Working For Jobs

Van Jones is a leading environmental and human rights advocate, President Obama’s former “green jobs” special adviser, a CNN contributor, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Green Collar Economy and Rebuild the Dream. Chris Mooney spoke with him by phone as part of our ongoing coverage of how Obama can tackle the climate issue — and lead — in his second term.

Q. Obama and global warming — decode his signals for us. Is he really going to take the lead here in the next four years, and prioritize this issue?

A. I think it’s not clear sometimes how America is prioritizing the issue. Four years ago, both presidential candidates, McCain and Obama, ran as climate champions. The only thing that they agreed on was that global warming was real, caused by humans, could be fixed by cap-and-trade, and that that would lead to jobs. Four years ago, that was common ground, and the only common ground. And four years ago, people were still impacted by Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Well, all of the horrible things that were shown in Al Gore’s film in 2007, you can see on the Weather Channel in 2012. And yet you don’t see people marching down the street, even in the wake of Sandy, even in the face of the drought, demanding change. So I think that’s a factor in Washington, D.C., not being as vocal or as visible.

Now that said, I think that’s starting to change, and I think this president is going to have to deal both with the worsening science, and the returning public will to act. And I credit Bill McKibben and 350.org for coming on so strong since the election was over, and also the shock of Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath, for I think creating a new moment for climate solutions to take center stage.

Q. What would real climate leadership look like? You gave President Obama a “B or B-minus” on the environment in his first term. What would he have to do to earn an “A” in the second one?

A. An “A” would be a major energy and climate bill as a centerpiece of his legacy. He obviously has to deal with the economy and the budget issues that the Tea Party keeps trying to politicize. And there’s a question of immigration reform, which is critical as a major part of the progressive coalition. But 10 years from now, 20 years from now, the only thing people are going to be asking of this president is either why he didn’t find the courage to do something on climate change, or they’re going to be asking how he found the courage. I think from the viewpoint of history, this is going to be the issue that he’s judged on.

Q. What are the chief actions that you think he can take?

A. I’m a board member for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and we just put a piece out this week, talking about ways to use the Clean Air Act to sharply reduce carbon pollution from the existing power plants … that would make a tremendous difference.

The other thing he can do is use the power he has as the president of the United States to force a national conversation. We’ve seen a lot of conversation about this fiscal cliff, which is an invented, manufactured crisis, but very little talk about the climate cliff, which is a real, unavoidable crisis. So if we can have the president of the United States on TV every day talking about the manufactured fiscal cliff, then he can use all of those resources to put pressure on Congress to do something about the real climate cliff.

I also think that it is still the case that the best possible way to get the economy moving is to move in a greener direction. You get on an airplane, you fly coast to coast, you look down, and you see a million rooftops that don’t have solar panels on them. You fly over the plains states, acre after acre, you don’t see wind farms and solar farms, even in places that they could exist. There is just tremendous opportunity to home-grow our energy, and put people to work. You land in any city, you are driving past buildings that are leaking energy, because they aren’t using modern energy efficiency technologies. There’s tremendous opportunity there.

So if you look at the economic case, as we begin to move in a greener direction, and you look at a the climate case, this should be more salient than it is. It should be more salient for the public, and I think that’s starting to change, and it should be more pressing for the president — and I hope that that will change.

Q. Do you think environmentalists trying to push Obama further, through protests over the Keystone XL pipeline or, now, the new fossil fuel divestment campaign, actually works? What’s the evidence?

A. I think activism works. You look at the last term, the Latino community kept pushing hard on immigration, and the president came out for the Dream Act. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movement kept pushing on the question of marriage equality, and the president came out for marriage equality, which then had a positive effect on public opinion and helped that movement win at the ballot box and in a number of states, within months.

So I think it takes two keys to unlock the door to change: It takes public activism and action, and it takes presidential leadership. But what we’re seeing now is the return of public action and public concern. 350.org is leading that process. The aftershocks of Sandy are going to push that process forward.

