Of course, the people that work in the coal industry (and the oil industry) who don’t want cap-and-trade legislation or any legislation that reduces greenhouse gases and promotes the adoption of renewable energy, don’t want prudent energy legislation, because they benefit from polluting the environment and making people sick. However, that doesn’t give them the right to force all Americans to continue to be disadvantaged by an imprudent energy policy that comes at a high price.
Acid rain causes acidification of lakes and streams and contributes to the damage of trees at high elevations (for example, red spruce trees above 2,000 feet) and many sensitive forest soils. In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation’s cultural heritage. Prior to falling to the earth, sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) gases and their particulate matter derivatives—sulfates and nitrates—contribute to visibility degradation and harm public health.
Emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from utilities contribute to the problem of acid rain. However, emissions trading or cap and trade, a market-based regulatory program, which is also “a program within the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments,” was successful in reducing these pollutants. As a result, the Acid Rain Program was successful in reducing acid rain. However, an increase in other types of anthropogenic activities is contributing to the problem of acid rain. For example, industrial agriculture operations, such as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, also contribute to acid rain. Other factors for the return of acid rain include agricultural nitrogen runoff and more vehicles, which are displacing the gains made from the introduction of the catalytic converter. More from Scientific American:
The acid rain scourge of the ’70s and ’80s that killed trees and fish and even dissolved parts of statues on Washington, D.C.’s National Mall is back. But unlike the first round, in which sulfur emissions from power plants mixed with rain to create sulfuric acid, the current problem stems primarily from nitrogen emissions mixed with rain to create nitric acid.
. . .
Sulfur emissions from power plants were one of the primary motivations for the U.S.’s Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which set reduction targets for both sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). However, whereas sulfur dioxide emissions decreased almost 70 percent from 1990 to 2008, emissions of one NOx—nitrogen dioxide (NO2)—went down only 35 percent for that same period, and amendment targets have yet to be made, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “This comes as scientists have grown increasingly aware of the consequences of the remaining nitric acid deposition,” Schlesinger says.
. . .
Nitric acid rain is derived primarily from power plant, car and truck emissions as well as from gases released by fertilizer use. Part of the problem dates back to WWI, when two German scientists invented the Haber–Bosch process, which took nonreactive nitrogen from the air (N2) and converted it into reactive, usable ammonia (NH3). Most of the nitrogen harvested via this process has been used in fertilizers, and the runoff from farms has created dead zones in Chesapeake Bay and at the mouths of the Columbia and Mississippi rivers. Some efforts have been made to regulate the agricultural nitrogen runoff, but atmospheric emissions of agricultural ammonia remain virtually unrestricted.
Agri-ammonia vapors also derive from concentrated animal feeding operations in the U.S. South. The gas rises into the air and is deposited dry or in rainfall where in the ground bacteria breaks it into nitrogen and nitric acid, which can kill fish and plants. “Agriculture is increasingly functioning as an intensively managed industrial operation, and that is creating serious water, soil, and air problems,” says Viney Aneja, a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Aneja says that state’s concentrated animal feeding operations may also emit particulate matter from swine and chicken manure into the atmosphere, which can carry diseases.
NOx escapes from power plants as a by-product of coal combustion, whereas vehicular engines run at high enough pressures and temperatures to combine nitrogen and oxygen in the air. “Though catalytic converters have decreased the amount of pollution per vehicle, there are more vehicles on the road and more miles driven,” Schlesinger says. Emissions from fertilizers are the chief source of atmospheric nitric oxide, but motor vehicles have now overtaken coal power plants as the secondary most critical source of this problem.
Basically, the Chamber’s policy positions are not only anti-environmentalism but they’re anti-business too. For example, according to Wikipedia, the Chamber, in addition to being a supporter of nuclear power, globalization, and free trade, supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and supports drilling offshore for energy. These policy positions are shortsighted and dangerous. For example, nuclear power requires massive amounts of water and produces radioactive waste that seems impossible to dispose. Globalization and free trade agreements lack meaningful environmental and social mandates and drilling for oil offshore or in ANWR isn’t meaningful energy policy. Furthermore, drilling domestically for oil doesn’t necessarily lead to domestic consumption, since oil is sold on the international market.
Due to its anti-environmentalism position, the Chamber is waging a losing battle. As energy availability and natural resources continue to decrease as populations continue to increase in countries around the globe, environmental regulation—and not just market-based mechanisms—will be necessary to protect and adequately distribute energy and resources to businesses and communities. Consequently, over-population, unchecked development, depletion of non-renewable resources, and depletion of other natural resources are real issues that businesses must reconcile and help remedy if they’re to survive into the future. Unlimited development is impossible, and unsustainable development exacerbates the unavailability of energy or entropy. Consequently, the sooner the Chamber can grasp these concepts, the sooner they’ll truly be pro-business.
Recently, the Chamber suffered an embarrassing prank over its hostility towards meaningful greenhouse-gas regulation:
In a dramatic announcement at the National Press Club today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reversed its position on climate change policy, and promised to immediately cease lobbying against the Kerry-Boxer bill.
Not.
