Thoughts on the "End of Oil"

by Thomas Neuburger

The phrase "the end is near" has overtones so cartoonish as to render it meaningless. Joke after joke has been built on this announcement, many of them excellent. One of my favorites is above; another is below:

But however much we laugh at these pronouncements, things do end — just not when we expect them to. We ourselves will end, as will our earth, swallowed, in five billion years or so, by an expanding, burning, dying sun, all to be returned to space dust from which something else will be made.

But is that end, or any of those ends, near? In the case of ourselves, we hope not. In the case of the earth, not likely. In the case of our species ... well, we'll have to see.

At some point, oil as a commodity will end. The question is, will it end prior to the end of civilized life, which may or may not be near, or will it cause the end of civilized life, in which case that end will be nearer than anyone wishes?

Use of oil as a commodity will certainly peak; many think that has already occurred. According Sierra Club writer Antonia Juhasz, the consulting firm Kinsey and Co. "warned oil-producing nations in 2019 to begin 'sufficiently diversifying their economies for a post-[oil] peak demand world.'"

Something will kill oil, and all carbon-based fuels, as a product — but what will that be? The end of a market for it is one such cause, based either on a happy conversion to renewable energy sources (the end of demand via choice), or less happily, the end of man's ability to use it in enough quantity to matter (the end of demand via death and decimation). In both of these cases, though, the end of oil comes via demand.

Can its use also be strangled by supply, not just lack of supply, but an over-supply that drives the price below the cost of production and makes the industry itself unviable and subject to collapse?

That's less certain, but it's the thesis of Ms. Juhasz's latest piece for Sierra, "The End of Oil Is Near." Her subtitle says, "The pandemic may send the petroleum industry to the grave," and she may indeed be right. This pandemic, like all economic depressions, is shutting down demand, causing oil tankers to park outside of ports like "an enemy invasion" that turn the seas around them into "aquatic parking lots."

"Today, the global oil industry is in a tailspin," she writes. "Demand has cratered, prices have collapsed, and profits are shrinking. The oil majors (giant global corporations including BP, Chevron, and Shell) are taking billions of dollars in losses while cutting tens of thousands of jobs. Smaller companies are declaring bankruptcy, and investors are looking elsewhere for returns. Significant changes to when, where, and how much oil will be produced, and by whom, are already underway. It is clear that the oil industry will not recover from COVID-19 and return to its former self. What form it ultimately takes, or whether it will even survive, is now very much an open question."

Perhaps her headline would better be written, "The end is near, but only if you cause it."

This Covid economy presents indeed a priceless opportunity with respect to fossil fuel. If indeed investor confidence has weakened to all-time lows and only "government bailout programs and subsidies could provide the lifeline the industry needs to stay afloat," deliberately denying those bailouts and subsidies may be our only hope — other than a chaotic market collapse in which a bailout is political poison — for ending the life our species' chief biological threat, Big Oil.

Make no mistake: The fossil fuel industry will kill us, in full knowledge that it dies with us, simply to extend its own existence and profits into the last decade allotted to anyone. It will not die so we can live; it will live so we and it can die together.

This makes both Joe Biden and Donald Trump into killers of monumental magnitude. Trump will accelerate fossil fuel production out of his own blindness and hubris, and at the behest of the monsters controlling his party. Biden will slow demand enough to "make a good show of it," a good show of caring about the rest of us, while still taking the industry's money and, in return, not restraining its ability to dig every drop and sell every ounce it can dig.

It's not even certain that Trump's race-to-ruin will end us faster than Biden's more measured destruction. If Trump's hands-off policy is allowed to run through an extended Covid-induced crisis, a chaotic market collapse may come sooner under Trump than under Biden's carefully managed "keep the industry afloat while seeming to restrain them" approach.

And should it be the case that Biden staves off an oil market collapse, its barons will honor him as a savior. By then he may not know what that honer even means, but his backers will, as will Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, and all the other fossil fuel enablers we allow to rule us.

But we started with "the end is near." We should finish there as well. Though collapses happen quickly — just ask a certain czar of ill repute, or a Bourbon of headless note — I'll venture to say that like many other predators, these our destroyers, this blood-drinking vampire industry, will prove more resilient by far than any we've faced.

We've beaten malaria, smallpox, the plague; polio and tuberculosis; lions, tigers and bears, and all the beasts of the forest and savannas. But the barons of fossil fuel, I'm deeply afraid, ride us till we die ­— unless we, uncharacteristically­, stop them with organized intention and with force.

That means stopping the next elected president, whoever that poor fool is, with organized intention — and with force.
 

Global Warming Is Accelerating. (In Other News, Democrats Reverse Platform, Won't End Fossil Fuel Subsidies)

The three colors in the chart represent odds that a season will be perceived as cool (blue), normal (white) or hot (red). In 1950 to 1980, if represented on a six-sided dice, there were two blue sides, two red sides and two white sides. "The dice are now loaded, really loaded. ... Four sides of the die are now red (hot) and one side is deep red for extreme heat, more than three standard deviations warmer than in 1951-1980. Dark red (22%) is creeping onto another side" (James Hansen et. al.)

by Thomas Neuburger

As we contemplate the political events of the week — the Republican takeover of the Democratic Party and convention; Democratic media adjunct MSNBC lying about AOC's Party-approved nomination of Bernie Sanders (before changing their headline); Bill Clinton daring to show his face in public, and post-MeToo leadership letting him — it's nevertheless impossible not to be overwhelmed by this.

 • "Good morning. The Greenland ice sheet has past the melting point of no return"

"[I]ce that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet" — Michalea King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.

"[S]tarting in 2000, you start superimposing that seasonal melt on a higher baseline—so you’re going to get even more losses,” meaning the melt-rate has permanently accelerated while the snowfall has not. 

But there's a bright side: “It’s always a positive thing to learn more about glacier environments, because we can only improve our predictions for how rapidly things will change in the future ... The more we know, the better we can prepare.”

We're learning how to learn sooner how wrong we are, "so we can better prepare." That's the bright side.

 • "Record Arctic blazes may herald new ‘fire regime’ decades sooner than anticipated"

"Something’s changed in the environment there" — Mark Parrington, senior scientist and wildfire expert at the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

“This is the type of fire event that would be described by these worst-case modeling scenarios that were supposed to occur mid-century” — Jessica McCarty, a wildfire expert at Miami University of Ohio.

Mid-century (2050) Arctic fires now occur regularly.

 • "Global warming is accelerating. 12-month mean peaked just below prior maximum"

"[G]lobal temperature is clearly running well above the linear trend that existed for decades" — climate scientist James Hansen

"1) That jump off the linear trend ought to scare the crap out of you. 2) Who but the careful public managers of your emotions say that being batcrap-scared is a useless response to the climate?" — Yours truly

Nonetheless, not everyone is scared.

 • "Democrats Drop Demand To End Fossil Fuel Subsidies From Party Platform"

"Roughly half of all U.S. oil reserves required subsidies to generate a profit, according to a study published in the journal Nature Energy in 2017, and that was before the price of crude plunged far below $50 a barrel." — Huffington Post writer Alexander Kaufman.

“This platform is a step backwards” — Charlie Jiang, Greenpeace.

