Sierra Club & Politics As Usual

The story below is just more proof that the environmentalist community is migrating away from the Lieberman-Warner bill. What's so great about this article is that the Sierra Club outright admits to their hyper-partisan political reasoning for opposing the bill. They, along with FOE and Greenpeace are laying the groundwork for a massive campaign that will attack the environmental integrity of the Lieberman-Warner bill -- for no other real reason than politics. These groups are riding high on the belief that they will have a Democratic sweep of the President and the Congress next year.

What's really interesting -- is that they are willing to bet at all. Since climate change is the "most important issue of all time" to these people, they should be focused on getting started NOW.

If, as they say they believe, the bill needs to be tightened or tweaked -- they can do that after it passes MUCH easier and faster than waiting for the perfect bill to gain enough political support to pass (which just doesn't happen in Washington). We are talking about a bill that sets out action until 2050 - DOES ANYONE REALLY BELIEVE THERE AREN'T GOING TO BE CHANGES AS WE GO??

Its not like the Lieberman-Warner bill has just emerged -- these enviro groups said PLENTY of positive things about it when it first came out -- all sorts of praise for Warner getting "engaged" in the issue. But now, with real political momentum growing behind the bill -- its as if the closer the Lieberman-Warner bill gets to passing, the further away the environmentalist groups are going. Hence, I return to my assertion that these groups do not really want to pass a bill on climate change -- they want to raise money off the issue a little longer.

The interesting thing to watch will be whether all the other "green groups" follow suit -- or whether some of them have the political courage to remain in support of the best bill out there to get us started dealing with climate change in a market-friendly way.

What is SOOO disturbing for people like me who really care about this issue, is that the Lieberman-Warner bill is a DAMN good start -- and it strikes a balance between reducing emissions and not crashing the economy -- something that will HAVE to be done in order to pass ANY bill EVER.

For agriculture -- the stakes are high here as well -- because one of the "tweaks" that groups like the Sierra Club would make in creating the perfect climate bill -- would be to eliminate the ag offset market completely. If you are afraid of higher energy costs in the Lieberman-Warner bill (which are completely overblown) just WAIT for the bill that gets the support of the lefty enviros -- THAT is the scenario people should be opposing.

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Environment & Energy Daily

CLIMATE: Sierra Club chief questions emissions bill compromises (02/15/2008)
Darren Samuelsohn, E&ENews PM senior reporter

The Sierra Club's executive director wants environmentalists to oppose any weakening of a major piece of global warming legislation given the prospects of a more friendly Congress and White House less than a year from now.

"We are being urged to compromise -- to put a system in place quickly, even if it is the wrong system," Carl Pope wrote in a guest essay published yesterday on the online environmental magazine Grist.

"Given that we only have one chance to get this right before it's too late, our top priority must be to make sure that we do not settle prematurely and sign a weak bill into law in the name of doing something about global warming," Pope added. "With momentum for strong action and a friendlier Congress and White House building every day, it's no coincidence that some wish to settle their accounts now."

Pope leads the country's largest "grass roots" environmental group, with 1.3 million members. He has spoken out forcefully several times over the last year on the Democrat-led campaign to enact climate legislation.

But his latest set of remarks offer the most comprehensive assessment of what it would take for Congress to win the Sierra Club's support. The essay also comes as Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain stands on the verge of winning his party's presidential nomination, all but guaranteeing the next president will support a stronger U.S. climate policy compared with President Bush.

Pope's essay outlined four key criteria that signal the Sierra Club wants to see changes to the fastest-moving vehicle on Capitol Hill, a bill from Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) expected on the Senate floor this spring.

Congress should ratchet up the bill's emission limits to 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 for the entire U.S. economy. It also should auction off all of the emission credits needed for compliance with the new U.S. cap-and-trade system. If any credits go out for free, Pope said they "must be limited in size and restricted to a short transition period."

As written, the Lieberman-Warner bill seeks to limit emissions to roughly the same limits as Pope suggests. But the bill would cover about 85 percent of the country's greenhouse-gas sources, leaving out commercial and residential buildings. The bill includes both an auction and free allowances, but not on the scale sought by the Sierra Club.

Opposing coal, nuclear power

The Sierra Club also wants to channel auction revenue away from the development of new coal or nuclear power plants. Instead, it suggests that the funds go toward renewable energy research, to help offset energy costs for low-income consumers and to give in-transition assistance to workers and regions affected by the new climate policy. [Sara's note: WHAT!! So they want to take down the bill that actually PROVIDES rebates to people affected by higher energy costs . . . generated from the auctions they so hate -- and instead, put more money into RESEARCH . . . yeah, that's had a GREAT track record of bringing down costs by itself.]

