Presidential politics and climate change

*UPDATE: (6/12) -- an excellent editorial in the Boston Globe covers the way that McCain falls far short on energy and environmental policy*

In the wake-up call issued by the report I mentioned yesterday, it is made clear that serious action must be taken to move America into a post-carbon (read: oil-free) future. Even Bush's own science advisor has broken ranks and admits the facts argue for a serious change in policy. Now that we're down to choosing between Obama and McSame in November, do we have a clear choice between presidential candidates in plans and priorities with respect to climate change? Yes, we do.

First, Democratic candidate Obama has promised serious action in the form of a market-based cap and trade solution to emissions and real investment in a clean energy infrastructure to improve our national security and environment simultaneously. The vicious cycle of empowering Iran and other rogue nations by sending them billions in oil wealth, then concomitantly fighting them and spending billions on national security in the Middle East, is desperately in need of change. Barack will change that broken record.

While John McCain's own website reports that he supports:

1. Climate Policy Should Be Built On Scientifically-Sound, Mandatory Emission Reduction Targets And Timetables.
2. Climate Policy Should Utilize A Market-Based Cap And Trade System.
3. Climate Policy Must Include Mechanisms To Minimize Costs And Work Effectively With Other Markets.
4. Climate Policy Must Spur The Development And Deployment Of Advanced Technology.
5. Climate Policy Must Facilitate International Efforts To Solve The Problem.

It turns out, that with a little digging, one can see that McCain has not voted to take any action whatsoever on climate change, often being the only Senator in Congress not to do so:

• On June 21, 2007, the Senate voted on the Baucus amendment to the energy bill, which would have removed some oil company subsidies in order to fund renewable energy. The amendment failed to pass. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On the same day, the Senate held a cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill. The vote succeeded. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On Dec. 7, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat on the energy bill, which had become substantially bolder after being aligned with the House version. The vote failed. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On Dec. 13, 2007, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill, which had the Renewable Portfolio Standard stripped out of it but retained a measure that would shift oil company subsidies to renewables. The vote failed -- by one vote, 59-40. Where was McCain? He didn't vote -- the only senator not to do so.
• On Feb. 6, 2008, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass a stimulus bill containing a number of green energy incentives. The cloture motion failed, by one vote. Where was McCain? He didn't vote -- again, the only senator not to do so.

Of course, Barack was there and voted his principles. This pattern undercuts the supposed "green-ness" of the GOP candidate, whose claims to fame mainly rest on three past laurels:

• He voted against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has sponsored or cosponsored the occasional, modest environmental protection bill (protecting whales; awarding tax credits for energy efficiency; boosting fuel efficiency). (Note, however, that his lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters is a measly 29 percent.)
• In 2003, he and Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced the first-ever climate bill to the Senate: the Climate Stewardship Act, which would establish a carbon cap-and-trade system to reduce U.S. emissions. It was introduced and voted down in 2003 and again in 2005.
• He acknowledges, without hedging, that anthropogenic climate change is real, and speaks eloquently about the need to address it. He has frequently criticized the Bush administration for inaction.

These years-old deviations from standard GOP orthodoxy have been undone by the weakness of his current proposals:

Relative to what's offered by other Senate cap-and-trade bills (and the plans of his Democratic rivals), the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act -- even in its 2007 incarnation -- is weak. Unlike other such bills, McCain's specifically sets aside massive and unnecessary subsidies for the nuclear industry. Its emissions targets are exceeded even by the lowest-common-denominator bill now heading to the Senate floor, the Lieberman-Warner America's Climate Security Act.

This is to say nothing of the Sanders-Boxer bill, the strongest extant climate legislation, which now boasts both Clinton and Obama as co-sponsors and includes even more aggressive targets. Beyond that, we have the plans offered by the leading Democratic campaigns, which offer bold targets, 100 percent auctioning of pollution permits, and detailed plans for how to allocate the auction revenue to boost the green economy.

McCain has never updated his position on cap-and-trade legislation, despite the steady advance in public opinion and climate science since he introduced his bill in 2003. He has not discussed, much less matched, the ambitious targets of his Dem rivals. He has not signed onto the Sanders legislation, or even Lieberman's new bill. He has not said whether he'll vote for it, and has hinted ($ub. rqd) that he'll vote Nay unless big buckets of nuclear pork are added.

In short, McCain's take on cap-and-trade legislation is now anachronistic, lagging well behind what's current, what's possible, and what's needed.

