By Thomas L. Friedman
When I first heard on Thursday that Senate Democrats were abandoning the effort to pass an energy/climate bill that would begin to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming and promote renewable energy that could diminish our addiction to oil, I remembered something that Joe Romm, the climateprogress.org blogger, once said: The best thing about improvements in health care is that all the climate-change deniers are now going to live long enough to see how wrong they were.
Alas, so are the rest of us. I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.
We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign - even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.
Since I don’t have anything else to say, I will just fill out this column with a few news stories and e-mails that came across my desk in the past few days:
Just as the U.S. Senate was abandoning plans for a U.S. cap-and-trade system, this article ran in The China Daily: “BEIJING - The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target. The decision was made at a closed-door meeting chaired by Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission ... Putting a price on carbon is a crucial step for the country to employ the market to reduce its carbon emissions and genuinely shift to a low-carbon economy, industry analysts said.”
As we East Coasters know, it’s been extremely hot here this summer, with records broken. But, hey, you could be living in Russia, where ABC News recently reported that a “heat wave, which has lasted for weeks, has Russia suffering its worst drought in 130 years. In some parts of the country, temperatures have reached 105 degrees.” Moscow’s high the other day was 93 degrees. The average temperature in July for the city is 76 degrees. The BBC reported that to keep cool “at lakes and rivers around Moscow, groups of revelers can be seen knocking back vodka and then plunging into the water. The result is predictable - 233 people have drowned in the last week alone.”
Icecap Note: last winter when Siberia had the COLDEST winter EVER and heavy snow and frigid temperatures blanketed Russia, China, Europe and the United States, setting a new record for the Northern Hemisphere, you were strangely silent and your compatriots in the media were explaining that was weather not climate.
A day before the climate bill went down, Lew Hay, the C.E.O. of NextEra Energy, which owns Florida Power & Light, one of the nation’s biggest utilities, e-mailed to say that if the Senate would set a price on carbon and requirements for renewal energy, utilities like his would have the price certainty they need to make the big next-generation investments, including nuclear. ‘If we invest an additional $3 billion a year or so on clean energy, that’s roughly 50,000 jobs over the next five years,’ said Hay. (Say goodbye to that.) No Mr globalist Friedman - look at how Green Jobs proved to be a myth all across Europe, contributing to significant job losses and increased energy costs hurting the economies at the worst possible times
Making our country more energy efficient is not some green feel-good thing. Retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson, who was Gen. David Petraeus’s senior logistician in Iraq, e-mailed to say that “over 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hauling fuel to air-condition tents and buildings. If our military would simply insulate their structures, it would save billions of dollars and, more importantly, save lives of truck drivers and escorts. ... And will take lots of big fuel trucks (a k a Taliban Targets) off the road, expediting the end of the conflict.”
The last word goes to the contrarian hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, who in his July letter to investors, noted: “Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for ... what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? I have a much simpler but plausible ‘conspiracy theory’: the fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”
Read another foolish NYT post here.
Icecap Note: Mr. Grantham, I have three wonderful grandchildren and like most Americans I worry about the debt your wacky, loser green enviro agenda will have on their future. I know climate change is mainly natural and small and manageable by adaption. A green economy would leave us deeper and deeper in the red. It would make funds like Grantham’s very rich. As the cooling that started this new century resumes this winter as La Nina strengthens, you and Mr. Friedman will look the fool and we will remind the world how much. And it will come on quickly enough that even the elder now threatened by a shortened lifespan by Obamacare will see the theory fail miserably.
Six Washington state taxpayers have filed a lawsuit (PDF) to stop implementation of Gov. Christine Gregoire’s May 2009 Executive Order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The lawsuit claims the governor exceeded her constitutional authority and invaded the province of the legislature by issuing the order, but the challenge is a real stretch in light of existing state climate change law, the Governor’s inherent power to communicate to state agencies what she wants them to accomplish, and what the Executive Order actually requires.
Washington’s Climate Law
The Washington legislature in 2008 established greenhouse gas emissions targets for the state —reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020; 25% below 1990 by 2035; and 50% below 1990 by 2050. That same session also set benchmarks for reducing vehicle miles traveled, which are a key component of the state’s GHG reduction program since the transportation sector contributes a substantial share of the state’s GHG emissions.
During the 2009 session, the legislature considered SB 5735 (PDF), which would have directed the Department of Ecology to establish statewide and sector-specific GHG emission caps and criteria for forestry offsets; continue participation in the development of the Western Climate Initiative’s (WCI) cap-and-trade program; and implement an electric vehicle and alternative fuels infrastructure program. SB 5735, however, did not pass and so Gov. Gregoire issued Executive Order 09-05 (PDF).
