Eric, Welcome to the Lake.

Eli, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Hi Eli, thanks for hosting this!

Hi Eric, and welcome to all the FDL readers — thanks for joining us. Here’s one to get started for this progressive audience.

In The Climate War you call for compromises from the environmental left as well as the right. What’s your own background in terms of issues like pollution and nuclear power? And have your views evolved, and if so, how?

No prob, Eric — great book you wrote — I recommend it to anyone who cares about climate or energy. Though there’s another worthy new book out there for such folks :)

Hello and welcome to Firedoglake!

Great question. I came at this out of political journalism, because I wanted to see whether our broken system could rise to this challenge. (So far, of course, it has not, and my book explains why.) I have been engaged in these issues since the 1970s, in various ways. In the late seventies, as a college kid, I was one of the people who marched on the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire. In 1995 I qrote a Time magazine cover story that helped shut down Milbrook One plant in Connecticut bcs it was not being operated in a safe manner. But climate change means we need to keep our nuclear generation at around 20% — I think we can deal with the waste issue, and I think nuclear needs to be part of the mix to drive a political solution. I have no idea if it can be cost effective; I greatly prefer other forms of power. But I dont think we can slam the door on nuclear and still get this done.

That could mean big subsidies for nuclear power, coal, and perhaps off-shore drilling.

How is that different from what we have now with corporate energy subsidies for the worst energy choices?

Good afternoon Eric and Eli and welcome to FDL.

Eric, I have not had an opportunity to read your book so please forgive me if you address this in there.

My question, just this week we saw a story about some coal enthusiasts mocking Ashley Judd for speaking out against mountaintop removal mining. As a native Kentuckian I deplore the use of coal but understand it nevertheless. Is it possible to set things such that anything that makes coal mining more difficult and more expensive would be more beneficial? That is, rather than the strip mining and mountaintop removal, force the coal companies to use more traditional mining, with more safety controls and land protection in order to force up the price and make folk find better alternatives.

Or am I an idiot?

As a technical note, there is a “Reply” button in the lower right hand of each comment. Pressing the Reply will pre-fill the commenter name and comment number being replied to and helps folks to follow the conversation more easily.

Note: some browsers do not like to work correctly with the Reply if it is pressed before the page completes loading after a hard page refresh

Eric — maybe in your response you can talk about how the coal industry is fairing in the current fight over a climate bill in the Senate…

As mentioned, my book is about whether our highly dysfunctional political system can take the first step toward emissions reduction, but passing a mandatory declining cap on CO2, and pricing carbon. The system is based on compromises, and it is crucial that the compromises needed to drive the bargain don’t destroy the environmental effectiveness of a bill. You can’t pass a bill without subsidies for coal–so make sure you are subsidizing coal in a way that accelerates carbon capture and sequestration and that your cap shuts down dirty coal hat doesn’t capture its CO2. Offshore drilling is off the table, at least for now. Nuclear needs to be on the table of you’re going to pass a bill–but so does concentrated solar, wind, cogeneration, and efficiency and conservation.

I think we should outlaw mountaintop removal mining today.

Eric: Should climate change be an issue led by environmental groups?

One problem is that Americans tend to associate green groups with limosine liberals, extremists, etc – whether or not that’s fair. (And the players in your book are constantly crafting public messages that reflect economic, not scientific/enviro concerns)

Another is that on issues like nuclear power it might be hard to get enviro groups to make compromises for the sake of climate…

I’m no sure there /is/ a climate bill in the senate. We’ll find out this week and next. Best case, alas, would be a cap on CO2 from the electric power sector–but even that seems like a longshot now. The great unknown is what the utilities will demand ion exchange for going first. I think they’ll demand a lot of things that they shouldn’t get.

so, if the question is whether our “dysfunctional” system can rise to the challenge, have you concluded the answer is NO? Or YES? And why?

I wholeheartedly agrees as well as most strip mining.

The Climate War is about the attempt (by green groups and others) to broaden this issue beyond the environmental community. They know their work is necessary but not sufficient. So groups like EDF and NRDC have worked hard to enlist Fortune 500 corps in a coalition called USCAP, which broke the de facto veto that US business has long held on climate action. Its blueprint became the basis of the Waxman Markey climate bill, which passed the House a year ago. Then the Senate refused to act — and Obama refused to push them –and that’s why we are where we are.