Basically, rather than update his position by voting new measures into law, he's avoiding confronting the right wing of his party by skipping every climate change vote. This portends poorly for the future. To summarize, a clear choice must be made by voters in November -- will we continue the same old, same old energy policies, those that send billions to the Middle East and Venezuela, only to turn around and spend billions more trying to fight and contain these countries? Or will we dry up the well that funds terrorist activity by moving towards a post-carbon future? One candidate has already shown courage and candor by opposing the gas tax, the other showed ignorance and political pandering.

You'll decide.

New EIA conference & peak oil presentations

Go read this post on a recent EIA conference for its great data on peak oil.

It's a topic I've bloviated about a few times, but it doesn't seem to get old to me.

Oil industry conference

The question is not that at some point in the future, demand for oil will outstrip production. The question is whether it has already come.

Another CNN Money article examines the question of peak oil, which I've written on here and here within the past few months. There are a few eye-opening quotes from oil industry executives:

"An oil crisis is coming, and sooner than most people think," said John Hess, chief executive of Hess Corp (HES, Fortune 500)., the integrated oil and gas company with 2006 sales of $29 billion. "All oil producers are not investing enough today."

Rising income of consumers has propped up demand even as crude prices have spiked five fold in the past six years. Hess offered some perspective: On a unit-to-unit basis, oil is still about 10 times cheaper than a Starbucks latte.

Runaway growth in oil use in India and China - the two countries are expected to boast a combined 1.2 billion vehicles by 2050, up from 20 million a few years ago - is expected to push demand above supply sometime between 2015 and 2020, Hess said.

"It's not a matter of endowment, it's a matter of investment," he said.

A small but growing number of analysts disagree with Hess' assertion that there is enough oil in the ground. They say production of oil has peaked or will peak soon, followed by a slow but steady period of decline that could cause major social unrest.

Oil executives, while acknowledging that crude deposits are ultimately limited, said that new technologies should keep crude production rising for at least several decades.

"Many perceive the supply challenge as one of scarcity," said Mark Albers, a senior vice president at Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500). "There is no question oil is a finite resource, but it's far from finished."

Albers pointed to a U.S. government survey saying the world has three trillion barrels of oil left - compared to the one trillion used so far in history.

The question is how those three billion barrels are stored: are they heavy crude? Shale oil deposits? Far below conventional drilling limits at around 5 miles?

Many of these reserves would be more expensive to produce than the current price of oil would make profitable. Obviously, if we narrow our supply down to these reserves, the price would escalate further and make recovery economically feasible. However, at those same prices, producing energy from alternative and renewable resources would be morally, environmentally and economically superior.

Even as they claim that there is still plenty of oil left, they ignore the essential question of whether the rate of production can keep up with the rate of demand. The short and simple answer is...no.

Later in the article there are some admissions from executives that the oil industry will have to play a positive role in addressing climate change. They sound more realistic than the chimp-in-chief...whose days, by the way, are thankfully numbered:

Deep Thoughts (with Jack Handey): Oil, v2

In the first installment of deep thoughts on oil, I tried to distance myself from a claim that we're on the right side of the Hubbert curve with respect to oil production.

Even the most optimistic scenarios have the right-side of the curve pushed out to 2040 or so:

Now, as I pointed out in the first installment, along with the higher price of oil comes new methodologies of extraction, like shale oil. These same sorts of development may push the availability of oil out for another 500 or 1000 years, but the question/problem is the rate of production versus rate of consumption. At the risk of sounding like cursed Cassandra, I now have a few more authoritative voices to back up my fears: consider The Economist's article this week on C. de Margerie, CEO of Total Oil.

Mr de Margerie's opinions also stand out, at least within the ranks of senior oilmen. Last year he declared that the world would never be able to increase its output of oil from the current level of 85m barrels per day (b/d) to 100m b/d, let alone the 120m b/d that energy analysts predict will be needed by 2030. That is in stark contrast with the view of Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Total's larger American rival, Exxon Mobil, who argues that the world is neither short of oil, nor likely to be any time soon. It also contradicts the line of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which claims that the only thing that prevents its members from producing more oil is the fear that no one will buy it.
...
Mr de Margerie is careful to point out that he is not predicting “peak oil” in a geological sense. His definition of peak oil is “when supply cannot meet demand”. He believes that the fuel that the world needs to keep its cars and factories running may well be out there, somewhere. It is just getting harder and harder to extract, for technical as well as political reasons. For one thing, he points out, the output of existing fields is declining by 5m-6m b/d every year. That means that oil firms have to find lots of new fields just to keep production at today's levels. Moreover, the sorts of fields that Western oil firms are starting to develop, in very deep water, or of nearly solid, tar-like oil, are ever more technically challenging. There is not enough skilled labour and fancy equipment in the world, he believes, to ramp up production as quickly as people hope.
...
Perhaps the best measure of Mr de Margerie's gloomy outlook for the oil industry is his eagerness to get Total into nuclear power. Though he says he is not about to increase Total's token 1% stake in Areva, France's nuclear-engineering giant, he clearly sees nuclear energy as part of Total's future. Why would an oil firm want to enter such a controversial field, unless it feels that it is already out on a limb?

