Native American tribes, though, living in much more immediate contact with their natural surroundings, have begun to notice environmental changes. And many of these changes have mattered.

Brown Ash: An early victim of climate change

In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report detailing the changes that have already been set in motion by climate change. In the Northeast, changes include ocean acidification and infiltration by invasive species.

Such changes have had a real impact on Native American life already. Sharri Venno, who acts as the environmental planner for the Houlton Band of the Maliseet Indians, said in an interview with the HPR that even before climate change “became a household word,” the Maliseet Indians were noticing a phenomenon called Brown Ash die-back. The Maliseet use Brown Ash, a plant sensitive to environmental changes, to make baskets, which they both use and sell. And due to climate change, Brown Ash is dying out. Venno explains, “I think the biggest frustration regarding communicating the impact of change to communities outside the tribe is that impacts to tribal culture are very broad and fundamental and can’t be summarized easily.”

The 30+ different kinds of change faced by tribes across the country make clear the urgency of the situation. Consider, though, that 50 percent of U.S. representatives elected in 2010 were global warming deniers. As Venno said, “The timeframe within which things are changing is very short.”

Photo Credit: Keith Kanoti

Waxman -- sad to see him go

As I mentioned in my last post, it’s time for a midterm post-mortem.

Fortunately, Barbara Boxer kept her senate seat in California, and the Democrats held the senate, so Senator Boxer will remain chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works committee. Unfortunately, Henry Waxman will relinquish his chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a post he held for two short years after beating out John Dingell for the position.

It’s unclear who will gain control of the House Energy committee. Grist, in a cross post from the Wonk Room, has covered the “intense leadership fight” for the committee. All four of the candidates are climate change deniers, including Joe Barton, now infamous for apologizing to BP during the Gulf Oil Spill.

Power in Congressional committees radiates from the chairman, and with such a wide move to the right, the proportion of seats on the committee will undoubtedly favor the Republicans. That’s bad enough. What’s worse is that House Republicans are likely to call hearings on climate change, a very real possibility suggested by the Los Angeles Times before the election and Andrew Revkin at the New York Times on Wednesday. The future looks bleak for climate legislation, and the Times writes, “If the GOP wins control of the House next week, senior congressional Republicans plan to launch a blistering attack on the Obama administration’s environmental policies, as well as on scientists who link air pollution to climate change.”

The last part of that sentence is rich, and telling. House Republicans plan to eviscerate scientists for… practicing science? The precision with which climate scientists craft their models and investigate disparate, unbelievably complex and difficult to analyze natural trends takes extensive education to understand. It is not elitist to state that very few congressmen, Democrat or Republican, would be able to grasp the intricacies of climate science in the context of a hearing.

Revkin notes the mixed reaction among scientists on how to approach congressional scrutiny, and questions whether or not scientists should appear before the committees if called. He points out that the scientists may have some obligation to appear, especially if they are receiving federal funding.

I’m not disinclined to agree with Revkin, but scientists should appear for reasons greater than just a matter of funding. They should appear before the committees on principle, because any other course of action makes it look as if they’re trying to hide. I don’t know whether or not going in front of a hostile committee will help their cause in the short run, but in the long run, taking a noble stand about climate science and the necessity of climate action now will matter most.

In other words, get the bastards. James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Harvard’s Dan Schrag – they all need to appear at any hearing they are called to and present the full weight of their data and their research. Chances are, House Republicans will find every way of belittling and attacking their research, but that’s still no reason to stand down.

While writing this post, I noticed that I unintentionally framed climate change as the cause of climate scientists – I referred to it as “their cause.” That is a powerful misnomer, because it’s our cause. No member of the current generation of Harvard students can afford to shy away from matters of climate change, and environmental issues at large. Environmental change encompasses every facet of policy or contemporary political debate. This has been said before and I’ll say it again: at this point, there aren’t even poor excuses for inaction.

With the midterms less than 50 hours from now, it’s fascinating to note how the environmental furor of the summer, especially in the aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill, seems to have largely subsided in discussions about the elections. Nevertheless, the outcome of the midterms, especially in the House, could have disastrous ramifications for the future of climate legislation.

It’s important to note that climate change is not a forgotten issue in local elections. Politicians in states that perceive themselves as would-be victims of cap-and-trade legislation have spoken out against climate change legislation far-and-wide. The folks over at the environmental blog Grist and Think Progress have done an excellent job of detailing key gubernatorial, House and Senate races between global warming deniers and candidates who would “vote for climate action.”

There is no eloquent way of describing the comments by many of these candidates, other than to point out that they’re downright scary. They represent a brazen disregard not just for science, but for national security and for economics. Left and right, these politicians have turned their backs on their own words and the health of their nation.

