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Advisory panel expected to put gas tax increase plan before House committee

Alex Kaplun, E&E Daily reporter

A House panel is poised to open a debate this week into increasing the federal gas tax as a means for funneling additional dollars toward bridge repairs, highway construction and other transportation projects.

The House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing Thursday to examine a report from the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, which is expected to outline a series of recommendations for improving the country’s transportation infrastructure.

The report will not be formally released until tomorrow morning but reports late last week indicate that the majority of the 12-member panel will endorse raising the gas tax to pay for a wide range of transportation initiatives. The size of the proposed increase to the 18.4 cent per gallon tax remains unclear and could range from as little as a dime or as much as a quarter per gallon.

Three members of the panel – including Transportation Secretary Mary Peters – are expected to oppose the increase. The Bush administration has consistently opposed any boost to the gas tax, arguing that it is an inefficient way to pay for future transportation projects.

Still, several key lawmakers in the last couple years have said that Congress should explore increasing the tax to inject extra dollars into federal transportation funds that are failing to keep up with the nation’s needs. But the idea has yet to gain any significant traction on Capitol Hill.

In the wake of last summer’s Minnesota bridge collapse, T&I Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) proposed a temporary five-cent gas tax increase to repair and replace bridges across the United States. The increase would sunset after three years and raise roughly $25 billion over that period.

Oberstar’s plan never made it out of committee before the end of the last session of Congress. It remains to be seen whether he will try to revive a similar plan this year.

But one influential Republican has already come out against any proposal to increase the gas tax, saying that it would place an extra burden on consumers without substantially increasing federal transportation dollars.

“This is a disappointment and probably even a big waste of tax dollars. A special commission came up with an old, cold, bad idea,” said Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “Raising the gas tax puts the brunt of the long-term trust fund expenses on automobile drivers, when diesel trucks and other heavy vehicles also use the highways.”

01/17/2008 at 11:00AM

The House begins a new round of global warming hearings this year.

Witness

• James Connaughton, chairman, White House Council on Environmental Quality

01/17/2008 at 10:00AM

Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will question members of the Bush Administration regarding the delay of a decision to list polar bears under the Endangered Species Act until after a controversial lease sale for oil drilling off of Alaska. The hearing will also feature experts on wildlife protection and oil drilling.

Earlier this week, the Interior Department announced it would miss the statutory deadline to reach a decision on listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), saying it would take up to a month more to reach the decision. That would put the listing decision one day after the sale of oil drilling rights in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, scheduled for February 6th. The Chukchi Sea is a sensitive polar bear habitat.

In the most thorough study to date, the Interior Department determined that under current trends, disappearing sea ice would result in a two-thirds drop in the world population of polar bears resulting in the disappearance of polar bears from Alaska by 2050.

PANEL I

• Mr. Dale Hall, Director, Fish and Wildlife Service
• Mr. Randall Luthi, Director, Minerals Management Service
• Dr. Steven Amstrup, Polar Bear Team Leader, U.S. Geological Survey

PANEL II

• Ms. Jamie Rappaport Clark, Executive Vice President, Defenders of Wildlife
• Ms. Deborah Williams, President, Alaska Conservation Solutions
• Ms. Kassie Siegel, Director, Climate, Air and Energy Program, Center for Biological Diversity

01/17/2008 at 09:30AM

The National Council for Science and the Environment invites you to participate in the 8th National Conference on Science, Policy, and the Environment to develop and advance science-based solutions to climate change.

Join us in the dialogue with leading scientists, policy makers, industry leaders, educators, and other solutions-oriented innovators to develop comprehensive strategies for protecting people and the planet against the threat of climate change.

The three-day conference will be held January 16-18, 2008, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. An interactive agenda features skill-building workshops, targeted breakout sessions, plenary sessions, and symposia to provide participants with an expansive understanding of climate change solutions—and how we can achieve them.

01/16/2008 at 08:00AM

Energy: A Conversation About Our National Addiction BIOFUELS, AT WHAT COST? with Glenn Prickett of Conservation International

Co Sponsored by: DoD, DoE, USDA, EPA, DoT, DHS, DoI, FERC, Commerce, State, Labor, NASA, NSF and DNI on behalf of the entire Intelligence Community

January 14, 2008 5:30-6:15 PM Reception 6:15-8:30 PM Presentation & Discussion

Doubletree Hotel 300 Army Navy Drive, Arlington, VA

Biofuel subsidies continue to change at a very fast rate and do little to constrain the enormous environmental issues that arise when so much land and water are used to produce fuel. Glenn Prickett, Senior Vice President for Business and U.S. Government Relations at Conservation International, will address these issues and more at our first seminar of the new year. Join the Conversation.

