New Study: "Natural Gas" Has No Climate Benefit, Will Make Things Worse

Your methane bridge to nowhere (source)

by Gaius Publius

I've seen this report referenced several times, but none of those mentions is getting traction. So time to repeat. The idea that methane, so-called "clean natural gas" or "clean energy," is a bridge fuel that can make our climate problem better — is a lie.

Not only that, it's an obvious lie. If you want to eliminate dust and grit, say, from blowing through an open window into your home, you don't half-close the window that lets it in. You close it all the way. If you want to eliminate all carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel, you don't start burning a different fossil fuel. You stop burning all fossil fuels, including methane.

That's just common sense. It makes even more sense when you consider that the Big Oil barons who own the oil companies also own many of the methane companies. Of the ten top drillers of fracked gas in the U.S., the largest by far is:

1. Exxon Mobil

The biggest natural gas producer is also the country's biggest oil company and one of the most profitable corporations in the world. Exxon has operations in every continent but Antarctica. Its oil and gas operations range across several states, from Pennsylvania to Colorado, and it also has wells in the Gulf of Mexico and off the California coast.

With the purchase of XTO, Exxon produces nearly 50 percent more gas than its closest competitor. Earlier this year, Exxon began running ads touting natural gas as a safe, clean source of domestic energy. About two-thirds of the company's domestic reserves are now in natural gas, with the rest in oil.

Others on the top ten list include BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. So call the promotion of "clean natural gas" a profit protection plan for Big Oil as well.

Do we want Big Oil companies to be profitable? Only if they abandon carbon fuel extraction and go into an entirely different, entirely anodyne business, as makers of party balloons perhaps. Otherwise, they need to die and disappear as companies, the sooner the better.

(I suspect that most people don't realize this — that if we don't kill off the fossil fuel companies, they will kill us off. That's literally true. Exxon and its like really do have to fail and disappear, or be taken down, before anything resembling our smart-phone civilization can survive.)

The Bridge to Nowhere

The common sense wisdom that says "switching to methane fuel won't help" is backed by data. The latest report is nicely summarized by Joe Romm at ThinkProgress (h/t the smart climate site Faster Than Expected):

Natural gas has no climate benefit and may make things worse
Methane leaks in New Mexico's oil and gas industry equal 12 coal-fired power plants.

The evidence is overwhelming that natural gas has no net climate benefit in any timescale that matters to humanity.

In fact, a shocking new study concludes that just the methane emissions escaping from New Mexico’s gas and oil industry are “equivalent to the climate impact of approximately 12 coal-fired power plants.” If the goal is to avoid catastrophic levels of warming, a recent report [pdf] by U.K. climate researchers finds “categorically no role” to play for new natural gas production.

Of course, the carbon lords get their say, even at the U.N. Note that the source is the IEA, which represents the prospects for the industry, not for the humans affected:

Sadly, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published a “Commentary” on “the environmental case for natural gas,” that ignores or downplays key reasons that greater use of natural gas is bad for the climate.

As the note in the Commentary says, "With concerns about air quality and climate change looming large, natural gas offers many potential benefits if it displaces more polluting fuels." Directly contradicted by the data, but when there's money on the table, seems even the U.N. helps its owners bend to pick it up.

The Problem With Methane

Part of the problem is that methane is subject to leaks all along its supply and production chain, and while short-lived in the atmosphere, it's incredibly potent as a greenhouse gas.

Atmospheric methane decays to carbon dioxide and water vapor in about 12 years, but note, carbon dioxide is itself a greenhouse gas, and also, prior to decay — that is, when first emitted — methane is more than a hundred times more potent that CO2. Over a 20-year span, the IPCC considers methane to be 84 times more powerful than CO2. If we keep refreshing the atmospheric supply of methane, as we're doing, we renew its global warming power each year, year after year.

In 15 years or less, global temperature will already have surpassed the dangerously generous "two degrees warming" the world is trying to avoid:

“The 2017 emissions data make it crystal clear that urgent and very serious emissions reductions are needed to stop global warming below 2° C, as was unanimously agreed in Paris,” Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said in an email. ...

Rahmstorf said there are currently about 600 billion remaining tons of carbon dioxide that can be emitted if the world is to have a good chance of keeping warming considerably below 2 degrees Celsius, and with some 40 billion tons of emissions each year, that leaves just 15 years.

Those fifteen years will shorten every year we keep increasing emissions, as we already know we will do in 2017. In 15 years, most of us will still be alive — and the world will be completely different in ways few can imagine.

The second problem with methane is that it doesn't just replace some coal, it replaces renewable energy sources as well. Call it the magic of the market. Romm:

Indeed, researchers confirmed in 2014 that  —  even if methane leakage were zero percent  — “increased natural gas use for electricity will not substantially reduce US GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, and by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies, may actually exacerbate the climate change problem in the long term.” Exactly. In fact, a 2016 study found that natural gas and renewables are competing directly with each other to replace coal plants in this country.

Joe Romm's data comes from a study published in 2014 in the journal Science, which has just been reinforced by a new study (pdf) at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Among its conclusions are these (emphasis added):

By 2035 the substantial use of fossil fuels, including natural gas, within the EU’s energy system will be incompatible with the temperature commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

1) The Paris commitment will be exceeded in under 18 years of current greenhouse gas emissions [actually, in 15 years or less according to the latest 2017 emissions data]

2) Non-OECD nations will “fairly” use up to 98% of the 2°C global carbon budget

3) It is highly unlikely that the Paris 1.5°C commitment is a viable mitigation objective

4) Current levels of emissions will use up the EU’s 2°C carbon budget in under nine years

5) To meet its Paris 2°C commitment the EU needs over 12% p.a. [per annum] mitigation, starting immediately

6) To deliver on the Paris commitments, policy makers need a balanced portfolio of CO2 mitigation scenarios with ‘negative emissions technologies’ only included in the exotic minority [i.e., no "Bill Gates and technology will save us" scenario]

7) Methane emissions and atmospheric concentrations are observed at the top end [i.e., worst case] of IPCC scenarios.

9) Carbon dioxide from combustion is the dominant contributor to the long-term climate change impact of natural gas. Methane has a much greater warming effect than carbon dioxide per unit of emissions released but its atmospheric lifetime is short, only about a decade. However, persistently high emissions [meaning leaks] of methane would replenish this loss and maintain this initial warming effect

9a) Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) transport increases the climate change impact of natural gas supply chains [consider that as both parties tout LNG sales — and transport — to Europe]

10) For stabilising at 2°C, reductions in methane emissions must be accompanied by CO2 reductions

And finally:

11) Fossil fuels (including natural gas) have no substantial role in an EU 2°C energy system beyond 2035

The study concludes that "there is categorically no role for bringing additional fossil fuel reserves, including gas, into production."

What to Note About This Report

Readers of these pages know by now what the rest of the country is just starting to discover — that climate change is already affecting American lives in large and tragic ways, and that the madness of burning fossil fuels to satisfy the greed and, yes, pathology of a small handful of billionaires (plus those they control), that madness must end before it ends us.

What seems new here is the absolute finality of statements in the latest climate reports. These are black-and-white conclusions. Again — "there is categorically no role for bringing additional fossil fuel reserves, including gas, into production." No wiggle room in a statement like that; no sugar at all to coat it with.

Once categorical statement like these make it into the insurance company estimates and reports (to name just one industry affected) — that is, once global warming start to affect billionaire money — you'll see a sudden increase in public awareness, to add to the gradual shifts in awareness we're seeing right now.

Not only will it be a wake-up call; it will look and act like a wake-up call.

Will wake-up call change the course of U.S. carbon emissions? Not while money buys politics and policy in the U.S. But it will introduce Sanders-like political chaos into the system. At that point the political battle will be visible, out in the open, with participants from all quarters joining in. Even the corporate news will report on it.