Economics is undoubtedly a driving factor for their climate change denials, Grist notes. These politicians have received vast donations from groups like Koch Industries, but more importantly their states often thrive off of industries that are harmful to the environment. Take this ad by Joe Manchin, Democratic candidate for senate in West Virginia, aired to virulently show his opposition to cap-and-trade legislation. Manchin is desperate to demonstrate that he will protect his state’s coal-based economy were he to be elected senator.

It would be unfair to ask politicians to ignore the economic implications of climate legislation, but the extent to which they blatantly discredit science with impunity is reprehensible. While some states may suffer in the short-run, as energy prices could potentially increase, it would be an act of great courage for just one Republican in the Heartland to proclaim that fighting climate change now will have economic benefits in the future.

In this report from NPR, All Things Considered reports that the Republican pollster Frank Luntz attributes lack of voter concern on climate change to the even more dismal economy of 2010, as compared to 2008. The problem here is again one of perception. Voters see climate change legislation has having a slew of detrimental effects and few positive ones, while neglecting the strain on the economy that non-renewable resources presently have. It’s hard to track where this antipathy originates – news reports often frame politicans as skewing their views on climate change to appease voters – but Luntz’s appraisal seems to be the most accurate.

Regardless, it’s unlikely that serious action on climate issues will occur unless a chorus of Republicans works with the Administration and congressional Democrats. It’s sad to say that a Republican in favor of climate change legislation in many states is now a matter of courage. The midterms are likely to be disastrous for climate legislation, and while I fervently hope this weren’t the case, I’ll have a full post-election analysis next week.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Only 39% [of respondents] believe that “most scientists think global warming is happening.” This statistic is by far the most damning, and the most revealing.

I agree that this is the most damning of the findings — how could our democracy move forward on an issue which is invisible to the naked eye and which appears to lack a scientific consensus? (It should go without saying in this forum that an overwhelming scientific consensus does exist.)

But I think that his conclusions miss the mark about who is to blame and what needs to be done to combat this gross misperception. He is way too tough on scientists, lets the media off too easily, and doesn’t even mention the impact of irresponsible politicians. He writes

The onus … is on scientists. … This consensus is so broad that scientists must do a better job of communicating the evidence for anthropologic [sic] climate change.

First a general point: If the need to communicate clearly has anything to do with the breadth of consensus, then an issue with a broad consensus should need less clear communication than a disputed issue does. Something else must be at play.

Scientists are not capable of convincing the public of their findings without the help of the media. The media control the flow of knowledge and ideas to the public at large, and they must try harder to convince the public of the truth. Ask yourself: Have you been underwhelmed by attempts to explain global warming in the popular media, or have you just  not heard that many?

Too often, media attempts at “fairness” lead to them creating the impression of an equivalence between two sides of an argument, even if that equivalence is manifestly false. Even PBS calls its online feature “The Global Warming Debate.” [emphasis added].

Darren Samuelsohn at Politico wrote earlier this week that

It’s going to be hard winning the Republican presidential nomination if you’re not a climate skeptic. 

It’s easy to forget that global warming has sparked a global response when the stalemate in Congress over national climate legislation continues, even despite the fact that the latest consequence of our fossil fuel addiction – the “worst” environmental catastrophe in America’s history – flickers across televisions nightly.

Yet the global clean energy industry could be worth $2.3 trillion by 2020, according to a December 2009 report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Who capitalizes on these new markets depends on governments’ willingness to establish favorable clean-energy policies – and everyone except Congress seems to know it.

China, moving rapidly into the void left by U.S. inaction, is poised to leap beyond the U.S. and seize control of the emerging clean energy economy. China’s overall clean energy investments surpassed the United States for the first time in 2009, with nearly $31 billion compared to just under $17 billion.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), fresh from another visit to China, released a memo on Capitol Hill yesterday reaffirming the widening transpacific clean-tech gap in the wake of its latest report. The memo comes on the heels of a comparative analysis done by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Bloomberg New Energy Finance which also concluded that America’s clean-tech leadership is slipping. Without comprehensive clean-energy legislation focused on investment, innovation and infrastructure to match that of its competitors, CAP argues, the United States will forfeit the chance to be a major player in the global clean-energy economy.

Investment

China anticipates 2.88 million new clean-energy jobs by 2020 – just by meeting its national demand. Already, thanks to robust national commitment, it has the most installed renewable energy capacity in the world – even though its economy is a third of the size of America’s. This unprecedented growth can be directly traced to China’s regulatory policies that create stable markets to encourage clean-energy investment.

