Steve Valk's Open Salon Blog

Climate advocates find hope on Capitol Hill

Sat, 2 Jul 2011 13:07:40 -0400

If the maladies preventing Congress from enacting effective climate legislation are cynicism and hopelessness, the antidote arrived on Capitol Hill last week in the person of volunteers from Citizens Climate Lobby.

The medicine may take a while to show its effect, but based on the positive response CCL volunteers received in numerous Republican offices, there is cause for optimism.

"Obviously, any bill that has a hope of passing will have to be introduced by a Republican," said CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds, "and we've taken the first steps toward identifying a GOP lead on this."

About 80 activists came to Washington from as far away as Alaska and Canada for CCL’s 2011 International Conference, where they attended a day of educational and skill-building sessions and followed that up with more than 140 visits to House and Senate offices.

They heard from renowned climatologist Dr. James Hansen, a familiar figure in the environmental community since he first testified before the Senate on the growing threat of global warming. But there were also faces not so familiar.

One of those was U.S. Navy Capt. Wayne Porter, co-author of “A National Strategic Narrative,” which is attracting attention for providing the context for a shift in policy toward sustainability. This report comes on the heals of the Joint Operating Environment 2010 report, which cited climate change as one of the leading threats to U.S. National security:

“In particular, where natural disasters collide with growing urban sprawl, widespread human misery could be the final straw that breaks the back of a weak state.”

Coming from the military, these reports carry much weight with Republican offices, and CCL volunteers were quick to cite them. They were also quick to cite a report from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, “Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene.” The Vatican report urges our societies to:

“Reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions without delay, using all means possible to meet ambitious international global warming targets and ensure the long-term stability of the climate system. All nations must focus on a rapid transition to renewable energy sources and other strategies to reduce CO2 emissions.”

Ultimately, though, what resonated with many Republican offices was CCL’s revenue-neutral approach to pricing carbon, known carbon-fee-and-dividend. A steadily-increasing fee on carbon-based fuels, starting at $15 per ton of CO2, eventually levels the playing field between dirty and clean energy. The clear and predictable price signal moves investments toward renewables and energy efficiency. Revenue from that fee is returned equitably to all households so that people have the extra income to deal with rising energy costs associated with the carbon fee. It doesn’t increase the size of government – anathema to the GOP – and it doesn’t require new government monitoring or regulations.

The conversations were a little different in Democratic offices, where despair and defeat lingered from the last election, some members having lost seats and chairmanships on important committees when their party fell into the minority. In those offices, the job wasn’t to persuade aides about the need to reduce carbon emissions. The job was to convince them that we could still find a path to enact the critical legislation to get the job done. CCL volunteers told them to hang in there, that we’d need their support once we had a bill with a Republican sponsor.

The progress made last week is owed more to CCL’s approach, which is to appreciate rather than revile politicians of all stripes for the often thankless job they do. Richmond chapter leader Elli Sparks best captured the experience of many volunteers:

“We looked for the light and found it every time. A smile, a softening, eyes brightening, arms un-crossing, even tears. These were beautiful and affirming moments. The men and women of Congress have started down the path of what will become the most rewarding thing they have ever done in their professional careers, perhaps even in their lives. It will also be the most challenging. It will require courage they never knew they had. That extra courage is there for them because we planted it this week. We planted the courage and revived the will. Our breakthroughs are their breakthroughs and belong to the world.”

It'll take a mom to save Mother Earth

Mon, 9 May 2011 15:05:12 -0400

Elli Sparks does not look like the kind of person who strikes fear in the hearts of fossil fuel lobbyists. But woe be to they who underestimate this diminutive mother of two from Richmond, Virginia.

Given a hundred Ellies, I have no doubt that the movement to stop climate change would regain its momentum. Given a thousand, I have no doubt that we could save humanity from our own stupidity and ensure a livable planet for generations to come.

Environmentalists often say we must stop climate change for the sake of our children and grandchildren. Who better, then, to lead the charge on Washington than mothers? As we approach the day when we honor those who gave life to all of us, I see that it will take a mom -- lots of them -- to save Mother Earth.

While the paid lobbyists in Washington who work for the interests of oil and coal are well compensated for their efforts, Elli has the stronger motivation. Their names are Sophie and Peter, her 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, who has undergone five open-heart surgeries. Like any good mother, her life is devoted to loving and nurturing her kids. She home schools both of them, and she raises an urban farm of sorts in her back yard -- complete with chickens -- to provide fresh, nutrition-rich food for their growing bodies.

You can check out her garden in the video below, where she treated us to a wonderful homemade breakfast -- freshest eggs I've ever had -- prior to our meeting with the editorial board of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Elli has always felt close to nature, but the full impact of the climate crisis didn't hit her until she read Bill McKibben's Eaarth last year.

