In the Supreme Court’s 2008-2009 term, which ended last Monday, the court ruled against the pro-environment side in five out of the five environmental cases it considered.
The New York Times reports:
It was, said Richard J. Lazarus, a director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center, “the worst term ever” for environmental interests. The court allowed Navy exercises using sonar that threatened whales off California. It limited the liability of companies partly responsible for toxic spills. It made it harder to challenge Forest Service regulations and easier to dump mining waste into an Alaskan lake. And it allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to use cost-benefit analysis to decide how much marine life may be killed by cooling structures at power plants.
Last week, the National Law Journal quoted Lazarus, who explained that in his view, the employment of experienced Supreme Court lawyers may have been important:
Business’ remarkable record may be due in part, Lazarus suggested, to the entry this term of the private sector Supreme Court bar on behalf of business interests in environmental cases, including such well-known, repeat players as former Solicitor General Theodore Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Maureen Mahoney of Latham & Watkins. “In each of these cases, business turned not to the usual retinue of environmental legal experts, but to expert Supreme Court advocates,” said Lazarus, who has studied the influence and effectiveness of those appellate practitioners.
For my master’s thesis research on climate policy, I did a series of interviews, which I recorded and then transcribed. Transcribing the interviews took about 4-5 hours per hour of recording, which is about the average that I’ve seen written about. Transcribing a lot of interviews can be tough, as others have blogged about.
However, I came up with a streamlined process that made it a bit easier, and I thought might be useful to share. I had recorded my interviews with a digital recorder borrowed from my university library, so I did all my transcription work on my laptop. I set it up so that I could switch between controlling the audio and my word processor with keyboard shortcuts, and after a few hours I was switching back and forth pretty quickly. You can read a page about how I set it up in the Research section of the site here.
 An old image of the Senate is that of an institution designed to dilute the passions of the House of Representatives by moderating bills before passing them on to the President’s desk:
An oft-quoted story about the “coolness” of the Senate involves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was in France during the Constitutional Convention. Upon his return, Jefferson visited Washington and asked why the Convention delegates had created a Senate. “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” asked Washington. “To cool it,” said Jefferson. “Even so,” responded Washington, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”
With respect to the ACES climate bill, however, the irony is actions the Senate takes to moderate the bill will more likely have a “warming” than a “cooling” effect on the climate. Thus, now that ACES has passed the House, environmental advocates have focused their attention on the Senate, to attempt to strengthen the bill if possible, or at least ward off its weakening.
Two key factors make the Senate a more challenging venue. First, the Senate gives each state equal power, regardless of population, which as Yale political science professor Robert Dahl has argued, is profoundly undemocratic. It means that a smaller state, like West Virginia (population 1.8 million) has the same representation as a larger state, such as California (population 36.7 million).
Second, as Reuters emphasized in a recent analysis, unlike the House, the Senate has the filibuster, which means that a majority of votes is not enough – 60 votes must be garnered before debate can be ended and a final decision made:
There is a chance the Senate legislation could be weaker than the House version in order to avoid a filibuster. “That means a Senate-passed bill will only be as good as the views of the 60th senator. So the deal-making in the House may be only a preview of things to come in the Senate,” said Frank O’Donnell, head of Clean Air Watch.
That being said, there are still some prospects for strengthening the bill. For one, as Joseph Romm has observed, although President Obama actively supported the House bill, he has conserved his political capital on the issue for the upcoming Senate fight.
For another, Romm writes, proper framing of the issue in historical terms can appeal to legacy-minded Senators:
Senators do, however, tend to see themselves as historical figures more than House members. The key to framing a win on this bill is to portray it — accurately — as the single most important vote a member will ever cast. If we fail to stop catastrophic global warming, future generations will not care what we have done on issues like health care, the deficit and Iraq. If we fail to stop massive sea level rise, widespread desertification, and 10-degrees-Fahrenheit warming over much of the inland U.S. — all of which we face on our current emissions path — then every person who voted against this bill will be vilified by history.
