reasons for Democrats to smile

The website ThinkProgress has had a great couple of days:

77 percent of Arizonans want Obama to pass immigration reform – they prefer a federal law over their own brand-new, idiotic state law. (elsewhere on the net, Republican operatives have admitted privately that they chose Tampa rather than Phoenix for their 2012 convention partly because the new Arizona immigration law would make the GOP look bad. Ouch!).

Maine Republican caucus-goers were forced to apologize for vandalizing a junior-high building. They tore down a poster, went through a teacher’s personal effects, and stole property. Even the kids were incensed. My favorite quote: “Republicans opened a closed cardboard box they found near Clifford’s desk and later objected to the fact that it contained copies of the U.S. Constitution donated to the school by the American Civil Liberties Union. “ After busting into the guy’s private effects, they complained that he had a copy of the Constitution!

More frat-house hijinx! The House GOP killed a jobs bill by attaching poison-pill language calling for any federal worker who even sees pornography to be fired. One giggling Republican brayed “We certainly should do more of this type of thing!” And actually they have played this kind of frat-house stunt to obstruct an energy efficiency bill, a health care bill, and a health and education bill. And if the Democrats don’t fold, the Republicans run ads like “Barbara Boxer Votes To Allow Convicted Sex Offenders To Receive Taxpayer-Funded Viagra!”

[ As we noted earlier, the Republicans are stomping all over Democratic ideas because, as they have admitted, they have no ideas of their own. They launched an abortive effort to set up a fancy cool-ideas council which really consisted of holding town halls so the party leaders could crib from the ideas that the voters themselves suggested. Then they set up a remake of “Contract With America” which, again, is just a suggestion box so that voters can do the party’s homework for them. And now House GOP leader Cantor has set up a website called “YOUCUT”, and again the idea is that you, the voter, come up with ideas for how to cut government spending. The problem with the plan is that the cuts proposed on the site are described dishonestly, and even if voters chose all of the cuts, it would only save a billion out of a trillion-dollar budget. So the Republicans are dishonest AND lazy AND futile. ]

The Oklahoma legislature has passed legislation mandating that abortion patients must: give up their personal details so they can be posted on a website, look at an ultrasound of their embryos, give up the right to sue a doctor if he lies about the state of the fetus, and give up any form of insurance coverage for abortion, unless you get a special policy.


http://thinkprogress.org/

And some other reasons to smile:

A new poll shows that a majority of voters would not support Sarah Palin for presidency. A majority of ALASKANS. One of the most conservative, Republican states in the union, and they don’t want her to run. Meanwhile, her opponent should she get the nomination, Obama, is hitting his highest approvals since October 2009, according to a new PPP poll.

The latest USA Today analysis shows that Americans are paying less tax than at any time in the last 60 years – going all the way back to Harry Truman. This is largely based on the middle class tax cut in the stimulus bill that the GOP opposed. So much for the teabaggers – their whole reason for existing is a gigantic fraud. “Taxed enough already” indeed.

Not that this is really good news, but Obama’s effort to pass climate energy legislation seemingly gets another boost every week: coal mines blow up, oil wells spill, nuclear reactors leak radioactive waste into drinking water….just as the nonsense in Arizona gives new momentum to another Obama initiative, immigration reform. Two other issues are also boosting the immigration effort: evangelicals who hope Latinos will vote GOP if the GOP stops fighting immigration reform, are defying rightwingers who want to block reform; also, people are beginning to ask how the Republican plan to build some sort of Maginot Line along the Mexican border can possibly work, when almost half of illegal immigrants cross the border legally and then overstay their visas. And a lot of the rest of them use tunnels, which makes a fence kinda stupid.

As we learned earlier, the GOP leadership said publicly that they would not defend its incumbents against attacks from the right by teabag candidates. Senator Bob Bennett was just tossed out of his own reelection race by the Utah GOP, and some raised the prospect of Bennett running as a write-in; John Cornyn, head of the Republican committee that is set up to elect Republicans to the Senate, reiterated that Bennett will get not a nickel from the party. Wouldn’t it be neat if Bennett stuck it to the Republicans by (a) switching parties, or (b) backing Harry Reid in shooting down GOP filibusters?

For that matter, since the Maine GOP has been hiacked by teabaggers, and has approved a platform slamming Obamacare, unions, motor voter which helps minorities too much, apparently), gay marriage, climate change legislation….isn’t this the perfect time for Collins and Snowe to quit a party that clearly doesn’t want them anymore, and join the Democrats? Particularly when their fellow Maine Republicans are acting like a Mongol horde?