It’s not clear where Eric comes out on the role of Rahm Emanuel. Do you see him as an obstacle to getting the President to make an all-out effort, and if so, what’s driving that? And why would Obama listen to Rahm on climate change instead of Chu and Browner?

The problem’s not going away, so the need for solutions won’t either. Since this is the only political system we’ve got, we’ll need to keep trying, and the characters who I follow closely in my book – Al Gore, Fred Krupp, Frances Beinecke, Barbara Boxer, Waxman and Markey, and many others who are fighting to get this done – aren’t about to quit. I hope to write a new ending to the book someday.

In the book and since its publication, the following issues have faced Obama: Economic stimulus; health care; wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; financial reform. The urgency of climate change in the average voter’s mind pales in comparison to each.

Was there ever a chance Obama would have linked clean energy and jobs more forcefully and made the climate bill more central to his first two years?

He’s linked them with the oil spill, but not at the volume level climate advocates would have wanted.

Eric — your focus on the Krupp/EDF strategy to build a coalition (e.g., with Rogers) begs the question: what it the right strategy, given the times, or do you now find EDF and other enviro groups now regretting that they took that path? How would you describe the current split in among/between these enviromental groups, and their arguments about what to do next?

How much did the carbon industry contribute in aggregate to O’s campaign?

In the book I describe Emanuel as an obstacle to climate action, plain and simple. Climate falls into the category of things he would like to do if the politics were easier. He doesn’t want to spend Obama’s political capital on an issue he regards as unwinnable. If he sees an opening and thinks he can get it done, he’ll try. That’s not good enough. There won’t BE an opening unless Obama tries in a very sustained way. But Emanuel isn’t the president–Obama is, and the question, as you say, is why he isn’t overruling his political team here. That’s a hard one to answer. I continue to hope that Obama will step up; now would be an excellent time for him the do so.

Thank you for your detailed response. But “Cap and Trade” seems to me to be just another Casino game for investment bankers to bet on. I would suggest an Energy Program that employs engineers, scientists and technical people. We need a commitment to a Solar/Hydrogen option that gets the taxpayer subsidies.

The Thieves at Goldman Sachs are the last people who should determine our future. Of course GS does control our energy policy and our future.

Without a green/business coalition, this can never get done. Like it or not, there is no way to pass a bill that transforms the energy sector without getting buy-in from industry. So no one regrets the attempt. What they regret is that the Senate didn’t have the courage to get it done last year, after the House passed a bill.

Recent stories describe the growth in the coal market world wide. In the US, coal might have declined a bit during the recession, as consumers used less electricity (and coals percentage fell just below 50%). But in China and India, coal use is surging as their economies expand. We’re exporting a lot of coal, even as we curtail use here.

How is this reality viewed in the US community by those working on climate change? Has it affected their strategies about what to focus on here? And does that play a role in your preference of nuclear as a bridge strategy?

You begin your book with Gore as a sympathetic protagonist, and he’s quoted throughout the book and portrayed fully, and I feel fairly. Certainly no one person has done more to bring the issue of climate change to the public than Gore, both in public and behind the scenes with his Alliance.

But I was recently shocked when about a month ago in LA the sports talk guys were _so negative_ about the guy. Right or wrong, they view him as moralizing, holier than thou, a hypocrite and somehow, at worst, going to profit from a cap and trade.

Do you think that the fact that he is such a polarizing figure means we need a new standard bearer? If so, any nominations?

Cap and trade has been demonized from the right and left. What matters is the cap–a mandatory declining limit on carbon emissions. The trade part has already been modified to solve the legitimate problem you raise–the speculator issue. Under the Kerry Lieberman bill, speculators like Goldman would not be allowed to buy carbon allowances. You would have be an emitter to buy or sell them. That’s a good example of the policy evolving in a positive way– sadly the politics have not kept pace. Message of the book: we have the policy tools to get this done. We don’t have the political courage to shout down the deny-and-delay crowd. My book exposes their fraudulent arguments, and ends with a call to action that has already moved a lot of people to get involved. That’s really heartening to me.

