Cap & Trade carbon mkt

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see also carbon tax
see  tar sands, koch

see RGGI

primer: <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/carbon-pricing-climate-change-2414547547.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/carbon-pricing-climate-change-2414547547.html</a>

=<div><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/09/20/petroleum-papers-geoff-dembicki-oil-sands-canada-exxon-imperial-syncrude-climate-denial/">https://www.desmog.com/2022/09/20/petroleum-papers-geoff-dembicki-oil-sands-canada-exxon-imperial-syncrude-climate-denial/</a>
<div>Imperial Oil might not be a household name in the United States, but the company, which is mostly owned by ExxonMobil, is a big name in Canada. There, it’s one of the major players in Canada’s oil sands — the name for the vast fields containing a tarry mixture of sand, water, and the thick, heavy oil called bitumen — that were first mined in 1967. These oil sands, sometimes called “tar sands,” which lie in northern Alberta, are one of the largest oil reserves in the world.But the oil that comes from them is distinctive in several ways. Oil sands’ unique texture means it takes more money and energy to refine than traditional crude. In addition, its oil is some of the most carbon-heavy in the world, with up to 20 percent higher emissions, and that has drawn the attention of climate advocates. Because of these factors, as Geoff Dembicki explains in his new book <a href="https://greystonebooks.com/products/the-petroleum-papers" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change</a> (Greystone Books, September 20), oil sands producers and refiners, like Imperial Oil or <a href="https://www.desmog.com/koch-industries-inc/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch Industries</a>, are particularly vulnerable to any efforts to mitigate climate change that would increase the already higher costs of extracting and refining bitumen.Dembicki’s book illuminates for the first time how these industry players profited from Canada’s oil sands and then spun those profits into international networks of climate denial that would help extend the oil sands’ lifetime. “Bitumen from Alberta bankrolled the assault on truth led by companies such as Koch Industries and Exxon,” he writes. Dembicki drew heavily on <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2019/12/03/imperial-oil-archives-climate-denial-energy-research/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">the Imperial Oil Files</a> we published in 2019, relying on internal company documents that demonstrated not only that Imperial Oil knew about climate change by the late 1970s but also that it studied climate solutions — so that it could try to shut them down. As he explains in the book, “Canada could slow down climate change, or it could tap one of the world’s largest oil reserves — but it couldn’t do both.” It chose the oil sands. Those oil sands–fueled efforts to spread climate denial and delay action aren’t just a thing of the past. As Dembicki demonstrates, “the machinery of Big Oil’s climate crisis denial” continues its work influencing U.S. and Canadian politics even today.We spoke with Dembicki ahead of the release of The Petroleum Papers. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Lindsey J. SmithI want to start with a really simple question: Why write about the oil sands?Geoff DembickiFor me, it’s kind of personal because I was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. That’s only a few hours’ drive south of the oil sands and, literally, my childhood home was just down the road from a huge oil refinery, and friends and family worked in the oil and gas industry. As I got older, I just wanted to have a better understanding of the industry. And then, of course, once I learned about the massive climate impacts it was creating, and how some of the companies involved with that industry had covered up those impacts and lied to the public that just got me more and more curious.SMITHDo you think that other people, even people who are informed about climate change, are aware of the oil sands and of their climate impact?DEMBICKIThere is a bit of awareness of that, especially in Canada. But part of the reason I wanted to do this book was to really educate readers in the U.S., and in Canada, and all over the world, just about the massive climate impacts that this gigantic oil industry has created. I think when a lot of Americans imagine foreign oil, they’re thinking about like Saudi Arabia, or something, but a huge part of the oil that Americans use every day, and that Canada sends to the U.S., comes directly from the oil sands. And it’s not just like the physical properties of oil that affect what’s happening with climate change. As I explain in the book, there’s a long history of sort of very powerful conservative forces — like Koch Industries, or even going back to Howard Pew in the 1950s and ’60s, and these are people who had a very sort of reactionary, far-right view on the world — and Canada’s oil was important to those types of business people and really funded and made possible this torrent of a very conservative politics, which has had a massive impact on our ability to deal with the climate emergency.SMITHA great example of that in the book is the Pine Bend refinery owned by Koch Industries.DEMBICKIYeah. I had known that Koch Industries owned and operated this refinery in Minnesota for a while, but I don’t think I knew how central it was to their company and to their history until I started doing more research for this book. Because it [is] placed so closely to the Canadian border, they could import all of this oil from Canada, which other U.S. refiners didn’t usually take because it was lower quality and required specialized equipment. And so the Kochs were able to do that in their Minnesota refinery and then they can sell the processed oil as gasoline and whatever else at extremely high margins. This created so much money for Koch Industries in the early days that it really allowed the company to become the massive industrial behemoth that it is now. And then, of course, everyone knows <a href="https://www.desmog.com/koch-network-database/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">the political impact</a> of the Koch brothers becoming so wealthy, which is like an absolute restructuring of our entire political system along free market, anti-government, climate denying lines. So I was just amazed at the central role that oil from Canada played in all of that. <figure class="wp-block-image size-full" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">[Canadian oil sands giant Suncor Energy’s plant. Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/suncorenergy/4777166655/in/photostream/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Suncor Energy</a> (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</a>)</figcaption></figure>SMITHI think that’s something that will surprise a lot of readers. Beyond Koch Industries, I’m wondering if you could briefly summarize the web of denial connected to the oil sands?DEMBICKIPart of the reason we named the book “The Petroleum Papers” is because I was drawing heavily on this large archive of documents that DeSmog and some others obtained, called the Imperial files, which is a record going back decades of what this company discussed internally in terms of the environment and climate change. Imperial Oil was doing all of this research on climate change, going back to like the 1960s even, and then sharing a lot of that research with Exxon executives. The documents are quite, quite amazing and kind of because they show how scientists inside Imperial and Exxon not only studied climate change internally long before the public knew about it, but they also anticipated that climate change would become a major public policy issue. They were really worried that there would be government regulations that would make their oil sands operations no longer profitable. And so before this issue was even clearly defined for the public, Imperial Oil was already figuring out ways to not only discredit the science of climate change, but also to discredit solutions that could fix the climate emergency too. SMITHWhat solutions were they studying?DEMBICKIThere’s a <a href="https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1993-imperial-oil-issue-summary-of-global-warming-climate-change/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">document from 1993</a> that was one of the most alarming that I saw in the entire course of doing research for this. Basically, in the early ’90s, climate change was just starting to become a publicly known issue, but it was very ill-defined so people didn’t really know what to think of it. So Imperial Oil decided to model a bunch of different potential solutions for climate change internally so it would know how to respond. Imperial studied a bunch of different solutions… [and] determined that if there was this price on carbon emissions across the whole economy, this could actually have a really big positive impact on fighting climate change. And then, this part, which was not known before and it was just included in a few footnotes in Imperial’s research, was that in the early days of bringing in such a policy, there would be an economic hit mostly through oil refineries and stuff being closed down. But Imperial actually determined that all of the tax revenue from a carbon price would create this huge amount of money that governments could then spend on green infrastructure and other forms of climate stimulus. And this would actually have a positive impact on the economy. I was just floored by that because it’s like, decades and decades ago, Imperial basically acknowledges that you could do a big part in fixing climate change, and it actually wouldn’t hurt the economy at all, it would probably be good for it. It would just be bad for Imperial Oil, and the oil sands. In this document in 1993, Imperial Oil came up with a confidential plan to misrepresent its own research to policymakers and government and media. There were all of these talking points emphasizing the uncertainty of climate solutions, how it would be bad for the economy, it would hurt international competitiveness. At this very early stage, when we could have made a big impact in fighting the climate emergency, Imperial had already planted these seeds of sabotage and denial.<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: initial; margin: 1.5rem auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); max-width: 100px;" />Read: <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/09/20/exxon-imperial-oil-climate-change-proprietary-docs/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Exxon Could Have Helped Stop Climate Change 30 Years Ago, ‘Proprietary’ Docs Show</a><hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: initial; margin: 1.5rem auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); max-width: 100px;" />SMITHWow, that’s infuriating. A lot of the latter half of the book focuses on these climate lawsuits that have come up in the last few years, including some led by a lawyer named Steve Berman, who managed to finally get a ruling in the courts against Big Tobacco. He and others are now trying to prove a similar thing with Big Oil: that these companies knew that their products were harmful, and they misled the public about that. So far, these climate lawsuits haven’t succeeded, but I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on what it might take for one to succeed?DEMBICKII mean, it’s definitely a long game. With tobacco, it took decades to get any sort of ruling against the industry. That said, there’s been climate lawsuits against Big Oil, I believe, filed by more than 20 jurisdictions in the U.S. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/lawsuits-climate-accountability-oil-governments/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Those lawsuits</a> haven’t resulted in any big rulings against the industry yet, but the fact that they’re still all sort of moving forward and clearing procedural hurdles is a big deal. To me, though, the most significant thing that these lawsuits do is really change the narrative around climate change. For so long, we’ve had this idea that no one specifically can be held responsible for climate change because it’s something that we all contribute to. But the climate change lawsuits flip all of that on its head, and they point directly at the oil and gas industry. And it’s not just for the emissions that that industry releases, even though they’re significant. It’s the fact that we had all these really good opportunities to bring in meaningful legislation and to clean up the economy, and the oil and gas industry has played a really bad faith role in sabotaging those solutions, spreading denial about them, confusing the public, flooding politics with their money. These lawsuits are pointing blame at specific companies, specific executives, specific industry groups, and I think that we’re still in the early days, but that’s really going to profoundly change how people see the climate emergency. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">[Suncor’s primary extraction plants separate raw bitumen from the sand in giant separation cells. Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/suncorenergy/4777801518/in/photostream/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Suncor Energy</a> (<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</a>)</figcaption></figure>SMITHOne of the lawsuits in particular in the book that caught your attention is a case in Colorado against an oil refinery operated by Suncor, a Canadian oil sands company, in the greater Denver area. The lawsuit names both Suncor and Exxon and calls out the oil sands as a major contributing factor to the pollution locals are dealing with. Why is that lawsuit significant?DEMBICKIThat one was interesting to me because it specifically named Suncor and Exxon. When I heard about that, I was like, “Oh, this is a lawsuit against the oil sands.” Suncor is the company that grew out of Sun Oil, which created the first commercial oil sands operation back in the ’60s. And the second big commercial oil sands operation was started by Imperial Oil, the Exxon subsidiary. Essentially, it’s litigation against the entire Canadian oil sands industry. SMITHAnother thing that stood out to me in the book was that some of the U.S.’s early support for developing Canada’s oil sands had to do with wanting to have a friendly source of oil in the face of communism. I feel like we’re in a very similar moment right now, where oil and gas companies are capitalizing on a global political crisis to expand production. What can we take away from that past push to develop the oil sands that also applies to this moment we’re in?DEMBICKII think there are two big takeaways for me, or almost like general principles of disinformation that I have observed taking place over many decades. One of them, as you pointed out, is that the oil and gas industry always, always loves to use a global political crisis for its own favor. Of course, the oil and gas industry isn’t in the business of trying to provide good faith solutions to geopolitical problems. They’re looking out for their profits, and that’s always been the case. So I think we can always expect oil and gas companies to try to turn any large global crisis in [their] favor. The second big pattern I noticed was at the moments of greatest possibility in fixing the climate emergency, that’s when the disinformation and the torrent of denial will be at its loudest. When governments are close to bringing in huge structural changes to the economy to fight climate change, when that poses the biggest economic threat to oil and gas companies, that’s when their denial machine really just cranks up as loud as possible.[// Brulle]Learn more about these issues by checking out <a href="https://greystonebooks.com/products/the-petroleum-papers" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Dembicki’s book</a> and diving into <a href="https://www.desmog.com/imperial-oil-archive-canada-exxon-climate-denial/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">the Imperial Oil Files</a>.</div><div>=</div></div>=<h2 style="" tiempos="Tiempos" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" em="em" line-height="line-height" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">c<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.propublica.org/e/125411/l-utm-campaign-dailynewsletter/74k4p2/449265023?h=_YVH7mZoUTOwDrmjyBt-Kp9IxqWiNO-cTX6foT41QZY" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ap and Trade Is Supposed to Solve Climate Change, but Oil and Gas Company Emissions Are Up</a></h2><p style="line-height: 1.375;" tiempos="Tiempos" text="Text" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" verdana="Verdana" sans-serif="sans-serif" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" px="px" margin-top="margin-top" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Countries have called California’s cap-and-trade program the answer to climate change. But it is just as vulnerable to lobbying as any other legislation. The result: The state’s biggest oil and gas companies have actually polluted more since it started.<div class="yiv5078550541byline" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0.25em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0.25em 0em;">by Lisa Song</div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"> =new 1119<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04112019/trump-war-california-auto-standards-environment-violations-justice-department-wildfires">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04112019/trump-war-california-auto-standards-environment-violations-justice-department-wildfires</a>As fierce Santa Ana winds whipped the wildfires outside of Los Angeles, stirring exactly the kind of infernos that scientists expect in a hotter, drier California, President Donald Trump was gloating over the new allies he has won in his epic battle to block that state's efforts to fight climate change.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">California has been a world innovator in crafting environmental policy, and its pioneering approach to the difficult issue of carbon emissions from cars helped put the United States on course to cleaner, more efficient vehicles. But a multi-pronged assault by the Trump administration now seeks both to hobble California's climate efforts and to shred the state's reputation as an environmental leader.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;">In its latest move, the Trump administration doubled down on <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092019/trump-auto-standards-rollback-california-waiver-electric-vehicles-climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">its fight to eliminate the state's carbon emissions rules</a> for vehicles. It had already revoked California's authority to set higher standards. Now it was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/climate/general-motors-toyota-emissions-white-house.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">pressuring carmakers</a> to take its side in California's lawsuit over the move. When GM, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota made the surprise decision to comply last week,Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1189592785311223815?s=20" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">tweeted</a>: "California has treated the Auto Industry very poorly for many years, harming Workers and Consumers. We are fixing this problem!"<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;">The attack isn't just on auto standards. On Sunday, Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1190995034163892226?s=20" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">tweeted </a>a threat to cut U.S. aid for fighting California wildfires, reiterating his previous <a href="https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2018/nov/12/donald-trump/trumps-overly-simplistic-and-false-claim-californi/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">false </a>claim that they are due to the state (which owns of just 2 percent of the forest land within its borders) failing to "clean" its forest floor. Trump's Justice Department sued the state a week earlier, arguing that California exceeded its authority when it launched a cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec to lower fossil fuel emissions.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;">At the same time, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency has threatened to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to withdraw federal highway funds from the state over air pollution, and to initiate enforcement action for water pollution violations. In a flourish, the EPA blamed the latter on human waste and needles from homeless people in San Francisco.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;">Those warnings, issued directly from the desk of EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, were at odds with the agency's hands-off approach under Trump. At a time when EPA is weakening environmental standards on both air and water pollution and enforcement activity is at its <a href="https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/enforcement-annual-results-fiscal-year-2018" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">lowest level in a decade</a>, the agency was invoking one of the most severe penalties available, for a state that has <a href="http://www.capradio.org/articles/2015/08/05/san-joaquin-valley-hits-air-quality-milestone/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">invested billions</a> in improved air quality and has among the best compliance records in the nation on water pollution.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">California's governor has called the moves "<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-california/trump-epa-blasts-california-air-quality-threatens-to-withdraw-highway-funds-idUSKBN1W91ZO" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">pure retaliation</a>," while former federal officials say that the unusual nature of the enforcement actions, and the management of the cases by top Trump appointees in Washington, reeks of political score-settling.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Together, the Trump administration's actions try to deliver the message that California is a laggard in addressing visible air pollution and sewage, and that the state's aggressive focus on global warming is a misguided distraction at best.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But the Trump administration's California narrative falls apart with a cursory review of the science and the state's record as a national leader in environmental protection. And it remains to be seen whether it has the legal arguments to persuade the courts, which will have the final say.<h3 style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">How Did We Get Here?</h3><p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This is not the first time that politicians have sought to caricature California as a victim of its own progressive policies.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Former Vice President Dick Cheney <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/us/cheney-promotes-increasing-supply-as-energy-policy.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">famously used </a>California's electricity crisis of 2001 as a pretext for expanded U.S. oil and natural gas production. Only later did it become clear that California's power shortages were created, not by conservation-oriented policies, but by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/us/tapes-show-enron-arranged-plant-shutdown.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">profit-hungry energy traders like Enron</a> who took advantage of the state's experiment with deregulation.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The same administration also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/washington/20epa-web.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">sought to block</a> California's effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles, but the auto industry's collapse in 2008 forced it into the arms of the federal government for help. President Barack Obama's administration brokered an historic $80.7 billion bailout of the carmakers, which included an agreement to put California's standards into effect nationwide. It forced a gradual fleet-wide improvement in fuel economy that by 2025 would have cut 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the biggest step any nation has taken to reduce greenhouse gases.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Soon after Trump was elected, the carmakers <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4954121-Auto-Alliance-Letter-to-Trump-Transition.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">sought to partially undo that deal</a>—they still wanted a nationwide standard, but more flexibility. The Trump administration, however, sought a head-on battle with California that the automakers had long said they hoped to avoid.<p style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Launching such a war runs counter to the Trump administration's stated goal of giving more environmental authority to the states. Just last month, for example, the Trump EPA <a href="https://www.kxnet.com/news/state-news/north-dakota-epa-agree-to-let-nd-companies-self-report-minor-violations/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">delegated increased authority</a> to North Dakota for oversight of oil and gas sites, and waste facilities, and power plants. But EPA Administrator Wheeler has portrayed California as a different case—a rogue state that needed to be reined in....[long]=<h1 class="headline" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.4;">Cap and trade fails in Va. Now what? [we freaking flip it?! 1119]</h1><section class="excerpt" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 10px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: block; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">It was supposed to be a crowning moment for cap and trade. Instead, it became the biggest setback for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative since 2012.</section><a href="https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060282005" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;"></a><section class="homepage byline" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By <a href="https://www.eenews.net/staff/Benjamin_Storrow" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap;">Benjamin Storrow</a> in <a href="https://www.eenews.net/cw" class="publication cw" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; font-weight: bold;">Climatewire</a> <time datetime="2019-05-06 07:32:13 -0400" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">7:32 AM EDT</time></section>===