What will be the effect of a wide and visible public battle over fossil fuel use, as the billionaires dig in?

Complete chaos.

GP
 

U.S. Sanctions on Russia & The EU Market for Liquified Natural Gas

Russia's undersea Nord Stream pipeline, which carries LNG (liquified natural gas) to north European markets. The Nord Stream opening ceremony in November 2011 featured Angela Merkel, Dmitry Medvedev, Mark Rutte and François Fillon. Nord Stream 2, an expansion project that would double Nord Stream's original capacity, was agreed to and signed in June 2015 (source; click to enlarge).

by Gaius Publius

Are the U.S. sanctions on Russia just another pipeline war?

Like all large developed regions, the nations of the European Union are hungry for energy. Like all resource-rich countries, the Russian Federation is hungry for markets. One of the resources Russia is most rich in is oil and natural gas. Thanks in part to the Paris climate agreement, but also to the existing desire of Western European nations to transition from coal and oil to the so-called "bridge fuel" — methane or "natural gas" — there is an obvious interest in both parties, Russia and the EU, in reaching agreements for the sale of Russian natural gas to the west, and also agreements on funding and building pipelines to deliver it.

The graphic below shows the extent of those pipelines, both built and proposed, for delivery of LNG (liquified natural gas, its most transportable form) to European markets.

Major existing and planned natural gas pipelines supplying Russian gas to Europe (source; click to enlarge)

Three things are clear from looking at the map above. First, Russia is Western Europe's nearest neighbor, and energy purchases from Russia would by nature be less costly than purchases from farther way, from North America, for instance. LNG purchased from North America would have to be shipped by tanker.

Second, all pipelines from Russia to Western Europe go though NATO territory — except Nord Stream. Thus Nord Stream frees Russia from worrying about NATO threats to its land-based pipelines. Note also that if tensions between NATO (a U.S. proxy) and Russia heat up, Nord Stream gives Russia an alternate source of LNG revenue from Western Europe should the status of pipelines to and through Eastern Europe fall into dispute.

Third, Russia is almost completely surrounded by NATO nations on its western border, the two exceptions being Belarus and Ukraine. NATO has been steadily moving east since the breakup of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine, an ethnically divided nation with a large Russian minority population, is strongly considering joining the NATO alliance. The U.S. is currently considering arming Ukraine with U.S.-made anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, so tensions are clearly escalating, and the U.S. is a player in those escalations.

Is Nord Stream 2 the Target of the Latest Anti-Russia Sanctions?

One of the outcomes of the recently enacted sanctions on Russia is the closing off of Western funding and penalization of support for a major expansion of the Nord Stream pipeline (all emphasis mine):

Nord Stream (former names: North Transgas and North European Gas Pipeline; Russian: Северный поток, Severny potok) is an offshore natural gas pipeline from Vyborg in the Russian Federation to Greifswald in Germany that is owned and operated by Nord Stream AG. The project includes two parallel lines. The first line was laid by May 2011 and was inaugurated on 8 November 2011. The second line was laid in 2011–2012 and was inaugurated on 8 October 2012. At 1,222 kilometres (759 mi) in length, it is the longest sub-sea pipeline in the world, surpassing the Langeled pipeline. It has an annual capacity of 55 billion cubic metres (1.9 trillion cubic feet), but its capacity is planned to be doubled to 110 billion cubic metres (3.9 trillion cubic feet) by 2019, by laying two additional lines.

The expansion mentioned above has been labeled "Nord Stream 2," and the latest sanctions threaten to shut down further work on it. From the Financial Times (paywalled; quoted here):

Brussels [EU headquarters] has stepped up its diplomatic offensive against the US moves, warning that several oil and gas projects involving Shell, Eni and BP are at risk.

On Tuesday, officials said Brussels was “activating all diplomatic channels” in an effort to persuade lawmakers to dilute the bill’s impact on European companies and the continent’s energy security.

Note that Shell, Eni and BP are Dutch, Italian and British companies, respectively.

EU officials are concerned that the sanctions could damage multibillion-euro pipeline and infrastructure projects straddling Russian territory and beyond in areas as far apart as the Baltic and Black seas.

A list prepared for EU commissioners shows that projects at risk include the proposed Baltic liquefied natural gas plant on the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, in which the Anglo-Dutch group Shell has a stake alongside Russia’s Gazprom. The list also includes Blue Stream, the gas export pipeline linking Russia with Turkey in which Eni of Italy has a 50 per cent. The threat to this pipeline centres on penalties against the maintenance and repair of pipelines on Russian land or waters.

Documents seen by the Financial Times also state that BP “would not be able to engage” in its activities with Rosneft if the US penalties hit operations by European companies to maintain, repair or expand pipelines in Russia.

The last point is important. U.S. sanctions would penalize European companies that engage in projects to "maintain, repair or expand pipelines in Russia." This includes financing as well as construction:

The text of the Senate amendment, which was passed with 97 votes to 2 against, requires the imposition of sanctions against those who make an investment or sell, lease or provide "goods, services, technology, information, or support" to projects for the export of energy from Russia.

"It sanctions those who . . . invest or support the construction of Russian energy export pipelines," Mike Crapo, a senator from Idaho who co-authored the amendment, told the Senate.

Needless to say, more than just the Russians are upset about these sanctions. European foreign ministers are opposed as well (h/t Naked Capitalism for the link).

Germany issues stinging rebuke of US sanctions against Russia
By Johannes Stern
17 June 2017

Germany’s Foreign Ministry published a sharply-worded press release Thursday from Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrats, SPD) and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern (Social Democrats, SPÖ) denouncing the United States’ foreign and economic policies.

Note the American stated justification in the paragraph below, then the German and Austrian foreign ministers' rejection of that justification as describing what the bill was "really about":

Republicans and Democrats agreed almost unanimously, by 97 votes to 2, to impose new sanctions on Russia in the Senate on Wednesday. The Senate justified the measure as a punishment for Moscow’s alleged meddling in the US presidential election, the annexation of Crimea and its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ...

Gabriel and Kern brusquely rejected the US Senate’s measure. The bill was really about “the sale of American liquefied gas and the sidelining of Russian gas supplies in the European market,” according to the two social democratic politicians. That emerges from the text “particularly explicitly.” The goal was “to secure jobs in the American oil and gas industries.”

Angela Merkel stands behind her foreign ministry's statements: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel explicitly backed her Foreign Minister on Friday. There was 'very strong agreement in terms of content with Gabriel’s statement,' stated government spokesman Stefan Seibert. 'It is, to put it mildly, an unconventional action by the US Senate.' It was troubling that European businesses were being targeted by sanctions to punish Russian behaviour. 'That cannot be allowed,' added Seibert."

"Europeans Targeted to Punish Russia"

Whichever way the (sorry to say it, but highly propagandized) U.S. public sees the sanctions bill, European leaders — including Angela Merkel — see it quite differently. For them it's not only an economic attack on Europe by the U.S. It's also a cynical attempt to prop up a struggling U.S. sector of the U.S. energy industry at Europe's expense. That sector, of course, is the inventory-swollen, over-leveraged U.S. oil and gas sector involved in the recent fracking boom.

(A note about the "heavy propagandization of the U.S. public": Consider that, after all the screaming in the U.S. press about how Russia "hacked the DNC" to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, forensics on that supposed "hack" now show it to have been a leak after all. For more, read this definitive and completely underpublicized piece in The Nation by Patrick Lawrence. It's one thing to get rid of Trump; it's another to falsify the trail of evidence to do it.)

There's More Here Than Meets the Eye

The bottom line in all this isn't simple, since as usual with U.S.-Russia relations, there's much more here than meets the eye.

