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Washington governor believes global warming could win over America in 2020.
Whitehouse's floor soliloquies chug on. Is anyone listening?
For the 180th time, Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor this month to warn of the perils of climate change, blasting the fossil fuel industry, corporate greed and the failure of market capitalism to address global warming.
For the 180th time, Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor this month to warn of the perils of climate change, blasting the fossil fuel industry, corporate greed and the failure of market capitalism to address global warming.
Each week for years, largely without fail, the junior senator from Rhode Island waxes philosphical about ocean acidification, atmospheric temperature rise, devastated coastal communities, increases in storms, fires and floods. And every week, he urges Congress and the American people to act before it is too late.
But is anyone listening?
"I don't know," the Democrat recently told E&E; News during a sit-down in his office. "After all that effort, I certainly hope and pray it had an impact."
Whitehouse has gained a reputation as a lefty progressive with anti-capitalist undertones who rages against greedy corporate interests and the Koch brothers.
But he said he sees market capitalism as the most effective way to address global warming, much more so than increased regulation, a common Democratic battle cry. And the climate hawk is working to find common ground with those who once appeared to be his enemies.
In the wake of unprecedented extreme weather events such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria, the subject of climate change is back in the spotlight. And the administration's move to kill the Clean Power Plan gives lawmakers more room to act.
In a change from years past, more Republicans are joining Whitehouse and beginning to call for action. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said last month he would work with Whitehouse on a bipartisan carbon fee bill.
"I'm a Republican. I believe that the greenhouse gas effect is real, that CO2 emissions generated by man is creating our greenhouse gas effect that traps heat and the planet is warming," Graham said during a press conference (Greenwire, Sept. 20).
Even though many activists on the left want caps on emissions, Whitehouse says a carbon fee is much more efficient. "You get much more climate bang for your effort buck," he said.
And while he is not shy to criticize the GOP for what he considers inaction on the global warming issue, he is equally willing to call out fellow Democrats, as well.
"Remember Will Rogers? The 1930s-era comedian who said, 'I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat,'" he said. "No, we've done an absolutely crap job of fighting this fight. We allowed it to become polar bears versus jobs, which is ridiculous on both sides."
There are more jobs in green energy and renewables now than in the fossil fuel industry, he said. "And it's not polar bears that are suffering, it's beaches and fishermen and farmers right here in the United States."
'Capitalism is the solution'
At issue, Whitehouse said, is not capitalism as an economic system, but rather what he sees as a perversion of that system.
"I think market capitalism is the solution to the problem," he said. "The difficulty here is that market capitalism has been twisted by the fossil fuel industry, and they have completely polluted and captured our politics so that the natural course of things has been interfered with."
The "natural course" refers to an inevitable market collapse that often accompanies innovation. Whitehouse said when the economy shifts, for example, from horses to internal combustion engines, there is a "quite precipitous and quite painful" fallout, but it is usually contained within the affected industries.
"In this case, we spin this out too far; while we're waiting for that natural eventual precipitous market collapse [of the fossil fuel industry] to take place, we're also doing all this other damage that will then come back to haunt us, and for which there will be considerable blame," he said.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on the Senate floor. C-SPAN
Critics believe the very nature of capitalism works against environmental protection. In her award-winning book "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate," author Naomi Klein argues capitalism necessitates ongoing economic growth.
The ever-growing consumption model requires never-ending resource extraction, she says, thereby exacerbating global warming through continued carbon emissions. Klein, and others on the left, are pushing for a new economic model.
This idea runs counter to Whitehouse's position. He argues market capitalism is not inherently problematic, but rather has been "torqued and polluted and ruined" by the fossil fuel industry.
More specifically, the industry "enjoys" an annual subsidy in the United States of more than a half-trillion dollars a year, according to the International Monetary Fund, he said.
"In theory, under market capitalism, those negative externalities in the amount of $700 billion a year ought to be baked into the price of the product," he said.
In economic theory, a negative externality is the cost that is suffered by a third party as the result of a market transaction.
"The markets work, but when you have negative externalities not in the price, that's an economic failure, an economic dislocation," Whitehouse said. "But because it's so to the benefit of the fossil fuel industry, they've stepped over into the political side and have just beat the hell out of everybody in order to protect that massive subsidy."
Whitehouse said that usually, on the political side, lawmakers would recognize the $700 billion as a negative externality, but Republicans — he thinks — have become indebted to industry donors.
"You can't smoke in airplanes any longer because now we know what secondhand smoke does to children sitting next to you in the airplane," he said. "They won't let us do the equivalent of that for climate change because they make too much money off of the status quo."
