The House committee’s new draft bill was big news this week, but it threatens to be overshadowed by all the posts flying around about the misuse of a number by prominent Congressmen, notably Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Some of our favorite rebuttals:

• EDF’s own Truth Squad gives a brief sketch of the number and why it was wrong.
• The Daily Green explains how Boehner misinterpreted the number, including a handy chart.
• Grist has great quotes from the study’s author, an MIT professor, commenting on the number Boehner used (via PolitiFact). The best: “It’s wrong in so many ways it’s hard to begin.”
• The Wall Street Journal included the latest press release from Republican leadership, who are not backing down in the face of simple math.

And a shout-out to One Blue Marble, spotlighting what EDF’s Fred Krupp says about the costs of climate action, based on Department of Energy data:

The impact on household utility bills will be about a dime a day, and that dime will be the hardest working dime in America. It will create jobs, reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, and protect the climate.

Mainstream media is delving into the details of climate policy at a level we just didn’t see a couple years ago. Here’s a sampling from this week:

Newsweek asked whether we can still afford to invest in an environmentally-friendly economy, and to find out, they talked with our president, Fred Krupp. He gave this example of how green investments make sense all around:

When we make the energy high-efficiency, low-carbon, we can create all types of jobs—jobs that weatherize homes that create dollars that stay here instead of going overseas to pay for imported oil. We can create jobs that produce the materials for weatherization, we can create jobs to make wind turbines and install them. It’s not only high-tech jobs we’re creating, it’s a tremendous number of jobs in existing, familiar businesses. (Read the two-page interview.)

The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Fred Krupp yesterday. He starts by observing:

When Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson says he favors a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade system, it’s worth asking why the energy giant would want to put a government levy on its own product.

Why, indeed? A tax would not set a legal limit on the pollution created by Exxon’s products. A cap would.

And finally, this line from a Los Angeles Times editorial calls out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business lobbying group:

There will be winners and losers in the clean-energy economy, and those who stand to lose have the loudest voices in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The winners won’t just be green-technology innovators; they include everybody on Earth.

From an address at the White House yesterday:

We can remain the world’s leading importer of foreign oil, or become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy. We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects.

It’s definitely worth reading the news summary and full remarks.

Matthew Yglesias over at ThinkProgress took the one of my favorite points — that when you look at the cost of capping carbon, you also have to look at what you get for your money — and made a nice analogy:

This seems like an important point! If I added up the ruinous costs of auto ownership—thousands of dollars in up front costs, fuel costs, repairs, insurance, etc.—but forgot to mention that you get to drive your car around it would seem baffling that anyone buys one. The same principle applies to carbon pricing.

Here’s the whole post.

And in case you missed the piece by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, he looks at 10 key things to keep in mind about a cap on carbon. It’s a nice clear explanation (and I’m not just saying that because he quoted me!).

Last week, Brad Plumer over at the New Republic made some thoughtful points about climate policy that are worth taking a look at.

He puts well the key difference between a cap and a tax:

With a tax, we know in advance how much it will cost, but aren’t sure what emissions level will result. With a well-enforced cap-and-trade regime, we know the maximum level of emissions we’ll get, but aren’t positive how much it will cost to get there…

We take issue with some of his thoughts about to how to cope with fluctuations in the market price of carbon (a so-called “safety valve” is a bad idea), but it’s great to see a clear-headed reaction to the fluctuations in the European market.

Last week, Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza asked for thoughts on what Obama’s first legislative priority should be upon taking office. I submitted this comment:

President-elect Barack Obama will face a series of challenges that rival any of his modern predecessors — a damaged economy, a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, aging and inefficient U.S. infrastructure, and a deteriorating environment.

Each individually would warrant the immediate attention of the White House. But the President-elect has an historic opportunity to work with Congress on a plan to address them all. That plan should start with a cap on global warming pollution.

With that cap, we can help revitalize the economy by instantly creating new markets and new customers for U.S. manufacturers in the supply chain for clean energy technologies – think wind turbines and all of the cement and steel that go into them. We can stem the flow of petrodollars overseas, by as much as $500 billion over the next two decades by MIT estimates. And we can generate new revenue for investment in America by auctioning emissions permits – all while fighting climate change.

It’s the energy policy America needs now. President-elect Obama should begin working with Congress early in his administration to enact a cap and restore U.S. leadership in the global climate change debate.

This morning, Cilizza posted a follow-up with excerpts from "the most interesting/provocative thoughts" he received, and I was happy to see my suggestion among them: a cap on global warming pollution.

This post is by Tony Kreindler, media director for the National Climate Campaign at Environmental Defense Fund.

The debate goes on about EDF’s competition to visually explain how a carbon cap will solve our addiction to oil. Joe Romm critiqued the competition as “bizarre” since it asked people to “explain something that isn’t true.” I responded by saying that MIT’s climate model supports us. This prompted another response from Romm titled “EDF’s and MIT’s magical thinking on carbon caps and oil.”

As I mentioned in my previous post about this thread, the discussion was not yet over. I posted my latest response on Gristmill and Environmental Economics.

The gist? History helps illustrate why, if anything, we are underestimating likely technological progress.

This post is by Gernot Wagner, Ph.D., an economist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.

A few weeks ago we posted about our video design competition – $10,000 to the winner  – for depicting how a cap on greenhouse gases can solve our addiction to oil. Joe Romm on Climate Progress had a problem with this – said we were asking the impossible since a cap wouldn’t do this.

I responded to Romm’s objection on the Environmental Economics blog with a post titled “Bizarre”? No. Tough? Yes. But that wasn’t the end of it. Romm fired back, accusing EDF of “magical thinking”. Our exchange is also cross-posted on Grist (Romm’s first post, my response, Romm’s answer).

Stay tuned – I’ll be posting a response to Romm’s second post this week.

This post is by Gernot Wagner, Ph.D., an economist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Our resident geographer, Peter Black, has a new blog called Climate Atlas where he posts maps to visualize many aspects of climate change. Here’s a sampling of his recent posts:

• Worldwide climate anomalies in 2007
• U.S. renewable energy resources
• Regional climate initiatives
• New York metro area with a 10-foot sea-level rise

Check it out and tell us what you think!

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Time magazine’s cover story in their latest issue is "How to Win the War on Global Warming". It starts this way:

Americans don’t like to lose wars – which makes sense, since we have so little practice with it. Of course, a lot depends on how you define just what a war is. There are shooting wars—the kind that test our mettle and our patriotism and our resourcefulness and our courage—and those are the kind at which we excel. But other struggles test those qualities too. What else was the Great Depression or the space race or the construction of the railroads or the eradication of polio but a massive, often frightening challenge that we decided as a culture we ought to rise up and face? If we indulge in a bit of chest-thumping and flag-waving when the job is done, well, we earned it.

We are now faced with a similarly momentous challenge: global warming. The steady deterioration of the very climate of our very planet is becoming a war of the first order, and by any measure, the U.S. is losing. Indeed, if we’re fighting at all—and by most accounts, we’re not—we’re fighting on the wrong side.

Take a look and tell us what you think!