On the U.S. side, the attempt to punish Russia may play well in the national press, but it's driving a wedge between American and European leaders. Already in the articles about European reactions, one can hear strains of "we did what you asked in your other fights with Russia — like Ukraine and Crimea — so why are you hurting us now?"

In fact the conflict with Russia over the Ukraine and Crimea was never black-and-white to begin with. One aspect of the Ukraine story is that, unlike what was reported in the U.S. press, the U.S. was a major instigator of the internal conflict, and the EU had to be dragged to support it.

Amy Goodman in 2014 (emphasis mine)

A New Cold War? Ukraine Violence Escalates, Leaked Tape Suggests US Was Plotting Coup

A short-lived truce has broken down in Ukraine as street battles have erupted between anti-government protesters and police. ... At least 50 people have died since Tuesday in the bloodiest period of Ukraine’s 22-year post-Soviet history. While President Obama has vowed to "continue to engage all sides," a recently leaked audio recording between two top U.S. officials reveal the Obama administration has been secretly plotting with the opposition....

The top State Department official has apologized to her European counterparts after she was caught cursing the European Union, the EU, in a leaked audio recording that was posted to YouTube. The recording captured an intercepted phone conversation between the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and Victoria Nuland, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe. Nuland expresses frustration over Europe’s response to the political crisis in Ukraine, using frank terms.

VICTORIA NULAND [on tape]: "So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U.N. help glue it. And, you know, [bleep] the EU."

Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, is a well-known neocon who during the campaign "figure[d] prominently among her current advisers" and is well known for her strong anti-Russian views. Her husband is Robert Kagan, another strong Clinton supporter during the campaign and co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, the neocon think tank that strongly advocated for the 2003 Iraq War.

The U.S. was a major player fomenting or adding to the conflict in Ukraine. However strongly the EU was in their public support, this current attack on Russia via the sanctions is too much even for them. Quoting the German Foreign Minister again:

the threat to impose extraterritorial sanctions which violate international law on European companies participating in the expansion of European energy supplies” could not be tolerated. Europe’s energy provision was “a European affair, and not one for the United States of America!”

It sounds like he means it.

The Players and the Game

As this evolves, keep the players and their interests in mind. The major players are:

• The U.S. foreign policy establishment, many of them Democrat-supporting neocons, most of them hardliners on Russia for decades

• Democratic Party leaders, eager to tar Donald Trump with the blackest brush they can find, in hopes that this will absolve them of the 2016 loss without having to make substantive policy changes going into 2018 and 2020

• The U.S. natural gas industry, desperate to open markets for product they are vastly oversupplied with

• The mainstream U.S. press, eager help the U.S. ruling establishment be rid of Trump, but also eager to cash in on the ratings that a years-long slow-motion Mueller-fueled train wreck will provide

• European leaders, turning away from U.S. international leadership as each day goes by — the Paris climate agreement and Trump's childish bellicosity toward North Korea are just two example of many — just as the U.S. is threatening Europe's right to make its own energy decisions

• Russia, which seems willing to patiently let all of this play out, knowing it doesn't need to drive a wedge between the U.S. and EU if the U.S. foreign policy establishment will drive that wedge for them

It's unlikely the U.S.-Russia conflict in Europe will end well. All of the American players listed above will continue to benefit from a ratcheting up of conflict with Russia over these sanctions, including the profit-hungry U.S. press.

Democratic Party leaders in particular will find an additional benefit to strong anti-Russia rhetoric and action — they can use it to further damage their strongest and most hated domestic opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was one of just two senators to vote against the sanctions bill. The mainstream Democratic Party, it seems, is determined to give just lip service, if that, to progressive policies while trying to position themselves as the only policy alternative to the Trump regime.

(In my view, their latest attempt at triangulation will fail in 2018, just as it did in 2016. There is more than one policy alternative to the Trump regime — the "Sanders wing" alternative — and the public knows it. If the Party won't offer that alternative, the public may just vote with their feet, by not voting.)

In the U.S. press, one hears a doubling down on worries that increased Russian LNG sales to Europe will make Western Europe "dependent" and vulnerable to Russia. Clearly the Europeans define independence differently than the U.S. establishment does. With Trump in the White House and both Merkel and Macron openly distrustful of U.S. world leadership, I don't see either side backing down.

The irony is that even if the U.S. foreign policy establishment succeeds in forcing Europe to buy LNG from American companies, the price is unlikely to rise enough to save those companies — though the added revenue may buy them a bit more time before the next round of bankruptcies. Stay tuned.

GP
  

Oil and Gas Price War Looms; Trump to Worsen It

Making America Great Again, by returning to a past that never existed at all (source).

by Gaius Publius

In a previous piece, "Climate Change in the Age of Trump: A Profit-First Energy Plan," we looked at the Trump "energy" plan and found it to be instead a profit plan for the oil-and-gas industry. The reason: It's not really about delivering energy to the country — as you'll see in a moment, it's likely to do the opposite. The Trump energy plan is just about making one last attempt to prop up a single powerful, energy-sector industry at the expense of all the others.

From that plan (my emphasis):

Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own. We will use the revenues from energy production to rebuild our roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure. Less expensive energy will be a big boost to American agriculture, as well.

The Trump Administration is also committed to clean coal technology, and to reviving America’s coal industry, which has been hurting for too long.

The attempt will fail, on both counts. It will fail to deliver energy, and it will fail to deliver profit, and for the same reason in both cases. The problem is, the price of fossil fuel, oil and natural gas (methane), is at a company-killing low, and the market for both is glutted with supply in a world of shrinking demand.

These are twin killers. As demand for a product falls, the price for that product falls with it, all other things being equal. Add the problem of rapidly increasing supply at the same time and the price falls precipitously, in some cases below the cost of production. And prices are clearly currently at dangerous (for the industry) lows.

Inflation-adjusted price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, January 2000 through January 2016 (source)

Traditional drilling can extract oil that still makes a profit at current prices, but hard-to-get-at oil and gas — tar sands oil, fracked oil and gas —are just not profitable now. Which means that companies relying on those technologies are at risk of going under, depending on whether they have deep pockets financially versus whether they are over-leveraged and too deeply indebted. (This danger applies to the banks, hedge funds and venture capital funds that hold their debt as well. Not only is the oil-and-gas industry threatened; its financial backers are also under siege by the same forces.)

What Trump has said he will do — in this low-price, profit-threatened environment — is flood the market further with supply. Two recent pieces have pointed out the dangers of that attempt.

From the Wall Street Journal, a discussion of the problem faced by fracked-gas producers (subscription required; my emphasis):

Gas Glut Reverses Lucrative 2016 Trade
Natural-gas futures have fallen 25% in the oversupplied market, hurting plans to grow U.S. exports

A flood of natural gas swamping the U.S. is turning into a global glut, sinking prices and dimming the hopes of American producers to export their way out of an oversupplied domestic market.

Natural-gas futures have fallen 25% over the past 2½ months. The declines continued Tuesday, with April futures dropping 3.45% to $2.938 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Shares of gas-production companies are among this year’s worst performers.

“Investors right now across the board just hate natural gas,” said Pearce Hammond, an analyst at Simmons & Co. International in Houston.

The recent declines reverse one of last year’s most profitable trades: Gas futures rose 59% in 2016, and shares of producers including Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Rice Energy Inc. doubled between March’s lows and year-end.

Many investors wagered that new gas-fired power plants and record exports would help burn off much of the excess supply in the U.S. But a historic level of exports hasn't been enough to transform a market dominated by unpredictable weather and massive new supplies from fracking.

Note that the Journal wants fossil fuel exports to grow — a climate-killing proposition, but what do they care, so long as profits are protected. Their complaint is that profits are threatened.

