New England Clean Energy Council

by Agence France-Presse.

CHIGAGO -- A new oil spill is sullying waters in Michigan after a pipeline leak sent more than a million gallons of crude into a river tributary, officials said Wednesday.

The Environmental Protection Agency said the spill began Monday when a 30-inch pipe in Marshall, Mich., burst, spewing crude into Talmadge Creek, a waterway that feeds into the Kalamazoo River. Officials said the pipeline belongs to the Canadian company Enbridge Inc.

The agency said it is directing and monitoring all aspects of oil spill cleanup and containment efforts over 30 miles of the Kalamazoo River, including marshlands, residential areas, farmland, and businesses.

"This is a serious spill that has the potential to damage a vital waterway and threaten public health," said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. "Staff from EPA's regional and headquarters office are on the scene and ensuring the leaked oil is contained and cleaned up as quickly and effectively as possible."

On Tuesday, the EPA requested that the U.S. Coast Guard make $2 million available for the federal response to the spill, and said the money eventually will be reimbursed by Enbridge.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) criticized both EPA and Enbridge Wednesday for what she described as a slow response so far.

"The situation is very, very serious," Granholm said in a conference call with the news media, adding that oil could reach Lake Michigan if more intensive containment measures are not put in place.

The Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge said in a statement that it views the incident "very seriously."

"We're treating this situation as a top priority," the company statement said. "We are committed to thoroughly cleaning up the site as quickly as possible. The safety of people and the protection of the environment are our highest priorities during the cleanup."

Enbridge said that the faulty pipeline has been shut down and isolation valves closed, stopping the flow of oil.

An investigation is underway into the cause of the leak, the company added.

Related Links:

Lessons from Senate climate fail

U.N. declares access to clean water a human right

Smart Growth is great, unless it created the housing bubble

by Agence France-Presse.

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday recognized access to clean water and sanitation as a human right.

After more than 15 years of debate on the issue, 122 countries voted in favor of a compromise to a Bolivian resolution enshrining the right, while 41 abstained.

The text "declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life."

The resolution laments the fact that 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and that 2.6 billion do not have access to basic sanitation.

It notes that roughly 2 million people die every year from diseases caused by unsafe water and sanitation, most of them small children. And it points to the pledge made by world leaders in 2000 as part of the poverty-fighting Millennium Development Goals to reduce by half, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

The resolution urges states and international organizations to provide financial and technological assistance to help developing countries "scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible, and affordable water and sanitation for all."

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Mighty Colorado River dribbles through Mexico [EXCERPT]

Smart Growth is great, unless it created the housing bubble

by Jonathan Hiskes.

Did land-use regulation contribute to the housing bubble? The idea is no comfort to Smart Growth fans, but it's the conclusion of new research [PDF] from a pair of economists. Haifang Huang and Yao Tang, of the University of Alberta and Bowdoin College respectively, found that any limits on where homes can be built -- be they lakes and mountains or urban growth boundaries such as Portland's -- corresponded to both higher price gains and steeper price drops for residential property:

In a sample covering more than 300 cities in the U.S. between January 2000 and July 2009, we find that more restrictive residential land use regulations and geographic land constraints are linked to larger booms and busts in housing prices. The natural and man-made constraints also amplify price responses to an initial positive mortgage-credit supply shock, leading to greater price increases in the boom and subsequently bigger losses.

Obviously, growth restrictions, geographic or political, limit the supply of available land. And zoning limits on density and building height limit the supply of available dwellings and drive up prices.

It's less clear why such restrictions would correspond with sudden price drops, as the research suggests. It's something that supporters of compact (walk-, bike-, transit-friendly) neighborhoods will want to answer. Any takers?

(Hat tips to Matt Yglesias and Adam Ozimek)

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Oil spill sends more than a million gallons into Michigan waters

U.N. declares access to clean water a human right

Congress rolls out its spill bills

by Randy Rieland.

We finally got a look at what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) considers climate and energy legislation. Don't cheer all at once. 

What we have is a spill bill with trinkets [PDF] -- some money for Home Star, which would provide rebates to people who do energy-efficiency retrofits on their homes; some money to help convert commercial trucks to natural gas; some money for the Land and Water Conservation Fund; and some money to start building an infrastructure to support electric cars -- a project pushed by the Electrification Coalition, a group of executives from companies like PG&E and Nissan. (Coincidentally, it just so happens that Nissan has a new electric car about to hit the market.)

The rest of the Senate bill cracks down on offshore drilling. A House bill [PDF], also trotted out yesterday, deals exclusively with tightening regulation of oil and gas drillers. Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones provides a good rundown of both bills.

The pain is almost pleasure: While all of the above might sound pretty unobjectionable, au contraire. Republicans are moaning about some of the measures aimed at offshore drillers, particularly one that eliminates the cap on a company's liability for a spill, and another that would raise the current oil production tax from 8 cents per barrel to as much as 49 cents per barrel. The House bill also includes a provision that would forbid any company with a history of safety violations from bidding on new leases. (That's a big uh-oh for BP.) 

Aside from complaining that they won't have time to debate the bills (like this whole energy issue just came up last week), some Republicans are saying they're being set up, since the bills include changes they can't possibly support. And that will make it easier to portray them as tools of Big Oil. As one Democratic strategist told Politico's Coral Davenport, "Republicans have found themselves on the defensive on that issue, and they are sitting on piles of big oil contributions. Absolutely, this is something we will be playing up before Election Day."

Dr. Squealgood:  The American Petroleum Institute (API) immediately went into High Whine. (Bet you didn't see that coming.) It issued a statement warning that the bills would "cut domestic production, kill American jobs, slow economic growth, and cost billions in federal oil and natural gas revenues." (It stopped short of claiming it would mean the end of the world as we know it.) Later, API CEO Jack Gerard took his shots, badmouthing a measure in the House bill that would raise the standards for blowout preventers, the last-stop devices designed to keep wells from rupturing. It was premature, he kvetched, since no one has officially determined the cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. He said it was "like going into surgery without a diagnosis." It was, he concluded, "the ultimate in malpractice." 

Slime after slime: Meanwhile, back at the spill, a squad of federal investigators is gathering in New Orleans to start a criminal probe of Deepwater Horizon's Big Three -- BP, Transocean, which owned the rig, and Halliburton, which poured cement for the well, reports Jerry Markon in The Washington Post. The federal agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service could also take a hit.

One emerging line of inquiry, sources said, is whether inspectors for the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency charged with regulating the oil industry -- which is itself investigating the disaster -- went easy on the companies in exchange for money or other inducements. A series of federal audits has documented the MMS's close relationship with the industry.

Masters of perception:  There's no question that the BP spill hasn't been good for Obama. But you can't say the same thing for Gulf Coast governors. Jeanne Cummings, writing in Politico, reports how Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R), Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) have all been able to spin the oil slick into political fortune. Their photo ops on beaches and rants against the feds have boosted their popularity -- Jindal's approval rating is now up to 74 percent. Is it sour grapes to bring up how his pet project to build sand berms has been condemned by almost two dozen Gulf Coast scientists? Or that Barbour, as head of the Republican Governors Association, was able to raise $2 million from oil and gas interests last quarter?

