Tag: Environment

[T]he Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who will be chairing the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. Thankfully we can all rest assured that the Adults are in charge of the GOP. There might be one or two show votes, but then they’re going to buckle down and get to the hard work of governing by consensus. Certainly that’s what the Commentariat is telling me. So it must be true. Cannot wait for my pony.

You Had Me At “Sump”

Rising flood waters at doorstep of Nebraska nuclear plant:

“And if the water gets in here, what would be the result?” Mr. Jaczko asked.

“We’ve got a sump pump over here,” said Dan Goodman, the assistant operations manager

Well, then. That settles it. Nothing to see here. I can’t think of one instance of high water causing troubles for a nuclear plant anyway…

You Had Me At “Sump”

[If the nation took an extremely vigorous stance on oil exploitation – and relaxed restrictions on the Gulf and drilled in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and off the coast of California, where America’s most easily accessible offshore oil is located – it still would not have much of an impact.] 
With the exception of the deep Gulf, where there are restrictions, people are drilling as fast as they can […] You might, under really optimistic scenarios, over five or six years, add 2 million barrels a day of production. On a global scale, it’s significant. But we would still be big importers – we would still be dependent on foreign oil. [Oil is traded on a world market, and the United States does not have enough petroleum to increase the global supply, which would reduce demand – and thus the price – for fuel.]

Mike Lynch, Strategic Energy and Economic Research, Inc. analyst and a self-proclaimed Republican, speaking to the Huffington Post. This cannot be repeated frequently enough. Something like it should be a regular refrain for Obama and all top Democratic leaders.
“Drill, baby, drill!” simply will not, cannot work to reduce, much less end our dependence on foreign oil. Period. Wishing won’t make it so. Willpower doesn’t enter into it. There isn’t enough oil on the Earth. Full stop.
All talk of carbon and its impacts aside: Find cheap space oil or think of some other way to generate power. Those are your two choices. Drilling won’t fix it. Ever.

Confessions of a Climate Convert

Forget all the road to Damascus stuff in the piece, this is what I find important:

I’d argue that conservatives and libertarians should strongly support regulation to reduce carbon pollution, since pollution by one entity invariably infringes upon the rights of others (including property rights), and no entity has a constitutional right to pollute. It does not put America on the road to serfdom to suggest that the federal government has a compelling interest in protecting the country from ecological damage. If anything, it puts America on the road to common sense.

Exactly right. This is how Democrats should be messaging on this issue. It removes the ever-present and undeniable impulse in the MSM to punch the dirty fucking hippies whenever possible, the nigh irresistible impulse to note that it “snowed today,” and the much beloved “well, Al Gore sure is fat” gambit and frames the debate in terms even libertarians can understand.

Part Two of said strategy needs to incorporate the notion that even if we’re 100% wrong these measures will be good for the country and likely even of existential importance relative to our industrial and economic standing in the world. Getting off our oil addiction is, plain and simple, a good idea, no matter what you think the output carbon of our oil economy is doing. We’re going to be getting off of oil sooner or later, may as well start now and be the arbiter or at least one of the arbiters of the post-oil economy. Furthermore, if you want America “making things” again, the most likely and highest value target for said industry is in the post-oil transition. Not only can you sell such technology to the developed world, the whole of the developing world will be knocking at your door as well.
There is not enough reserve oil in American hands to measurably move the global market, even if we could extract it all tonight. There just isn’t. We wouldn’t even make an appreciable impact on our own rate of import were we to employ all of our oil; even that small but measurable impact would only last for a year or two. We may hold 1-2% of proven world reserves. Period. We cannot and will not ever produce our way off of foreign oil. It is simply not possible given current or projected usage. And, oh by the way, there isn’t enough global capacity either, though only the US military seems willing to admit it publicly.
The time to start dealing with both the implicit misconception (Drill baby drill!) and the overriding and much more important harsh reality is right now, not 20 years from now when our oil addiction and its impacts is both (still) utterly undeniable and but it is also too late to do anything about it.

Confessions of a Climate Convert

Barack Obama understands that if people ignore George Will and believe the planet is getting warmer rather than cooler, that this will make him more politically popular. He also knows that people might believe scientists about something like this. His problem is that while American scientists are all ready to coordinate their message in order to advance a foreign agenda, JournoList doesn’t have the reach necessary to extend this kind of partisanship to foreign scientists. Fortunately, though, foreigners hate America. And foreigners know that Obama’s death panels and general socialism will cripple the US economy. So in order to boost Obama’s fortunes, they’ve gotten 48 countries’ worth of scientists together to promote this lie. Fortunately, George Will still has the guts to call it like it is and the Post—and dozens of other papers across the country—still publish his bold work. Kudos.

Matthew Yglesias explaining it all

The Oncoming Storm

Jonathan Chait isn’t too worried about consequences of the failure of the Senate’s cap and trade bill to find support:

I don’t think the failure of a bill means the planet will burn. I think it means that the Environmental Protection Agency will take over the issue. This isn’t ideal from an economic point of view. But it is ideal from Congress’s point of view – or, at least, the conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans who hold the deciding votes in Congress.

I agree up to a point. But I think the biggest winners here will be the far right. This sort of quiet expansion of governmental powers plays right into their hands; likewise, they have a base that’s already sure the EPA is right up there with [Godwin’s law alert] the Gestapo, meddling as they do in our water and air and such when the little guy with a massive industrial waste stream is just trying to get by. Likewise, it will be taken as yet more “proof” of the creeping Socialization of everything.
This is usually the moment that sensate individuals take recourse to the facts: why, cap and trade is a Republican idea, and Republicans are the ones stopping it; this means it is they who will suffer the consequences.
To which I say: don’t worry your pretty little head about that; the facts do not matter. This is additionally one of those cases where it is genuinely Bad for the Democrat; this outcome dispirits the base and empowers the opposition.

Were I an optimist, I might say that the administration and its cronies will easily foresee this eventuality, and be ready to combat the inevitable “it’s not enough for the government to take our water and other precious bodily fluids and poison them with fluoride and God knows what other Communistic contaminants, now they want to control the air we breathe” style-nonsense that will inevitably emit from the maw of the far right. Yes, theoretically optimistic me opines that the various trans-limbic individuals inhabiting American polity will furthermore soon begin their own inoculations against such future tropes so that, when said tropes arise, the public will be well prepared to disregard the new, and incompatible information. After all, it is well known that fact-primacy is everything in the current environment.
But I am not an optimist.

…now that the enviros have embraced a GHG tax or its cap-and-trade equivalent as the way to deal with global warming, conservative support is nowhere in sight. They’re all too afraid of Grover Norquist.
Remember this the next time a conservative explains how we ought to voucherize public education. The minute that happens, the conservatives will come back and decide that we need to means-test the vouchers. That done, they’ll attack the remaining program as “welfare.”
This is not a group of people it’s possible to do business with.

Mark Kleiman on the ever-moving goalposts that “sensible people” must forever be chasing after.