The Future is Green

A Wonkish Post About the Waxman-Markey Bill, a.k.a. the American Clean Energy and Security Act

Just back from Atlanta, where I spent four days at the Renewable Energy Markets conference sponsored by CRS, the Center for Resource Solutions.

One of the most striking things about the conference was the acknowledgement by virtually every speaker that a great deal of the clean energy landscape is about to change. Congress is on the verge of passing (we hope) some version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), also known as the Waxman-Markey bill. (The Senate version of the bill is called the Bingaman bill, but don’t let that confuse you).

Though far from perfect, ACESA is a significant step forward in the effort to reduce our dependance on fossil fuels and to curb global warming. The bill will mandate that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by 80% (from 2005 levels) by the year 2050. That’s ambitious goal to be accomplished in 40 years, but it’s far from impossible. Still, many would argue that it is not ambitious enough.

One of the most crucial features of this 1,200 page bill is a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is the same model that has been highly successful in reducing acid rain, so we know the mechanism to be effective. Simply put, energy producers would first be required to limit their greenhouse gas emissions to 2005 levels, and then gradually reduce emissions each year as the cap is ratcheted down.

Opponents of cap-and-trade claim that the costs will be prohibitive. But experience has shown that the successful acid rain reduction program in the US has been far less costly than originally predicted. And the European Union currently operates under a cap-and-trade system with virtually no negative economic consequences, according to an analysis by MIT.

More importantly, what opponents fail to consider, and should be reminded of at every opportunity, is that the cost of inaction will dwarf the cost of addressing climate change. I am always amazed when professed fiscal conservatives ignore financial consequences that will occur after the next election cycle, let alone in their children’s lifetime. This is conservatism? I call it irresponsible. But I digress.

But back to ACESA. One of the bill’s flaws, which could be easily fixed, is that neither the House or Senate versions contain a provision for protecting the voluntary market for renewable energy credits (RECs). (Click here for more detail on renewable energy credits).

While utilities in 30 states must buy RECs to comply with state mandates for clean energy, called Renewable Portfolio Standards, many organizations voluntarily buy RECs as part of a corporate commitment to environmental responsibility. Some of the largest voluntary buyers of RECs include Intel, PepsiCo, DuPont, Staples, Alcoa, Cargill Dow, Delphi Corporation, and scores of others who have offset from 4% to 100% of their conventional electricity usage. To date, voluntary REC purchases have been responsible for over 50% of all new renewable energy development in the US. Voluntary purchases in 2007, alone, account for 18.1 Megawatt hours of clean energy capacity. It’s a big success story.

A simple change in the bill’s language could rectify this shortcoming. It would take someone far more wonkish than I to explain this adequately, but passing this bill is a crucial step towards tackling climate change. I urge you to write, call, or email your Senators and Representatives to say you support passage of ACESA, and that it should be amended to provide added protections for the voluntary REC market.

TELL THE SENATE TO FIX CLIMATE BILL LOOPHOLES

I just did something to help secure a clean energy future for the United States. It took exactly 30 seconds. Maybe 25 seconds. You can, too.

All you have to do is visit the EarthJustice web site where a simple, easy-to-use form will enable you to send a letter (already written for you - how thoughtful is that!) to your senators asking them to support the climate bill passed by the House recently.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

It is also important to ask the Senate to fix a couple of shortcomings in the House version in the bill.

A recent editorial in the New York Times (see below) explained what the Senate must do to strengthen the bill.

Why is it so important to write to your senators? EarthJustice explains:

Your senator is hearing daily from opposing voices, among them far-right bloggers and talk radio hosts, who do not believe global warming is real and want to keep our nation hooked on dirty fossil fuels. It is time for us to demand that the Senate act swiftly to combat global warming and usher in an era of clean renewable energy. The world cannot wait. The Senate must craft a bill that sets science-based caps on carbon emissions.

Please visit EarthJustice today and send a letter to your senators. It only takes 30 seconds. While you're at it, why not ask ten friends to do the same.

NY TIMES EDITORIAL, "CLIMATE LOOPHOLES"

Published July 21, 2009

The House’s approval of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill earlier this month was a remarkable political achievement and an important beginning to the task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But in all the last-minute wheeling and dealing, the House bill acquired two big loopholes that the Senate must close.

