Climate 411

After all the drama, the clean energy bill is on its way to the next stage in the Senate, having cleared committee this morning. Meanwhile, Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman are leading the charge to getting a clean energy bill passed on the Senate floor.

EDF’s president Fred Krupp had this to say:

As the battle over clean energy legislation heats up in the Senate, CNN has released a new poll showing that 60 percent of Americans support cap and trade.

CNN says the issue shows a huge generational divide. More than two-thirds of Americans under age 50 support cap and trade, but those 50 and older are split.

The poll shows three-quarters of Democrats back the idea, as do nearly sixty percent of Independents and about 4 in 10 Republicans.

Says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland:

Independents may not be red or blue, but they appear to be green.

CNN Poll: 6 in 10 back ‘cap and trade’

It’s no surprise that some opponents of clean energy legislation are fighting dirty. Big Polluters were always expected to use underhanded tactics, and they’ve managed to live up (or down) to the stereotype. But in the last week or so, the opposition’s pronouncements have veered from merely misleading to downright wacky.

We like to think it’s a sign of desperation triggered by the other side’s knowledge that they’re losing. However you want to interpret it, here are four quotes that will make your jaw drop:

Pennsylvania State Senator Daryl Metcalfe

As a veteran, I believe that any veteran lending their name to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change … is a traitor to the oath he or she took to defend the Constitution of our great nation! Remember Benedict Arnold before giving credibility to a veteran who uses their service as a means to promote a leftist agenda. Drill Baby Drill!!!

Senator Metcalfe wrote that about Operation Free, a group of decorated war veterans who are traveling the country to talk about the importance of energy independence to our national security. Operation Free pointed out that “the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the National Intelligence Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency have all decided that climate change is a security threat that must be dealt with seriously and honestly” – but Metcalfe still refuses to apologize.

Senator James Inhofe

There’s another secret person going with me. We’re going to have a team of three, a truth squad of three.

Senator Inhofe (R-OK) made that announcement on Bill Bennett’s radio show. (ThinkProgress has the clip) Inhofe had already announced that he would travel to Copenhagen to be a “one man truth-squad” during international climate change treaty negotiations. Now we know that John Barrasso is going with him and we’re anxiously awaiting the identity of the third “secret” climate change denier.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue

Members come and go all the damn time.

Donohue explains why a highly-publicized string of companies leaving the Chamber doesn’t bother him. Politico pointed out that rarely, if ever, have so many companies publicly left a business group over a policy disagreement.

Rush Limbaugh

This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?

Limbaugh calls for the untimely demise of reporter Andy Revkin, who had the nerve to acknowledge that a rapidly increasing global population is one of the factors contributing to climate change. This hate-filled invective is par for the course for Limbaugh though, so this might not be a sign that the opposition is growing desperate. Either way, you can find a link to the comments on Media Matters.

It must have been a late night for one of the headline writers at the Washington Post. That’s the best explanation we can think of for the seriously misleading headline on a generally balanced story by reporter Juliet Eilperin.

The story is about the testimony of the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, who appeared before a Senate energy panel yesterday.

The article points out that Elmendorf went out of his way to say the costs of shifting to clean energy would be “comparatively modest” and that his analysis didn’t even include the heavy cost of failing to take action to slow climate change.  He estimated a very small economic difference under the clean energy bill over a long period of time.

The headline writer summed it up this way: “Cap-and-Trade Would Slow Economy, CBO Chief Says.”

This is extremely misleading since many readers will interpret this to mean that economic growth would actually turn negative, which is absolutely NOT what Elmendorf said.

What he said (and what Eilperin reported) is what’s reflected in the CBO analysis – that the economy is expected to grow strongly and thrive whether we pass a carbon cap or not. If we do nothing, the American economy would reach $25 trillion by January 2030; if we pass a cap on carbon, it will reach the exact same size of $25 trillion by May of 2030 (and that’s a conservative estimate – we’d reach that between March and May). And, remember, that projection doesn’t include the economic benefits of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.

What is confusing in the headline is that “economy slowing” has become shorthand for “panic, it’s a recession” — which is the opposite of what Elmendorf was talking about. What Elmendorf actually said is that a cap would “cut the nation’s gross domestic product … compared to ‘what it would otherwise have been.’” The CBO finding was that a carbon cap would cut GDP “0.25 to 0.75 percent” by the year 2020. Again, that’s a cut from what it would have otherwise reached without the policy — not a cut from where the economy stands now.

To put that in perspective, if you had to cut the Post article by the same amount, you’d need to edit out – three or four words. Or, to cut that headline proportionately you’d have to – lose half the “s” on the end of the last word. That’s a tiny amount, and certainly no reason to panic – unless you’re looking for a reason to panic so you can try to kill a clean energy bill.

Read more in EDF’s latest Climate Economics Brief, Or read the CBO report itself. And check out National Wildlife Federation’s comments on, as they call it, the Post‘s “scare headlines” — we’re flattered that they used an EDF graph to help make their case.