The Belfast (Maine) CCL chapter hosting H.R. 763 public meeting

From an Essay by Ann OBrien, Daily Camera, January 24, 2020

The January 11th front-page article in the Daily Camera reveals the horrifying effects from the massive wildfires in Australia. While the devastating loss of human lives, property and animals will take decades to overcome, some of the losses will be permanent. If the fires in Australia teach us anything, it is that the time to act on climate change is now.

The need to stem the tide of extreme weather events in the United States and across the globe takes up a big space in my brain. Unfortunately, in recent times, both ends of the political spectrum no longer speak civilly to one another, let alone address the critical issue of climate change. But there is a ray of hope that has put me and many others on an active path to promote a solution to address the damage to our climate.

The work of Citizens’ Climate Lobby is helping to break down the gridlock created by the current divisions over climate change in our nation. CCL is an international nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating legislators and citizens about a practical solution to reduce carbon emissions. CCL has over 400 chapters worldwide that are dedicated to using civil conversation and active listening skills to overcome the divisions that subvert our commitment to address climate change. The lobbying that CCL engages in is best described as gentle, but persistent, persuasion.

I believe that the CCL-endorsed Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R.763) that is now in Congress offers a way forward to reduce the output of carbon in our country. Members of Congress who wish to join Citizens’ Climate Lobby must join with a member of the opposite party. This ensures a nonpartisan approach that acknowledges the need to reduce carbon emissions. CCL’s work to bring Congress on board and to gather support among local businesses and nonprofits is ongoing.

H.R. 763 has been studied and endorsed by well over 1,000 economists. H.R. 763 is co-sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. If passed, this legislation is projected to produce 40% less carbon over 12 years. Please go to citizensclimatelobby.org to learn more about H.R. 763 and about the work CCL is engaged in.

Colorado has 14 active CCL chapters. My concerns about the impacts of climate change caused me to join the Boulder CCL a year ago. I received a warm welcome. I continue to find their approach refreshing and upbeat. The group combines a mix of ages and political views of members who are united in the work of reducing carbon emissions. Party politics are left at the door. Working with CCL has rekindled my hope that we will stabilize our climate in the years to come.

If you wish to learn about the work of CCL or use your skills in this important effort, there are Boulder County chapters in Boulder, Longmont and the University of Colorado Boulder that can be found through a Google search, at these locations or elsewhere.

The time is now.

>>> Ann OBrien lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA

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See also: The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019 (H.R. 763) is a bill in the United States House of Representatives that proposes a fee on carbon at the point of extraction to encourage market-driven innovation of clean energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fees are recycled to citizens in monthly dividends. The act was originally introduced in 2018 with bipartisan support from six co-sponsors and died when the 115th congress ended on January 3, 2019. It is principally based on Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s carbon fee and dividend proposal, and this organization advocates for the bill.

American economists warn of climate crisis & benefits of action

From an Article by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, October 8, 2018

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics to a duo for their work on how the world can achieve sustainable growth.

The prize was divided equally to William D. Nordhaus of Yale University and to Paul M. Romer of New York University’s Stern School of Business, both Americans, who have “designed methods for addressing some of our time’s most basic and pressing questions about how we create long-term sustained and sustainable economic growth,” the academy said Monday in a press release.

Nordhaus is known for his pioneering model describing how economic activities drive climate-warming emissions. He is a major advocate of using carbon taxes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

He has worked on this topic since the 1970s, when scientists became increasingly worried about fossil fuels contributing to a warming world, the academy said.

Coincidentally, the academy’s announcement was issued the same day that a United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report about the catastrophic effects of unmitigated climate change and advised rapid government action. The report builds on and cites Nordhaus’ work, The New York Times reported.

When it comes to averting climate change, “the policies are lagging very, very far—miles, miles, miles—behind the science and what needs to be done,” Nordhaus said in an interview after his win.

He added that the United States has fallen behind in mitigating global warming due to the “disastrous policies” of the Trump administration. President Trump has pushed for fossil fuel usage and infamously pulled the U.S. out of global Paris agreement to limit warming.

Romer, whose work focuses on how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas and innovations, laid the foundation of what is now called “endogenous growth theory,” the academy said. The theory explains how ideas require specific conditions to thrive in a market.

Romer is less pessimistic about the future of the planet in light of the IPCC’s dire report, but said work needs to be done to slash carbon emissions.

“It is entirely possible for humans to produce less carbon,” he said at the press conference announcing his prize. “Once we start to try to reduce carbon emissions, we’ll be surprised that it wasn’t as hard as we anticipated.”

