This story first appeared on Treehugger.com.
In the months that have passed since the ignominious death of the Senate climate bill, there’s been speculation abound as to what, exactly, caused its demise. Some argued that oil and coal interests were just too strong, or that public opinion was never strong enough, or that health care reform drained Congress’ will. Many have also focused on the role of the White House, and how the Obama administration was too detached from the process, etc. But a more pointed theory has been bouncing around ever since Ryan Lizza’s excellent investigative report on the climate bill proceedings was published: That a lone betrayal from the White House administration against the Republican senator working on the climate bill may have been the beginning of its end.
Senators Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman, and John Kerry had succeeded in working out a climate bill that each of the major industries and interests to be impacted — yes, even coal, oil, and the US Chamber of Commerce — approved of. They just had to get some Republican senators to sign on, and get the White House behind their bill. So they sent the bill to the Congressional Budget Office to get it formally appraised.
Here’s the what happened next, according to the New Yorker piece: “In early April, according to two K.G.L. aides, someone at the Congressional Budget Office told Kerry that its economists, when analyzing the bill, would describe the linked fee as a tax.” Knowing this would be disastrous politically, the senators met with the oil industry to work out a system that would be different enough to avoid that label. They agreed to ditch the linked fee for a different system.
And yet:
Two days later, on April 15th, [White House Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel and [Climate Czar Carol] Browner hosted a group of prominent environmentalists at the White House for an 11 A.M. meeting. For weeks, the linked fee had been a hot topic among Washington climate-change geeks. Now the two groups that hated the policy the most were in the same room. According to people at the meeting, the White House aides and some of the environmentalists, including Carl Pope, the chairman of the Sierra Club, expressed their contempt for the linked fee: even if it was a fine idea on the merits, it was political poison. The White House aides and the environmentalists either didn’t know that the fee had been dropped from the bill or didn’t think the change was significant. The meeting lasted about thirty minutes.Just after noon, Rimkunas, Graham’s climate-policy adviser, sent Rosengarten an e-mail. The subject was “Go to Fox website and look at gas tax article asap.” She clicked on Foxnews.com: “WH Opposes Higher Gas Taxes Floated by S.C. GOP Sen. Graham in Emerging Senate Energy Bill.” The White House double-crossed us, she thought. The report, by Major Garrett, then the Fox News White House correspondent, cited “senior administration sources” and said that the “Obama White House opposes a move in the Senate, led by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, to raise federal gasoline taxes within still-developing legislation to reduce green house gas emissions.” Including two updates to his original story, Garrett used the word “tax” thirty-four times.
It turned out that someone from within the Obama administration had leaked the notion that Lindsay Graham supported a gas tax to Fox News. Which may not sound like much, but that’s like leaking news that a Republican supports gay marriage to Rush Limbaugh — it’s political anathema.
First of all, Graham never supported the tax. Second of all, it was factually untrue that such a tax was even in the bill. But the suggestion stuck, and Fox News kept with the story, and soon the whole conservative community had slammed Graham with it. It was at that moment that Graham started planning an exit strategy — and the bill fell apart from there.
In a talk with Dave Roberts of Grist today, Lizza touched further on the incident, calling it the “greatest mystery of the whole saga.” He goes on:
“A case can be made that that killed C&T for 2010. Perhaps it never would have passed, anyway, but that really was the beginning of the end … Everyone in Washington who followed this debate closely has a favorite suspect, but I never figured out who it was. But the universe of suspects is quite small.”
Some believe it was Rahm Emanuel or David Axelrod, two of the president’s closest advisers who had opposed participating in the climate legislation process from the get-go. Others believe it was a well-intentioned staffer who wanted to get rid of a potentially bad policy. We may never know who it was, but from there on out, no Republican would come within fifty miles of the supposedly gas tax-laden climate legislation. And then Graham jumped ship. And then the climate bill died. It may have died anyways, as Lizza notes, but this was the event that can be pinpointed as the beginning of the downward spiral.
It should also be evidence of how fickle and ego-driven our political system is, that what is essentially an issue of semantics — along with a single power play from an insider — potentially has the ability to slay an entire piece of important legislation.
This post first appeared on Treehugger.