<h2 style=" box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Organizations That Raise Concerns About Cap-and-Trade with Offsets and Point to Simpler, More Direct CO2 Pricing Mechanisms</h2>

<li style=" box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: disc; margin: 5px 0px; line-height: 1.4 !important;"><a href="http://chesapeakeclimate.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Chesapeake Climate Action Network</a></li>

<li style=" box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: disc; margin: 5px 0px; line-height: 1.4 !important;"><a href="http://www.taxpayer.net/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Taxpayers for Common Sense</a></li>

<li style=" box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: disc; margin: 5px 0px; line-height: 1.4 !important;"><a href="http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=2531" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Public Citizen</a></li>

</ul>

==

<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/jerry-brown-climate-bill-2461399772.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/jerry-brown-climate-bill-2461399772.html</a>

_EJ ab 398

==

<a href="https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/07/06/whats-next-for-californias-cap-and-trade-program/">https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/07/06/whats-next-for-californias-cap-and-trade-program/</a>

<h3 style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0.625rem 98.3281px; padding: 0px 0.625rem; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; line-height: 1.3; font-stretch: normal; width: 688.328px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Episode airs July 7, 2017 at 9:00 AM</h3>

<p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em 98.3281px; padding: 0px 0.625rem; line-height: 1.5; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-stretch: normal; letter-spacing: 0.01rem; width: 688.328px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While Governor Jerry Brown has been taking on a larger role in the global fight against climate change, back in California he’s working to get the state’s cap-and-trade program renewed. The program, which limits carbon emissions and requires polluters to buy allowances for greenhouse gas emissions, is set to expire in 2020 if state lawmakers can’t agree on terms of an extension. Early reports signal that Gov. Brown has been able to build consensus on a deal that goes lighter on the oil industry — a move that’s drawn criticism from environmentalist groups. In this segment, Forum discusses the cap-and-trade deal and looks at the future of California’s environmental policy.

Guests:

Guy Marzorati, California politics and government reporter, KQED

Michael Wara, associate professor of law, Stanford University

==

a better option than Brown's proposal: SB 775. A groundbreaking Cap-And-Trade bill, SB775, authored by CA Senator Bob Wieckowski (Fremont), is about to be proposed to the CA Senate. SB 775 is supported by almost every major environmental and environmental justice organization. We must stop Brown's gift to Big Oil and instead move forward with SB 775. <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.350siliconvalley.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fenergy-and-environment%2F2017%2F5%2F3%2F15512258%2Fcalifornia-revolutionize-cap-and-trade&e=49913dd46dcaf167d806970bde9143c6040ae527&utm_source=350sv&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6_30_17&n=3" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">

</a>

An excerpt from Vox about SB 775:

"...The changes that <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.350siliconvalley.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fenergy-and-environment%2F2017%2F5%2F3%2F15512258%2Fcalifornia-revolutionize-cap-and-trade&e=49913dd46dcaf167d806970bde9143c6040ae527&utm_source=350sv&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6_30_17&n=4" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none;">SB 775</a> proposes for the state’s carbon trading program are dramatic — and, to my eyes, amazingly thoughtful ... in my opinion, if it passes in anything close to its current form, it will represent the most important advance in carbon-pricing policy in the US in a decade. Maybe ever."

Join our Legislative Team meeting this Sunday (<a rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" href="http://www.350siliconvalley.org/legislative_team_meeting_20170702?e=49913dd46dcaf167d806970bde9143c6040ae527&utm_source=350sv&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6_30_17&n=5" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499186287420_37508" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none;">RSVP</a>) to get involved with our fight for SB 775 and SB 100.

