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Climate Slips Off US Agenda
WASHINGTON – The Canadian government's strategy to let Washington set the pace on climate change has fallen into disarray as American lawmakers lose their appetite for aggressive carbon-cutting legislation in 2010.
Greenpeace activists wear masks of 'carbon dioxide' winners, from left, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as they protest against the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen, outside the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Jan. 22, 2010. (AP photo/Sakchai Lalit) Public anger exposed by Tuesday's electoral uprising in Massachusetts is resetting Washington priorities across the board, as Democrats and Republicans scramble to address economic issues in a bid to outpace an anti-incumbent mood ahead of November's midterm elections.
Few expect President Barack Obama to relinquish his agonizing quest for a health-care overhaul as priorities shift. But Washington analysts doubt the White House has the political nerve to simultaneously move forward with equally controversial cap-and-trade legislation, which many expect now will be punted to 2011.
The developments may be a mixed blessing for Ottawa, which has long held to a wait-and-see approach on U.S. decisions that could determine where Alberta's carbon-intensive oil sands fit in America's energy future.
Climate campaigners looking for aggressive American follow-up to the uncertain outcome of December's Copenhagen Summit are putting on a brave face, insisting momentum is on their side. But their enthusiasm flies in the face of several recent U.S. surveys, including a 16-state poll released Wednesday by the National Federation of Independent Business, pointing to the political unpopularity of the stalled climate and energy bill.
"Maybe we will be dead sooner because of global warming. But it is a distant risk. And the focus now is moving to bread-and-butter issues that resonate with the average hurting American," one Canadian diplomatic source told the Toronto Star.
"Cap-and-trade doesn't fit that bill. I would be astonished if there's any receptivity."
Dave Martin, climate and energy co-coordinator with Greenpeace Canada, said the developments leave the Canadian environmentalists in "a difficult situation."
"The U.S. position has been the elephant in the room for a long time from the Canadian perspective. We have supported the Obama administration on the rationale that if we give them time they will find their backbone and deliver. And now that has faded significantly. It's disheartening," he said.
But in the absence of clarity from Washington, individual states are proceeding apace with their own legislative measures to steer the U.S. toward renewable energy at the expense of fuels heavy in heat-trapping greenhouse gases like the gooey bitumen of Alberta.
Earlier this month, California approved implementation of the world's first Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a controversial measure to impose strict new pollution limits on imported transportation fuel. The policy, which takes effect in 2011, sets a threshold of 96.88 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule of fuel – a measure difficult even for the makers of corn-derived ethanol to meet. Many believe the new California standard will make America's largest state a tar sands-free zone.
California is the first, but is hardly alone. Late in December, 11 states from Maine to Maryland signed a Memorandum of Understanding toward the creation of a regional fuel standard modelled after the California measure. Separately, the governments of Oregon, Washington, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota have been weighing similar measures.
The Consumer Energy Alliance, a Washington-based lobby group backed by many oil industry giants, sounded a warning this week on the dangers the regional efforts pose to oil imports from Alberta, noting that Washington could embrace the measures as an alternative to cap-and-trade legislation and instead push for a federal low-carbon fuel law.
The warning echoed a report last month by Washington's Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which said strict environmental measures that discriminate against Alberta oil could push Canada in search of other markets.
If so, America's loss would likely be China's gain, the energy alliance's vice-president Michael Watley told the Star, pointing to the development of Enbridge's proposed 1,200-kilometre Northern Gateway pipeline, a project to link the oil sands to Kitimat on the northern B.C. coast, placing Alberta oil on tap for the thirsty Asian market.
(On Tuesday, the project took another step forward when Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced the establishment of a three-member environmental and regulatory review panel.)
"If cap-and-trade is going to die, folks are going to be looking around at other legislative tools they can use to reduce carbon emissions or bring alternative fuels online, and we think a low-carbon fuel standard will be part of that debate (in Washington)," said Watley.
Another well-placed Washington source monitoring the plight of Alberta oil said the downgrading of climate legislation should not be interpreted as cause for celebration in Calgary.
"If you are a smart oil person from Alberta, there is no reason to relax, even for a nanosecond. If they think they've dodged a bullet, they haven't," said the source, who asked not to be identified.
In 2008, Alberta pumped an estimated 1.5 million barrels a day to U.S. markets, accounting for 14 per cent of U.S. oil imports. The Consumer Energy Alliance estimates that figure stands nearer to 18 per cent today – nearly double the imports from its next nearest supplier, Mexico.