Jim Manchin is currently the governor of West Virgina, and he’s running for one of the state’s Senate seats. Though a Democrat himself, he’s no fan of Barack Obama, nor his fellow Dems. Or at least he has to make TV ads saying as much to get people to vote for him in a state where his party is currently deeply unpopular. You see, his conservative opponent is hitting him for his ties to the party in power. So he did what any sensible politician would do: He grabbed his gun, marched out to a field, and shot a bullet through the cap and trade bill. And films the whole thing, then circulates it as a TV campaign ad, of course. Watch:
Never mind that the cap and trade bill is long dead in the Senate. Or that shooting a bullet through a photocopy of the legislation would have little effect on whether or not it became law even if it wasn’t. Nope, the important thing here is that Manchin rolled his endorsement from the NRA, opposition to Obama, and evident hatred of now-irrelevant climate laws into one pithy thirty-second spot.
It is fitting that Manchin would invoke the specter of the dead cap and trade bill, as it was widely attacked in West Virginia, the nation’s 2nd largest coal-producing state. Politically, it’s a safe and easy target. More interesting, however, was that the Senate seat he’s fighting for was vacated by Robert Byrd, who in his later years was actually coming around to supporting climate action. But no, Manchin is instead joining the herd; the droves of ‘moderates’ and conservatives now pledging opposition to climate action of any kind, and often denying the science behind global warming altogether.
H/T to Ezra Klein
This post first appeared on Treehugger.
With the elections drawing closer, the oil company-funded Prop 23 campaign has kicked into full gear. The Texas oil companies Valero and Tesoro, along with Koch Industries, a coal and oil conglomerate, have donated millions of dollars to finance TV ads and other campaigns in an attempt to overturn California’s groundbreaking climate and clean energy law, which was passed in 2006. That TV ad has recently been put into heavy rotation in major California markets — and, staying true to form for such political ads, it’s chock full o’ lies.
Here’s the spot:
First of all, the tagline: California Jobs Initiative? I guess it’s no longer a requisite for political ads to convey even a shred of truth in naming their political prerogative: The only thing that Prop 23 does is cancel out AB 32, California’s climate law of 2006, which Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law. That’s it. There is no evidence that Prop 23 will create a single job. The goal is to protect the bottom line of oil companies, and other emissions-intensive industries. Period — the initiative was actually put on the ballot by the oil companies, not concerned citizens.
AB 32 would slowly make it more expensive to burn dirty fuels, and will make oil and coal companies responsible for their emissions — an idea they clearly don’t take kindly to. So, they’ve responded by doing what they do best: Lie. Let’s break down the list of lies stuffed into this single 30-second spot:
1. What “New” Energy tax? First of all, it’s hardly new — it’s four years old. The ad tries to make it sound like those nasty politicians have whipped together some nefarious new tax to hit the unsuspecting public with — and that voters must rise up to beat them!
2. It’s Not a Tax. For the last f@$&ing time, laws that require companies to reduce their emissions are not ‘taxes’ — and especially not taxes, or “bills” on citizens. This is a willful mischaracterization; an excuse to drop the four letter ‘T’ word on the public. But making companies pay for their emissions pollution is in no way a ‘tax’ on Americans.
3. Energy Costs Would NOT Rise 60%. This an outrageous, baseless statistic whipped up by an oil company-sponsored think tank. Marginal increases in energy bills — less than a postage stamp per month — may eventually come to pass. But that is pretty outright misleading. As is the claim that:
4. Prop 23 Will Save a Million Jobs! — Yet another figure generated in much the same way. Pro-clean energy think tanks have released their own studies with figures much the same in the opposite direction — that AB 32 will create nearly a million jobs in the renewable energy sector. But the most reliable estimates show that just over 100K jobs will be created by sound clean energy policies — like those AB 32 promotes, and that Prop 23 seeks to uproot. For further proof, 118 Economists composed and signed a letter explaining that AB 32 will “Stimulate Innovation And Efficiency” and create jobs.
5. “Wait” Until People are “Back to Work” – Finally, this notion, mentioned at the end of the add is also just short of being an outright lie. Prop 23 overturns AB 32 until California sees 4 consecutive quarters where the employment rate is under 5.5%. This has happened only three times in the last 30 years. Oil companies are betting that it won’t happen again anytime soon: the unemployment rate is currently close to 12%. Also worth noting is the cynical portrait of the bourgeois housewife, who says “I want to do my part on global warming,” but reassures everyone that it’s OK to wait. Climate change becomes another far-off problem, like world hunger or such, that we can deal with when we’ve tended to more fixable, real-world matters.
Prop 23 embodies everything there is to hate in politics — Powerful, self-interested corporations trying to protect their bottom lines at the expense of California’s environment and economy. And doing so by lying directly to the American public.
See a more detailed takedown of this add at Political Correction
This post first appeared on Tree Hugger.