How BP goes green:  It was tough enough to swallow that BP Bad Boy Tony Hayward will get a pension of almost $1 million a year. But now it looks like BP, due to the huge cost of dealing with the spill, will be able to write off almost $10 billion in U.S. taxes -- or roughly half the amount it pledged to victims of the spill.

They know slick.

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The Gulf’s invisible villain: natural gas

Oil spill sends more than a million gallons into Michigan waters

by Agence France-Presse.

April 20: The Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers.

April 22: The rig, dangerously listing and still ablaze two days after the explosion, sinks to the bottom of the Gulf, some 5,000 feet below the surface.

April 25: Energy giant BP, which leased the rig, says oil is escaping from the well -- after officials initially denied such a possibility.

April 29: The first oil reaches the shores of Louisiana.

May 2: President Obama visits Louisiana for the first time since the spill.

May 27: Obama unveils a six-month moratorium on new oil drilling and exploration.

May 30: BP CEO Tony Hayward makes the controversial comment that he "would like my life back" as he struggles to deal with the aftermath of the massive spill.

June 1: The United States launches a civil and criminal investigation into the oil spill. BP shares slump after the company reveals the disaster has cost it $990 million so far.

June 14: Obama begins a two-day, three-state tour of the oil-slick Gulf, his fourth visit to the region.

June 15: Obama uses his first Oval Office address to discuss the crisis, vowing to "make BP pay." His administration raises the estimate of the size of the leak to between 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.

June 16: BP announces it will create a $20 billion fund to compensate people affected by the catastrophe.

June 18: Mississippi-born Robert Dudley replaces Hayward as leader of BP's day-to-day response to the oil spill.

June 22: A New Orleans judge blocks a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, striking a blow to the Obama administration.

June 30: Hurricane Alex, the first major storm of the Atlantic season, churns waters in the Gulf of Mexico, putting containment efforts on hold.

July 4: Cleanup efforts resume after Alex dissipates over Mexico.

July 5: Tar balls hit the Texas coast, as BP's costs in the disaster soar above $3 billion.

July 10: Underwater robots remove a loosely fitting cap over the leaking oil well, the first step in an operation to replace it with a tighter containment cap.

July 12: Obama administration announces a second moratorium on deepwater drilling.  BP says it has successfully placed a new giant valve over the leak, hoping it will seal the well or contain all the gushing crude.

July 15: For the first time, BP stops the Gulf gusher from flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, mostly ...

July 27: BP announces that gaffe-prone Hayward is out and, as of Oct. 1, Dudley will take over as CEO of the company.

July 28: Day 100 of the Gulf disaster.

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Oil spill sends more than a million gallons into Michigan waters

U.N. declares access to clean water a human right

by Agence France-Presse.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama on Tuesday pledged to fight on for a climate-change bill, despite the collapse of Senate legislation designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

Obama, after talks with Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, said a watered-down energy bill soon to come before senators, shorn of climate-change action, was just a first step. The bill focuses on the aftermath of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and developing alternative-energy projects.

"That legislation is an important step in the right direction," said Obama. "But I want to emphasize it's only the first step and I intend to keep pushing for broader reform, including climate legislation."

Obama said the Gulf oil spill had shown that current U.S. energy policy was "unsustainable," arguing that the United States could not stand by and let China create the clean-energy jobs of the future.

"We should be developing those renewable-energy resources and creating those high-wage, high-skill jobs right here in the United States of America," he said. "That's what comprehensive energy and climate reform would do, and that's why I intend to keep pushing this issue forward."

Obama's Democratic allies last week acknowledged they lacked votes to approve the first-ever U.S. plan restricting carbon emissions and shelved the legislation.

With Republicans hoping for big gains in November's congressional polls, the move may mean the end of carbon-capping legislation for the forseeable future, dealing a blow to the global effort to battle warming.

Obama, who will this week step up his political campaigning ahead of midterm elections in November, warned lawmakers to ignore "chatter" about politics and polls and honor their commitments to voters. "The folks we serve ... they sent us here for a reason," he said. "They sent us here to listen to their voices, they sent us here to represent their interests, not our own."

So what's actually in the Senate bill?

Later, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unveiled legislation, dubbed the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Accountability Act, aimed at boosting clean energy and energy efficiency.

The measure aims to ensure that BP pays fully for damage from the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and aims to drive the firm and other oil giants to develop new technologies to prevent and respond to future spills. It would also overhaul U.S. government agencies in a bid to improve their ability to respond to such catastrophes.

It would scrap a $75 million cap on oil firms' liability for economic damages from major spills, making energy firms responsible not just for total cleanup costs but also job or revenue losses.

The bill would sharply increase a per-barrel oil tax from eight cents to 49 cents; the tax fills a special trust fund to pay for damages from major spills. And the bill would raise the cap on per-incident Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund expenditures from $1 billion to $5 billion.

The bill also includes $5 billion to provide point-of-sale rebates to consumers buying energy-efficient appliances, and promotes a shift to vehicles powered by natural gas or electricity.

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Lessons from Senate climate fail

by Jonathan Hiskes.

The Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) finance tool helped thousands of homeowners pay for green improvements to their homes until Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac came out against it. Here's the latest in the fight to save it:

PACE programs may soon run up against the same barrier that's blocked so much progress of late: a Senate that can't manage to get much done.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he is willing to add PACE-restoring legislation to a scaled-back energy bill, but only if a Republican cosponsor signs on to the plan, according to Brad Penney of the Alliance to Save Energy.

That may be the best hope of restoring the popular finance tool, which helped thousands of homeowners pay for home-energy retrofits and rooftop solar arrays until Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac told mortgage lenders to avoid it, throwing PACE programs across the nation into uncertainty.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) introduced a bill last week that would require Fannie and Freddie to adopt standards that allow for PACE, which lets homeowners pay for improvements through a surcharge on their property tax bills. Boxer has three Democratic cosponsors but no Republican supporters. Reid, already short on time to pass an energy bill this year, may not be willing to add any provisions that could gum up the process.

Penney said his group had spoken to Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Richard Lugar (Ind.), George LeMieux (Fla.), and George Voinovich (Ohio) about cosponsoring a PACE-fixing plan. So far, none has been willing.

"The time is too short to do this without Republican cosponsors," said Cisco DeVries, who developed PACE three years ago as chief of staff to the mayor of Berkeley and now runs a company that sets up PACE programs. "We know there are Republicans who support this. We need them to sponsor and cosponsor bills."

The PACE model should have bipartisan appeal. By reducing the upfront costs of improvements like insulation, sealing, and high-efficiency furnaces, it lets homeowners cut energy use and emissions, save on monthly utility bills, and give work to local contractors.