• "DNC’s Flip-Flop on Fossil Fuel Subsidies Follows Deep Ties the Industry"

"In August 2018, the DNC approved a resolution from Chair Tom Perez that reversed a DNC policy prohibiting it from accepting contributions from fossil fuel PACs. ... Shortly thereafter, donations from fossil fuel executives began flowing into DNC coffers." — Donald Shaw, money-in-politics editor and co-founder, Sludge

 • "A-a-and we're done..." — Yours truly

If the question is climate, who with any power is the answer? Certainly not Joe Biden.

The real answer, of course, is the people, but only if they know it.
 

Former Republican Congressman Joe Barton Proudly Explains How He And His Cronies Helped Destroy Planet Earth

Joe Barton (Villain-TX)

Republican former Congressman Joe Barton is a 70 year old energy lobbyist now. Once he was the all-powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the dean of the Texas congressional delegation. His dream was the deregulation of electric and gas-- and everything else. Barton, one of Congress' most corrupt members, was the ultimate climate change denier. After a trove of pornographic selfies of Barton surfaced in 2017, he announced he would not seek reelection in 2018. On Sunday, Barton wrote a long column, I knew my bill to lift the ban on U.S. oil exports was important. I hardly expected it to change the world for the Dallas Morning News. He has hardly reformed his views but the column condemns himself and his congressional cronies who seems to have set out to make global warming even worse.

To this day, the only person to serve in the House who solicited and accepted more bribes from the Energy Sector than Joe Barton ($4,626,327) was former Speaker John Boehner ($4,909,902). In 2014, his donors wanted one thing really badly-- and Barton delivered for them. In his own words: "I started hearing from oil companies about a new idea, to lift an old ban on oil exports... I agreed to try. As a longtime member of Congress, I knew this would be a long and difficult road that would require bipartisan cooperation, and I couldn’t guarantee success. At the time, I hardly understood how lifting this one rule could change the world."

Repeal was not initially popular, as many environmental groups wanted to restrict oil and gas production, not create new markets for it. Undaunted, several companies and individuals decided it was a job that needed to be done.

On Dec. 9, 2014, I introduced the bill. It had seven co-sponsors, all Republicans, including one Texan, Mike Conaway of Midland.

...On Feb. 4, 2015, I introduced HR 666. My staff immediately demanded I reintroduce the bill to get a better number. So I hurried back to the House floor and reintroduced the identical bill, but with a new number. HR 702 had 37 original co-sponsors, all Republicans.

Having only Republican sponsors was a big problem. In 2015, the Republicans had a comfortable majority in the House, but the bill would have to pass in the Senate and gain President Barack Obama’s signature. Obama was opposed to another energy issue of the time, the Keystone oil pipeline, and would later veto that bill when it came to his desk.

I needed Democratic support. Not just nominal support, but active participation in the effort to pass the bill. One of the seldom-discussed truths about Congress is that while most of the media attention goes to the bomb-throwers on both sides of the aisle, the way to actually pass law that improves the lives of everyday Americans is work together. Ideally, my Democratic leader should be a member of the Energy and Commerce committee, which had primary jurisdiction over the bill.

I asked Gene Green, from Houston, to be my primary Democrat sponsor. He was interested, but numerous refineries in his district were opposed to the bill, and he also was concerned about creating a totally open market for crude exports. My bill was only two pages long, and expressly prohibited any federal agency or official from imposing permits or restrictions on crude oil exports. The president would retain his emergency power to stop exports in an emergency.

So Green said no, as did Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas agreed to co-sponsor, but she didn’t want to be the lead Democrat. I turned to Henry Cuellar of Laredo, a member of the powerful appropriations committee with a history of working across the aisle. Plus, the Eagle Ford Shale was in his South Texas district. He needed time to consider the bill and communicate with people in his district. After about a month, he agreed to be the lead Democrat.

Of the 137 co-sponsors, 15 were scummy crooked Democrats, starting with Texas Blue Dog Henry Cuellar. He was followed by Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO), Marc Veasey (New Dem-TX), Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA), David Scott (Blue Dog-GA), Tim Ryan (D-OH), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA), Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX), Tony Cárdenas (D-CA) and Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL). It passed on October 9, 2015, 261-159. 6 Republicans and 153 Democrats voted against it. 26 Democrats voted in favor, the co-sponsors and a batch of other corrupt, easily bought whores including-- Lacy Clay (D-MO), Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ), Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY), Beto O'Rourke (New Dem-TX), Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA), Albio Sires (D-NJ), Stephen Lynch (New Dem-MA) and Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX).

Milwaukie, Oregon's progressive mayor, Mark Gamba, is running for the seat held by Kurt Schrader, who backed Barton's efforts to repeal the export ban. "This," he told us today, "is a prime example of why blue dog, 'moderate democrats', are in some ways more dangerous than Republicans. This bill would not have passed without their capitulation. Billions of gallons of American Oil would not currently be filling our atmosphere with carbon and other pollutants. Please note also, this bill kept the price of crude oil down worldwide when the Iranians attacked the Saudi oil fields! That is exactly the opposite of what is called for if we hope to curb the worst effects of the looming climate catastrophe! This is a perfect example of the lies that Kurt Schrader tells when he pretends to care about climate change. Stopping this one bill would have made a world of difference and passing it did nothing to benefit his district and most certainly sped up the climate chaos. Keep in mind that he is the leader of the blue dog caucus, his decision to support this bill undoubtedly brought many more democrats in line with the republican’s wishes. When I get into office, one of my top priorities will be to reinstate the ban. It’s really unfortunate that real Democrats have to work to fix problems that supposed Democrats caused in the first place."

Boston conservative New Dem Stephen Lynch, a longtime Climate Crisis denier, voted with Barton as well. His progressive primary opponent, Brianna Wu," sees a pattern in Lynch's conservatism. "Even though Stephen Lynch was against impeachment from the beginning, I'm sure a part of him is glad the hearings are finally happening.  He's one of those conservative establishment Democrats who want to silence the majority of us who want a more progressive agenda.  The differences between Lynch and myself are probably too many to mention, but I'll try.  I was for impeachment since before the Mueller Report; Lynch said we hadn't "made the case" and we would get Trump re-elected.  I support a Green New Deal; Lynch says it's too aspirational and we have 100 years to address climate change.  I support Medicare For All; Lynch says he isn't convinced it will work.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  Take a look at Lynch's donors and you'll see why he is beholden to the establishment and is not going to waiver. Lynch actually had the audacity to run for chair of the House Oversight Committee after being against impeachment until the very end.  My campaign launched an effort to tell Congress to say no to Lynch, and we won.  We will defeat Lynch in 2020.  Whether the establishment wants to admit it or not, the progressive movement is alive and well, and we will win in 2020 and beyond."

HR 702 had a reasonable number of co-sponsors, and it was bipartisan. So far, so good. But, to become law, it needed much, much, more. It needed a Senate companion bill with bipartisan Senate leadership. It needed to be blessed, or at least not opposed, by House and Senate party leadership. It needed to be passed by at least one of the congressional chambers as a stand-alone bill. It needed support from as many outside groups as possible and, conversely, to be opposed by as few outside groups as possible.

Last, but not least, it would be very helpful if the president supported it, because it would take a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate to override his veto. What we needed, in short, was a coordinated, organized strategy and a plan to implement that strategy.

The first order of business was to get Fred Upton, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee, on board. He agreed to support the bill. House Speaker John Boehner didn’t promise active support, but he thought the bill was a good idea and should be given a chance. In a similar fashion, the republican majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, gave his approval.

