The $64,000 Question for Obama and McCain on Climate

When it comes to addressing national climate change and energy policy, the focus has been on creating federal law. But the new president will have the power to order the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions on January 21, 2009. The question is: Will he?

In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 to effectively reject the Kyoto Protocol. In 2003 and 2005, the Senate voted down bills introduced by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) that would have set a nationwide cap on greenhouse emissions. This past spring the Senate couldn't even cut off debate to get a vote on the Warner-Lieberman Climate Security Act. Worse still, the House of Representatives has never even had a climate bill reach the floor.

Those of us who believe the United States must begin to bring its greenhouse gas emissions down have been left to groan the familiar loser's chant: "wait till next year." And with all that's going on, can we have any realistic expectations that the long, arduous path required of a complex climate bill could actually begin on January 3, 2009 when the 111th Congress meets for the first time?

So how about taking another path, the presidential one?

On April 2, 2007 the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Massachusetts v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that, "Under the clear terms of the Clean Air Act, EPA can avoid taking further action (i.e., to regulate greenhouse gas emissions) only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation."

Because of the Bush administration's opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions -- despite the president's recent shift concerning the seriousness of the global warming threat -- the likelihood that EPA would actually act on the Supreme Court ruling was nil. Indeed, EPA administrator Steve Johnson has squelched any official discussion of EPA rule-making with respect to climate change.

But 2009 promises a whole new world for addressing climate. Both presidential candidates have sponsored or co-sponsored climate change legislation that would impose a declining cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (see here and here). Indeed Senator McCain with his long sponsorship of the McCain-Lieberman bill had been leading the way.

So couldn't the new president do something about global warming right out of the gate? The Supreme Court thinks so. And it turns out that EPA staffers had already begun on the QT to draft a white paper on the legal mechanisms by which EPA could develop rules and regulations.

So here is the question I would like to put to Senators McCain and Obama during the presidential debates:

"Suppose you've won the election and are sworn in as president on January 20, 2009. When you wake up on January 21st, what do you do about climate change during your first day on the job: Do you take the initiative on climate change? Or do you waste precious time, pass the buck, and leave it to Congress to figure what to do and how to do it?"

Dr. Bill Chameides is the dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. He blogs regularly at www.thegreengrok.com.

Comments

[Bill Chameides - Huffpost Blogger]

Hey Blackbird Highway and liberton -- interesting discussion. I guess it won't surprise you to learn that I am in liberton's camp on this one. Blackbird, you might think this makes me part of the "Global Warming Doomsday Cult," but I find your "cannot do" message about new technologies a little on the doomsday side. (Do I hear calls of "nattering nabobs of negativism?") And you should check your facts:

> Renewables are not 5 times more expensive than conventional sources of electricity. For example, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the projected levelized cost of wind energy in 2010 is 4.8 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to 4.3 for coal: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/aeo_2005analysispapers/prcreg.html

Now, to some extent the wind estimate is reduced by the federal government's Production Tax Credit, estimated to be worth about 2.9 cents per kilowatt-hour. But even if you add in the extra 2.9 cents, the wind cost is nowhere near a factor of five larger.

> It is true that wind and solar are intermittent, and that is a problem. But not insoluble. Development of energy storage systems and smart grids are underway to address the issue.

[BlackbirdHighway]

Bush promised back in 2000, before the election, that he would regulate CO2. As soon as the election, err, I mean the Supreme Court ruling, that promise went out to the curb like some smelly trash.

So, why ask, if you are probably just going to get a lie anyway.

Hey, libertron, so we can't go green because we need cheap energy? Have you been to a gas station lately, bub? Cheap energy is over. All gone. Finished. Kaput.

If you are trying to argue that we can't afford go green because we need to keep paying Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran and Russia $140 a barrel for oil, you need to have your head examined.

[libertron]

You must not have read the whole post. Expensive oil (because or wars, terrorists, supply vs. demand) was the first part. Next we get to see huge electricity price jumps because a fuel (coal) which is all domestically produced, cheap, and a supply that may last 300 years, shot down by the ecowhackos. It is cheap energy.

But don't fool yourself into thinking it won't be used. If middle-class America is already struggling with high gasoline, heating fuel, and food bills, it's only a matter of time before people revolt against the Global Warming Doomsday Cult and their crazy schemes. libertron

[BlackbirdHighway]

Where I live, we get 2/3 of electricity from coal and 1/3 from nuclear. Electricity prices are going up 70-80% due to deregulation and the soaring cost of coal. That's not because of "ecowhackos", it's because of very high demand.

I don't think we will be in such terrible shape if we switch to using wind and solar, with nuclear as a base for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Especially if we follow the French example for nuclear. They use a standardized reactor design which dramatically lowers cost, and reprocess spent fuel, which decreases both the amount of waste that has to be stored away and the need to mine new uranium.

A mix of 50% nuclear, 30% wind and 20% solar should be about right. The solar is nice because it generates maximum power when we need it the most, on hot sunny summer afternoons when everyone is running AC.

[libertron]

You could change the name of this blog to the the $64 trillion question. As in costs and economic losses suffered. Those who say that this will be some great economic opportunity with green technology and the like are blowing smoke.

The world economy runs on cheap energy. We've all noticed the shock to the system from high oil prices, But we will soon see that with electricity, if the climate change club gets their way. And we will (politically) lose our most abundant source of power, coal. Don't give me this stuff about sun and wind being free; it costs five times as much to harness them and then you have to figure out what to do in the obvious times when they don't work.

If we're not at the beginning of an economic collapse, you folks will cause one. Far better to think about ways to mitigate losses from climate change.