Nancy Jackson: Notes from the Governor’s Conference – and the global picture on climate change action
November 19, 2008
Over the last year in Kansas, I have heard one sentiment again and again: Climate change is a global problem – it requires a global response.
Well, reporting from the Governors’ Global Climate Summit, I have great news: the globe is responding!
Checking in to the conference, I was handed a translation headset. Next to me, someone asked, “Do I really need this?” To which the cheerful response came: “Do you speak Mandarin, Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, and Bahasa Indonesia?” We did not – we took the headsets.
Here to discuss goals (they all have them!), programs (ditto), successes and lessons from their efforts are governors from the fastest-developing nations in the world, including Mexico, Brazil, India, Indonesia – all of whom are dramatically less prosperous than the United States and are acting decisively to manage their climate risk.
Also here are Ministers of Environment from Canadian provinces, numerous representatives of the European Union and, crucially, the Director General, Department of Climate Change, National Development Reform Commission from the People’s Republic of China.
Food for thought:
China: 600 million Chinese are expected to move from the countryside to cities by 2030. Two times the entire U.S. population will need new places to live and work in a mere twenty years. So, China is devising and finding ways to enforce energy efficient building standards, to build efficient mass transportation and further lower vehicle carbon intensity (already significantly lower than the U.S.), to dramatically increase the efficiency of their traditional power generation and add massive new renewable capacity. They have begun a massive national ghg inventory so that they can measure their reductions.
Mexico: Mexico’s voluntary registry of greenhouse gases covers fourteen industries and 80% of emissions. Soon greenhouse gases will be added to the mandatory Toxic Release Registry. Mexico has a National Special Plan for Climate Change, and the President has made climate action a priority. Mexico’s representative here said “We can achieve lower carbon intensity very soon, very cost effectively.”
President-elect Obama: in a video made for this conference, said “My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.” He called for a national cap-and-trade system that will “establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050.” His closing: “I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who’s willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that’s willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.”
Kansans, have no fear of acting alone. Put to rest your worries about industry migrating to countries who are not managing their carbon risk – there will soon be virtually nowhere to go.
Here, amid unfamiliar languages and determined leaders, I have witnessed the dawn of a new day. We’ll see it soon in Kansas. This day inspires new thinking, real innovation, and cheerful determination – and it ushers in a new, sustained prosperity.
Henry Ford – a good, practical, visionary Midwesterner – is fabled to have said, “If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have said they wanted a faster horse.”
Let’s embrace a new vision and, together, let’s get to work!
Pres. Elect Obama speaks on climate change via video at governors’ conference yesterday
November 19, 2008
We can safely say that the following represents quite a shift in the federal position on climate change. Pres. Elect Obama spoke yesterday via video to a governors conference convened by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Analysis of the speech, reprinted in full from the NYTimes:
Obama Affirms Climate Change Goals
By JOHN M. BRODER
President-elect Barack Obama, in strongly-worded remarks to a gathering of governors and foreign officials on Tuesday, said he had no intention of softening or delaying his aggressive targets for reducing emissions that cause the warming of the planet.
Speaking by video to a climate conference in Los Angeles, Mr. Obama repeated his campaign vow to reduce climate-altering carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and invest $150 billion in new energy-saving technologies.
“Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all,” Mr. Obama said. “Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”
Some industry leaders and members of Congress have suggested that Mr. Obama’s climate proposal would impose too great a cost on an already-stressed economy — having the same effects as a tax on coal, oil and natural gas — and should await the end of the current downturn. A bill similar to Mr. Obama’s plan failed to clear the Senate earlier this year, largely because of concerns about its impact on the economy.
Mr. Obama rejected that view, saying that his plan would reduce oil imports, create jobs in energy conservation and renewable sources of energy, and reverse the warming of the atmosphere.
“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process,” Mr. Obama said.
State officials and environmental advocates were cheered that Mr. Obama choose to address climate change as only the second major policy area he has discussed as president-elect. In a press conference and television interview last week he said that his first priority as president will be to revitalize the economy.
The bipartisan summit meeting was convened by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, who has been a leader in state efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, even when it meant confronting the Bush administration over its more hesitant approach. Attendees included the governors of Illinois, Florida, Wisconsin and Kansas, who have also been in the forefront of actions at the state level to act in the absence of a national climate change plan. Officials from 22 other states, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Brazil, China, India and Indonesia, as well as United Nations aides and environmentalists, also are taking part in the two-day meeting.
Mr. Schwarzenegger announced the meeting in September in part to signal to Washington and the two presidential candidates that the states were serious about moving forward with climate legislation with or without Washington’s blessing.