Please RSVP to Sarah Minczeski, [email protected].

• THERE IS NO REGISTRATION FEE
• Registration is not mandatory but STRONGLY encouraged
• Refreshments: A vegetarian friendly buffet is available for $10.
• Transportation. The Pentagon City Metro on the blue/yellow line is just 3 blocks from the hotel.
• Parking: Street parking is limited. Hotel parking with validation costs $8.

01/14/2008 at 05:30PM

What is the current and historic annual rate of growth in CO2 emissions? What is the future trajectory of CO2 emissions and concentrations based on present rates of emissions? Is the natural uptake of CO2 by the biosphere limited? If so, what is the limitation and what are the limiting factors? More importantly, what is the implication of the biosphere having limited capacity to absorb atmospheric CO2? Does this limitation have implications as to how long CO2 resides in the atmosphere?

Moderator:

Dr. Anthony Socci, Senior Science Fellow, American Meteorological Society

Speakers

• Dr. Ralph F. Keeling, Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA
• Dr. David Archer, Professor, Department of. Geophysical Sciences and the College, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

01/14/2008 at 12:00PM

The Field Briefing will take place Thursday, January 10 at 10:00am PST in the City Council Chamber at the Los Angeles City Hall, 200 North Spring St. in Los Angeles.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson has been invited to appear at the field briefing to answer Senators’ questions about the EPA’s denial of California’s request for a waiver to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from motor vehicles.

Witnesses

• Edmund G. Brown Jr., Attorney General of California
• Mary Nichols, Chairman of the California Air Resources Board
• Fran Pavley, Senior Advisor, Natural Resources Defense Council
• Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club

01/10/2008 at 01:00PM

Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will hold a hearing next week on the international climate negotiations now wrapping up in Bali, Indonesia.

Chairman Markey and other members of the Select Committee will host climate experts returning from Bali to discuss the climate conference and suggest an effective path forward on global warming for the United States and the international community.

Witnesses

• Philip Clapp, President, National Environmental Trust
• Myron Ebell, Director, Energy and Global Warming Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy, Union of Concerned Scientists
• Ned Helme, President, Center for Clean Air Policy
• Christiana Figueres, Former Official Negotiator, U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, Costa Rica

12/19/2007 at 12:00PM

Featured Speaker:

• Senator John Kerry (D – MA)

Introduction by:

• Melody Barnes, Executive Vice President for Policy, Center for American Progress Action Fund

After years of denial, delay, distraction and distortion, climate change is changing the political climate. Australia’s John Howard recently became the first national leader voted out of office in large measure because of his failure to respond to citizens’ concerns about global warming. Newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made global warming his first priority in office. Australia’s awakening is not an isolated example. Eighty-three percent of Chinese support action on climate change. Between 2006 and 2010 China plans to improve energy efficiency by 20 percent. The dialogue in the United States is also shifting, albeit too slowly. Fifty-nine percent of Americans now endorse taking major steps soon to combat global warming, and 33 percent more think we need modest steps. Unfortunately this 92 percent of the American public is still looking to President Bush for action on this key issue.

Just last week representatives of more than 180 nations met in Bali to chart a course toward a new global agreement to control climate change that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Together – in spite of American obstruction – they produced a roadmap for the new climate negotiations that set a target date of 2009 for the next treaty. How do we avoid the missteps that plagued the Kyoto Treaty? How do we create a framework that includes industrialized nations as well as the developing world? Sen. Kerry – who attended the Bali conference and led the U.S. Senate delegation – will lay out a strategy to follow the Bali roadmap and expand the existing emissions trading market, promote an efficient and effective technology development and implementation program, launch an aggressive effort to protect the world’s remaining forests, and embrace technology transfer. This will require innovative financing and investment – and, if properly implemented, will create major new opportunities for American industry to create the jobs of the future.

Center for American Progress Action Fund
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

RSVP

12/19/2007 at 10:00AM

“Does the current framing and scaling of the climate/energy issue adequately capture the challenge posed? If not, what might be a more appropriate frame and scale?”

Speakers

• Dr. James G. Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
• Dr. Daniel Schrag, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard University

The issues of global energy demand and climate response are, at one level, complex and contentious. However, they are joined by simple but important considerations. While the flow of energy is important to the global economic infrastructure, the flow of energy within the Earth’s climate system reveals simple but compelling conclusions. These will be explored in this briefing.

12/18/2007 at 12:00PM