* only President Obama can produce meaningful climate change legislation

LMW COMMENT …

Two articles in the May 23, 2009 edition of The Economist deal with the progress of President Obama’s initiative to deal seriously with climate change issues after 8 years of the “head in the sand” Bush administration. The Economist is not optimistic about what it sees.

gas guzzling SUV

My own conclusion is that these issues can never be resolved by a Congress (Democrat or Republican) which is beholden to special interests and a limited constituency. There is never sufficient incentive for enough Congressmen and Senators to focus on the national or global interest as opposed to what they view (perhaps understandably) as more pressing concerns in their own districts.

Only President Obama can focus on the broader problem, move better legislation forward, and take what reasonable people everywhere believe are necessary steps to save our planet as we know it.

It is my hope that the president has delegated this issue to Congress only temporarily, while he deals with the plethora of other issues confronting him and us. Maybe, when the time is right, President Obama will re-enter the climate change fray and produce a meaningful result.

FROM THE ECONOMIST (1st article) … Weak medicine – Compromise has enfeebled America’s cap-and-trade bill. A carbon tax would be better

• FOR those who believe that climate change is a serious problem, the decisions that America makes now are of momentous importance.
• the fact that Barack Obama clearly intends to turn America from being a laggard into a leader in this task is therefore encouraging.
• Good intentions, however, are not enough. Moves in Washington over the past week have indicated the shape of America’s policy.
• “Oil lost and coal won,” was an insider’s verdict on the two big developments in Washington this week.
• If America insists on using fuel-efficiency standards to cut vehicle emissions, then tough ones are better than weak ones. Yet such standards are a poor way of reducing emissions.
• Far better to have a carbon price high enough to pinch, and then let companies and consumers decide where to cut emissions.
• But that, unfortunately, is unlikely to emerge from the cap-and-trade bill now in the House of Representatives, the details of which have been revealed by its promoters, Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. They have, it seems, granted some rather generous concessions to Midwestern Democrats from states dependent on coal or heavy industry.
• The weakening of this bill illustrates one of the central problems with cap-and-trade systems. They are complex, obscure and therefore susceptible to horse-trading.
• The corresponding attraction of a carbon tax, which this newspaper has always supported, is its simplicity. The government sets the rate. Everybody can see what it is. Voters get transparency. Businesses get certainty. And the government gets a large chunk of revenue—not to be sniffed at in these difficult times.

read the entire article at … http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13697284

FROM THE ECONOMIST (2nd article) … The first climate-change bill with a chance of passing is weaker and worse than expected

• AL GORE calls it “one of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in Congress.”
• Joe Barton, a Republican congressman and global-warming sceptic, says it will put the American economy in a straitjacket.
• President Barack Obama has long argued that America should join Europe in regulating planet-cooking carbon. But he has left the details to Congress. And the negotiations to craft a bill that might actually pass have not been pretty.
• On May 15th Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, the Democratic point-men on climate change in the House of Representatives, unveiled a bill that would give away 85% of carbon permits for nothing, with only 15% being auctioned.
• Giving away permits creates several problems.
• First, it generates no money, thereby royally messing up Mr Obama’s budget.
• Second, it means that the permits go not to those who value them most (as in an auction) but to those whom the government favours.
• Another problem with Waxman-Markey is its complexity. It includes a dizzying array of handouts, mandates and technical standards.
• Meanwhile, Mr Obama continues to attack climate change from other angles.
• On May 19th he announced that he would impose tougher fuel-efficiency standards.
• Mr Obama admitted that more fuel-efficient cars might cost more. But he promised that motorists would save thousands of dollars by cutting their fuel bills. In fact, they can already cut their fuel bills by buying smaller cars, but most choose not to.
• Mr Obama could discourage petrol use more directly and efficiently by taxing the stuff, but that would be unpopular.
• Ideally, politicians who want to save the planet would be honest with voters about how much this will cost. But America’s leaders do not seem to think Americans are ready for straight talk about energy.

read the entire article at … http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13702826

* Nuclear power – the French way versus ours

LMW COMMENT … 

In the debate over lessening our dependence on foreign oil, building more nuclear plants sometimes surfaces as a desirable alternative. There are several problems. Some people are afraid that nuclear plants are not safe, although I don’t think there has ever been a fatal accident in any U.S. plant. Others are opposed to the accumulation of nuclear waste, to be buried somewhere; nobody wants it anywhere near them.

Meanwhile, the French have nuclear plants all over the country and the disposal of waste doesn’t seem to be a problem. What do the French do with their nuclear waste?

It turns out they recycle it, more than 90% of it, safely re-using the uranium to generate more power. It turns out that the U.S. is the only country in the world which does not reprocess its nuclear fuel. Why is that? Especially since we were the one who invented the process by which recycling can be safely accomplished.

The answer to these questions is inextricably linked to our attitude toward government regulation and our definition of free markets which allow anyone (at least anyone who is wealthy and politically connected) to do whatever they want, regardless of how counter-productive it might be. This Ronald Reagan Republican-backed philosophy that “government is the problem” has led us down so many wrong paths (think financial meltdown), denying the public good while transferring enormous wealth from most of us to the very rich.

The article extracted below provides some important perspectives. But the most important ingredient is political will to have government do for all of us what none can do as individuals … another piece of the Obama challenge.

 

Recycling Nuclear Fuel: The French Do It, Why Can’t Oui?
by Jack Spencer  December 28, 2007

• 95 percent of the used fuel from America’s 104 power reactors, which provide about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, could be recycled for future use.
• The sad thing is, the United States developed the technology to recapture that energy decades ago, then barred its commercial use in 1977. We have practiced a virtual moratorium ever since.
• Other countries have not taken such a backward approach to nuclear power.
• France, whose 59 reactors generate 80 percent of its electricity, has safely recycled nuclear fuel for decades. 
• Anti-nuclear fear mongering has proved baseless. The French have recycled fuel like this for 30 years without incident: no terrorist attack, no bad guys stealing uranium, no contribution toward nuclear weapons proliferation, and no accidental explosions.
• The British, Japanese, Indians, and Russians all engage in some level of reprocessing.
• Of course, there is still waste involved. But recycling produces much lower volumes of highly radioactive waste, and the French deal with it effectively–placing some waste in short-term, interim storage or preparing the rest for long-term storage in their version of Yucca Mountain.
• Nuclear fuel reprocessing is a safe activity that should be part of America’s nuclear energy program. It can be affordable and is technologically feasible. The French are proving that on a daily basis. The question is: Why can’t oui?

Jack Spencer is a research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.

 read the entire article at … http://www.heritage.org/press/commentary/ed010108d.cfm