And lastly, I finally figured out why I keep laughing involuntarily whenever John Boehner comes on TV to yell and scream about Obama’s evil communist plots. It’s because he sounds exactly like Sylvester the Cat. Suffering succotash! That one had been bothering me all year.

Oil slick! We need Big Gummint!

Gee, the wingnuts are cracking down on Obama, to bring Big Gummint in and whup up on those big bad oil companies. Clearly their sense of irony is...as sharp as it ever is.

As the Washington Monthly correctly pointed out, Obama had the Navy and Coast Guard out there immediately, and already more than a dozen agencies are busting their butts on this -- seems like half his cabinet is down there already. But they're not magicians. Blaming the fireman (Obama) instead of the arsonist (BP) is intellectually dishonest, which is of course why the Republicans will embrace the strategy enthusiastically.

And Obama is not the president who approved the rig or the oversight plan thereof. Seems to me like the only thing Obama did wrong, was to trust BP and Haliburton not to lie about what was going on in the Gulf. I don’t expect he’s going to do that again.

This makes it easier to decide whether to push immigration reform – which unites Democrats and divides Republicans – or energy legislation – which splits Democrats and unites Republicans.

Here's Inhofe counting his chickens before they...um...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/20/inhofe-to-boxer-we-won-yo_n_365465.html

Here's wingnut Senator Inhofe celebrating that he managed to delay the climate change bill until January, sneering at Barbara Boxer -- "We won, you lost, get a life."

Remember Leon Lett in the Super Bowl years ago, doing his touchdown dance before he even got to the end zone, and then getting the ball knocked out of his hands? That's Inhofe come Valentine's Day.

Preparing for the Copenhagen climate talks

Lindsey Graham and John Kerry are trying to craft a bipartisan compromise on climate change. Under the terms of this deal, the Republicans would actually admit that climate change is a problem (for which they deserve no credit), and that we should set up cap and trade, with the EPA empowered to step in if change doesn’t come fast enough. In return the Democrats give some ground on offshore drilling, nuclear, and the search for clean coal.

Apparently they (rather optimistically) hope to get this through Congress soon, before Obama (or his delegate) goes to Copenhagen to negotiate international climate agreements. As soon as anybody says we want this done before Copenhagen, the Republicans will do all they can to delay passage, and then brag that they forced us to go to Denmark with no concrete proposals. As we learned from the GOP’s caterwauling when Obama “lost” the Olympics and then won the Nobel Prize, Republicans don’t care if America looks bad, as long as Obama also looks bad. Attacking America’s Democrats is more important than attacking America’s problems, as far as they are concerned.

The other issue is – who are the Republicans who will go along with Graham on this climate change compromise? Is Graham just the new Olympia Snowe, dangling the myth of bipartisanship in front of us like a gold watch, in order to hypnotize us into making more concessions? I think Graham should bring some new GOP faces to the table before we talk seriously about running off and joining the “clean coal” snipe hunt.

And, Senator Grassley, you’re not invited. You already wasted two months of our lives with your footdragging.

Also – Boxer says her committee (Environment Committee) will pass the Boxer-Kerry bill soon, which is presumably close to the Graham-Kerry formula. They’re courting Graham. The House passed a somewhat similar bill in June.

As for Copenhagen itself, the developing world is making efforts to cut emissions – China and India on infrastructure changes, China on emissions, Brazil on deforestation – but when the world meets to talk climate change, China and India are going to want Obama to give them things in return, which will cause backlash back home: big emissions cuts in the U.S., U.S. investment money for developing countries, a chance to share in U.S. energy technology (exacerbating the intellectual-property issue), and a little slack in establishing their own emissions caps.

There are other issues which will cause trouble here in the U.S.: in addition to the inevitable obstruction from Republicans, there will also be the need to refit old buildings, build new ones the right way, build infrastructure, divert money away from recession-fighting efforts and development, and the need for legislation on environmental restrictions, verification and enforcement (to include penalties).

Creating and then dashing high expectations would be toxic both at home and abroad. The White House is reinforcing the notion that the Copenhagen talks are not at the head of state level, so that if it looks like an ugly disaster, Obama can wave off of a personal appearance without hearing the bipartisan screaming, to the tune of “so you went to Scandinavia for the Olympics and the Nobel, but not for climate change?” If we don’t have a climate deal passed in Congress, he is even less likely to go.