"I wept the entire time I was reading it. I felt so helpless, and I still have waves of that. I was stunned to see how far things had deteriorated."

Knowledge about the consequences of climate change began to weigh on her mind as she considered her children's future.

"The kids talk about what they want to do when they grow up... The uncertainty is terrifying."

Compelled to do whatever she could, Elli organized one of 350.org's Day of Action events last fall, and in the process found out about Citizens Climate Lobby, an organization that trains and supports volunteers to lobby effectively for legislation to stop climate change. Their approach to advocacy appealed to her.

"I like how we come from a place of love. I don't think we're going to get very far yelling at people in anger."

Since then, she has held monthly meetings, organized letter-writing parties, published letters in the local newspaper, called congressional offices and met with editorial writers. She's working to get a face-to-face meeting with Richmond Congressman Eric Cantor -- she knows someone who knows his mother -- and is hoping to see the House Majority Leader when she goes to Washington in June for CCL's conference.

When Elli talks about coming from a "place of love," though, she isn't kidding. Her approach -- to melt hearts rather than beat heads -- was evident in a speech she gave while accepting a "Green Heroes" award in Richmond. Seated in the audience were executives from Dominion Virginia Power, a sponsor of the event and a utility that generates more than 40 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels. She spoke to them directly, in a manner that inspired rather than admonished, about the role they can play in a future free from the tyranny of carbon-based fuels. My words cannot do justice to her speech. Watch it here:

Like I said, give me a hundred moms like Elli, and we'll turn this thing around in no time.

As Cap and Trade Dies, Let's Bury Offsets With It

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 03:07:17 -0400

Senate Democrats pulled the plug on climate legislation Thursday, but it's not the end of the world. In fact, the demise of cap-and-trade might be the best thing that could happen for the Earth's climate.

Although the proposal from Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) was watered down and industry-friendly, the argument was made that we needed to take steps now, no matter how small, to stop climate change. Whatever the flaws or shortcomings, we could fix them later.

Some flaws, however, are not fixable. And that was the case with the little-talked-about provision in cap-and-trade legislation - greenhouse gas offsets.

Greenhouse gas offsets -- also known as carbon offsets -- allow polluters to exceed their emissions cap by helping to finance projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions somewhere else.

Sounds reasonable, right? After all, it's one big atmosphere, so what's the difference if reductions are made in one place or another?

Here's the problem: In order for offsets to really work, the emissions reductions they achieve have to go beyond what is legally required. They also have to be "additional," meaning it must be shown that those reductions wouldn't have happened without the financial incentive provided by the offset purchaser. If a project that reduces greenhouse gases would have happened in the course of "business-as-usual," it is not considered additional. Any offset purchase for such projects would produce no net reductions.

The trick, obviously, comes in establishing the additionality of an offset. In most instances, this is difficult, if not impossible, to prove.

But don't take my word on this. Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, two attorneys for the Environmental Protection Agency based in San Francisco, just issued a whistleblower disclosure calling on Congress to investigate the unfixable flaws of greenhouse gas offsets in proposed climate legislation.

It must be noted that this disclosure by Williams and Zabel is their own opinion and isn't intended to represent the views of the EPA or the Obama Administration. That said, they each have more than 20 years working with the EPA, giving them a high level of experience with offsets and environmental enforcement issues. They know what they're talking about, and their alarm over offsets is so great that they produced a video last fall -- "The Huge Mistake" -- detailing the major flaws of the climate bills being considered in Congress. Most of that information was also presented in a Washington Post oped.

In their paper, Williams and Zabel list four unfixable flaws with GHG offsets:

1. Business-as-Usual is Not Distinguishable -- It is impossible to determine whether a particular project would not have happened but for the additional incentive provided by the offset payments (i.e., would not have â€• happened anyway).
2. Activity Shifting (also called "Leakage") -- Emissions allegedly reduced by the project may simply be shifted elsewhere and there is no feasible way to track this.

3. Perverse Incentives to Keep Polluting Activities Legal -- The dual pressures to maintain offset profits and to keep the price of GHG offsets low will increase political pressure against the development of new regulations to limit polluting activities.

4. Subjectivity/Complexity/Uncertainty -- Subjective factors, along with complex and uncertain emissions calculations, are used to determine the baseline emissions and the allegedly additional reductions from GHG offsets. Along with the other unfixable flaws, subjectivity, complexity and uncertainty make enforcing additionality impossible

The 22-page disclosure goes on to explain, in much detail, each of these flaws, citing EPA protocols and examples. Worth the read for anyone concerned with getting things right -- I didn't say perfect -- on climate solutions. Certainly worth the read for members of Congress and their staff who are responsible for enacting effective legislation to address climate change.