This is a complex issue and you can find 2 excellent articles explaining more about why we want SB 775 (and not Brown's proposal) here: <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://www.350siliconvalley.org/r?u=http%3A%2F%2Finthesetimes.com%2Farticle%2F20282%2Fjerry-brown-climate-change-sb775&e=49913dd46dcaf167d806970bde9143c6040ae527&utm_source=350sv&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6_30_17&n=6" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">LINK</a> and <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://www.350siliconvalley.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fenergy-and-environment%2F2017%2F5%2F3%2F15512258%2Fcalifornia-revolutionize-cap-and-trade&e=49913dd46dcaf167d806970bde9143c6040ae527&utm_source=350sv&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6_30_17&n=7" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">LINK</a>.

==

2 big losses in ct? high speed rail and

After more than four years, a legal challenge to California's cap-and-trade program has reached an unsuccessful conclusion.

The end came on Wednesday when the California Supreme Court declined to consider an appeal from business groups who consider the program to be an unconstitutional tax.

The program requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases, a system intended to provide a financial incentive to reduce emissions.

The law that provided the program's foundation was not passed with a two-thirds vote in the Legislature, the legal threshold for new taxes, sparking lawsuits from the California Chamber of Commerce and the Pacific Legal Foundation.

A state appeals court <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-california-cap-trade-decision-20170406-story.html" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">rejected their arguments</a> in April, but they appealed. Business groups were also concerned the decision was too broad and could open the door to additional taxes.

Despite the state's victory in court, there are other legal questions around cap and trade. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-california-climate-talks-20170623-story.html" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing lawmakers</a> to extend the program past 2020 with new legislation.

“With this Supreme Court victory, now it’s up to us to take action extending California’s cap-and-trade system on a more permanent basis," Brown said in a statement.

==

E&E

<h1 class="headline ">High-stakes carbon trading market set to launch</h1>

<section class="byline"><time datetime="2017-06-26 07:50:47 -0400">Published: Monday, June 26, 2017</time></section>

China is preparing to later this year launch the world's largest carbon cap-and-trade market — a high-stakes gamble that could position Beijing as a world leader on climate change as long as it's not undercut by the nation's industrial sector.

Chinese regulators have studied other cap-and-trade models in Europe and California. Last week, the government said its initiative is on track to start in 2017.

But officials have already conceded that they lack reliable information on many industries. In the past, some large companies have ignored laws or relied on local officials to meddle in markets. And despite President Xi Jinping's enthusiasm for the project, his record on environmental and market reforms has been mixed.

The sectors covered by the new permitting market have already been pared down to likely only include coal-fired power plants and producers of cement and aluminum. Aviation might also get included in the final market.

If China succeeds, it would deepen the country's considerable influence over energy technology development (Chris Buckley, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/world/asia/china-cap-trade-carbon-greenhouse.html">New York Times</a>, June 23). — AAA

</section>

==

news: these are the most "layperson friendly” articles about Cap & Trade that I’ve seen:

SB100:

Sample of coverage of SB 100 and what it says about California’s climate leadership <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/01/these-titans-of-industry-just-broke-with-trumps-decision-to-exit-the-paris-accords/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/01/these-titans-of-industry-just-broke-with-trumps-decision-to-exit-the-paris-accords/&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNG_G7FJNrNDy0zQCc5mR6gLlpnLyw">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/01/these-titans-of-industry-just-broke-with-trumps-decision-to-exit-the-paris-accords/</a>

<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/governors-pledge-climate-action-in-face-of-possible-paris-withdrawal/" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/governors-pledge-climate-action-in-face-of-possible-paris-withdrawal/&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNFfcYAHsU-MDRzyC8SiOXQg-jlUg">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/governors-pledge-climate-action-in-face-of-possible-paris-withdrawal/</a>

Is 100% possible? <a href="http://inewsource.org/2017/05/26/sempra-100-percent-renewables-pxise/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://inewsource.org/2017/05/26/sempra-100-percent-renewables-pxise/&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNETukPJY6UOSdj47a2PsEvc3PN4fQ">http://inewsource.org/2017/05/26/sempra-100-percent-renewables-pxise/</a>

CAP AND TRADE:

For clear and readable writing on Cap and Trade, the best writer IMO is Dave Roberts at Vox

Background here <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/8/29/12650488/california-climate-law-sb-32" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.vox.com/2016/8/29/12650488/california-climate-law-sb-32&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNGgpyI2_VPgBOGkuzx5cN9OKAH5LA">https://www.vox.com/2016/8/29/12650488/california-climate-law-sb-32</a>

His description of SB 775 (he’s a fan) <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/5/3/15512258/california-revolutionize-cap-and-trade" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/5/3/15512258/california-revolutionize-cap-and-trade&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNEauZOBT8KlMWZbG-hO2P8pydR20Q">https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/5/3/15512258/california-revolutionize-cap-and-trade</a>

SB 775 the bill <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB775" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id%3D201720180SB775&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNEUnKBWlvCnLv3U-lWNV_2Z9FfkGQ">https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB775</a>

More in-depth article about why new Cap and Trade program is needed by Stanford professors Wara and Cullenward, who helped design SB 775: <a href="http://legal-planet.org/2017/05/15/guest-bloggers-michael-wara-and-danny-cullenward-understanding-sb-775-a-realistic-path-to-achieving-californias-climate-goals/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://legal-planet.org/2017/05/15/guest-bloggers-michael-wara-and-danny-cullenward-understanding-sb-775-a-realistic-path-to-achieving-californias-climate-goals/&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNGkiNW8j-sxUpqB_hGdgL7Otw5Tow">http://legal-planet.org/2017/05/15/guest-bloggers-michael-wara-and-danny-cullenward-understanding-sb-775-a-realistic-path-to-achieving-californias-climate-goals/</a>

For an environmental justice prospect <a href="http://greenlining.org/blog/2017/cap-and-trade-clean-energy-protecting-communities-of-color/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://greenlining.org/blog/2017/cap-and-trade-clean-energy-protecting-communities-of-color/&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNEakZ3A7cQMISN3HpcvzbESKO0F-Q">http://greenlining.org/blog/2017/cap-and-trade-clean-energy-protecting-communities-of-color/</a>

For deeper dives in Cap and Trade:

350 Bay Area 2016 informational workshop <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I5rQbLdwMs&feature=youtu.be#t=21m44s" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D8I5rQbLdwMs%26feature%3Dyoutu.be%23t%3D21m44s&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNHpe5-mY9ap3w2VL1a-6-jblvOY4w">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I5rQbLdwMs&feature=youtu.be#t=21m44s</a>

For a really deep dive into Cap and Trade, here is the link to a 4 hour oversight hearing of the program by the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on May 10,2017 <a href="http://calchannel.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=7&clip_id=4530" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://calchannel.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id%3D7%26clip_id%3D4530&source=gmail&ust=1498314804358000&usg=AFQjCNE9rzkPm9sVwP_NUV7vxVOorprpwA">http://calchannel.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=7&clip_id=4530</a> Although the topic of this hearing is the current Cap and Trade program, there was also a lot of discussion of SB 775. The opening testimony by ARB head Mary Nichols and then presentations by Wara and Cullenward are particularly interesting. You’ll also hear testimony from major environmental groups supporting the basic ideas in SB 775.

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==

CA CoC ~ court loss

<a href="http://www.triplepundit.com/2017/04/californias-legislature-trying-extend-life-cap-trade-program/">http://www.triplepundit.com/2017/04/californias-legislature-trying-extend-life-cap-trade-program/</a>

==

<a href="http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=17-P13-00006#feature1">http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=17-P13-00006#feature1</a>

Conservatives could support a carbon tax if it also reduced EPA regulations and made payments to consumers to offset the costs, say advocates led by Republican elder statesmen, including former Secretary of State James Baker. They have proposed an ambitious Carbon Dividend plan that could entice bipartisan support, pay families $2000 a month, and cut greenhouse gas emissions more than Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Co-author Ted Halstead of the Climate Leadership Council explains its appeal and mechanics to host Steve Curwood. (15:30)

Capitol Hill action on global warming has been stalled for years, but that could change thanks to a plan being advanced by Republican senior statesman, James Baker.

BAKER: There’s a carbon tax buried in there somewhere, but this is a program on carbon dividends. Make sure you understand that. And every American is going to get a dividend quarterly, from the taxes that are collected on the production of carbon.

CURWOOD: The former secretary of both state and treasury is leading the launch of this new plan to reign in carbon emissions. It’s called “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends.” The title aims to entice tax-averse GOP legislators to sign on. Ted Halstead, founder and President of the Climate Leadership Council, is a co-author of this daring new blueprint, and HE joins me now. Welcome to Living on Earth.

HALSTEAD: Nice to be with you, Steve.

CURWOOD: So, Ted, why hook up with really senior powerful Republicans for this vision of how to move forward on the climate?

HALSTEAD: Because the main impediment to solving climate change at the necessary scale and speed is one party in one country. The major breakthrough that is needed is getting the Republican party on board for a climate solution that fits the conservative world view, and it's been a profound honor to work with such distinguished figures as George Schultz, Jim Baker, Hank Paulson, Marty Feldstein, and Greg Mankiw. So, we have three former Republican secretaries of treasury, two former Republican secretaries of state, and two former Republican chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers. We also are fortunate to have Rob Walton as a co-author who is the former chairman of Walmart, of course, the world's largest private employer.

CURWOOD: Ted, for years, former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis has been calling for a carbon tax. What exactly does your plan call for?

“The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends” was produced by a collaboration that includes senior Republican leaders. (Photo: Climate Leadership Council)

HALSTEAD: A carbon tax is part of what we are proposing, but our plan is called “carbon dividends,” and it's a very different beast. I mean, simply put, an economist would tell you that a carbon tax is the most efficient way to solve climate change. The problem is that proponents of that position have long lacked a coherent political strategy to move forward on that issue because, by itself, a carbon tax is deeply unpopular. So, what we're proposing is a carbon tax with 100 percent of the proceeds going back to the American people in the form of dividends. Now, that's just one of the arguments in favor of it. For Republicans, the arguments that I think will be equally powerful is that this is a pro-growth plan. This is a pro-competitiveness plan. This is a plan to reduce regulation and shrink the government, all the while saving our climate. So, it's a new synthesis, but it is built on bedrock Republican principles.

CURWOOD: Alright. Now, let's walk through the four basic elements of your plan. At the top of the list, and the title that you use for this, is a dividend from carbon. In other words, a typical family of four would receive about $2,000 a year. So, this dividend means that any tax, if I understand correctly, would be essentially for the economy - neutral. There will be no growth in government. There would be no drag on growth in the conventional economy this way.

HALSTEAD: That's correct. It would be revenue neutral; however, just to clarify, every American would get a dividend, and every American would get the same dividend whether you're rich or you're poor. But what the Treasury Department found in studying this is that for the bottom 70 percent of Americans, they would come out ahead, meaning they would receive more in dividends than the added cost for carbon. That means 223 million Americans stand to benefit from this new solution to climate change. So, it's a real populist climate solution that fits our political moment.

CURWOOD: How is the public going to embrace this when the first thing they're going to see is the higher price of gasoline, more money at the pump?

