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How Wall Street Will Ruin the Environment
Peter Andrews / Reuters
The House of Representatives votes today on cap-and-trade legislation that will make pollution a tradable commodity. Robert Bryce on why the Sierra Club’s favored legislation is full of methane.
If only we could turn bullshit into energy. Armed with that technology, the House could skip today’s much-anticipated vote on the cap-and-trade bill, a 1,201-page grab bag of ideas that has been dubbed the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.”
The bill aims to reduce America’s carbon-dioxide emissions through a myriad of new mandates on renewable energy and efficiency. It will create a system that caps carbon-dioxide emissions from large industrial plants like power generators and refineries by establishing an ever-shrinking pool of carbon allowances that could be traded among various companies and investors. The measure also aims to increase the use of carbon capture and sequestration, increase the use of electric cars, prevent destruction of tropical forests, and create something called the Clean Energy Deployment Administration.
In short, given its length and complexity, the cap-and-trade bill would be better named “The 2009 Lawyer-Lobbyist Full Employment Act.”
The idea behind the bill is to cut U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050—a level at which America’s per-capita emissions would be on par with the current-day emissions levels from such economic powerhouses as North Korea, Syria, and Cuba. (I’m not making this up.) What will the bill cost? No one knows. Proponents claim it will cost American families “less than a postage stamp per day.” Opponents claim the bill will further hamper the U.S. economy and be particularly hard on states like West Virginia, Indiana, and Wyoming—all of which get more than 90 percent of their electricity from coal-fired power plants. Thus, consumers in those states would end up paying far more under cap-and-trade than residents in states like Idaho and Oregon, both of which rely heavily on hydropower.
In short, given its length and complexity, the cap-and-trade bill would be better named “The 2009 Lawyer-Lobbyist Full Employment Act.” Proponents are ignoring the fact that Enron (remember Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay?) desperately wanted caps on carbon dioxide because they saw huge profits in being able to trade carbon allowances. And now Congress wants to give Wall Street traders—the same pirates who helped engineer the financial meltdown—a mandate that requires a massive new trading business that has the potential to be gamed in the same way that Enron gamed the California electricity market? Hello?
While Democrats are confident they can pass the bill through the House today, its chances in the Senate are far less certain. What is certain: The U.S. should immediately launch a Manhattan Project to create a new bullshit-to-energy technology, with applications that extend far beyond the halls of Congress. The need for such a breakthrough became obvious last month when I appeared on CNBC opposite Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. (Yesterday, the Sierra Club and a number of other environmental groups announced their support for the cap-and-trade bill.)
In about two minutes, Pope repeated nearly every hackneyed idea about energy that’s been put forward over the past 10 years—none of which is supported by anything remotely connected to reality. Among Pope’s claims: The U.S. should be “energy independent.” When I challenged Pope on his use of the phrase, he insisted that he had a different definition of energy independence, and that for him it means that “for a very, very long time” the U.S. has “passed up enormous opportunities” to reduce its use of foreign oil. Fine. Pope wants a little energy independence. Alas, that’s a lot like being a little pregnant.
But what really stuck in my craw was that Pope mindlessly repeated a spate of spurious claims about ethanol and Brazil. When asked about alternative energy for the transportation sector, he replied, “In Brazil, they have used sugar cane and other, much higher than corn, much better than corn, feedstocks, to generate cellulosic biofuels. We need to be doing that in the U.S. It’s going to take some time.”
What a load of methane.
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Robert Bryce has written for numerous publications ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to The Guardian and The Nation to The American Conservative. His first book, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron, was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2002 by Publishers Weekly. His latest book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence,” was published in 2008 by PublicAffairs.
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Robert Bryce has written for numerous publications ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to The Guardian and The Nation to The American Conservative. His first book, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron, was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2002 by Publishers Weekly. His latest book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence,” was published in 2008 by PublicAffairs.
