Hill Heat

In a letter to the heads of the Senate EPW and Foreign Relations committees (Boxer, Inhofe, Biden, and Lugar), a large group of development, faith-based, and environmental (including FoE, Greenpeace, UCS, and NWF) organizations write:

We urge you to take action to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States that are contributing to these impacts on impoverished countries, while also putting in place substantial assistance for those countries to adapt to the widespread and serious consequences of climate change. In particular, a significant proportion of any revenue generated from climate policies, such as auctions of emission permits, should be directed to the adaptation needs of poor people and impoverished countries. To maximize those resources, policies to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions should ensure that the responsibility to pay for emissions reductions and adaptation costs are borne equitably by those who are most responsible for those emissions, such as through robust permit auctions.

The present version of Lieberman-Warner allocates 5% of auction revenues to a Climate Change and National Security Fund “to enhance the national security of the United States” and “assist in avoiding the politically destabilizing impacts of climate change in volatile regions of the world.” The August draft outline allocated 10% of auction revenues to international aid; the initial draft legislation cut those revenues to 5% and allocated 3% of emissions allowances to fighting tropical deforestation; in subcommittee markup a Barrasso amendment was adopted to instead allocate those emissions allowances to states.

EE News reports:

Under the Lieberman-Warner legislation, an auction could create tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars per year in new revenue depending on how much industry pays on the market for greenhouse gas credits. If the credits sold for $10 per ton of carbon dioxide, a 10 percent slice for international adaptation would equal $1 billion.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) supports including international assistance for adaptation as part of the climate bill. But a Boxer aide said today that no decision has been made on changes in the distribution of the Lieberman-Warner bill’s auction revenue.

Eight environmental organizations sent a letter calling on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to “continue the process of strengthening S. 2191, and to deliver the bill to the full Senate the first week of December.” The signatories included four members of US-CAP (NRDC, ED, NWF, Nature Conservancy), as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists, National Environmental Trust, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Wilderness Society.

The letter does does not specify how S. 2191 needs to be strengthened, though testimony of group representatives before the committee has generally agreed on the call for an 80% reduction by 2050 in emissions and opposition to any safety-valve/price-cap amendments.

In addition, a NWF representative has stated that the National Wildlife Federation supports 100% auction, and the Union of Concerned Scientists has called for 100% auction, with revenues going to efficiency and to “counteract the negative societal impacts of a carbon price.” NET has called for U.S. climate legislation to “auction a significant percent of allowances” to avoid windfall profits. NRDC has opposed grandfathering of emissions allowances to firms and believes “allowances should be held in trust for the public and distributed in ways that will produce public benefits.”

Groups who have directly responded to Lieberman-Warner with a call for 100% auction or outlined climate legislation principles (such as Sierra Club, Audobon, Physicians for Social Responsibility, U.S. PIRG, Friends of the Earth, Rainforest Action Network, and Greenpeace) were not involved in the letter.

The full text of the letter is below.

Last week the 9th Court of Appeals issued a 90-page decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration/California v. NHTSA in favor of the plaintiffs. The suit was brought against NHTSA’s corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for light trucks – i.e., SUVs – issued in April 2006, in part for NHTSA claiming that the value of reduced greenhouse gases would be zero. NRDC, ED, Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and 11 states and the District of the Columbia joined as plaintiffs.

The NHTSA is tasked by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) to set CAFE standards. Its April 2006 ruling raised the light truck standard from 22 to 23.5 miles per gallon by 2010.

The court agreed with the states that NHTSA must take into account greenhouse gases, as required by the National Environment Protection Act (NEPA) following the Massachusetts v EPA Supreme Court decision: “There is no evidence to support NHTSA’s conclusion that the apppropriate course was not to monetize or quantify the value of carbon emissions reduction at all.”

In addition to agreeing that the agency conducted an inadequate environmental assessment under NEPA, the court found that NHTSA’s regulations violated EPCA in four key areas, including the “SUV loophole” (“failure to revise the passenger automobile/light truck classifications”):

NHTSA’s failure to monetize the value of carbon emissions in its determination of the MY 2008-2011 light truck CAFE standards, failure to set a backstop, failure to revise the passenger automobile/light truck classifications, and failure to set fuel economy standards for all vehicles in the 8,500 to 10,000 lb. GWR class, was arbitrary and capricious and contrary to the EPCA. We therefore remand to NHTSA to promulgate new standards consistent with this opinion as expeditiously as possible and for the earliest model year practicable.

Warming Law’s comprehensive coverage:

• BREAKING: 9th Circuit Rules That Feds Must Account for Climate Change
• On Cloud 9(th Circuit) For Thanksgiving
• Delights in the Details
• “NHTSA can’t have it both ways”: NEPA and GHG

The Daily Star:

Bangladesh dated with a nightmare as cyclone Sidr ripped through the southwestern coast late Thursday, killing over 700 people and demolishing houses, crops, vegetables and trees alike along its trail of devastation over an area of thousands of square kilometers.

Packing winds over 220km an hour, the fierce tropical storm roared across the shoreline after it hit landfall at the Khulna-Barisal coast at 7:30pm Thursday, cutting off all communications and utility services across the country.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my 47 years life,” Khalilur Rahman, a government official in Patuakhali, told The Daily Star over telephone last night. “It was a panic beyond description. People found no way but to keep on screaming as long as the cyclone ran rampage here.”