On the Democrat side, Cuellar and I both knew we couldn’t get the support of Democratic House leadership, but we hoped we could persuade them to be neutral. Nancy Pelosi, minority leader at the time, and assistant minority leader Steny Hoyer both agreed to let the bill, if it came to the floor, be a “free” vote. What this meant was while they would vote against the bill, they wouldn’t ask the Democratic whip to recommend a “no” vote or the House Democratic caucus to make it a binding “no” vote. Persuading the House Democratic leadership to take a hands-off approach was a major tactical and strategic victory. It would not have happened without Cuellar’s active leadership.

Meanwhile, I met with my Texas senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and obtained their support. I also asked for and received the support of the chairwoman of the Senate energy committee, Lisa Murkowski.

Murkowski was trying to move a comprehensive energy bill through the Senate, and she felt adding the export ban repeal would strengthen her larger bill. As it turned out, her bill didn’t move, but including the export ban repeal helped with the Senate later at the end of the year. Cornyn got the endorsement of Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell.

On the Democratic side, Cuellar and I met with Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, another area of intense shale oil activity. She agreed to be the lead Senate Democrat, and she worked tirelessly to get her fellow Senate Democrats to vote yes.

...Environmental groups opposed the bill out of concern it would also inhibit switching to alternative, green energy. The environmentalists wanted to keep our oil in the ground. Luckily, their top legislative priority was stopping the Keystone oil pipeline, so while they opposed HR 702, they did not wage all-out war against it.

...What do oil executives think of the results? Pioneer’s Sheffield said, “When the Iranians attacked the Saudi oil fields, the world price of oil would have gone to over $200 a barrel,” if not for the repeal of the export ban.

And Jim Teague, chief executive of Enterprise Products, the country’s largest exporter of crude oil, said, “Without the crude oil export ban repeal, the United States would not be producing half of the oil it is today because it could not be exported.”

Justin Miller, who covers politics for the Texas Observer, noted in a series of tweets on Sunday that Bernie, Warren, Booker are among those who say they will reinstate the ban. Status Quo Joe, Mayo Pete, Kamala and Castro haven't announced their stands. "It's hard to overstate just how significant the effect of ending the crude oil export ban has been-- both as a huge boon for the ONG industry and as a huge blow to the keep-it-in-the-ground movement. Hard to put this boom back in the box," he wrote. "Interestingly, Barton contends that passage was much smoother than anticipated because enviro groups were focused mostly on the Keystone pipeline fight. (26 Dems ended up voting to lift the ban)... There's some interesting nuggets in this though. Barton explains how Henry Cuellar was critical to getting Dem leadership to stay neutral, freeing up ONG lobbying campaign to court dozens of House Dems."

Report: Just Ten Percent of Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Would Completely Pay For a Global "Green Transition"

Stephanie Kelton explaining what Ben Bernanke meant in 2009 when he said the Fed doesn't "spend tax money" when it transfers money to banks, but simply changes numbers in a computer. "To lend to a bank, we simply use a computer to mark up the size of the account they have with the Fed." Kelton: "It's exactly like putting points on the screen at a baseball game," and a scorekeeper can "never run out of points."

by Thomas Neuburger

I'm not a fan of the "how are you going to pay for it?" scam, since it's obvious the government never pays for anything it really wants in the sense of raising new revenue. It just spends the money. For proof, just look at the Iraq War, or any recent war, or any Republican tax cut plan. (See the video above for a slightly longer explanation of why governments that control their own currency never have to tax to spend.)

The fact is, a government that issues its own currency and whose economy is not ravaged by inflation can always write checks to buy anything it wants — and the idea that it "pays for" what it wants by selling bonds is a fiction, since every bond sale is a trade of an asset for an asset, not a loan. The Treasury market also gives rich people something safe to invest in. Neither of these goals is related to financing government spending.

But for those who do fetishize "paying for it," here's one for the books.

Everyone knows that at some point, the burning of fossil fuels will have to stop completely. In fact, it will stop completely; the only question is whether will be stopped voluntary, because we chose to stop — or involuntary, because there are so few of us left that it won't change atmospheric CO2 no matter what the survivors burn.

As a consequence, everyone also knows that in order to end fossil fuel use, global governments will have stop paying companies like Exxon to dig up more carbon to burn. In other words, global fossil fuel subsidies will have to go to zero.

Turns out that if fossil fuels subsidies did go to zero, enough money will be freed up to "pay for" a complete "green transition" — perhaps as many as ten of them.

Damian Carrington, writing at the Guardian, explains:

Just 10% of fossil fuel subsidy cash 'could pay for green transition'

Redirecting small portion of subsidies would unleash clean energy revolution, says report 

Switching just some of the huge subsidies supporting fossil fuels to renewables would unleash a runaway clean energy revolution, according to a new report, significantly cutting the carbon emissions that are driving the climate crisis.

Coal, oil and gas get more than $370bn (£305bn) a year in support, compared with $100bn for renewables, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) report found. Just 10-30% of the fossil fuel subsidies would pay for a global transition to clean energy, the IISD said.

Ending fossil fuel subsidies has long been seen as vital to tackling the climate emergency, with the G20 nations pledging in 2009 to phase them out, but progress has been limited. In May, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, attacked subsidies, saying: “What we are doing is using taxpayers’ money – which means our money – to boost hurricanes, to spread droughts, to melt glaciers, to bleach corals. In one word: to destroy the world.”

As Richard Bridle, IISD Senior Policy Advisor, put it in the IISD press release, "Public money is far better spent delivering the clean energy transition than propping up the fossil fuel industry." He's careful to point out that the "reform of subsidies alone is not enough to meet global emissions targets," but we knew that. Ending fossil fuel subsidies isn't the same as ending fossil fuel emissions, but it's a necessary first step.

I'll go one further than Bridle. Any U.S. presidential candidate who does not favor ending carbon fuel subsidies at the fastest possible rate is not serious about climate change, independent of any other words that emerge from her mouth.

In fact, any U.S. presidential candidate who does not run on ending carbon fuel subsidies is the enemy of everyone else on the planet.

In the long run, meaning in the lives of our grandchildren, will it matter if that candidate is marginally less bad than Trump? Our grandchildren, as they're cooking what they've killed over a fire in a neo-paleolithic cave, will still ask, "Who's Trump? I don't think he's the one who did this to us."
 

13 Of The Presidential Candidates Have Signed The No Fossil Fuels Pledge-- But Not Trump And Not Status Quo Joe Biden

The New Republic ran this photo collage and headline in March. Back then Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and even corporate shill Kirsten Gillibrand had all signed the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge:

I pledge to not take contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industry and instead prioritize the health of our families, climate, and democracy over fossil fuel industry profits.

That means no money from fossil fuel executives, PACs or lobbyists. But, as Amy Atkin wrote for the New Republic, "Refusing money from the oil, gas and coal industries may seem, at first glance, like a politically risky move. If the eventual Democratic nominee is to beat Donald Trump... they’ll need all the resources they can get. So why give up such a potentially huge source of revenue?