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Nobel prize in economics.

“The contributions of Paul Romer and William Nordhaus are methodological, providing us with fundamental insights into the causes and consequences of technological innovation and climate change,” the academy said. “This year’s Laureates do not deliver conclusive answers, but their findings have brought us considerably closer to answering the question of how we can achieve sustained and sustainable global economic growth.”

The need for a global price on carbon is urgent

From an Article by Thomas Newsome, EcoWatch.com, March 10, 2018

The article, ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice’ has been co-signed by 20,000 scientists around the world.

A chilling research paper warning about the fate of humanity has received 4,500 additional signatures and endorsements from scientists since it was first released last year.

The paper—”World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice”—was published in November 2017 in the journal Bioscience and quickly received the largest-ever formal support by scientists for a journal article with roughly 15,000 signatories from 184 countries.

Today, the article has collected 20,000 expert endorsements and/or co-signatories, and more are encouraged to add their names.

The “Warning” became one of the most widely discussed research papers in the world. It currently ranks 6th out of 9 million papers on the Altmetric scale, which tracks attention to research. It has also inspired pleas from political leaders from Israel to Canada.

“Our scientists’ warning to humanity has clearly struck a chord with both the global scientific community and the public,” said lead author ecology professor William Ripple at Oregon State University in a statement.

The 2017 paper is actually an update to the original version published 25 years ago by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It was signed by 1,700 scientists then, including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences.

The first notice started with this statement: “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course.” It described trends such as the growing hole in the ozone layer, pollution and depletion of freshwater sources, overfishing, deforestation, plummeting wildlife populations, as well as unsustainable rises in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures and human population levels.

Unfortunately, the authors of the updated paper said that humanity failed to progress on most of the measures and ominously warned, “time is running out.”

“Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change” from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities, the paper stated.

The authors concluded that urgent measures are necessary to avoid disaster. They called upon everyday citizens to urge their leaders to “take immediate action as a moral imperative to current and future generations of human and other life.”

This week, three letters in comment and a response companion piece by the “Warning” authors was published in BioScience.

The response piece, “Role of Scientists’ Warning in shifting policy from growth to conservation economy,” includes two key areas for action in policy and science, from introducing a Nobel Prize in Economics for incorporating the limits of the biosphere to introducing a global price on carbon.

Watch below for an interview about the “Warning” paper with co-author Thomas Newsome of the University of Sydney’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences:

YouTube Video — https://youtu.be/8XJ1xv3Awcc

The best thing since sliced-bread

‘A Conservative Climate Solution’: Republican Group Calls for Carbon Tax

From an Article by John Schwartz, New York Times, February 7, 2017

A group of Republican elder statesmen is calling for a tax on carbon emissions to fight climate change.

The group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, with former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former secretary of the Treasury, says that taxing carbon pollution produced by burning fossil fuels is “a conservative climate solution” based on free-market principles.

Mr. Baker is scheduled to meet with White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, the senior adviser to the president, and Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, as well as Ivanka Trump.

In an interview, Mr. Baker said that the plan followed classic conservative principles of free-market solutions and small government. He suggested that even former President Ronald Reagan would have blessed the plan: “I’m not at all sure the Gipper wouldn’t have been very happy with this.” He said he had no idea how the proposal would be received by the current White House or Congress.

A carbon tax, which depends on rising prices of fossil fuels to reduce consumption, is supported in general by many Democrats, including Al Gore. Major oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, have come out in favor of the concept as well.

The Baker proposal would substitute the carbon tax for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, a complex set of rules to regulate emissions which President Trump has pledged to repeal and which is tied up in court challenges, as well as other climate regulations. At an initial price of $40 per ton of carbon dioxide produced, the tax would raise an estimated $200 billion to $300 billion a year, with the rate scheduled to rise over time.

The tax would be collected where the fossil fuels enter the economy, such as the mine, well or port; the money raised would be returned to consumers in what the group calls a “carbon dividend” amounting to an estimated $2,000 a year for the average family of four.

The plan would also incorporate what are known as “border adjustments” to increase the costs for products from other countries that do not have a similar system in place, an idea intended to address the problem of other “free-rider” nations gaining a price advantage over carbon-taxed domestic goods. The proposal would also insulate fossil fuel companies against possible lawsuits over the damage their products have caused to the environment.

Attacks on the plan can be expected from many quarters, even among supporters of a carbon tax in theory. Supporters of the Clean Power Plan are likely to oppose its repeal. Democrats also tend to oppose limitations on the right to sue like those envisioned in the Baker proposal. And the idea of a dividend will no doubt anger those in the environmental movement who would prefer to see the money raised by the tax used to promote renewable energy and other new technologies to reduce emissions.