In a nod to industry demands, the Lieberman-Warner bill leaves open the prospect that auction revenue can go toward nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration from coal plants. Industry groups, in fact, want to see even more explicit language on both items.

Pope likened the current dilemma over a compromise on climate legislation to the 1970 debate over the Clean Air Act.

Then, electric utilities successfully pleaded with lawmakers to grandfather the existing fleet of coal-fired power plants from having to install state-of-the-art pollution controls. That agreement led to a lengthy legal fight that still continues to this day over the law's New Source Review permit and enforcement program.

"This time if we get it wrong, we can't argue we didn't see it coming," Pope said of industry calls for free emission allowances.

Environmental groups have offered Congress a wide set of opinions on what to do with global warming legislation during this election year.

Friends of the Earth is running print and television ads urging lawmakers to "Fix or Ditch" the Lieberman-Warner bill. By contrast, Environmental Defense earlier this week testified before the Senate Finance Committee in favor of moving the Lieberman-Warner bill this year with only minor modifications.

Farmer Testimony on Lieberman-Warner Bill

You have heard a lot from me about the agriculture industry's need to get engaged in the climate change bill that will become law in the next few years. I've also pointed out that while its not perfect, the Lieberman-Warner bill has the best provisions and potential for agriculture of the bills likely to move through the Congress.

Now, I'm encouraging you to read the testimony of a real farm leader -- Will Roehm with the Montana Grain Growers Association. Will testified in front of the Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee led by Senators Lieberman and Warner -- and did a great job of laying out the reasons why he and the National Association of Wheat Growers came to the conclusion that it is in ag's interest to get engaged in the issue. There are also some very good facts about soil carbon sequestration potential and great recommendations for improving the bill for ag in this testimony. I highly recommend it to you!
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TESTIMONY OF WILL ROEHM, VICE PRESIDENT, MONTANA
GRAIN GROWERS ASSOCIATION
Before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON PRIVATE SECTOR AND CONSUMER
SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL WARMING AND WILDLIFE
PROTECTION
SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS

October 24, 2007

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Warner and Members of the Committee: My name is Will Roehm, I am Vice President of the Montana Grain Growers Association and a third generation wheat farmer from Great Falls Montana with my crop selection focusing primarily on winter wheat.

On behalf of the National Association of Wheat Growers and the agricultural sector generally, I would like to commend you Chairman Lieberman and Senator Warner for developing legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions that recognizes the important role that agriculture can play in capturing and storing greenhouse gasses.

I believe your proposed legislation takes an important first step in providing the necessary infrastructure for agriculture to be recognized for the immediate, cost effective and real greenhouse reductions and offsets our industry can provide.

The American farmer has long been a careful steward of the land and the environment and contributing to the reduction of environmentally harmful levels of greenhouse gasses is a logical extension of what we see as our stewardship responsibilities.

I can state today that the National Association of Wheat Growers intends to actively support your efforts and we look forward to working with you and your staff as the process moves forward.

There are many critics of US farm programs, and while we believe many of these criticisms are not well founded and a strong farm safety net program is essential to maintaining our ability to stay on and work the land, we are also constantly seeking out entrepreneurial value-added opportunities. A robust, uninhibited offset market presents just such an opportunity. The
carbon offset program should generate real, measurable and verifiable emissions reductions or offsets but should not limit the market’s ability to utilize this important tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To that end, one significant improvement to your legislation would be to remove the 15% limit that would be applied to the offset market.

I understand there are some critics who believe agriculture offsets should not
be allowed because they are unreliable or difficult to verify. The National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) Board of Directors three weeks ago unanimously voted to move forward with a business plan that would establish NAWG as a carbon aggregator. I was a member of our Environment and Renewable Resource policy committee that likewise voted
unanimously to make this recommendation to our Board. A report commissioned to provide direction on moving forward with this endeavor noted “Thus, one of the key differences moving into a mandatory system, will be the need – in fact the demand by buyers, to have projects that are able to pass measurement and verification tests.”

In moving forward in our role as a potential aggregator, we intend to follow the measurement, verification and monitoring requirements set forth in the field manual put out by Duke University Press titled “Harnessing Farms and Forests in the Low Carbon Economy.”, commonly called the “Duke Standard”. The scientific consensus that supports this work should provide answers to those critics that claim agricultural offsets are unreliable.