“The fossil fuel industry doesn’t generally have a major role in presidential elections on the Democratic side, and hasn’t for awhile,” said Sarah Bryner, the research director at the Center for Responsive Politics. Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, only got about $1 million from oil and gas interests over the course of her campaign; Barack Obama received about the same amount in 2008 and 2012, respectively. That’s a fairly minuscule amount, given that Clinton’s campaign raised about a $1 billion and Obama’s 2012 campaign raised even more. Even a Democratic candidate like O’Rourke, who’s historically benefitted from oil and gas industry money, wouldn’t be giving up that much if he gave it up in 2020. As a congressman in 2018, he received $476,000 from the industry, second only to Senator Ted Cruz in all of Congress. But O’Rourke raised $6 million online in the first 24 hours of his campaign alone.

So the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge isn’t very costly for Democrats. (The No Hollywood Celebrity Money Pledge would be another story.) And any money a Democratic candidate gives up by signing is more than offset by the credibility they’d earn on the issue of climate change-- not to mention that it might attract big-money environmental donors. The eventual Democratic nominee surely will be expected to champion the Green New Deal, or a similar plan to transition the country’s fossil fuel economy into a renewable one. Democratic voters ought to be able trust that their nominee isn’t corrupted by the very industries that are making the planet unlivable.

The Democratic field is large, and nearly every candidate has made a grand statement or two about the dire threat of global warming. But right now, voters can truly trust only five of them to decarbonize the economy. Bryner expects that to change, eventually. “This is a signaling game, and it ends up punishing candidates who won’t make the same pledges,” she said. Hopefully it does-- because if the next president doesn’t have the guts to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, then they certainly don’t have what it takes to prevent a world of hurt.

Yesterday, Amy Klobuchar became the 13th Democratic presidential candidate to sign the pledge. She tweeted this:

Since the New Republic piece, Beto has also been embarrassed into signing. Kamala Harris, Michael Bennet and, obviously, Status Quo Joe are wheeling and dealing to get all the money they can from the fossil fuel industry and have absolutely refused to sign the pledge. No surprise there.

These are the Democrats currently serving in Congress who have taken over $200,000 each from oil and gas interests (since 1990):

• Gene Green (TX)- $746,963
• Henry Cuellar (TX)- $713,127
• Beto O'Rourke (TX)- $570,094
• Jim Costa (CA)- $520,474
• Joe Manchin (WV)- $424,945
• Steny Hoyer (MD)- $409,470
• Tom Udall (NM)- $390,564
• Chuck Schumer (NY)- $316,023
• Michael Bennet (CO)- $312,689
• Ron Wyden (OR)- $286,012
• Sheila Jackson Lee (TX)- $253,500
• Dianne Feinstein (CA)- $251,611
• Marc Veasey (TX)- $244,400
• Bob Casey (PA)- $236,516
• Cedric Richmond (LA)- $230,550
• Rick Larsen (WA)- $228,051
• Mike Doyle (PA)- $207,012
• Bob Menendez (NJ)- $203,726

After this happened, Beto agreed to finally sign the Fossil Fuel Pledge:

About The Weather

When I woke up yesterday, Memeorandum was offering only one story-- out of scores-- that wasn't Kavanaugh-related, a Washington Post piece by Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney: Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100. "Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees by the end of this century." Earlier the NY Times had run a unintentionally related piece by Coral Davenport, E.P.A. to Eliminate Office That Advises Agency Chief on Science.

Among the many reasons for which a sane society would be clamoring for immediate impeachment of Trump is his regime's nonchalance-- at best-- towards climate change. Axios' recent reporting would have us believe there's little to worry about because Big Oil is taking up the slack: The oil industry takes on climate change despite Trump's rollback. So even if the Trump regime's ideological attitude is putting the planet at risk, "a tangible shift over the last two years is sharpening among the world’s biggest oil companies, including in America, to more readily acknowledge and address climate change. The trend, fueled by investor and lawsuit pressure, is underway regardless of, and partly in response to, President Trump’s retreat on the matter... Goldman Sachs’ co-head of global natural resources, Gonzalo Garcia, said in a presentation at a conference in Norway Wednesday that he’s "probably spent more time talking with oil company executives about the energy shift and renewables in the last two years than the previous 23 put together." Garcia says he predicts U.S. companies like Exxon and Chevron will invest in renewables like their counterparts in Europe.

A week earlier, the same reporter, Amy Harder, wrote that Some of America’s most powerful U.S.-based oil companies-- ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum-- are joining a global consortium of oil and gas producers seeking to address climate change. "The companies," she wrote, "are the first U.S.-based members of the group, called the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. This is one of the strongest signs yet of how America’s biggest oil companies, under pressure from investors and lawsuits, are joining most other U.S. corporations in working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite President Trump reversing America’s course on the matter." Exxon CEO Darren Woods: "It will take the collective efforts of many in the energy industry and society to develop scalable, affordable solutions that will be needed to address the risks of climate change."

CEOs of several major, publicly traded oil companies say they support carbon taxes and back a separate group writing a proposal for one. But the companies are not actively lobbying Congress to embrace the policy. That disconnect will grow harder to reconcile as their public commitments to address climate change, such as through groups like this, grow.

No doubt. Meanwhile, in the real world, the Weather Channel reported this week that NASA says that Climate Change Is Causing Earth to Wobble on Its Axis, NASA Says. No, really.

For the first time, scientists have identified why Earth wobbles as it spins.

The decrease in Greenland's ice mass is the main reason for the wobble, NASA says.

Changes in the Earth's wobble could impact the accuracy of satellite tools like GPS systems, according to NASA.

Climate change is impacting how Earth spins on its axis, NASA says. Over the past century, Earth’s axis-- the imaginary line that passes through the North and South Poles-- has drifted about 4 inches, and a decrease in Greenland's ice mass is the main contributor to the wobble, the space agency has announced.

As temperatures increased throughout the 20th century because of humans, Greenland's ice mass decreased.

"A total of about 7,500 gigatons-- the weight of more than 20 million Empire State Buildings-- of Greenland's ice melted into the ocean during this time period," NASA said in a press release. "This makes Greenland one of the top contributors of mass being transferred to the oceans, causing sea level to rise and, consequently, a drift in Earth's spin axis."

Big Oil Seeks Billions from U.S. Government to Protect It From...Climate Change

Map from early 2018 showing spending Congress has already approved to protect Big Oil facilities in Texas from superstorms and rising sea levels. What's mentioned in the article is in addition to all this (source).

by Gaius Publius

In a masterstroke of irony — and hubris — the oil industry wants the federal government to build and pay for "a nearly 60-mile 'spine' of concrete seawalls, earthen barriers, floating gates and steel levees on the Texas Gulf Coast" to protect "the crown jewels of the petroleum industry."

What are those crown jewels? One of the "world’s largest concentrations of petrochemical facilities, including most of Texas’ 30 refineries, which represent 30 percent of the nation’s refining capacity."

The cost, of course, is in the billions. From the AP:

Texas is seeking at least $12 billion for the full coastal spine, with nearly all of it coming from public funds. Last month, the government fast-tracked an initial $3.9 billion for three separate, smaller storm barrier projects that would specifically protect oil facilities.

That followed Hurricane Harvey, which roared ashore last Aug. 25 and swamped Houston and parts of the coast, temporarily knocking out a quarter of the area’s oil refining capacity and causing average gasoline prices to jump 28 cents a gallon nationwide. Many Republicans argue that the Texas oil projects belong at the top of Washington’s spending list.

