not follow. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to improve upon these concepts and find a pathway forward on energy independence, job creation, and a cleaner environment,” but ” the problems created by the historic oil spill in the Gulf, along with the uncertainty of immigration politics, have made it extremely difficult for transformational legislation in the area of energy and climate to garner bipartisan support at this time.”

Visit USCAN’s American Power Act page for more information and the climate community’s reactions. USCAN is following the developments and will be updating this article and posting others in the days ahead.

– Keith Schneider

On May 5, in an unusually aggressive response to what they saw as an academic witch hunt, the University of Virginia Faculty Senate condemned state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s demand to turn over six years of documents related to the work of Michael Mann, a former UVa climate scientist.

Two days later, members of the National Academy of Sciences published a letter in the journal Science that focused on the “political assaults” directed at climate scientists. The letter, signed by 255 of the nation’s leading scientists, called for “an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecutions against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.”

Both actions are the latest and arguably the most influential steps yet mustered by academia and science to counter the global campaign to discredit climate research, a crusade that drew much of its energy this year by what looks like an unprosecuted crime: the theft and public release last November of thousands of email messages exchanged by scientists at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England, a top climate research group.

Change The Conversation
The UVa faculty and the National Academy members spoke out to specifically change the vector in the fierce competition between climate advocates and skeptics about the value of climate science. And though it is early, it looks as though the tactical strategy worked, in large part because the UVa Faculty Senate and NAS scientists struck at the very moment that the skeptics had overreached.

Though Brian Gottstein, director of communication for the attorney general’s office, told reporters that Mann’s involvement with East Anglia researchers indicated that “some climate data may have been deliberately manipulated to arrive at pre-set conclusions” and that “the use of manipulated data to apply for taxpayer-funded research grants in Virginia is potentially fraud,” almost every other observer understood that Cuccinelli’s investigative demand was starkly political and not all connected to checking scientific accuracy.

The Washington Post said the investigation involved a “dangerous disregard for scientific method and academic freedom.” The UVa Faculty Senate said the Virgina attorney general’s “action and the potential threat of legal prosecution of scientific endeavor that has … a chilling message to scientists engaged in basic research involving Earth’s climate and indeed to scholars in any discipline. Such actions directly threaten academic freedom and, thus, our ability to generate the knowledge upon which informed public policy relies.”

“Society has two choices,” wrote the National Academy members in their letter. “We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.”

An Overreach
For years fossil fuel industry executives and their allies in state Legislatures, Congress, the media, and free market think tanks have waged a persistent campaign to discredit the global scientific consensus that the world was warming, that the causes were largely due to man-made emissions from burning fossil fuels, and that if the trend persisted the consequences to Earth’s environment and economy could be catastrophic. The organized skepticism delivered results. One was to prompt journalists to seek “other side” quotations when reporting on new physical evidence of climate change or new reports from climate scientists.

But last November, the release of the stolen cache of emails from East Anglia University was followed by a carefully and well-orchestrated global message campaign by critics of climate science that focused on the not always graceful way that scientists communicated. Skeptics cherry picked the messages to bolster their argument that neither the scientists nor the science could be trusted. And if that was so, they argued, why should the U.S. or any other nation fashion a new regulatory framework to reduce carbon emissions to solve a problem that might not exist at all?

The email messages also provided justification for climate science reporters from mainstream news organizations to probe and find a few inaccuracies in important climate science studies, among them the exhaustive United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former Vice President Al Gore.

The IPCC acknowledged the errors — the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers, for example, was overestimated by a decade or two — but argued that the original consensus about the causes and consequences of climate change were scientifically sound. Still, skeptics had drawn blood and pursued their work by targeting specific scientists, among them Michael Mann, a former researcher at the University of Virginia who now works at Penn State University and had been in active contact with colleagues at East Anglia University.

Blizzard of FOIAs
Since the disclosure of the hacked emails Mann and a number of other climate scientists have spent much of their professional time responding to Freedom of Information Act requests for notes, other emails, and research conducted while they were in the employ of state-funded or federally-funded research centers.

Those who filed the FOIA requests asserted that they were intent on discovering the accuracy of climate research findings. Scientists and their supporters fired back that the FOIA process was an attempt by climate skeptics to discover other instances of candid communications between scientists that might prove embarrassing, as well as damaging to scientific credibility.