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Robert Bryce has written for numerous publications ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to The Guardian and The Nation to The American Conservative. His first book, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron, was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2002 by Publishers Weekly. His latest book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence,” was published in 2008 by PublicAffairs.
MadMatt35F
I just hope they at least act like they took the time to read the bill. That would be a step in the right direction for this congress.
jzj9yx
I thought sugar cane was a good source of ethanol. What am I missing?
EtienneEtoile
Oh yes, you are absolutely correct, Rum, mmmm. Brasil was doing great until the oil boys bought up energy distribution. (trucks that deliver to fuel stations) I believe that in the early 90's they were up to 70% of cars were using ethanol and there maybe at 40% now. Any Brasileiros who can give us the real numbers? Cane works as it is easier to ferment and they use the bagasse to fuel the stills.
EtienneEtoile
I really think it is more likely people like Mr. Bryce that will ruin/have ruined the environment. Another Altar Boy for the Oil Boys.
Baby Steps....every little effort we make to reduce carbon emissions (even if the concept for altering our climate is bogus) has the potential for putting people in the US to work. The trick is to keep some of the new technology and manufacturing in the US. The ways the Oil Boys are driving the bus the US public is just another set of tires and there is a lot of nails and glass in the road!
penscott
No facts, no semblance of an argument, just insults and meaningless slogans.
Certainly this is today's stupidest post.
downbytheriver00
While I agree that every little bit helps (including nuclear and new hydro plants, BTW), this is a bit of a zero sum game. All renewable energies also have a price. I didn't see the CNBC segment with the guy from the Sierra Club but I'm surprised the Sierra Club is pro-Ethanol. Growth of sugarcane in Brazil is often sighted as one of the main reasons for the Amazon's deforestation.
If you want to go the every little bit helps route, here are some things to consider...
1. Electricity will go up in price as time moves on. We need to start building nuclear plants NOW (realizing their economic viability will be stable in the future). If France can do 80% of their electricity with Nuclear then why can't we? We also need to consider new hydro plants. I feel for the fishes but let's make a value decision here. I'd love to see more wind plants (and we can start in my backyard off of Cape Cod where my two Democratic Senators have been fighting the Cape Wind project for the past 10 years), but wind is unreliable and just doesn't provide enough power, so we need to do the first two as well.
2. Let's consider re-embracing the diesel engine for the car. A friend of mine in England just bought a new BMW 5-series (in Europe BMW's are much more average and commonplace as over here). It's a mid-sized sedan with a 2 litre, 4 cylinder diesel engine that gets 50 MPG, and it has plenty of power. That's 50 MPG! Yes, the diesel exhaust is more polluting than gasoline but in Europe they burn "clean diesel" with much lower hydrocarbon output. We need to consider it. If we're going to legislate the change of our gasoline distribution infrastructure to accept ethanol mixed gas then why can't we do it with diesel?
3. Natural gas as a fuel for cars REALLY needs to be looked into in a big way. All the cabs in Phoenix (and I believe all the buses as well) burn LNG. I know there are issues in colder climates with the engines but LNG is what we have A LOT of. Even if it's just for municipal vehicles in the warm states, we need to look at it.
4. Finally, and most painful, if America wants to REALLY, REALLY address this issue we need to wean ourselves off the internal combustion engine for our personal transportation. This would have a HUGE IMPACT on our lives, from where we live in relation to where we work to how our towns are zoned. This would impact the American lifestyle in a huge way, some of it negatively, some positively.
This legislation worries me, not because I think it will hamper us economically, but because, as sure as the sun rises in the east, it will create a new bureaucracy. This new bureaucracy will need to be fed by price increases on electricity (now there's a nice regressive tax if I ever saw one), and it will be chock full of those old by-products of big government; waste, fraud, and abuse.