For Whitehouse, the fight for climate action is not only a fight for the preservation of the planet, but also for what he sees as core American values.
'Baked into me'
The child of a prominent diplomatic family, Whitehouse said he spent time in places such as Laos and Turkey growing up, and watching his kin make sacrifices for high ideals had an effect.
"I spent my life as the son and grandson of Foreign Service officers, and we were not on the champagne and cocktails diplomatic circuit," he said. "We were in poverty-ridden countries, and we were in countries at war, and what I grew up around were Americans who put themselves and their families in harm's way because they believed in something."
It was evident to him from an early age that something about America was important enough for family and friends to subject their loved ones to malaria, dirty drinking water or poor living conditions.
"They do it because something matters. So that got baked into me pretty hard," he said.
"And if we have let this temple of democracy that men and women fought and bled and died to create and preserve get corrupted by one special interest in a way that will harm the lives of people all around the world and bring the democracy that we cherish into disrepute, shame on us."
Whitehouse first became passionate about climate change through his wife, a marine biologist who shared her findings concerning sea-level rise and ocean acidification in their home-state Narragansett Bay.
"The bay in which my wife did her research on winter flounder has risen nearly 4 degrees medium underwater temperature, and the flounder that she used to study are virtually gone," he said.
'Boom'
When Whitehouse arrived on the Hill in 2007, lawmakers were taking climate change seriously and working to draft a solution, he said. From 2007 to 2009, there were "bipartisan bills coming out of all sorts of places," he said. In 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ran for president on a climate change platform Whitehouse considered "great."
"And I thought, OK, this is a scientific problem, but government is working on this, we're doing our job," he said. "Then comes 2010, Citizens United decision. Requested and forecasted by the fossil fuel industry from the five Republicans on the Supreme Court and boom, like sprinters at the starting gun, they were off."
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is the 2010 landmark Supreme Court case, which lifted restrictions on how much money large corporations can invest in political campaigns.
Since 2010, there has not been a Republican co-sponsor, with Graham as a potential exception, of serious carbon emissions reduction legislation, Whitehouse said.
"The fossil fuel industry took that huge political weaponry that they were given by the five Republicans on the Supreme Court in Citizens United and they turned it on the Republican Party and they crushed dissent, and they made [climate] look like a partisan issue, which it is not," he said.
'Science got me scared'
When a carbon cap-and-trade bill passed the House in 2009 but failed to gain traction in the Democrat-controlled Senate, Whitehouse was furious and began taking on the Senate floor to vent his frustrations with Congress' lack of action.
"The science got me scared, watching the corruption of the government that I love happen in front of my eyes got me mad," he said.
"So at that point, I thought, well, somebody has got to say something, just to let people know that the lights have not gone out here. The only way to do that around here with people as busy as they are is to put yourself on a schedule and tell your office every week, no excuses, no exceptions, I'm going to the floor."
And despite the yearslong quest, Whitehouse is convinced the climate change fight can be won. "I wouldn't rule out a carbon fee," he said. A confluence of action has given him hope.
In addition to Graham's announcement, large oil and gas players have said they support a carbon fee.
"Although they're lying, Exxon, Shell, Chevron, all the big oil companies, pretend to support carbon fee," he said. "So there's significance in their pretense, if they know they've got to at least pretend."
There is building support for a carbon fee in the business community, he said. In fact, more than 1,200 business across the globe, including U.S. companies like General Motors Co., are voluntarily assigning a dollar value to carbon dioxide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Greenwire, Sept. 12).
And lastly, Whitehouse cited President Trump himself, who in 2009 signed onto a full-page ad in The New York Times saying climate change science is irrefutable and the consequences will be catastrophic and irreversible (E&E; News PM, Oct. 2).
"So is it a long shot? Yes, but those are all pretty interesting pieces that could come together as this thing develops," Whitehouse said.
"Ultimately, we win. We just hope that we don't win too late."
Twitter: @AriannaSkibell Email: askibell@eenews.net
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Florida needs to step up for Maria evacuees, activists urge.
Gov. Rick Scott reiterated Sunday that his administration is mobilizing resources to provide relief on the island and help evacuees coming to Florida.
ORLANDO -- Florida leaders need to step up immediately to prepare for perhaps hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Puerto Rico, Orlando area legislators and progressive activists declared Sunday at a news conference.
“We need to have a special session right now to deal with this crisis,” said Democratic state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith. “We need to have as a state all hands on deck to be able to deal with what is happening on the island of Puerto Rico. We cannot wait until Jan. 1.”