It should also appeal to opponents of big government.  The programs are funded by local governments selling bonds on secondary markets, so the model essentially uses private capital to finance the improvements. Local governments have used similar tax assessments to fund local improvements, such as schools and sewers, for more than 100 years without federal interference.

"This is such an overreach of federal authority into a local government arena," said Martin Chávez, former mayor of Albuquerque and director of ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability.  "I would think conservative Republicans would be offended, no matter what they think of PACE."

Fannie and Freddie worry about PACE users who default on their homes, leaving unpaid liens that must be paid off before mortgages -- but research and past experience suggest that owners of energy-efficient homes are less likely to default

If that doesn't work ...

Another failure in the Senate would leave two options for saving PACE, neither of them appealing to supporters.

The first is litigation. California Attorney General (and Democratic candidate for governor) Jerry Brown has sued Fannie and Freddie over the issue, and Sonoma County, Calif., added its own suit this week. But resolution from the courts could take years.

The other option is a 30-month, 300,000-property pilot program floated last week by Long Island Rep. Steve Israel (D), who's been active in defending Long Island PACE programs. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie and Freddie's regulator, told Israel it would consider the idea.

But PACE advocates such as Penney and Chávez said they oppose a demonstration project, which they say would limit PACE's growth and discourage Congress from addressing the problem.

"It's a sucker program," Chávez said. "We don't need a pilot. We've had pilots and they're working great. It's time to move."

Their opposition to a pilot reveals just how big advocates think PACE could become. A pilot of 300,000 would dwarf existing programs -- Sonoma County's, the nation's largest, has approved 1,292 applications in its first year and a half. But 22 states have passed bills allowing and encouraging municipalities to set up programs. If cities, towns, and counties take up the option, the tool could grow well beyond 300,000 users.

"I served five years in the [New Mexico] state senate, and any time we wanted to avoid an issue we formed a task force and we did a pilot program," said Chávez. "It's a way to get things off your desk. They ought to be able to step up and make a decision."

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Oil spill sends more than a million gallons into Michigan waters

Lessons from Senate climate fail

by Agence France-Presse.

NEW ORLEANS -- The U.S. Coast Guard dispatched emergency teams Tuesday after a boat crashed into an oil well off the coast of New Orleans, spilling crude into the Gulf of Mexico.

The well, located about 65 miles south of New Orleans, was ruptured when it was struck by a dredge barge called Captain Buford pulled by a tug, Pere Ana C.

Reports of a giant fountain of oil were downplayed by U.S. authorities who said only a light sheen was visible on the surface, some six feet above the damaged wellhead.

The incident, which is unrelated to the massive gusher recently capped by BP deep down on the seabed, occurred in a nearby part of the Gulf of Mexico. Cleanup vessels were redeployed to surround it with 6,000 feet of boom.

"There is some vapor emanating and we have an overhead picture that shows probably a combination of gas and water vapor and so forth coming to the surface plus a light sheen," said U.S. spill chief Thad Allen. "One of the positive things I suppose about having this response going on is we have a significant amount of resources ... there's skimming equipment close by and booming equipment."

A Coast Guard strike team from Mobile, Ala., had been dispatched by boat to the scene, as well as a helicopter from New Orleans with a marine-pollution investigator on board.

"There have been reports of oil from the elision and we are investigating those reports to mitigate any environmental concerns," Petty Officer William Colclough, a Coast Guard spokesman, told AFP. "The oil spill liability trust fund has been enacted to provide monetary support for any cleanup operation."

The government's on-scene spill coordinator for Louisiana, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft, was also on an overflight of the new spill, along with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R).

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by Randy Rieland.

Now that climate and energy legislation in the Senate has shriveled to a husk, the chance that maybe, just maybe, a renewable electricity standard (RES) could be added to the bill is raising last-minute hopes that all is not lost.  

Sure, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last week that he couldn't drum up enough support for an RES. But on Friday, 27 Senate Democrats sent a letter to Reid, making the case that a formal federal commitment to renewable energy is key to encouraging serious private investment in wind and solar power. And on Monday, a Republican, Sen. Sam Brownback from Kansas, a state with a lot of wind, jumped on board. That was enough to get Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader who is now doing work for the American Wind Energy Association, to claim that the magical 60 votes are there to pass an RES amendment.

Fear of commitment: But would an RES really justify popping some corks, especially if it's likely to fall way below green groups' goal of having 25 percent of the country's electricity come from renewable sources by 2025? Bryan Walsh, in Time's Ecocentric blog, explains the benefits of an RES:

Too often U.S. policy on renewable power has been like a truck stuck in rush-hour traffic: stop-and-start. Generous tax subsidies help the wind or solar [industry] grow -- but when they're allowed [to] expire, the industry suddenly collapses.  By requiring America's utilities to shift some of their production to clean energy, an RES could finally provide the renewable power industry the long-term certainty it needs to grow -- creating new jobs along the way. "If you want to lead and you're serious about green-collar job creation, then you need to set a goal," said Iowa Governor Chet Culver, whose state gets around 20 percent of its electricity from wind. "I could not be more direct in my pleas to Congress to pass this renewable electricity standard. Our energy future depends on it."

Kate Sheppard, writing for Mother Jones, adds this:

Solar and wind advocates say that even the House-passed standard is actually less ambitious than the path that the industry is already on ... But at this point, they'll take anything to put the U.S. government on record in support of a renewables mandate. "Getting a signal in place that we're open for business is going to be critical to build the base in the U.S. and attract manufacturing," said Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association ... "In this political climate we have to do what we can do."

A slick maneuver: Without an RES, Reid's bill is thin gruel. It includes funding for Home Star, which would provide rebates to people who do energy-saving retrofits on their homes; funding for a natural-gas truck fleet; money for the Land and Conservation Fund; and, of course, a crackdown on offshore oil drilling. It's that last part that could turn things ugly again. As Coral Davenport writes in Politico's Morning Energy blog, the bill likely will include elements that Republicans won't support, the goal being that they can then be portrayed as backers of Big Oil:

Possible provisions likely to raise Republican and oil industry hackles: a financial assurance requirement, in which offshore drillers would have to front capital to prove they could cover the costs of a spill or other disaster -- a particularly onerous requirement for smaller independent firms; a provision to funnel new oil royalty revenues directly to the Land and Water Conservation Fund rather than to state coffers; and the retention of the Menendez limitless liability requirement, rather than a compromise $10 billion cap.

Cap-and-gag: Cap-and-trade may be dead for the rest of us, but for a lot of House Democrats, it's feeling like acid reflux. Last summer, most Dems voted for the House's climate bill, which included a cap-and-trade provision. They figured that eventually the Senate would follow suit, President Obama would sign it, and they could say they had struck a blow for clean energy and energy independence. But now that the Senate has dropped cap-and-trade like a bag of skunks, those House Dems feel they've been left out to dry, easy pickings for Republican opponents blasting away at "cap-and-tax," as Paul Kane and Shailagh Murray report in The Washington Post.

Perhaps we've been too hasty: Finally, we may have found just the thing to get Republicans to start taking climate change seriously. As Anna Gorman writes in the Los Angeles Times, a new study concludes that devastation of farmland in Mexico brought on by global warming could spark a mass migration of Mexicans into the U.S.

Lou Dobbs must feel so conflicted.

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Oil spill sends more than a million gallons into Michigan waters

Lessons from Senate climate fail

Recently elected Dem senators want more ‘fight’ for green economy

by Jonathan Hiskes.

Greenpeace U.K. shut down at least 30 BP stations in London on Tuesday in one of the more ballsy displays of civil disobedience against the energy giant. Activists fanned out to as many as 50 BP stations -- the exact number isn't clear -- and posted banners that said, "Closed: Moving beyond petroleum."

They also pulled safety switches that cut off fuel supplies at the stations -- and removed the switches so they couldn't be turned back on again. Here's the collection of switches they gathered:

The group chose today to coincide with the release of BP's quarterly report -- showing a record $17 billion loss -- and the announcement that Bob Dudley would replace Tony Hayward as CEO.

Said Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo:

Bob Dudley should overturn current plans to extract oil from risky deep-water wells off Libya and in the Arctic, where a spill could have consequences even more devastating than in the Gulf, as well as from the tar sands of Canada. A change in leadership is a key opportunity for BP to cut its losses in more ways than one, by turning away from high-cost and environmentally reckless sources of oil, like deepwater drilling and Canadian tar sands, towards an energy revolution based on clean energy sources.

British environmentalists have history of more rowdy civil disobedience than American greens, with the occasional exception of Appalachian mountain defenders. But with the effort to pass a U.S. climate and energy bill dying with a whimper last week, maybe it's time for American activists to take up more forceful tactics.

Matt Yglesias suggested as much last week, pointing out that actual civil disobedience is different from holding signs at protests or carefully staging symbolic arrests:

There were protests and sign-holdings associated with the Civil Rights Movement, but the core of that era's civil disobedience was, well, civil disobedience. People actually going and doing illegal stuff and forcing the authorities to come out and stop them. The idea was to (a) demonstrate the extreme depth of the commitment the activists possessed, (b) dramatize the injustice of Jim Crow in a visceral way, and (c) create an atmosphere of social crisis such that fence-sitters could no longer say "well, this just isn't a good time to address these issues." The movement was causing trouble, and would have to be dealt with by either crushing it with repression or else addressing its concerns.

Put another way, transactional politics -- cutting deals to pass a clean energy bill -- have had their chance and failed for the time being. Transformational politics -- trying to change the way the public perceives the energy issue -- may be gaining currency.

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by Agence France-Presse.

LONDON -- BP's vilified chief executive Tony Hayward resigned on Tuesday, as the British oil giant said the Gulf of Mexico disaster will cost it $32 billion after causing a record quarterly loss.

Hayward, whose PR gaffes made him a target of U.S. fury, will be succeeded by Bob Dudley, who is in charge of BP's Gulf cleanup operations and who has vowed to "change the culture" of how the company tackles safety issues.

BP had a record $16.9 billion loss in the second quarter, and will sell $30 billion of assets over the next 18 months as it seeks to return to profitability, it said in a statement.

The troubled firm was pushed into the red by the $32.2 billion set aside to pay for the costs of the spill.

BP and Hayward have been mauled by Washington since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and unleashing millions of gallons of crude into the sea and onto the U.S. Gulf coast.

"The Gulf of Mexico explosion was a terrible tragedy for which -- as the man in charge of BP when it happened -- I will always feel a deep responsibility, regardless of where blame is ultimately found to lie," Hayward said Tuesday.

He will step down on Oct. 1, and will remain a BP board member until Nov. 30, but has meanwhile been nominated as a non-executive director of Russian joint venture TNK-BP.

Dudley will become BP's first American chief executive following the resignation.

"I think sometimes events like this shake you to the core, the foundation, and you have two responses," Dudley said in an TV interview with ABC News, in reference to the oil disaster. "One is to run away and hide, the other is to respond and really change the culture of the company and make sure all the checks and balances are there, just to make sure this does not happen again."

Dudley added that his top priority was to permanently seal the Gulf well, contain the crude spill, and clean up and restore the area's beaches. The company finally capped the leak on July 15.

BP's share price has plunged about 40 percent since the explosion, wiping tens of billions of dollars off its market value. BP shares dropped 1.65 percent in afternoon London trading.

"As expected, BP reported the worst figures in U.K. corporate history," said ETX Capital trader Manoj Ladwa. "Despite the company going through significant management and structural change, the future still remains uncertain for the oil giant and BP in a year's time could be significantly different from the company today."

The spill has been a public-relations disaster for BP, with Hayward making a long line of gaffes. On Tuesday, he stood by the company's handling of the crisis. "I believe the decision I have reached with the board to step down is consistent with the responsibility BP has shown throughout these terrible events," Hayward said.

Under his contract, Hayward will receive one year's salary, worth $1.62 million. He also has a pension pot totalling $17.1 million.

BP added that Dudley will move to London and hand over his present duties to Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America.

It has taken more than three months to stem the Gulf of Mexico oil flow. Up to four million barrels of crude has escaped.

The catastrophe has destroyed vital tourism, fishing, and oil industries in the five U.S. Gulf coast states and left BP facing soaring cleanup and compensation costs.

"The tragedy of the Macondo well explosion and subsequent environmental damage has been a watershed incident," said BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. "BP remains a strong business with fine assets, excellent people, and a vital role to play in meeting the world's energy needs. But it will be a different company going forward, requiring fresh leadership supported by robust governance and a very engaged board."

Hayward, 53, had already handed over day-to-day management of the crisis in June to Dudley, as criticism mounted over his handling.

Hayward enraged Gulf residents when he said in a May 18 interview that the environmental impact of the spill would be "very, very modest." Then on May 30 he was seen as insensitive to the families of the dead rig workers when he said he wanted the disaster over with so he could have his "life back."

"Hayward, by his own many gaffes, demonstrated that he was the wrong man for the job," noted BGC Partners analyst Howard Wheeldon.

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U.N. declares access to clean water a human right

Smart Growth is great, unless it created the housing bubble

Congress rolls out its spill bills

by Jonathan Hiskes.

The Chicago Tribune/WGN released a doozy of a poll Saturday finding a surprisingly large appetite for cutting highway expansion and redirecting the money to transit. City residents overwhelmingly prefer bus and train service improvements to highway spending -- that's no surprise.

The news is that a majority of suburbanites -- 52 percent -- agree with them. That's up from just 34 percent in 1999:

Most suburbanites support investing more in mass transit than roads, sharing the long-held stance of a large majority of city residents, the poll found. Suburban residents also said they are driving less and taking more advantage of expanded suburban train and bus service in communities where the automobile has been king.

Drivers who said they would back spending more on mass transit cited the growing stress associated with congestion; high gasoline prices; and, to a lesser degree, the environmental and financial benefits of riding transit instead of inhaling belching emissions from cars.

I grew up in suburban Chicago, and it's not an easy place to navigate without driving. It's a bit hard to believe the Tribune's finding -- if it's true, it suggests quite the cultural shift. (It's not clear whether the Tribune has been polling on the same questions for long -- and full poll data doesn't seem to be available.)

For decades, 80 percent of federal money for ground transportation has been allocated to roads and 20 percent to mass transit in the region, the Tribune reports. And as with most areas, most transit "spokes" in the suburbs lead mainly to the city center.

"The problem with Metra [the commuter rail network] is that it is a spoke system without a wheel," Ceithaml [of suburban Elgin] said, noting that the only way to get from one suburb to another on a different Metra line is to travel to downtown Chicago, switch trains and head back out. "Why don't we have an around-Chicago rail line?"

Such a project wouldn't be cheap -- but neither are new highways.

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Congress rolls out its spill bills

On day 100 of the Gulf gusher, a timeline of the tragedy

by Todd Woody.

As global warming accelerates, the world will become not only hotter, flatter, and more crowded but also thirsty, according to a new study that finds 70 percent of counties in the United States may face climate change-related risks to their water supplies by 2050.

One-third of U.S. counties may find themselves at "high or extreme risk," according to the report prepared for the Natural Resources Defense Council by Tetra Tech, a California environmental consulting firm.

"It appears highly likely that climate change could have major impacts on the available precipitation and the sustainability of water withdrawals in future years under the business-as-usual scenario," the study’s authors conclude. "This calculation indicates the increase in risk that affected counties face that water demand will outstrip supplies, if no other remedial actions are taken. To be clear, it is not intended as a prediction that water shortages will occur, but rather where they are more likely to occur."

Those conclusions are based on climate modeling, predicted precipitation, historical drinking water consumption as well as water use by industry and for electrical generation.

It's no surprise that states in the hot and dry West faces the highest risk of water shortages. Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas top the list, though the study also finds that part of Florida could find itself tapped out.

"As a result, the pressure on public officials and water users to creatively manage demand and supply -- through greater efficiency and realignment among competing uses, and by water recycling and creation of new supplies through treatment -- will be greatest in these regions," the report states. "The majority of the Midwest and Southern regions are considered to be at moderate risk, whereas the Northeast and some regions in the Northwest are at low risk of impacts."

The forecast relies on the continuation of business as usual -- i.e. the nation does not change its water-wasting ways -- and also on federal government data that predicts the U.S. will continue to use thirsty fossil-fuel power plants to generate electricity.

That should whet some appetites for renewable energy sources that use less water and for investment in new water technologies.

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Congress rolls out its spill bills

On day 100 of the Gulf gusher, a timeline of the tragedy

Obama vows to fight on for climate change bill

by Randy Rieland.

Okay, we've had a few days to try to make sense of how a hulking climate bill can shrink to a lame-o energy bill, then shrivel to spill bill ultra-lite.

It's interesting that President Obama has received much of the early blame, given that (10th-grade civics here!) Congress is a separate branch of government. But so it goes in the age of outsized expectations for the prez.

Could have used some drama, Obama: That first wave of Obama zappers raged that the president hadn't just dropped the ball, he let the air out of it. One of most damning was Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson. He wrote:

Rather than press forward with a climate bill in the Senate last summer, after the House had passed landmark legislation to curb carbon pollution, the administration repeated many of the same mistakes it made in pushing for health care reform. It refused to lay out its own plan, allowing the Senate to bicker endlessly over the details. It pursued a "stealth strategy" of backroom negotiations, supporting huge new subsidies to win over big polluters. It allowed opponents to use scare phrases like "cap-and-tax" to hijack public debate. And most galling of all, it has failed to use the gravest environmental disaster in the nation's history to push through a climate bill -- to argue that fossil-fuel polluters should pay for the damage they are doing to the atmosphere, just as BP will be forced to pay for the damage it has done to the Gulf.

Joseph Romm of Climate Progress and Andrew Revkin, in his Dot Earth blog, likewise took Obama to task for not elevating the fight against climate change to a national mission, instead allowing it to wallow in the muck of Capitol Hill horse-trading. Wrote Revkin:

On a host of issues, Obama campaigned as a voice of reason, willing to listen to all views, amid all the polarized shouting. But on climate and energy, he has not yet, apparently, found the strength to break free of the 20th-century-style left-right fight to forge a positive path that is true to the scope and time scale of the climate and energy challenge and could resonate with Americans, particularly the young generation that will inherit the environment being shaped by decisions, or indecision, now.

A New York Times editorial weighed in with the Obama bashers:

Mr. Obama never fully committed to the fight. He raised hopes here and around the world last year when he pledged in Copenhagen to reduce United States greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent. Until a couple of months ago, he talked a good game, praising the House bill that aimed at the 17 percent target and promising to make every effort to get the Senate to follow. Then, despite the opportunity offered by the oil spill to press for a bold energy policy, the president essentially disappeared. What has passed for advocacy by the White House in recent days has consisted largely of one op-ed article by the energy adviser, Carol Browner, and daily assurances from the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, that the White House was "working behind the scenes."

The Axis of Venal: But a second wave of reaction followed, one that didn't absolve Obama of blame, but acknowledged that the president had a big rock to roll up the hill, given the efforts of "energy tax"-chanting Republicans, self-serving centrist Democrats, and paranoia-pandering Big Energy interests groups. Wrote Bradford Plumer in New Republic:

The White House was reluctant to dominate the legislative process, in part because some advisers thought the bill would fail no matter what, and they didn't want to be responsible for that failure. Could a more assertive Obama have made a difference? I wonder. There weren't 60 votes in the Senate for cap-and-trade, and White House pressure didn't seem to work on potential swing votes like Scott Brown. This one may well have been beyond the president's control.

Brian Merchant, in his Treehugger blog, deemed Obama "ineffectual" and suggested his legacy could suffer for not stepping up on climate change. But he saved his true disdain for others:

The Republicans, 'centrist' Democrats, and fossil fuel interests, on the other hand, are directly responsible for obstructing climate progress. They were generally unproductive, misleading, and willfully dishonest about the costs and impacts climate legislation would have. They opposed any and all efforts to curb carbon, and offered no alternative ideas to those proposed. What they did to prevent climate action over the last couple years was simply and absolutely morally bankrupt.

So did Grist's Dave Roberts:

I'm frustrated with Obama's passivity on this issue. I'm frustrated with (Majority Leader Harry) Reid. I'm frustrated with the environmental movement. But we should be clear about where the bulk of the responsibility for this farce ultimately lies: the Republican Party and a handful of "centrist" Democrats in the Senate. They are the ones who refused to vote for a bill, no matter how many compromises were made, no matter how clear the urgency of the problem. They are moral cowards, condemning their own children and grandchildren to suffering to serve their own narrow electoral interests. There isn't enough contempt in the world for them.

Pass the guilt, please: Thomas Friedman, in his column in Sunday's New York Times, joined the chorus, but added another culprit:

I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.

Greenhouse gases, unfortunately, just won't freeze: With the Senate proving toothless, the job of reducing greenhouse gases now falls squarely on the EPA (and forward-looking states). Naturally, coal-state Democrats like Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W. Va.) and Rep. Rick Boucher (Va.) are already causing trouble. They've proposed a two-year moratorium on the EPA enforcing the Clean Air Act on -- surprise, surprise -- coal-burning plants. On Friday, though, a White House spokesman promised Obama would veto the EPA moratorium bill if it makes it out of Congress.

Yes, that's the sound of one hand clapping.

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On day 100 of the Gulf gusher, a timeline of the tragedy

Obama vows to fight on for climate change bill

Attack on clean air protections planned in Senate

by Agence France-Presse.

LONDON -- BP chief executive Tony Hayward is expected to quit imminently with a payoff of up to $18.5 million despite being lambasted over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, British media reported Monday.

The size of the payoff, which must be agreed to at a BP board meeting in London on Monday, risks sparking fresh controversy as the British-based firm battles to rebuild its reputation after the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP has insisted that no final decision has yet been made on the future of Hayward, whose string of public relations gaffes during the crisis included telling reporters "I want my life back" and joining a yacht race.

"BP confirms that no final decision has been made on these matters," a spokesman for the energy giant said. "Any decisions will be announced as appropriate".

The company's share price was up over 2 percent on the news. The firm has lost about 40 percent of its stock market value since the spill.

Hayward has drawn criticism from U.S. President Barack Obama -- who said he would have fired him -- and other senior figures in the United States over his handling of the Gulf spill disaster.

But he could still get a payoff and pension package worth around $18.5 million, The Times and the Financial Times newspapers reported.

He is expected to be replaced by Bob Dudley, who grew up in Mississippi and is now in charge of the Gulf of Mexico cleanup operation. BP has said Dudley has a "deep appreciation and affinity for the Gulf Coast."

A decision on Hayward's future is likely ahead of the release of BP's second-quarter results Tuesday, which are expected to reveal a $30 billion provision for funding the disaster.

Hayward's reported payoff is the equivalent of one year's salary plus a guaranteed pension. Hayward, 53, started his career with BP 28 years ago and took over as chief executive in 2007.

Meanwhile, back at the Gulf ...

In the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. government oil spill chief Thad Allen said BP's operation to plug the leaking well permanently had been delayed until the week beginning Aug. 2.

Originally expected as early as Tuesday, Allen said BP had given a "refined and revised" timeline as it redeployed vessels and personnel following a recent storm.

The leak was sealed 11 days ago with a giant cap, but up to 4 million barrels of crude has already spewed into the sea since the deadly rig explosion. Toxic crude has washed up on the shores of five U.S. states on the Gulf Coast, and vital tourism, fishing, and oil industries in the region have been hit hard.

BP faces hundreds of pending lawsuits, not to mention hearings into the cause of the April 20 rig blast that should determine eventual liability.

The company is also facing additional controversy over claims, which it denies, that it lobbied for the release of the Lockerbie bomber in order to secure a lucrative exploration deal with Libya.

The U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday will hold a hearing into the release of Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohment al-Megrahi from a Scottish jail. Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 bombing of an airliner that killed 270 people, was freed by the Scottish government last year on compassionate grounds due to his terminal cancer.

On Saturday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague wrote to the Senate committee, saying, "I believe we have a responsibility to address the unsubstantiated rumors that there was some sort of conspiracy involving BP which led to Mr Megrahi's release." Hague said there had been "legitimate" contacts on at least five occasions between BP and senior British officials over a prisoner transfer agreement between Britain and Libya, which was signed in 2008, but Megrahi was not released under this.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has repeatedly argued that a "strong and stable" BP is in the interests of both the U.S. and Britain.

 

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by Jonathan Hiskes.

Talk about a way to focus a city's attention on bicycle safety:

After taking heat for lack of bike-infrastructure support -- what mayor doesn't get flack for this? -- Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villariagosa climbed on a bike for the first time in years last Saturday for a ride to the beach. Within 30 minutes a taxi driver pulled out in front of him on Venice Boulevard, knocking the mayor to the pavement. He hit his head -- he was wearing a helmet -- and broke his right elbow.

The security officer trailing him in a car took the mayor to a hospital, where the broken elbow required surgery. He greeted the press Monday morning with his arm in a sling (photos here) and joked about signing legislation left handed and taking two hours to shave in the morning.

"Welcome to our world," wrote the blogger behind Biking in L.A. "You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who's spent much time riding the streets of this city who doesn't have a similar tale to tell. Except drivers usually don't stop for cyclists who don't ride with a security detail."

If that sounds unsympathetic, L.A. cyclists (or at least the ones with blogs) were furious with Villariagosa's response.

First, the mayor put the onus on bikers to take responsibility for their own safety: "I want to say to all the people who ride bikes: Wear a helmet, because I went head first, and then I hit my elbow," he said.

Then he let the taxi driver off by declining to press charges: "He was very concerned when he realized it was me," the mayor said. "He was careless, but that's not illegal. He certainly didn't do this on purpose."

Biking in L.A. responds:

That's where the mayor is wrong -- and where he's done a huge disservice to everyone else on the roads, especially his new friends in the cycling community.

Because what the driver did was illegal. He pulled away from the curb without making sure the bike lane he was parked next to was clear. And as a result, caused a cyclist to be injured.

It's called failure to yield. And it is against the law.

I'm with the nags on this one. Villariagosa had a prime teachable moment to deflate the myth that collisions between military-sized vehicles and cyclists are no big deal. Instead, he reinforced the notion that public streets are for autos -- and anyone else enters at their own risk. He can redeem himself by improving the flawed bike master plan the city is rewriting.

Side note: Villariagosa's doing great work to try to get L.A.'s ambitious new light-rail plan built in 10 years instead of 30. It's a wonderful goal. But he can start changing Angelenos' attitudes toward bikers even quicker.

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by Agence France-Presse.

SYDNEY -- Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Friday announced a new "citizens assembly" to guide action on global warming, in a major pre-election speech which was hit by protests and condemned by critics.

Security staff leapt on one demonstrator who invaded the auditorium and led him away in handcuffs, while chanting could be heard through much of Gillard's address at a Brisbane university campus.

The prime minister made only a slight pause and smiled briefly during the disturbance, which constituted the first hiccup of her tightly managed campaign for August 21 elections.

The 150-strong assembly, to consult over 12 months, was the centerpiece of Gillard's long-awaited announcement on the environment, a key voting issue in the world's biggest per capita polluter.

"Through a dedicated discussion, a representative group of Australians drawn from all ages, parts of the country, and walks of life will help move us forward," she said. "And if I'm wrong and that group of Australians is not ready for the consequence of change, that will be a clear warning bell that our community has not been persuaded as deeply as required about the need for transformational change."

Gillard said the assembly, helped by a new commission to sift scientific advice, would examine the case for a carbon-trading scheme which twice failed in parliament and was then shelved by ex-leader Kevin Rudd, badly damaging his support.

Australia's first woman prime minister said she remained committed to a "market-based" solution to pollution as the country bids to cut emissions by five percent from 2000 levels by 2020.

Businesses would be given incentives to act immediately on pollution and Australia would make use of renewable energy, Gillard added, warning that she would only act "in step" with major economies.

But the initiative drew an outraged response from the Greens party, environmental groups, and some academics. Greenpeace said Gillard was pandering to the powerful mining industry -- seen as influential in some marginal seats.

"I'm pretty disgusted with what the prime minister came out with today," said Greens Sen. Christine Milne. "It was really a pretty weak position on climate change."

Professor Warwick McKibbin, director of the Research School of Economics at the Australian National University, called the approach "extremely disappointing."

"The science and expert input has made a strong case for action for more than a decade. A majority of Australians already want to take action on climate change," he said.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott said the announcement was just "camouflage" for plans to introduce a carbon tax, while a coalition of green groups said the proposal was an "insult" and "appalling."

"The citizens' assembly is basically an insult to the millions of people who did vote for climate change action in 2007," said the World Wildlife Fund's Gilly Llewellyn.

Climate change, along with immigration and the economy, is considered a key issue for next month's elections, where Gillard is seeking a public mandate after her shock ousting of Rudd in last month's party coup.

Rudd won 2007 elections on an environmental platform and signed the Kyoto Protocol, describing climate change as the "greatest challenge of our generation."

But the environmental push was derailed by the carbon scheme's failure and last year's unproductive U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, where Rudd was a leading protagonist.

Gillard's speech came as United States lawmakers scrapped plans to introduce climate change legislation, potentially setting back global efforts to control the Earth's warming.

The prime minister, who is in a narrow race with Abbott, was also confronted by about a dozen demonstrators as she arrived for the speech. She later shrugged off the protests.

"We're at a university, and universities tend to be home to passionate young Australians who make their voices heard in a variety of ways," she said. "And we heard some voices today."

 

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by Randy Rieland.

The climate bill is dead -- moment of silence -- but plenty of other stories came to life this week. From an oil spill strategy that backfired to solar-driven drones and wifi, here are 10 green stories to share over the weekend.

Seemed like a good idea at the time: Last April, when it looked like the coast of Louisiana was about to be coated in brown ooze, Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered valves opened on the Mississippi River. The valves are there to divert freshwater into the marshes as a way to reduce salinity; Jindal figured the extra flush of river water would push away the oil. It may have helped, although no one's sure how much. What they do know is that it also seems to have killed a lot of oysters. The AP's Cain Burdea delivers the irony.   
Hold the vinegar: China's dealing with its own oil spill at the moment, but it's added another arrow to the shockingly slim cleanup quiver: bugs. Actually, bugs that eat oil. (Okay, technically, they're bacteria.) The Beijing company that provided 23 tons of them to chow on the spill calls them "environmentally friendly microbial products." We'll stick with bugs. Chuin-Wei Yap, writing for the Wall Street Journal's RealTimeChina Report, has more. 
The revolution will be on wifi:  As any college student will tell you, if you don't have good wifi, well, why live? So two guys at the Rochester School of Technology wanted to reassure the world that you can create a wifi hotspot off the grid. They used a wind turbine and a solar panel. Get the lowdown at Hackaday. 
Droning on: If it stays aloft through Friday, a drone circling above the Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona will have been airborne for 14 days -- twice as long as the previous record for continuous unmanned flight. Impressive. More impressive is that it's droning on solar power. The plane, named Zephyr, is being billed as the "world's first truly eternal plane." That's a lot of bags of peanuts. John Collins Rudolf has the story in the New York Times Green blog. 
Make that the Green Angels: Not easily impressed? How about a Navy jet flying on algae? A San Francisco company named Solazyme has handed over 1,500 gallons of algae biofuel to the Navy for testing. The Navy has a goal of operating 50 percent of its fleet on renewable fuel by 2020, and if anything can help it get there, shouldn't it be sea gunk? There's more at BrighterEnergy. 
Not much of a cleansing: The Jordan River has become so polluted that the Israeli government is considering closing the spot where, scripture has it, Jesus was baptized. Drought and irrigation have shrunken the river to a sewage-heavy stream at the site near Jericho, which actually is on the boundary between Israel and Jordan. As many as 100,000 tourists arrive every year and many of them wade into the water. Not such a good idea. Israel soon may post signs reading: "Polluted Waters, Entry Forbidden." Here's the story in the Jerusalem Post. 
Do the white thing: Here's a tip from the very top: White roofs are cool. Energy Secretary Steven Chu made it the official policy of the Energy Department this week that any new roofs on its buildings will henceforth be white. By his estimate, this will save the government $735 million a year on its energy bills. See Brit Liggett's story at Inhabitat. Pretty great, huh? But how about mandating the replacement of all those old fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs, wonders Ashley Braun at Grist?
Little lumen: Solar cells are becoming so small that the next generation could be as little as lint -- which opens all kinds of possibilities for embedding them in windows or fabric or the roofs of cars. Janet Raloff, at Science News, provides the electrifying details.   
Honda wants to be your hybrid: Just not quite yet. But starting next year all Civics made in Japan will be hybrids, and, by 2013, Honda plans to offer hybrid versions of five of its models. Look for a fully electric Honda car in the U.S. in 2012. Check out Leon Kaye's story at Triple Pundit. 
Just don't get any ideas about watering it: Acknowledging that there are few things as ugly as a highway sound baffle, the Ohio Department of Transportation is going natural. It plans to start testing a living wall built from specially-designed bags of dirt and seeds. In theory, at least, once the barrier is in place, a stretch of I-70, east of Columbus will feature one giant, sound-muffling, chia pet. Alyssa Danigelis plants a seed at Discovery News.

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by Jonathan Hiskes.

The Senate on Thursday officially gave up on trying to pass a climate bill in the foreseeable future -- so what's plan B? Leadership from states and federal agencies.

A mishmash of state plans and existing laws doesn't sound like much. Climate experts have long preferred a national, economy-wide approach to cutting carbon pollution. But existing and announced state plans would do more good than you might assume.

Ten northeastern states already run a functional cap-and-trade system, and 11 Western states and Canadian provinces are planning to start their own, the Western Climate Initiative, in 2012. And the Environmental Protection Agency continues its own march toward regulating climate pollution -- which the Supreme Court directed it to do.

So it's pretty darn useful that the World Resources Institute has a new report out today that calculates what exactly states and federal agencies could accomplish in the absence of Congressional action. The WRI research group looked at current and in-the-works state programs, as well as existing law directing federal agencies to cut carbon emissions. They measured the impact of these combined activities against President Obama's pledge in Copenhagen last year to cut emissions "in the range of 17 percent" below 2005 levels by 2020.