They also will work to lower expectations, and aim for a the establishment of a framework which would lead to a more long-term process: the Kyoto deal took years to set up, and a bilateral U.S.-China deal, if forged soon, could provide the framework for further progress. After that, though, Obama would want to keep the ball moving: it is probably not in his nature to approve a broad, vague conceptual framework and then leave it at that, particularly if his successor – from either party – might be less committed to making progress on this front.

southern station rejects dishonest GOP attack ad

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/02/virginia-station-wont-air_n_225195.html

From those pesky folks at FactCheck:

The ad says the bill will result in lost jobs and cost "middle class families" $1,870 a year. That sounds pretty dire, until you consider that this week we posted an item about the Office of the Republican Whip Eric Cantor's claim that the same bill would "impose a national energy tax of up to $3,100." So is the cost of the legislation going down? Did the NRCC make a mistake in its math?

Hardly. While it may seem curious that House Republicans would flog two different cost figures for the proposed legislation, it is indicative of the difficulty in determining how a cap on carbon emissions could affect Americans' electricity bills. The NRCC ad credits a Washington Times editorial for its claim that the Waxman-Markey bill would make electricity prices "skyrocket," costing families $1,870 a year. But the NRCC is wrong.



Wow. When you can't even spew wingnut lies down in Roanoke, the GOP really is dying.

Guess how many GOP efforts to block the climate change bill there are?

450.

Four hundred fifty.

Obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22583.html

GOP openly admits obstruction on energy bill

The Republicans have admitted that they plan to push forward more than a hundred amendments to the coming energy bill in the House, in an effort to gum up the works. They said flat-out that their efforts at obstruction were not going to be "gentlemanly".

Your tax dollars at work.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22495.html

Britain’s new offshore wind farm will power 750,000 homes

The farm will sit in the mouth of the Thames river near London. At a cost of about $3 billion, it will supply enough power for 750,000 homes, so do the math: if America invests, say, $100 billion in this technology, it would power 25 million homes with renewable energy, saving us gobs of money.

The British system will also take 2 million tons of CO2 out of the air.

Obama is planning a similar offshore wind farm for the U.S.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1180819/Worlds-largest-offshore-wind-farm-built-Kent-coast.html

More on energy policy...

Winning the battle over energy and climate change is going to be not only hard work, but complex. We’re going to need to do a dozen things at once, most of them painful and disruptive.

Infrastructure is going to hurt our wallets. Already a lot of our infrastructure is aging. Building a grid to carry power from wind and solar farms to cities will cost perhaps 60 to 400 billion, but it will also save more than 100 billion a year which is currently being lost from the old system, and it’s a steal if it lasts for 40 years or so. It means wind turbines, solar panels, recharging stations, two-way transmission wires, intelligent power meters, a lot of hardware. We will need to find capital and private-sector people to start taking initiative; wind turbines, for example, are built in a few places in Germany, Spain and Denmark. Remember, a lot of it is one-time pain.

There are a hundred little things we can do across the board: CFL bulbs, programmable thermostats, furnace and air conditioning filters, eco-friendly appliances, water heater blankets, low-flow showerheads, clotheslines, turning off lights, insulation. There could be a lot of jobs rehabilitating buildings to make the efficient. Schools, business, stores and factories need to rehab too, particularly all that lighting; when we shop, buy local foods rather than frozen, eat less meat, and go for the brands that use the least packaging. On the road: carpool, tune up the car, inflate the tires. We may need to go whole hog and use the recycling and rationing methods of WWII; recycling in just a few areas, like cars and computers, could help immensely. Ultimately we will need to greatly ramp up recycling anyway, not only because of the mounds of trash but also because of the wasted resources.

Part of Obama’s economic plan involves rebuilding infrastructure, weatherizing schools and federal buildings, replacing heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs.

The Big Three have known for 30 years that we need hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars, something up toward 100mpg. As the developing world becomes more affluent, we will need those hybrids and electrics, or the carbon problem will really explode. A firm called Tesla is turning out cars that get 200 miles on a charge and gets up to 60mph in 4 seconds, but it costs $100,000 and the first 40 were flawed; the firm is run by amateurs who made a lot of mistakes. Other problems along the way: making the new technologies practical for trucks, figuring out whether it is practical to set up refuelling stations for hydrogen-based cars, and urging the aviation industry to keep moving on cleaner, more efficient aircraft too. Is there any way in the world to make carbon-free aircraft – in a cost-effective way?

If we can make hybrid cars practical across the economy, then we avoid a lot of problems (to include removing the fear of being stranded with a dead battery). But what can we do, do reduce our reliance on cars and trucks? A big part of it is urban planning. European cities are liveable without a car (in fact they ban cars in some areas and tax them in others). But American cities are designed with cars in mind, and suburbs even more so. Workplaces and workers will move closer together; Factories and workers will move closer to resources and supply chains, and stores. People will drive to malls less, and take bikes and little shopping wagons to stores selling products in smaller packages – food shopping will be a pain. People will walk more, lose weight, interact with their neighbours (good thing or bad?). The disabled will have new challenges.

Some migratory patterns of the 20th century may be reversed: the folks who moved south and west because of affordable air conditioning may move back to the ice belt – unless heating costs also spike. Whites will move back into the cities and use more public transport (buses use existing infrastructure; trains don’t). And airlines will lose money to Amtrak.

Some will be the losers in the new economy; who deserves help, and how much? Oil firms, Geico, Firestone, Meineke, drive-thrus, used car salesmen, garage mechanics. On the plus side, alcohol-related auto fatalities would drop like a rock.


So the solution seems to be setting up solar farms and wind farms and building a new grid to connect to it; then build hybrid cars, conserve energy, and lean on people like the Chinese to do the same.


The weak link in many of these efforts will be batteries. We need them for cars, gadgets, and for solar and wind farms. Lithium is light but expensive and it can overheat. Because batteries involve chemical processes, there is only so much progress to be made; researchers are working on nanotechnology and nanophosphates to lower voltage. GE and Exxon are working on new technologies. To store solar and wind power, utilities are experimenting with sodium-sulfur batteries that are the size of tractor-trailers. Optimists envision a day when your electric car helps store the power generated by your rooftop solar panels, with many homeowners selling homegrown electricity back to the utility companies over the grid.

If they can solve the battery problem, Toyota’s exploration of the all-solar car might be more practical.

Energy and politics

Currently, policy regarding national energy strategy is stuck in committee on Capitol Hill. People who want to solve these problems are squabbling with representatives in the Rust Belt who are afraid of losing jobs while paying higher taxes to finance the necessary infrastructure upgrades. I think we need to start moving forward now, even if we’re just taking baby steps.

Globally, energy politics seems to being out the worst in politicians. Countries who are temporarily riding high due to strong energy prices have been annoying everybody else at least as far back as the Arabs in the 1970s. Today, some of the most obnoxious political figures are people with little talent who happen to be sitting on gobs of oil and gas: Putin, Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Sarah Palin....the Jed Clampett Syndrome. They lord it over everyone when the price goes up, and then eat a slice of humble pie when the prices drop. You think maybe we might have more leverage with Russia and Iran than we did a year ago? Already the Russians are working with OPEC to stop the slide in energy prices.

Globally, the major player on the carbon issue is China: although they are trying to build environmentally-friendly cities, they are also still building a lot of coal plants; they get most of their energy from coal. They say they are doing all they can, and will evade further commitments in the coming carbon talks in Copenhagen, talks which really need to succeed unless we’re just going to give up on fixing climate change; taxing, capping and trading probably won’t do it by themselves. When pressed, the Chinese will point to our own emissions, and they’re not wrong.

China is not the only offender. Britain needs to shut down old coal plants but has nothing to replace them. France and Germany blocked Europe’s green-energy plans because they want to protect energy-hungry firms. Poland relies heavily on coal. India is building a lot of coal plants. Canada is fighting a civil war on coal: Alberta is booming thanks to coal and gas, but Ottawa wants to cut emissions. Even in the U.S., the EPA backed down from the coal industry on classifying coal ash as hazardous.


The Copenhagen talks pose other problems: Obama may not have a finished carbon law by the time of the meeting; Obama does not want to drill down to 25 percent below 1990 carbon levels the way the Europeans do (he thinks the 1990 level is low enough); Poland wants richer countries to pay to convert to the new technology, an idea which the Germans hate; and in a similar vein China, India and Brazil say they will not commit to carbon targets until the industrialized countries identify their own cuts and help third-world nations to pay for conversions.

Some advocate establishing a fixed price for carbon credits; the question is whether it would be enforceable globally. The EU proposed making its firms buy 100 percent of its credits at auction, but Germany drove that down to 70 percent, and Poland got concessions also.

An issue of growing importance on the carbon front is deforestation, which will probably be discussed in Copenhagen. Indonesia is among the poor performers on this issue.

Global resource politics could get much more serious further down the road. In addition to the fight over carbon, we could have wars for oil, wars for water and food, particularly if the massive populations of China and India are involved.

At home, the Republican party has been a slave to Big Oil and ridiculously resistant to using real science and accepting the reality of global warming. A few Republicans are saying their party needs an answer on energy, if only for political purposes. The power of their Big Oil allies needs to be broken; we cannot leave it to the oil firms to come up with the alternative energies, and we need them to cough up some key patents and technology. The Democrats are not without sin: Pelosi and Waxman want action on warming, but Democrats from the Rust Belt are not as enthusiastic – they are focusing on saving jobs.

There is no doubt that government must act and act now. The private sector has not shown the necessary leadership, so Obama and Pelosi must move quickly before the sense of urgency leaks out of Washington. We need a complete overhaul of the energy system, government efforts in solar and wind, and all the rest. The drop in oil prices will impel some to say “See? Crisis over.” Others will argue that in a recession, firms need to think profit and jobs rather than going green, and that we should spend on things other than energy research: it’s not an entirely invalid argument.

Other political issues will come into play: there will be more effort to block drilling offshore, on federal lands, and on the Alaska leases. Activists will get into green investing.

Obama moves forward on energy

USA Today reported yesterday that Obama is launching a program for offshore wind power – it could create 250,000 jobs and provide a fifth of our power in a few decades.

It is increasingly likely that wind and solar power are going to play a major role in our energy strategy.

We can think of airspace as a finite resource: there is only so much “space” into which we can put carbon, before truly disastrous things happen. In addition to conservation and getting away from fossil fuels as much as possible, there are a number of options on the table: capping emissions, taxing them, fining polluters, and so forth. On ambitious effort worth watching: Abu Dhabi is building a no-carbon city, Masdar.

Some options in the carbon battle are problematic. There are many carbon-trading plans out there, too many, and trading probably won’t solve the problem. Anything that is not statutory won’t work. And the technology for clean coal retrofitting shows promise but it is not anywhere near a stage that justifies building new coal plants. Obama has ruled out a straight carbon tax for now.

The western desert could supply the U.S. with all the electricity it needs. The LA mayor wants a project to generate 1.3 GW of solar power by 2020. China and India are exploring it too. One issue to address is cutting the cost of the silicon involved: since sand is plentiful, this sounds like a straightforward problem of chemistry and engineering.

In addition to the large-scale solar efforts to generate electricity, there are smaller efforts: solar water heaters, solar chimneys that get hot and create updrafts that circulate air, and solar water distillers (how much volume can they generate?). Some vehicles use solar panels to power air conditioning.

There are also ways to fight the sun: choosing the right building materials, designing spaces to circulate air, orienting the building the right way vis-a-vis the sun, low ratio of surface area to volume, shading, window sizes and shapes, white paint, and even computer modelling for the light and HVAC.

Wind power gives the U.S. one percent of its power; it could be 15 percent by 2020. They are using the Great Plains, but I’ll bet the Great Lakes are worth a look since they’ve got wind and population centers right there. China is building windfarms in Hebei. Germany, Ireland and Denmark are using it, and India is exploring it too.

Picking wind sites is critical: look at the the cost of land, value of energy generated, access to power lines, environmental issues, and of course the wind itself, or lack thereof. Some places like Texas have little wind in summer when electricity demand peaks; geothermal heat pumps can make air conditioning more efficient, but can the power be stored locally too? Since people usually don’t like living in windy places, a lot of the best places for wind farms are far from population centers, which bumps up the cost of power lines and substations; Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have plenty of wind, but it’s way, way out there. Another complication is that it’s much easier to move turbine blades by water than by land, so some of those sites in the boonies are problematic. Wind power is becoming more cost-effective, and federal and state authorities offer tax breaks for using it. Some Americans are buying grid-linked turbines in the 1-10KW range to power their entire homes.

Engineers are deploying slow-water hydroelectric power in the Detroit River. A field of cylinders built on a seabed 1 km by 1.5km could power 100,000 homes. It would be cheaper than wind or solar, and won’t bother the wildlife much. Normal hydroelectric dams need to fuel but a river is needed; it is expensive and it can hurt the environment.

Twenty years ago the liberal fashion was to attack all nuclear technology. Later the conservatives were the ones worrying: more nations want nuclear technology, the technology to go from energy production to weaponry is easier to get, and countries such as Russia and China don’t seem to be serious about stopping proliferation. And then, even though it is cheap, there is the waste: Obama and Reid oppose storing waste at Yucca Mountain, but some scientists say it may be the safest way. CNN now reports that the Republicans, to cross Obama up, are calling for an energy plan that is heavy on nuclear, but nuclear plants can be incredibly expensive – 15 to 20 billion – and are notorious for cost overruns. So that isn’t really a comprehensive answer.


Geothermal hot-spot plants are worth a look. Less promising is biofuels, which take too much land and water, and save little in the way of energy or carbon. And they’re inefficient. However, we may also need to end our opposition to Brazilian cane ethanol which is more efficient than the domestic stuff. The airlines were playing around with aircraft that run on biofuels, but I don’t know how practical that is.

Are methane cars practical?

Just some stuff to think about.

More to come on energy and politics!