Does the demise of climate legislation this year make discussion of offsets moot? I'd like to think so, but there's no guarantee that offsets won't re-emerge in future climate legislation. Polluters love the easy way out provided by offsets, which are usually cheaper for companies than reducing their own emissions. Alarmingly, proposals in this Congress would have allowed for 2 billion tons of GHG reductions to be provided by offsets. This means that all reductions for the next 20 years could be accounted for in a system thoroughly lacking integrity, one that allows American polluters to go about business as usual without making their own reductions. Corporate lobbyists will be working overtime to ensure that offsets are part of any future climate solution.

The best-case scenario for the next Congress would be legislation that places a steadily-increasing fee on carbon, returning the revenue from that fee to the American people. No carbon trading. No offsets. The "carbon dividend" from this fee would provide an offset of a different sort, one that shields families from the impact of rising energy costs associated with phasing out fossil fuels.

However, if any legislation emerges with GHG offsets, Congress must honor the request of Williams and Zabel for an investigation. There's simply too much riding on this to institute a phony system that fails to reverse the destructive course humanity has set.

K-G-L and the Shell Game Known as Carbon Offsets

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:04:24 -0400

As details emerge about the long-awaited climate bill from senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, I find it increasingly easier to contain my enthusiasm for their proposal.

The latest disappointing news is that Kerry plans to drop the tax on transportation fuels. This leaves utilities as the only sector immediately covered in their emissions-reduction strategy, a sector that accounts for 40 percent of the carbon dioxide the U.S. emits each year.

Given that electricity producers burn most of the coal extracted from decapitated mountains, this might seem like a decent first step. But the other devil in the details emerging on K-G-L is that carbon offsets will figure prominently in the new legislation. Instead of actually reducing CO2 emissions or purchasing permits to keep coal fires burning, polluters will have the much cheaper option of helping to finance projects in developing countries that supposedly lead to an equivalent reduction in CO2.

Sounds good in theory, but in practice carbon offsets are an illusion. Or, as Friends of the Earth labeled them in an excellent report last fall, “A Dangerous Distraction.”

As we weigh the pluses and minuses of the forthcoming K-G-L bill, the minuses pile up fast. This is a good time to revisit the FoE report, which dispels any notion that offsets are a viable strategy for reducing CO2. Be warned, when you finish reading their critique, you’ll needed an ibuprofen to relieve the soreness in the muscles that raise your eyebrows.

In the final hours of negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, developed nations worried they wouldn’t be able to achieve their emissions reductions targets. They needed an escape hatch, something other than actually reducing CO2 emissions in their own countries. Thus was born carbon offsets and the creation of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Through the CDM, polluters purchase certified emission reductions (CERs) in poorer nations, investing in projects that would curb carbon in the future. To qualify for CDM funding, a project has to prove it is additional, that the project wouldn’t have happened anyway. In other words, a project asserts that it couldn’t be constructed without CDM assistance. As FoE reported, many projects qualify despite the inability to prove they are additional.

From “A Dangerous Distraction”:

International Rivers cites the example of the Xiaogushan, Gansu, hydro project: A 2003 Asian Development Bank report on the project said it was the cheapest option for expanding generation in Gansu, regardless of CDM revenue, and a priority for the local and provincial government. Yet in 2006, two years after construction started, the developers claimed that without CDM support it was too risky “to reach financial closure and […] commence the project construction.” It was CDM-approved in August 2006.

In some instances, the Clean Development Mechanism should be renamed the Less Dirty Development Mechanism. In 2007, the CDM ruled that new electric plants that burn coal more efficiently – and therefore emit less CO2 than older plants – could receive funding and qualify as CERs. Regarding a 4 gigawatt coal-fired complex in India, the FoE report quotes David Wheeler, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development:

“Instead of supporting critical zero-emissions energy investments, scarce international resources are sweetening a private sector project that will emit over 700 million tons of CO2 during its operating life.”

By their very nature, offsets provide no real reductions in global carbon emissions because they’re based on what might happen in the future, not what’s happening now. English journalist Dan Welch, quoted by International Rivers, sums it up succinctly by saying, “Offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened.”

By giving utilities the option of purchasing cheap offsets, we would delay, by precious decades, America’s conversion to clean energy. Polluters would simply keep burning coal as long as offsets are available for a fraction of the cost of low-carbon power.