The first loophole involves coal-fired power plants. Coal is the world’s most abundant fossil fuel — producing more than half the electricity in the United States — and also its dirtiest, with twice the carbon content of natural gas.

The House bill would limit emissions from coal-fired power plants in two ways. It imposes a cap on emissions from all industrial facilities that tightens slowly over time. It also sets tough performance standards on new power plants permitted after 2009, requiring emissions reductions of 50 percent or more. The bill would help underwrite advanced technologies capable of capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground.

The bill does not, however, impose any performance standards on existing power plants. And it explicitly removes these plants from the reach of the Clean Air Act. This is a mistake. The overall cap on industrial emissions will not be fully effective for a long time, and, meanwhile, the government should be able to impose lower-emissions requirements on the older, dirtiest plants.

There is little doubt that the Clean Air Act authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to require existing plants to reduce emissions by, say, using cleaner fuels or increasing efficiency. But the House bill says otherwise, at least when it comes to carbon dioxide. The Senate must fix this problem by writing standards for existing plants into its bill or restoring the E.P.A.’s authority to do so. The old plants simply cannot be let off the hook.

The second loophole involves the tricky matter of offsets.

Climate Policy: An Affordable Salvation, says Paul Krugman of the NY Times

Paul Krugman, the NY Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, provides  a clear, concise explanation in today's paper of why action on climate change is not only affordable, but a very good way to stimulate the economy. Calling a spade a spade, he labels denials of climate change "junk science," and predictions of economic disaster resulting from doing anything about it "junk economics."

Citing a recent MIT study of the cost of climate change proposals, he concludes that, contrary to what many conservatives assert, the cost to consumers, while not zero, would be quite modest. But ultimately, he explains, adopting strong climate-change policy will "create major incentives for new investment — investment in low-emission power plants, in energy-efficient factories and more."

His column, which is well worth reading, is reprinted below. And you can link to his blog here.

An Affordable Salvation

by Paul Krugman

The 2008 election ended the reign of junk science in our nation’s capital, and the chances of meaningful action on climate change, probably through a cap-and-trade system on emissions, have risen sharply.

But the opponents of action claim that limiting emissions would have devastating effects on the U.S. economy. So it’s important to understand that just as denials that climate change is happening are junk science, predictions of economic disaster if we try to do anything about climate change are junk economics.

Yes, limiting emissions would have its costs. As a card-carrying economist, I cringe when “green economy” enthusiasts insist that protecting the environment would be all gain, no pain.

But the best available estimates suggest that the costs of an emissions-limitation program would be modest, as long as it’s implemented gradually. And committing ourselves now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump.

Let’s talk first about those costs.

The price of risk: Taxpayers pay the costs of both financial and climactic melt-downs

Thomas Friedman's column in the NY Times on March 31 correctly points out the similarities between the current economic mess and the progressing climate crisis. In both cases we have been operating under a system that rewards small numbers of individuals while all of the risk is borne by taxpayers.

The answer, he argues, is to place more realistic prices on the risks associated both with financial instruments and environmental impacts.

Friedman writes, "Just as A.I.G. sold insurance derivatives at prices that did not reflect the real costs and the real risks of massive defaults (for which we the taxpayers ended up paying the difference), oil companies, coal companies and electric utilities today are selling energy products at prices that do not reflect the real costs to the environment and real risks of disruptive climate change (so future taxpayers will end up paying the difference)."

We have become "addicted to cheap coal," he continues, "that makes for lower electricity prices today but spits out toxic greenhouse gases that have to be paid for by future generations tomorrow"

The full text of his article is below.

THE PRICE IS NOT RIGHT
by Thomas Friedman

"I don’t expect much from the G-20 meeting this week, but if I had my wish, the leaders of the world’s 20 top economies would commit themselves to a new standard of accounting — call it “Market to Mother Nature” accounting. Why? Because it’s now obvious that the reason we’re experiencing a simultaneous meltdown in the financial system and the climate system is because we have been mispricing risk in both arenas — producing a huge excess of both toxic assets and toxic air that now threatens the stability of the whole planet.

Just as A.I.G. sold insurance derivatives at prices that did not reflect the real costs and the real risks of massive defaults (for which we the taxpayers ended up paying the difference), oil companies, coal companies and electric utilities today are selling energy products at prices that do not reflect the real costs to the environment and real risks of disruptive climate change (so future taxpayers will end up paying the difference).