Whatever the fate of the plan, it is a notable moment because it puts influential members of the Republican establishment on the record as favoring action on climate change — a position that is publicly held by few Republicans at the national level, though many quietly say they would like to throw off the orthodoxy in the party that opposes action.

“This represents the first time Republicans put forth a concrete, market-based climate solution,” said Ted Halstead, an author of the paper and social entrepreneur whose organization, the Climate Leadership Council, is posting the memo outlining the plan. Mr. Halstead, who also founded the New America research institute, said the political left and right had stalled on climate action in part because they disagreed about the means to fixing the problem, even though they might find common ground.

Some popular environmentalists take stands that those on the right can never embrace, Mr. Halstead said, citing the works of Naomi Klein, who attacks capitalism itself as the root of climate change. “That is so at odds with the conservative worldview, of course they’re going to walk away,” he said. “The only way for this solution to come about is if it gets a start on the right.”

The other co-authors of the memo include N. Gregory Mankiw and Martin Feldstein, former chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Rob Walton, the former chairman of Wal-Mart. (See yesterday’s FrackCheckWV.net).

A survey taken just after the 2016 election by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 66 percent of registered voters supported a carbon tax on fossil fuel companies, with the money used to reduce personal taxes. The party breakdown for that support was 81 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents and 49 percent of Republicans. Even among Trump voters, 48 percent support taxing fossil fuel companies, according to the Yale program.

Mr. Baker said it was time for the Republican Party to engage in the discussion of global warming beyond simple denial.

“It’s really important that we Republicans have a seat at the table when people start talking about climate change,” Mr. Baker said. He said that, like many Republicans, he was skeptical that human activity was the main cause of warming, but that the stakes were too high for inaction. “I don’t accept the idea that it’s all man made,” he said, “but I do accept that the risks are sufficiently great that we need to have an insurance policy.”

As for the likelihood of success of his plan, “I have no idea what the prospects are.”

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See also:  Citizens’ Climate Lobby for detailed descriptions.

James Hansen, Ph.D., in his Study

Will We Miss Our Last Chance to Survive Climate Change?

From an Article by Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, December 22, 2016

In the late 1980s, James Hansen became the first scientist to offer unassailable evidence that burning fossil fuels is heating up the planet. In the decades since, as the world has warmed, the ice has melted and the wildfires have spread, he has published papers on everything from the risks of rapid sea-level rise to the role of soot in global temperature changes – all of it highlighting, methodically and verifiably, that our fossil-fuel-powered civilization is a suicide machine.

And unlike some scientists, Hansen was never content to hide in his office at NASA, where he was head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York for nearly 35 years. He has testified before Congress, marched in rallies and participated in protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline and Big Coal. When I ran into him at an anti-coal rally in Washington, D.C., in 2009, he was wearing a trench coat and a floppy boater hat. I asked him, “Are you ready to get arrested?” He looked a bit uneasy, but then smiled and said, “If that’s what it takes.”

The enormity of Hansen’s insights, and the need to take immediate action, have never been clearer. In November, temperatures in the Arctic, where ice coverage is already at historic lows, hit 36 degrees above average – a spike that freaked out even the most jaded climate scientists. At the same time, alarming new evidence suggests the giant ice sheets of West Antarctica are growing increasingly unstable, elevating the risk of rapid sea-level rise that could have catastrophic consequences for cities around the world.

Not to mention that in September, average values of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record 400 parts per million. And of course, at precisely this crucial moment – a moment when the leaders of the world’s biggest economies had just signed a new treaty to cut carbon pollution in the coming decades – the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet elected a president who thinks climate change is a hoax cooked up by the Chinese.

Hansen, 75, retired from NASA in 2013, but he remains as active and outspoken as ever. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, he argues, sweeping changes in energy and politics are needed, including investments in new nuclear technology, a carbon tax on fossil fuels, and perhaps a new political party that is free of corporate interests.

He is also deeply involved in a lawsuit against the federal government, brought by 21 kids under the age of 21 (including Hansen’s granddaughter), which argues that politicians knowingly allowed big polluters to wreck the Earth’s atmosphere and imperil the future well-being of young people in America. A few weeks ago, a federal district judge in Oregon delivered an opinion that found a stable climate is indeed a fundamental right, clearing the way for the case to go to trial in 2017. Hansen, who believes that the American political system is too corrupt to deal with climate change through traditional legislation, was hopeful. “It could be as important for climate as the Civil Rights Act was for discrimination,” he told me.

