Update, 7/27/12, "Readers Jump Into the Climate Fray," NY Times, Green blog, John Broder
The relevant part of the above entry is that Mr. Broder cites Mr. Shellenberger and the reality of lower CO2 from the US. The item is toward the end of the piece. via Tom Nelson
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Mr. Broder, perhaps you're unaware of the good news. US CO2 emissions have dropped steadily since at least 2006 and are going lower! This has been acknowledged in the NY Times at least once. Your 7/26 article ignores the new reality and instead promises to ramp up attention about a non-existent US CO2 problem with 'experts' leading up to the election. Your piece contains a sub-headline as follows: "The Agenda: Planet, The lagging U.S. response to climate change." The truth is the exact opposite. Other countries' CO2 hasn't dropped,
- despite hundreds of billions spent on cap and trade and extra taxes.
7/26/12, "A Climate and Energy Stalemate," NY Times, Green blog, John Broder
"On the day he clinched the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, Barack Obama declared that future generations would look back and say, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” He made addressing climate change, domestically and as part of a concerted international effort, a central tenet of his campaign platform and a top priority of his first year in office.
Then the president backed off, hamstrung by an economic crisis and implacable opposition from Republicans, who were cheered on and financed by their ideological allies and fossil fuel companies. International talks organized by the United Nations made scant progress, not least because the United States was unwilling to accept a binding accord unless it required comparable emissions cuts by all countries regardless of their stage of economic development.
As Mr. Obama seeks re-election, a warming climate and its related challenges — more frequent droughts and wildfires, rising seas and more violent storms — are near the bottom of the national agenda. The Republicans, some of whom as recently as four years ago shared Democrats’ concern about a warming climate and advocated a market-based approach known as cap and trade to reduce climate-altering emissions, are nearly unanimous in questioning whether global warming even exists. Democrats, burned by the Senate’s rejection of legislation addressing climate change and wary of any policy that could be portrayed as raising energy costs, have fallen silent on the topic.
The public is divided, with fervent minorities at either end of the debate and a broad crowd in the middle that believes that human activity is altering the climate but remains conflicted over what government, corporations and individuals should do about it. Attuned to the public’s ambivalence, both political parties and their presidential candidates are playing down the climate issue. Instead, what passes for an energy debate in the United States is rivalry over which party is more devoted to extracting oil and gas from the ground and the seabed.Over the new few months, we hope to jump-start a discussion about energy and climate policy in the United States. We’ll have experts weigh in and welcome readers’ opinions on broad questions that may be neglected on the campaign trail.
Is climate change a real and present danger? Why does the United States lag behind many other industrialized nations in addressing it? Do Americans need to reduce their energy consumption? Should there be limits to where and when and how they drill for oil, frack for gas and mine coal? How far should regulators go in trying to reduce air pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases? Should the federal government subsidize alternative sources of energy like the sun, wind and biofuels?
In campaigns past, those complex issues have been reduced to slogans like “Drill, baby, drill” or simplistic calls to eliminate the Energy Department or the Environmental Protection Agency. With your help, we’ll try to dig a little deeper." via Tom Nelson
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Mr. Broder, the NY Times has elsewhere acknowledged the big news:
7/15/12, "Recession Special: Cleaner Air," NY Times, Matthew Wald
"What the government has not mandated, the economy is doing on its own: emissions of global warming gases in the United States are down.
According to the Energy Department, carbon dioxide emissions peaked in this country in 2005 and will not reach that level again until the early 2020s.
“It’s important to note that the future isn’t what it used to be,” said David Doniger, policy director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He pointed out that the Energy Department’s projection of emissions in 2020 was lower in 2008 than in 2007, and has kept falling.
How could that be? In part, the Great Recession has been good for something.
“The recession has led to a smaller economy, less activity and less energy consumption,” said Revis W. James, director of the Energy Technology Assessment Center at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium."-----------------------------------------------------
The climate industry balloons via taxes, regulations, administration:
In the US, "compliance with (EPA) regulations costs the U.S. economy more than $1.75 trillion per year." And $55.4 billion more in policing and administration. EPA's prohibition on light bulbs will cost $10.9 billion a year.
8/23/11, "The Alarming Cost Of Climate Change Hysteria," Forbes, Larry Bell
"The U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) can’t figure out what benefits taxpayers are getting from the many billions of dollars spent each year on policies that are purportedly aimed at addressing climate change."...
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A few examples of climate cash sought in 2011:
1/11/11, "Big Money in Climate Change: Who Gives, Who Gets," Al Fin
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8/10/11, "U.S. Army Creates Renewables Office: Billions to Be Spent," GreenTechMedia.com
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11/21/11, "Analysis: U.S. government a tenuous beachhead for biofuel firms," Reuters
"The U.S. military has jemerged as a key ally for fledgling producers of non-food-based biofuels."...