Whenever products are mispriced and do not reflect the real costs and risks associated with their usage, people go to excess. And that is exactly what happened in the financial marketplace and in the energy/environmental marketplace during the credit bubble.

James Howard Kunstler on the Recovery, Suburban Sprawl, Obama, and Wall Street's "Stupendous Orgy of Misbehavior"

James Howard Kunstler has occasionally been described as a purveyor of doom and gloom. His book, The Long Emergency painted a particularly bleak picture of the prospect of living in a post-carbon world - i.e. a future in which the exponentially rising imbalance between supply and demand for petroleum-based fuels has brought economic growth to a standstill and unleashed widespread disruption of the social order.

Pretty scary stuff. But implausible? Perhaps not so much.

 In a recent post to his blog, Jim responds to the charge of being a "doomer" by challenging us to take a clear-eyed look at reality and asking pointed questions about what shape we expect future to take. He writes,

     "At the risk of confirming my critics' dumbest charge -- that I am a "doomer" -- the mandate of clarity requires me to ask: to what state of affairs do we expect to recover? If the answer is a return to an economy based on building ever more suburban sprawl, on credit card over-spending, on routine securitized debt shenanigans in banking, and on consistently lying to ourselves about what reality demands of us, then we are a mortally deluded nation. We're done with that, we're beyond that now, we've crossed the frontier and left that all behind, and we'd better get our heads straight about it."

He goes on to criticize some of the Obama administration's efforts to put the country back on track, and makes a few interesting suggestions about possible alternatives.

Jim Kunstler is nothing if not provocative. In the ten or so years since I first met him I have often marveled at his unwavering rejection of complacency and his steadfast refusal to accept conventional wisdom about almost everything. While occasionally over the top (to understate the case) his observations and the questions he raises are always worth pondering. I reprint the rest of his March 9 posting below. Readers' comments are welcome.

Back by popular demand: Stephen Colbert on greenwashing by oil companies

There's nothing I can possibly add to this. Just watch and enjoy.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Prescott Oil Loves the Earth

Giant asteroid on collision course with Earth!

Okay. Now that I've got your attention, I have a question for you. If a mile-wide asteroid actually were heading for planet Earth, how much media attention do you think it would get?

The answer is obvious. It would be the lead story in every news broadcast, and would appear above the fold on the front page of every newspaper in the world until either; a. it struck, or b. scientists figured out how to prevent it.

And in the second instance, what portion of our resources, human and otherwise, would we devote to implementing plans to avert such a catastrophe? Would anyone ask if it was worth the money?

Yet this is exactly analogous to the situation we currently face. The climate crisis is potentially no less dire than the effects of a civilization-disrupting asteroid impact. So where are the headlines? Why are we not more worried?

This week I had the opportunity to speak to a group of college students at the University of Hartford. Their visual communication class had just completed a project designed to encourage their peers to act more sustainably and I was invited to critique their work. There were posters and other materials advocating things like changing light-bulbs, driving less, conserving water, and several other worthy ideas. Some of the work was quite good, with catchy slogans and attractive graphics. But I couldn't bring myself to give them much of a pat on the back for their efforts.

Changing light bulbs is all well and good, but I wanted to change the subject. Why aren't you more angry, I asked them. You are about to inherit a very fucked-up planet and you should be really pissed off. You should be marching in the streets. You should be organizing protests, sit-ins, moratoriums. You should be taking over the administration building and demanding change. You should be furious.

I am a child of the 60's, I told them. When I was in college the Vietnam war was raging. It was all we could think about. Students everywhere were united in opposition to the war. We were consumed with rage. We were mad as hell and we weren't going to take it anymore.

A whole generation took to the streets, staged protests - some peaceful, some not - and demanded change. And it wasn't only students. Millions of people raised their voices in unison and were heard. Activism played a major role in ending American involvement in that war. Nixon and Kissinger would have continued to prosecute the war but it became clear that the country would no longer support it. When people make enough noise, (enough being the operative word) government has no choice but to respond.

So why are we so passive about global warming? If left unchecked, the cost in human suffering will be no less than from any war. It will be greater. Where is the anger? Where are the protests? Are we sheep?

Baaaaaa.