Let’s not forget, we have dust bowl conditions developing in the heartland of America, the bread basket of the world, just as Al Gore predicted. That is happening right now. So as the urgency of these disasters moves public attention, and as you see activists marching again, I think there’s an obligation for the president to meet the people on this issue.

This story was produced as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy, Politics

View full post on Grist

Incoming search terms for the article:

• what is happening with van jones human rights issue

Photo by The White House.

What are the possibilities and prospects for action on climate change if Barack Obama is reelected?

Real talk: Obama will get very little done on climate or energy domestically, especially if Republicans keep the House, most especially if they win the Senate too. The reasons are drearily familiar: deep polarization, corporate influence, and the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Unless some large and unanticipated exogenous force knocks the system out of equilibrium, we can expect more of what the first term delivered, which is modest (read: woefully insufficient) progress on efficiency and clean energy.

But I’ve been thinking lately that Obama might still be able to make progress on climate through foreign policy.

It’s clear that Obama sees climate as a legacy issue, something that could improve the world in an enduring way. In a recent piece on Obama’s second-term prospects, Ezra Klein said: “Beyond the deficit, Obama’s advisers see two big unfinished pieces of business from the first term: climate change and immigration reform.” On the campaign trail, Obama has mentioned, in the context of a second-term agenda, “the long-term challenges that we’re facing in terms of energy independence and climate change.” In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Obama said: “I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way.”

But “legacy” and “long-term” are apparently not for the here and now, because as far as I know, he hasn’t mentioned climate change since, not even during the recent drought. He’s clearly not trying to make it part of his mandate in this election.

But! Presidents have a freer hand in foreign policy, and that’s where they often make their mark, particularly in a second term, as both Klein and Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker have pointed out. Both mention that Obama’s team anticipates a “pivot” or “rebalancing” away from the Middle East and toward the Asia-Pacific region. Climate could be part of that pivot.

Remember, in Copenhagen, Obama pledged that the U.S. would hit the near-term Waxman-Markey climate-change goal: 17 percent cuts in CO2 emissions below 2005 levels by 2020. The Waxman-Markey bill was never passed, but it turns out the U.S. is in fact reducing emissions — more than any other country in the world! Progress is being made. Admittedly, some of it, probably the bulk, has nothing to do with climate policy. Nonetheless, it gives Obama and the U.S. some rare credibility with which to try and reengage and reshape international climate work.

The situation internationally is similar to the situation domestically: For the time being, top-down Grand Solutions aren’t going to happen. The pathetic outcomes at Copenhagen and Cancun and Durban have made that clear. For all the exhortations from greens to lead, there’s only so much the U.S. president can do to generate consensus among the 192 nations of the UNFCCC.

What’s needed is for Obama to put bottom-up solutions at the center of his foreign policy. That means deals and treaties between states, regions, and other subnational entities. It means bilateral and multilateral deals among small groups of countries with common interests. It means, rather than one Climate Solution, a focus on the various bits and pieces of a solution: cities, sea-level rise, deforestation, solar manufacturing, carbon sequestration, and the like. Scholar David Victor has lots of ideas along these lines; check out my review of his book. His basic insight is that no international process or treaty can push nations beyond what they see as their own self-interest. So to at least get the climate ball rolling, we need to pay more attention to which aspects of mitigation and adaptation are in which countries’ interests.

There are plenty of measures that can take a bite out of climate while also creating near-term, local benefits. There’s a handy list of 14 of them in a recent paper in Science called “Simultaneously Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change and Improving Human Health and Food Security,” which focuses mainly on methane and soot. (David Biello has a nice write-up of the paper.) And of course growth in cleantech industries has both local and global benefits as well. There are plenty more places to look for win-win-opportunities.