“Our overall economy, not only in Texas but in the entire country, is so much at risk from a high storm surge,” said Matt Sebesta, a Republican who as Brazoria County judge oversees a swath of Gulf Coast.

By "overall economy" Sebesta means corporate profits. Even if he talked about "jobs" (he doesn't), he would still mean corporate profits. The industry doesn't care at all about the "overall economy." They only care about their own economy. If industry CEOs could hire Texans to work for a pittance instead of a wage, they would do that. If they could hire Texans to work for nothing instead of a pittance, they would do that too.

The planned infrastructure is quite extensive. Just some of the detail: "While plans are still being finalized, some dirt levees will be raised to about 17 feet high, and 6 miles of 19-foot-tall floodwalls would be built or strengthened around Port Arthur, a Texas-Louisiana border locale of pungent chemical smells and towering knots of steel pipes."

The stink of the town is obviously due to the massive refinery structures. Note that this federal spending protects the property of non-U.S. companies as well:

The town of 55,000 includes the Saudi-controlled Motiva oil refinery, the nation’s largest, as well as refineries owned by oil giants Valero Energy Corp. and [the French company] Total S.A. There are also almost a dozen petrochemical facilities.

Of course, the entire industry is international with no interest in borders, Russian and Iranian borders excepted. In addition, all oil products are sold on international exchanges to international buyers, so the concepts of "our oil" and "our oil companies" are meaningless. Still, for those still fooled by those concepts, it's worth pointing out that "their oil companies" will be protected by U.S. federal dollars as well as "ours."

"Not every property can be protected"

The article notes near the beginning that communities and "delicate ecosystems" will be also protected by this project, but lower down, beyond where most people stop reading, we find this (emphasis added):

The proposals approved for funding originally called for building more protections along larger swaths of the Texas coast, but they were scaled back and now deliberately focus on refineries. ...

Oil and chemical companies also pushed for more protection for surrounding communities to shield their workforces, but “not every property can be protected,” said Sheri Willey, deputy chief of project management for the Army Corps of Engineers’ upper Texas district.

"Not every property can be protected" should be emblazoned on t-shirts and coffee mugs and sold in dollar stores everywhere. It will be the one commonality when the full climate crisis hits.

When that day comes, and every day after it, the ultra-rich will use the full resources of government to only protect themselves. Because not every property can be protected.

You read it here first. 

GP
 

Which Would Be Harder to Ban, Single-Use Plastic or Money-Bought Government?

Credit: Chris Jordan

by Gaius Publius

From the Dept. of What We're Up Against:

Texas Supreme Court Rules Cities Cannot Ban Plastic Bags

The Texas Supreme Court struck down the city of Laredo's plastic bag ban—a decision that will likely overturn similar bans in about a dozen other cities, including Austin, Fort Stockton and Port Aransas.

The court ruled Friday that only the state has the authority to regulate solid waste disposal in Texas. In the 19-page opinion, Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote that the Texas Constitution prohibits city ordinances from conflicting with state law.

"Both sides of the debate ... assert public-policy arguments raising economic, environmental and uniformity concerns," Hecht said. "We must take statutes as they are written, and the one before us is written quite clearly. Its limitation on local control encompasses the ordinance."

Twenty Texas state senators and representatives plus the state's attorney general backed the Laredo Merchants Association in their bid to overturn the ban.

The case was correctly decided, by the way. The problem is a state law that prevents cities from "going rogue" and allows conservative and pro-corporate policies to be enacted at the state level. This means only state legislators have to be bribed — one-stop shopping — while cities are forced by law to follow.

More Plastic Than Fish

In a related piece EcoWatch notes, "More than 8.3 billion metric tons of new plastics have been generated, distributed and discarded as of 2017. Much of that material ends up in our oceans. Every year humans send an estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic out to sea. If plastic consumption continues at this rate, we are on pace to fill oceans with more plastic than there are fish by 2050."

More plastic than fish in the ocean is a lot of plastic. Most or all of this plastic is single-use. You touch it for five minutes — drink your slurpee, drain your sugery coke, carry your groceries to the kitchen — then throw it away. Five minutes on the finger tips, a thousand years on the hips of an already over-burdened planet.

There's so much plastic in the ocean that mussels are now so riddled with it they should not be eaten:

Shellfish are the natural filter systems of our seas, mechanisms of purity. So, to discover in a report released on World Oceans Day that mussels bought from UK supermarkets were infested with microplastic seems like a final irony in the terrible story of the plasticisation of the sea. According to the study by the University of Hull and Brunel University London, 70 particles of microplastic were found in every 100 grams of mussels.

We feed plastic to the ocean, and it feeds plastic to us. Our modern life, "consumed with that which it was nourished by," eaten by what we eat.

Cassandra Spoken Here

But this is a political piece, from the Dept. of What We're Up Against. The one-use plastics industry has to die or it will kill us. Yet consider what's in the way. If you thought "Texas Republicans" you'd be wrong. We're up against Money.

The plastics industry is the third largest in the U.S. It's expected to be worth over $650 billion worldwide by 2020. How do you make an industry this big shrivel and die without a revolution that first destroying money's dominance of government? 

And the single-use plastics industry is just a start. The fossil fuel industry has to die soon as well — collapse and rot in the ground in less than a generation. How does that happen, with billionaire-dominated government in the way?

Cassandra, about to not be doing so well.

There are half a dozen industries like these, lucrative destroyers, insulated by money-bought government from populist slings and arrows. Maybe I should have sent this from the Dept. of Cassandra Spoken Here.

GP
 

Why Climate Activists Must Include Supply-Side Restrictions in Their Recommended Policy Mix

Daily average Arctic surface temperature since 1958. The red line is now — 2018 year-to-date (source: Bill McKibben).

by Gaius Publius

Climate policy recommendations, to date, cluster around a very small number of recommendations, all designed to discourage demand for fossil fuels and encourage demand for renewable energy sources. Few policy recommendations address the plentiful, cheap and growing supply of fossil fuels.

This is a major mistake. It may even prove fatal to the great task ahead. And only the climate activist and policy community can fix this error.

Consider the following six points.

The Argument for Restricting the Supply of Fossil Fuels

1. Note the graph above. If it's not already clear that global warming has not just reached truly dangerous proportions, but is accelerating, what's shown in graphs like that should dispel all doubt.

Here's another, from the same series of tweets by climate writer Bill McKibben:

Hmm, something seems a little different this year when it comes to ice in the Bering Sea pic.twitter.com/RwCayhinmt

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) February 25, 2018

The Chukchi Sea is the region of the Arctic north of the Bering Strait. As you can see, the extent of sea ice is declining precipitously. (See also here and here.) All those tiny lines are measurements from the most recent previous years.

(Both of these graphs come from the website of climate scientist and student Zachary Labe, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Earth System Science at UC Irvine. The site is rich in graphs like these. For more Arctic sea ice figures, see here and also the links at the bottom of the page.)

If this isn't an emergency, what is? The World War II analogy would be: Germany has been arming for war for years and has now massed troops on the Polish border. There's no time to waste in preparing the Polish people for the onslaught.

2. If there's no time to waste in addressing the climate crisis, it's necessary not just to restrict the demand for fossil fuels — for example, via carbon taxes and mandatory emissions standards — but also the supply.