Dr. Jeff Masters, Wunderground:

Storm surge is usually the biggest killer in Bangladesh cyclones, and was responsible for the vast majority of the 140,000 people killed in the 1991 Bangladesh Cyclone. This storm struck eastern Bangladesh as a Category 5 cyclone—the only Category 5 cyclone on record to hit the country. The triangular shape of Bengal Bay funnels high surges into the apex of the triangle where Bangladesh sits, and the shallow bottom of the bay allows extraordinarily high storm surges to pile up. The maximum storm surge from Sidr was probably 20-25 feet, and affected the regions near and to the right of where the eye made landfall. The eye fortunately came ashore in the Sundarbans Forest, the world’s largest forest of mangrove trees. This region is the least populated coastal area in the country. Storm surge levels of 10-20 feet probably affected the provinces of Barguna and Paruakhali, which are more heavily populated. Undoubtedly, the storm surge killed many more people in these provinces, and Sidr’s death toll will go much higher. However, Bangladesh has done a much better job providing shelters and evacuating people during cyclones since the 1991 storm. Over 650,000 people did evacuate from Sidr, and it is unlikely the death toll will put the storm on the list of the world’s deadliest cyclones of all time.

The International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies has launched an emergency appeal for support.

This memo is being circulated among target companies:

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is organizing what it calls a National Day of Action Against Coal Finance on Nov. 16 and 17. They have distributed flyers and are planning a rally at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 17, at Kiener Plaza. Another rally is being planned at Washington University on Friday, Nov. 16. They are targeting Peabody as well as Bank of America and Citigroup, Inc. At a recent rally in Charlotte, N.C., four protesters were arrested for trespassing while hanging a giant banner from a crane at a nearby construction project. Please exercise caution when entering and leaving the office on Friday and Saturday.

Ed.—links added.

Sen. Boxer convened the third full Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Lieberman-Warner (S 2191) this morning.

Some highlights:

Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense strongly praised Lieberman-Warner as having “the right framework to address the challenge of climate change in a way that makes sense for the environment, entrepreneurs, and the economy.” He emphasized the heavy potential costs of delay. Krupp said that early reductions can take place primarily with energy efficiency and terrestrial sequestration. He called for three specific changes to the bill:

• 80% target by 2050
• an “Ocean Trust” of ocean and coastal adaptation funds as proposed by Sen. Whitehouse (D-R.I.)
• increased support for international adaptation

ED opposes amendments to weaken the emissions cap by changing targets or establishing a price cap, and opposes limits on offsets.

Krupp’s written testimony did not mention allocation at all.

Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Climate Change also strongly praised Lieberman-Warner. Her written testimony defends the giveaways to the coal industry in the bill:

While the use of a well-designed cap-and-trade program ensures the lowest overall cost, many important sectors of the economy will face real transition costs that can and should be dealt with through the allowance allocation process. Allocation, contrary to the impression some stakeholders may be creating, has no effect on the greenhouse gas reductions mandated by the cap. Given this, we should use the allocation process, in the early years of the program, to address the legitimate transition costs some sectors will face as we move to a low- greenhouse gas economy. . . The best hope, at the moment, lies with carbon capture and sequestration, which most experts believe will take at least a decade to deploy throughout the power sector. While we need not wait until then to begin cost-effective reductions, it would be appropriate to allocate initially a significant amount of allowances to this sector to help with transition. The bill does this and also appropriately uses bonus allowances and a clean coal technology program funded out of auction proceeds to accelerate CCS deployment and speed and smooth the transition. There is is a similar need for transition assistance in other sectors of the economy, most particularly energy-intensive industries that face significant foreign competition. As the need for transition assistance diminishes, the allocation of free allowances should phase out, which the bill does as well.

The Pew report she references calls for a total investment in CCS of 8 to 30 billion dollars, far lower than what is in Lieberman-Warner (about $400 billion explicitly for CCS, with another $100 billion to coal power, plus another $500 billion in research money that could go to coal, nuclear, renewables, and efficiency R&D.)

Following the GoogleAds on this site may lead to these coal industry websites:

• Americans for Balanced Energy Choices

From SourceWatch:

Formed in 2000 to develop astroturf support for coal-based electricity, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) promotes the interests of mining companies, coal transporters, and electricity producers. ABEC’s website is registered to the coal industry trade organization Center for Energy and Economic Development.

• Clean Coal USA

Clean Coal USA is an openly industry-funded site. The members are the following trade groups: The Association of American Railroads, the coal industry lobby group Center for Energy and Economic Development, the electric power industry lobby group Edison Electric Institute, the National Mining Association, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

NOAA has recently debuted a new website, Arctic Report Card 2007, summarizing the state of environmental changes in the arctic, linking each section with the detailed reports from NOAA researchers. Their summary:

Collectively, the observations indicate that the overall warming of the Arctic system continued in 2007. There are some elements that are stabilizing or returning to climatological norms. These mixed tendencies illustrate the sensitivity and complexity of the Arctic System.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the first lobbying groups to come out strongly against Lieberman-Warner (America’s Climate Security Act, S 2191). Using figures from CRA International’s Anne Smith, a fossil-fuel industry lobbyist, the Chamber claims:

If this bill becomes law, 3.4 million Americans will lose their jobs. American GDP will decline by $1 trillion. And American consumers will be forced to pay as much as $6 trillion to cope with carbon constraints.

The Chamber also released the following commercial:

Other groups, such as Environmental Defense, are supporting its passage and asking their members to lobby in support of the bill.

The National Wildlife Federation has launched a campaign to get a total of 218 sponsors for the Waxman (HR 1590, equivalent to Boxer-Sanders) or the Olver-Gilchrest (HR 620, equivalent to McCain-Lieberman) cap-and-trade climate bills. The two bills combined have 170 co-sponsors. NWF is targeting what they call The Final Fifty, fifty legislators who have not co-sponsored either bill.