Finally, Senators may feel they have more political space to be able take a stand on this issue, since they are up for election every 6 years, rather than every 2 years like their colleagues in the House.
With respect to the timeline, indications are that the process of shepherding the bill through the Senate will begin in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times:
In an interview Saturday, Boxer said she would introduce a climate bill “very soon” in July, with “enough time so we can have a couple of legislative hearings and a couple of briefings.”
The three-term senator said she would build from the House bill, with plans for a markup before the end of July. Beyond Boxer’s Environment panel, five other Senate committees are also expected to weigh in: Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources, Finance and Foreign Relations.
Reid has set a Sept. 18 deadline for the six committees to produce their pieces of the bill for consideration on the Senate floor this fall.
The passage of ACES represented a historic achievement, the first ever cap on greenhouse gas emissions passed by a house of Congress. However, the process of building support for the bill entailed significantly diluting the bill’s strength.
One excised provision was the section providing for citizen suits to compel implementation of the law. The Global Climate Law Blog has a helpful post explaining what the provision contained and the debate about what it would have meant:
The citizen suit provision was set forth in Section 336 of the discussion draft version of ACES, and it would have given environmental groups and other activists standing under the Clean Air Act to “commence an action” when someone has “suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part, to a violation or failure to act referred to in subsection (a).” Harm under this section was defined as: “For purposes of this section, the term ‘harm’ includes any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring, and the incremental exacerbation of any such effect or risk that is associated with a small incremental emission of any air pollutant (including any greenhouse gas defined in Title VII), whether or not the risk is widely shared.”
The citizen suit provision in ACES generated significant controversy. A staff member in the office of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) had warned that the subsection could result in a flood of “lawsuits filed by environmental groups who perceive some risk—and they undoubtedly will perceive it” and that “this provision will further empower the eco-trial bar to fight the ravages of climate change and the businesses it dislikes, with no effect on the former and disastrous consequences for the latter.” However, supporters of the bill, such as the Center for Progressive Reform, offered a contrasting view, arguing that an “extremely positive aspect of the bill is its approach to citizen enforcement of the laws.
In addition to government enforcement provisions, the bill includes strong citizen suit provisions. It reaffirms the importance of citizen enforcement of the environmental laws against both potential violators and agencies that have the responsibility to implement the regime. Citizens have traditionally had this enforcement power under the environmental laws, but it has recently been threatened by a series of judicial decisions. The Waxman-Markey bill responds to these judicial decisions and strives to ensure the vitality of citizen suits.”
The New York Times reports that the Waxman-Markey ACES climate bill passed the House Friday night, and even garnered votes to spare:
The 219-212 vote marked the first time that either house of Congress has approved a bill aimed at curbing the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change, and it could lead to sweeping changes in the economy.
The Washington Post provides a good rundown of the provisions contained in the final bill:
– Emissions from a large sector of the U.S. economy, including power plants, factories and auto tailpipes, would be required to be cut 17 percent below their 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent below those levels by 2050.
– These reductions would be managed by requiring emitters to amass buyable, sellable “credits” equal to their pollution.
– About 85 percent of these credits would be given away, many with the mandate that electricity distributors sell them and use the proceeds to soften the blow of rising energy prices. Environmentalists had wanted the government to auction all of them.
– Electricity producers would be required to get at least 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, with as much as 5 percent more energy saved from new efficiency measures. The two figures must add up to 20 percent.
– Polluters could also balance out some of their emissions by purchasing carbon “offsets,” which are official certificates that greenhouse gas emissions have been avoided or taken out of the air. In a last-minute amendment, oversight over offsets generated on farms was taken from the Environmental Protection Agency and given to the Department of Agriculture.
– A new Clean Energy Deployment Administration funded with $7.5 billion in “green bonds” would provide government money to private companies investing in environmentally friendly technologies.
