Energy News, Analysis & Opinion  (Contact the Editor)
First Quarter 2010
Current Edition (PDF)
Climate Bill Eclipsed by Political Realities
The case for immediate action on the part of industrialized countries to bring down their emissions was
never more compelling than at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen during the last days of 2009.
Yet, even as the world approaches an unprecedented threshold of climate urgency, US legislators seem less
concerned about the plight of their species than with political promises and pending elections ...
Climate bill? What climate bill?
The advent of 2010 has ushered in a freshly turbo-charged “war on terror,” a still-unresolved “healthcare” bill and an economy that, despite the happy talk coming from Wall Street and its financial apostles, seems reluctant to spread the wealth any further than the bankers and financiers who triggered the recession in the first place.
    All of these political and economic realities have played a part in diluting the urgency of “climate action” here in the US.
    Today, with lawmakers in Washington understandably eager to downplay the dismal outcome of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, silence on the subject has replaced yesterday’s boisterous rhetoric. And, as climate action in the form of legislation languishes in the US Senate, lawmakers seem relieved to get back to what they do best — run for re–election.
“I don’t think anyone’s excited about doing another really, really, big thing that’s really, really hard that makes everybody mad,” Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill told reporters recently. “Climate fits that category.”
    Even the Democrats are at odds over climate legislation. The carbon trading system known as ‘cap and trade” has Blue Dogs worried about job loss, while progressives are concerned that the program is little more than a Wall Street fleece job.
    Award–winning NASA climate scientist James Hansen believes progressives are right to worry about cap and trade.
    “The revolving door between Washington and Wall Street has produced a new scheme to fleece the public,” wrote Hansen in an Op–Ed first published in the New York Times. “Cap–and–trade is the heart of the Obama Administration’s plan to slow global
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Happy New Year! Billions Gifted to Fossil Fuel Industry. Despite the lofty rhetoric and promises before and after the climate talks in Copenhagen.
promised he would end all subsidies to the fossil fuel industries. The president did, in fact, campaign on the idea, and his administration has proposed eliminating some domestic subsidies in the 2010 budget.
    A letter, authored by Obama adviser Michael Froman went so far as to call on all of the G20 nations to completely eliminate fossil fuel and electricity subsidies, as a “logical step in combating global climate change.”
    But, writes Steve Kretzman at priceofoil.org, “The reality, is, as usual, stickier. In the US, calls for subsidy removal tend to be answered by the oil
industry and their allies with dire predictions of rising gas prices and consumer pain thus leading to unemployed politicians ... In other businesses involving addiction,” says Kretzman, “this is called a protection racket.” Kretzman’s analysis may explain why the Obama proposal for subsidy removal in the US is piecemeal at best, and also why it is gathering more dust than steam, in Congress. What is a fossil fuel subsidy and why don’t we like them? Simply put, a fossil fuel subsidy is any government
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FACT CHECK/
CORRECTION:
In the front page article of its Q4-2009 edition (“Clean Energy Economy Trips Over Transmission Lines”), SolarTimes incorrectly states: “A plan to build 600 miles of high voltage transmission lines across large swathes of the California Desert .... ” The number of miles is incorrect. It should have read “approximately 85 miles of high voltage transmission lines ...”