NewEnergyNews: CAN OBAMA HOLD TOGETHER A NEW ENERGY COALITION?/

NewEnergyNews

Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

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YESTERDAY

THINGS-TO-THINK-ABOUT WEDNESDAY, August 23:

  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And The New Energy Boom
  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And the EV Revolution
  • THE DAY BEFORE

  • Weekend Video: Coming Ocean Current Collapse Could Up Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Impacts Of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current Collapse
  • Weekend Video: More Facts On The AMOC
  • THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 15-16:

  • Weekend Video: The Truth About China And The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Florida Insurance At The Climate Crisis Storm’s Eye
  • Weekend Video: The 9-1-1 On Rooftop Solar
  • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 8-9:

  • Weekend Video: Bill Nye Science Guy On The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: The Changes Causing The Crisis
  • Weekend Video: A “Massive Global Solar Boom” Now
  • THE LAST DAY UP HERE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 1-2:

  • The Global New Energy Boom Accelerates
  • Ukraine Faces The Climate Crisis While Fighting To Survive
  • Texas Heat And Politics Of Denial
  • --------------------------

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    Founding Editor Herman K. Trabish

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    WEEKEND VIDEOS, June 17-18

  • Fixing The Power System
  • The Energy Storage Solution
  • New Energy Equity With Community Solar
  • Weekend Video: The Way Wind Can Help Win Wars
  • Weekend Video: New Support For Hydropower
  • Some details about NewEnergyNews and the man behind the curtain: Herman K. Trabish, Agua Dulce, CA., Doctor with my hands, Writer with my head, Student of New Energy and Human Experience with my heart

    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

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  • WEEKEND VIDEOS, August 24-26:
  • Happy One-Year Birthday, Inflation Reduction Act
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 1
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 2

    Wednesday, May 27, 2009

    CAN OBAMA HOLD TOGETHER A NEW ENERGY COALITION?

    Testing the Resolve of Obama on Energy
    John Harwood, May 24, 2009 (NY Times)
    and
    U.S. climate negotiator sees 'impressive' actions by China
    Lisa Friedman, May 22, (NY Times)
    and
    Obama’s New California-Based Climate Policy: Six Key Things To Know
    William Bradley, May 20, 2009 (Huffington Post)

    SUMMARY
    2 historic New Energy/Environmental measures moved ahead in the week before the Washington, D.C., Memorial Day recess. Taken together, they represent the challenging agenda President Obama is working to enact. They also demonstrate the President’s political conundrums.

    The 2 measures: (1) New, much stronger corporate average fuel economy (CAFÉ) regulations to be enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now require U.S. automakers to improve their fleet mileage 5% yearly through 2016, moving the U.S. to 35.5 miles per gallon 4 years sooner than the 2007 energy bill would have required. (2) An energy/climate bill pushed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would institute the first-ever national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) requiring regulated U.S. utilities to obtain 15% of their power from New Energy sources by 2020 and would also institute the first-ever national emissions reduction regime through a cap&trade system aimed at cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs) 17% by 2020 and 80% by 2050.

    The new CAFÉ order won support from automakers because it resolves the question of multiple regulations into a single standard and because the Obama bailout is providing financial support for the auto companies to make the aggressive structural changes necessary to meet it. Environmentalists applauded the fact that the new standard met the high level of emissions cuts called for in California’s nation-leading standard.

    ABC describes the unique coalition. From immreport via YouTube.

    The energy/climate bill held its Committee support from Democrats with backing from Big Businesses. The support held because the bill's authors made concessions to power producers and Big Coal that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, concessions that moderate environmentalists were willing to settle for in exchange for progress on the RES and emissions cuts. Republicans and moderate Democrats pushed for more concessions and activist environmentalists condemned the bill for its concessions.

    The deep split provoked by the energy/climate legislation in Committee suggested how hard it will be for the Obama administration to get its legislation through Congress.

    Such a law would be difficult under the best of circumstances because (1) voters don’t get excited when gas pump prices are relatively low and weather does not instill fears of “warming” and because (2) many Democrats will not be able to support a cap&trade system because of the widespread misperception that it is – as Republicans have misnamed it – “cap and tax.”

    The first and possibly most important challenge for President Obama is getting the energy/climate bill through the House of Representatives. The Democratic majority in the House includes the Blue Dog coalition of Representatives from fossil fuel-dependent states like Arkansas and Texas. 4 such moderate Democrats voted against passing the bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee and many more could resist the legislation on the House floor unless it contains more provisions for oil and gas producing constituencies and for the nuclear energy industry. Making concessions to the Blue Dogs, however, could alienate New Energy supporters on the left.

    The attack from the right. (See the attack from the left below.) From infohwyguy via YouTube.