Personally, I blame the media. During the Vietnam era disturbing images of war appeared in every newspaper every day. Every night on TV we saw flag-draped coffins bearing the remains of young Americans being disgorged from airplanes. Back then the media did its job - we were not allowed to forget for a single day the cost of war.

There was something else, too. It felt personal. Very personal. I and millions of young men of my generation were subject to the draft. Like everyone else, I knew there was a very real possibility I might suddenly find myself on a battlefield in southeast Asia. Once there it was not at all unlikely that I might be killed, or worse, have to kill others. I was lucky, though.

Students today have nothing so tangible to concentrate the mind. But the threat to their future is, if anything, greater. Had I been sent to Vietnam there was a better than even chance that I could have returned home to resume a normal life. But none of us will be able to escape the consequences of a warming planet.

When are we going to do something about it?

Mass transit: a sustainable solution to economic recovery. A Republican shows us how - go figure!

  It's not often that I find reason to praise conservative Republicans, but I'm making an exception for Pat McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte, NC. Largely through his willingness to stick his neck out on an issue he, himself, thought might get him run out of town on a rail, he successfully championed the creation of Lynx, a state-of--the-art light rail system that should serve as a shining example of what US cities should aspire to.

As documented last week in an excellent segment of the PBS television program, NOW, entitled Stimulus Roadblock, McCrory seems to have gotten everything right about what mass transit can do for a city and how to make it work.

Charlotte's downtown, which prior to the opening of Lynx had largely been a 9 to 5 destination for office workers, has blossomed into a vibrant, walkable, mixed-use urban environment. Businesses are thriving and real estate values have surged. In some previously troubled areas that are now connected to the city center by Linx, home prices have doubled - in this economy.

One of the things that McCrory understood about making transit work is that not only do the trains have to be comfortable, attractive, and on time, they also have to be linked to residential areas by high quality pedestrian access. As a result, ridership of the new system is nearly double what was originally anticipated, and new transit-oriented residential development has been encouraged by the city and embraced by developers.

Charlotte's successful experiment with mass transit is a paradigm of how stimulus money could be spent to create sustainable, long-term economic development. The problem, though, as pointed out by the Now segment, is that it is much easier for cities and states to get Federal money to build roads than transit systems.

In fact, cities applying for transit funding in the stimulus plan are, in effect, penalized for their effforts. This must change. Let your representatives in Congress know that you support funding for mass transit.

I highly recommend watching this piece, which you can see here.

What $800 billion doesn't buy

The dollar just doesn't go as far as it used to. Not long ago I would have guessed that you could buy a lot of cool stuff for $800 billion. Take trains, for example. Wouldn't you think you could buy a bunch of really nice trains and still have enough left over for some windmills, a national smart electric grid and a few schools? 

A serious commitment to mass transit would do far more to stimulate the economy, create jobs, and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels than most other things in the bill - like roads, for example. Yet the amount of money for mass transit in the stimulus package wending its way through Congress (on a slow train) is woefully small. 

Let's just look at job creation which, obviously, is a high priority right now. According to a study by the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, mass transit creates more jobs than defense spending, tax cuts, health care, education, or home weatherization. I'm a big advocate of weatherization for other reasons, but here are the number of jobs that would be created for each billion dollars of spending in the following areas:

Defense: 8,555

Tax cuts: 10,779

Home weatherization: 12,804

Health care: 12,883

Education: 17,687

Mass Transit: 19,795

So why has Congress cut stimulus spending for education and transit to the bone. Can't these people read? 

Singing about climate change

The most intriguing story of the day, at least for music-loving environmentalists like myself, is that the storied La Scala opera house in Milan has commissioned an opera based on Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

Actually, La Scala's management announced as early as last May that it had engaged the composer Giorgio Battistelli to turn Gore's documentary into an opera. The reason it hit the wires today is that William Friedken (director of The French Connection and The Exorcist) has resigned as director for the production, claiming  “irreconcilable creative differences” with the poet J. D. McClatchy, who is writing the libretto.

But, according to today's New York Times, composer, Giorgio Battistelli ". . . told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that Mr. Friedkin left “for personal, not artistic reasons,” and criticized the director for his use of special effects in the production, saying, “Opera isn’t Hollywood.”

The opera is scheduled to have its premiere at La Scala on May 11, 2011. I didn't even know Al Gore could sing.