His colleague, Democratic state Rep. Amy Mercado, choked up as she noted that, like countless others in Florida, she family members on Puerto Rico unaccounted for 10 days after Hurricane Maria Struck, and millions of people on the island lack power and running water.
“To prepare for this influx of hundreds of thousands of Americans to Florida we believe it is vital that the state responds proactively to ease the impact on state and local governments and reduce the challenges that evacuees themselves will face,” said Mercadoo, who has urged the governor to establish relief centers to help evacuees from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Gov. Rick Scott has not responded to the request for a special session, but he reiterated Sunday that his administration is mobilizing resources to provide relief on the island and help evacuees coming to Florida.
“As Puerto Rico continues to respond to and recover from Hurricane Maria, Florida stands ready to deploy all available resources and personnel to our neighbors to help in these efforts,” he said in a statement.
“Last week, during my visit to Puerto Rico with Governor Ricardo Rosselló, I saw the complete and total devastation brought to Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. The crisis in Puerto Rico is unlike anything we have seen before and Florida is going to do everything in our power to help everyone impacted by this storm get back on their feet. I will continue to make sure that our state leaders are in contact with officials in Puerto Rico. The State of Florida stands with Puerto Rico and will keep working to make sure they have everything they need.,” Scott said.
The governor said National Guard, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Division of Emergency Management, and other state agencies are working with federal and Puerto Rican officials. Many state colleges and universities, including University of Central Florida, University of Florida, and Florida State, are waiving out-of-state tuition fees for students displaced by Maria, and disaster relief centers in Florida are in the works.
Sunday’s news conference at Iglesia Episcopal Jesus de Nazaret church was organized by Vamos4PR, an offically non-partisan group funded by Democratic-leaning unions and other organizations.
“We’re coming here today to address a huminitarian crisis. This isn’t politics. This about human life. We’re here for people,” said Father Jose Rodriguez, the church rector who said he is a Republican.
But policy is politics, and many of the myriad policies advocated by speakers Sunday to help evacuees -- restoring affordable housing funding in the state budget, expanding Medicaid, aggressively responding to climate change, allowing Puerto Rico to write off $72 billion in public debt -- are largely priorities for Democrats, not Republicans.
“Puerto Rico’s economic refugees have already been paying dearly for housing, and as we continue to see the growing impacts of climate change, a new group of climate refugees are likely to come to the mainland with even fewer resources and will face an even more difficult time locating affordable housing,” said Yulissa Arce, regional director of Organize Florida, which advocates for low- and moderate-income Floridians.
The devastation caused by Maria could have significant political repercussions in Florida, where statewide elections tend to be neck and neck. Puerto Ricans are one of the fastest growing populations in Florida and tend to lean Democrat, though both parties are courting them. Perceptions about the state’s response to Maria could be a vote driver in competitive races in 2018, including Gov. Scott’s expected campaign for U.S. Senate.
No one singled Gov. Scott out for specific criticism Sunday, but several suggested the Republican agenda in Tallahassee on issues like affordable housing and access to health insurance will come under greater scrutiny as people in need stream into Florida from Puerto Rico.
State Sen. Victor Torres, D-Orlando, said his constituents have been taken aback that President Trump attacked the Mayor of San Juan rather than simply promising her more help was on the way.
“It shows people the consequences of not voting. Elections have consequences,” he said of Trump. “And don’t forget, next year is an election for governor, senate, and other offices. People are watching and won’t forget. We won’t let them.”
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How many big storms before people abandon coastal cities?
For homeowners in flood zones, one big question looms: Rebuild or retreat after another “500-year storm?”
People love living near the coast. Only two of the world's top 10 biggest cities — Mexico City and Sáo Paulo — are not coastal. The rest — Tokyo, Mumbai, New York, Shanghai, Lagos, Los Angeles, Calcutta and Buenos Aires — are. Around half of the world's 7.5 billion people live within 60 miles of a coastline, with about 10 percent of the population living in coastal areas that are less than 10 meters (32 feet) above sea level.
Coastal migration has been steadily trending upward. In the U.S. alone, coastal county populations increased by 39 percent between 1970 to 2010. As the population skyrockets — from 7.5 billion today to 9.8 billion by 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to a recent United Nations report — the question for sustainability and development experts is, will the world's coasts bear the burden of all this humanity? But with the rise of both sea levels and extreme weather, perhaps a better question is, will all this humanity bear the burden of living along the world's coasts?