Meanwhile Pennsylvania State University, the British government, and other groups established independent scientific panels to study the conduct of scientists who wrote some of the email messages, and whether the credibility of climate science was eroded. In every case, including an evaluation by a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences, the independent groups found that climate scientists conducted themselves and their work with high standards of scientific principals and ethics. Each concluded that the stolen East Anglia emails revealed interesting twists and turns in how scientists communicated, but the emails in no way compromised the validity of scientific research on the hazards of climate change, or its causes.

On February 3, 2010, for instance, a panel established by Penn State to investigate Mann’s conduct and research published its finding that Mann had acted properly in his role as a scientist and researcher. On April 12, an independent British scientific panel investigating research results and conduct at the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University found that “CRU did a public service of great value by carrying out much time-consuming meticulous work on temperature records at a time when it was unfashionable and attracted the interest of a rather small section of the scientific community. CRU has been among the leaders in international efforts to determining the overall uncertainty in the derived temperature records and where work is best focussed to improve them.”

In addition, studies by the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other government groups consistently concluded that global temperatures continue to rise, that the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record, and that physical evidence of the warming was appearing almost everywhere.

Virginia AG’s Agenda
Those conclusions, though, did not deter Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli, who on April 27 filed a “civil investigative demand” under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act requiring the University of Virginia to turn over documents related to Dr. Mann and his research from 1999-2005.

Such zealousness often marks the moment when an opposition movement built solely on ideology begins to crumble under the weight of real evidence of hazards and public opinion. An analogy is the property rights movement, which gained influence in state Legislatures and in Congress in the 1990s on the basis that government oversight of the environment was an intrusion in what conservatives asserted was their right to do with their own property what they deemed fit. The movement began to break down in the late 1990s when conservative governors and their anti-regulatory environmental agency chiefs ignored the law and failed to guard against environmental hazards, asserting their action could be seen as a “taking” of private property under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

In Michigan, for instance, state oil and gas regulators declined to carefully oversee maintenance work at natural gas wells in populated areas because it would interfere, they said, with the property rights of well owners. The result was that 11 people in Manistee, Michigan were injured in 1996 by a deliberate release of dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas from a well in their neighborhood. The incident was a turning point that significantly diminished the influence of property rights advocates in local and state elections, and in state policy making.

Cuccinelli was elected Virginia’s attorney general on the basis of his ardent support of extreme conservative views. He has filed federal lawsuits over clean energy policies and the Democratic-authored health care reform law. He has written to Virginia’s public college presidents telling them not to enforce policies that protect the rights of gays.

His pursuit of the climate investigation may delight allies in Virginia’s Tea Party, but the responses by the UVa faculty and the members of the National Academy of Sciences could cause a backlash among less conservative voters who see the probe as an overreach by a powerful government officer. Cuccinelli’s demand for documents is a hunt, but not one that benefits science or that most citizens are likely to support.

– Keith Schneider

Barack Obama addressed 90,000 people Saturday at the Big House, the University of Michigan’s football stadium, where he was greeted warmly by the largest crowd to hear the president since the inauguration. Among the nearly 10,000 graduates was my daughter Kayla.

The university is a place of innovation, stability, and optimism in a state that has endured more negative consequences of the recession, and the underlying transitional factors that caused it, than any other. The evidence list is long and familiar. Detroit is losing 10,000 residents a year, and is home to less than half as many residents as it had in the 1950s. The state is just one of two — Rhode Island is the other — that is losing population. Joblessness is high. Incomes are low. Most of Saturday’s graduates will begin their careers outside Michigan, where we’ve been sending our best   since 1990. For two decades in a row, Michigan has been a national leader in exporting its brightest young minds.

Michigan voted for Obama because he represented hope and because his calm, self-effacing, and candid style is appreciated even though the state is fueled by division. Blacks from whites. Urban from suburban. North from south. Detroit from Grand Rapids. Conservatives from liberals. Front office from shop floor. Michigan from Michigan State. Perhaps that’s why Obama, who’s confronting upheaval and resistance at every turn — war, the economy, jobs, political opposition in both parties, climate change, energy, and an expanding environmental disaster in the Gulf — chose Michigan as the place to address how Americans behave in the public arena. His speech, he said, was prompted by a kindergarten student who sent him a letter that asked, “Are people being nice?”