HALSTEAD: Well, first of all, we’ll probably make the dividend monthly, so people would get it monthly, and we may even try to pay it in advance the first month so that there is none of that problem. In order words, the dividend comes first, and increased payments come second. But again, the key point: The bottom 20 percent of Americans, 223 million Americans, would come out ahead.

Ted Halstead says the carbon dividends plan would cut twice as many greenhouse gas emissions as former President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Above, Obama stands at the bow of a ship on a 2015 tour of Alaska that highlighted the impacts of climate change. (Photo: Pete Souza / White House, public domain)

CURWOOD: So, let's talk about the tax. You say it would begin at the level at $40 for each ton of carbon dioxide associated with the emissions, and then it would ratchet up. How high could it go?

HALSTEAD: Well, you know, $40 per ton is near the high end of what is politically feasible in Washington today. That's about $.36 cents per gallon extra at the pump. When you ask of what is ultimately needed, it's a much higher number, if you work backwards from the goal of keeping climate change or warming, rather, at the limit of 2 degrees Centigrade that all scientists and all world leaders who attended the Paris conference recently agreed to. So, if that's the goal, we need to reduce CO2 emissions in America by about 70 percent by mid-century, and in order to accomplish that, you need a tax that's at $100 per ton or more. But that's not the starting point. You need to get people comfortable with this. In our paper, we said after five years, a Blue Ribbon commission should analyze whether to continue growing, based on the latest climate data. So, there is a built-in checkpoint after five years.

CURWOOD: Now, your third pillar of this, you call border carbon adjustments, that is, that people say manufacturing goods or producing something in another country that doesn't have carbon constraints might be able to, in the words of an economist, dump their carbon heavy products in the US and undercut local production which is subject to the tax. But what about the other way around? What disincentives are there for American companies to go and get carbon intensive fuels such as coal and export it, where it'll get burned in countries that it may not have any regulation of carbon?

HALSTEAD: So, if companies are doing that now there would be no change in incentives for them. What we're trying to do is improve on what we have now, and what is not widely understood is that the current global economic rules of the game actually subsidize dirty producers abroad. So, you know, President Trump is particularly concerned about the way in which our environmental regulations could hurt American companies and jobs and so forth. Well, the best answer to trading with partners that have weaker environmental standards is not to lower our standards. It's to penalize them for theirs, and that is exactly what our border carbon adjustment would do. So, if we're trading with a company that has lower carbon prices than the ones that we put in place, we would tax them at the border for the difference. By contrast, because we, of course, don't want to harm our own companies, if our country's export to a nation that has lower environmental cost, they would get a rebate for any carbon tax that they've paid.

British Columbia’s carbon emissions have gone down since a carbon tax was implemented there in 2008, as compared to the rest of Canada. (Photo: Lawrencekhoo,Wikimedia Commons CC0 1.0)

CURWOOD: But what are the disincentives for American companies to go, say, mine coal out of the Powder River Basin and export it to the world. Any carbon dioxide molecule anywhere in the world is contributing to global warming whether it's emitted in the US or in China or India or, you know, some Third World country that has virtually no limits on carbon emissions.

HALSTEAD: So, Steve, that's an insightful question, and you are correct that our system would not provide a disincentive for that. But, I would point out that that would be no change from where we are today. What would change, though, is that, by putting in place a system of border carbon adjustments, it would very soon compel other countries to set up their own carbon pricing at similar levels to ours, and then -- Guess what -- any coal mined in the United States and exported would be subject to the exact same taxes, and of the various fossil fuels everybody knows that coal is the most carbon intensive. So, coal will be hit very hard by our plan, but even there there's an elegant way out. It turns out that at a carbon price of between $50 to $100 per ton, it becomes economical for utilities to invest in carbon capture technologies at the coal plants. So, what we end up with is not the end of the coal industry as some fear, but rather, clean coal.

CURWOOD: The fourth major pillar of your proposal is to roll back lots of regulations and course, in particular, there's the question of President Obama's Clean Power Plan. Tell me how your carbon tax and dividend proposal compares to the Clean Power Plan, in terms of carbon emissions averted and rules that you think could be removed.

HALSTEAD: Sure, when we put out our statement, we put out a corresponding analysis by two of the top scholars in the field and what it found is quite stunning. It compared our plan to all Obama-era climate regulations, including a full implementation of the Clean Power Plan, and what the study found is that our plan would achieve nearly twice the emission reductions of all the Obama-era policies combined. What's more, the study also found that with our plan and our plan alone, America could meet the high end of its Paris commitment with no other policies. So, the logic here is that if you have a powerful enough, market-based policy, you don't need the regulations any more. Obviously, it's a difficult pill for a Democrat, an environmentalist to swallow the elimination of regulations, but frankly that is what motivates the Republicans, and that is where we can have a major breakthrough here.

CURWOOD: How likely is your plan to succeed in this Republican-controlled Congress, especially among those members of Congress from coal, oil and gas producing states?

HALSTEAD: Well, Steve, you know, there is this mischaracterization of the Republican position on climate change that boils down to confusion between means and ends. Most Republicans, like most Democrats, want a healthy climate for their children and want to protect our climate. The entirety of the debate, or almost all of it, is about the means of getting there, and the reason why Republicans have constantly been opposing the Democratic plans is because they hate regulation, and they see heavy-handed regulation as growth inhibiting and as bad for the competitiveness of US firms. OK, but now Republicans are finally in charge, right? So, because they're in charge, there's no more threat of these regulations. So, now there's an opportunity.

Ted Halstead, Secretary James Baker, Martin Feldstein and Gregory Mankiw met with White House officials on Wednesday, February 8th to discuss their “conservative case for carbon dividends”. (Photo: ??????, Wikimedia Commons public domain)

CURWOOD: Well, but, wait a second, Ted. I think you have to point out that many, many Republicans, especially leaders, have delegitimized the whole question of climate change. Years ago, for example, John McCain and Speaker Gingrich signed on to climate action, but since the cap-and-trade legislation failed, the mantra in the Republican Party has been around scientific skepticism, or, if there's a problem, how much of it is man-made. It's not been a willingness to go forward on this. It’s been really denial, I think, especially on the part of leadership.

HALSTEAD: Look, you know, we can spend lots of time debating this. I think there's a much more interesting point of where we can go in the future, but on this point, Steve, if you listen carefully to what the cabinet appointees said on this topic in their nomination hearings – And, granted, this is about as anti-climate a cabinet as you can imagine, in general, especially the EPA Administrator -- But they all said, “Climate change is real”. They say, “Well, we're not sure how much, you know, it's man made,” but they said it's real. And then they go on to say, “But we're worried that any solution would undermine the competitiveness of US firms and would be bad for the economy.” So, the big turning point here is that we have a plan that is good for the economy, that's good for the competitiveness of US firms.

Republicans are going to have a major PR problem on their hands when they start dismantling all of the climate regulations. If they follow a repeal-only strategy, that is going to be highly unpopular, and it is going to cost them in the same way that a repeal-only strategy on health care is just not politically viable. It's political suicide, in fact. So, sooner or later they, are going to come around to a solution. Our goal in launching this was to say, “Here is the conservative solution”. To put it in tech-speak, it is the “killer app” of climate policy because it accomplishes all of these goals at once. It solves the climate problem better than the Democratic policies, but it's also, it ticks every box that Trump cares about. It is pro-growth, pro-competition. It is deregulatory. It is pro-jobs. It rebalances trade, and, most of all, it is good for working-class Americans. So, it ticks all their boxes.

Ted Halstead is the founder, President and CEO of the Climate Leadership Council. (Photo: Climate Leadership Council)

CURWOOD: Ted, before you go, tell me, why does your plan include a proposal to give companies immunity from lawsuits for polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases?

HALSTEAD: What we're trying to find here is a package of policies that both sides can live with. So, you need to offer the Republican Party deregulation, and also there is no upside in fighting it out with historic polluters if you have a new plan that dramatically and consistently reduces emissions over time. That is the goal. Let's keep our eyes focused on the goal. It is to solve the climate problem at the required scale and speed. If we have a solution that does that, well then, why not let the companies not have any more legal liability on carbon emissions? By the way, we're not talking about the other greenhouse gases because our policy right now doesn't touch those. But on carbon emissions, if we’re going to price it, well then we shouldn't be litigating it at the same time. It's just sensible politics, right, because the policy works, and if you believe the policy works then you don't need these other sticks at the same time. So, it's all part of finding a compromise that all sides can live with.

CURWOOD: Ted Halstead is Founder, President and CEO of the Climate Leadership Council in Washington. Ted, thanks for taking the time with us today.

HALSTEAD: Thank you, Steve. Much appreciated.

Related links:

- “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends”

- NYTimes Op-ed by Martin S. Feldstein, Ted Halstead, and N. Gregory Mankiw,

- Listen to our interview with Republican Congressman Bob Inglis about leading the GOP on climate change

-

Support for Living on Earth

==

<a href="http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/31/brave-new-world-carbon-pricing/">http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/31/brave-new-world-carbon-pricing/</a>

==

<a href="http://www.globalpossibilities.org/could-western-states-band-together-to-comply-with-the-clean-power-plan/">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/could-western-states-band-together-to-comply-with-the-clean-power-plan/</a>

==

<a href="http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/sites/default/files/skocpol_captrade_report_january_2013_0.pdf">http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/sites/default/files/skocpol_captrade_report_january_2013_0.pdf</a>

post mortem TP

CONTENTS

Making Sense of the Cap and Trade Failure

Beyond Easy Answers

          Did the Economic Downturn Do It?

          Did Obama Fail to Lead?

An Anatomy of Two Reform Campaigns

          A Regulated Market Appr

oach to Health Reform

          Harnessing Market Forces to Mitigate Global Warming

          New Investments in Coalition-

Building and Political Capabilities

          HCAN on the Left Edge of the Possible

Climate Reformers Invest in

Insider Bargains and Media Ads

Outflanked by Extremists

          The Roots of GOP Opposition

 Climate Change Denial

          The Pivotal Battle for Public Opinion in 2006 and 2007

          The Tea Party Seals the Deal

What Can Be Learned?

          Environmentalists Diagnose the Causes of Death

          Where Should Philanthropic Money Go?

The Politics Next Time

          Yearning for an Easy Way

          New Kinds of Insider Deals?

          Are Market Forces Enough?

          What Kind of Politics?