Is it too much to ask for the Environmental Protection Agency to actually protect the environment?

In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency was empowered to regulate greenhouse gas emissions if they determined that global warming posed a threat to public health.

In response, Stephen Johnson, then the E.P.A. administrator, had his staff write an endangerment finding and propose regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. But the White House not only chose to ignore those findings but refused to even open the e-mail message that contained them. This did nothing to alter my suspicion that George Bush thought EPA stood for Environmental Prevention Agency.

But there is a new white knight at that beleaguered agency. In a memo to the EPA staff, Lisa Jackson, the agency’s very qualified new administrator, said that she intended to honor her obligation to address climate change under the Clean Air Act.

According to a recent NY Times editorial, however, "there is resistance from some members of Congress and parts of the business community who fear that regulating vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to economy-wide controls on greenhouse gases from all sources, including industry."

Economy-wide controls on greenhouse gas emissions? Oh, dear God, not that! Let's all just choke on our emissions until the planet is no longer capable of supporting life as we know it. Then would they do something about it?

I believe Lisa Jackson is serious about this, but I'm prepared to hold her feet to the fire if she doesn't pull it off. Gentle readers, pay close attention to this and be prepared to act up in not so gentle ways if the EPA fails to protect our environment from the most serious threat it faces.

Cruising for Dystopian Burgers OR The Drive-in at the End of the Universe

My friend James Howard Kunstler is not impressed with recent efforts at improving automobile fuel efficiency. In his view, anything short of ending our dependence on cars for personal transportation is a doomed enterprise.

In a recent email he wrote, "Personally, I've been carrying on a low-grade war with some of the more high-toned Greenies. Much of the green program these days is about making people feel good.  People come up to me after my college blabs and brag that they just bought a Prius and I refuse to give them the brownie points they long for.  I tell them they're just part of the problem --thinking that car dependency by 'other means' is great for us. Then, of course, there's Amory Lovins and his hyper-car (beloved of the Aspen Enviro Institute). 

IMHO anything we do to try to prolong or extend car dependency is a tragic act of futility. Walkable communities is the key to being "green." And public transit that really works. If Mr. Obama's big stimulus initiative ends up being about highways, he will be making a tragic error."

He continues the argument this week in his blog, Clusterfuck Nation. (Jim doesn't mince words)

I've been skeptical of the "stimulus" as sketched out so far, aimed at refurbishing the infrastructure of Happy Motoring. To me, this is the epitome of a campaign to sustain the unsustainable -- since car-dependency is absolutely the last thing we need to shore up and promote. I haven't heard any talk so far about promoting walkable communities, or any meaningful plan to get serious about fixing passenger rail and integral public transit.

Has Mr. Obama's circle lost sight of the fact that we import more than two-thirds of the oil we use, even during the current price hiatus? Or have they forgotten how vulnerable this leaves us to the slightest geopolitical spasm in such stable oil-exporting nations as Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, Libya, Algeria, Columbia, Iran, and the Middle East states? And we're going to rescue ourselves by driving cars?

I know it is difficult for Americans at every level to imagine a different way-of-life, but we'd better start tuning up our imaginations, because endless motoring is not our destiny anymore. The message has not moved from the grassroots up, and so at this perilous stage the message had better come from the top down. Mr. Obama needs to go on TV and tell the American public that were done cruisin' for burgers.

Click here to read the entire post.

This is a good week, by the way, for fans of James Howard Kunstler. He is the central focus of Ben McGrath's piece, The Dystopians in the Jan. 26 issue of The New Yorker.  Definitely woth reading.

What part of "catastrophic climate change" don't you understand?

I wanted to share two comments I received recently. The first in response to my post of January 14 in which I suggested that the proposed $500 tax credit would be better spent insulating 20 million homes rather than the 2 million that Obama has proposed.

". . . insulating the two million homes, and two million homes only, for now, may not be enough considering the facts, but we need to start with some number, and take it from there. Being realistic in the current economy is the sparkle that will ignite it's engine."

How about being realistic about global warming? I know, it's hard to stay terrified for long stretches of time, so we tend to forget exactly how serious the threat is. This is a mistake.

The second, and more alarming of the two was in response to my January 15 post in which I expressed hope that President Obama turns out to be green enough to make some progress on the impending climate catastrophe.

"I just hope he doesn't try to force down our throat a bunch of economic nonsense like what Gore was trying to do . . . carbon credits, Kyoto Protocol, etc . . . green is good, but not if it completely cripples our economy or serves to unduly transfer justly earned wealth to those who did not earn it." 

Has no one been paying attention? Have you read the 2007 report by the UN's  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? The report stated that climate change is a serious, real and present danger, with a 90% certainty that global warming is caused by human activity. (The IPCC recently revised its conclusion to say that evidence of anthropomorphic climate change is unequivocal.) Ninety-eight percent of the world's scientists concur. Many of them think the results are grossly understated.

We should be scared. We should be very scared.

One of the predictions in that report was that global warming would cause the continued shrinking of polar ice sheets. Recent data indicates that the ice is shrinking 100 times faster than the report predicted.

Remember the 2003 heat wave that killed 35,000 people in Europe? Temperatures in July and August were consistently over 100 degrees F. This was considered, at the time, to be a once-in-a-hundred-year event. According to current climate models, by 2050 it will be a once-in-two-year event and that by 2070, 100 degrees will be considered an unusually cool summer day in Europe.

We do not have time to go slow. If we don't take radical measures to slash our frenzied consumption of fossil fuels - including setting a stiff price on CO2 emissions - the consequences could be disastrous and irreversible. Countries that have taxed carbon and invested in renewable energy on a large scale have not seen their economies crippled. On the contrary, their economies have been strengthened. (I'll provide details in a future posting.)

Inaction, or insufficiently bold action, is what will cripple our economy, cause widespread disruption of the food chain, and put at risk the planet's continued ability to sustain life as we know it. 

Are we scared yet?

Our first green president?

I just published my first post as a guest blogger at CT Green Scene. It asks the question, Is Obama green enough. I think he just might be. At least I sure hope so. It will kill me if he isn't. You can read the post here.

He looks good in green, doesn't he?

Please don't send me $500

Last week I was surprised to discover that I disagree with Barack Obama about something: Two things, actually. The first was his promise to insulate two million homes. I'm all for insulating homes, but two million is not nearly enough. 

There are more than 100 million homes in the US and the vast majority of them are not insulated as well as they should be. Tens of millions of homes in this country have virtually no effective insulation. And it's not just the aging middle-class homes, the ones that make up the majority of our housing stock. I have observed energy audits of multi-million dollar homes built within the last 20 years that have serious deficiencies in the way they are insulated. 

Homes are responsible for 21% of greenhouse gas emissions. If we're going to get serious about addressing climate change we need to invest in making large numbers of homes -- at least ten times as many as Obama promised -- more energy efficient.

Which brings me to the other thing I disagree with – this nonsense about a $500 per person tax rebate. Please, just say no. If the government sends me a check for $500 I'll probably just fritter it away on something silly, like my electric bill, as I did with the $600 that Dubya sent me recently. "Do you feel stimulated?" my wife asked when we opened the envelope. No, actually, I didn't.

Now, if the treasury were to send me more, say two or three thousand, then I might go buy something big, like a giant flat-screen TV -- you know, those multi-purpose devices that create jobs in China, jack up your electric bill, increase your GHG emissions, and make you even more sedentary by making all the garbage on TV look extra seductive. Of course, I could forgive all that if The Sopranos were to come back. But I digress.

Instead, that same stimulus money could pay for insulating twenty to thirty million homes. That would create jobs in this country, and reduce our annual GHG emissions by more than 250 million tons - the equivalent of taking 200 million cars off the road.

At the same time, the resulting energy cost savings would pay back the outlay for all that insulation in two to three years. If we figure an average cost of $2,000 to insulate a home (a high estimate), the homeowners could save $500 to $1,000 per year, every year, from now on (and more as energy costs rise). So instead of a one-time gift of $500 per person or $1,000 per couple, how about making an investment that will provide each household dividend of $1,000, every year?

Environmental jitters: Vilsac, corn, and energy

Environmentalists are having heart palpitations over Tom Vilsack, Obama's pick for Secretary of Agriculture. The former two-term governor of Iowa has strong ties to farmers and a history of strong support for ethanol. 

Here's the problem. Farmers love turning corn into ethanol. 