Growing appeal: Landlocked life
As the "500-year" hurricanes Harvey and Irma (and 2011's Irene) powerfully and tragically demonstrated, living near a coastline is an increasingly dangerous proposition. But for some coastal regions, rising seas and hurricanes aren't the only cause for alarm: the coastal lands in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina are sinking by up to 3mm a year, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Florida. Could these multiple factors reverse humans' seaward migration?
Some research suggests that may be the case. A recent University of Georgia study found that rising sea levels could drive U.S. coastal residents far inland, even to landlocked states like Arizona and Wyoming, which could see significant population surges from coastal migration by 2100. Many of these places are not equipped to deal with sudden population increases. That means sea level rise isn't just a problem for coastal regions.
"We typically think about sea-level rise as being a coastal challenge or a coastal issue," said Mathew Hauer, author of the study and head of the Applied Demography program at the University of Georgia. "But if people have to move, they go somewhere."
"We're going to have more people on less land and sooner than we think," said Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell University. “The future rise in global mean sea level probably won't be gradual. Yet few policy makers are taking stock of the significant barriers to entry that coastal climate refugees, like other refugees, will encounter when they migrate to higher ground."
Geisler is the lead author of a study published in the July issue of the journal Land Use Policy examining responses to climate change by land use planners in Florida and China. He and the study's co-author, Ben Currens, an earth and environmental scientist from the University of Kentucky, make the case for "proactive adaptation strategies extending landward from on global coastlines." By 2060, about 1.4 billion people could be climate change refugees, according to Geisler's study. That number could reach 2 billion by 2100.
Not just for the birds: Higher ground
Writing in the Washington Post, Elizabeth Rush, author of "Rising: The Unsettling of the American Shore," suggests that coastal residents should take a lesson from the roseate spoonbill. For most of the past century, this striking pink shorebird has made a habitat in the Florida Keys. But for the past decade, as rising wetland levels have made finding food more difficult, the spoonbills have been steadily abandoning their historic nesting grounds for higher ground on the mainland. She writes:
Adding several centimeters of water into the wetlands where spoonbills traditionally bred (as has occurred over the past 10 years in the Florida Bay, thanks to wetter winters and higher tides) significantly changed the landscape, eliminating the habitats where these gangly waders had long found dinner. When the spoonbills realized it was no longer possible to live on the Florida Keys, they left.
But humans can't move to higher ground and build new homes as easily as the spoonbill. Rush contends that "legal and regulatory conditions don’t make moving away from increasingly dangerous coastal areas easy." She argues that, to avoid loss of life and economic value, governments at local, state and federal levels, as part of climate adaption, must "start financing and encouraging relocation."
In New York, some residents impacted by Hurricane Sandy took matters into their own hands, forming grassroots "buyout committees" to raise awareness about the perils of coastal life, even knocking on doors to gauge residents' interest in relocating. Eventually, the relocation activists got the attention and support of Governor Andrew Cuomo: In 2013, he released funds from the federal Hazard Mitigation Grant Program to buy out homes across three Sandy-impacted areas in Staten Island.
"[T]hose homes would be knocked down, giving the wetlands a chance to return so they might provide a buffer against storms to come," Rush writes, adding that since Sandy, around 500 residents have applied for government buyouts—now "entire neighborhoods are being demolished along the island’s shore."
Risky business: Flood insurance
One "exit barrier" has to do with a 49-year-old program called the National Flood Insurance Program. Under the current law, homeowners are required to rebuild on their land—even after suffering through multiple floods. "Through the National Flood Insurance Program, we know there are about 30,000 properties that flood repeatedly," said Rob Moore, senior policy analyst for the NRDC's water program. "On average, these properties have flooded about five times." Only around one percent of these properties carry flood insurance, reports NPR, but have been responsible for about 25 percent of the paid claims.
Jennifer Bayles, a homeowner in the Houston metro area who was interviewed last week on NPR, paid $83,000 for her house in 1992. After the first flood in 2009, insurance paid her $200,000, then an additional $200,000 following the next flood. Now, post-Harvey, she expects to receive around $300,000.
When a program pays out billions of dollars for just a handful of repeat customers, some argue that rebuilding simply isn't cost-efficient. Rush points to a recent Natural Resources Defense Council study that found, "in most cases, it is less expensive to buy out these homes than it is to cover the cost of repairing and rebuilding after ever-more-common floods."
Another problem is a lack of funding. The National Flood Insurance Program is nearly $25 billion in debt due to this season's massive hurricanes. In a recent press briefing, Roy E. Wright, the deputy FEMA administrator in charge of the program, said his agency estimates it will pay Texas policyholders some $11 billion in flood claims for Harvey alone. But NFIP has only $1.08 billion of cash to pay claims. That amount, reported Bradley Keoun of TheStreet.com last week, is "down by a third in less than three weeks—and a $5.8 billion credit limit from the U.S. Treasury Department."