The Waxman-Markey climate bill, titled the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), is currently scheduled for a full vote in the House tomorrow.
According to a report by E&E Daily (via Climate Progress), sponsors of ACES remain still need to confirm about 35 votes in order to meet the requirement of 218 votes to pass the bill.
Potential swing votes in the House have been intensely lobbied in the last few days, but calls or even emails from constituents could help tip the balance.
If you are registered to vote in the district of a potential swing voter, it is particularly important that you make a call to their office.
The Environmental Defense Fund calls this “the most important climate vote of our lives,” and urges supporters of the bill to not only call the Washington office of their Representative, but also their office in their home district.
As the EDF wrote in an email sent out to their Action Network today:
Dial the Capitol Hill switchboard — (202) 224-3121 — and ask to be patched through to your Representative’s office. Tell the staff that you are a voter back home and that you support the American Clean Energy and Security Act because it will create jobs, unleash our clean energy future, free us from foreign oil, and cut America’s global warming pollution.
When you’re done with the Capitol Hill office, please look up your member at http://www.house.gov/ and find the phone numbers for home district offices — let the staff back home know what you think, too.
The EDF also provides a handy webpage for sending an email to your Representative about the bill, here.
UPDATE: (via Climate Progress):
Repower America has set up phone lines that will automatically connect you to your Representative:
Call 877-9-REPOWER (877-9-737-6937) and we’ll connect you to your Representative right after providing you with talking points. (We’re expecting high call volume, and if you are unable to be connected please use our secondary line, 866-590-0971.)
Broadly, a quote from E&E summarizes some key groups of potential swing voters:
Fence-sitters include dozens of Republicans and a number of Midwestern and Southern Democrats, as well as many lawmakers who were first elected to the House in 2006 and 2008.
For a fuller analysis, you can download a PDF (via the New York Times) of an E&E report that categorizes each Representative, and identifies 177 yes votes, 163 no votes, and 96 fence sitters.
For your convenience, I’ve compiled here a list of Representatives that have been specifically mentioned as potential swing votes and targeted for lobbying to support the bill, drawing on reporting by E&E, as well as a piece in Congressional Quarterly.
Below is only a partial list, but if your Representative is on it, your call could make an especially important impact.
Democratic Representatives
6 from Ohio’s delegation:
Steve Driehaus
Charlie Wilson
Marcy Kaptur
Marcia Fudge
Mary Jo Kilroy
John Boccieri
Debbie Halvorson – Illinois
Bobby Bright – Alabama
Jim Hines – Connecticut
Frank Kratovil – Maryland
Larry Kissel – North Carolina
Betsy Markey – Colorado
Mark Schauer – Michigan
Republican Representatives
Mike Castle – Delaware
Vernon Ehlers – Michigan
Mark Kirk – Illinois
Leonard Lance – New Jersey
Frank LoBiondo – New Jersey
Thomas Petri – Wisconsin
Dave Reichert – Washington
Peter T. King – New York
Jim Gerlach - Pennsylvania
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just published the analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill that the House Committee on Energy and Commerce ordered on May 21.
According to the CBO’s breakdown, the bill would:
• Increase federal revenues by about $846 billion; and
• Increase direct spending by about $821 billion.
Thus, the CBO analysis finds that the bill would result in a reduction of budget deficits by “about $24 billion over the 2010-2019 period.”
Although the CBO projects that implementation of the bill may require an increase in discretionary spending of $50 billion of the 2010-2019 period, they write: “Most of that funding would stem from spending auction proceeds from various funds established under this legislation.”
As Peter Altman from the Natural Resources Defense Council has observed, although some opponents of the bill have sought to exaggerate its costs, the price has been estimated at less than the cost of a postage stamp per day per household:
In April, the EPA estimated that the American Clean Energy and Security Act would cost households less than the cost of a postage stamp each day, roughly $100-$140 per year. Since then, the EPA estimates the changes to the bill will reduce the cost of allowances by 10%, which will in turn lower the actual cost to households.