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32 Comments so far
Show AllEcosystem collapse is an even more dire threat than economic collapse, though now it seems the two are inseperable, but, as the article points out, it's off most peoples' radars. Just look at the number of comments under environmental articles here on CD--there are always significantly fewer comments than under political or economic articles (with the exception of climate articles assailed by deniers).
It's the ecosystems, people!
"It's the ecosystems, people!"
Yup. Without that, nothing else is possible, not the economy, politics, or anything else made by man.
Western culture will fight tooth and nail any suggestion of a simpler lifestyle.
Kids today grow up with electric toothbrushes, battery powered plastic cars, and dvd collections. They think water comes in plastic bottles. They curse the rain.
Food is ordered by cell phone or passed through a window or unwrapped from plastic and placed in a microwave. Ask anyone you meet at a grocery store if they would be willing to give up their car or truck. Ask them to give up their four-wheelers or wave runners.
Go ahead, suggest they open up their vacation home/homes to house the homeless.
I dare you.
You're right, of course. The usual Liberal idea that people have to suffer doesn't appeal to anyone (not even Liberals, since they seem to presume they're among the privileged). So what's the solution? Do we just throw up our hands and accept that we're doomed?
Or do we develop a better idea and then paint a picture of it so that people will get excited and sign up?
I have no problem, for example, with the idea of a world where nobody is a wage-slave working for a corporation. A world where everyone has the right to a share of the common wealth, and the responsibility to contribute to it. A world where being someone who can *make* things has huge social cachet, but being someone who *owns* things is a little embarrassing, like having a social disease. A world where nobody is working to make somebody else rich. A world where "jobs" are scarce and everyone has lots of free time to use as they please.
Would that appeal to anyone else, do you think? If you could live in Tahiti, would you?
Intelligence, rationality and compassion have slipped off the USA government agenda.
Low carbon fuels is better than cap and trade.
Tar sands oil is about the worst fuel possible equal to the worst coal.
And Obomber approved the first import license for this mutant garbage fuel.
James Hansen, head climatologist for Nasa/Goddard's newly published book Storms of My Grandchildren, is a must read. He argues forcefully that 'cap and trade' doesn't work. It's a shell game and will only lead to more CO2 in the atmosphere.
First, he says we must shut down ALL coal fired plants within 5 years as coal is the worst emitter of CO2. The remaining coal and tar-sands etc. have to be left in the ground.
Then, he calls for a substantial and increasing tax on all hydrocarbons at the well-head or point of entry with an equal distribution of the refund to all citizens. This, he says, will shift investment to renewables. According to his data, we don't have more than a few years before a 'feedback loop' that causes a massive release of methane hydrates into the atmosphere will take any initiative out of our hands. We will lose control of the process and probably kill life on the planet. He is not hysterical, but a wonderfully shy, nerdy guy who sees the massive data on the wall and is attempting to stop the certain catastrophe from happening, for the sake of his grandchildren. It's now or never, folks. We'd better be up to what it will take.
Amurkan, Thanks for bringing up methane hydrates! I haven't the foggiest notion how Gaia will react to the release of massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. But methane is 20 times more effective as CO2 (actually I've read as much as 60 times) as a greenhouse gas. Methane Hydrates are present in extensive amounts in permafrost and at the ocean floors. The idea is that once the embedded methane hydrates in the northern latitudes begin to warm and release methane into the atmosphere the release level increases as the methane releases, causing even more warming and, of course, methane release. The most logical approach is figure ways to remove CO2. But, it's not going to happen.
What a lot of pretty language tricks have we in the STAR"
-------"American lawmakers lose their appetite for aggressive carbon-cutting legislation . . . "
(Never having had such appetite, they appear to gain it retroactively in the process of losing it.)
------- "Few expect President Barack Obama to relinquish his agonizing quest for a health-care overhaul . . . "
Few expect him to trim his long white beard, either.
" . . . strict environmental measures that discriminate against Alberta oil . . . "?
OK, "discriminate" may mean "differentiate," but co-opting the language of racial prejudice severely mischaracterizes the motivations for rejecting tar sands product.
And "If so, America's loss would likely be China's gain" mischaracterizes everyone involved. Is it "America" that would straightforwardly gain from the tar sands, or a few purveyors of product? Which persons in China will gain more from well-heeled sweatshops, and which will be damaged when the rivers fed by Himalayan meltoff run thin, and why is one group or the other "China"?