          Using Policy Goals to Build a Broader Coalition

 The Challenge Named

==

gop women future500 endorse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsf2ne2veHk

R street

==

<a href="http://grist.org/news/californias-cap-and-trade-program-will-fund-environmental-justice/">http://grist.org/news/californias-cap-and-trade-program-will-fund-environmental-justice/</a>

==

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/06/3446085/rggi-latest-auction-success/">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/06/3446085/rggi-latest-auction-success/</a>

==

<h1 class="headline" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em; padding: 0px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.2em; text-transform: none; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="post-title" href="http://grist.org/news/china-launches-worlds-second-biggest-carbon-trading-market/" style=" border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: inherit; max-width: 100%;">China launches world’s second-biggest carbon-trading market</a> grist</h1>

<a href="http://grist.org/news/china-launches-worlds-second-biggest-carbon-trading-market/">http://grist.org/news/china-launches-worlds-second-biggest-carbon-trading-market/</a>

===

(see also carbon pricing:

fee and dividend; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/the-american-party_b_3358546.html?view=print&comm_ref=false">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/the-american-party_b_3358546.html?view=print&comm_ref=false</a> hansen

===

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/28/2850021/california-oregon-washington-british-columbia-agreement/">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/28/2850021/california-oregon-washington-british-columbia-agreement/</a>

===

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/10/24/206921/gop-cap-and-trade-flip-flop/">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/10/24/206921/gop-cap-and-trade-flip-flop/</a>

<h3 style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 20px 0px 10px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24.75px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cap and trade was conceived by Reagan, delivered by Bush Sr. and praised by Bush Jr. The GOP is now demagoguing it to death.</h3>

Opposition to “cap-and-trade” legislation to reduce global warming pollution is a common refrain among many Republican and a few<a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/manchin-obama-is-dead-wrong-on.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Democratic</a> officials this fall. The program is derided as a “cap and tax” that would drain voters’ wallets while bankrupting the nation.

But, ironically enough, the three most recent Republican presidents promoted cap and trade, including Ronald Reagan, as CAP’s <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/experts/WeissDaniel.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Daniel J. Weiss</a>explains in this <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/10/cap_and_trade_gop.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">cross-post</a>.

They employed such a system to phase out lead in gasoline, cut chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting chemicals, and reduce sulfur pollution from power plants responsible for acid rain””all without undue cost. Officials who are criticizing it now are doing so for political purposes, and they could likely make it harder to employ cost-effective, market-based policies in the future to significantly lower pollution at an affordable cost.

For instance, the <a href="http://pledge.gop.gov/resources/library/documents/solutions/a-pledge-to-america.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">“Pledge to America</a>: the 2010 Republican Agenda” promises to “oppose attempts to impose a national ‘cap and trade’ energy tax.” After the demise of comprehensive global warming legislation in the Senate, <a href="http://senatus.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/mcconnell-r-i-p-cap-and-trade/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)</a> gloated that “cap-and-trade, which is also known as the national energy tax, is dead in the United States Senate.”

Yet many Republican officials greatly admire the father of cap and trade: President Ronald Reagan. <a href="http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/problem-solved-sarah-palin-offers-unemployment-solution----be-more-like-ronald-reagan.php" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) praised Reagan</a> last year:

When you realize the magnitude of President Reagan’s achievements, there is absolutely no reason why anyone would ignore his ‘demonstrably good’ example.

Nonetheless, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/13/AR2009071302852.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">she opposes a global warming plan</a> that would employ the innovative cap-and-trade system first created by President Reagan. Like Palin, many of today’s public officials are repudiating Reagan’s legacy of cap and trade for cheap political gain and to curry favor with the polluting industries that are supporting attacks on those who voted for a cap-and-trade market mechanism to reduce global warming pollution.

A little history is in order. <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/01/capandtrade101.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Cap and trade</a> was developed as a more flexible, market-based system to reduce environmental pollution compared to the so-called “command and control” model employed by environmental laws in the 1970s. The old system required each polluting facility to make a fixed reduction in air or water contamination, which ignored that some facilities could cut pollution more cheaply than others.

Cap and trade is a cost-effective alternative that allows the firms that can more cheaply reduce their emissions below their required limit to sell any additional reductions to companies that are not able to make reductions as easily. This creates a system that guarantees a set level of overall reductions while rewarding the most efficient companies and ensuring that the cap can be met at the lowest possible cost to the economy.

The Reagan White House conceived the first cap-and-trade program to reduce pollution. It was used in the 1980s to phase out lead in gasoline at a lower cost. An <a href="http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rstavins/Papers/Handbook_Chapter_on_MBI.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">EPA analysis</a> shows:

“¦estimated savings from the lead trading program of approximately 20 percent over alternative programs that did not provide for lead banking, a cost savings of about $250 million per year.

President Reagan also signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to slash the production and use of chemicals that deplete the upper ozone layer essential to screen out cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. His administration established a cap-and-trade system to implement the chemical reductions the protocol required. A <a href="http://ozone.unep.org/Events/ozone_day_2008/press_backgrounder.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">2006 scientific assessment</a> concluded that “the Montreal Protocol is working” to reduce chemicals and protect the ozone layer.

President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, was the first president to propose the employment of a cap-and-trade system in an environmental law. The Clean Air Act of 1990 includes his proposed cap-and-trade system to reduce the sulfur pollution from power plants responsible for acid rain.

The Clean Air Act passed the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=101&session=2&vote=00324#position" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Senate by a vote of 89-10</a> and the <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1990/roll525.xml" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">House by 401-25</a>. Many staunch conservatives voted for it including Sens. Kit Bond (R-Mo), Trent Lott (R-MS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Strom Thurmond (R-SC). Conservative House supporters included Reps. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Joe Barton (R-TX), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Fred Upton (R-MI).

When <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=19039" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">President Bush signed the Clean Air Act into law</a> he highlighted its innovative cap-and-trade mechanism:

The acid rain allowance trading program will be the first large-scale regulatory use of market incentives and is already being seen as a model for regulatory reform efforts here and abroad.

By employing a system that generates the most environmental protection for every dollar spent, the trading system lays the groundwork for a new era of smarter government regulation; one that is more compatible with economic growth than using only the command and control approaches of the past.

President Bush’s prediction came true. An <a href="http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/cap-trade/docs/ctresults.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">EPA analysis</a> a decade after the law was passed determined that the actual cost of cutting sulfur emissions by 40 percent was substantially lower than it had predicted: “$1 to $2 billion per year, just one quarter of original EPA estimates.” A <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/02/crystal_ball.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">CAP analysis</a>determined that in 2006 utility rates were 5 percent lower (in real dollars) than before the act passed in 1990. And the U.S. economy added 16 million jobs during this time.

President George W. Bush also included a cap-and-trade mechanism in his “Clear Skies” bill that would have amended the Clean Air Act. Upon the bill’s introduction <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/02/print/clearskies.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">he noted the success of his father’s cap-and-trade program</a>:

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments have significantly reduced air pollution, especially through the innovative “cap-and trade” acid rain control program. [It] has been a resounding success, cutting annual sulfur dioxide emissions in the first phase by 50 percent below allowed levels. Emissions were reduced faster than required, and at far less cost”¦The program only requires a handful of EPA employees to operate.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced several <a href="http://www.rff.org/News/Features/Documents/McCain-Lieberman.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">global warming pollution reductions bills</a> during the previous decade. While running for <a href="http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/5-12-08-qa-climate-change-details.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">president in 2008 McCain</a> proposed to reduce global warming pollution via a cap-and-trade program.

John McCain’s climate plan will be similar to the very successful acid rain trading program created under the first President Bush in the early 1990s.

A cap-and-trade system sends a market signal that organizes the whole economy around our environmental goals”¦The market evolves by requiring sensible reductions in greenhouse gases, but also allowing full flexibility in how industry meets that requirement.

Then-<a href="http://seethroughthepodium.org/issues/climate/environment_mccain.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Gov. Sarah Palin</a> (R-AK) also supported a cap-and-trade system to reduce global warming pollution as the GOP nominee for vice president. She<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89FbCPzAsRA" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">reiterated that support</a> (see 34:00) during the vice presidential debate.

Former <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/interviews/gingrich.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich</a> (R-GA) also endorsed a cap-and-trade system to reduce global warming pollution in 2007:

I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.

Gingrich has changed his tune, however, just two years later. <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/blog/entry/1599" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">He railed against</a> the “cap-and-trade energy tax” in 2009.

Why have Republicans and a few Democrats rejected this successful policy innovation developed and deployed by Republican Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Bush? In Gingrich’s case it may be the <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/201004190019" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">$350,000 from oil and coal interests</a> his political committee received during the first quarter of 2010 alone.

In addition to giving money to Gingrich, Big Oil, Dirty Coal, and other special interests have spent hundreds millions of dollars over the past two years to convince legislators, politicians, and citizens to oppose cap and trade and other measures that would create jobs, cut oil use, and reduce pollution. Center for American Progress Action Fund analyses find that these interests spent at least <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2010/10/bigoilmoney.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">$68 million in 2010 alone to air misleading and fictitious ads</a> on global warming. What’s more, many of these same interests <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2010/09/dirty_money.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">spent over $500 million</a> in 18 months to lobby Congress to oppose clean energy and global warming legislation.

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/us/politics/21climate.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times reports that these efforts are bearing fruit</a>:

[Tea Party views] in general align with those of the fossil fuel industries, which have for decades waged a concerted campaign to raise doubts about the science of global warming and to undermine policies devised to address it.

They have created and lavishly financed institutes to produce anti-global-warming studies, paid for rallies and Web sites to question the science, and generated scores of economic analyses that purport to show that policies to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases will have a devastating effect on jobs and the overall economy.

Special interest money, then, has played a big role in public officials rejecting this tool created and sharpened by Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

Among Tea Party activists, ideology also plays a part in their rejection of cap and trade as a solution to global warming. Many activists do not believe that global warming is real despite reams of scientific data to the contrary. ANew York Times poll found:

“¦that only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said that global warming is an environmental problem that is having an effect now, while 49 percent of the rest of the public believes that it is. More than half of Tea Party supporters said that global warming would have no serious effect at any time in the future, while only 15 percent of other Americans share that view, the poll found.

Tea Partiers, therefore, would oppose any solution to a problem they do not believe exits.

There’s a bigger point to be made here, though. This summer the Senate failed to act on global warming legislation that employed a cap-and-trade mechanism to reduce costs. Noted economists Richard Schmalensee, who worked in the Reagan White House, and Robert Stavins <a href="http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/analysis/stavins/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">warned soon after that rejecting cap-and-trade programs such as those in the Senate bill could increase the expense of future pollution</a> reductions. They worry that policymakers would hesitate to employ a discredited cap-and-trade system and instead rely on a traditional, more expensive command-and-control method.

To reject this legacy and embrace the failed 1970s policies of one-size-fits-all regulatory mandates would signify unilateral surrender of principled support for markets. If some conservatives oppose energy or climate policies because of disagreement about the threat of climate change or the costs of those policies, so be it. But in the process of debating risks and costs, there should be no tarnishing of market-based policy instruments. Such a scorched-earth approach will come back to haunt when future environmental policies will not be able to use the power of the marketplace to reduce business costs.

Schmalensee and Stavins’s warning should be heeded: This current crop of Republican and a few Democratic officials””in their zeal to curry favor with their special interest funders and Tea Party activists””could doom future efforts to follow the path paved by Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Bush to reduce pollution in the most cost-effective way possible.

– Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at American Progress, where he leads the Center’s clean energy and climate advocacy campaign.