The global growth in coal makes it clear to mainstream enviro groups that we have to do everything we can to make CCS a reality — because even if we shut down all the coal plants in the US (which we’re not going to do, alas, since 25 states get 50% or more of their electricity from coal), China and India aren’t going to shut theirs down. So we need this technology in order to have a fighting chance at reducing global emissions. I see CCS as a bridge technology, that would allow some plans to continue operating until we complete the transition to truly clean forms of energy. Funding CCS is also a political necessity to pass a carbon cap.

Eric — in response to Frank33 @24, there’s a complicated debate between the carbon tax straight up vs carbon tax implicit from caps without or without trade/dividend/etc. At one point you describe the propaganda by the denialists campaign to portray the trading system as Enron-type scams — where do you come out on whether that concern is valid or propaganda. How do you interpret the results from the European (or early US regional) trading systems?

(To be clear I just gave the example of the sports talk guys as a representative example of Americans who probably don’t spend much time each day thinking about climate/energy/politics)

Without a green/business coalition, this can never get done.

I respect your optimism. But one has only to look at pitiful Louisiana to believe how impossible either is at this time. In my view until it is not necessary to have Corporate Energy’s support that there will be a chance to begin the measures hoped to save the planet.

What we need is to understand that how Gore is portrayed is largely a function of climate deniers and their propagandists. Whatever it takes to demonize and discredit those trying to solve the problem, they will do it. There are no rules here.

Eric — how were you able to get a sense of what the “clean coal” and climate denier groups were doing to change the narratives? Were you shocked, and if so, by what?

I hate to think where we’d be on this issue without Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, and the slide show. That said, he knows he is a polarizing figure – it is baked in from 2000. That’s why he created the Alliance for Climate Protection, to carry his message to places and people he personally can’t reach. But no one messenger can get this done. If there’s one who could make the biggest difference of all, I’d say it has to be the president. no one else has the bully pulpit or the communication skills of Obama. If he doesn’t engage fully and deeply- on messaging, policy-making, and politicking – we don’t gt this done.

Eric:
A lot of the people you spoke to for the book were the “true believers” as you call them. You interview and depict coal interests – and as you told me today, Jim Rogers of Duke Energy is certainly a complex figure — as well as other industry players. But I wonder if your book would be stronger if its protagonists weren’t all the “white hats” who want an emissions cap.

I think the climate community made a mistake by splitting on the cap vs tax issue. Truth is, we’ll need them both before we’re done. The countries that have been most successful at emissions reduction have both. While the left argued tax vs cap, the right sang from one page of the hymnal, and that’s part of the reason they succeeded in preventing us from getting anything done. I think the desire for a ‘simple, pure’ carbon tax is wishful thinking.

But let me hasten to add that if we could pass a carbon tax, I’d be all for it. Since no carbon tax has ever come close to passage, and the House actually did pas a carbon cap, it’s clear to me that the cap is more doable. There will be a lot of rethinking after the Senate (likely) passes an energy bill with no cap. Some will say this is proof that a cap can never pass, and that we need to move on to Plan B. I’m all for it–as soon as I hear about a Plan B that can work. In the meantime, we’ll make do with a renewable energy standard, and various subsidies and targets. None of them, in my view, would be as powerful as a well-designed cap. That’s why the fossil fuels industry fights the cap so hard. They know it is powerful.

I don’t think all my protagonists are white hats, by any means. Jim Rogers is a very ambiguous character; for much of the book you never know which side he’s going to end up on, because he doesn’t know himself. And then there are the villains – Myron Ebell and the professional deniers and the “clean coal’ lobbyists at ACCCE. I embedded with people on all sides of this war. I take the reader inside the strategy sessions of the professional deniers, and I hing out with the coal lobbyists, expose their connections to the science deniers, and tell the story of how their minions twisted the presidential election and forged letters to Congress about Waxman Markey. So I wouldnt say they are white hats.

In 2006 James Hansen wrote that we had only 10 years, not to begin drasticly reducing CO2, but “to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions,” or we will inevitably be on course to catastrophic temperature rise. He has determined that we can only afford a 2 degree Fahreinheit rise; a five degree rise brings the extinction of 60% of the species on earth, massive sea level rise, food and water wars, etc.
Almost five years have gone by since he wrote this. Are you confident that the course you recommend will be effective in avoiding catastrophic disaster, that it will, if taken, be effective in creating the amount of change needed, in a short enough time, to be successful, and, if not, does that mean that there is no politically viable way to avoid the worst case scenario?