This focus ought to fit neatly with the Asia-Pacific pivot. If the U.S. wants to build relationships in the region, we can do it by engaging on the knot of problems the region most desperately needs to solve: how to continue developing economically, bringing people out of poverty, without choking the air and water with poisons. How to grow local efficiency and clean energy industries that generate jobs and wealth. How to plan for unavoidable climate impacts. Focused on these challenges, America’s expertise and money can do good and create good will.

The current skirmish with China over solar subsidies and tariffs highlights the need for what Michael Liebreich referred to in our interview as a “global industrial policy.” The worst thing that could happen in clean energy is an escalating series of trade wars and protectionist barriers that play for short-term national advantage at the expense of global welfare. There is plenty of work to go around and dire need for low-cost low-carbon technologies. The U.S. should be working to find areas of economic cooperation, non-zero-sum games, that make the best use of each country’s unique strengths. Above all, the U.S. should be working with the region on innovation policy, coordinating and accelerating efforts to drive down the costs of cleantech.

International climate work badly needs a kick in the ass, a new sense of life and momentum. One more failed climate summit isn’t going to do it. If Obama wants to create a foreign policy legacy for his second term, he should focus on reorienting international climate policy toward mutually beneficial, bottom-up solutions. He should make America a catalyst, a constructive, creative force for practical progress on climate. It’s not the Kyoto-on-steroids global climate agreement greens want, but it could make a real difference, and I suspect historians — and future Earthlings — would look upon it kindly.

Filed under: Article, Climate Policy, Politics

View full post on Grist

Photo by Dave Lawrence.

The Romney campaign lies with amazing brazenness and regularity — see, just to pick a recent example out of a hat, this whopper. Thus far, political horse-race reporters don’t seem to care. They spend their time analyzing whether the lies will “work.”

Outside the horse-race beat, however, there are still some reporters who do the old-fashioned work of assessing the truth value of political claims. (I know, boooring, right?) Take, for instance, this piece in the Washington Post from green reporters Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin.

Being that they are “objective” reporters, they can’t just come out and state the thesis of the piece plainly: “Romney had sane energy policies when he was governor of Massachusetts. Now he’s flip-flopped to far-right policies justified by outrageous lies that even industry doesn’t support.” But that’s what the piece shows.

What drew my attention is buried down at the bottom of the piece. It has to do with the reaction of a certain kind of person — the self-styled “centrist” or moderate — to Romney’s outrageous lurch rightward. I think there is, among those sorts of people, a lingering sense that Romney is “really” one of them, really a moderate, really the guy he was in Massachusetts, and all the loopy right-wingery is just what he has to do when he campaigns. It’s all in the game. Once he’s in the White House, his inner moderate will re-emerge. Right? Witness:

While Romney has sharply attacked Obama for investing federal dollars in wind and solar projects, [Charles Ebinger, director of Brookings Institution's energy security initiative] said that it is unlikely that Romney would cut off all federal research and development funds for renewable energy.

“In reality, he is a venture capitalist, for better or worse. He would realize R and D [research and development] is very important,” Ebinger said. “I can’t see him bowing to the right wing of the Republican Party and saying, ‘We won’t do any R and D.’”

Lots of centrist types “can’t see” Romney bowing to the right-wing of the party or governing as right-wing as he’s running. That’s because lots of centrist types are naive about American politics. (It is often, in my rather uncharitable opinion, a kind of self-imposed, willful naivety.)

As I said here, the Republican Party has been evolving steadily into a parliamentary party, which acts as a unified bloc and is driven from the legislature. As party honcho Grover Norquist put it, the president’s job is “to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.” The party agenda, not what is secretly in Romney’s heart, is what matters. And the party agenda is now entirely driven by the right wing of the party (which is, for all intents and purposes, the only wing it has left). The same people Romney is pandering to with his extreme energy rhetoric in the campaign are the ones he’ll have to please after he’s elected. They’re the ones who will staff his administration. They’re the ones who will send him legislation to sign.