And the potential for agricultural offsets in the US is enormous. The Pew Center for Global Climate Change reported that agricultural soils currently sequester approximately 20 million metric tons (MMTC) of carbon per year. Based on research in the field, there is the potential for soils to sequester 60 to 200 MMTC/yr more under soil conservation practices providing 12 to 40% of the reduction that would be needed for the US to return expected 2010 greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels.

The potential value for producers is also significant. In my state of Montana, if one were to assume .45 MTC per acre @ $15/ton and further assume a limited enrollment of 10% of eligible producers we would realize a significant market of $3.5 million annually. If half the state wheat acres are enrolled at that price, the income would be an estimated $18 million. This is not an unreasonable expectation since the report notes that 93% of Montana Grain Growers surveyed expressed an interest in aggregating their carbon tons with NAWG.

At the national level, using the same assumptions as above the market is valued at $408 million just for wheat alone. Keep in mind that the practices that create the carbon crop also increase soil fertility, water quality and wildlife habitat.

It is apparent why agriculture should support, and actively pursue, as open and unrestricted greenhouse gas cap and trade market as possible. To that
end, I would like to offer the following policy recommendations:

• Provide adjustment funds to help defray the cost of measurement,
monitoring and verification.
• Encourage USDA to establish standardized measurement, monitoring
and verification protocols to determine changes in soil carbon for
market-based applications;
• Avoid policy that forces agriculture and forestry offsets to compete
for limited market pools. Create markets that are large enough for all
verifiable and measurable offsets to come to the market.
• Remove any artificial limits on the potential carbon offset market.
The carbon offset market should be unlimited.
• Oppose any artificial price cap on carbon. This would have the effect
of capping the price for carbon credits as well and drive away buyers
who would treat the price cap as a carbon tax rather than offsetting or
reducing emissions.
• Support dramatic and immediate expansion of agriculture greenhouse
gas mitigation research. Expanding the carbon “crop” to its full
potential will mean more research on various practices and crops that
store carbon more efficiently and knowledge about how best to model
and measure carbon gains in a cost efficient manner.

I hope that you will support agricultural offset policies that not only allow us to help solve pressing national problems, but also generate new revenue streams for agriculture. I strongly believe that a market- based system that treats carbon as a commodity would spur new technologies and generate significant revenue for agricultural practices that sequester carbon. However, a key to our ability to fully participate in this new market – which would be
one of the five largest agricultural commodities in the United States – are policies that do not limit our ability to participate or cap prices.

In closing Mr. Chairman, I want to again return to the idea that we see our contribution to help reduce greenhouse gas levels as part of an ongoing stewardship responsibility practiced by US agriculture. That responsibility was best summed up by one of the great conservation President’s of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt who in 1910 observed:

“I ask nothing of this nation except that it so behave as each farmer here
behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature
who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a
good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide
for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he
found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.”

I urge you to adopt policies that create opportunities for us to leave the land a little better than we found it ourselves.

Thank you for your consideration.

Industry & Lieberman-Warner

As I have discussed here and on my other eco-pragmatism blog, Friends of the Earth and some other liberal environmental groups are continuing to wage their war on the Lieberman-Warner climate bill. Check out their web campaign by clicking here.

Industry is starting to come to the conclusion (rightfully so in my view) that this type of action from the left shows just what they might be facing if they wait to pass a climate bill in the next administration when these groups may have more sway over Congress and possibly the President. Take a look at an excerpt from the blog of OpenCongress -- a website that tracks whats going on at Capitol Hill:

But just as the blog and non-profit driven opposition to Lieberman-Warner is starting to be considered an actual threat, the energy industry is increasingly throwing its powerful support behind it. Ryan Grim of the Politico quotes a top House aide saying that there is “'consensus among leadership that there is a good chance' a climate change bill will pass in 2008, partly because industry — worried about getting a tougher bill in 2009 — is getting behind it." And Tom Athanasiou of Foreign Policy in Focus quotes an anonymous congressional staffer saying that "Lieberman-Warner is increasingly looking like 'the best deal that American business will ever get.'”

A couple of weeks ago, representatives of the coal, gas and oil industry met for a conference and agreed to support the Lieberman-Warner bill because, as David Parker, president and CEO of the American Gas Association, said, "future legislation could be even harder on the industry." A link to a full video of the conference has been posted in the bill's comment section on OpenCongress.

