Crossposted with www.thegrengrok.com.
The Environmental Protection Agency is on the march, while U.S. senators prepare a flanking attack.
Lots of Americans are quite happy these days. Why? Because it's football season and there's nothing like a good old-fashioned battle on the gridiron.
 It's the "reds" against the "greens" in the heated battle over climate protection. |
For years the reds have been routing the greens. But in 2009, the greens turned the tables and won big time in the House of Representatives with the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), often referred to simply as Waxman-Markey.
On to the Senate!, cried the greens following their House win, in hopes of a quick and decisive victory. But it was not to be. The greens got hopelessly bogged down in the other chamber, and were never able to capture the "60-Filibuster-Proof-Votes Hill," a piece of property essential to launching a successful legislative battle in the Senate. Another red victory.
As things got quiet on the congressional front, the greens turned to their reserve forces: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose regulatory power over carbon dioxide is vested in the Clean Air Act. Lo and behold, marching under the EPA banner, the greens have been gobbling up new strategic territory.
It all began with a panzer attack last December when EPA finalized its endangerment finding that greenhouse gas emissions pose a health risk to the American people and, as such, must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. EPA followed up with two major strikes deep into low-carbon territory:
Together these two measures would accomplish at least some of the goals the greens envisioned in congressional legislation. Do these wins signal a green victory of sorts in the making?
Maybe not, because now comes the counterattack. First, with Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) leading the charge, the Senate attempted a direct frontal attack with legislation aimed at stripping EPA of its authority to write climate rules. The bill failed in June (and even if it had passed, it would have probably been a Pyrrhic victory as President Obama would almost certainly have vetoed it).
Having lost a direct attack on the environmental agency's regulatory authority, the red strategy shifted to flanking tactics -- going after EPA's purse strings. One rider to EPA's spending bill, Sen. Murkowski's latest salvo, would block EPA's ability next fiscal year to spend money writing climate rules for power plants and the like. A rider in Sen. Jay Rockefeller's (D-WV) plan would up the freeze to two years.
Last week saw lots of speculation on whether the reds (e.g., Republicans and coal-state Democrats) on the Senate Appropriations Committee would get the opportunity to attach riders to the funding bills for EPA and the Interior Department. A committee vote scheduled on the appropriations bill for last Thursday is reported to have been "indefinitely postponed" to head off any such move.
Meanwhile the greens are planning their own counter-counterattack. There is speculation that EPA's funding bill may get bundled into the larger omnibus package for a vote later this year making it harder for senators to vote against any one provision.
The reds have opened another flanking attack against the greens and EPA along yet another front -- the courtroom. More than 150 businesses, trade associations and others have joined in the dozens of legal challenges that have been filed against the endangerment finding. (EPA denied 10 of these in July.) Five specifically target the tailoring rule [pdf] (which limits the regulation to the largest stationary emitters of greenhouse gases) and at least one challenges EPA's vehicular greenhouse gas regulations. More keep coming (subscription required), including some from unlikely quarters.
And in still another flank attack, reds in California have set their sights on the Global Warming Solutions Act, aka AB32, the most ambitious state-based climate change legislation in the United States. A referendum on the ballot this November, Proposition 23, would upend the law, requiring the state "to abandon implementation of comprehensive greenhouse-gas-reduction program that includes increased renewable energy and cleaner fuel requirements." While not directly related to EPA's rulemaking, canceling AB32 would be a major, major defeat for the greens on a front they thought they had secured for years: the Golden State.
What happens next? Who knows. Just get into your bunker and stayed tuned. That might be a good idea anyway. If the climate catastrophes come, you'll be right where you need to be.
Follow Bill Chameides on Twitter: www.twitter.com/theGreenGrok
http://fredbortz.scienceblog.com/34728/will-the-sun-give-us-a-reprieve-from-global-warming/
The state's clean technology sector received $9 billion cumulative venture capital investment from 2005-09, including $2.1 billion investment capital in 2009 - 60 percent of the total in North America and more than five times the investment in our nearest competitor, Massachusetts.
The laws bring investments, and the investments create the jobs independently of tax breaks or subsidies. California is a national leader in clean energy. Let's keep it that way by saying no to Prop23.
You repeat this same statement many times. Nothing was "super" to Enron and Enron would be kicking and screaming against revoking the law, against the proposition.
The best way to attack climate change is to make green energy so inexpensive that everyone will want it.
As it happens, and perhaps to everyone's surprise, that is in the process of becoming a viable alternative.
It can occur faster than might be imagined. The reason is the thus far little recognized potential impact of rising solar flare activity, as the sunspot cycle moves towards a projected peak in 2013.
A huge solar flare missed the earth earlier this month. If one hits the geomagnetic field surrounding the earth, according to NASA, 130 million Americans live in areas that may lose power for protracted periods of time - at a cost the first year of between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.
This is similar to the total cost to date of both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!
See: http://www.aesopinstitute.org for additional information.
The strategy outlined there reflects the observation that we need to pursue cheap green power.
That can clearly be done and will have enormous positive economic impact.
It can also open a new door to broadly supported political action to minimize the damage from a possible solar storm. And encourage development of cheap green energy to reduce the need to import oil and burn fossil fuels.
This approach opens a positive way forward. It will neutralize political opposition since a massive longterm power outage is unacceptable. It can restore American leadership in the energy field.
However, the MWP deniers, such as the IPCC, US EPA and the UK’s MET Office, will never admit the existence of the MWP because it means that their religious-like belief in AGW is exposed for the steaming pile of junk science that it truly is.
In total, climate change is complex and not well understood.
But this part is simple.
Since the world was warmer when CO2 levels were lower, CO2 cannot be the earth's temperature regulator.
In the past, the Earth was warmer than it is today; before the social and industrial advances that have made modern people the healthiest and most prosperous in history. MWP deniers want us to believe that plant friendly and life giving CO2 is a bad thing to better advance their meglomanical desire to both boss around the developed world and further impoverish the poor while pocketing a lot of taxpayer money along the way.
Useless, misguided attempts to control carbon are not the answer to the ever changing climate.There is only one answer to changes in climate that has ever worked for humanity.
That is adaptation.
One of the many links to the overwhelming Paleoclimate evidence of the global nature of the MWP is below.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Yeah, okay.