California enacted a sweeping climate bill in 2007 that would have, among other things, imposed strict mileage and emissions standards on all cars and trucks sold in the state. More than a dozen other states adopted the standards, but they were struck down by the Bush administration last December on the ground that the states did not have the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
“When California passed its global warming law two years ago, we were out there on an island,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said in opening the conference, “so we started forming partnerships everywhere we could.”
Mr. Obama said that although he would not attend a U.N.-sponsored meeting on climate change next month, he has asked members of Congress who are going to report back to him on what the United States can do to reassert leadership on global climate policy.
He also told the state officials: “When I am president, any governor who’s willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that’s willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.”
Governor Jim Doyle, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles that he had been frustrated by what he said was the Bush administration’s timid approach to climate issues. And he said that despite the current economic crisis, it was important to begin long-term efforts to address global warming.
“I think we all wish the economy was a lot better, but I feel very strongly that we can’t back away from progress we’ve made on really important things like climate change,” Mr. Doyle said. “I’m looking forward to having a federal government and a president who will provide real leadership and bring the United States into the world on this issue.”
More on the (third?) Sunflower suit
November 19, 2008
I say third suit because I think -I think – there is also at least one ongoing suit in state court, as well as one in the state administrative appeals system (which could end up in state court). But I have truly lost track so don’t take it from me.
The following was filed in federal district court in KCK on Monday (again – I think). Sunflower’s legal claim is that the denial of the air permit violated their civil rights. Reprinted in full from the LJWorld:
Sunflower Electric sues state leaders
Company claims Sebelius and others just wanted to advance their careers
Topeka — Claiming its civil rights have been violated, Sunflower Electric Power Corp. wants a federal court to overturn decisions by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and clear the way for construction of two coal-powered electric plants in southwest Kansas.
In a lawsuit filed in Kansas City, Kan., Hays-based Sunflower Electric accused Sebelius, Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson and Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Roderick Bremby of trying to advance their political aspirations by rejecting Sunflower’s permits for the coal-burning plants near its existing facility in Holcomb.
The officials want to “further their individual political fortunes by catering to the environmental lobby that opposes the Holcomb Expansion Project and to increase their chances of being elected or appointed to some state or national office, all at the expense of Sunflower’s constitutional rights and the rule of law in Kansas,” Sunflower’s lawsuit claims.
Sunflower is seeking a court order that would prohibit the Sebelius administration from blocking the $3.6 billion project. No hearing date has been set before U.S. District Court Judge Eric Melgren.
The company claims Sebelius’ rejection of the plants based on carbon dioxide emissions and global warming was “nothing more than a pretext” and violated the constitutional requirement of equal protection.
“Indeed, since defendants denied Sunflower a permit, they have granted hundreds of permits to other CO2 emitters and continue to allow pre-existing similarly situated CO2 emitters to operate freely,” the lawsuit states.
Sebelius said she hadn’t seen the lawsuit, and declined to comment on it. She was headed to Beverly Hills, Calif., to co-chair a meeting of worldwide officials on global warming. The meeting was set up by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Sebelius has opposed the plants, citing the project’s annual emission of 11 million tons of carbon dioxide, and the fact that the project would mostly serve out-of-state customers.
Sunflower has already been fighting to gain the permits through an administrative appeals process, the state court system and the Legislature.
During the last legislative session, lawmakers approved bills requiring construction of the plants, but Sebelius vetoed the measures and supporters of the plants came up just short of gaining the necessary two-thirds majorities to overturn the governor.
In the lawsuit, Sunflower warned that if it doesn’t obtain the permits to construct the plants soon “the cost of construction may well increase to the point that the project cannot be financed at all.”
If there were no project, Sunflower argued, its customers would suffer.
“In denying the air permit, the administration has discriminated against 400,000 Kansans and over 1.5 million citizens from other states who will be forced to pay the price of this decision for decades to come through higher electric rates,” Earl Watkins, Sunflower’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We believe we have an obligation to act on behalf of the people we serve and to correct this wrong.”
Bruce Niles, director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign, defended Sebelius’ actions.
“It is clear that with this lawsuit, the coal industry hopes to take away states’ rights to take action on global warming,” Niles said. “The writing is on the wall. Clean energy is where the future of America is, and that clean energy can be the engine of our economic and climate recovery. States should be free to pursue that clean energy future, and not be bullied for doing so.”
In a sworn statement, Watkins said the company has already spent $1.4 million in fees to lawyers and consultants to prepare for the permits and $1.1 million in legal fees and expenses to appeal the denial of the permits.
Sunflower said it filed the lawsuit in Kansas City, Kan., because that was more convenient for its law firm, which is based in Kansas City, Mo.
— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