OPEC has attempted to head off this profit crunch by attempting once more to agree to limit supply (and thus sales). This attempt, modest to begin with, has failed, as these attempts often do.

From Nick Cunningham at OilPrice, via Naked Capitalism:

New Oil Price War Looms As The OPEC Deal Falls Short

...So, we have OPEC talking up a major production cut deal, and also trumpeting its unprecedented rate of compliance. Oil investors listened, and became incredibly bullish on oil prices, expecting a sharp tightening in the market to be forthcoming. But while the participating countries have indeed taken about 1.1 mb/d [million barrels per day] off the market, they did so from their peak levels, and those cuts were offset by rising output from Libya and Nigeria.

To be sure, Libya’s output is once again under threat of violence near the country’s largest export terminals – Libya has already lost about 80,000 bpd [barrels per day] in recent weeks. And recognizing Nigeria’s threat to the integrity of the OPEC deal, OPEC officials have suggested that Nigeria could lose its exemption status if the cartel extends the deal for another six months.

Nevertheless, about midway through OPEC’s six-month deal, the headlines about success are belied by a much more measured impact on supply fundamentals. The bottom line is that OPEC has only taken a few hundred thousand barrels per day off the market from last summer’s levels.

And those barrels from the Middle East are quickly being replaced by barrels from Texas. U.S. oil production is closing in on 9.1 mb/d, up about 600,000 bpd from last summer. After largely ignoring this growing threat, hedge funds and other money managers have suddenly grown more concerned as bloated inventories continue to rise, and a liquidation of net-long bets could be underway. Bullish bets are now at a one-month low and could be heading down. That helped spark a sharp correction in oil prices last week, down about 9 percent in a few days.

In short, the OPEC deal was kind of weak to begin with, and now U.S. shale could be killing off the OPEC-fueled oil price rally.

The bottom line is this. Trump's energy plan is proving to be what I said it would be when it was announced, an industry-killing plan disguised as its salvation, and a plan that will take us down with the industry it seeks to protect:

This [energy plan] will roil the oil market, which is already glutted with supply at unsustainably low prices. Look for energy market crises — and business bankruptcies — to increase, perhaps exponentially. Many smaller fracked-oil companies will go bankrupt, and the banks that financed them may need another bailout.

As the Journal pointed out, "Bernstein Research, Macquarie Group Ltd. and energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. all are warning that oversupply may weigh on the market for years."

So, chaotic energy market with a side of bailout. Fair warning — not only has the weather turned permanently tumultuous, but markets connected with the weather, particularly oil and gas, have turned turbulent as well, perhaps permanently so.

With maybe worse to come. First, look for this turbulence to continue until the day we're no longer carbon-dependent, a day that almost no one in power is working to see dawn. And second, look for the tumult to geometrically worsen, as Trump and his team implement a solution that looks for all the world, even to the players involved, like fuel to enflame the problem.

It's going to be a fascinating ride. By attempting to force a return to Happy Motoring, the oil-and-gas industry has insured the opposite, a ride to energy hell, both for them and for us. Is it an emergency yet? Time, perhaps, to act?

GP
 

Oregon to Ban Coal Completely for Energy Generation

Dirty coal is going down in Oregon (source)

by Gaius Publius

Short and very sweet. There are two states that don't use coal at all to generate energy, Vermont and Hawaii. All of the rest burn some coal, and no state has banned coal completely; until now; until Oregon. My emphasis below:

Coal phased out
Oregon governor signs landmark bill

PORTLAND, Ore. – With the stroke of Gov. Kate Brown’s signature Friday, Oregon became the first state to eradicate coal from its power supply through legislation and now boasts some of the most stringent demands for renewable energy among its state peers.

The new law will wipe out coal-generated energy in phases through 2030 and requires utilities to provide half of customers’ power with renewable sources by 2040, doubling the state’s previous standard.

“Oregon is known to be a leader in clean-energy programs, investing in energy efficiency and recognizing the risk of climate change,” said Brown, who signed the measure surrounded by students at a Portland elementary school that’s powered by solar panels.

Environmental experts and advocates say the law’s coal phase-out component is precedent-setting for lawmakers considering similar moves in their states, although Hawaii and Vermont have standing histories of running coal-free.

The renewables portion thrusts Oregon to the top ranks of a handful of other states that have renewable mandates of 50 percent or more. Hawaii, for instance, has a 100-percent requirement by 2045, while Massachusetts has 1-percent annual increase indefinitely, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

I've argued for some time that it's going to take force, and the largest agent of force in the country is government. (Second most powerful is the court, in my opinion, followed by chaos in carbon markets and yes, mass uprising.)

In a perfect world, government would create a World War II-style mandate for change, then enact it. Did the "free market" get to decide how many tanks GM built in 1942? How dumb would it be to do that? Oregon points the way.

(Care to join a movement to mobilize, WWII-style? Click here and sign. More and more, public figures are figuring this out as well. You can help encourage them to get it.)

GP
 

Will China Be the Enforcer of the Paris Climate Agreement?

Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants

by Gaius Publius

It's amazing what can be done by a government determined to do it. In the U.S., our approach to the climate crisis is to use the "invisible hand" of the market and be careful not to get in the way of "wealth creation" (for billionaires). The Chinese don't have those constraints. Yes, they want to make their billionaires wealthier, but that's not their primary goal. There's a very nationalist strain in China, and to a greater extent, I think, than in the U.S., the Chinese government wants what's best for China, and not just its wealthy.

Put differently, the economic policy of the Chinese government is to grow the country, including its billionaires. It often seems that U.S. economic policy is to grow our billionaires at the expense of the country. That may be no more evident than in the following story.

"You Talk about Fixing the Climate, But What about China?"

One of the main reasons the climate foot-draggers, in both parties, want to go slow on climate in the U.S. (aside both parties' allegiance to "wealth creation") is the China argument. In simple form, it says, "Whatever the U.S. does to save the climate will be undone by China, so why bother?" I don't think that argument holds true any longer.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in The Telegraph (my emphasis):

China is the low-carbon superpower and will be the ultimate enforcer of the COP21 climate deal in Paris

Chinese scientists have published two alarming reports in a matter of weeks. Both conclude that the Himalayan glaciers and the Tibetan permafrost are succumbing to catastrophic climate change, threatening the water systems of the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Mekong.

The Tibetan plateau is the world’s "third pole", the biggest reservoir of fresh water outside the Arctic and Antarctica. The area is warming at twice the global pace, making it the epicentre of global climate risk.

One report was by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The other was a 900-page door-stopper from the science ministry, called the “Third National Assessment Report on Climate Change”.

The latter is the official line of the Communist Party. It states that China has already warmed by 0.9-1.5 degrees over the past century – higher than the global average - and may warm by a further five degrees by 2100, with effects that would overwhelm the coastal cities of Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou. The message is that China faces a civilizational threat.

Whether or not you accept the hypothesis of man-made global warming is irrelevant. The Chinese Academy and the Politburo do accept it. So does President Xi Jinping, who spent his Cultural Revolution carting coal in the mining region of Shaanxi. This political fact is tectonic for the global fossil industry and the economics of energy.

Until last Saturday, it was an article of faith among Western climate sceptics and some in the fossil industry that China would never sign up to the COP21 accord in Paris or accept the "ratchet" of five-year reviews.

They have since fallen back to a second argument, claiming that the deal is meaningless because China will not sacrifice coal-driven growth to please the West, and without China the accord unravels since it now emits as much CO2 as the US and Europe combined.

This political judgment was perhaps plausible three or four years ago in the dying days of the Hu Jintao era. Today it is clutching at straws.

Eight of the world’s biggest solar companies are Chinese. So is the second biggest wind power group, GoldWind. China invested $90bn in renewable energy last year and is already the superpower of low-carbon industries. It installed more solar in the first quarter than currently exists in France.