Congress is set to vote soon on whether to reauthorize the flood program. "Even though we reauthorized it for three months, and extended it, it's gonna run out of money probably in October,” Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) told Rollcall earlier this month. MacArthur, who sits on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans, said Congress will have to authorize additional financial support to the program, noting that extra funds "must come with reform."
What kind of reform remains to be seen. Rush proposes lawmakers eliminate the requirement that claim filers must rebuild near the line of devastation:
[T]he program could offer discounted flood insurance to homeowners in the highest-risk areas, with a caveat: In return for lower premiums, those homeowners would agree to accept buyouts if their properties were damaged during a flood. This would help keep insurance rates affordable for low- and middle-income homeowners (a daunting task given that the program is both federally subsidized and tens of billions of dollars in debt) while encouraging folks to move out of harm’s way.
Risky proposition: Climate denial
House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), a longtime critic of NFIP, argues that the program amounts to a federal subsidy that spurs human development in flood zones. "After Harvey and Irma," he told Rollcall, "it would be insane for the federal government to simply rebuild repetitive loss homes in the same fashion, in the same place."
In an interview Thursday on CNBC, he said:
If all we do is force federal taxpayers to build the same homes in the same fashion, in the same location and expect a different result, we all know that's the classic definition of insanity.... Maybe we pay for your home once, maybe even pay for it twice, but at some point the taxpayer's got to quit paying and you've got to move.
"The NFIP in its current form is unsustainable and perverse," Hensarling said, in a written statement.
Perhaps. But what's also unsustainable and perverse is denying the role of climate change, not only in storm activity, but in the rising sea levels that make flooding worse: Hensarling's poor climate voting record garnered him a spot on Vice Motherboard's "Texas Climate Change Deniers" list. As the Sun Herald, a Mississippi Gulf Coast newspaper, recently put it, "Climate change denial and our love of the beach could sink the National Flood Insurance program."
Predictably, Donald Trump dismissed the notion that climate change played a role in the frequency and intensity of superstorms like Harvey and Irma. When asked about climate change by reporters aboard Air Force One after touring the devastation of Florida's west coast, Trump insisted:
If you go back into the 1930s and the 1940s, and you take a look, we've had storms over the years that have been bigger than this....So we did have two horrific storms, epic storms, but if you go back into the '30s and '40s, and you go back into the teens, you'll see storms that were very similar and even bigger, OK?
But for coastal residents impacted by these massive storms—and for the vast majority of scientists—it's not OK. Penn State atmospheric scientist Michael Mann connects the dots between climate change and the impact of Hurricane Harvey:
There are certain climate change-related factors that we can, with great confidence, say worsened the flooding. Sea level rise attributable to climate change…is more than half a foot over the past few decades. That means that the storm surge was a half foot higher than it would have been just decades ago, meaning far more flooding and destruction.
Endangered: Ocean economies
There's also the economic impact of losing shorelines. The U.N. estimates that the so-called ocean economy, which includes employment, marine-based ecosystem services and cultural services, is between $3 to $6 trillion per year.
Coastal areas within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the ocean account for more than 60 percent of the world's total gross national production. For the economies of developing nations, these regions are especially crucial. A big part of that coastal production is food. As the sea gobbles up fertile seaside land and river deltas, feeding the rapidly escalating human population is going to get that much more difficult.
The future of tourism is also a major concern, particularly small island states, where tourism generally accounts for more than a quarter of GDP. For some islands, that amount may soon have to be wiped off the balance sheet. Just last year, five islands in the Solomon Island archipelago disappeared to the rising sea.
But economic losses due to extreme weather and climate change are also a major issue for developed nations; according to preliminary estimates, Hurricane Harvey caused up to $200 billion in damage.
Retreat or rebuild?
People may enjoy the coasts, beaches, surf and sand. But by emitting greenhouse gases at an unsustainable rate, we're losing these cherished ecosystems to the rising seas and superstorms. Perhaps we should give the coasts back to nature. By letting key coastal ecosystems return to their natural states, mangrove forests and other vegetated marine and intertidal habitats can act as bulwarks against the rising seas and hurricanes.
Like forests, these coastal areas are powerful carbon sinks, safely storing around a quarter of the additional carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Crucially, they also help protect communities and wildlife near shores from floods and storm surges. As people move inland, natural ecosystems could reclaim shorelines. "Retreat," Rush declares, "is slowly gaining traction as a climate change adaptation strategy."