Within minutes of the Chamber’s dramatic announcement, it was revealed that the “Chamber spokesperson” was an impostor, and the press conference an elaborate hoax designed by activists to draw attention to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “troglodytic” fight against climate change legislation. At the close of the news conference, a visibly rattled Chamber of Commerce spokesperson (Eric Wohlschlegel) barged into the room and declared the event a fraud. (Videohere.)
The stunt was pulled off by the Yes Men, the activists best known for posing as corporate executives in order to reveal how corporate greed negatively influences public policy. Recently, the Yes Men have focused their attention on the urgent need for action on climate change. Today they sought to highlight relentless corporate lobbying of elected officials aimed at derailing domestic climate legislation and a much-needed global climate accord.
The group of reporters at the Press Club listened closely as U.S. Chamber “representative” “Hingo Sembra” (Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men) asserted that the Chamber would put its full weight behind supporting the Kerry-Boxer bill, while working with Senators Kerry and Boxer to strengthen the bill.
“We believe that climate legislation currently being considered by the U.S. Senate is a great start towards a bill that will spur American innovation, create jobs, and give us all a good chance of survival,” he said. To the visible delight of reporters in the audience, he added, “We at the Chamber have tried to keep climate science from interfering with business. But without a stable climate, there will be no business.”
The Chamber has recently come under fire for launching multi-million dollar advertising campaigns designed to derail climate negotiations. Their position has been so controversial that Apple, Exelon, PNM Resources, PG&E, PSEG, Levi Strauss & Co, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce have all left the U.S. Chamber, and Nike very publicly stepped down from the board.
“The Chamber’s position against climate legislation is completely troglodytic,” said Bichlbaum. “The rest of the world sees the need for urgent action on the climate. The rest of the world’s rich countries have pledged large emissions reductions. With scientists saying if we don’t reduce carbon emissions, then sooner or later we’re doomed, the Chamber represents corporate America at its most backwards.”
“An entity claiming to represent the public good, but that opposes action on the climate, is obviously illegitimate,” Bichlbaum added.
“Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.
“These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases. The U.S. Chamber believes that strong climate legislation is compatible with the goals of improving our economy and creating jobs. We continuously seek opportunities to engage in a constructive dialogue to achieve these goals.
“We will be asking law enforcement authorities to investigate this event. Beyond that, the Chamber will simply continue to focus on a positive vision for getting people back to work and growing our economy.”
The U.S. Chamber is the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.
Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
In her sky-is-falling rhetoric, Sarah Palin claims the energy sector will dry up but fails to mention jobs created by further developing the renewable energy sector:
Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.
Senator John F. Kerry refutes Palin at the New York Times:
“Yes, she manages to write about the climate change action in Congress without ever mentioning the reason we are doing this in the first place,” Mr. Kerry wrote. “It’s like complaining about the cost of repairing a roof without factoring in the leaks destroying your home.”
Mr. Kerry outlined the threats of climate change – including those facing Ms. Palin’s own state of Alaska – and also refuted her arguments that cap-and-trade legislation will cost jobs and hurt the poorest Americans.
“Palin confidently claims job losses are ‘certain,’” Mr. Kerry wrote, but “she somehow neglects to mention that jobs in our emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs since 1998.”
Mr. Kerry was presumably referring to a recent study from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
In an impressive feat, Palin managed to write an entire piece about energy policy without mentioning the words “global warming,” “climate change,” “carbon,” or “emissions.” There’s “no denying” the need to address the issue, but there’s also no explaining why. (She did, however, manage to work in the phrase “cap-and-tax” four times.)
Keith Olbermann’s critique of Sarah Palin’s Washington Post op-ed:
s Derek says, this is a bit like an op-ed on health care that doesn’t contain the words spending, costs, coverage, or medicine, or a high-school paper on Catcher in the Rye that doesn’t contain the words, um, Catcher in the Rye.
I find this absence sickening. Deciding how to deal with climate change is an uncertain and complicated process. It requires weighing costs in the present against benefits a hundred years in the future. It requires weighing costs in the U.S. against benefits in places like India and Bangladesh. It requires weighing concrete GDP against the moral emphemera of the world’s floral and animal diversity. And it requires sacrificing today to ward off uncertain and unquantifiable future risks. This tremendous empirical uncertainty demands reflection and humility.
And then you have Sarah Palin show up, blathering about how we’re “destroying America’s economy” while we’re “literally” sitting on mountains of oil and drill baby drill and blah blah blah. Sickening.
You can read Sarah Palin’s Washington Post op-ed here.
Someone should explain to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann that although carbon dioxide is “natural,” the anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide trapped within hydrocarbons isn’t a natural process. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, so an increase in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide impacts the climate. Furthermore, just because something is “natural” that doesn’t mean it can’t be harmful.
In an attempt to appear independent from the Democrats in Washington and the Obama Administration, West Virginia’s Governor Joe Manchin, who is “the Democratic nominee to replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.)[,] actually fire[ed] a bullet through a piece of paper meant to symbolize last year’s House-passed cap-and-trade bill.” In his advertisement, Governor Manchin seems to channel the Tea Party more than the Democratic Party. According to The Hill, “Manchin is trying to illustrate his independence from Washington lawmakers and the Obama administration as he finds himself trailing or — at best — in a dead heat, with Republican John Raese for Byrd’s seat.”