The Chinese plan to build six to eight nuclear plants every year, reaching 110 by 2030. They intend to lever this into worldwide nuclear dominance, as we glimpsed from the Hinkley Point saga.

Home-grown energy is central to Xi Jinping's drive for strategic security. China's leaders know what happened to Japan under Roosevelt's energy embargo in the late 1930s, and they don't trust the sea lanes for supplies of coal and liquefied natural gas. Nor do they relish reliance on Russian gas.

Isabel Hilton from China Dialogue says the energy shift has reached a point where Beijing has a vested commercial interest in holding the world to the Paris deal. “The Chinese think they can dominate low-carbon technologies,” she said....

Do read the rest; it's fascinating.

The Chinese Century & the Next Great Power Source

There are a couple of takeaways here. One relates to the fact that, as we all know, the U.S. has been competing economically with China to make sure the 21st century won't be the Chinese Century the way the 20th century was the American Century.

So the first takeaway is this — thanks to our billionaires and their control of the U.S. political process, that competition is over. In a world without a climate crisis, China will win economically. The U.S. has already, as part of an unspoken national economic policy, handed China control of the world's manufacturing, in exchange for major additions to American CEO bottom lines, like Phil Knight's at Nike. Put simply, U.S. national economic policy is to make China and Phil Knight rich at the expense of most Americans. Both China and Phil Knight have taken that deal.

The second takeaway is an insight from Kevin Phillips' book American Theocracy, that world power ("greatness") moves to the country that adopts the next great power source. For a while, the Dutch dominated with wind power (they really did), until coal power allowed the British to take their place as the world's leading nation. The U.S. ran its economy on oil, not coal, and supplanted the British. The next great energy source is going to be renewables (if we can get to a stable world run on renewables).

The Chinese are counting on that being true, that the first nation that owns and runs on renewables is the next great national power. They want to control the world's manufacturing and control the next-generation power source. They see this as their path to the Chinese Century, and they're going to try very hard to get there. Again, from the article: “The Chinese think they can dominate low-carbon technologies”. In a world without catastrophic climate change, it's likely they're right.

But the third takeaway is this:

• If I'm right that we have at most 10 years to start a massive conversion to zero-carbon power generation in the U.S....
   
• If warming of at least +1.5 °C is "baked in" and guaranteed no matter what we do, and not stopping means we can only go higher that that...
   
• If we don't soon have a national "wake up call" that motivates us to emergency action...

... then no one will own this century, not us, not the Chinese, not anyone, because it won't be ownable. If we're lucky, civilization will survive this century more or less intact. Period. Every nation will spend its energy in adaptation, not expansion; in survival and self-preservation, not dominance. Consider, for example, that if 45°N latitude is the cutoff point for livability in the second half of a hot next century, China's breadbasket, the North China Plain, at about 39°N could be at risk. That's where China will spend its time and money. We may have similar problems.

Dismissing the "China Argument"

It's true that we can't "fix" (mitigate, in climate-speak) or avoid the worst of the climate crisis without both the U.S. and China lending a serious hand. If the Chinese are going to do their part — and it looks like they are — it does come down to us then. The Chinese are not saying, "Let's wait for the U.S. before we get serious." They're taking a leadership role and acting. Time to take a page from that book and do our own part? Looks like the "China argument" just went away.

GP

Two Industries Poised to Wipe Out Carbon Emissions Savings of Entire Nations

Data: LSE | *Metric tonnes CO2 equivalent (click to enlarge). Note Canada's emissions in 1990, the Kyoto benchmark year, and in 2005, Obama's benchmark year.

by Gaius Publius

The push to get nations to commit to carbon emissions savings is much in the news lately, so I'd like to take a moment to make two points. The first is in the headline to this piece. While the U.N. FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change, their treaty-making body) is working to get firm and sufficiently large commitments from nations to reduce their carbon emissions, nations are only part of the problem. The other is industries that operate internationally.

The second point, below, involves the choice of "benchmark year" for carbon reductions agreements — in this pledge, for example, "to reduce our emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025," something Obama announced recently as the U.S. contribution to the FCCC national target request.

Why 2005, and not, say, 1990, the benchmark year of the Kyoto agreement? Read on.

Two Emissions-Rich Industries That Individual Nations Can't Reign In

Independent of the pledges of the various nations — which are proving to be entirely inadequate to meeting even the modest goals of the U.N. — pledges by nations aren't the entire solution. In fact, the pledges by a number of nations would be entirely wiped out by the emissions of two international industries. These are international shipping and international air travel.

Cassie Werber writing at Quartz:

These industries are going to cancel out entire countries’ carbon savings

Later this month, representatives from some of the world’s biggest polluting countries will gather in Paris to negotiate a collective agreement to limit global warming to fewer than two degrees celsius below pre-industrial levels.

It’s a massive task, especially since global average temperatures are likely to have risen by one degree from those levels—halfway to the crucial point of no return—by the end of this year.

But as individual countries commit to cuts, the runaway emissions of industries that operate across borders is becoming more apparent. In 1990, the world’s entire maritime industry emitted less than half the carbon of Canada. Aviation emitted even less. But by 2030, both these industries will outstrip Canada and other large economies by millions of tons of carbon every year.

The forecasts by the London School of Economics (pdf) include several scenarios for countries’ emissions in 2020 and 2030. We’ve compared them [in the chart above] with Canada’s national emissions because the country’s commitment to cut its pollution by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 isn’t subject to as many variables as other countries’ (like India, which bases its commitment on how fast its economy grows).

Ponder that chart again. As Canada's emissions have fallen about 15% below the 1990 benchmark and about 30% below its peak in 2005, on the same scale the emissions of global shipping and global aviation have almost quadrupled. Certainly, even if a solution were found for completely eliminating carbon emissions from a nation's energy use — and there is one here, for example — eliminating emissions from shipping and aviation will be a challenge.

Consider — a nation could conceivable eliminate all emissions from transportation, save those two, fairly easily. Simply convert all power generation, all of it, from anything carbon-related to 100% renewables, then require that only non-carbon-using vehicles, electric cars and buses, for example, be used.

Still, that doesn't solve the "boats and planes" problem? What does solve it? Sadly, not something good, but something that is revealed by examining the benchmark year issue.

Why the "Benchmark Year" Matters & What It Reveals

Briefly, if you're in the business of looking better than you are, or making your performance look as good as possible, what you compare yourself to is critical. Consider Obama's pledge to, again, "reduce our emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025." Here's a chart of U.S. carbon emissions from energy generation:

U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions since 1992 (source).

Now consider that if Obama had said in 2012, "I pledge to reduce energy-related emissions in the U.S. by 10% from 2005 levels" — he'd be there on the day he made the statement. When Obama announced at the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks that he would "reduce greenhouse gas emissions about 17% below 2005 levels by 2020," he knew that he had 10% of that reduction already in his pocket and 12 years to find the rest. Not much of a pledge.

You see this over and over with him. His much touted EPA plan, for example, "aims for a 30% national reduction of heat-trapping CO² emissions, from 2005 levels, by 2030"— about half of which had already been accomplished. Prior to Obama's pledges, the usual benchmark year was the one used in the Kyoto protocol, 1990. Look again at the two charts above and you'll see why that benchmark level was jettisoned.

Which leads to the question: What is the most effective method of reducing carbon emissions? You may not want to know.

Economic Crisis & Climate Change

The answer comes in a good 2009 piece in the New Yorker by David Owen. Note again that 2009 was the year of the Copenhagen climate conference. My emphasis below:

Economy vs. Environment

Economic crisis and climate change

The week before last, twenty-five hundred delegates, from more than seventy countries, met in Copenhagen to prepare for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will take place there in December and will produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1992 and will expire in 2012. The speakers in Copenhagen were united by a sense of urgency—and for good reason, given the poor record of most participating countries in meeting their Kyoto targets for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.

