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A Coalition for Firm Limit on Emissions
Felicity Barringer, NY Times
Ten major companies with operations across the economy – utilities, manufacturing, petroleum, chemicals and financial services – have banded together with leading environmental groups to call for a firm nationwide limit on carbon dioxide emissions that would lead to reductions of 10 to 30 percent over the next 15 years.
Introduction of this group, which includes industry giants like General Electric, DuPont and Alcoa, is aimed at adding to the recent impetus for Congressional action on emissions controls and the creation of a market in which allowances to emit carbon dioxide could be traded in a way that achieves the greatest reduction at the lowest cost.
The diversity of the coalition – some members had already come out for other forms of emissions control, like a carbon tax or voluntary controls, but others had been silent on climate-change issues until now – could send a strong signal that businesses want to get ahead of the increasing political momentum for federal emissions controls, in part to ensure that their long-term interests are protected.
(18 Jan 2007)
Power companies endorse emissions cap bill
Caroline Daniel, Financial Times
In a sign that US electricity companies are recognising that the Democratic-controlled Congress will seek to impose aggressive climate change initiatives, six companies, including Exelon, one of the largest utility companies, on Wednesday endorsed a bill that would reduce their projected emissions by 25 per cent below projected levels by 2020.
Dianne Feinstein, the Senate Democrat from California, and co-sponsor of the cap and trade bill with Tom Carper, a Democrat for Delaware, said the bill was the first time “major industry groups have endorsed a cap and trade bill which establishes emissions reductions as deep and aggressive as this bill”.
The six companies, which have broken ranks with the rest of the industry, represent 15 per cent of the US electricity market and operate in 42 states.
(17 Jan 2007)
Related at SF Chronicle.
Oil companies warm to law on emissions
Marc Lifsher, LA Times
SACRAMENTO – Oil companies on Thursday embraced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new executive order to fight global warming by boosting the consumption of alternative fuels and cutting carbon emissions from car and truck exhausts by 10% over the next 13 years.
“To meet the demand for transportation fuel, we need everything we can think of,” said R.E. Zalesky, vice president for biofuels and hydrogen for Chevron Corp., California’s biggest petroleum refiner.
Zalesky and other business executives from electric utilities, alternative fuel developers and even a San Francisco taxi cooperative applauded Schwarzenegger as he signed an executive order to make California the first government in the world to set a comprehensive standard for regulating the amount of carbon dioxide in transportation fuels.
(19 Jan 2007)
No longer taboo
National Parks Service moves bring warming trend to forefront
Editorial, Daily Astorian
After six years spent ruthlessly suppressing any official recognition that global warming is caused by humans and demands urgent attention, interesting signs are emerging that the Bush administration is getting the point.
Not long ago, it was a career-killer for any federal employee to say climate change is real and to advocate changing the way we fuel our lives. Government reports were purged of references to human-related impacts on climate or softened to the point of irrelevancy. Never before in national history has ignorance been so deliberately woven into government science and policy.
…In fact, modifying our lifestyles to limit the impacts of global warming is itself an inherently conservative decision. Only by prompt and meaningful action can we hope to conserve the quality of life we enjoy today. There is nothing more conservative than protecting what we have and bequeathing it to the future.
One of the most encouraging signs of Bush administration awakening on climate change is the attention now being given to the issue by the National Park Service. According to Sustainability News, “Seven national parks have hosted workshops as part of the Climate Friendly Parks Program, a collaboration between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service. Workshops help park employees and partners identify actions to mitigate the negative environmental impacts of climate change.
(18 Jan 2007)
Confessions of an Alleged ExxonMobil Whore
Ronald Baily, Reason
Actually no one paid me to be wrong about global warming. Or anything else
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As far as I can tell my first published expression of skepticism with regard to catastrophic global warming was in a review of environmentalist Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature that I wrote as a staff writer for Forbes magazine in October, 1989…
…Just to bring my intellectual journey in reporting and opining about the global warming issue up to date, I reviewed former vice-president Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth for Reason. I agreed that Gore has “won the climate debate” and that “on balance Gore gets it more right than wrong on the science” though I argued he exaggerates just how bad future global warming is likely to be. However, I agree that the balance of the evidence pretty clearly indicates that humanity is contributing to global warming chiefly by means of loading up the atmosphere with extra carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.
ExxonMobil has been a supporter of the Reason Foundation. Folks at the foundation confirmed when I called yesterday that the company has donated a little over $250,000 since 2000. The company’s latest contributions were $10,000 in 2003 and $20,000 this past January. The last contribution poses a possible conundrum for hard-line corporate conspiracy theorists because it arrived about five months after I declared, “We’re All Global Warmers Now.” I would suggest that ExxonMobil supports the Reason Foundation because my colleagues robustly defend the free enterprise system. “Follow the money” is often pretty good advice when evaluating the source of information, but in the think tank and public policy magazine realm money tends follow opinion, rather than the other way around.
So if corporate shilling doesn’t explain my stubborn skepticism about global warming, what does? … And then there is also the matter of my intellectual commitments. We all have them. Since I work for a self-described libertarian magazine that should indicate to even the dimmest reader that I tend to have a healthy skepticism of government “solutions” to problems, including government solutions to environmental problems.
(22 Sept 2006)
Applause to libertarian Ronald Bailey for admitting his mistakes. Ideology makes for poor journalism. Hopefully, he will now look into the claims of Peak Oil skeptics more closely. -BA