T

Eric,, thanks for all you responses. What’s been the response to your book in the environmental/climate change community? And what are they suggesting that you focus on if you get to write “a different ending”??

Also, ‘True Believers’ doesn’t just refer to climate campaigners. After all, they have scientific evidence on their side. There are plenty of belief systems at war with one another in this book. Some of the skeptics I write about are true believes that climate change is a hoax. The folks at EDF are true believers in the power of a cap. Others are true believers in the carbon tax. Lots of believers here.

I found the most compelling figure in your book, indeed, Jim Rogers. Since the prospects for a tough bill have waned since the election, has Rogers altered his views?

(And not to overload you with q’s, as I know we’re almost out of time)

How has the BP oil disaster helped — or hindered — the effort on climate this year on Capitol Hill?

eli

You state above:

“so make sure you are subsidizing coal in a way that accelerates carbon capture and sequestration”

Two questions:

1. Do you know of any Electricity Generating plant, say above 100 MW, where this is implemented?

2. And have any numbers about the percentage of generated energy by the plant required to sequester most, if not all, the flue gases from the plant?

As we come to the end of this short Book Salon,

Eric, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and spending time with us discussing your new book and the climate war.

Eli, Thank you very much for Hosting this Book Salon.

Everyone, if you would like more information, here is Eric’s website, and Eli’s website.

Thanks all.

I wonder whether working on Rogers was the best choice. Why not the folks at Exelon, who are more nukes than coal? Or the California utilities who’ve been working with EDF and NRDC for years. Trying to pull along a large coal utility always seemed a little strange, no matter what you thought of Rogers himself.

Jim Hansen is also a character in my book, and I interviewed and spent time with him — I describe his attempt to persuade Jim Rogers not to build the Cliffside coal fired power plant. There’s a scene of the two of them debating it over dinner, and I tell how each of them came away from the meal with a very different idea of what happened.

Hansen told me that he isn’t sure exactly how much time we have, or (to phrase it differently) exactly when we’ll reach tipping points that accelerate unstoppable climate change. But I agree, we don’t have a lot of time to turn this ocean liner around.

Am I confident? Hell no. And I’m not recommending a course so much as describing the course that was on the table in 2007-2010. I try to write about how the world really works. If I was king of the world, I’d be a lot more aggressive than these climate bills. If I have a bias, it is in favor of action. Let’s get started!!!

Roger is pushing for a cap on the electric power sector. He says, we’re going to retire all these coal plants no matter what. So price carbon, to help us make the right decisions about what to build next.

Because it is easy for Exelon. Of course they are for a cap–thay have clean generation. Rogers had way more skin in the game! More at stake. He burns lots of coal. That’s why he was the swing vote.

Thanks all — and GOOD LUCK! to Eric on promoting his important book.

Hope to see all of you on August 22 when I’ll be back on the Lake talking Hack the Planet on a book salon. Geoengineering might become an inevitability if we can’t deal with carbon more maturely — or the planet throws us some curveballs.

Thanks everybody! Really appreciate the great questions!! Hope to continue the conversation soon.

Science and truth are not just other belief systems. That is the fact that must get out. Personally as a scientist I don’t think of myself as a “true believer.” Just someone who sees the truth and hopes to share it. But US science has become so corrupted that even the NSF is fudging on truth as to Big Bang and Evolution in deference to belief systems.

Personally I prefer a more scientific approach psychologically.. Our economic system is based on wealth as extraction until depletion then move on. — whether it is extraction from a human mark or the bowels of the fragile planet. Corporates will always defend this. We have to find ways around that philosophy and quickly.

Yes thanks for the book. You give useful insight into the personalities and the politics.

Thanks Eric and Eli, interesting discussion.

(and as always, Bev)

Exactly the point. Do we have the time to do it legislatively?

That’s why I think 350.org’s international climate work day on 10/10/10 is so important. They have just started a campaign to Put Solar on It for places like the White House and Parliament. Personally, I’d like to see Obama host a weatherization barnraising on the White House with “This Old House,” “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” and all the other TV carpentry shows. That would do something to lever open the Overton Window on energy issues.

Geoengineering is happening in the Gulf of Mexico as I write. Homo sap sap has been geoengineering the Earth for a long time in a number of different ways, inadvertently and by accident.

We need to start thinking from a zero emission perspective with deep remediation in mind.