Last fall, I visited Hansen at his old stone farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. At times he seemed downright cranky, as if he were losing patience with the world’s collective failure to deal with the looming catastrophe that he has articulated for the past 30 years. “It’s getting really more and more urgent,” Hansen told me. “Our Founding Fathers believed you need a revolution every now and then to shake things up – we have certainly reached that time.”

>>> You’ve arguably done more than anyone to raise awareness of the risks of climate change – what does Trump’s election say about the progress of the climate fight?

Well, this is not a whole lot different than it was during the second Bush administration, where we had basically two oil men running the country. And President Bush largely delegated the energy and climate issue to Vice President Cheney, who was particularly in favor of expanding by hundreds the number of coal-fired power plants. Over the course of that administration, the reaction to their proposals was so strong, and from so many different angles – even the vice president’s own energy and climate task force – that the direction did not go as badly as it could have.

In fact, if you make a graph of emissions, including a graph of how the GDP has changed, there’s really not much difference between Democratic and Republican administrations. The curve has stayed the same, and now under Obama it has started down modestly. In fact, if we can put pressure on this government via the courts and otherwise, it’s plausible that Trump would be receptive to a rising carbon fee or carbon tax. In some ways it’s more plausible under a conservative government [when Republicans might be less intent on obstructing legislation] than under a liberal government.

Trump’s Cabinet nominees are virtually all climate deniers, including the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt. Are Trump’s appointments a sign that climate denialism has gone mainstream?

Climate denialism never died. My climate program at NASA was zeroed out in 1981 when the administration appointed a hatchet man to manage the program at Department of Energy. Denialism was still very strong in 2005-2006 when the White House ordered NASA to curtail my speaking. When I objected to this censorship, using the first line of the NASA Mission Statement ["to understand and protect our home planet"], the NASA administrator, who was an adamant climate denier, eliminated that line from the NASA Mission Statement. Denialism is no more mainstream today than it was in those years.

>>> How much damage can a guy like Pruitt do to our chances of solving the climate crisis?

The EPA is not the issue. They have been attacked several times by an incoming administration since I got into this business – but they always survive without much damage. EPA cannot solve the climate problem, which is a political issue.

>>> If President-elect Trump called you and asked for advice on climate policy, what would you tell him?

What we need is a policy that honestly addresses the fundamentals. We must make the price of fossil fuels honest by including a carbon fee – that is, a straight forward tax on fossil fuels when they come out of the ground, and which is returned directly to people as a kind of yearly dividend or payment. Perhaps someone will explain to President-elect Trump that a carbon fee brings back jobs to the U.S. much more effectively than jawboning manufacturers – it will also drive the U.S. to become a leader in clean-energy technology, which also helps our exports. The rest of the world believes in climate change, even if the Trump administration doesn’t.

So he wants to save the jobs of coal miners and fossil-fuel workers and make the U.S. energy-independent, but he also wants to invest in infrastructure, which will make the U.S. economically strong in the long run, and you can easily prove that investing in coal and tar-sands pipelines is exactly the wrong thing to do.

China and India, most of their energy is coming from coal-burning. And you’re not going to replace that with solar panels. As you can see from the panels on my barn, I’m all for solar power. Here on the farm, we generate more energy than we use. Because we have a lot of solar panels. It cost me $75,000. That’s good, but it’s not enough. The world needs energy. We’ve got to develop a new generation of nuclear-power plants, which use thorium-fueled molten salt reactors [an alternative nuclear technology] that fundamentally cannot have a meltdown. These types of reactors also reduce nuclear waste to a very small fraction of what it is now.

>>> If the Trump administration pushes fossil fuels for the next four years, what are the climate implications?

Well, it has enormous implications, especially if it results in the building of infrastructure like the Keystone Pipeline, which then opens up more unconventional fossil fuels, which are particularly heavy in their carbon footprint because of the energy that it takes to get them out of the ground and process them. But I don’t think that could happen quickly, and there’s going to be tremendous resistance by environmentalists, both on the ground and through the courts. Also, the fossil-fuel industry has made a huge investment in fracking over the past 20 years or so, and they now have created enough of a bubble in gas that it really makes no economic sense to reopen coal-fired power plants when gas is so much cheaper. So I don’t think Trump can easily reverse the trend away from coal on the time scale of four years.

>>> How would you judge President Obama’s legacy on climate change?

I would give him a D. You know, he’s saying the right words, but he had a golden opportunity. When he had control of both houses of Congress and a 70 percent approval rating, he could have done something strong on climate in the first term – but he would have had to be a different personality than he is.