For more on this topic please see:

<li style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/01/capandtrade101.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Cap and Trade 101</a></li>

</ul>

maurice strong?  <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/05/03/03climatewire-sale-of-chicago-climate-exchange-to-ice-reinfo-362.html?pagewanted=all">http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/05/03/03climatewire-sale-of-chicago-climate-exchange-to-ice-reinfo-362.html?pagewanted=all</a>

---

podesta and browner went for cap and tr w/ uscap, uscap some traction 2006 but collapsed in recession; wind and solar can only compete if dirty

fuel taxed but req trust both wall st and govt 541 cda tar sands exxon big stake api, consumer energy alliance Cncl For Relations study coll

waxman takes over from dingell

waxman bo plan reduce 2.5% gnp in 40 yrs, 15% less jobs coal and oil but no effect elsewhere 553

carbon tax win polls, esp when expl vs cap

===

http://grist.org/news/california-might-borrow-500-million-from-its-climate-fund/

===

By David Stanway

BEIJING, April 18 (Reuters) - The crisis facing the European carbon market will not deter China from plans to establish its own emissions trading platform or its other climate pledges, the senior official responsible for climate change said on Thursday.

Xie Zhenhua, vice-director of the National Development and Reform Commission in charge of climate policies, said efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions were a "domestic requirement". They were, he said, designed to address longstanding inefficiency and environmental problems, and did not depend on other nations, or on the state of the economy.

"China has pledged these targets to the international community to deal with climate change and they will not change," he said at an event in Beijing. "Even if other countries say they will do nothing, we will keep to our strategy. No matter what happens to our economy, we cannot make any change."

The global financial crisis has saddled Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) with a crushing oversupply of carbon credits and record low prices, but the EU parliament this week rejected proposals to bail the market out.

The ETS allows enterprises to meet their carbon reduction targets by purchasing carbon credits from the market, enabling them to keep emitting greenhouse gases. Many credits have been generated by low-carbon projects in China as part of a United Nations scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism.

China is planning a similar domestic scheme in which carbon-intensive enterprises and industries can meet their own targets by acquiring the emission quotas allocated to other firms....

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/china-climate-policies-greenhouse-gas-emissions_n_3107538.html?view=print&comm_ref=false">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/china-climate-policies-greenhouse-gas-emissions_n_3107538.html?view=print&comm_ref=false</a>

===

theda:

My interlocutor had played a major role in efforts to get Congress to pass “cap

and trade" legislation during 2009 and 2010. Hefty DC players had worked together in

the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (otherwise known as USCAP), a coalition of

business chieftains and leaders of big environmental organizations that was publicly

launched in 2007 to push legislation to place a cap on carbon emissions and create an

open market for energy producers to trade allowances under the cap. Once legislated,

caps were meant to be slowly ratcheted down in future decades, so U.S. companies and

citizens would have an incentive to use less carbon-based energy and invest in green

technologies. This “cap and trade” approach was seen by supporters as a quintessentially

market-oriented way to nudge the vast U.S. economy through a gradual transition to

reliance on sources of energy that would do less damage to the climate. The model

originated with economists looking to harness market forces and found some favor with

major corporations and Republicans, so it seemed to be a good bet for building bipartisan

coalitions in Congress.1 Votes from some Republicans would be essential, because votes

for carbon caps would be hard to find among Democrats representing states with strong

coal or oil sectors or states heavily reliant on electricity generated in coal-fired plants.

To many savvy players, prospects for a legislative push for cap and trade looked

excellent during and right after the presidential campaign of 2008. Versions of this

approach were touted not just by the Democratic nominee and eventual victor Barack

Obama, but also by the 2008 Republican standard-bearer, John McCain – who was one of

the favorite GOPers among big environmentalists, because he had repeatedly cosponsored

carbon-control bills. Environmentalists who favored cap and trade presumed

that John McCain would be on their side – it was just a question of when they could make

it possible for him to play a pivotal role in forging a bipartisan deal in the Senate. With

Democratic president Barack Obama moving into the White House in early 2009 and

Democratic House and Senate leaders pledged to act on climate legislation, the time

looked ripe to move full speed ahead. On January 15, 2009, USCAP leaders issued a

meticulously negotiated blueprint for a new cap and trade system and geared up for nonstop

lobbying to get legislation through Congress.2

Visions danced in their heads of a

celebratory White House signing ceremony nicely timed to tee up U.S. leadership in the

next international climate confab scheduled for December 2009 in Copenhagen.

Following months of intricate bargaining, USCAP forces scored an initial, hardfought

success when, on June 29, 2009, the House of Representatives passed the

Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security” bill by a vote of 219 to 212.

Supporters were elated, but they got a big shock almost at once as oppositional lobbying

and media campaigns went into overdrive and fierce grassroots Tea Party protests broke

out. During the summer Congressional recess, telegenic older white protestors carrying

homemade signs appeared at normally sleepy “town hall” sessions to harangue

Congressional Democrats who supported health reform as well as the Waxman-Markey

bill. Protests were bolstered by generously funded advertising campaigns targeted on

Senators who would be asked to decide about cap and trade bills in the fall. In hasty

response, cap and trade supporters threw together a national “war room�� and public

relations campaign. They plowed ahead toward what they hoped would be a bipartisan

deal in the Senate.

But one coalitional effort after another fell apart in late 2009 and early 2010, as

putative Senate compromises came and went. In July 2010, Senate Leader Harry Reid

finally pulled the plug when it became clear that no variant of cap and trade or any other

kind of energy legislation had any prospect of coming close to the 60 votes needed to

clear his chamber’s filibuster bar. During this pivotal year, Republicans, including longtime

supposed friends of the environmental movement like John McCain, simply melted

away; and in the end GOP Senators unanimously refused to support of any variant of cap

and trade.3 In public opinion polls, Americans registered increased wariness about

government action on carbon caps – with public worries stoked by opponents claiming

that new taxes and regulations would cost jobs, reduce family incomes, and stifle

businesses struggling to recover from the Great Recession.

...In spelling out political obstacles to cap and trade, I look more closely than other

analysts at the role since 1990 of the rightward-lunging Republican Party, which was

pivotal in the collapse of bipartisan negotiations and the growing backlash against carbon

caps. For this part of the analysis, I am able to draw on not only on a wide variety of

surveys, journalistic pieces, and political science studies, but also on research I did with

my co-author Vanessa Williamson for our book The Tea Party and the Remaking of

Republican Conservatism.13

-----

<a href="http://www.grist.org/climate-policy/2011-05-26-bombshell-high-rising-price-carbon-pollution-deficit-reduction/PALL/print">http://www.grist.org/climate-policy/2011-05-26-bombshell-high-rising-price-carbon-pollution-deficit-reduction/PALL/print</a>

===

<h1 class="headline">Senate rules out using budget process to pass cap-and-trade</h1>

By <a href="http://grist.org/author/kate-sheppard/" title="Posts by Kate Sheppard">Kate Sheppard</a>

Prospects for using the Congress’s budget process to pass cap-and-trade legislation were extinguished on Wednesday night as the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure to bar that option.

The <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:SP00735:">amendment</a>, sponsored by Sen. <a href="http://johanns.senate.gov/public/index.cfm">Mike Johanns</a> (R-Neb.), prohibits the “use of reconciliation in the Senate for climate change legislation involving a cap and trade system” �� Congress-speak for “you can’t attach cap-and-trade to the budget bill.” The amendment <a href="http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-help-ban-reconciliation-vote-on-climate-change-2009-04-01.html">passed by a vote</a> of 67-31, with 26 Democrats voting for the provision.

Johanns and his allies were critical of the idea of passing major legislation outside of normal Senate procedure, which requires 60 votes end debate on a bill; the budget process requires only simple majority votes, taking away the filibuster option and making it possible to pass a cap-and-trade measure without any Republican support (Democrats hold 58 of the Senate’s 100 seats).

Democrats who voted with Johanns were: Max Baucus (Mont.), Evan Bayh (Ind.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), Robert Byrd (W.Va.), Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Russ Feingold (Wis.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Herb Kohl (Wis.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Jim Webb (Va.).

Senate Environment and Public Works Chair <a href="http://boxer.senate.gov/">Barbara Boxer</a> (D-Calif.), who has been <a href="http://gristmill.grist.org/story/article/2009-04-01-senate-susses-climate-plan">leading the charge</a> to keep cap-and-trade prospects alive, noted that when Republicans controlled Congress, they used the tactic of budget reconciliation to pass a number of contentious issues.

A measure that Boxer and fellow cap-and-trade supporter <a href="http://whitehouse.senate.gov/">Sheldon Whitehouse</a> (D-R.I.) put forward today would have neutered the Johanns amendment, but it failed by a vote of 42-56.

=

TS:

TS

T

e push for a carbon tax started a while ago. As

The Hill

explained on July 12,

2012, an “ad-hoc, left-right group” including some conservative economists and

111

advocates plus assorted liberal experts

had since 2011 been “gathering on Wednesday

afternoon at the conservative American Enterprise Institute... in Washington, D.C.... to

discuss a path forward on climate and fiscal policy, including proposals for a carbon

tax.”

134

The discussions were supposed to be

entirely confidential, but (as always

happens in DC) someone leaked an

agenda document titled “Price Carbon

Campaign/Lame Duck Initiative” to Marlo

Lewis of the ultra-free-market, climate-

science-denying Competitive En

terprise Institute,

who in turn immediately denounced the

“carbon tax cabal” and mobilized an outcry on the

right. Four days later, on July 16,

The

Hill

ran a predictable follow up article quoti

ng spokespersons for House Speaker John

Boehner and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConne

ll to the effect that

“Capitol Hill’s most

powerful Republicans say advocates who ha

ve been discussing a carbon tax behind

closed doors are wasting their breath.”

135

Months later, following the November

elections, Boehner and McConnell again

vetoed a carbon tax, their message

reinforced by denunciations in a

Wall Street Journal opinion column and a fatwa from conservative

anti-tax enforcer Grover Norquist – who

had earlier explained to journa

list Ezra Klein that a “Republican Party which creates a

new tax would not be long for the world.”

136

Proudly, Americans for Prosperity (the

Koch-backed advocacy organization affiliated with Tea Party activism) touted the fact

that the entire GOP leadership for the 113

th

House consists of legislators who have signed

its “no climate tax pledge.”

137

None of this has prev

ented economists like Lawrence

Summers from continuing to push the carbon ta

x idea on the (let’s face it) politically

irrelevant grounds of logi

cal economic efficiency.

138

Two months ago, my report “<a href="http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/skocpol-captrade-report-january-2013y.pdf">Naming the Problem: What It Will Take to Counter Extremism and Engage Americans in the Fight Against Global Warming</a>” [PDF] was posted online (along with an important companion report, “<a href="http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/sites/default/files/rff_final_report_bartosiewicz_miley.pdf">The Too Polite Revolution"</a> [PDF], by journalists Petra Bartosiewicz and Marissa Miley). These reports probed what happened with the big push for cap-and-trade legislation in 2009 and 2010, and mine used the results of months of research to place this episode within the larger political trends that have been playing out in U.S. politics in recent years.

As a scholar of U.S. politics, I am accustomed to analyzing social movements as well as efforts to enact big policy reforms, and I always look forward to learning as much from debates about my writings as from the original research. Nevertheless, I was surprised by the <a href="http://grist.org/article/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-skocpol-cap-and-trade-report/">sudden and intense debate</a> my report helped to kick off.