So far, the most effective way for a Kyoto signatory to cut its carbon output has been to suffer a well-timed industrial implosion, as Russia did after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991. The Kyoto benchmark year is 1990, when the smokestacks of the Soviet military-industrial complex were still blackening the skies, so when Vladimir Putin ratified the protocol, in 2004, Russia was already certain to meet its goal for 2012. The countries with the best emissions-reduction records—Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic—were all parts of the Soviet empire and therefore look good for the same reason.

The United States didn’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but Canada did, and its experience is suggestive because its economy and per-capita oil consumption are similar to ours. Its Kyoto target is a six-per-cent reduction from 1990 levels. By 2006, however, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars on climate initiatives, its greenhouse-gas output had increased to a hundred and twenty-two per cent of the goal, and the environment minister described the Kyoto target as “impossible.”

The explanation for Canada’s difficulties isn’t complicated: the world’s principal source of man-made greenhouse gases has always been prosperity. The recession makes that relationship easy to see: shuttered factories don’t spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even affluent people buy less throwaway junk. Gasoline consumption in the United States fell almost six per cent in 2008. That was the result not of a sudden greening of the American consciousness but of the rapid rise in the price of oil during the first half of the year, followed by the full efflorescence of the current economic mess.

Sad but true. Barring intervention in the economy — this kind of intervention, for example — the only "free market" method of reducing emissions is reverse prosperity — in other words, recession and depression. It's possible to have both zero energy-related emissions and national prosperity, but only if we manage it, World War II-style. If we don't manage it, we'll still get recession and depression, but chaotically and destructively.

The good news is, today at least we can still make choices, and some of them are excellent. Which means that it's not too late to sign this pledge. Nor is it too late to work for the only candidate who truly recognizes the threat that climate change represents, not just to our wealth, but to our lives (you can adjust the split any way you want at the link).

GP

A Fossil-Fuel-Exporting Superpower that Lectures the World about Cutting Emissions

by Gaius Publius

Bottom line first — the title of this piece is taken from the following quotation:

“We’re a fossil-fuel-exporting super­power that goes around lecturing the rest of the world about cutting emissions,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was an adviser on climate during the Clinton administration. “The United States is reducing its domestic coal use and then simply exporting some of those emissions abroad.”

Consider that the next time you want to give Barack Obama, or any U.S. president, credit for not allowing drilling in the U.S. part of the Arctic. Easy to do when Shell says it's not even profitable. If the U.S. government were truly serious about cutting global CO2 emissions, it would stop all oil, gas and coal leases on public lands. Yes, we're even leasing coal rights.

The Hypocrisy of the U.S. Government

And now the detail. The federal government leases the right to extract burnable carbon in many forms from publicly owned land. This story is about leasing the right to extract burnable coal. Joby Warrick writing at the Washington Post:

U.S. exports its greenhouse-gas emissions — as coal. Profitable coal.

Gillette, Wyo. — A few feet below this prairie town lies one of North America’s biggest coal deposits, a 100-foot-thick slab of brittle black rock spanning an area the size of Rhode Island — nearly all of it owned by the U.S. taxpayer.Just a dozen nearby mines, scattered across a valley known as the Powder River Basin, contain enough coal to meet the country’s electricity needs for decades. But burning all of it would release more than 450 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — more than all greenhouse-gas emissions from all sources since 2000.

The Obama administration is seeking to curb the United States’ appetite for the basin’s coal, which scientists say must remain mostly in the ground to prevent a disastrous warming of the planet. Yet each year, nearly half a billion tons of this U.S.-owned fuel are hauled from the region’s vast strip mines and millions of tons are shipped overseas for other countries to burn. Government and industry reports predict a surge in exports of Powder River coal over the next decade, at a time when climate experts are warning of an urgent need to reduce coal burning to prevent global temperatures from soaring.

Each shipment highlights what critics describe as a hypocrisy underlying U.S. climate policy: While boasting of pollution cuts at home, the United States is facilitating the sale of large quantities of government-owned coal abroad.

“We’re a fossil-fuel-exporting super­power that goes around lecturing the rest of the world about cutting emissions,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was an adviser on climate during the Clinton administration. “The United States is reducing its domestic coal use and then simply exporting some of those emissions abroad.”

It would be fair if we took the sum of the calculated CO2-emissions savings via President Obama's EPA emissions plan, and reduced that total by the amount of increased emissions from exported coal, oil and gas resulting from (very profitable, but not to us) federal carbon leases. From what the one hand gives, subtract what the other hand takes back.

Put differently, this program of leasing rights to extract carbon from federal lands and offshore waters hides what looks like the real purpose of these programs — to covertly enhance the profits of companies like Exxon while other programs publicly diminish them.

Leasing Coal Rights on Federal Land Is a Very Profitable Business

The other aspect of this business — the business the government is in when it leases the right to extract carbon from public land — is that it's giving away publicly owned resources for nearly nothing. Warrick again:

Nearly all of the coal is ­government-owned as a result of ­century-old laws that cede to the federal government the ownership of minerals that lie beneath much of the West’s land. Mining companies in the basin typically pay as little as $1 a ton for the federal coal they mine, although Washington assesses additional royalties and fees, and requires bonding to ensure the sites are cleaned up after mining operations end.

Coal company officials insist that taxpayers are getting an exceptional deal.

“The law requires maximum economic recovery for these reserves,” said John Eaves, chairman of the board for Arch Coal, the coal giant and the operator of Black Thunder, a Powder River Basin mine that ranks among the largest surface mines in the world. “Few industries anywhere generate such a high percentage of value for the public good.”

The “value” here stems in part from the fact that Powder River coal is cheap [to mine], by world standards. By a geology quirk, the basin’s biggest coal seam is unusually thick and sits just below the surface. There are no tunnels to dig and no mountaintops to blast away. The labor and materials required to extract the coal puts the average going price at about $10 a ton, a quarter of the cost of coal mined in Appalachia and little more than a sixth of the market price of Chinese coal. Wyoming’s coal contains less energy but also less sulfur, so it burns more cleanly.

What that means is this — the companies are getting an exceptional deal. They buy leases at $1 per ton, they sell the coal for $10 per ton, and their product is so attractively priced that they can more than compete on price against coal mined elsewhere, which sweetens the volume.

What Should the Government Do?

You could argue that the government should at least strike a better bargain in exchanges for the public's property, the carbon it owns under public land in Western states. But a better argument is that the government should just stop, unilaterally. By that I mean:

• Stop issuing new leases for carbon extraction on public land or offshore waters. A total freeze.
   
• Use every legal means possible to cancel existing leases at the earliest possible moment.

Again, I'm waiting for the first climate-serious candidate to promise to use his or her power as president to do this simple, easy to accomplish act. Seems like an obvious proposal, yes?

GP

What Sanders Can Accomplish by Not Acting

"The game is rigged." Doesn't sound much like a "market" to me. And "capitalism" isn't the word you're looking for either.

by Gaius Publius

(This is part one of several pieces on what Bernie Sanders can accomplish if elected president. At the end I offer an example of a Sanders-like "What I will never do" speech. Scroll down or click the link to go directly to the speech.)

I recently wrote about British politician Tony Benn's speech, a "ten-minute history of neoliberalism." Near the beginning Benn says, "This country and the world have been run by rich and powerful men from the beginning of time." If the "beginning of time" means the start of humanity's post-Stone Age history, that's a period more than 5,000 years long. A brief window opened in the mid-1800s, with the beginning of trade unionism and, in the U.S., the New Deal, when "rich and powerful men" were no longer as in charge as they have always been. That brief window, the blink of an eye compared to the rest of human history, is now closing.