To read the full article on this, click here for OpenCongress

Climate Bill, Energy Costs & Farmers

A funny dynamic has started to occur on the climate change issue: agriculture is starting to wake up to their own interests on this bill -- and to the fact that their interests are not always the same as the larger fossil fuel industry. As this has started to happen, there have also emerged a big push to put agriculture "back in its box" using ag's political capital and friendly rural faces to go down with the ship in terms of fighting climate change legislation -- while the fossil fuel industry makes its own side-deals with lawmakers on what they now see as an inevitable law.

One of the key strategies that is being trotted out and used against those in the agriculture industry who have decided to engage in shaping a climate bill to be the best it can be in terms of creating a carbon offset market, is that the cost of any climate bill -- let alone Lieberman-Warner are SO high -- that farmers would be participating in their own demise by working on such a bill. This scare tactic is very effective if you have not been following the full climate issue and don't realize just how inevitable a climate bill is. To these cost scare tactics, I offer the following thoughts:

1. The only way that the "do nothing" crowd on climate change should be believed or listened to at all is if they can guarantee that there will not be a mandatory climate bill in the next few years. I triple dog dare them to come up with thoughtful analysis that shows that Corporate America + a Democratic congress + a President from either party that supports climate legislation = no bill ??
2. Higher energy costs ARE a concern -- AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY ITS CRITICAL FOR FARMERS TO GET INVOLVED. Ag offsets are the only way to allow coal-fired utilities to keep burning coal and keep energy costs down while the reductions in GHG emissions move forward. If you are concerned about higher energy costs for farmers, then you'd better MAKE SURE that farmers have the option of selling their carbon on the market to reduce those costs for themselves and for the entire economy. We are not talking about getting involved in this bill because farmers want climate action now -- we are talking about farmers getting involved in a bill that WILL pass and making it better.
3. The cost estimates that the "do nothing" climate crowd are using are HYPER inflated and assume all sorts of things that the Lieberman-Warner bill does not call for and will not create -- at least according to multiple universities and government agency economic modeling -- compared to a for-profit firm hired by the Edison Electric Institute to develop the worst case scenario.
4. Keep in mind that those who tell you we must have a "safety valve" or price cap on carbon -- are only guaranteeing a price cap for industry -- they are NOT dealing with YOUR higher energy costs which the energy companies will still pass on to you (farmers), but which you will not be able to reduce for yourselves because there is no carbon offset market when you have a price cap on carbon -- which becomes essentially a carbon tax.

States Ask FTC to Develop Guidelines for Climate Offsets

Newsday.com / Associated Press For the 2/10/08 edition

CARBON COPIES? Leery about the potential for fraud in the carbon offset market, officials in 10 states have asked the Federal Trade Commission to develop guidelines for businesses that sell credits.

Carbon offset is the term applied to credits bought by people and companies to offset their contributions to global climate change by supporting environmental projects.

The inherently intangible nature of carbon offsets and the lack of standards and definitions among those selling them make it hard for consumers to know whether they got what they paid for, according to the attorney general for Vermont, William Sorrell, and his counterparts in nine other states.

The market for carbon offsets has ballooned into a $100 million-a-year business, but it needs regulation, the attorneys general said in a seven-page letter Jan. 27.

Bank of America Backing Away from CCX

Many of you are familiar with the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) which is a voluntary climate market in the U.S. and Canada. As a pilot project for understanding carbon trading, CCX has been a very helpful platform. But as we move into the "end game" of climate policy resulting in a mandatory climate market, the forward value of CCX is debatable. This is especially true for the offsets that they offer since these offsets are not measured and therefore, buyers would take on great potential liability from environmental groups that already oppose all forms of offsets if they can not prove how much carbon they have actually reduced through their offset purchase.

The story below talks about Bank of America pulling out of a joint venture they were pursuing to commit to buy more carbon from CCX (for whom National Farmers Union and the Iowa Farm Bureau aggregate soil carbon offsets). There are likely many reasons for this turn of events -- but it brings up an important point to consider as farmers think about their carbon commodity. Why would you sell something that is likely worth 3 times the voluntary market price -- when a mandatory market is just around the corner??

Many farmers may not realize the strong likelihood that mandatory climate legislation will pass in the next 2 years. Businesses, however, are keenly aware of the state of climate policy and politics -- and it strikes me that this may be at least part of the reason why companies are starting to re-evaluate whether it makes sense to continue buying carbon from CCX when there is no guarantee that those reduced tons or offsets will be recognized by the mandatory law. In fact, it is more likely that they will not be recognized.

If you are a farmer -- you have to ask yourself if now is the right time to commit to selling a commodity whose true price is about to be discovered with the creation of a real market with real economy-wide demand.

Sara
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Bank of America pulls out of Climate Exchange Deal

Greenwire 2/7/08

Bank of America has pulled out of an agreed joint venture with Climate Exchange and will not buy $25 million worth of shares in the company, a spokesperson for Climate Exchange said on Wednesday.

Bank of America said Climate Exchange, the company that runs the Chicago and European Climate Exchanges for trading carbon offsets, remains a strategic partner. Climate Exchange said the pair had ditched the venture because it was not needed "to pursue projects of mutual interest."

As part of the venture, Bank of America agreed to market the Chicago Climate Exchange's carbon offsets to its customers on the bank's own trading platform, and it committed to purchasing 500,000 tons of carbon on the CCX over three years. Bank of America said it was no longer obliged to purchase the carbon, but added that it remained committed to reducing its carbon footprint (Bowker/Wills, ReutersFeb. 6).

In July 2007, Bank of America announced that, as part of its $20 billion initiative to support the growth of environmentally sustainable business activities to address global climate climate change, it would join the CCX, making it the largest financial institution to claim membership in the exchange (Greenwire, July 25, 2007). --PR

The Next President WILL support climate legislation

As the tag line of this blog says, if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Now that Romney has dropped out of the race, its practically a done deal that McCain will be the Republican nominee.

This means that regardless of who wins the presidential election this year, THERE WILL BE CLIMATE LEGISLATION NEXT YEAR !! Check out the quote from someone who worked for Pres. Bush at the White House Council for Environmental Quality -- he's calling it a "certainty."

The time to make sure agriculture gets its carbon market out of this bill is NOW before all the deals are cut and the environmentalists manage to cut ag out of the picture altogether!!
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Environment & Energy Daily

CAMPAIGN 2008: Climate debate shifts as Romney ends White House bid (02/07/2008)

Darren Samuelsohn, E&ENews PM senior reporter

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination today, a move that all but guarantees the 2008 general election will feature major party candidates who agree on the need for mandatory limits on emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Romney's withdrawal cements Arizona Sen. John McCain as his party's front-runner. During the primary campaign, McCain repeatedly came under attack from Romney over his long-standing position in support of legislation to establish a cap-and-trade system for curbing greenhouse gases.

Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Committee's annual conference in Washington, Romney said the need for unity among Republicans led him to leave the presidential race.

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I'd forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win," he said, referring to the two leading Democratic candidates, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

McCain spoke two hours later. Without mentioning his position on global warming, which has been unpopular with conservative Republicans, the four-term senator acknowledged his stance on many issues has often put him out of step with his party's core constitutency.

"It is my sincere hope that even if you believe I have occasionally erred in my reasoning as a fellow conservative, you will still allow that I have, in many ways important to all of us, maintained the record of a conservative," McCain said.

'With what conditions?'

McCain's emergence as the likely Republican nominee sets up an intriguing dynamic for the general election.

Robert Stavins, a Harvard economist who tracks climate issues, said the basic agreement among McCain and his Democratic opponent on global warming could push the topic to the back of the debate agenda.

"It's good news for policy, it may not be good news for the drama of politics," Stavins said.

Still others see McCain's success as another sign that the United States within the next three years will set a mandatory limit on greenhouse gases.

"I've long thought it was very likely that we would have a climate bill of some sort in 2009 or 2010," said Sam Thernstrom, a former spokesman at the White House Council on Environmental Quality who now works as a scholar on environmental issues at the American Enterprise Institute. "McCain's nomination now makes that almost a certainty."

Yet McCain and his climate change position still remains a question mark in some eyes as rank-and-file Republicans start to define his campaign.

"He was specific enough for a Republican primary to distinguish himself from the other Republicans in the race," said Tony Massaro, senior vice president for political affairs at the League of Conservation Voters. "But over time, he's going to have to spell out even more for this to be the kind of thing that really propels it forward in a landmark way."

National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich predicted the climate debate was far from over.

"It's fair to say all the candidates that appear to be in the running favor mandatory controls," Popovich said. "But the question is going to become, 'With what conditions?'"

Popovich added, "That's where I think logic and fact have to have the opportunity to carry the day here, so that in the end we have a president who understands the limitations of this rhetoric and now starts figuring out how we make controls consistent with common sense."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul remain in the Republican presidential contest, but neither is expected to pose McCain with a significant challenge. Primary and caucus contests continue Saturday in Louisiana, Kansas and Washington state.