Although I doubt we'll see doomsday scenarios like this one playing out any time soon, it is necessary to be mindful of how many other predictions about oil have been wrong -- like how, back in August, experts declared it would never go up to $100/barrel. I'm ready to buy that Honda hydrogen car & power station now.

The future is now

Honda has thrown down the gauntlet on H₂ fuel cell vehicles.

Availability of H₂ filling stations will hinder the distribution of the vehicle, although hydrogen infrastructure will eventually morph into existing gasoline stations. And, if it doesn't, no worries: the home power station Honda has been working on for years can solve that problem.

The idea is simple -- use solar cells to "split water" and form your own fuel at home, as shown in the figure below:


The most beautiful thing about this is that gas/oil/coal companies can't do a goddamned thing to stop people from buying these home units and choosing hydrogen. They can (and probably will) slow the distribution of hydrogen at filling stations by basically refusing to integrate the new technology at the rate at which they are capable. This compounds the already-noted issues with transitioning to a hydrogen economy.

I can't wait until oil goes the way of the dodo. Unfortunately, that won't probably happen for a loooooong time.

Kudos to Honda.

Deep Thoughts (with Jack Handey): Oil

Those with no plan for the future will inherit the plans laid by others.

I used to laugh when my dad told me he thought the government should impose a $1 tax on gasoline. I tried to tell him how that would slow growth to a crawl and cripple the economy for years. After reading today's Friedman column and giving it some thought, I now wonder if ol' dad didn't have it right all along.

What worries me a great deal is the relationship between oil and climate change and war.

At the risk of sounding like cursed Cassandra, I want to wax poetic about peak oil for one second. No one actually knows how much oil the world has left, because the Arab states refuse to allow independent audits of their reserves and fields. It could very well be the case that they have been plotting (for decades) to hobble the mighty US giant by making us completely dependent on their oil up to the day it runs dry. At that moment, our economy and our military would be crippled. When I think about Iran wanting to build nuclear facilities, even at the risk of war, it only reinforces this concern. It's like they know we're on the right side of Hubbert's bell curve. If this is true, friends, then we're all fucked.

But, let's say this is not the case at all, and that oil fears are unfounded. Let's say for a moment that we have 200 years of oil supply left in the ground. In fact, recent advances in shale oil technology seem to hold great promise that perhaps as much as 15 million barrels per day of our 21 million barrels per day consumed could be domestically supplied. What does this change in terms of US foreign policy? Not too much, given that we are still not capable of being "energy independent" -- i.e., able to supply all of our own oil demand.

Few people, certainly, would deny that those who control our oil supplies wield enormous influence over us. Some might argue that they are co-dependent since their economies become structured on the export/sale of this resource to us, and so in effect, that we are in a symbiotic relationship. They might say that worrying that Iran/OPEC/whomever would stop selling oil is absurd because their countries would bankrupt themselves.

People like the Heritage Foundation, in this assessment of the ties between national security and US dependence on oil, are irrational and incoherent:

Energy independence, defined as competitive local production of all the energy we need, remains a mirage. It is energy security that we need to accomplish, in which abundant and affordable energy supply is within reach of all Americans. Rec­ognizing the inherent, systemic, and long-term instability of the global oil markets is the first step in addressing the problem the U.S. is facing.

This was their grand, sweeping conclusion. They spell out the fact that by 2017, 70% of US energy needs will be imported if current trends continue, but then they say to just keep importing it. Don't solve the problem, in other words, just use more military force to try to secure the sources of those imports. Absolutely irrational...especially given that the DoD uses more oil than any other source in our country.

This came after admitting that striking Iran would be disastrous for the global supply of oil, and could push prices up to $83 pb if Iran's 15 million barrels were cut off from world supply:

The economic consequences of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities to the world energy mar­ket would likely be significant, if not disastrous. Immediately following military action, according to a Turkish assessment, uncertainty about Iran's abili­ty to sustain oil production at the current level of 4 mbd could drive oil prices above $80 per barrel.[9] If Iran retaliated and escalated by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, which would merely require plac­ing anti-ship mines in the strait,[10] the temporary loss of more that 15 million barrels of oil to the international market could drive oil prices above $83 per barrel, the historic height of the 1970s (adjusted for inflation).[11] In fact, a recent Heritage Foundation war game and economic study specu­lated that oil prices could go as high as $120/barrel for a limited time.