Say what you will about California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but despite being the onetime public face of the Hummer, he’s consistently come out on the side of good green policy for his state. And he may have just offered up his most vehement defense of any green law out there, criticizing the Texas oil company-led effort to pass Proposition 23, which would overturn California’s groundbreaking climate law. He publicly attacked the lack of trustworthiness of the oil industry and their “black oil hearts”. Seriously, you’ve got to read this gem of a quote:
Schwarzenegger, speaking before several hundred people at the Commonwealth Club in Santa Clara, said the proponents of Prop. 23 are attempting to subvert the democratic process using scare tactics. He likened the campaign to a shell game hiding what he said was the real purpose: “self-serving greed.”"They are creating a shell argument that they are doing this to protect jobs,” the governor said. “Does anybody really believe they are doing this out of the goodness of their black oil hearts – spending millions and millions of dollars to save jobs?”
So reports the San Francisco Chronicle, which relayed the latest quote to be heard ’round the blogosphere. For good reason though — that was the best thing I read all day yesterday. And, while colorful, it’s accurate.
The Texas oil companies Valero and Tesoro have dumped over $5 million in funding so far to support Prop 23, and were responsible for placing it on the ballot. The Americans for Prosperity, a Tea Party-organizing group funded by the carbon-intensive Koch Industries, is chiefly responsible for arranging the ‘grassroots’ protest. This is a cut-and-dry example of major fossil fuel industries directly opposing a law that would require them to lower their emissions pollution, to protect their own self interest. It’s greed over public good, plain and simple. The campaign slogan for Prop 23 insists that the oil companies’ chief interest is in saving jobs, but, as Schwarzenegger notes, this is anything but the case.
Prop 23 is an effort to protect the fossil fuel industry, plain and simple — AB 32, the climate law it would overturn if passed, is designed to lower California’s carbon pollution, and to assist the growing clean energy sector in the state. If anything, AB 32 will eventually create many good, sustainable jobs in an industry that’s sure to dominate the globe for decades to come.
No one should believe for a second that Prop 23 was created for any other reason than to protect oil company profits. Governor Schwarzenegger, in so many words, was dead on.
More on Prop 23
California’s Proposition 23 : A Cunning Effort to Kill Clean Energy …
Tea Party, Oil Companies Take Aim at State Climate Laws
This post first appeared on Treehugger.
In the post-Deepwater Horizon explosion rush to expose every devious, idiotic, two-faced, greedy, and hypocritical move BP has every made, the media has brought us a veritable treasure trove of anecdotes and revelations: BP saved millions by cutting corners on the destroyed rig. BP had shady connections to the Lockerbie bomber. BP licensed an oil disaster board game! Obviously, these range from the genuinely terrible to the the downright trivial. Somewhere along that spectrum lies the most recent “BP gotcha” — news has surfaced that BP helped write California State’s public school curriculum.
BP, the energy giant responsible for the largest offshore oil spill in history, helped develop the state’s framework for teaching more than 6 million students about the environment.Despite a mixed environmental record even before the Gulf of Mexico disaster, state officials included BP on the technical team for its soon-to-be-completed environmental education curriculum, which will be used in kindergarten through 12th-grade classes in more than 1,000 school districts statewide.
It turns out that BP was involved in the Education and the Environment Initiative, a 7-year, 13,000 page project designed to update the state’s environmental science education curriculum. A number of environmental groups and other corporations, including PG&E and Sempra Energy, also helped guide the curriculum’s creation.
State officials evidently approached BP to help in the planning stages, though the California EPA maintains that the oil giant played only a “minor role” in the development of the curriculum. A spokesperson says that the “the bulk of work on the curriculum was done by specialists whose content was peerreviewed by outside experts.” BP already had an egregious safety record at that point — long before the Gulf spill disaster — and the state claims it was aware of that fact. It included the company in the process to “get all sides of the environmental debate.”
But media watchdog groups and progressive blogs are crying foul anyway, citing the extent of BP’s dishonesty over the course of the Gulf spill as a reason to be concerned about the company’s influence over the curriculum.
It’s not exactly shocking that BP had a role in the development of this curriculum — bringing corporations on board to assist in such endeavors is common practice. That BP was enlisted 7 years ago for this project shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows in and of itself. But it should perhaps grant us an opportunity to examine the wider practice: Should corporations, whose aims are to generate profits from a specific interest, be shaping the curriculum intended to foster critical thinking and open-mindedness on a subject?
Cross-posted from Treehugger.
The recent discovery of trace amounts of oil in blue crab larvae has left experts forecasting dire news for the Gulf ecosystem. It’s evidence that the oil from the spill loosed from the Deepwater Horizon explosion has already begun working its way up the food chain — where it could be fatal to animals who ingest it.