EtienneEtoile
river- a counter point and some agreement
1. nuclear energy is dangerous. Study up on the Somali pirate and Somali health issues. Spent fuel was/is being dumped in their coastal waters not to mention every other hazardous waste known to man. There is little chance the guilty country(s) will be exposed as they were not breaking international law. As soon as the government there became defunct there territorial waters were fair game. The pirates used to fish these waters. Do you really think we will do any better with our spent fuel. With the corporate bottom lines and our greedy CEO's there is too much potential for abuses until a safe way of dealing with the wastes is developed. And no, salt mines in Utah, concrete filled barrels dumped off San Fran are not safe ways of dealing with the wastes.
2. Owning a diesel car myself and having rented diesel cars in Europe I can not understand why we have not moved to diesel as an interim until batteries for electric vehicles can be perfected. Does anyone know why we have not embraced diesel vehicles..Oh yea the same reason Bush was POTUS.
3. Another easy interim quick fix...hello!!! with minimal impact
4. Public transportation - until it is designed to function with the suburbs this will be a long haul.
Let's not forget- solar
Mandate that all public buildings(schools, libraires, gov. bldg, and even churches if they are receiving in fed money) mount solar panels, solar waterheating, geothermal hvac (where feasible) This alone would create significant jobs in the manf. and construction industry with huge energy savings in the long run. This can be done now! In the city where I live the energy grid will have to be updated to continue growth. The cities work around is to offer huge rebates for the above and with the 30% fed tax credit these energy saver are becoming reacables for those of us that are still working.
downbytheriver00
EtienneEtoile,
Thanks for the response. Please allow me to counterpoint.
WRT to number 1. Yes, I DO think we'll do it better than others. I agree that the disposition of nuclear waste is an issue, but I do not think that because doing something right is complicated that we should not attempt to do it. If that were the case then we should do away with all government programs, as every single one of them is loaded with waste. I also do not think that you can just label CEO's as greedy and cast the lot off and presume they'll mess things up. I happen to know many CEO's personally (albeit none in the energy industry) and I'm not sure I'd characterize them as any more greedy than you or me (me not knowing you). I do agree that power breeds corruption (like Lord Acton's famous axiom) but it's up to us to keep the corruption in check. And I'll bet my bottom dollar that the disposal of nuclear waste is 100% controlled by the EPA and the US Government in this country and not by those greedy CEO's you fear so much.
2. Diesel not being accepted doesn't have anything to do with President Bush. I do think, however, that you need to look at how diesel is dispensed and subsidized to the farm industry, how our refineries have traditionally done only gas (and we supposedly haven't built a new refinery in like 30 years), and perhaps what kind of crude oil the US has historically refined. Also, you need to look at how older diesel cars had zero power and were not accepted by the US market. I know if I put the new BMW 520iD in the hands of a guy who loves his US V8, he'd not know the difference. The same could not be said 20 years ago. Presuming my car lasts another 5 years or so, I can't wait to see what's available from VW. Perhaps a 70MPG sedan with a thumping 4 cylinder diesel that cranks out 120bhp and 250fp of torque?
3. I totally disagree with you on LNG. If this is as serious a problem as we all fear it is then we need to put everything on the table. The US has perhaps the largest Natural Gas reserves outside of Russia. There are a CRAPLOAD of cars in Flordia, Southern California, Texas, the Gulf States, and Hawaii that never go into colder climes. I'll bet you can make a business out of this if you could convert the engines over. Did you know that at the San Jose Mineta airport in California you can drive up to the bus terminal there and buy LNG? Anybody who's got an LNG car can do it. And that's halfway up the California coast. Somebody's converting them!
4. I agree with you and sadly, this will never happen in the US. On this one I clearly have to tip my hat to the Europeans. They have figured out how to build towns. If you fly over most European areas (Southern Germany comes to mind), you see spots of tightly clustered towns with endless unpopulated farmland in between. Do the same thing in the US (especially the eastern half of the country) and you see suburban sprawl, meaning EVERYONE needs a car. Unfortunately the American Dream not only means your own house but it also means you want your own 2 acres of land (and I'm just as guilty as the next guy). It's sad. Perhaps that's one of the benefits of having gone through endless centuries of wars (building your towns in tight, often behind a wall)?
