One recent example of continuing wicked disregard for future survival of life on the planet as we know it was billions in tax credits for coal operators included in the near-trillion-dollar federal bailout of the financial sector. As this blog has chastened, coal won the 2008 election. Such friends in rich places behavior continues despite repeated warnings that use of coal will result in irreversible, catastrophic heating of the planet. Even as the warnings become more severe, denial at a federal level persists.
Photo: Vivian Stock / Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
Environmentalists had hoped that the Obama administration would reign in mountaintop removal coal mining. Now comes word that the Army Corps of Engineers has approved 42 of 48 pending projects. And, don’t look to Congress for help. As previously noted, “Over 470 mountains in Appalachia have been destroyed in this process, the coal scooped up and hauled away to be burned at coal-fired power plants across our country and abroad.” This includes the Potomac River Plant, which generates the electricity for the White House and the Capitol.
In terms of appointment, President Obama has followed through upon his pledge to boost the role of science in policymaking. And, yet one of the leading scientific minds in the Cabinet, Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently said that “he will provide $2.4 billion from the economic recovery package to speed up development of technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and factories that burn coal.”
NYC treehugger Matthew McDermott also perceives that Secretary Chu would seem to giving in to the polluters. McDermott refers to a BBC inteview in which “Stephen Chu talks about how US carbon emission reduction goals are being hindered by political opposition, and that compromises must be made.” Such a statement could apply to either those that want to persist with BAUAAAE (Business As Usual And Above All Else) and those that want to stop coal.
Damon Moglen from Greenpeace USA:
It is out of the question that the US should agree new power stations burning coal – the dirtiest fuel. Our targets on emissions are too low anyway – and there is no way we will meet even those low targets if we allow more coal to be burned.
If, indeed, Secretary Chu believes what he espouses, i.e., “we are heading for a climate tipping point and that action must be taken quickly”, then why is one of the compromises Chu suggests approval of new coal fired power plants even if they don’t incorporate CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) technology? In direct conflict with mitigation of the worst conseqences of our long term pollution of the atmosphere, ocean and populace with carbon emissions is advocacy of more coal for the short term. What we do in the next two to three years will determine whether there is any hope of stabilizing below 450 ppm.
Secretary Chu is afraid the US won’t get started if he or others say we need to do much, much better. Yet the growing consensus is that we do need to do much, much better. Instead, political economy dictates that we condemn future generations to unimaginable horrors. As the Earth Policy Institute recently observed, those antagonistic argue that a consideration of economics is essential and yet “economic theory and economic indicators fail to explain how the economy is disrupting and destroying the earth’s natural systems.”
Alex Steffen has cautioned that we need to embrace the magnitude of the environmental issues that at least are becoming more acknowledged,and that we need to think about these issues differently than we have. I trust that a winner of the Nobel prize in science has the capacity for such thinking. Does Chu have the fortitude to insist that federal energy policy be guided by, rather than continue to deny, scientific findings?
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Andy “Hi, Sailor” Revkin recommends a web site, “more think tank than blog” created “to strip away some of the spin surrounding the intersection of climate change, politics and money.” There are 3 themes to the new economics promoted by RealClimateEconomics.org:
In the above post this blog tried to convey the severity of the problems addressed by H.R.2454 and the need for different thinking. The Gray Lady columnist (“Pay no attention to the dry ice and fans, Onward thru the fog”) does well in sketching the theme. The scope of the required response is of such magnitude, writes Revkin…
There is concurrence between discussion at Real Climate Economics and at the Earth Policy Institute with the economics applied to current policy analysis. While, there are plenty of web sites discussing the risk, to include the most excellent,
Charlie McCarthyClimate Progress, and, while the Gray Lady, Real Climate Economics, etc. see fit to address the issue of equity, this blog quite frankly has downplayed such consideration.There is a highly qualified individual in the Oval Office to provide diligent (hopefully providential) oversight of equity issues, to include those related to national security, public health, foreign policy, Chinese takeout, etc. Nevertheless, the increasingly dire warnings, the threat to the safety and welfare of the world, and policy based upon the best available thinking, all of these are interrelated (and certainly subject to interpretation as constructs). It is the latter — clean energy policy — with which this blog has the most concern. It may be making sausage to you, CP, but it is a socket to me.
Still, I must admit that I do have less of an appreciation for guys with maps than Andy. It would seem a rather abstract way to interact with how the winds carry you over the waters. Still stripping down the spin and getting to the plastic sexant… Argghh, me hearties!
HuffPo provides an image that captures this moment in our story quite well.
Massey Energy of Richmond, Virginia has built a coal waste impoundment directly above Marsh Fork Elementary School. A March, 2007 protest against Marsh Fork impoundment by Mountain Justice members in the governor’s office resulted in 14 arrests.
The national media complicity with the previous administration’s war on the environment is infamous. There is some indication that change is afoot; some media has adjusted its coverage. For instance, political realist Joseph “Time to make the Sausage” Romm notes that Salt Lake Tribune criticized Jim Matheson (D-UT) “picked political expediency over science” voting against the climate bill and thus “failed Utah and the country.” Er, SLT, I believe that the scope is a bit larger than that.
In a summation about the mining of “trillions of cubic feet of natural gas… locked under the Marcellus Shale that runs from West Virginia, through Ohio, across most of Pennsylvania and into the Southern Tier of New York state,” Chris Hedges provides another definition of BAUAAAE (Business As Usual And Above All Else).
Reuters relays a report from the EIA. “Without new policies and binding pacts to cut global warming pollution,” warns the Energy Information Agency, “global emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, will jump more than 39 percent by 2030.”
Meanwhile, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has cautioned against an over-obsession with percentages. Chu perceives that “there has been too much emphasis on setting exact target numbers for carbon emissions.”
“There was a great deal of discussion on the Kyoto targets,” observed Chu, “and I’m not really sure which fraction of the countries that took part in that actually met their targets.”
Marsh Elementary School is in the news again. Writing for HuffPo, Josh Nelson tells us that the West Virginia state supreme court has handed down a decision that will allow yet another coal silo to be built directly adjacent to Marsh Fork Elementary School.