You know, the approach of subsidizing solar panels and windmills gets you a few percent of the energy, but it doesn’t phase you off fossil fuels, and it never will.

Climate change hardly came up during the election, except when Al Gore campaigned with Hillary Clinton. Do you think Gore has been an effective climate advocate?

I’m sorely distressed by his most recent TED talk [which was optimistic in outlook], where Gore made it sound like we solved the climate problem. Bullshit. We are at the point now where if you want to stabilize the Earth’s energy balance, which is nominally what you would need to do to stabilize climate, you would need to reduce emissions several percent a year, and you would need to suck 100 gigatons of CO2 out of the atmosphere, which is more than you could get from reforestation and improved agricultural practices.

>>> You’ve described the impacts of climate change as “young people’s burden.” What do you mean by that?

Well, we know from the Earth’s history that the climate system’s response to today’s CO2 levels will include changes that are really unacceptable. Several meters of sea-level rise would mean most coastal cities – including Miami and Norfolk and Boston – would be dysfunctional, even if parts of them were still sticking out of the water. It’s just an issue of how long that would take.

Right now, the Earth’s temperature is already well into the range that existed during the Eemian period, 120,000 years ago, which was the last time the Earth was warmer than it is now. And that was a time when sea level was 20 to 30 feet higher than it is now. So that’s what we could expect if we just leave things the way they are. And we’ve got more warming in the pipeline, so we’re going to the top of and even outside of the Eemian range if we don’t do something. And that something is that we have to move to clean energy as quickly as possible.

If we burn all the fossil fuels, then we will melt all the ice on the planet eventually, and that would raise the seas by about 250 feet. So we can’t do that. But if we just stay on this path, then it’s the CO2 that we’re putting up there that is a burden for young people because they’re going to have to figure out how to get it out of the atmosphere. Or figure out how to live on a radically different planet.

>>> Trump has talked about pulling out of the Paris Agreement. How do you feel about what was achieved in Paris?

You know, the fundamental idea that we have a climate problem and we’re gonna need to limit global warming to avoid dangerous changes was agreed in 1992 [at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change]. This new agreement doesn’t really change anything. It just reaffirms that. That’s not to say there’s nothing useful accomplished in Paris. The most useful thing is probably the encouragement of investment into carbon-free energies. But it’s not really there yet. I mean, the U.S. should double or triple its investment in energy. The investment in research and development on clean energies is actually very small. There are these big, undefined subsidies, like renewable portfolio standards, that states place on their electricity generation, which can help them get 20 or 30 percent of their power from renewables. But we’re not actually making the investments in advanced energy systems, which we should be doing. There were agreements to do that in Paris. They have to be implemented – somebody’s gotta actually provide the money.

I think that our government has become sufficiently cumbersome in its support of R&D that I’d place more hope in the private sector. But in order to spur the private sector, you’ve got to provide the incentive. And that’s why I’m a big supporter of a carbon fee.

>>> Is the target of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius, which is the centerpiece of the Paris Agreement, still achievable?

It’s possible, but barely. If global emissions rates fell at a rate of even two or three percent a year, you could achieve the two-degree target. People say we’re already past that, because they’re just assuming we won’t be able to reduce missions that quickly. What I argue, however, is that two degrees is dangerous. Two degrees is a little warmer than the period when sea levels were 20 to 30 feet higher. So it’s not a good target. It never had a good scientific basis.

>>> In Paris, negotiators settled in an “aspirational” target of 1.5C.

Yes. But that would require a six-percent-a-year reduction in emissions, which may be implausible without a large amount of negative emissions – that is, developing some technology to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

>>> Let’s talk more about policy. You’re a big believer in a revenue-neutral carbon fee. Explain how that would work, and why you’re such a big supporter of it.

It’s very simple. You collect it at the small number of sources, the domestic mines and the ports of entry, from fossil-fuel companies. And you can distribute it back to people. The simplest way to distribute it and encourage the actions that are needed to move us to clean energy is to just give an equal amount to all legal residents. So the person who does better than average in limiting his carbon footprint will make money. And it doesn’t really require you to calculate carbon footprint.

So this would provide the incentive for entrepreneurs and businesses to develop carbon-free products and carbon-free energies. And those countries that are early adopters would benefit because they would tend to develop the products that the rest of the world would need also, so it makes sense to do it. But it’s just not the way our politics tend to work; they tend to favor special interests. And even the environmentalists will decide what they want to favor and say, “Oh, we should subsidize this.” I don’t think we should subsidize anything. We should let the market decide.