It's very profitable for them. But do we get any real benefit from it? Some studies conclude that turning corn into ethanol is a net energy loser - by many estimates it takes as much as 29% more energy to produce a gallon of corn-based ethanol than the fuel yields. Other estimates see it as roughly a break even proposition.  

There are other downsides to making fuel from corn. It drives food prices up and encourages the clear-cutting of forests to make more land available for crops - a disaster in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. 

There is also, in my view, a real danger in encouraging farmers to become dependent on the income from corn-based ethanol. It's only a matter of time until recognition of the drawbacks produces a backlash that will put them out of business.

It may be ok, though - Vilsack, I mean. According to today's NY Times, Vilsack ‘was the co-chairman of a task force last year on climate change for the Council on Foreign Relations, which recommended phasing out subsidies for mature biofuels, including corn-based ethanol, as well as reducing tariffs on imported biofuels like Brazilian sugar ethanol.’ 

Ethanol made from sugar produces more energy than it takes to make it.

So we will have to wait and see. Pay attention, and be suspicious of any effort to expand corn-based ethanol production. 

World revolves around sun after all: Who knew? Obama believes in science

Something momentous happened today. It hasn't yet received the media attention it deserves but it is a game changer. At a press conference introducing his new energy and environmental team, Barack Obama said that his administration . . . "will value science. We will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that facts demand bold action."

This is a stunning and extremely welcome change from current policy. For the last eight years the Bush administration has had more or less the same relationship to science as the Catholic church in the 17th Century had to Galileo.

So far, the enormity of this change has failed to capture the attention of the media, which today devoted hours of coverage to airborne shoes. But today's statement by the President-elect, along with his cabinet choices for directing energy and environmental policy, has more potential to reshape our world than anything else that has happened since election night. And this hasn't exactly been a slow news month.

I'll be disappointed if tomorrow's headline in the New York Times isn't World Revolves Around Sun, After All.

A most entertaining year

Say what you will, this has been the most entertaining year. Starkly set, as it was, against the tragic, and tragically numbing background of carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan, the events of the last twelve months included more jaw dropping, eye popping, gut wrenching, and truly dazzling surprises than any other among the roughly half-century I have spent on the planet.

 

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Somehow, today’s revelations about the governor of Illinois attempting to sell a seat in the U.S. senate - forgive me but  I feel  compelled to write that again, it is so brazen, attempting to sell a seat in the U.S. senate to the highest bidder has turned my perception of history on its head, as well as any notion of what it means to live through it. This is pure entertainment. As an added bonus, like the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks, this latest seems like nothing so much as a Bizzaro World bookend to the simultaneous and strangely parallel (well, not exactly parallel) possibility that Hillary Clinton’s senate seat may be filled by Caroline Kennedy.  

 

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Add to this the layered and ironic sub-plot that Clinton’s replacement will be named by Elliott Spitzer’s replacement, this chapter in our history may turn out to be the greatest comedy ever written. All great comedies contain a tragic element, of course, and all great tragedies contain a comic element, so it’s a little hard to know for sure which this is, but today I’m slouching towards comedy. Either way, it's just so damn interesting.

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For sheer entertainment value, I am almost ready to concede, recent events come close to ameliorating the piling up of insult over injury as the financial crisis trickles down (like lead from a shot tower) to my small corner of the universe.  Not even Steven Spielberg could have imagined such a sweeping, epic roller-coaster of a story, with so many outlandish plot twists and so large a cast of improbable characters. This has been a year more operatic in scope than Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

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Not since Watergate have I found myself so in thrall to the news media. I cannot remember the last day I didn’t check in with CNN, NPR, and the Internet several times each just to answer the question, "What next?" 

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Poetic justice, anyone? Just imagine, in a country where no major political party has ever nominated a woman or an African American for the office of President, we suddenly had front row seats to the larger-than-life spectacle of Hillary and Obama battling it out practically to the very threshold of the Democratic convention. And imagine a country that outlawed slavery only a century-and-a-half ago now looking to Barack Obama as its longed-for savior, and breathing a collective sigh of relief that we didn’t elect John McCain.  It leaves me breathless.

 

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And, keep still, my palpitating heart, it looks as if the new administration may actually recognize and seize this unprecedented, unexpected, un-hoped for and unloved opportunity to solve the financial crisis by solving the energy crisis and the climate crisis. Only comedies end with such exquisite resolution. Still, this all is only prelude. The curtain is about to go up.