This means, in turn, putting the squeeze on the economy to force a conversion to renewable energy supply, rather than simply put pressure on the economy via more gentle restrictions and encouragements that allow the economy to adjust, if it wishes, in a way that's "comfortable."

Examples of "comfortable" demand restrictions include carbon taxes and mandatory cap-and-trade systems. "Comfortable" demand encouragements include subsidies for renewable energy infrastructure.

Supply restrictions, in contrast, tend to be uncomfortable — for consumers because supply is restricted in advance of changes in buying behavior or availability of alternatives; for suppliers because the flow of profit is artificially constrained; and for segments of the economy as a whole because money is forced out of fully operating sectors (fossil fuel production, delivery and use) and into alternative, less-developed areas.

The purpose of supply restrictions, in fact, is to use that discomfort to force changes in behavior, to force the development of alternatives — and not to settle for waiting until the market or consumers decide to make these changes on their own.

The World War II analogy would be the transfer of money from the consumer part of the U.S. economy via rationing into the war-making part of the economy, in order to force the production of ships, tanks, guns and other materiel needed by the military. The constricting factor, the reason the U.S. couldn't support both parts of the economy at full capacity, is manufacturing capacity. No developed nation can double manufacturing capacity in a year, even with all the money in the world to do it. Capacity to make cars, for example, had to be converted to make tanks. In the same way, overall spending had to be diverted, since a nation's ability to expand government spending, while large, isn't infinite.

3. Restrictions on supply, when coupled with constrictions on demand, work very well in other areas where public policy intervention is needed to create a positive social change. Consider the attempt to limit tobacco use in Australia, from a recent academic study ("Cutting with both arms of the scissors: the economic and political case for restrictive supply-side climate policies" by Fergus Green & Richard Denniss) that looks at the utility of supply-side restriction in the battle to mitigate climate change (emphasis added):

Significantly, many countries rely on complicated and evolving combinations of these measures, wherein restrictive supply-side policies play an important role complementing demand-side policies.

Policies to control tobacco smoking in Australia provide an instructive example. The policy mix includes prohibitions on producing tobacco without a license, selling tobacco without a license, selling tobacco to children, tobacco advertising, tobacco sponsorship, and smoking cigarettes in confined public spaces. It also includes heavy taxation of tobacco consumption, hard-hitting public information campaigns, “plain packaging” laws, mandatory health warnings on cigarette packages, and the subsidisation of certain substitutes for cigarettes such as nicotine patches.

None of these anti-"free market" measures is considered out of bounds by the public in the war on tobacco use:

Far from being derided as an inefficient mire of “red tape”, Australia’s tobacco regulatory environment is lauded as a global model of effective public health policy, with the country seen as an early mover in innovative regulation in the sector (Chapman and Wakefield 2001). The combination of a wide range of policies, rather than an ‘optimal’ policy, is, moreover, endorsed in the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which states that “‘tobacco control’ means a range of supply, demand and harm reduction strategies that aim to improve the health of a population by eliminating or reducing their consumption of tobacco products and their exposure to tobacco smoke…” (article 1(d)).

As the authors also note, supply-side restrictions "have also played an important role in efforts to reduce negative environmental pollution externalities, including chlorofluorocarbons (Haas 1992), asbestos (Kameda et al. 2014), and lead in petroleum products (Needleman 2000)."

4. Restrictions on demand for fossil fuels alone aren't doing the job, certainly not fast enough. The march to a far less human-friendly climate — what I've been calling the Next New Stone Age — is relentless and accelerating. Again, we are now seeing zero degree Celsius days in February in the Arctic. In plain English, that means this: air, warm enough to melt ice, in the Arctic, in winter.

Restrictions on supply are therefore critically needed. Yet restrictions on supply create discomfort, both for producers and consumers. Can counter-arguments that point to "discomfort" as a reason not to address climate change via fossil fuel supply restrictions be overcome?

5. The surprising answer is yes, those arguments can be overcome. The paper cited above notes both economic and political benefits of restricting the supply of fossil fuels, and shows that, controlling for other factors, those arguments can be popular and effective. To my knowledge, it's the first paper to do so.

It points out that the economic benefits of supply-side restrictions include low administrative and transaction costs, higher certainty of abatement outcomes, positive price and efficiency effects, the avoidance of infrastructure "lock in," and others.

On the political side, the authors assert that "supply-side policies are generally likely to attract higher public support than demand-side policies, all else equal."

Scholars have identified various reasons, related to these factors [perceived benefits, distributional fairness, and so on], why people tend to prefer certain kinds of climate policy instruments over others (e.g. command and control regulation over market-based instruments) (Jenkins 2014; Karplus 2011; Rabe 2010) and, within a given class of policy instrument, certain design features (e.g. explicit earmarking of revenue from market-based instruments) (Drews and van den Bergh 2015, 863; Rabe and Borick 2012). What has not been analysed is the effect on public support resulting from whether the instrument targets the supply side or the demand side (controlling for instrument type and relevant design features such as, where applicable, revenue allocation). 

The point of the study is to support that point by "controlling for instrument type and relevant design features such as, where applicable, revenue allocation".

For example, on the "perceived benefits" of demand-side vs. supply-side climate policies, the authors state:

A common conclusion from climate-related public opinion research is that climate science is poorly understood and concern about the problem, though widespread, is shallow, i.e. it tends to be a low-salience, low-priority concern and individuals have a low “willingness to pay” for solutions (Ansolabehere and Konisky 2014; Guber 2003; Jenkins 2014, 470–72; van der Linden et al. 2015). This is unsurprising: the climate benefits of mitigation policies are diffused widely across time and space; they disproportionately accrue (and are perceived accrue) to future generations and people in other countries; and their magnitude is uncertain, meaning they are likely to be strongly discounted by voters (van der Linden et al. 2015).

Supply-side policies suffer none of these disadvantages:

By contrast, supply-side instruments typically target fossil fuels per se. Survey evidence suggests that people more readily link co-costs/co-benefits (environmental, health, security, social, economic) to specific energy sources than to the more abstract concepts of “carbon”/“climate” (e.g., Ansolabehere and Konisky 2014); and fossil fuels are well-understood commodities that many people more readily associate with a range of higher-priority, more localised and more immediate negative (non-climate) impacts, resulting in negative attitudes toward fossil fuels, especially coal (see Green 2018, section 3.1.1 and references there cited). These features give supply-side policies considerable advantages in attracting public support for climate policy. Relatively high public support for fossil fuel severance (resource extraction) taxes, even in climate-ambivalent, tax-averse north-American states and provinces (Rabe and Borick 2012, 377–79), provides circumstantial empirical support for these arguments.

The paper studied similar support for supply-side policies based on perceptions of distributional fairness and lower costs.

6. The bottom line is: This is the first study that controls for other factors in determining support for supply-side climate policies vs. demand-side policies by themselves, and finds much to be encouraged about.

The authors conclude:

In our experience, the climate policy community has for too long been excessively narrow in its preference for certain kinds of policy instruments (carbon taxes, cap-and trade), largely ignoring the characteristics of such instruments that affect their political feasibility and feedback effects. At the very least, then, we hope we have shown that supply-side policies should be in the toolkit, ready to be wielded when circumstances favour.

Better, we think, to cut with both arms of the scissors.