Photo: Hansen being arrested at a White House protest in 2011. “We have to move to clean energy,” he says. “If we burn all the fossil fuels, then we will melt all the ice on the planet, and that would raise the seas by about 250 feet.” 

>>> Of course, the problem with getting carbon-fee legislation passed is that Congress is run by people who don’t even acknowledge that climate change is a problem.

We need a revolutionary third party that takes no money from lobbyists. Look at Obama and Bernie Sanders: Their campaigns initially were funded by small donors. They didn’t have to take lobbyist money. The public is not into the details of what’s going on, but it knows that it’s become a rotten system.

>>> I agree that a carbon fee could be an effective tool to cut emissions, but how do you get the politics right to get it done? I mean, it’s one thing to…

Well, you have to make it simple. You can’t do this 3,000-page crap, like they did with cap-and-trade in 2009. You gotta simplify it down to the absolute basics, and you do it in a way that the public will not let you change it. If the public is getting this dividend, they won’t let you change it.

>>> A lot of people say you are a great scientist, but when it comes to policy, that’s a whole other thing – and something you should leave to politicians.

Bullshit. What scientists do is analyze problems, including energy aspects of the problem. I got started thinking about energy way back in 1981, when I published a paper that concluded that you can’t burn all the coal, otherwise you end up with a different planet. There’s nothing wrong with scientists thinking about energy policy, in my opinion. In fact, if you have some scientific insights into the implications of different policies, you should say them. It’s the politicians who try to stop you. And that includes people who ran NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where I worked for 33 years. Before I would go to Washington to testify, I’d sometimes get a call from the director of the center – somebody who I respect a lot and is a very good scientist and engineer. But he would tell me, “Just be sure to only talk about science, not policy.”

>>> Do you ever feel a sense of futility about the situation we’re in – the essential insanity of continuing to emit carbon pollution, given what we know about the future consequences.

It’s not at all surprising, because it’s related to the desire of people to raise their standard of living out of poverty levels. That’s what we did in the West. We discovered fossil fuels, which allowed us to replace slavery with fossil fuels. That’s what China and India and other countries want to do now. But if they do it the way we did, then we’re all going down together. If we go over there and say, “You guys do it differently. Use solar panels” [laughs], that’s stupid. We have to work together in a way that will actually work. And they understand the risks, too.

There is a lot of talk about the rise of China as a military power. Well, they’re not gonna bomb their customers. The bigger threat is this climate threat. That’s what could destroy civilization as we know it.

Only one major political party in the world denies climate change, and it’s in charge of the most important political body in the world. 

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary, UN Climate Change Framework

Climate change deal will not include global carbon price: says UN climate chief

From an Article by Nina Chestney, Reuters News Service, October 28, 2015

Christiana Figueres is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

A climate change deal to be agreed in Paris in December will not be able to come up with a global carbon price, the United Nations’ climate chief, Christiana Figueres, said on Tuesday.

Big multinational companies and investors, and most recently oil majors, have called for a global carbon price to help spur investments in low-carbon energy.

A global carbon price would help to create an incentive for operators of power plants and factories to switch to cleaner fuels such as gas or to buy more energy-efficient equipment.

When the European Union launched a carbon trading scheme in 2005 there were expectations this would eventually lead to a global carbon scheme by 2020 worth around $2 trillion.

But the difficulties of bringing together different carbon schemes from countries around the world means the goal of a global carbon price remains elusive.

“(Many have said) we need a carbon price and (investment) would be so much easier with a carbon price, but life is much more complex than that,” Figueres told a climate investor event in London.

“I agree it would be more simple … but it’s not quite what we will have,” she said, adding that the world would move towards that in the future.

Figueres said 60 jurisdictions around the world already have a carbon price or carbon pricing mechanism such as a tax. “I would argue we already have a strong carbon price signal,” she said.

Countries are due to meet in Paris from November 30 to December 11 to agree on a global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.

This month, the leaders of 10 companies that produce 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas recognized that current greenhouse gas levels were inconsistent with a goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times. But they stopped short of outlining goals to cut their own emissions.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Source: www.wvpolicy.org

Tax Reform Committee Public Hearing This Tuesday in WV

The Joint Select Committee on Tax Reform will host its first public hearing on Tuesday, October 20 starting at 9:00 AM in the House Chamber at the State Capitol.

West Virginia policy makers are already struggling to maintain funding for important programs. Governor Tomblin recently announced additional across-the-board budget cuts for the current fiscal year.

Individuals wishing to speak to the Committee will be given a chance to sign up that day and speak in the afternoon. Groups or agencies will speak during the morning session and were required to preregister.