    Blue Dogs and Republican opponents have also condemned cap&trade energy/climate legislation because it will, they say, put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with China. Multiple studies report otherwise. (See CAP&TRADE, INDUSTRY AND CONGRESS and TEXAS STUDY SAYS EMISSION CUTS COULD COME AT MODERATE COST)

    The Obama administration has already begun moving to correct the impression that China is incurring no emissions-cutting costs. Head climate negotiator Todd Stern recently summarized all that China is doing, all that it is spending, to build New Energy and implement Energy Efficiency. He called China's emissions-reduction efforts as "...quite significant..." and "...quite impressive..."

    Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) is scheduled for talks in Beijing this summer and the President will go there in the fall. That either of them can exert enough pressure to get China to do or say something that will turn the momentum in Congress in favor of energy/climate legislation remains dubious.

    The strongest leverage the President has to force Congress to pass energy/climate legislation is the threat of further EPA legal action if Congress does not act. Under the authority of the Clean Air Act (CAA), EPA has the responsibility to take action against pollutants. A 2007 Supreme Court decision gave EPA the right to name GhGs as pollutants. It was this EPA authority to regulate vehicle tailpipe emissions that made it possible for the President to put together the coalition of support for the new CAFÉ standards.

    Some believe such EPA legal action against economy-wide GhG emissions threatens the private sector enough to initiate an avalanche of counter-suits that could tie climate action up in court for a decade. Others say the 2007 Supreme Court ruling makes the threat of further legal action real enough to represent leverage. Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, said he has no doubt his boss has the determination to take on what one member of the administration called “the biggest of all economic coalitions.”

    Because of the threat of the legal action and the President’s commitment to energy/climate legislation and a cap&trade system, there remains a strong possibility of legislative action through a tentative, flimsy and temporary political coalition - even in the Senate - IF the President and his administration can hold the coalition together.

    The attack from the left. (See the attack from the right above.) From TheCleanDotOrg via YouTube

    COMMENTARY
    Of the challenges before the Obama team in policy, politics and diplomacy, it might appear the revolution they want to create in health insurance – a change that has been pursued since the 2nd Truman administration of 1948-to-1952 – would be the most daunting, but the energy/climate fight could be harder because the coalition the administration must hold together to get the legislation through is more complicated.

    Both energy/climate measures pushed forward demonstrated the Obama administration’s capacity for coalition building. The new vehicle efficiency standards got the support of the car companies and environmentalists as well as Republican and Democratic Governors. The energy/climate legislation got little support from Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee but won big backing in the business community.

    Hit from the left. (click to enlarge)

    The public’s interest in the health insurance fight is broad-based and engaged. The public’s interest in the energy/climate issues waxes and wanes with gas pump prices.

    Health insurance legislation will reportedly be undertaken in the Senate with reconciliation procedures normally reserved for budget battles that require only 50 votes for passage. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) and administration stalking horses in the Senate say they will not use such a strategy for the energy/climate legislation. This means the energy/climate bill will require a filibuster-busting 60 votes to pass. Though the defection of Arlen Specter (previously R-, now D-Penn) gives them 60 votes (assuming Minnesota clears the red tape to get Al Franken seated), some of those Democratic votes come from fossil fuel-dependent states and may not be cast in support of legislation that it is said will drive gas and electricity prices higher.

    If the conundrum of pulling in Blue Dog votes and alienating support on the left seems unlikely, consider that environmental stalwarts such as the Sierra Club and 1Sky have expressed strong dissatisfaction with the bill and more activist groups like Greenpeace the Rainforest Action Network have already dismissed supporting it.

    President Obama’s bottom line for 2009 is to get something from Congress – even if it is just House approval and Senate rejection – that he can take to the international summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December to show the U.S. is sympathetic to the world’s struggle to reverse global climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

    Hit from the right. (click to enlarge)

    QUOTES
    - Douglas Holtz-Eakin, policy director, 2008 McCain campaign and cap&trade supporter: “The ultimate objective is to get something through the House so they can show the international community progress at Copenhagen…”
    - Dan Weiss, Senior Fellow/Director of Climate Strategy, Center for American Progress:
    “[Cap-and-trade skeptics]will write its obituary many times before Obama signs it…”
    - Todd Stern, climate change negotiator, Obama administration: “If you look at what a country like China is actually doing with respect to climate change, it's quite significant…It's quite impressive in many ways…In fact, they have a 20 percent energy intensity goal, they've got a significant renewable energy goal, and they've got an auto standard that is about where our brand-new ones are…"It's clearly not enough…[but] they've got a lot of things going on."
    - Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff to President Obama, on the President’s willingness to move independently on energy/climate legislation: “People always miss that toughness, that steel in him… It would be a warning to all those other interests not to underestimate this president…That would be a mistake.”
    - Former Senator Timothy E. Wirth, head, United Nations Foundation: “Will they all pull in the same direction and take on the biggest of all economic coalitions? The jury’s out.”

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