Cutting with "both arms of the scissors" means using both supply-side policies and demand-side policies in addressing the looming climate crisis. It's clearly ineffective to use just one.

Only the Climate Policy Community Can Lead in Making This Change

Note the addressee of the authors' conclusion — the "climate policy community." This recommendation is not addressed primarily to politicians, who in the West are natively "free market" apologists, which means, natively Big Money enablers.

And it's not addressed to the public at large, who fear — and are led to fear — the "discomfort" of supply restrictions. Recent American Petroleum Institute ads, for example, say this in effect to consumers: "Do you like that big-screen, smart-phone lifestyle of yours? Be sure to keep carbon in the energy mix, or you'll lose it." Yet the reality is, if Mr. and Ms. Consumer truly hope to keep their smart-phone lifestyle intact, they better start now to arrest the devolution to Stone Age life that constantly burning carbon will cause — just the opposite of what the API is telling them to do.

It makes sense then, does it not, that a message that clearly explain the benefits of reduction — and destruction — of fossil fuel supply can only be carried at first by leading climate activists and the broader policy community?

I see no one else to offer it. And considering both the existential nature of the coming emergency and its near-suffocational timeline, that leadership needs to start ... well, now.

GP
   

Do Mainstream Democrats Really Want to Eliminate Carbon Emissions and Fossil Fuel Use?

Rep. Joe Kennedy III gives the official Democratic Party response to Trump's State of the Union address (source). Can he see global warming from his house? Unlike the rest of us, apparently not.

by Gaius Publius

“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.” 

– Barack Obama, March 15, 2012 (quoted here; emphasis mine)

I raise the following questions because, as regular readers know, the coming climate disaster is regularly on my mind.

Do mainstream (corporate) Democrats really want to eliminate carbon emissions and fossil fuel use?

Or do they, like President Obama, want an "all of the above" energy strategy that maintains fossil fuel use (and continually enriches Big Oil firms) into the indefinite future?

Let's consider.

As a candidate in the 2016 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton pointedly and angrily refused to stop taking money from fossil fuel lobbyists, nor would she commit to banning fracking.

For the 2018 cycle, very few Democratic candidates for national office support a ban on fracking, and very few (about 45 candidates by my count) have signed the pledge not to take money from Big Oil in any of ways it hands out money: "Taking the pledge means that a candidate’s campaign will adopt a policy to not knowingly accept any contributions over $200 from the PACs, executives, or front groups of fossil fuel companies".

Just 45 candidates have signed at last count, among literally hundreds of Democratic Party primary and general election candidates. And most of the signers are of the rebellious "Bernie Sanders" stripe — Randy Bryce, Ro Khanna, Doug Applegate, Kevin de Léon, to name a few — people, in other words, generally unwelcome at Party leadership tables and events.

And now comes the "official" Democratic Party response to Trump's State of the Union address to Congress — from good-looking, groomed-for-Party-success Rep. Joe Kennedy III (Mass.) — and not one word about the climate.

From the Huffington Post:

Democrats Ignore Climate Change In State Of The Union Rebuttal

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was the only one to bring up global warming after the second-hottest year on record. 

The Democratic Party omitted any mention of climate change in its rebuttal Tuesday to President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address.

In his speech, Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) didn’t bring up global warming, sea-level rise or the surge in global greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten to become worse as the Republican White House ramps up fossil fuel production to unprecedented levels.

The Democratic Party omitted any mention of climate change in its rebuttal Tuesday to President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address.

In his speech, Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) didn’t bring up global warming, sea-level rise or the surge in global greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten to become worse as the Republican White House ramps up fossil fuel production to unprecedented levels.

The 37-year-old former prosecutor and grandson of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who was assassinated in 1968, lamented the Trump administration’s “all-out war on environmental protection,” made a passing reference to a “coal miner” and lionized Americans with the courage to “wade through floodwaters, battle hurricanes, and brave wildfires and mudslides to save a stranger.”

Yet, like Trump, the Democrat neglected critical milestones in the climate crisis in his speech.

I don't count this an error, but a strong indicator of policy. And if Kennedy or another corporate-representing Democratic Party official rises up later to adjust this "oversight," I recommend discounting it, just as you would discount a statement like "Of course I love you" that comes many days or weeks later than when it should have been said.

Who Is Joe Kennedy III?

Joe Kennedy III is being called, for all of the obvious reasons, a "rising star" in the Democratic Party. And certainly, Democrats are positioning Kennedy as such by handing him the opportunity to give the Party's official response.

Why am I calling him a "corporate-representing" Party official? Here's a list of his top contributors for the previous 12 months (h/t Lee Fang):

 Click to enlarge.

Rising star Joe Kennedy is also one of the fewer-than-100 House Democrats still not backing Medicare for All. He's opposed to free public colleges, taxing Wall Street, and marijuana reform. In 2015, for example, Kennedy voted to let the DEA arrest medical marijuana patients and providers.

He is kindly described as a "backbencher" and less kindly as "corporate owned."

The best characterization of Kennedy I came across in researching this piece is by Michael Steel, former press secretary to John Boehner: "Rep. Joe Kennedy (Mass.) is an old Democrat’s idea of what a young Democrat should be."

Can Democrats Free Us from Fossil Fuels?

Back to the original question and why it matters. First, do mainstream, Party-backed Democrats really want to bring carbon emissions to zero in a strong, proactive way? Apparently, obviously, not.

Second, if mainstream Democrats won't commit to freeing us from the death grip of oil and gas companies — and, I have to say it, the death grip of the money-obsessed sociopaths who run them — then this country will never free itself, not ever, even after the crisis is so far advanced that even a brick knows to take action. That refusal will leave a mark on us that will last millennia, assuming our species survives that long.

Third, if mainstream Democrats, as they continue to be challenged by Sanders and others to adopt climate policies that are actually effective, publicly refuse to do so — well, that's going to leave a mark on the Democratic Party at the ballot box as well.

It won't be as long-lasting a mark as the other one, but it could doom the Party to irrelevance for the next generation, or until actual progressives actually challenge — in a Party-dividing way — the corporate-owned for leadership, and win.

What are the odds of that happening in time to make a difference?

California resident waters a roof as the Thomas Fire approaches the town of La Conchita. Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty (source)

I guess the answer depends on what "in time" means. For many, "in time" means "now."

GP
 

The Building Is Burning and All the World’s Babies Are In It — Using Force to Fight Climate Change

Who's responsible for carbon emissions? By 1890 the U.S. had taken the dominant position and held it until 2000 (source; click to enlarge).

by Gaius Publius

This piece contains a small number of simple ideas:

• It's going to take force to fight climate change. Asking and negotiating won't do the job.

• There's no time to wait. New studies show sea level rise could be as much as 11 feet by the end of the century.

• Just because we can't stop all of the coming disaster doesn't mean we can't mitigate, perhaps even halve, its effects. 

Let's look at these points one by one.

It's Going to Take Force

Anyone who thinks that asking the billionaires who run our government, and have done so since Reagan snatched the 1980 election from Carter, to do something effective about the catastrophic effects of climate change — that person is dreaming TV-induced dreams of public figures "doing the right thing" when right things need to be done. No one with power will do the right thing when it comes to climate change, or do enough of it to actually matter (though one person perhaps would have, had he advanced far enough).