Uuf.
And, unless I am mistaken, the article implies as well that some benefit accrues to Albertans from the exploitation of the tar sands by American interests.
That might, I suppose, apply to those Albertans who own stock in American oil companies.
*NICE* deconstruction! Well done! Yowza!
The biases in this article were nicely pnted out by Bardamu.
NC-Tom said, "It's the ecosystems, people!
Yup. Without that, nothing else is possible, not the economy, politics, or anything else made by man."
Yes, you'd think they'd get that, wouldn't you? But somehow, it just doesn't seem to sink in or stick. A bit like children who ignore their parents' warnings and run into the street. They just can't believe that someone won't stop them if it really is going to make them get hurt.
Most Toxic Energy Source
At a time when carbon pollution has been recognized by the international scientific community as the paramount danger to our planet’s future, the current strip mining of oil sands in Alberta and elsewhere defies logic.
The energy and water required to extract these low grade oils from the formations, and the environmental destruction resulting from the millions of tons of contaminated waste and denuded landscapes which can never be properly restored, render oil sands/shales the worlds most environmental damaging and wasteful source of energy .
Not until such noxious and unnecessary practices are halted by the responsible governments, and efforts redirected toward development of renewable and non toxic energy sources, will we have any chance of reversing the self perpetuating climate change that we have generated.
Climate Slips Off US Agenda -- lubricated by the melting ice!
Gotta love "Clean Coal", how fittingly Orwellian. Tar Sands sounds too dirty, gotta think up a doublespeak name for that one.
It's a shame that even in Canada, they'll stick to just tar sands even when it's legal there to grow hemp for fuel to at least lessen the dependence on oil significantly.
Hemp has many practical uses and was deemed illegal to favor Standard Oil's petro products. That is a given. But, even if Canada's forests were mowed down and planted in hemp, it wouldn't produce anywhere near enough energy to replace the fossil fuels.
Buck which study are you referring to?
Scientific Ameriac 2008 ------- for billions in fifty years USA could be 90% solar electric including autos.
Buck, glenn ford, and WTF, you all are correct. It is true that hemp alone can't replace fossil fuels but it can do most of it. Exceptions would be nylon and asphalt but algal oil I believe could substitute for that since the chemical equivilant of light sweet crude can be extracted from algae but is carbon neutral unlike light sweet crude oil from conventional crude oil. If there's one thing I am disappointed with FDR and the then Democrats with, it's allowing cannabis to be overtaxed as a slippery slope to forcing it out of the competition.
glenn, as for solar electric, I am afraid that we will have to import from the Japanese here too just like the fuel efficient Japanese replacements to the inefficient American autos and trucks.
Perhaps there could be some more ways to exploit the "free trade" loopholes so that China and Japan can export more hemp based plastics similar to the way the hemp lobbyists were able to successfully win against the DEA on importing hemp based products that were low on THC. Japan and India, unlike the ancient times, are not as familiar with hemp compared to China which I hear is planning to make more plastics out of hemp to cut down on crude oil demand.
I'll have to admit that putting the alternative technologies along with conservation and fuel efficiency strategies will be the only guarenteed ticket to 100% independence from fossil fuels.
That is not true, and any application of logic would demonstrate that. Ask yourself, when hemp was made illegal in the 1930s, how could it possibly compete with oil products?
Hemp was made illegal when a means was discovered to mechanize the stripping of the hemp fibers permitting its use as pulp. This threatened the use of wood as pulp. At the time, Randolph Hearst owned many pulp mills that fed into his newspaper empire. Hearst petitioned Congress to ban hemp, and the only way possible was to declare it a source of the ever-evil THC. Histrionic movies such as "Reefer Madness" was part of this campaign. End of story.
Buck
I must agree that your point about replacing all the trees is correct. But I doubt oil was ever really worried that hemp would surplant it as an energy source.
Thats the problem with all the alternative fuels.
Actually, the oil robber barron interests already knew that had hemp had been allowed to stay that eventually hempseed oil would have won but Big Oil and Big Government ruined everything. Big government meddled for the oil giants just Big Government is meddling for the health insurance and drug business giants. Do a google search on Jack Herer who tells the truth about hemp. He's not a conspiracy theory guy unlike what the rightwing will tell you.