Looking over the details of the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal, as reported by Reuters, there are many more reasons for concern – stripping EPA authority on greenhouse gases, more offshore oil and gas drilling, for example. But carbon offsets are truly the fatal flaw in this scheme, and if the K-G-L climate bill is the only train that’s leaving the station right now, we’re better off waiting for the next train.

Steve Valk is communications director and regional manager for Citizens Climate Lobby.

Why carbon caps don't work and other mysteries explained

Wed, 7 Apr 2010 11:04:09 -0400

By Steve Valk

When policy wonks start talking about carbon pricing, it’s difficult for mere mortals to follow the conversation. There’s a dizzying array of options – cap and trade, cap and dividend, fee and dividend. How do these various systems work and which one is most effective?

Last Saturday, members of Citizens Climate Lobby had the benefit of picking one of the best brains on this issue – economist Robert Shapiro, who was Undersecretary of Commerce for Economics during the Clinton Administration. You can listen to the conference call with Shapiro here.

Shapiro now chairs the U.S. Climate Task Force, and for several years he’s advocated for a carbon tax – or fee, if you prefer – to put a price on fossil fuels that will make clean energy competitive. He explained, more clearly and convincingly than anyone I’ve heard, why the fee and dividend approach would work better than cap and trade.

Before I get into that, some folks may be wondering why we’re still talking about cap and trade. Didn’t congressional leaders declare cap and trade was dead and they were coming up with a new plan on climate legislation?

Well, the phrase “cap and trade” may have been stricken from the climate change lexicon, but the system of buying and selling permits to emit carbon-dioxide is still very much on the table. The proposal in the works from senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman would employ such a permitting system in the utilities sector. I assume the reason it’s taken so long to draft their legislation is because they’re having a hard time coming up with another name for cap and trade.

Back to Shapiro and the cap and trade vs. fee and dividend debate.

“Cap and trade,” as Shapiro explains, “is a quantity-based regulatory regime. You’re going to control something by controlling its quantity.”

This would be the cap, which on the surface sounds good. We want less CO2. Therefore, we set a limit on the amount of it we allow to be emitted. Right? The problem starts, however, when policy-makers attempt to determine the cap.

“The cap will be set with a set of assumptions about how much energy the country will consume in the year of the cap.”

And there are numerous factors, quite unpredictable, that will affect energy demand – economic growth, how cold the winter is, how hot the summer is. If the economy grows faster than anticipated or the winter is colder, energy demand will exceed what the cap allows.

“As energy demand bumps up against the cap… the price of the permits will soar. So what you get is price volatility in the permits, and that volatility is then transmitted through the permits to the price of energy,” said Shapiro.

“This is not only bad for the economy, to introduce this additional volatility into energy prices, but it’s also bad for the environment. The reason is that the only way we’re going to succeed in containing the damage from global warming is through the development of new technologies and new fuels. The ones we have today will not be sufficient… We have to go beyond that and produce new forms of energy which are not only climate-friendly but cheaper than the ones we have today. And to do that, for businesses to undertake the sustained investments required to develop these technologies and these fuels, they have to know what the price of carbon is going to be.”

If a predictable price on carbon is the driving force for investments in clean energy, as Shapiro argues, then a direct fee or tax applied to carbon is the way to go. Eliminate the volatility, and investors will open their wallets.

The other great advantage of a fee and dividend system is the recycling of the revenue back to the people.

“The hardest thing to do in politics is to get people to accept a short-term cost in order to avoid a larger long-term cost… Cap and trade in the House tried to deal with this by trying to reduce the short-term costs at the cost of the environmental effectiveness of the program. They gave all kinds of exemptions and offsets and they weakened the environmental center of the program. A carbon-based tax can largely eliminate the short-term costs by recycling the revenues. After all, the goal of this is not to make people poorer. It’s to change the relative price of different forms of energy based on their impact on the climate. And that’s exactly what a carbon-based tax does.”

What about the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act? Their bill employs a cap and dividend approach that sets a limit on emissions, auctions off the permits and then recycles 75 percent of the revenue in the form of a monthly payment.

Shapiro labeled the CLEAR Act “cap and trade light.” Though CLEAR uses a price collar with a floor and a ceiling, there is still uncertainty in the price of carbon.

“First of all, it doesn’t eliminate the volatility. It limits it. The way it’s designed, the spread between the floor and the collar top would expand over time, so the volatility would increase. And the fact is, the only way to enforce a cap on the price would be to issue more permits, and then you have blown the cap, which is the only advantage of cap and trade.”

If Shapiro’s made a believer out of you for a carbon-based tax, check out CCL’s proposal for a Carbon Fee and Dividend Act. Everything’s on the table with climate legislation at this point, but we need to choose the solution that will actually work.

Steve Valk is communications director for Citizens Climate Lobby.