The most we can hope for from current mainstream leadership is for people to look like they're doing the right thing, or to do some of the right things, but not enough of them to upset the money-laden apple cart that gets them elected, or to turn the mainstream press so against them that they get the "Sanders-Kucinich treatment." Recall that even Al Gore got the Sanders-Kucinich treatment from the press, one of the under-mentioned factors in his loss to Bush. We're going to have to use force.

What does "using force" mean when it comes to climate action? Here are just a two examples of many I could cite. So far these are orderly uses of force. (Disorderly uses of force are likely to come later, in the form of social chaos driven by global impotent anger, and are less likely to be effective. We'll consider that set of outcomes at another time.)

The Building Is Burning and All the World's Babies Are In It

An example of the orderly use of force, from climate activist Emily Johnston writing at The Guardian:

I shut down an oil pipeline – because climate change is a ticking bomb
 
Normal methods of political action and protest are simply not working. If we don’t reduce emissions boldly and fast, that’s genocide

A little over a year ago, four friends and I shut down all five pipelines carrying tar sands crude oil into the United States by using emergency shut-off valves. As recent months have made clear, climate change is not only an imminent threat; it is an existing catastrophe. It’s going to get worse, and tar sands oil—the dirtiest oil on Earth—is one of the reasons.

We did this very, very carefully—after talking to pipeline engineers, and doing our own research. Before we touched a thing, we called the pipeline companies twice to warn them, and let them turn off the pipelines themselves if they thought that was better; all of them did so.

We knew we were at risk for years in prison. But the nation needs to wake up now to what’s coming our way if we don’t reduce emissions boldly and fast; business as usual is now genocidal.

The reason this counts as "using force," despite the fact that nothing they did was permanent, is this — it gave them access to the courts and the "necessity defense" (emphasis added):

One major hope of ours was to set legal precedent by using the “necessity defense” and bringing in expert witnesses to testify that because of the egregious nature of tar sands crude and the urgency of the climate crisis, we’d actually been acting in accordance with higher laws.

The classic example of a legitimate use of the necessity defense is when someone is arrested for breaking and entering after they hear a baby crying in a burning building, and rush in to save her.

Because it requires a high bar of proof—you must have tried everything else, the danger must be imminent, the action must be likely to be effective—courts seldom even allow this defense to be argued, or expert witnesses to be brought; their only concern, generally, is did you break and enter? Not why.

Three of our trials (which are in four states) had already rejected the use of the necessity defense. In North Dakota, the judge said essentially “I’m not going to let you put US energy policy on trial”. But recently, I and the other Minnesota defendants were finally granted it.

I have little doubt that the awful weather events of the last couple of months played some role in this—it’s not just scientists seeing the truth anymore: the building is indeed burning, and all the world’s babies are in it.

The building is indeed burning. It's time to not think about property rights — imagine that revolution! — and save the babies instead.

Putting the Prosecutor on Trial

A final note. Recall above that the North Dakota judge said bringing climate science into the defense would allow the defendants "to put US energy policy on trial." That's exactly right — and exactly what's at stake.

Johnston comments, "I was struck by the North Dakota judge’s implicit understanding that letting science be spoken in her courtroom would have had the effect of putting energy policy on trial—of reversing, in effect, who was the defendant, and who the prosecutor" (my emphasis). Putting the energy industry on trial is precisely the tack to take.

A second example of the same use of force: Climate scientist and pioneer James Hansen is doing exactly the same thing here, and for exactly the same reasons — global justice. A small handful of the powerful super-rich should not be allowed to destroy the lives of billions of their fellow humans, born and unborn, for just a short decade or so of added profit.

Will the billionaires and the governments they control stand down and "do the right thing?" I wouldn't bet on it — it's going to take force. Note that orderly force can take many other forms as well, for example, destroying the stock price of fossil fuel-dependent energy companies, which I've written about before.

There's No Time to Wait

The second main point is that there's no time to wait. Every day it seems there's new news on the climate front, all with the same message — we're constantly wrong to the slow side, constantly comforting ourselves with underestimates of the speed of this evolving crisis.

The latest is this, a new study showing that a feedback loop in the West Antarctica ice shelf may, by the end of this century, melt enough land-borne ice to sink coastal cities worldwide under as much as 11 feet of water (my emphasis):

“With marine ice cliff instability, sea-level rise for the next century is potentially much larger than we thought it might be five or 10 years ago,” Poinar says.

A lot of this newfound concern is driven by the research of two climatologists: Rob DeConto at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and David Pollard at Penn State University. A study they published last year was the first to incorporate the latest understanding of marine ice-cliff instability into a continent-scale model of Antarctica.

Their results drove estimates for how high the seas could rise this century sharply higher. “Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse,” read the headline in the scientific journal Nature, a publication not known for hyperbole.

Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard’s findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.

The result?

Three feet of sea-level rise would be bad, leading to more frequent flooding of U.S. cities such as New Orleans, Houston, New York, and Miami. Pacific Island nations, like the Marshall Islands, would lose most of their territory. Unfortunately, it now seems like three feet is possible only under the rosiest of scenarios.

At six feet, though, around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world’s most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map.

At 11 feet, land currently inhabited by hundreds of millions of people worldwide would wind up underwater. South Florida would be largely uninhabitable; floods on the scale of Hurricane Sandy would strike twice a month in New York and New Jersey, as the tug of the moon alone would be enough to send tidewaters into homes and buildings.

There's no time left to dawdle. If we can't end carbon emissions in an orderly way, there's no way we can relocate all the world's coastal cities in an orderly way. The chaos alone of all that relocation would kill most of the would-be escapees.

Mitigating Climate Disaster Isn't All-or-Nothing

Which leads to the last point, one last word for those who've thrown in the towel on the likely fate of our species. Just as the climate disaster is and will be a rolling nightmare, advancing from frontier to frontier in its destruction — meaning, it won't all happen at once, but in stages — so is disaster mitigation a rolling series of preventions that can knock off the worst climate effects one by one. But only if we act.

If we started now, for example, we can very likely prevent the West Antarctic ice shelf disaster mentioned above, according to the authors of the study.

If the divestment movement takes firmer hold, and shareholder lawsuits increase against an industry that's been lying for 50 years about the price instability of their in-the-ground assets, Big Oil could see financial decline well in advance of major climate collapses. If Big Oil collapses, a massive, aggressive, worldwide turn to renewables would be the only safe way left to keep the world in kilowatts — a welcome and effective turn from a climate perspective.

If the necessity defense really takes hold in American (or global) jurisprudence in climate cases against Big Oil companies, they could be threatened with bankruptcy due to damage lawsuits alone. After all, how great are the damages? More than they or their shareholders could begin to think of paying. How do you price the global devolution of a species from a smart-phone culture to the New New Stone Age?

Any number of mitigating events could and will happen in the next 10 years, events that won't cancel climate consequences — that ship has sailed — but that could offset a great many of those effects still in doubt. In that sense, it's not "already over" — that's way too digital, too all-or-nothing an analysis. It's only "already over" if no one acts at all, and that's just not what's happening. Many, like those cited above and a great many more, are already acting, and acting with increasing force. That's encouraging.

It's also encouraging that the real (and so far failed) Resistance, which started with Occupy and continued through the 2016 election, has not ended. That fight — against Rule by the Rich — is also the climate fight, and thankfully, it's not going to stop on any of its major fronts, including the battle for a human-livable climate. 

GP