This analysis is in line with a recent study by the Environmental Defense Fund, which found that a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have only modest costs. As the EDF writes,
The United States can enjoy robust economic growth over the next several decades while making ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. If we put a cap-and-trade policy in place soon, we can achieve substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions without significant adverse consequences to the economy. And in the long run, the coming low-carbon economy can provide the foundation for sustained American economic growth and prosperity.
But for such a policy to be truly affordable, we must act now. Delay will greatly increase the economic cost of making the necessary emissions reductions, and will risk locking in irreversible climate change. And delay will put the United States further behind the rest of the world in the race to invent and produce the next generation of energy technologies.
Additionally, the CBO report provides a useful, non-technical summary of the bill:
H.R. 2454 would make a number of changes in energy and environmental policies largely aimed at reducing emissions of gases that contribute to global warming. The bill would limit or cap the quantity of certain greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted from facilities that generate electricity and from other industrial activities over the 2012-2050 period. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would establish two separate regulatory initiatives known as cap-and-trade programs—one covering emissions of most types of GHGs and one covering hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). EPA would issue allowances to emit those gases under the cap-and-trade programs. Some of those allowances would be auctioned by the federal government, and the remainder would be distributed at no charge.
In addition these programs, the CBO writes, the bill contains specific provisions for the following policy objectives:
• Provide energy tax credits or energy rebates to certain low-income families to offset the impact of higher energy-related prices from the cap-and-trade programs;
• Require certain retail electricity suppliers to satisfy a minimum percentage of their electricity sales with electricity generated by facilities that use qualifying renewable fuels or energy sources;
• Establish a Carbon Storage Research Corporation to support research anddevelopment of technologies related to carbon capture and sequestration;
• Increase, by $25 billion, the aggregate amount of loans DOE is authorized to make to automobile manufacturers and component suppliers under the existing Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program;
• Establish a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) within the Department of Energy (DOE), which would be authorized to provide direct loans, loan guarantees, and letters of credit for clean energy projects;
• Authorize the Department of Transportation (DOT) to provide individuals with vouchers to acquire new vehicles that achieve greater fuel efficiency than the existing qualifying vehicles owned by the individuals; and
• Authorize appropriations for various programs under EPA, DOE, and other agencies.
This blog’s previous post contains links to a few more analyses of the Waxman-Markey bill’s provisions.
The Waxman-Markey Bill, also known as the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, could be coming up for a full House vote in the last week of June. In the interim, it will be working its way through various committees, which will debate and possibly add amendments to the bill.
The bill isn’t perfect. But it’s a critical first step, and time is running out. For the climate, but also for international climate negotiations, which are coming up in December. Demonstrating U.S. commitment to greenhouse gas reductions will be critical to convincing China and India to take tough steps to reduce their own emissions.
For proponents of climate action, it’s time to lay our cards on the table, and one good way of doing that is to write a letter to your Representative in the House requesting that they vote in favor of ACES.
As Marshall Ganz emphasized in his workshop at the Powershift 2009 climate conference, the key to making democracy work is the ability of citizens to balance inequality of resources with equality of voice.
Writing a letter to your representatives has been described as “the one hard thing you must to do to save the planet,” but it’s actually not that hard. You’re probably looking at about a 15 minute time investment.
Here’s some guidelines.
1. Identify yourself as a constituent, and provide a little bit of information about yourself to personalize the letter.
2. Hand-writing a paper letter matters. Part of the impact of a letter derives from its function as signal that you actually care enough about the issue to put pen to paper and pay for postage.
3. Timing matters, and the timing is perfect now. As the American Institute of Physics emphasizes:
Timing is important! A letter sent after Congress acts is a missed opportunity, while correspondence sent months before an issue is considered may be forgotten.