5. Solar - I love it, but there are two MAJOR problems with it (and I say this as a guy who's trying to change my career and make my way into the solar industry). The first is that it is unreliable (like wind), and this unreliability necessitates the need for serious power plants that must run continuously. You can't turn the big plants on only on a cloudy day. The second is that we have not figured out a way to effectively store the energy on a large scale. This goes back to our battery problem which is the main reason electric cars are not yet a reality. You can generate a ton of electricity in the Arizona desert on a sunny day, but you can't store it well. In the interim I'd love to see all public buildings and all "big box" buildings (stores, warehouses, plants) have solar cells on the top. It's an incredible waste of space.
Another perhaps very negative outgrowth of this legislation is that it could cause the proliferation of large (and perhaps strongly polluting) power plants along our borders. This happened when the EPA tightened its chemical waste disposal rules in the 1980's and 1990's. A whole bunch of new factories sprung up along the Texas/Mexico border after they shut down in the US (helped along by NAFTA) and this area just over the border became one of the most polluted in the world. There are always unintended circumstances of any legislation. We need to guard against just moving the problem to someone else's backyard, especially when the stuff they pollute is the air and the water.
By the way, I FIRMLY believe this is not a Republican versus Democrat issue but rather one that calls into question the American lifestyle. We want endless amounts of cheap energy to light our incandescent light bulbs, power our 4 TV's and two computers in the house (plus the two video games), run the two fridges we have that store two weeks of food that we end up throwing 20% away on anyway, run our AC so that we never have to have it hotter than 76 degress in the summer time, heat the house in the winter so that it never need be below 72, heat our water so our teenage son can take his daily 1/2 hour shower, and drive wherever the hell we want when we want. And we also insist that every other building we go into also be appropriately temperature controlled. Long term, there is really only one solution, and its the hardest one of all... Conservation.
GPatton
What's the big deal? Just send in the 82nd Airborne to take over the Middle East oil fields. And then the Arabs can't tell us what to do. And we'll be energy independent. George Patton
EtienneEtoile
George,
Mexico and Venezuela are closer. Or maybe you could nuke everyone else that uses oil and then the middle east would be crying for us to buy oil.
Or with your idea using the 82nd Airborne, why not outsource to the French, there is already a base in the UAE and you eliminate US casualties.
You should run for office, Maybe you could hook up with Palin as in Palin/Patton2012 or maybe with Bachman.
downbytheriver00
Actually I like Canada even more if we go that route. We can finally claim hockey dominance and we're already buying half their hydro-electirc power, plus we can outlaw that whacko pronunciation of the word "out" that they always do!
squiggy
If you want no carbon emissions build nuclear, if you want full employment let the jobless ride bicycles that generate electricity. If you think that these plans are a joke then tax people while not cutting emissions and call it an answer, in baby steps.
GPatton
Chere Mme Etoile: I'd be delighed to run with Gov. Palin. We should ressurect the "Bull Moose Party" or we could run as Republicans. Like the idea of invading Mexico/Venezuela. We can do that too. Lock and load, George Patton
(PS Call me either General or just Patton, SVP!)
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Sunnyflower
Proponents are ignoring the fact that Enron (remember Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay?) desperately wanted caps on carbon dioxide because they saw huge profits in being able to trade carbon allowances.
*snicker* How very true.
Should this bill pass, it will be a very sad day and provide a reference point in the history books of when America began to lose it's economic prosperity.
GradyConnal
Rob:
re no natural gas mentioned in bill:
H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 [Executive Summary Distribution]
"... It would also make natural gas fueled vehicles eligible for clean vehicle incentives, the vehicle integration program, and the manufacturing incentives for alternatively fueled vehicles...."
gak001
While Mr. Bryce's puns were rather cute, there's an excellent quote that describes substituting wit for substance, and he is definitely guilty. I'm guilty of being too lazy to search for the quote.
Next time, let's see some more science and less cute pun-ditry (oh... ouch... so sorry).
Thank you.
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