Then we looked at a recent Noam Chomsky interview and noted as he does that the "economic system" being evolved in that closing window, what I've called "modern capitalism" — "capitalism" as practiced today — isn't capitalism at all, but merely theft, the adult equivalent of bullies taking lunch money, or the Roman ruling class enslaving most of Europe to work the land, which only the ruling class owns.

Nor is "modern capitalism" a market in any sense that matters. Is a monopoly on all essential products a market? Only in the most reduced sense; only in the sense that "0" is a number. Only in the sense that one person, living alone, is a family. Only in the sense that a man in a meadow talking to silent birds is a conversation.

In other words, that closing window brings us back to Tony Benn's original description, a world "run by rich and powerful men." Period. Those pieces are here and here, and they set up the following.

Can Sanders Reopen that Closing Window?

In his speech, Tony Benn said not to despair:

It's very important to keep optimism. ... Progress has always been made by two flames burning in the human heart. The flame of anger at injustice. And the flame of hope you can build a better world.

In his own piece, though, Noam Chomsky is less optimistic, at least when it comes to the "Bernie Sanders" electoral solution (my emphasis in italics):

[Q] Let’s imagine for example that Bernie Sanders won the 2016 presidential elections. What do you think would happen? Could he bring radical change in the structures of power of the capitalist system?

[Chomsky] Suppose that Sanders won, which is pretty unlikely in a system of bought elections. He would be alone: he doesn’t have congressional representatives, he doesn’t have governors, he doesn’t have support in the bureaucracy, he doesn’t have state legislators; and standing alone in this system, he couldn’t do very much. A real political alternative would be across the board, not just a figure in the White House.

It would have to be a broad political movement. In fact, the Sanders campaign I think is valuable — it’s opening up issues, it’s maybe pressing the mainstream Democrats a little bit in a progressive direction, and it is mobilizing a lot of popular forces, and the most positive outcome would be if they remain after the election.

It’s a serious mistake to just to be geared to the quadrennial electoral extravaganza and then go home. That’s not the way changes take place. The mobilization could lead to a continuing popular organization which could maybe have an effect in the long run.

While I agree that a broad movement is needed and helpful, I disagree with Chomsky on these three points:

• The electoral majority that puts Sanders in the White House, if it does, would represent a mobilizing of popular forces.
   
• If Sanders carries through (unlike Barack Obama in 2009) on the opportunity he would have, his election would represent much more than a "quadrennial electoral extravaganza." He could, in fact, lead the ongoing political revolution he says he wants.
   
• Bernie Sanders could accomplish an enormous amount without Congress. He wouldn't be acting alone; he'd have control of the whole of the Executive Branch — or most of it (more on that last later).

Let's look at what Sanders could accomplish without Congress. I want to divide these accomplishments into two groups — "What I will never do" and "What I will absolutely do, starting day one." This piece is about the first list, some of the "actions" you will never see from a successful Bernie Sanders. I'll offer the second list, "I'll do this on day one" actions, another time.

A "What I Will Never Do" Presidential Speech

Consider how much time and energy was drained from the progressive community in fighting against Barack Obama's wrong-headed neo-liberal initiatives. Think of the enormous effort to stop Fast Track (which failed). The long effort to stop the Keystone Pipeline (which may succeed, but with a huge expenditure of energy). The effort to constantly, year after year after year, block cuts to Social Security and Medicare (which have so far succeeded, but the fight is far from over).

And on and on, going all the way back to the beginning, 2009, when the progressive community (and progressives in Congress) got stiffed by the Affordable Care Act, first because it turned its back on a single-payer solution, and then by its lack of a public option, which our community fought and fought to retain (a fight that failed).

In fact, the progressive community has been in constant battle with "our" Executive Branch on what I've called Obama's four big "legacy" items, his want-list:

1. Health care “reform” — a privatized alternative to Medicare expansion
2. A “grand bargain” in which social insurance benefits are rolled back
3. Plentiful oil & gas (burnable carbon), and passage of the Keystone Pipeline
4. Passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement

Obama has been very good on many things, including peace with Iran, but not on these. Thousands of capable progressives have used hundreds of thousands of uphill hours resisting Obama's constant attempts to roll neo-liberal boulders down the hill at them.

What could be done if we could have those hours back, hours we could use in a different way, use on proactive goals, instead of constantly playing defense against "our" president? This is not a trivial problem. Under a real progressive president — a President Sanders who kept his word, for example — you would never have to fight those things. Would that please you? Would it feel like a gift to be handed that freed-up time? Would if feel like a Sanders accomplishment if he gave it to you?

Here's the first part of my imagined, Sanders-like "what I will accomplish" speech. It's entitled "What I Will Never Do." Keep in mind, this is me and my imagined progressive talking. But also keep in mind how relieved you would feel to hear these words from someone who meant them.

If you elect me president, here's what I will never do —

    ▪ You can count on me never to push a plan to cut Social Security and Medicare. Not one person outside of government will have to spend one minute trying to prevent me from privatizing — or cutting in any way — these vital programs. Not one minute. And if Congress proposes these cuts and it reaches my desk, you won't have to spend one minute asking me to veto that proposal. It's vetoed the minute it arrives.

    ▪ I will never negotiate a so-called "trade" deal that sends American jobs across our borders. No one will have to spend one minute asking me to stop a deal that hurts American workers. I will support only trade deals that increase American jobs, that create new workers in this country, that increase our balance of payments, and nothing less.

    ▪ No one will have to spend one minute stopping me from granting coal, oil and gas leases on lands or in waters controlled by the Department of the Interior. Not one minute. Drilling in the Arctic? You won't even have to ask. The answer is already No. New coal leases? Not one. Dangerous and deadly-to-the-climate offshore drilling leases? Those days are over.

    Soon I will tell you what I will do to aggressively bring down carbon emissions. But if I don't start here, with what I won't do, how will you know I'm serious?

    ▪ You will never see me even contemplate extending tax breaks for the very rich, as we saw all too often in our recent past — for example, during the negotiations to extend the Bush tax cuts, or negotiations at the end of the last fiscal year. Any such deal that reaches my desk will go straight back to Congress for renegotiation.

    If Congress wants a bill, they can give me one I can sign. If they want to shut down the government over tax breaks for the very very wealthy, they will shut it down, and I will explain it that way to the American people. If they want me to sign a bill, any bill, they need to understand — tax breaks for the rich can never be a part of it.

In other words, you'll never have to lobby me to not do what I said I would never do. You can spend your precious time, your precious energy, in other ways. There are many things I will do as well. Some I will do alone, using the power of the Executive Branch. And some I will ask your help to do because we need help from others. But the things I listed above, and many more besides, will never be contemplated.

I hope you agree that sparing you the constant effort to stop these wrong acts is indeed an accomplishment, and one you'll be glad, even eager, to have. It's one I'll certainly be glad and eager to give you.

Thank you.

Yes, there's much a president like Sanders, if he really carries through, can refuse to do, acting completely alone. This list shows just a few of the "wrong acts" you would be spared from resisting. I'm sure you can add others of your own. Soon I'll list some of what a president like Sanders can proactively do, deeds that can be done, even acting totally alone.

Stay tuned. Supporting a president like Sanders is by no means a waste of your time. (If you like, you can help Sanders here; adjust the split any way you wish at the link.)

GP

Obama's Clean Power Plan: "So Weak As to Be Potentially Destructive"

Do you trust your climate future to the heart of a CEO? (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

There's plenty of political news these days, and it's being well covered in these pages. (My own crystal ball gazing piece is still a question without an answer — is something hidden going on with Democratic "insiders" that will soon change the balance of power in the presidential race? The ripples are certainly there. Plus, I'll have comment on that rumored Biden-Warren rapprochement in a bit.)