The whole report was accurately summarized in the first major news article on it, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/14/environmental-groups-climate-change-inaction">by Suzanne Goldenberg at The Guardian</a>, but the editors assigned her article a headline and teaser that hit a sore spot: “Climate Change Inaction the Fault of Environmental Groups, Report Says: Academic Paper Largely Clears President Obama of Blame Over Failure to Pass Climate Legislation Through Congress.” No matter that my report pointed to Republican extremism as the problem that had to be “named,” faced, and effectively countered. No matter that it called for forward-looking strategies and hardly used the word “blame” at all (except in brief accounts of how various wings of environmentalism fingered each other for the cap-and-trade shortfall).

Almost instantly, Cap-and-Trader Joe Romm at the Center for American Progress <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/18/1448251/what-theda-skocpol-gets-wrong-about-the-climate-bill-fight/">called troops into battle</a>, going after me for doing a 145-page “opinion piece” rather than a properly “refereed” research article (an odd accusation coming from a blogger). When comments at CAP’s ThinkProgress blog deteriorated into tagging me as a plant by climate-change deniers, I left the Democratic Party’s “progressive” think tank to its own circular firing squad and focused on learning from discussions at my talks and from much more substantive <a href="http://grist.org/article/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-skocpol-cap-and-trade-report/">debate at Grist</a> and other media outlets.

Dozens of emails arrived from environmental activists and funders and participants in the 2009-10 congressional maneuvers, alerting me to additional facts and thanking me for encouraging a necessary strategic reexamination. I have also followed early steps by the reelected Obama administration and press coverage of the newly introduced <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/sanders-and-boxer-introduce-fee-and-dividend-climate-bill-greens-tickled-pink/">Boxer-Sanders climate bill</a> and the <a href="http://grist.org/news/tens-of-thousands-march-on-white-house-in-rally-for-climate-action/">big D.C. rally against the Keystone XL pipeline</a>. As I continue to learn, here are some of my reflections on key issues:

The danger in treating 2009-10 as a close call

Some cap-and-trade supporters still see their 2009-10 push as a near miss that would have succeeded with just a few lucky breaks or tactical improvements. Joe Romm fiercely insists that there were 51 votes in the Senate and that President Obama could have thumped his chest and forced Congress to accept “reconciliation rules” setting a majority threshold and avoiding filibusters. Not only is there no evidence for this fantasy, but one insider wrote to alert me to the fact that, in April 2009, <a href="http://grist.org/article/2009-04-01-senate-budget-cap-trade/">more than two dozen Democrats joined in voting for a GOP-sponsored bill</a> that explicitly ruled out use of the 51-vote threshold for climate change legislation. This was a much stronger and more formal step than the usual process by which centrist Democrats take pro-reform stands in public but, behind the scenes, lobby Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid against either reconciliation (51-vote) rules or filibuster reform.

Many Midwestern and other Democrats do not want to be put on the spot by a majority rule on big issues such as cap-and-trade where they are cross-pressured. Their reluctance must be changed in future legislative battles, and the key to that will be increased pressure from citizens in their districts and states. If we are to pass climate legislation, Democrats will have to hold a Senate majority, and their majority will have to remove or weaken the 60-vote threshold.

Romanticizing 2009-10 as a near miss may seem harmless enough, a form of self-reassurance by cap-and-trade supporters who misdiagnosed the larger political terrain. But such misdiagnosis actually encourages the sort of minimal recalibration signaled in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/17/us-environmental-groups-climate-change-legislation">Environmental Defense Fund VP Eric Pooley’s remark</a> that sometimes a loss points not to a bad game plan, but to poor execution. I am a well-informed NFL fan, and as I explain in a recent <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/24/you_can_t_change_the_climate_from_inside_washington_barack_obama">Foreign Policy </a><a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/24/you_can_t_change_the_climate_from_inside_washington_barack_obama">rejoinder</a> to Pooley, the overwhelming evidence reveals that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Action_Partnership">U.S. Climate Action Partnership</a> — a coalition of business and environmental leaders that pushed cap-and-trade — had a bad game plan, not just a few dropped passes in the fourth quarter. After losing games or seasons that fall short, good NFL teams do clear-eyed post-mortems and create new game plans and remake their team’s composition. Would-be carbon cappers can do no less.

The need for environmental groups to get out of their comfort zones

As leaders of various kinds of environmental groups debate my report, a lot of what seems to be going on is mutual finger-pointing and blame-shifting along with efforts to attract more funding to particular organizations. In political and social movements, an ever-present danger is substitution of organizational maintenance for effective strategizing about how all forces together can push toward the real goal. Especially for organizations with big paid staffs, it is very easy to believe that what will attract that next grant will also further the substantive reform goal. But will it — and who will orchestrate true strategic reevaluations?

A number of journalists who report on environmental politics have remarked to me that, in their assessment, this is a very internally divided field of organizations. My report calls for investments in far-reaching inter-organizational alliances and networks that would allow Beltway and state and local groups to pull together more effectively in any future push for national carbon-capping legislation. It takes time to build such alliances, but so far I see few signs of efforts to do so. It cannot be done by a few big players who write legislation in advance and simply invite others to support what they set forth. Nor will taking polls and tweaking messages to reach unorganized mass audiences accomplish what is necessary. Building broad citizen understanding and support has to proceed hand in hand with knitting together far-reaching organizational alliances to push for legislation all can get behind.

The importance of reaching Americans beyond the upper-middle class

Now that President Obama has been reelected and some new supporters made it into the Senate, established environmental organizations are happily reveling in the president’s new willingness to <a href="http://grist.org/news/obama-we-will-respond-to-the-threat-of-climate-change/">give speeches</a> about <a href="http://grist.org/politics/obama-if-congress-wont-act-on-climate-change-i-will/">global warming</a> and signal that he will support regulatory steps through the Environmental Protection Agency and other executive bodies. One can almost hear the sigh of relief that, now, most professionally run organizations can go back to doing what they do best: writing reports and recommending regulatory actions. That has been the well-worn groove of action since the 1970s. Throw in occasional chain-yourself-to-fences demonstrations and short visits to jail, and we’ll be on a roll, global-warming reformers think.

I can understand the happiness at new openings, and there is good evidence that EPA regulatory steps under the Clean Air Act, coupled with economic shifts toward the substitution of natural gas for coal, can make a difference in reducing dangerous emissions. In fact, environmental organizations that have long championed regulatory actions rather than cap-and-trade legislation with a lot of free permits and weak standards may be proven correct in this period. Such mainstream professional environmental organizations will be tempted to say goodbye to efforts to accommodate polluting businesses (which is what much of the 2009-10 effort was about).

��

But I also think that all forces concerned with speeding America��s transition to production and use of cleaner sources of energy need to take this period to do more than push the EPA to regulate carbon energy polluters. At the same time, reformers should be building broad center-left organizational alliances and broader public support to prepare for the next opening for possible congressional action, perhaps in 2017. To be effective, these inter-organizational alliances will have to stretch far beyond environmental activists, reaching community groups, unions, churches, organizations of healthcare providers, women’s organizations, and many other kinds of associations with deep roots and actual constituents. USCAP No. 2 is not going to cut it next time. Nor will expert reports to the EPA and the occasional demonstrations of tens of thousands of avowed environmentalists.

Why not? Because, like it or not, environmentalism has long been primarily a cause of the educated upper-middle class in the United States, and it remains largely populated by experts and activists from that relatively privileged, non-majority class background (including university students headed for that stratum). Yet needed global-warming reforms go far beyond traditional environmental regulations, and they will require acceptance, and some enthusiastic support, from the majority of ordinary American workers and families. Almost all families now use carbon-intensive forms of energy to light and warm their homes. Because these families have not seen real wage increases in decades, they are extremely sensitive to even modest price increases in life necessities

The climate-change deniers and opponents of carbon limits understand this, and they are well prepared to scare ordinary American families with claims that global-warming regulations will increase living costs. The enemies of any kind of carbon limits will tell ordinary Americans that “elite” environmentalists are about to shaft them by “taxing” their energy use. Climate reformers will need to be aggressive in telling regular Americans that, no, they will receive rebates more than equal to their higher energy costs under carbon-capping legislation.

Rebates of revenues raised from carbon taxes or caps must become central features in legislative pushes, because otherwise it will not be easy to get the message out. The recently introduced Boxer-Sanders bill, for example, includes modest monthly rebates to citizens as well as carbon taxes and investments in clean energy, but all that got highlighted in media reports were the taxes and the investments. Going forward, a simple carbon tax and “green dividends” approach may be best, with 75 to 80 percent of the revenues raised devoted to highly visible checks sent annually to each citizen. The advantage of this approach is that it would be simple to administer and explain, and the rebates would be front and center — impossible for media reporters to overlook, and impossible for voters to overlook.

So far, I find the global-warming movement to be tone-deaf to valid majority concerns about increased costs. Snippets here and there tell the story. At a recent Harvard event, a well-intentioned proponent of higher carbon prices remarked that they would “only raise electricity prices by $25 a month,” not much at all in her eyes. From the perspective of the upper-middle class in Cambridge, Mass., this is indeed a modest cost. But, of course, for most families that increase would be way too much to accept — and they would listen to right-wing attacks on global-warming regulations that threatened price increases of that much or more. Likewise, at the recent, inspiring D.C. rally against the Keystone XL pipeline, <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_02/straw_poll_if_forward_attendee043048.php">a blogger did an (unscientific) snap poll</a> among attendees, asking them to choose among various things that would “give up” to pay for greenhouse gas regulations. By a large margin, the global-warming demonstrators were reported to be willing to delay Social Security benefits and raise the U.S. retirement age. Of course, this sounds like a harmless step to professionals who work at desks. But do they realize that virtually all of the increase in longevity in the United States in recent decades has gone to white-collar and professional people, while Americans who work on their feet all day, or lift things for a living, have not enjoyed any increase in life expectancy? How will the majority feel about being asked to work at physically taxing jobs much closer to the point of death to pay for global-warming remedies? Asking the question answers it.

For me, the bottom line is simple. Global-warming reformers must stop being blind and tone-deaf to the real-life circumstances of typical American families in an era of astonishing socioeconomic inequality. The current fashion is to suppose that severe weather emergencies will, in and of themselves, prompt most Americans suddenly to support governmental actions with real bite. I really doubt this. Severe weather events are not self-interpreting; they are most likely to be understood as signs of global warming by educated people who already believe in the reality of this threat. Beyond that, humans have, for thousands of years, grown accustomed to adjusting to weather events and trends. People just devise work-arounds and truck on, and that is what will happen if global-warming reformers cannot do better than cheer for speeches by President Obama that point to weather emergencies.

Anti–global warming policies that ordinary Americans can understand, policies that deliver concrete benefits to ordinary families, plus the construction of far-reaching networks of allied organizations able to push Congress — these are what it will take to pass carbon-capping legislation next time.

—–

<a href="http://grist.org/article/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-skocpol-cap-and-trade-report/">Read responses</a> to Theda Skocpol’s original report from <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/beyond-baby-steps-analyzing-the-cap-and-trade-flop/">Bill McKibben</a>, <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/why-the-climate-bill-failed-its-not-that-simple/">Eric Pooley</a>, <a href="http://grist.org/politics/the-problem-wasnt-the-green-groups-what-skocpol-gets-wrong-about-the-climate-bill-fight/">Joe Romm</a>, <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/missing-the-point-of-the-cap-and-trade-defeat/">Mark Hertsgaard</a>, and <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/harvard-professor-has-it-right-u-s-climate-push-requires-intense-grassroots-support-around-cap-and-dividend-bill/">Mike Tidwell</a>, plus three (count ��em: <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/what-theda-skocpol-gets-right-about-the-cap-and-trade-fight/">one</a>, <a href="http://grist.org/politics/the-road-forward-from-cap-and-trade/">two</a>, <a href="http://grist.org/politics/if-you-want-to-pass-climate-legislation-fix-u-s-politics/">three</a>) from Grist’s David Roberts.

==

...

<h1 itemprop="name" style=" margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;">FLASHBACK: The Wall Street Journal Wanted Cap-And-Trade</h1>

<h5><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog"> Blog </a>››› ››› JILL FITZSIMMONS</h5>

In recent years the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board has led the charge against cap-and-trade proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. But a Media Matters <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/08/02/the-wall-street-journal-dismissing-environmenta/189063">analysis</a> of past editorials shows that this marks a major reversal since 2001, when the Journal said "the Bush Administration should propose a domestic cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide."

Once upon a time, cap-and-trade was the <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/10/cap_and_trade_gop.html">conservative alternative</a> to "command and control" regulatory action. It was first <a href="http://www.eenews.net/public/climatewire/2011/11/17/1">proposed</a> by George H.W. Bush's administration to address sulfur dioxide emissions that were causing acid rain, threatening U.S. lakes and ponds. Ten years after the Clean Air Amendments were signed by Bush, the Journal editorial board concluded that the acid rain program was "fabulously successful," adding that it cost much less than expected:

<blockquote>The program, which was started in the U.S. in 1995 as part of the effort to cut the emissions that cause acid rain, saves about $700 million annually compared with the cost of traditional regulation and has been reducing emissions by four million tons annually. When the program is fully implemented, sometime over the next couple of years, cost savings should be as much as $2 billion a year -- that's twice as much as originally estimated by the EPA. [Emissions Impossible?, 7/23/01, via Factiva]...<a href="http://mediamatters.org/print/blog/2012/08/03/flashback-the-wall-street-journal-wanted-cap-an/187349">http://mediamatters.org/print/blog/2012/08/03/flashback-the-wall-street-journal-wanted-cap-an/187349</a></blockquote>

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6 groups/plans

Only the <a href="http://savingthedream.org/about-the-plan/plan-details/">Heritage Foundation</a> plan makes no mention of carbon pricing.

All in all, this strikes me as a big deal. Just a few months ago, the political acceptability of any carbon pricing was viewed as virtually nonexistent, a "third rail" for the foreseeable future. Now you have major policy groups from across the political spectrum seriously entertaining not just any carbon pricing, but a high and rising price sufficient to substantially reduce U.S. emissions and put us on the path needed to meet our obligation as part of an overall global deal aimed at 450 parts per million or stabilization near 3.6 degrees F....

1st propopsed by GOP, sucessfully implemented on acid rain (see Pooley)

edf;

"Cap and trade" harnesses the forces of markets to achieve cost-effective environmental protection. Markets can achieve superior environmental protection by giving businesses both flexibility and a direct financial incentive to find faster, cheaper and more innovative ways to reduce pollution.

Cap and trade was designed, tested and proven here in the United States, as a program within the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. The success of this program led The Economist magazine to crown it "probably the greatest green success story of the past decade." (July 6, 2002). <a href="http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085">http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085</a>

---

not C&T?

CFC's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol</a>

The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer (a protocol to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_the_Ozone_Layer" title="Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer">Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer</a>) is an international <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty" title="Treaty">treaty</a> designed to protect the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer" title="Ozone layer">ozone layer</a> by phasing out the production of numerous substances believed to be responsible for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion" title="Ozone depletion">ozone depletion</a>. The treaty was opened for signature on September 16, 1987, and entered into force on January 1, 1989, followed by a first meeting in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki" title="Helsinki">Helsinki</a>, May 1989. Since then, it has undergone seven revisions, in 1990 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London" title="London">London</a>), 1991 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nairobi" title="Nairobi">Nairobi</a>), 1992 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen" title="Copenhagen">Copenhagen</a>), 1993 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok" title="Bangkok">Bangkok</a>), 1995 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna" title="Vienna">Vienna</a>), 1997 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal" title="Montreal">Montreal</a>), and 1999 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing" title="Beijing">Beijing</a>). It is believed that if the international agreement is adhered to, the ozone layer is expected to recover by 2050.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-0">[1]</a> Due to its widespread adoption and implementation it has been hailed as an example of exceptional international co-operation, with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi_Annan" title="Kofi Annan">Kofi Annan</a> quoted as saying that "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-1">[2]</a> It has been ratified by 196 states.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-2">[3]</a>

Western region

If California, Oregon, and Washington were a country, they would rank seventh in the world in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. California alone would rank twelfth. hmmn

not c&t: Five Western Governors Announce Regional Greenhouse

Gas Reduction Agreement

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and

Washington today announced the formation of the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative to

implement a joint strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  February 26, 2007

MIDWEST

pew:

<a id="MontanaWCI" name="MontanaWCI" title="MontanaWCI"> </a>Montana Joins Western Climate Initiative, Establishes 20x10 Initiative

On November 19, 2007, Governor Brian Schweitzer announced that Montana will become the seventh U.S. state to join the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a joint effort to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. The Initiative was established in February 2007 by the governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington; Utah and the Canadian Provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba joined the initiative in the spring of 2007.  Under the agreement, by 2008 the member states and provinces will establish a cap-and-trade system to aid in meeting their regional greenhouse gas emissions target of 15% below 2005 levels by 2020.  The participants will also set up an emissions registry and tracking system. 

At the same time, Governor Schweitzer also announced a new initiative seeking a 20% reduction in energy consumption by Montana state agencies by the year 2010.  In addition to reducing energy use, Schweitzer also asked agencies to apply a Montana vehicle efficiency standard by shifting state vehicle fleets to achieve an average of 30 miles per gallon or better.

<a href="http://governor.mt.gov/news/pr.asp?ID=513" target="_blank">Press Release</a>

<a href="http://westernclimateinitiative.org/Index.cfm" target="_blank">Western Climate Initiative</a>

<a href="http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_states/regional_initiatives.cfm">Map of Regional Initiatives</a>

<a id="MRGGRA" name="MRGGRA" title="MRGGRA"> </a>Midwestern Governors Announce Emissions Reduction Agreement

On November 15, 2007, six states and one Canadian Province established the Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord. Under the Accord, members agree to establish regional greenhouse gas reduction targets, including a long-term target of 60 to 80 percent below current emissions levels, and develop a multi-sector cap-and-trade system to help meet the targets. Participants will also establish a greenhouse gas emissions reductions tracking system and implement other policies, such as low-carbon fuel standards, to aid in reducing emissions. The Governors of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, as well as the Premier of the Canadian Province of Manitoba, signed the Accord as full participants; the Governors of Indiana, Ohio, and South Dakota joined the agreement as observers to participate in the development of the cap and trade system. The Accord represents the first Midwestern regional agreement among U.S. states to collectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and will be fully implemented within 30 months.

...

Since the Montreal Protocol came into effect, the atmospheric concentrations of the most important chlorofluorocarbons and related chlorinated hydrocarbons have either leveled off or decreased.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-11">[12]</a> Halon concentrations have continued to increase, as the halons presently stored in fire extinguishers are released, but their rate of increase has slowed and their abundances are expected to begin to decline by about 2020. Also, the concentration of the HCFCs increased drastically at least partly because for many uses CFCs (e.g. used as solvents or refrigerating agents) were substituted with HCFCs. While there have been reports of attempts by individuals to circumvent the ban, e.g. by smuggling CFCs from undeveloped to developed nations, the overall level of compliance has been high. In consequence, the Montreal Protocol has often been called the most successful international environmental agreement to date. In a 2001 report, NASA found the ozone thinning over Antarctica had remained the same thickness for the previous three years,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-12">[13]</a> however in 2003 the ozone hole grew to its second largest size.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-13">[14]</a> The most recent (2006) scientific evaluation of the effects of the Montreal Protocol states, "The Montreal Protocol is working: There is clear evidence of a decrease in the atmospheric burden of ozone-depleting substances and some early signs of stratospheric ozone recovery."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-14">[15]</a>

Unfortunately, the hydrochlorofluorocarbons, or HCFCs, and hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, are now thought to contribute to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropogenic_global_warming" title="Anthropogenic global warming" class="mw-redirect">anthropogenic global warming</a>. On a molecule-for-molecule basis, these compounds are up to 10,000 times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. The Montreal Protocol currently calls for a complete phase-out of HCFCs by 2030, but does not place any restriction on HFCs. Since the CFCs themselves are equally powerful as greenhouse gases, the mere substitution of HFCs for CFCs does not significantly increase the rate of anthropogenic global warming, but over time a steady increase in their use could increase the danger that human activity will change the climate.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-15">[16]</a>

Policy experts have advocated for increased efforts to link ozone protection efforts to climate protection efforts.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-16">[17]</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-17">[18]</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-18">[19]</a>Policy decisions in one arena affect the costs and effectiveness of environmental improvements in the other.

Eastern region:

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first mandatory U.S. cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide. It was established in December 2005 by the governors of seven Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. RGGI sets a cap on emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants, and allows sources to trade emissions allowances. The program will begin by capping emissions at current levels in 2009, and then reducing emissions 10% by 2018. Massachusetts and Rhode Island both joined RGGI in early 2007, and Maryland joined in April 2007.

<a href="http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_states/rggi">http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_states/rggi</a>

Afp attacks <a href="http://americansforprosperity.org/052611-pr">http://americansforprosperity.org/052611-pr</a>

<h2>PR: Americans for Prosperity Declares Victory over RGGI Cap & Trade!</h2>

For Immediate Release – May 26, 2011

<div align="center">Americans for Prosperity Declares Victory over RGGI Cap & Trade!</div>

<div align="center">Governor Christie Deals Cap & Trade a Death Blow; Announces New Jersey’s Withdrawal from Job-Killing RGGI Scheme</div>

BOGOTA, NJ – A year-long campaign by Americans for Prosperity and the pro-taxpayer group’s army of 68,000 citizen activists to put an end to the job-destroying Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – aka “RGGI” – Cap & Trade scheme has resulted today in a tremendous victory for New Jersey taxpayers.

At a press conference this morning in Trenton, Governor Christie announced that he would use his executive authority, in the context of the state’s Energy Master Plan, to remove New Jersey from the ten-state compact which began in 2008 under then Governor Corzine.

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Read more: <a href="http://americansforprosperity.org/052611-pr#ixzz1NZfNWhDo">http://americansforprosperity.org/052611-pr#ixzz1NZfNWhDo</a>

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Europe

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