Moving people out of flood zones — and rewilding coastlines and bringing wetlands back — could be an area where policymakers and conservationists could find common ground. It also means rethinking the way cities are designed; when it comes to urban planning, city planners have generally not taken natural systems into account.
Writing on AlterNet, Mary Mazzoni looked at how the mismanagement of Houston's natural ecosystem increased the amount of flooding from Hurricane Harvey, pointing out that by paving over wetlands, which are able to absorb a great amount of flood water, the city left itself vulnerable to disaster.
She notes that the "relative lack of regulatory hurdles — Houston is the largest U.S. city without zoning laws — allowed development to continue more or less unchecked . . . the wetlands loss documented in [a] Texas A&M; study is equivalent to nearly 4 billion gallons in lost stormwater detention, worth an estimated $600 million."
"'Conquering' nature has long been the western way," writes Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki. "Our hubris, and often our religious ideologies, have led us to believe we are above nature and have a right to subdue and control it. We let our technical abilities get ahead of our wisdom. We're learning now that working with nature — understanding that we are part of i t— is more cost-effective and efficient in the long run."
In our new normal, one way to work with nature might be to let her have her coastlines back.
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Climate and energy are becoming focal points in state political races.
The latest example, Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto has a strong clean energy proposal.
As soon as Donald Trump won the presidential election, people in the US and around the world knew it was terrible news for the environment. Not wanting to believe that he would try to follow through on our worst fears, we held out hope.
Those hopes for a sane US federal government were misplaced. But they are replaced by a new hope – an emerging climate leadership at the state level and a continuation of economic forces that favor clean/renewable energy over dirty fossil fuels. In fact, it appears that some states are relishing the national and international leadership roles that they have undertaken. Support for sensible climate and energy policies is now a topic to run on in elections.
This change has manifested itself in American politics. One such plan stems from my home state, but it exemplifies work in other regions. I live in the state of Minnesota where we are gearing up for a gubernatorial election, which is where this plan comes from.
My state is well known as somewhat progressive, both socially and economically. The progressive policies resulted in a very strong 2007 renewable energy standard, which helped to reduce carbon pollution and create 15,000 jobs.
As an aside, it is really painful for me to have to describe sane energy policies as “progressive.” The fact that conservatives in the US have largely attacked clean energy and the science of climate change is deeply disappointing, but it is a reality nonetheless.
Consequently, it is not surprising that one of the candidates for Governor, Rebecca Otto, has outlined what may become the trend among other states. She is not yet elected, but her clean energy proposal has many people talking.
The proposal presents a two-part focus on clean energy-based economic development and climate-change mitigation. Basically, in my state (and in many other states), the clean energy economy is a major contributor to the creation of new, high-paying jobs. Here wind and solar power are king. If you drive through the farm fields of southern Minnesota, you will see wind farms that stretch as far as the eye can see. With solar, there are some large-scale solar farms but the real excitement is the small-scale commercial and residential solar generation that is complementing the large-scale wind turbines.
From an energy production standpoint, this makes sense. A diversified renewable energy portfolio is one that that includes large wind (which provides intermittent power) along with solar that also is intermittent but often generates power when the wind isn’t blowing (and vice versa). Also, the small-scale nature of solar makes it more reliable, less subject to local weather systems.
So the proposed clean energy plan would leverage the fast-growing and high-wage industries in energy. It also brings to bear perhaps the best financing mechanism to spur clean energy growth (the so-called “fee and dividend”). The way fee and dividend works is a fee is charged to companies that produce greenhouse gas emissions. No longer would society be subsidizing the costs from carbon pollution.
The revenue from the fees would be returned to citizens so that it becomes a revenue-neutral tool. There is no net increase in cost or increase in income. What the fee and dividend method does, however, is reward people and companies for good choices. If you make choices that reduce your greenhouse gas contributions, you end up with extra money at the end of the year. On the other hand, if you make poor choices, you end up with less money. I think of this as a tax that advantages the smart over the, well, less smart.
What is also exciting about the plan is that a portion of the fees would go to fund clean-energy technology and tax credits. For instance, residents would get funds to offset the costs of energy purchases. So when residents insulate their house, buy solar panels, or install high-efficiency heat pumps, part of that cost is covered.
It will be interesting to see if similar plans emerge nationally. Most importantly, it will be interesting to see whether the climate change and energy topic becomes something that political candidates actively run on. In the past, this issue has been low on voter priorities lists. But, if proposing bold new plans can get votes, that may change – and quickly.
