Climate 411

The latest Smithsonian magazine has an in-depth piece that tells the story of “How an unlikely mix of environmentalists and free-market conservatives hammered out the strategy known as cap-and-trade.”

The story is powerful — it starts with a hike,  leads to fury within the Bush White House and ends with results:

Almost 20 years since the signing of the Clean Air Act of 1990, the cap-and-trade system continues to let polluters figure out the least expensive way to reduce their acid rain emissions. As a result, the law costs utilities just $3 billion annually, not $25 billion, according to a recent study in the Journal of Environmental Management; by cutting acid rain in half, it also generates an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from avoided death and illness, healthier lakes and forests, and improved visibility on the Eastern Seaboard. (Better relations with Canada? Priceless.)

…

Cap-and-trade — a term that first appeared in print that year — quickly went “from being a pariah among policy makers,” as an MIT analysis put it, “to being a star — everybody’s favorite way to deal with pollution problems.”

You have to give Sarah Palin credit for getting attention — her op-ed in the Washington Post on climate change legislation triggered an avalanche of blog posts and opinion columns. Here’s a round-up:

The facts, please!

• Sen. John Kerry is among the many to point out that Palin completely ignored the looming specter of climate change. Others included Treehugger, Politics Daily and The Atlantic‘s Derek Thompson.
• Bill Chameides, formerly EDF’s chief scientist and now the head of Duke University’s school of the environment, adds that Alaska has a lot of hurt coming its way if we don’t act.
• On Daily Kos, wah’s take-down starts with a good summary of how we got here.
• PolitiFact focuses on her claims about job losses.
• In other comprehensive fact checks, Media Matters gives a rundown of her false statements, and Russ Walker debunks Palin’s points using nothing but recycled Grist posts.
• If you want your fact-checking laced with outrage, check out Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, who writes that her ignorance is “so profound it’s almost gutsy.” And Think Progress unearths a video clip in which she seems to take the opposite view.

Why is she doing this?

• Josh at Talking Points Memo thinks it’s all about rebranding Palin as a policy wonk. So does the Political Animal at Washington Monthly (who also notes that her running mate long supported cap and trade).
• Jean Williams of the Seattle Examiner thinks Palin wants to pave the way to drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
• Treehugger thinks that either she doesn’t understand the bill or she wanted to talk up her natural gas pipeline.

Really, everyone is piling on!

It wasn’t just the usual environmental crowd who were taken aback by Palin’s claims. People taking issue with her stance popped up in unexpected places:

• Alaska Dispatch‘s Palin Watch says “Palin is wrong on cap and trade.”
• A Kansas City Star columnist lists a few things she scored on, but a lot more misses.
• The Christian Science Monitor also says Palin missed the mark with her cap-and-trade critique