The Republican Party now acts as a unit. And it is a unit with an agenda, on energy as on much else, that is wildly reactionary relative even to a few short years ago. Even assuming the hidden moderate so many people want to see inside Romney is real, it will be powerless in office. You elect a Republican, you get the Republican agenda.

Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy, Politics

View full post on Grist

by Jonathan Hiskes.

Bill McKibben chats with
David Lettermen about 350.org, his book Eaarth,
and a new tour to bring rooftop solar back to the White House (Jimmy Carter
installed panels; Ronald Reagan took them down; and students from Unity College
in Maine, where they’ve been stored, are traveling
to Washington to have them put back up). Hard worker, this guy:

Related Links:

Stimulus driving clean energy innovation, manufacturing, markets—But what comes next?

Isolated green buildings won’t save the planet, TEDsters argue

Is the U.S. the most overpopulated country on the planet? [VIDEO]

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

by David Roberts.

Here at the end of the week, I have a few final thoughts on my carbon debate with Steve Everley of American Solutions (see: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and Amanda Little’s interview with Newt Gingrich, Steve’s boss.

A recent report from the International Energy Agency revealed a stunning fact: Worldwide, fossil-fuel energy corporations receive $550 billion a year in subsidies. Another report found that between 2002 and 2008, American taxpayers alone lavished $72.5 billion on fossil-fuel subsidies, and that’s not counting implicit subsidies like military deployments to defend energy supplies, health costs from respiratory and circulatory ailments caused by fuel combustion, ecological damage like in the Gulf of Mexico, and damage from climate change. This massive interference in global energy markets by heavy-handed government bureaucrats ought to offend proponents of free-market capitalism or small-government conservatism. It’s tantamount to corporate socialism.

Yet Gingrich and his acolyte defend these subsidies. Why? Says Gingrich, “a low-cost energy regime is essential to our country.” That is one doozy of a non-sequitur. Surely a conservative ought to know that money government spends on energy subsidies is taken from elsewhere in the economy. The externalized health and ecological costs of fossil fuels are paid by the public, with money taken from elsewhere in the economy. Fossil-fuel subsidies don’t reduce costs, they shift costs. The burden is moved from energy companies to the public. The result is what we have today: energy that looks cheap because most of its costs are hidden from view.

Economist Friedrich Hayek—beloved of conservatives—taught that prices as set by a free market are our way of communicating with one another, conveying our knowledge and preferences. Collectively, through our transactions, we solve the economic calculation problem of how to optimally balance competing desires and willingness to pay. When prices are distorted by government interference, our communication is distorted and our balance is off. The market is broken.

Even as he defends fossil-fuel subsidies, Gingrich and his acolyte propose a whole new raft of subsidies (disguised, thinly, as tax credits and prizes). Everley says, “Incentives aren’t the same thing as picking winners because, for example, prizes for a national goal (such as a 100 mpg car) allow everyone to innovate, regardless of industry or status.” But that’s not true. The public-transit industry can’t compete to make a 100 mpg car. Who says cars are our national priority, as opposed to walkable cities or intercity rail? Presumably cars are another one of those things government bureaucrats have determined is “essential to our country.”

There is no plausible interpretation under which Gingrich could be characterized as pro-market. He is pro-business, or more precisely, pro-some-businesses, which is very different—the opposite, even—of pro-market. If you want to make sense of his various words and actions, no ideological or economic principle will help. It’s pure instrumentalism: the exercise of political influence in service of protecting energy incumbents. Gingrich is a paid advocate for corporate interests that benefit from the status quo. One doesn’t really have an argument with a person like that. Arguments are based on principles and evidence. One simply beats, or is beaten by, such a person.

Related Links:

This week, declare your independence from dirty energy

A Salon debate on cap-and-trade and energy politics: day four

Watch oiled politicians get the scrubdown and other spill-inspired ads

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist