Toluu : Environment and Energy

Environment and Energy

This came out in early December, but John Shiffman and John Sullivan's long Philadelphia Inquirer profile of Stephen Johnson, Bush's last (and perhaps most controversial) EPA head, is absolutely fantastic. There's plenty of good dirt in here: an in-depth look at how Johnson overruled his staff scientists and denied California's request to tighten its own tailpipe-emission rules; an explanation of how Johnson, a relatively obscure EPA technocrat, became a top political appointee in the first place (credit goes to a Kentucky lobbyist with ties to Karl Rove); and even a look at his creationist views. But this tidbit sums things up nicely:

Perhaps one of the best insights into Johnson's vision for EPA can be found in written testimony he submitted to a Senate committee this year. In the document, Johnson laid out his top 11 goals.

No. 1 was clean energy, particularly approving drilling for "thousands of new oil and gas wells" on tribal and federal lands. No. 2 was homeland security.

Environmental enforcement and sound science ranked ninth and 10th.

Now, since Johnson took the helm of the EPA in 2005, he's done a few green things here and there—killing

Pelosi Says Hold Off On Cap-And-Trade (For Now)Today

On Monday, Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she has the votes to pass a carbon cap-and-trade bill through the House right now, but won't force the issue just yet: "I'm not sure this year, because I don’t know if we’ll be ready. We won’t go before we’re ready." What's that supposed to mean? As Keith Johnson suggests, part of the rationale for taking it slow seems to be that Pelosi wants to avoid making the same mistakes Europe made with its cap-and-trade regime (as when it initially gave away too many pollution credits), and figures it's better to do it right than do it quickly.

That's a reasonable thought—after all, even if Congress rushes to enact an economy-wide cap-and-trade bill by early 2010, one that, say, aims to cut U.S. emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, many experts think it will still take a few years for the new system to get fully up and running. In the meantime, then, Congress can address climate change (and begin curbing emissions) with a variety of short-term measures, such as bolstering the na

Postponing Disaster with Whiter RoofsToday

"White roofs" are, as I've mentioned before, one of the easiest ways to cool down the planet. As Hashem Akbari at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated last year, if we took all the roofs and pavement in the world's large urban areas, and either painted them white or replaced the black asphalt with brighter material, thereby increasing their solar reflectivity, the global cooling effect alone would be enough to offset 44 metric gigatons of carbon-dioxide—roughly equivalent to taking all the world's cars off the road for eleven years. By itself, that wouldn't prevent many of the other nasty effects of CO2 emissions, like ocean acidification—an area where "geo-engineering" schemes will always prove a poor substitute for curbing emissions. But it would buy us some time to implement other longer-lasting climate mitigation strategies.

Anyway, Joe Romm has a more in-depth look at white roofs over at his blog. I'd add a bit more: Yes,

Bush Does Something Green (Really)Yesterday

As Jonathan Stein reports over at Mother Jones, President Bush is going out on a (slightly) green note by designating three new "marine monuments" in the Pacific Ocean, placing some 190,000 miles of marine habitat under federal protection. And good for him. Among other things, this move will ease pressure on bluefin tuna stocks, which remain perilously close to collapse, by keeping fishermen away from the southern bluefin's Pacific spawning grounds.

Mind you, this hardly makes up for all the other environmental devastation Bush has wrought, such as—oh, picking at random—eight years of inaction on carbon emissions, seeing as how ocean acidification and global warming now threaten to wipe out every last coral reef on the planet. Still, credit where due.

--Bradford Plumer

Breaking The Boom-Bust Oil CycleYesterday

Jason E. Bordoff is Policy Director of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project and Gilbert E. Metcalf is Professor of Economics at Tufts University.

Gas is cheap again, and that's a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the drop in gas prices from their summer peak of more than $4 per gallon has put about $300 billion back in the pockets of U.S. consumers. But lower prices, projected to drop to $40 per barrel by the spring, also mean more driving and more oil consumption. That will, in turn, send more dollars overseas, bolster nations that are hostile to U.S. interests, and increase our economy's vulnerability to oil price shocks. Not to mention that oil consumption contributes one-third of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions each year.

Low oil prices also take the wind out of the sails of alternative-energy ventures, which would be unfortunate because, while oil prices are low right now, they won't stay that way. Once we move past the current global recession, prices will shoot back up, thanks to the demand shock from rapid economic growth and supply constraints caused by underinvestment. Tighter supplies will also mean greater price volatility down the road.

Faced with this reality, policymakers need to take measures now, while prices are low, to encour