The AP reports that scientists say the discovery of oil in blue crab larvae — a Gulf seafood staple, and a closely-watched indicator for signs of contamination — could confirm some of their worst fears. Namely, that the spill will impact the Gulf ecosystem for years and years to come:
“It would suggest the oil has reached a position where it can start moving up the food chain instead of just hanging in the water,” said Bob Thomas, a biologist at Loyola University in New Orleans. “Something likely will eat those oiled larvae … and then that animal will be eaten by something bigger and so on.”Tiny creatures might take in such low amounts of oil that they could survive, Thomas said. But those at the top of the chain, such as dolphins and tuna, could get fatal “megadoses.”
And even if the crabs aren’t immediately killed by the oil, it could have a severe effect on their ability to reproduce, scientists say. If enough are impacted, it could cause a decline in the next generation — and if fishing is allowed to resume then, the population could be further exacerbated. These kinds of impacts support the claims of other researchers, who fear that the worst of the damage from the BP spill may be done to the strata of life that resides in the deep sea.
Scientists do note that it’s good news that most of the larvae they’re collecting are alive, and they aren’t worried that blue crabs will be wiped out by the spill — they’re simply too abundant. But they raise the concern that diminished numbers of crabs may impact other animals who rely on them as a food source, and could harm other populations.
Cross-posted from Treehugger.
A few years ago, the state of California passed a landmark bill designed to reign in carbon pollution to 1990 levels by 2020, and Governor Schwarzenegger signed it into law. Now, the trailblazing law is beginning to take effect — but wouldn’t you know it? The fossil fuel industry and conservative politicians who ally themselves with it are attempting to shut it down. In particular, a number of Texas-based oil companies have begun funneling millions of dollars into misleading campaigns designed to overturn California’s law.
Proposition 23 is the Big Oil-backed prop that would overturn CA’s climate law. Fueld by the Tea Party ideology popular in conservative circles, the GOP’s top candidates for Senator and Governor have been publicly calling to overturn the law as well — predictably, they’re attempting to label it a jobs killer. Thankfully, California voters aren’t buying the nonsense: Two out of three continue to support the climate law despite the opportunistic smear campaign from the GOP.
Which is where the oil companies come in — perhaps disheartened by the positive polling, companies like Valero, Tesoro, and others, have begun pouring money into a campaign designed to convince the public that transitioning to cleaner energies and stimulating the development and deployment of renewable technologies will somehow kill jobs. In fact, that’s precisely what the oil companies are calling their public front group designed to take down the climate law: The California Jobs Initiative. I don’t know how much more disingenuous you can get.
The Wonk Room has more on the story:
In public, the repeal AB 32 campaign — given the Orwellian moniker “California Jobs Initiative” — says it is about helping low income people, small businesses, and improving the California economy. But behind closed doors, it’s about boosting already sky high oil company profits. According to Valero’s 10-Q corporate disclosure forms, the company views compliance with AB 32 as a risk to their bottom line.According to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by the Wonk Room, Tesoro has been courting other oil companies to join their crusade to rescind AB 32. At an April 13th presentation to the Western States Petroleum Association, Dave Reed, a Tesoro refinery executive in Los Angeles, pitched his clean energy repeal initiative, Proposition 23. The Western States Petroleum Association is an oil trade group, like the American Petroleum Institute on the national level, that advocates for the interests of their industry, including expanded offshore drilling off California’s coast. The Association is made up of many oil companies operating in California, including BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell Pipeline. Reed’s PowerPoint drives home the message that cleaning the air and diversifying California’s energy sources will have a negative “impact on [Tesoro's] business.
So essentially, the internal documents clearly reveal that the oil companies view reducing carbon emissions as a threat to their outmoded business models, so they created an initiative whose supposed aim is to protect jobs — but they really just want to shut down the emissions rules. It’s really not going too far to say that the oil companies are blatantly lying to California voters’ faces.
And what’s more, is that the oil and refining companies already involved (Tesoro, Valero) are recruiting other, even more powerful companies to contribute to the campaign.
Hmmm — all this sounds vaguely familiar. A California law attacked by politicians seeking to exploit a culture war issue, and campaigns designed to mislead the public receiving millions of dollars of funding from outside the state by powerful donors? Where have we seen this before?
California voters, don’t let the simple mantras and nonsensical rhetoric fool you — the AB 32 climate law is an important milestone, and one that will help keep the state on the cutting edge of clean energy tech. And yes, Jerry Brown, the other frontrunner for the governorship, is right — the climate law will create jobs in the clean energy and cleantech industries, and help expand and diversify California’s economy.
Cross-posted from Treehugger.
You probably haven’t seen many Amoco gas stations on the side of the road for a while. That’s because BP merged with the ‘American Oil Co.’ in the 90s, the British company’s logo and namesake took over. As a result, all Amoco stations were converted to BP stations, leaving Amoco stations nowhere to be found. But that could change very soon — in a major rebranding effort launched to sidestep the bad reputation that’s sprouted from having caused the biggest environmental catastrophe in US history, BP is considering renaming all of its stateside gas stations ‘Amoco’ — or something else.
BP gas station owners across the country are divided over whether the oil giant stained by its handling of the Gulf spill should rebrand U.S. outlets as Amoco or another name as part of its effort to repair the company’s badly damaged reputation.Some who have seen their sales plunge because of protests say BP has already sought a fresh start by naming an American to replace its gaffe-prone British CEO, so why not change the name on gas station marquees to Amoco, which once stood for American Oil Co.
BP gas station owners have reportedly seen their profits drop from 10-40% since the spill began, and many have only been kept afloat by cash sent directly from BP. Boycotts, protests, and general anger with and distrust of the brand have brought gas sales tumbling.
There’s some resistance to the idea from certain parties in the company who feel that the BP brand will recover, and that supporting it now will pay off in the long run when it does.
There are 11,000 BP gas stations (and BP-owned subsidiaries like ARCO on the West Coast). Changing the name may help speed Americans’ inclination to forget about the BP spill, but it obviously doesn’t change any of the fundamentals behind the company’s practices. Though most of those gas stations are independently owned and operated by citizens who arguably don’t deserve to bear the brunt of such boycotts, it nonetheless would be a shame if BP succeeded in having its most public front to slither out of view.
Cross-posted from Treehugger.
The USDA has recently been delving into the potential benefits of enacting a tax on sugary beverages like sodas and fruit juices. Clearly, there’s plenty to debate about such a tax — whether it would raise soda prices enough to discourage consumption, whether it would unfairly impact the poor, how much revenue it would raise, and whether it would actually make anyone healthier. Well, according to the USDA’s just-released study, it would at least do the latter — the projections show that a sugar tax on sweet drinks would reduce caloric intake from beverages by 13% in adults. For the average American, that equates to roughly 3.8 fewer pounds gained per year.
Here’s a chart displaying the findings:
And here’s GOOD on the significance of these findings:
the USDA estimates that a tax would reduce the number of calories from sweetened beverages … consumed by adults in the United States by 37 a day … 37 calories a day over the course of a year is 3.8 pounds. And while that doesn’t seem like a lot of pounds in an obese person, the study finds that a lot of people are only a tiny bit (like, say, less than 3.8 pounds) obese or overweight. A reduction of 3.8 pounds across the population, says the USDA, could reduce the percent of overweight adults from 66.9 to 62.4 percent, and the percent of obese adults from 33.4 to 30.4 percent.
The gist here is that a sugar tax would actually put a noticeable dent in overall obesity levels in Americans, and actually flat out prevent a number from reaching obesity in the first place.
Cross-posted from Treehugger.
Lest you think the economic damage from the BP spill be limited to the seafood trade, tourism, and such industries directly dependent on an un-oiled Gulf of Mexico, we turn to one of the more unlikely institutions that’s seen its business dry up in the wake of the disaster: Strip clubs.
An unlikely company has filed a claim for compensation regarding the disaster – a New Orleans strip club. The owners of The Mimosa Dancing Girls, located on the edge of New Orleans, claimed that the spill was bad for business as the fishermen who usually frequented the club cannot afford to spend money there …
Obviously, the impact of a disaster that puts entire industries out of commission is going to have a serious ripple effect — any business that previously relied on workers in the seafood industry is going to have a tough time, needless to say. And though many make the argument that some of these fishermen are getting paid by BP for doing cleanup work, it’s reasonable to assume that many will be saving that money, knowing that when BP no longer requires their services for cleanup, they may find themselves in dire financial straits.
Which is why it makes sense that many of the claims being filed now are not from fishermen, and that other industries may actually be getting hit harder right now: “officials at BP’s New Orleans claims centre said the bulk of claimants were no longer fishermen … As well as strip joint owners, restaurant waitresses, dock workers, plumbers and electricians also came to the centre, saying their livelihoods were severely hit,” the Sun reports.
For another example, just check out this CNN video of a business that is closing its doors tomorrow.
I’ll go ahead and state the obvious: the economic pain already being caused by the BP Gulf spill is already very real.