The top-line finding: States and federal agencies could keep us on track in the near-term -- until about 2016 -- but after that they would be insufficient. That's the best-case scenario. Because there's so much uncertainty about how state and federal agency plans will be executed, WRI mapped out "lackluster," "middle-of-the-road," and "go-getter" scenarios.

Here's how each would perform compared to business as usual:

The bottom line on that graph charts the CO2 reductions the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the whole world must achieve to avert catastrophic climate change. But even meeting those targets only gets us down to 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide-equivalent in the atmosphere; scientific consensus holds that 350 ppm is the safe upper limit.

WRI also mapped out the projected emissions from different sectors of the economy based on the various scenarios:

The electricity industry (in blue) is the biggest reduction target by far, and that's where things get wonky quickly. The report considers regulatory action the EPA could take under several parts of the Clean Air Act -- New Source Performance Standards, Best Available Control Technology, and even more obscure titles and section numbers. But none of this works if Congress strips the EPA's authority to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act -- something some senators have threatened to do.

"The study highlights both the need to pass climate legislation and the importance of preserving existing authorities," WRI President Jonathan Lash said in a prepared statement.  "The study's findings make it very clear that current efforts by Congress to curb EPA authority will undermine U.S. competitiveness in a clean energy world economy, block control of dangerous pollutants, and put the U.S. at odds with its allies."

The report also looks at steps the energy and transportation departments could take to boost efficiency standards for appliances and automobiles. Notably, it does not measure transportation planning -- which has a profound effect on oil consumption -- or forestry or agriculture.

The authors also concede something that these sorts of reports tend to downplay: It's hard to predict the future. "Longer-term reductions post-2020 are less certain under all analyzed scenarios," they write, "primarily due to uncertainty about how quickly aging power plants will be replaced and the transportation sector can be transformed."

Hence the focus on the next ten years. The report will no doubt meet criticism somewhere -- in a hyper-partisan era, it's easy to dismiss think-tank research as so much political ammunition. What's interesting about this report is that it doesn't make any claims about the amount of jobs created, money saved, double rainbows produced, etc. WRI makes it clear it wants a climate bill; here it looks at what may happen without one.

So is this any comfort? Good news or bad? The devil, as always, is in the details and the execution. The report illustrates the wide range between "lackluster" and "go-getter" policy. That's the field of play for anyone who wants to help.

Update: Here's an explanatory video from WRI:

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The blame Obama game

by David Roberts.

As Jon noted, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has officially announced that there will be no climate bill this year. But Jon's post doesn't fully convey the extent of the capitulation. What's happened is total and complete surrender. There's no silver lining in this cloud.

Not only will the bill not contain any restrictions on greenhouse gases -- not even a watered-down utility-only cap -- it won't even contain the two other key policies that would have moved clean energy forward: the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) and the energy efficiency standards.

Basically, Reid canvassed his caucus and figured out what they could pay for (without a carbon price for funding) and what already had 60 votes. This is it:

Some response to the Gulf oil spill, in the form of tighter restrictions on offshore drilling. Some pork for natural gas vehicles. (T-Boone gets his money.) Home Star. Some money for land and water conservation. (Baucus demanded $5 billion for this, leaving other, much more worthy clean energy programs begging.)

Home Star is good, but as an energy bill? This is f*cking pathetic. It's little better than what the Republican Congress produced under George Bush.

I'm running around at Netroots Nation right now, so I don't have a lot of time, but just a few quick notes.

Blame where it is due: I'm frustrated with Obama's passivity on this issue. I'm frustrated with Reid. I'm frustrated with the environmental movement. But we should be clear about where the bulk of the responsibility for this farce ultimately lies: the Republican Party and a handful of "centrist" Democrats in the Senate. They are the ones who refused to vote for a bill, no matter how many compromises were made, no matter how clear the urgency of the problem. They are moral cowards, condemning their own children and grandchildren to suffering to serve their own narrow electoral interests. There isn't enough contempt in the world for them. So when the anger and recrimination get going -- as they already are -- let's at least try to keep the focus on the real malefactors.

The cap is dead this year, but the RES & efficiency don't have to be: I've heard that some environmental groups are loath to push for an RES this year, because they think it's a kind of sweetener that will help the cap go down next year. That is dangerously short-sighted and wrong-headed. We know that the RES and efficiency have bipartisan support, and with a little bit of pressure, they could be strengthened. Green groups (and progressive senators) should rally around these two policies, and only these two policies, for the next few weeks.

Big Coal will be back begging for cap-and-trade: No, really. Right now there are EPA rules in the pipeline that are going to shut down a third or more of the existing coal fleet. No new coal plants are going to get built -- they're not cost-competitive with natural gas or wind, and every one runs into a buzzsaw of grassroots opposition. In other words, carbon caps or no carbon caps, Big Coal is in trouble. Sooner or later, the industry will realize that the funding it can get from cap-and-trade, to support carbon capture and sequestration, is its only path to survival. Robert Byrd tried to tell the industry the truth before he died. Byron Dorgan tried to tell it the truth just the other day. By 2012, certainly by 2015 when many of the rules kick in, the industry will be forced to acknowledge this basic truth. And they'll come begging Congress for cap-and-trade.

Protecting the EPA is now job one for progressives: Murkowski already tried to block EPA on carbon. Rockefeller's going to try again shortly, and his bid is going to be even trickier to block than hers. The EPA's ability to act must be protected. It won't be as comprehensive, as economically efficient, or as socially cooperative as smart climate legislation would have been, but it will reduce carbon. And you know what? Senators from coal-heavy states have poorly served their constituents, so as far as I'm concerned, they deserve a big ol' EPA boot to the ass. They made this bed, they can sleep in it.

"We don't have 60 votes" is bull: Every cowardly senator repeats it like a talisman to ward off the terrible threat of having to act: "We don't have the votes." Two things to say about that. First, of course you don't have votes for something this controversial before you go to the floor and force the issue. Pelosi didn't have the votes before she took the House bill to the floor. She got the votes by twisting arms and making deals. She forced the issue. That was the only way the Senate vote could ever work -- if the bill was put on the floor, the issue was forced, and Dems united in daring the GOP to vote against addressing the oil spill. There's no guarantee that would have worked, but at least it would have been a political rallying point. It would have put senators on record. And it's not like the wimpy avoidance strategy is producing better results.

Second, senators need to stop talking about "60 votes" as though it's in the Constitution that the U.S. Senate -- unlike every other legislative body on the planet -- has a supermajority requirement. It's not in the Constitution. It's an accident, an informal rule that Republicans have taken to relentlessly abusing, not to extend debate but simply to degrade the Senate's ability to act. The filibuster is anti-democratic and it is thwarting the country's will. The American people need to be told this and senators who still want their institution to be minimally functional need to start getting angry about it.

It's a sad, corrupt state of affairs this country finds itself in. I wish I had some hopeful words to offer. But at this point, American government appears to be broken. And our children and grandchildren will suffer for it.

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