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And, "Only 12% (of net US petroleum imports) came from Saudi Arabia last year, down from nearly 19% in 1993."...
12/16/11, "Oil boomlet sweeps U.S. as exports and production rise," USA Today, Wendy Koch
"The U.S. exported more oil-based fuels than it imported in the first nine months of this year, making it likely that 2011 will be the first time since 1949 that the nation is a net exporter of such goods, primarily diesel....
"It's dramatic. It's transformative," Edward Morse, a former senior U.S. energy official who now directs global commodities research at Citigroup, says of the historic shifts. He says the U.S. is importing a smaller share — 49% in 2010, down from 60% in 2005 — of the oil it uses, adding: "We're moving toward energy independence.""...
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11/30/11, "U.S. Nears Milestone: Net Fuel Exporter," Wall St. Journal, by L. Pleven, R. Gold
"U.S. exports of gasoline, diesel and other oil-based fuels are soaring, putting the nation on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011
for the first time in 62 years.
A combination of booming demand from emerging markets and faltering domestic activity means the U.S. is exporting more fuel than it imports,
- upending the historical norm.
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CRS says congress may want to consider that global warming isn't happening anyway.
3/26/12, "Obama Requests $770 Million to Fight Global Warming Overseas," CNS News, Matt Cover
"The Obama administration has requested $770 million in federal funds to combat the effects of global warming in developing countries, a new congressional report details, continuing its policy of using foreign aid to combat the effects of global warming in the developing world.
The figure, from a recent report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), shows that despite another year of $1 trillion deficits, the Obama administration continues to pursue its policy of using foreign aid funds for anti-global warming measures – known as the Global Climate Change Initiative (GCCI).
According to CRS, the government has spent a total of $2.5 billion on GCCI since 2010 on overseas anti-global warming efforts in Latin America, Asia, and Africa."...
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US CO2 drops steeply and is going lower:
6/26/12, "The Incredible Shrinking Carbon Pollution Forecast - Part 2," switchboard.nrdc.org, Dan Lashof
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6/29/12, "US Carbon Output Forecasts Shrink Again," American Interest, Walter Russell Mead
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6/4/12, "Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006," Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage
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6/22/12, "U.S. cuts greenhouse gases despite do-nothing Congress," CNN, Steve Hargreaves
"Even factoring in a stronger economy, forecasters see greenhouse gas emissions continuing to fall."...
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4/21/12, "Why [CO2] Emissions Are Declining in the U.S. But Not in Europe," by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, newgeography.com
"As we note below in a new article for Yale360, a funny thing happened: U.S. emissions started going down in 2005 and are expected to decline further over the next decade."
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7/2/12, "CO2 Emissions Will Likely Fall This Year to 1991 Levels," Carpe Diem, Mark J. Perry
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11/23/11, "Europe's $287 billion carbon 'waste': UBS report," The Australian, by Sid Maher
"SWISS banking giant UBS says the European Union's emissions trading scheme has cost the continent's consumers $287 billion for "almost zero impact" on cutting carbon emissions."...EU CO2 trading provided "windfall profits" to participants paid for by "electricity customers.""
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4/23/12, "'I made a mistake': Gaia theory scientist James Lovelock admits he was 'alarmist' about the impact of climate change," UK Daily Mail, L. Warren
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7/16/10, "Carbon Trading Used as Money-Laundering Front," Jakarta Globe
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10/8/10, "Murder on the Carbon Express: Interpol Takes On Emissions Fraud," Mother Jones, M. Schapiro
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5/6/12, "US Leads EU in CO2 Reductions," Walter Russell Mead, American Interest
=======================1/25/2009, "Global warming industry becomes too big to fail," Timothy Carney, Washington Examiner
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A 2011 report noted EIA results through 2009, US CO2 emissions dropped steadily since 1999. If, hypothetically, US temperatures have been on the increase, they couldn't possibly be related to US carbon dioxide emissions:
4/14/11, "Biggest Drop in U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions," World Climate Report
"In 2009, greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. experienced their biggest drop since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began tracking them during the 1990-2009 timeframe."
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12/4/2009, "Carbon Capitalists Warming to Climate Market Using Derivatives," Bloomberg
"Says the NRDC’s Stevenson...“There are trillions of dollars needed to make this transition, and companies need the banks,” says Stevenson, a former trader for London-based hedge fund firm Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP."
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7/02/09, "The Great American Bubble Machine: How Goldman Sachs has Engineered Every Major Market Manipulation Since the Great Depression," Rolling Stone, by Matt Taibbi
"A groundbreaking new commodities bubble,
- called cap-and-trade.
- except it has one delicious new wrinkle:
If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices
- will be government-mandated.
- Goldman won't even have to rig the game.
.
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