So let's turn to climate, the one issue that ought to be front and center, since in a decade or less it's going to be the only conversation anyone on the planet is having. (If you're a reader who circles the circles of influence, and you think this stuff matters, you may want to be paying attention. We're not talking theory when we talk climate; this will get very real — California real — very fast. Climate collapse is not a linear process.)

Why Obama's "Clean Power" Plan Is Dangerous

I've long suspected that the "Clean Power" plan, which in my view is suspiciously named after the methane industry's self-branding — "Natural Gas, America's Clean Energy" — is in fact a methane industry enrichment proposal. Even the EPA seems to be in on the branding.

It's not that the Obama plan does nothing; it's that it does the least it can do while appearing to be more than it is. Which makes it, according to Brad Johnson writing at Jacobin, "potentially destructive." I'll have my own explanation of why Obama's plan is destructive below. Johnson and I — and climate scientist James Hansen — are in complete agreement.

Johnson opens by writing about the plan's virtue (singular):

The information necessary to understand the rule is impressively buried on the EPA website amid “fact sheets” that list out-of-context factoids and fail to cite references from the one-hundred-plus-page technical documents or ZIP files of modeling runs. The structure of the plan is complex (for example, states can choose to comply with “rate-based” pollution-intensity targets or “mass-based” total-pollution targets) and carefully designed to satisfy a wide range of stakeholders.

With sufficient inspection, the plan’s impact on climate pollution — its entire purpose — emerges: the rule locks in the rate of coal-plant retirement that has been ongoing since 2008, and that’s about it:

Under both the rate-based and mass-based approaches, the projected rate of change in coal-fired generation is consistent with recent historical declines in coal-fired generation. Additionally, under both of these approaches, the trends for all other types will remain consistent with what their trends would be in the absence of this rule.

Now, that’s a pretty good accomplishment in political terms. The administration is seizing on the ascendant power of the natural-gas industry to codify an existing economic trend at the expense of the presently weak coal industry. Coal-plant pollution has been protected from air-pollution regulation for generations; some of the plants in operation today were built during the Great Depression. These plants — immensely profitable for their owners — are not only climate killers, but destroyers of the lives of anyone who lives downwind of their poisonous effluvia.

The "rule locks in the rate of coal-plant retirement that has been ongoing since 2008, and that’s about it."

So the plan is an attempted coal-killer, though not a very aggressive one. After all, locking in the current rate of coal plant retirement is not the same as accelerating that rate. But it's a lot better than letting coal experience a "market"-based comeback if or when the price of alternative fuels rise.

And note the downside of this plan. Johnson (my emphasis):

From the perspective of actual reality, however, the proposed rule is so weak as to be potentially destructive. It is built around the premise that the United States will extend its commitment to fracked gas for decades to come, even as the climate targets Obama personally signed onto can only be met if the dismantling of all fossil-fuel infrastructure begins immediately.

Thus the contradiction built into the plan, and the danger. Obama's own climate targets can be met only if all fossil-fuel infrastructure is dismantled, starting immediately. Remember, no investor in methane (natural gas) infrastructure expects it to be dismantled. Not one.

Physics Bats Last

In other words, climate change isn't something that can be negotiated. To paraphrase Bill McKibben, Physics bats last. McKibben:

President Obama is visiting Alaska this week — a territory changing as rapidly as any on earth thanks to global warming. He’s talking constantly about the danger that climate change poses to the planet (a welcome development given that he managed to go through virtually the entire 2012 election without even mentioning it). And everything he’s saying is right: we are a nation, and a planet, beset by fire, flood, drought. It’s the hottest year in earth’s recorded history. July was the hottest month ever measured on planet earth.

But of course the alarm he’s sounding is muffled by the fact that earlier this year he gave Shell Oil a permit to go drill in the Arctic, potentially opening up a giant new pool of oil.

It’s as if the health teacher giving the anti-smoking talk to junior-high assembly had a Marlboro dangling from her lip.

To most of us this seems like a contradiction. ...

[David] Balton [the State Department’s diplomat for ocean issues ]— and Obama, and almost everyone else in power — makes the same simple-but-deadly category mistake. They think the relevant negotiation is between the people who want to drill and the people who don’t. But actually, this negotiation is between People and physics. And therefore it’s not really a negotiation.

Here's what that means...

"Stop Now" means Stop. Now.

Echoing Brad Johnson, I wrote above:

Obama's own climate targets can be met only if all fossil-fuel infrastructure is dismantled, starting immediately.

Colloquially translated, that means "Stop Now." Not, stop when David Koch and Rex Tillerson (methane-owning Exxon's CEO) find it convenient to cease being profitable. Now.

Here's the benefit of stopping and the downside of not stopping from a physics standpoint. James Hansen, in a recent peer-reviewed paper, published this diagram:

Figure 4. Decay of atmospheric CO2 perturbations.
(A) Instantaneous injection or extraction of CO2 with initial conditions at equilibrium. (B) Fossil fuel emissions terminate at the end of 2015, 2030, or 2050 and land use emissions terminate after 2015 in all three cases, i.e., thereafter there is no net deforestation. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081648.g004 (source; click to enlarge)

It's the (B) part we're interested in, so look at the graph on the right side of the figure. This gives three "stop now" (i.e., year when "Fossil Emissions = 0") scenarios. The graph goes out to the year 2500, so first, find 2100 on the X-axis and draw an imaginary vertical line. We're not interested in time after that. The Y-axis is atmospheric CO2 concentration. We're at 400 ppm now and headed higher at an accelerating rate of 2.1 ppm per year.

We know that polar ice, both Arctic and Antarctic, is melting (again, at an accelerating rate) in our current, 400-ppm world. If we stay above 400 ppm until 2100, the planet will have stored enough heat to melt all standing ice, likely sooner than anyone expects. We know from the table in this piece that melting all glacial ice represents 80 meters of sea level rise (about 250 feet) — not something we want to happen.

The good news is that a "stop now" scenario — which in practice means "go to zero emissions in the next ten years" — lets the climate system remove that added CO2 using natural processes. Note that each "stop now" scenario has CO2 ppm declining over time.

Now the bad news — what if we stop "later"?

• Stop after 2015 — CO2 is 350 ppm in 2100
• Stop after 2030 — CO2 is still close to 400 ppm in 2100
• Stop after 2050 — CO2 is about 450 ppm in 2100

A century of emissions over 400 ppm means warming continues — not holds steady, continues — and it's basically over for us. We're now scrambling as a species in a very different and likely uncivilized world. (If you're interested in a couple of "stop slowly" scenarios, see Figure 5 of the same paper; cutting emissions by 6% per year with reforestation produces a very workable decline.)

Johnson concludes (my emphasis):

Dismantling the global fossil-fuel economy is a civilization-scale fight. Fossil-fuel industrialists have every incentive to resist democratic control to prevent their economic extinction. And that extinction is what climate policy needs to bring about, not forestall — global warming won’t stop until we stop burning fossil fuels. The Obama years have been spent in skirmishes and accommodations that have served mainly to delay the inevitable, seismic conflict between extractive capitalism and democratic society.

The modest accomplishments for climate and environmental justice in the Clean Power Plan will have little meaning unless they turn out to be the first salvos in a relentless assault on the carbon economy. In 2008, Obama envisioned that he would oversee from the White House “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

That moment has not yet come.

Nor will it under the "Clean Power" plan alone. For "that moment" to come would take something built upon the "Clean Energy" plan — for example, denying Shell's application to drill in the Arctic. Didn't happen.

If you're in any way in position to influence policy, or a friend of someone who is, take note. This is not something a compromise or "deal" will address.

GP