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1. Palin Admits Man's Role In Climate Change, Kinda
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2. Democrat's Energy Bill: Offshore Drilling for Clean Power
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3. Playing the Ethanol Waiting Game in Ford Heights
Palin Admits Man's Role In Climate Change, Kinda
Craig Rubens - Policy
McCain has been lauded for being way ahead of the GOP when it comes to fighting climate change and proposing some of the first emissions reduction legislation. However, his newly minted running mate Sarah Palin has expressed skepticism at mankind’s roll in the warming of the globe. In her first interview since being nominated for Vice President, yesterday Palin said: “I believe that man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change.” When pressed by Gibson, she repeated: “I’m attributing some of man’s activities to potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now.”
There is a significant difference here from her previously stated position on global warming. In an interview from several weeks ago with NewsMax, Palin said: "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made." Before, she emphasized that she personally didn’t think man was contributing to global warming. Now, she’s conceding that human activities could potentially be causing some aspects of climate change. Though by no means is this an admission that burning fossil fuels is directly related to the warming of the globe.
In the interview Palin said that she and McCain do agree that something must be done to mitigate the effects of global warming, regardless of what causes it. And while Gibson dwelt on the issue of causality, he didn’t question Palin about what should be done to cut pollution. The first-term Governor has not come out in favor of McCain’s carbon cap-and-trade system and has not articulated what she thinks should be done to fight global warming, man-made or otherwise. The only definite energy and environment plan she has put forward is expanded drilling with little mention of any other energy options.
Here’s the excerpted transcript below:
GIBSON: Let me talk a little bit about environmental policy, because this interfaces with energy policy and you have some significant differences with John McCain. Do you still believe that global warming is not man-made?
PALIN: I believe that man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change. Here in Alaska, the only arctic state in our union, of course, we see the effects of climate change more so than any other area with ice pack melting. Regardless, though, of the reason for climate change, whether it’s entirely, wholly caused by man’s activities or is part of the cyclical nature of our planet — the warming and the cooling trends — regardless of that, John McCain and I agree that we gotta do something about it and we have to make sure that we’re doing all we can to cut down on pollution.
GIBSON: But it’s a critical point as to whether or not this is man-made. He says it is. You have said in the past it’s not.
PALIN: The debate on that even, really has evolved into, OK, here’s where we are now: scientists do show us that there are changes in climate. Things are getting warmer. Now what do we do about it. And John McCain and I are gonna be working on what we do about it.
GIBSON: Yes, but isn’t it critical as to whether or not it’s man-made, because what you do about it depends on whether its man-made.
PALIN: That is why I’m attributing some of man’s activities to potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now.
GIBSON: But I, color me a cynic, but I hear a little bit of change in your policy there. When you say, yes, now you’re beginning to say it is man-made. It sounds to me like you’re adapting your position to Sen. McCain’s.
PALIN: I think you are a cynic because show me where I have ever said that there’s absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any affect, or no affect, on climate change.
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Democrat's Energy Bill: Offshore Drilling for Clean Power
Craig Rubens - Hitlines
The Democratic leadership unveiled its energy package yesterday with the no-nonsense title the “Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act.” But the emerging bill was a swap meet-style process, bundling plans to open up huge chunks of the Atlantic seaboard to offshore drilling with a number of incentives for renewable energy. The bill is scheduled for consideration next week, giving the House an opportunity to vote on offshore drilling, which Republicans and the President have been calling for all summer.
There’s three possible big gains for cleantech: 1) Yet another attempt to extend the renewable energy tax credits, which help solar and wind energy development, 2) the creation of a federal renewable portfolio standard that would mandate all utilities generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and 3) the creation of a Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve to invest in and offer incentives for plug-in hybrid cars, as well as energy-efficient homes, buildings and appliances.
Paying for all this, however, has always been the sticking point. Democrats propose repealing tax breaks for the oil and gas industry and revamping the royalty system, forcing oil companies to pay for their existing leases. Democrats got some ammo on this front this week when reports came out that the Mineral Management Service, the agency in charge of collecting these royalties from the oil companies, was rife with corruption.
The bill’s short-term, fossil-fuel-powered energy goals include the release of 10 percent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which Democrats say could lower prices at the pump by as much as a third. It would also end the moratorium on offshore drilling, allowing for leasing and exploration between 50 and 100 miles offshore, effective at the end of the month. However, how quickly expanded domestic drilling would effect our gasoline prices is anything but certain.
It’s also not clear how Republicans or the oil industry will take to swapping the financial certainty of tax breaks for the gamble of offshore drilling options. But in tit-for-tat sausage making, the Republicans might need to swallow higher taxes on the oil companies if they want to get the domestic drilling over which they’ve been beating their war drum.
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Playing the Ethanol Waiting Game in Ford Heights
Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy
Hard times for the U.S. corn ethanol industry doesn’t always mean plants officially get the boot — sometimes it’s a more subtle move, like ignoring a planned plant til it’s basically kaput. That’s the case for Ford Heights Ethanol, at least according to Bloomberg, which says the company applied for a permit for a $130 million plant in Illinois in June 2006, promising economic prosperity, but has quietly sat on the plans.
According to the Illinois EPA, the plant was going to be designed to provide 63 million gallons of ethanol per year and would have been powered by natural gas. The Illinois EPA issued a construction permit July 31, 2007, and there was a planned public hearing for June 12, 2007. We’re not sure if that hearing ever happened, but Bloomberg says the plot where the plant was to be built is covered in “knee-high grass and old tires,” and that, “[T]wo years later, no work has begun.”
Few are likely surprised by such a situation — we’ve been compiling our ethanol death watch map (Ford Heights Ethanol newly added) for a good 9 months now, and mainstream media like NPR have inked titles like High Corn Prices Cast Shadow Over Ethanol Plants.
The high corn prices are bad enough, with various reports blaming biofuels for the subsequent rise in food costs that has ranged from 3 percent to a whopping 75 percent. But it was also the rapid build-out of a heavily subsidized industry that has proven to be a mixed bag for greener transportation. As fuel consultant Jim Jordan, of Jim Jordan & Associates, tells Bloomberg, “We have in fact overbuilt. This thing is pretty devastating.”
But it’s most devastating for the local area that has been dreaming of green jobs, only to be kept waiting. Particularly an area like Ford Heights, Ill., which has a population of 3,300 — 49 percent of which live in poverty. Ford Heights Ethanol President Jonathan Kahn tells Bloomberg that no one would fund the project and the company regrets not being able to bring jobs to the area.
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