Alternative fuels aren't the problem. The problem is taking energy sources for granted and jacking up the demand after rigging the game. Kentucky and Indiana wouldn't be so conservative if only people could grow and smoke pot as freely as they smoke tobacco.
After all their jibberish, lies, and doublespeak, there's one thing you could bet on. Whatever Congress would have passed would have resulted in the the realease of even more carbon emissions with taxpayer money being funneled to banks, hedge funds, and energy companies.
That's their answer for everything now.
Penalize the American people, funnel the money to the special interest they're "reigning" in and make the problem worse. If it fails, double down by taking even more of our momney and handing it over.
They called it "Cap and Trade" and you got its real purpose perfectly.
Jeevee
Why are humans so eager to destroy themselves and the planet? Have we forgotten that "I wanna play," is no substitute for the deep satisfaction we may attain from helping people to help themselves by following the ancient traditions that lead to life for all with L O V E.
A lot of ancient traditions made better use of the greatest crop on this planet HEMP before cotton and crude oil muddied the waters. Black gold is the curse of this planet designed to seduce and destroy.
Climate change addressing was never really on the US agenda in the first place except in its usual window dressing form. If climate change was really all that important, they would have addressed the need for hempseed oil, the need to make solar and wind technologies more affordable, and most of all acknowledging that even brainiest nations such as China, Japan, India, etc... out in the Far East are very heavily chained to fossil fuels as far as their nations' infrastructures are concerned. I would go further in saying that climate change is not really a priority for almost any nation on this planet except for maybe some of Europe.
Having already been to India and Singapore and now in Japan, I can tell you straight that fossil fuel usage is just as abominable if not worse than the US and I already don't feel good about China which I will be visiting. I know hemp used to be used very much in these nations but when I asked a few Indians and Japanese about hemp to help address this hydrocarbon mess, they don't know about it. I'm now finding out that ever since WWII ended, the US has successfully made the pro-war market into a powerful weapon to marginalize this excellent crop that would aid even the poorest of people on this planet. When nations all over the world base their prosperity and infrastructure mainly on fossil fuels and yet fail to acknowledge this, what does this tell you?
So, first President Obama and the Democratic Congress abandons the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
They give AIG $92 billion in the fall of 2008 and even more in the spring of 2009. Then they stiff the jobless by not giving the $92 billion directly to us who would spend it quickly on food. Then they do next to nothing about climate change, funneling that money to corporations and well-connected profs. Then health care turns away from the successful European/Japanese models and instead enshrines a cartel of lousy rotten insurance companies and pill pushing companies. Then President Obama declares a troop buildup in South Viet Nam.
Then people don't vote. They don't care anymore.
So then President Obama suddenly claims that he's going to beat up his bank buddies. Yeah sure. In other news, climate change legislation is utterly abandoned because Exxon is preparing to attack half of Congress.
When will y'all recognize that in general, Americans don't give a damn about anything in this world other than their own miserable lives.
“The first sign of a nervous breakdown is when you start thinking your work [life] is terribly important.” - Milo Bloom, Bloom County.
WTF
Is there another country and its citizens that are different? I don't see any country that cares more for anything than their own lives and country.
I'm curious to know if you see one or if that was just a comment specifically?
Your comment "I don't see any country that cares more for anything than their own lives and country" is very different to my own, where I speak of citizens, not "country". In answering your question, I would suggest that many countries in Europe should satisfy your question.
The US leads the world in waging war and killing people of foreign origins. The US leads the way in environmental erosion. The US fails to take leadership on stemming anthropogenic warming. The US precipitated and lead the way into the global recession. The US fails to lead on human rights and nuclear non-proliferation. The US fails to take a leadership stance in the UN by offering more "no" votes than any other country.
Why does the most powerful country in the world, with the highest standard of living, fail to take advantage of an unprecedented opportunity to do "good"?
Because the majority of its citizens don't care.
Thought this was about climate 'change' not global warming. But for my 2 cents worth, 7,000,000,000 people and the current political and economical systems do not make for anything to be positive about in the future.
War on Terror, Global Warming, 9/11 Commission report, 93 Tade Center Bombing, War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Cancer...War on Iraq/Afghanastan...what's not a fraud? It's all a hoax. There is no man-made global warming. There is NO vast network of terrorists. There will always be a small band of crazy people of every religion. So we are to become a POLICE STATE? Too late...already have! Wake up lemmings..think for yourself!