For more, please visit the Committee’s Facebook page. See also the WV Center on Budget & Policy, advocates of a WV state tax on natural gas liquids production.

Last month, a diverse coalition of organizations that cares about kids, families, seniors and working people, community organizations and local governments released basic principles of fair taxation which we urge legislators to consider as they deliberate changes to the tax code.

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Carbon Fee and Dividend Promoted by Citizens Climate Lobby

Concerned about our changing climate? Come hear how you can get involved in doing something about it, Wednesday, October 21st at 6 pm at the Morgantown Public Library.  This is a free presentation and all are welcome.

The speaker will be Jim Probst of the Citizens Climate Lobby.  Other advocates are the Monongalia Friends Meeting and the Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition.

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New Concern Over Quakes in Oklahoma Near a Hub of U.S. Oil

From an Article by Michael Wines, New York Times, October 14, 2015

A sharp earthquake in central Oklahoma last weekend has raised fresh concern about the security of a vast crude oil storage complex, close to the quake’s center, that sits at the crossroads of the nation’s oil pipeline network.

The magnitude 4.5 quake struck Saturday afternoon about three miles northwest of Cushing, roughly midway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. The town of about 8,000 people is home to the so-called Cushing Hub, a sprawling tank farm that is among the largest oil storage facilities in the world.

Scientists reported in a paper published online last month that a large earthquake near the storage hub “could seriously damage storage tanks and pipelines.” Saturday’s quake continues a worrisome pattern of moderate quakes, suggesting that a large earthquake is more than a passing concern, the lead author of that study, Daniel McNamara, said in an interview.

“When we see these fault systems producing multiple magnitude 4s, we start to get concerned that it could knock into higher magnitudes,” he said. “Given the number of magnitude 4s here, it’s a high concern.”

The federal government has designated the hub, run by energy industry companies, a critical national infrastructure. Major tank ruptures could cause serious environmental damage, raise the risk of fire and other disasters and disrupt the flow of oil to refineries nationwide, said Dr. McNamara, a research geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado.

The Cushing quake is among the largest of thousands of temblors that have rocked central and northern Oklahoma in the past five years, largely set off by the injection of oil and gas industry wastes deep into the earth. The watery wastes effectively lubricate cracks, allowing rocks under intense pressure to slip past one another, causing quakes.

The tens of millions of barrels of injected wastewater have helped make Oklahoma the second most seismically active state, behind Alaska. Although quakes have damaged or destroyed buildings and roads and, in a few instances, injured people, regulators do not have the authority to seriously curb waste disposal, and politicians in a state dominated by the energy industry have made no move to give it to them.

The state had three earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater in 2009. Last year, it had 585, and this year’s total exceeds that.

Many scientists say the largest earthquake recorded in Oklahoma, a magnitude 5.7 temblor in 2011, was apparently unleashed by injected waste. Research suggests that the Cushing faults hold the potential for a quake as large as magnitude 6, Dr. McNamara said.

The Cushing oil hub stores oil piped from across North America until it is dispatched to refineries. As of last week, it held 53 million barrels of crude. The earth beneath the tanks was comparatively stable until last October, when magnitude 4 and 4.3 earthquakes struck nearby in quick succession, revealing long-dormant faults beneath the complex. Three more quakes with magnitudes 4 and over have occurred within a few miles of the tanks in the past month.

The Department of Homeland Security has gauged potential earthquake dangers to the hub and concluded that a quake equivalent to the record magnitude 5.7 could significantly damage the tanks. Dr. McNamara’s study concludes that recent earthquakes have increased stresses along two stretches of fault that could lead to quakes of that size.

The vice chairman of the state’s oil and gas regulatory body, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, said in an interview that the potential for a large earthquake in Cushing was among her biggest worries. “It’s the eye of the storm,” said the vice chairwoman, Dana Murphy. Nevertheless, Oklahoma’s attempt to deal with the earthquakes this autumn faces continuing obstacles.

The government’s chief seismologist, who came under oil industry pressure to minimize the quakes’ origins in waste disposal, left this fall, and his successor is scheduled to depart soon. The state budget for the fiscal year that began in July slashed appropriations to the Corporation Commission by nearly 45 percent.

The commission has used its limited power over oil and gas exploration and production to persuade some companies in quake-prone areas to reduce the amount of waste they inject underground. This week, however, a Tulsa energy company filed the first challenge to those efforts, calling them arbitrary and a violation of due process. The two sides are negotiating an accord.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Carbon pricing schemes double since 2012 in climate fight: World Bank

From an Article by Alister Doyle, Reuters (Oslo), September 9, 2015

The number of carbon pricing schemes worldwide has almost doubled since 2012 but most taxes or markets have prices too low to prevent damaging global warming, the World Bank said on Sunday.