4. Keep it short and sweet. You should keep the letter to about 1 page to ensure that your key points don’t get lost in the text.
5. For details on the bill and ideas about points to make, check out these analyses:
World Resources Institute:
http://www.wri.org/stories/2009/05/american-clean-energy-and-security-act-key-elements-and-next-steps
Center for American Progress:
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2009/05/waxman_markey_reasons.html
Climate Progress:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/06/01/cheerleading-waxman-markey/
6. Make a concrete, specific request. In this case, you want to ask that your Representative vote in favor of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, when it comes up for a floor vote in the House.
7. To help your letter stand out, you might try addressing the envelope “care of” the Representative’s staff member, called a Legislative Assistant (LA), who deals with the issue. As the Consumerist writes, it’s easy to find out the name of the appropriate LA:
Finding the staffer destined to read your letter is easy: call the Capitol switchboard (open 24 hours a day!) at (202) 224-3121, ask for your Member’s office, and ask the person who answers for the name of the staffer handling the issue area or bill number.
8. You can find your the name of your representative by entering your zip code here.
9. Start off the text of letter like this:
The Honorable __________________________
United States House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Representative ______________________,
10. Happy writing!
Earlier today, House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) released a discussion draft of their energy and climate bill. A summary can be found here, and the full text is available here.
The bill, titled “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” calls for 83% cuts below 2005 levels of greenhouse gas emissions in 2050. This is in line with the IPCC’s recommendation that 80-95% cuts in emissions by developed nations are required by 2050 to avoid warming of more than 2 degrees.
Another positive aspect of the bill is that it proposes standards requiring retail electricity suppliers to generate 25% of their load from renewable resources by 2025.
However, one key weakness of the draft is its support for unproven carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology for coal plants. In addition, the bill’s greenhouse gas emission limits are weakened by a provision which allows regulated entities to purchase offsets to increase their emissions above their allowances, up to a limit of 2 billion tons of GHGs.
Overall, reception by environmental groups has been relatively positive. “Indispensable” climate blogger Joe Romm gives the bill a B+, Greenpeace calls the bill “a good first step,” the Environmental Defense Fund says the Chairmen are moving forward “boldly and deliberately,” and the World Resources Institute calls it a “good starting point.”
According to their website, the Energy and Commerce Committee plans to complete consideration of the legislation by Memorial Day. The preliminary schedule is as follows:
• Week of April 20: Energy and Environment Subcommittee Hearings
• Week of April 27: Energy and Environment Subcommittee Markup Period Begins
• Week of May 11: Full Energy and Commerce Committee Markup Period Begins
McGill delegates to Powershift, a major climate conference in Washington, D.C., relay the energy and spirit of today’s environmental movement
Devin McDougall
The McGill Daily
During Reading Week, a delegation of 14 McGill students joined students from every Canadian province and all 50 states in Washington D.C. for Powershift 2009, the largest youth climate conference in the history of the United States. Over the course of four days at the end of February, 12,000 students gathered for the conference, 2,500 attended a demonstration at a coal plant near the Capitol, and 350 visits with elected officials were scheduled, some drawing hundreds of attendees.
The conference began on Friday, February 27, with a day-long workshop on community organizing by Marshall Ganz, a veteran activist and professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Ganz taught techniques for developing effective narratives about social change. An effective public narrative, Ganz said, “must translate into words the values that move us to act.” Narrative is of particular importance in a democracy, Ganz emphasized. “Democracy is based on the premise that equality of voice can balance inequality of resources.”
On Saturday and Sunday, McGill students attended a range of climate-related panels and workshops, addressing subjects from mountain-top removal coal mining to media training to emissions trading systems. For Nora Hope, a U1 Psychology student, one of the most interesting sessions focused on campaign strategy. “I felt empowered to start making a difference in an informed and organized manner,” she said after the session.
Continue reading Sustaining voices: Powershift 2009
|
|