Taxpayer Lawsuit
The Complaint in the taxpayer’s lawsuit quotes a confidential briefing document from then-Ecology director Jay Manning stating that the Governor directed preparation of “an executive order that accomplishes what the bill would have authorized and more.” Even if true, most of the provisions in the order already are authorized by existing law, although the Complaint brushes existing statutory authority aside as “purportedly authorizing such actions.” [emphasis added]
But there’s no purportedly here. For example, the Executive Order directs Ecology to continue participating in the WCI, and under RCW 70.235.030(1)(a) Ecology already has been told to “develop in coordination with WCI a design for a regional multisector market-based system to limit GHG emissions.” Similarly, to fulfill the statutory mandate to participate in designing the cap-and-trade system, Ecology reasonably would be expected to develop emission benchmarks by industry sector and also forestry offsets, both of which are key components of the WCI’s cap-and-trade program.
A second statute adopted in 2008, RCW 47.01.440, set benchmarks for reducing vehicle miles traveled and requires that Ecology develop a collaborative process with the Transportation and Commerce departments, regional planning councils and businesses to devise strategies, including public transportation options. The Executive Order does virtually the same thing by directing the Department of Transportation to work with local governments, business and environmental representatives on the issue.
Directive to Agencies
Even if the legislature had not adopted the climate bills in 2008, the Executive Order still should be valid because the Governor is allowed to direct state agencies to accomplish her policies, although the directives would not have the force and effect of law. A 1991 Attorney General Opinion, Wash. AGO 1991 No. 21 (available on Westlaw at 1991 WL 521712), issued in connection with another governor’s wetlands preservation executive order, described three basic types of executive orders: 1) general policy statements to persuade and encourage persons within and outside of government to accomplish the Governor’s policy; 2) directives from the Governor to state agencies communicating what the Governor wants the agency to accomplish; and 3) operative effect executive orders.
According to the opinion, only the last type of order has the force and effect of law. That does not mean that the first two types of executive orders are invalid or voidable. Indeed, the AG’s opinion recognized that the Governor can direct state agencies to take actions to accomplish her policies and fire the agency head if he or she does not comply.
“Force & Effect of Law”
The lawsuit claims that the Executive Order is void because it improperly has the “force and effect of law,” but there is no Washington case law interpreting the term and Black’s Law Dictionary calls it “a redundant legalism.” Black’s defines it to mean “legal efficacy.”
But the actions that the order directs the various agencies to undertake—“continue participating,” “provide estimates,” “request recommendations,” “work with business to develop benchmarks,” “develop recommendations,” “develop strategies,” and “provide alternatives”—all sound like they stop well short of having any teeth to them. Put another way, how could there be any legal consequence to anyone if the agencies provide estimates, request recommendations, work with business, develop strategies or provide alternatives?
What makes this lawsuit even more odd is that no one challenged the Governor’s 2007 executive order (PDF) that established GHG emissions reduction targets a year and a half ahead of the legislature. What makes this later Executive Order different? Probably nothing, except perhaps the move in California to halt that state’s climate change law, AB 32, has emboldened opponents everywhere. To be sure the economy is in far different shape than it was in 2007, with the state’s budget in continuing dire straits, but that does not make the Executive Order an unconstitutional intrusion on the legislature’s prerogatives. There may be other ways to challenge the state’s involvement in climate change regulation, but this lawsuit does not appear to be one of them.
CLIMATE change sceptic followed Kevin Rudd into a toilet in Washington last week in the hope of flushing out the former PM on an ETS.
But accosted as he washed his hands in the toilets of the flash Georgetown Cafe Milano, Mr Rudd left his interlocutor from conservative think tank the Cato Institute with an expletive in his ear.
While dining with an Australian friend in the Cafe Milano, Pat Michaels, the climate change warrior named in the East Anglia climate scandal emails as the man some scientists wanted to punch on the nose, spotted the former prime minister heading into the men’s room and went in hot pursuit.
Mr Michaels had been tipped off about Mr Rudd’s presence but didn’t believe it was really him.
The senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington asked the man washing his hands in the toilets if he was indeed Kevin Rudd—and started in on an emissions trading scheme and the scientific conspiracy on climate change as soon as it was confirmed.
A movable and colourful conversation ensued as Mr Rudd went out into the restaurant.
In his own words, Mr Michaels, in an article published in The Spectator Australia today, felt Mr Rudd was “confronting the devil in the men’s room” and didn’t take kindly to suggestions an emissions trading scheme was a waste of money.
“You can talk about this in think-tank land, but put yourself in my shoes,” Mr Rudd is reported to have said to Mr Michaels. “All my scientists at CSIRO are telling me this (climate change) is a terrible problem. What could I do?”
The exchange turned colourful, according to witnesses in the restaurant, as Mr Rudd resorted to some well-worn expletives when he realised he’d been ambushed in the toilet by a sceptic tank.
Mr Michaels reports he warned Mr Rudd the CSIRO was only telling him the bad news about climate change because “the global warming gravy train would derail” and scientists would have to fly economy class.
Witnesses said Mr Rudd railed against the Cato Institute’s conservative position and rudely rejected suggestions he should write for the conservative Australian Spectator now that he was on the back bench.