Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage.
Lawmakers Introduce Reality-Based Plan to Achieve “Freedom From Oil”
Tawnya Snyder, DC.StreetsBlog,
Members of Congress of all stripes are trying to show that they’re concerned and responsive to the financial strain caused by high gas prices. Some are recommending more oil drilling. Some want to end subsidies to oil companies. Today, members of the Congressional Livable Communities Task Force suggested that providing more diverse transportation options to more people might help.
“Here in Washington, DC, when gas prices spike, people have choices,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), chair of the Task Force. “They can take a bus, Metro, bike, Capital Bike-share, walk, cab, drive. It’s a wide range of [choices] and it actually minimizes some of the sticker shock. But unfortunately, about half the American population doesn’t have an environment they live in that provides those choices. Too much of America is dependent on a pattern that imagines that we will always have an unlimited supply of inexpensive gasoline, and government policies in housing and road transportation reinforce that.”
Blumenauer and other members of the Task Force introduced a report this morning called “Freedom From Oil: Policy Solutions From the Livable Communities Task Force.” It’s an impressive product from a Congressional task force, many of which exist in name only. The more than two dozen members of the Livable Communities Task Force, all House Democrats, strive to make the federal government a better partner with communities to promote “cost-effective, environmentally friendly solutions to infrastructure problems” and “coordinate transportation, housing, and environmental policies and investments.”
The lawmakers of the Task Force said increasing oil drilling in the U.S. will never have an appreciable effect on world oil prices, because the price of oil is determined globally and the U.S. supply won’t be sufficient to make a significant difference.
“Here’s the harsh reality: The United States is never going to have control over world oil supplies or gas prices through drilling,” said Task Force member Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA). “We simply don’t have the oil supplies, no matter how much we drill. What we do have is the ability to control prices by lowering our consumption and giving American families new transportation choices.”
… The Freedom From Oil policy recommendations are:
- Set clear national priorities for our transportation system, including a strategy and performance measures for reducing oil consumption.
- Require Metropolitan Planning Organizations to evaluate the effects of new transportation projects on regional petroleum consumption.
- Promote Pay-As-You-Drive insurance, allowing consumers to pay less if they drive less.
- Encourage lenders to use transit accessibility and location efficiency as a factor in mortgage rates, taking into account the reduced spending on gas and making it easier to purchase a home that allows transportation savings.
(2 June 2011)
Suggested by EB contributor Carl Etnier. -BA
The Optimism of a Double-Dip
Michael Perelman, Unsettling Economics
… Both the crisis and the recovery can only be understood in terms of the long-term processes that caused the initial collapse. In “The Confiscation of American Prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression” I tried to tell the story of the gradual weakening of the US economy. The book explained how the unusual postwar prosperity was created by a sequence of the Great Depression and then the war. The postwar period up to the late 1960s is often described as The Golden Age because the economy performed better than ever before.
The business class believed that this exceptional performance was the norm. As the economy began to falter in the late 1960s, capitalists set out to restore their sagging profits. During the Golden Age, prosperity also meant that competitive pressures were not strong. In the absence of competitive pressures, business had little need to improve productivity. Management could coast along assuming that high profits were due to their outstanding managerial skills.
Unprepared and unwilling to adapt to the new economic conditions, capitalists set out to remake the economic structure in a way that would allow profits to recover. However, they did so by subtracting from the rest of society, rather than by contributing anything productive. Anything that stood in the way of profit maximization, whether unions, regulation, or taxes, had to be swept away. Business was surprisingly successful in this endeavor, but it did nothing to make the economy stronger. In fact, this strategy undermined economic strength.
Obscene inequality of wealth and income meant that business would be unlikely to prosper by selling goods to the masses. The rise of international competition made that strategy less likely. Instead, business turned to finance, at the same time as the regulatory forces that might have imposed a modicum of rationality were no longer operative.
(3 June 2011)
US Military Goes to War with Climate Skeptics
Jules Boykoff, Guardian/UK
Political action on climate change may be mired in Congress, but one arm of government at least is acting: the Pentagon
—
… Enter what some might view as a counter-intuitive counterweight: US military brass. A recent report, “A National Strategic Narrative” (pdf), written by two special assistants to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mike Mullen, argued, “We must recognize that security means more than defence.” Part of this entails pressing past “a strategy of containment to a strategy of sustainment (sustainability)”. They went on to assert climate change is “already shaping a ‘new normal’ in our strategic environment”.
For years, in fact, high-level national security officials both inside the Pentagon and in think-tank land have been acknowledging climate change is for real and that we need to take action to preserve and enhance US national security interests. The Pentagon itself stated unequivocally in its February 2010 in its Quadrennial Defense Review Report (pdf), “Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment.” It noted the department of defence is actively “developing policies and plans to manage the effects of climate change on its operating environment, missions and facilities”.
CNA Corporation, a nonprofit that conducts research for the Navy and Marines, echoed the Pentagon’s urgency, writing, “Climate change, from the Military Advisory Board’s perspective, presents significant risks to America’s national security.” The Army Environmental Policy Institute, the National Intelligence Council and the Centre for a New American Security have issued similar reports on the dangers of runaway climate change and what it could mean for geopolitics.
This isn’t a tree-hugging festival. It’s the US military and its partners making clear-eyed calculations based on the best available climate science.
So, why this quiet camaraderie between scientists and military higher-ups? The answer, most certainly, is uncertainty.
Uncertainty is an inherent element of honest science. But in the political sphere, uncertainty has been harnessed as an alibi for denial and inaction. The military, however, operates under conditions of uncertainty all the time. Like scientists, they wade through the unknown to assess varying degrees of risk. As CNA Corporation put it, military leaders “don’t see the range of possibilities as justification for inaction. Risk is at the heart of their job.”
(21 May 2011)
L.A. Times: Obama is throwing ‘the environment and public health under a bus’ to get reelected
Joseph Romm, Grist
The L.A. Times has delivered a blistering editorial that everybody in the White House should read:
In the 2012 campaign, environmentalists don’t matter
That’s the message President Obama is sending as the administration caters to smokestack and other industries.
Ouch. Here’s the whole thing:
Shortly after his party’s “shellacking” in the midterm election, President Obama ordered government agencies to ensure that new regulations took economic growth into consideration and that old ones be revoked if they “stifle job creation or make our economy less competitive.” Five months later, it’s becoming pretty clear what he meant: The environment and public health will be thrown under a bus for the sake of his reelection in 2012.
… Note: I don’t view this final paragraph as a “threat” from the L.A. Times, but rather a warning that Obama’s political calculations are beginning to border on the counterproductive. He is alienating environmental voters — and pointlessly.
That said, I am quite certain that the reality of the actual GOP nominee will make the contrast evident enough. That said, until enviros figure out how to inflict a cost for those who oppose them — as the NRA, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and AARP do, for instance — how will they ever become a genuine political force?
Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
(20 May 2011)