Carbon pricing, including emissions trading schemes from California to China, now covers about 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in a sign of momentum before a U.N. summit on climate change in Paris in December, it said.

The number of carbon pricing instruments, both implemented or planned, has risen to 38 from 20 since 2012, it said. South Korea began carbon trading this year, for instance, and both Chile and South Africa plan taxes on carbon emissions.

“There is a growing sense of inevitability … that there will be a price on carbon” for governments and businesses, Rachel Kyte, a vice president and special envoy for climate change at the World Bank, told a telephone new conference.

The study showed that prices, meant to shift investments from fossil fuels toward cleaner energies such as wind or solar power, ranged from less than a dollar a tonne of carbon dioxide in Mexico to $130 a tonne in Sweden.

In more than 85 percent of cases the price was less than $10, “considerably lower”, the report said, than levels needed to help limit temperature rises to a U.N. goal of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

The World Bank did not suggest a target price.

The combined value of the carbon pricing instruments was estimated at $50 billion a year worldwide, with $34 billion from markets and the other $16 billion in taxes.

A year ago, 73 countries and more than 1,000 companies and investors called for a price on carbon. Kyte said the group was becoming a “powerful coalition” that would make announcements before Paris. She gave no details.

A parallel report by the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with input from the International Monetary Fund, also laid out new principles for carbon pricing that it called FASTER.

“Carbon pricing is central to the quest for a cost-effective transition toward zero net emissions in the second half of the century,” said Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD.

FASTER stands for Fairness, Alignment of policies and objectives, Stability and predictability, Transparency, Efficiency and cost effectiveness and Reliability and environmental integrity.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Climate change and the oil and gas industry

Letter by Jim Probst to State Journal, Charleston, WV, August 20, 2015

I am writing today in support of an approach to addressing greenhouse gas emissions that you may be surprised to learn is also supported by ExxonMobil. 

That proposal is for a fee to be placed on the carbon content of fossil fuels, with the monies collected 100 percent rebated to American households in equal shares, also known as revenue neutral fee and dividend. The specific proposal that I advocate for is one put forth by the group Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

It calls for a steadily increasing fee, starting at $15/ton of carbon content, to be assessed at the point that the fuel enters the marketplace. This fee would increase at a rate of $10/year. By giving the fees collected back to households, consumers would be able to pay for the higher cost of goods and services. As the fee goes up, so does the amount of the dividend so, over time, low emissions energy production will be more desirable in the marketplace and will drive innovation and create millions of new jobs. 

CCL’s proposal also calls for a border adjustment so that goods coming into the U.S. from countries that are not placing a fee on their carbon emissions will have a fee assessed when their products enter the country, which will serve to level the playing field and encourage other countries to also place a fee on their emissions. I would like to quote from a report on ExxonMobil’s website where they address the type of policy that they would support. 

They say it should:
•Promote global participation,
•Let market prices drive the selection of solutions,
•Ensure a uniform and predictable cost of GHG emissions across the economy,
•Minimize complexity and administrative costs and
•Maximize transparency.

They go on to say that, “We believe that a properly designed, revenue neutral carbon tax is a more effective policy option for imposing a cost on carbon than cap and trade schemes, regulations, mandates or standards.

All of these goals would be met by CCL’s fee and dividend approach.  

In a study commissioned by CCL by the research firm Regional Economic Models, it was  found that a steadily increasing fee on carbon emissions would result in the creation of 2.1 million jobs over the first 10 years with 2.8 million jobs created over a 20-year span. CO2 emissions would be reduced 33 percent after 10 years with a 52 percent reduction after 20 years; 13,000 lives would be saved per year after 10 years with 227,000 lives saved over 20 years from reduced emissions. There would also be a $1.375 trillion increase in gross domestic product over the first 20 years of the plan.

To quote from ExxonMobil’s climate policy discussion, “Society continues to face the dual challenge of expanding energy supplies to support economic growth and improve living standards, while simultaneously addressing the societal and environmental risks posed by rising greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.” 

I think that much the same can be said for the oil and gas industry in West Virginia, where producers here can either decide to be proactive, and work to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and get out ahead of the realities they are facing, or wait and have their futures decided for them, as in what is happening with the coal industry and the Clean Power Plan.

>>> Jim Probst is the West Virginia director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby. He lives in Hamlin, WV.

>>> See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net