Guess what? We're already at $95 and this supply hasn't been cut off. Try again. Looks more like $120 is a closer guess.

Conservatives have no answers when it comes to energy policy. They want to continue the status quo. This is the most irresponsible and dangerous possible approach to our country's long-term economic stability and national security. We must develop more energy independence. Now.

Whether or not you agree with the science of climate change, you cannot deny that oil revenues are being funneled to terrorism and that we are, indirectly, buying the very weapons and supporting the very enemies we send our troops to die fighting with each $ we spend on oil. Saudi Arabia and Iran are both state sponsors of terrorism, and their entire economies have been supported by our addiction to oil. In graphical form, it looks like this:


Learn to equate a gasoline pump with a gun, and you'll start to get the picture.

The energy alternatives already exist, and so the government's role at this point is to make those alternatives viable and competitive on the world market. So long as oil-sponsored politicians run our country, nothing will change. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton know this, and have great energy plans to fix the central issue of transitioning America's oil-based economy into a green and sustainable one.

It's time to elect a responsible and bold leader as America's chief executive, not another regressive conservative who cares more about the status quo and doesn't connect our oil addiction to our wars and national insecurity.

Go progressive.

I agree with Jack Handey -- we need to elect a robot as president next, so we can recover from the Bush years by allowing the newly-elected robot President to tour the country and take bullets from enraged citizens.

Don't Forget

That gas prices are entirely to blame on the war in Iraq. Don't believe me?

(source)

Notice that prices dropped after 9/11, then returned to their pre-9/11 average, until we invaded, at which point prices skyrocketed, and have ever since.

Let me remind you of how quickly things have gone to hell. Gas prices averaged $1.60 a gallon in February 2003. Then Bush went to war in Iraq one month later, and prices have soared ever since. So there is a very real issue as to whether George Bush directly caused the doubling of gas prices in America. You can't blame September 11 for the increase beyond $1.60 - the $1.60 price was a good year and a half after September 11. And four months before September 11, gas prices were averaging $1.70 a gallon. And actually, gas prices fell in the months following September 11 - for example, gas prices averaged $1.24 a gallon six weeks after September 11. Thus, September 11 had no effect whatsoever on long-term (or even medium-term) gas prices. (source)

Nothing else happened between February '03 and now that could explain such a leap; demand in China and India has increased, but not exponentially within two years' time. Prices doubled from Feb '03 to Sept '05 -- in 19 months. All of Bush's Texas buddies are wiping with $100 bills. Anyone who protests otherwise doesn't know the facts, or is too blinded by partisanship to care about the truth.
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Technorati tags: Politics

War Oil Profiteering

I mentioned a few days ago the breaking news about the oil companies getting what we've all worried this war was about all along -- a huge share of Iraq's oil revenues. In that post (or see Facebook note) I said:

We've all been assured, time and again, that invading Iraq had nothing to do with oil. Very recently leaked internal (confidential) government documents indicate a production sharing agreement was just reached between private companies and the council appointed to head Iraq's oil reserves. Surprise, surprise. Read the original here, or the new version's translation here. Watch this from Jim Hightower.

Well, more confirmation to confirm our most cynical suspicions:

The 'IoS' today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. To the victors, the oil? That is how some experts view this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 years

So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.

And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.

Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.

C&L says:

According to The Raw Story, in Saturday's New York Times it's revealed that somewhere between $5 and $15 million dollars in Iraqi oil goes missing every day. It's becoming clear why Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force meetings were made classified and why attempts to gain access to records from those meetings met with such strong resistance and are still being kept from the public to this day.

Indeed. Impeach these thugs, these liars, these crooks. They used the blood of American soldiers to purchase oil profits for their buddies back in Texas, at Halliburton and Blackwater. If it was only a scant 200 years ago, we'd definitely see them hang for this.
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Technorati tags: Politics

Jim Hightower on Oil Looting in Iraq by US/UK

We've all been assured, time and again, that invading Iraq had nothing to do with oil. Very recently leaked internal (confidential) government documents indicate a production sharing agreement was just reached between private companies and the council appointed to head Iraq's oil reserves. Surprise, surprise. Read the original here, or the new version's translation here. Watch this from Jim Hightower.

PS: Check out -- "The Price of Oil" and "Whose Oil is it, Anyway?", which was printed in the NYT 3/13/07, just after the documents above were leaked.
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Technorati tags: Politics