I will also be watching how people on the right side of the political aisle view these plans. In truth, this plan has a lot that so-called libertarians or even fiscal conservatives would like. It creates a reward system that is revenue neutral. It penalizes bad choices and rewards good choices. It also reflects the fact that not charging the polluters means that the rest of us pay for the costs.
Whether it is more severe hurricanes, crop-killing droughts, intense storms and flooding, or sea-level rise, these impacts cost us. And it just isn’t right that the industries that have created the problem (and fought to have us neglect the problem) should be getting a free ride. I don’t know any conservatives who think that. I also don’t know any conservatives who want a dirty planet to hand our children. While conservatives often dislike solutions for handling climate change, “fee and dividend” is a concept that many support.
In full disclosure, I have endorsed Rebecca Otto in her election contest, because of her nation-leading climate and energy plan. This article is not intended to be a further endorsement, but rather a reflection on how exciting new proposals to truly handle the climate/energy problem are being developed and used by candidates for office.
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Meet the one EPA employee unafraid to call out Scott Pruitt.
Pruitt is “like a very good attorney not leaving a paper trail.”
These days, Environmental Protection Agency staffers who aren’t in Administrator Scott Pruitt’s inner circle will only speak to the press anonymously for fear of retribution or losing their jobs. Not John O’Grady, who has worked as an environmental scientist in the agency’s Chicago regional office since the first Bush administration. As president of the EPA’s employee union, American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, it is O’Grady’s job to be out in front, often criticizing the administration, in order to defend the jobs of its 9,000 members across the country who can’t afford to speak up so publicly.
O’Grady, a biochemist by training, once thought the EPA was “too bureaucratic” for his taste. But after taking the plunge, he’s had his hands in everything from the EPA’s Superfund clean-up to its pesticides and water quality programs over his three-decade career at the agency. O’Grady has been especially busy since Trump has taken office, as union chapters have taken a lead in organizing campaigns like a recent “National Save the US EPA Day,” and even taking the unusual step to protest Pruitt’s appointment earlier this year.
His union duties were what brought us to AFGE’s Washington headquarters earlier in September. He spoke to me—on behalf of the union, not the EPA—hours before he planned to meet Republican congressional leaders to make a case for shielding the EPA from budget cuts; we followed up later on the phone. O’Grady told me he’s concerned that the EPA’s mission is drifting under Pruitt—”Are we here to protect human health and the environment or are we here to make sure companies make a profit?”—and, on the eve of three major hurricanes, he talked about what all of this means for much-needed emergency response.
Mother Jones: The EPA is pursuing buyout for staff, some employees have quit in protest, and many of the top positions at the regional and national level remain unfilled, not to mention that the EPA’s staffing is approaching its lowest level since the Reagan administration. How do all these EPA vacancies affect responding to real-time disasters?
John O’Grady: You send people down to remediate the hurricanes. That’s going to cost a lot of money. You’re not just paying their wages, but contracts. I don’t think we have the staffing. I don’t think we have the funding. They’re going to have to beg, borrow, or steal money from other programs in order to get that accomplished.
The double edge is when you send these people to respond to these hurricanes that money is taken in part from Clean Air Act programs, clean water action, and hazardous waste programs. The emergency response is generally handled by on-scene coordinators, and we’ve been losing some of them lately. They are a specially trained crew that is trained for hazardous waste and emergency response. We have a regional response core, which consists of regional employees that volunteers to be mobilized in hurricanes. If you have fewer people, you have fewer in the response core.
Look back at 2001 or 2005 when we had anthrax [threats] or Katrina, we had higher staffing levels and we had more money as well. We had the [1986] Challenger disaster, the [2003] Columbia disaster. We deployed teams for on-scene coordinators to go down there to assist with the cleanups. But with the buyouts and retirements, a lot of the experienced on-scene coordinators are leaving. I don’t see the capacity to respond to a lot of these events.
MJ: The staffing issue predates the Trump administration, right?
JO: Pre-Trump. But it was just a fact that our numbers have been going down since 1999 and it looks like it is going to go down a lot more.
MJ: There have been a bunch of accusations about EPA HQ’s interaction with career staffers—like not allowing notes in meetings, not listening to experts on staff, and censorship of climate change in grants.
JO: Here’s the big problem with this administration. We have Administrator Scott Pruitt, who does not send emails out. So when he has a meeting, he has a verbal meeting with people and then the verbal orders are dispersed. It’s really kind of like a very good attorney not leaving a paper trail. There are a few mass mailers from Mr. Pruitt, but those are generally written by someone else and sent out under his name.
MJ: If Pruitt is not sending emails, who is?
JO: There aren’t things coming out of headquarters. It’s pretty much on a regional level, assuming we’re supposed to do this we’re supposed to do that. It’s getting to the division directors. Maybe they’re getting the emails from someone higher up, but the staff have not seen them.
MJ: And is that unusual?
JO: I think so. For example in the former Office of Solid Waste Emergency Response there were [guidelines] you could read; that’s our policy, [but] those kinds of things seem to be diminishing. It’s not a sudden thing, like we had it, then we don’t. It’s just kind of drifting.
MJ: How does that affect the work?
JO: I think it makes people less certain of what they’re supposed to do. Administrator Pruitt, when he was first at EPA, talked about how the agency is supposed to provide a standard approach, certainty, rule of law. Well, I think we have less of that today because it’s like we’re guessing. Are we here to protect human health and the environment or are we here to make sure companies make a profit?
I think it’s beginning to drift toward our mission being compromised. Every other administrator, whether it was Republican or Democrat, would come in and establish their principals and communicate as necessary. There wasn’t a question. But this administration is really kind of strange.
MJ: Does having acting heads in several regional offices limit what those offices can do?
O’Grady: On a personal level I’m glad they’re not yet staffed with political appointees because I think then things are going to get worse. Then they’ll start directly implementing their programs more aggressively. Right now you have people who have been in the agency for years who are acting in the capacity of regional administrator, deputy regional administrator, and its better that way right now than if we had a Trump appointee or a Pruitt appointee.
MJ: What are you telling your members regarding the Hatch Act, the law that prevents federal employees from engaging in political campaigns and lobbying?
JO: Be very cautious. I put out a letter in February because I was hearing rumors about people going on strike and said, ‘wait a minute we have no right to go on strike as members of the federal civilian service. So don’t even talk about it and don’t participate in it.’
We don’t have an election coming up just yet but when we get close to next summer and people are directly running for Congress and the Senate then, be very careful folks, Hatch Act kicks in again. Careful especially on the property, on government time, and never with government equipment.
MJ: What are the most unsettling directives or initiatives you’ve seen come out of headquarters?
JO: Scott Pruitt basically supported the president’s budget—he was in favor of 30 percent [overall] reduction, he was in favor of letting go almost 3,800 people, of closing offices.
He talks about the Superfund program like he’s going to get in there and magically speed everything up. It does take a long time but there’s a reason for that. Up until 1995, when we had the Superfund tax, we had a fund we could go into and we could clean up a site. It’s listed on the “National Priority List.” We could go right away and ask for the Superfund money and do the remedial investigation, the feasibility study, record the decision, clean the thing up, and then go after the responsible parties. But since that tax and money has dried up, now we find out who the parties are, go to court and sue them, and sit down with them and get them to clean up the site using their money. And that’s a constant battle. That takes time.
So how are you going to jump in there and suddenly speed everything up with no extra money? It’s not going to happen.
MJ: Where are we in the Trump administration’s pursuit of buyouts at the EPA?
JO: They were looking for 1,227, but I’m convinced it’s only about 400 they got nationwide [as of early September]. If you look at 2014 [buyout incentives] you had $11.3 million, and by the time they paid annual leave there was $16.2 million, and they had 456 people. Now how are you going to take [2017’s] $12 million [for buyouts] and turn that into 1,227 people? It doesn’t make sense.
MJ: Looking out ahead, where do you think the EPA will be in a few years?
JO: It’s scary to even think of that.
One of the big problems is this: How often have you heard of a major corporation, whether it’s Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Walmart, talk poorly about their employees? Yet in America, we have the House and the Senate speaking ill of federal employees.
All of this is impacting people and their morale. I’m certain that at some point people graduating from college, the kind of people you need to bring onto the agency each and every year, they’re going to look at that and say ‘Why would I work for the agency or the government?’ They’re not going to do that. That’s my big concern.
MJ: How has your union’s role changed to adapt to this administration?
JO: In the past I would say it was pretty typical for unions to almost exclusively work on grievances, arbitration, and unfair labor practices. But given the fact that the ultimate working condition is whether or not you have a job, we’ve begun doing more [to alert] Congress to the dangerously low levels of staff and how the budget is going to basically cripple the agency.
MJ: Back to why you were in town, how do you talk to Republicans to get them on board with the EPA’s work?
JO: I hope the Republican leadership can see us as individuals, as human beings, as dedicated civil servants who care about accomplishing the mission of the agency and are basically carrying out the wishes of Congress.
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