One of China’s smartest policies, its renewable portfolio standard (RPS), requires utilities to generate 15 percent of their energy with renewables by 2020, with additional provisions that could reach double their target. Germany has a goal of 20 percent by 2020, and Spain aims to achieve 30 percent by 2020. Here, while 24 U.S. states already have RPSs, Congress has yet to pass a national standard (although one is included in the current draft of the American Power Act).

In addition, the Chinese government is aggressively pursuing feed-in tariffs, which most people in the United States haven’t even heard of. Feed-in tariffs set prices for utilities to buy renewable energy that producers feed into the grid, and their incredible success across Europe and in a few U.S. cities is well documented. Together with the RPS and fuel economy standards that are more than a third higher than ours, China’s feed-in tariffs reflect the country’s realization that market-expanding national clean-energy policies matter to global clean-tech investors trying to decide where to place their bets.

Innovation

America is also losing its clean-energy innovation edge, which is crucial to generate more efficient renewable energy technologies.Applied Materials, the world’s biggest solar manufacturing supplier, isrelocating its chief technology office from Silicon Valley to China and constructing the largest solar research center ever built in Xi’an. One of its stated reasons for the move: China’s concrete commitment to a renewable energy future.

The sustained, programmatic R&D funding from the Chinese government looks to eclipse the U.S., where ad-hoc stimulus funding ($6.8 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) doesn’t amount to the long-term support required for good R&D.

China’s national Science and Technology plan contains what CAP’s memo described as “tangible benchmarks” like patent and citation quotas through 2020 and specific clean-energy targets designated by the Ministry of Science and Technology in transmission, wind turbine, and efficiency development.

Infrastructure

CAP representatives also noted that China’s infrastructural commitment left a “particularly deep impression” during their visit – especially the “impressive, tangible, and breathtaking” $300 billion Beijing has allocated for railway expansion through 2020. Coupled with what will be the largest urban rail system in the world, and a vast network of ultrahigh-voltage grid transmission wires, this concrete investment will facilitate rapid movement of people and goods across the burgeoning Chinese economy.

The U.S. Congress, in stark contrast, hasn’t even started talking about a new surface transportation authorization bill, even though the last one expired in September 2009. The Department of Transportation is operating on a series of temporary extensions that barely cover operating costs. Revitalizing the U.S. transportation infrastructure to meet environmental and economic pressures requires cohesive, national leadership which short-term stimulus funding cannot replace.

All too often, critics try to dismiss China’s edge in the clean energy marketplace by referencing that the Chinese passed the U.S. in absolute emissions in 2006, that they build “two coal plants a week,” etc. The emerging work on China’s headlong rush toward alternative energy indicates the opposite. As President Obama heads to the June 26-27 G-20 meeting, he should keep in mind how much we have to learn.

–Will Rafey

Read The New Yorker’s excellent exposé on Beijing’s 863 program here to get a clearer idea of the magnitude of their innovation drive.

To see the analysis by the Breakthrough Institute and Americans for Energy Leadership of the American Power Act’s impact on U.S. economic competitiveness, go here.

Graph courtesy of the Pew Charitable Trusts (“Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?,” p. 17)

In Will’s article, William Gale, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center, opines that the anti-tax movement, in which he includes Americans for Tax Reform and the various Tea Parties, “just hate all taxes,” and will therefore oppose any tax increase. But it’s not entirely that simple. I don’t presume to speak for ATR or the Tea Parties per se, but fiscal conservatives generally recognize what Chief Justice John Marshall observed in McCulloch v. Maryland, that “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Government should not use the tax code to pick winners and losers, so to speak, since it can effectively outlaw activities through excessive taxation, hindering a given industry to the point that it can no longer operate profitably. In the next section of the article, Will notes that the gas tax “raises a thorny issue of fairness,” since some citizens drive more than others; this fairness question in fact applies to all excise taxes, and places government in the position of arbitrarily redistributing income from one group of citizens to another in the name of what it considers the general welfare. Citizens and politicians, moreover, frequently disagree as to just what constitutes the “general welfare,” and therefore differ as to which industries and activities should be promoted and which discouraged. Given these facts, it is better in most cases to allow the market to answer this question, and to confine federal tax policy to either a flat income tax or a consumption tax.

Carbon consumption is a very rare instance in which a corrective tax is warranted, given the broad bipartisan consensus that America must wean itself from dependence on oil: even citizens who reject the notion—or the urgency—of climate change would generally agree on the need to curb the massive wealth transfer to rogue oil-producing countries. Will is correct in his implication that what he calls the “anti-tax establishment” thinks taxes in general are too high and would oppose any tax increase. What he appears to overlook is that it is not necessary to raise the overall tax rate in order to discourage gas consumption through the tax code. He briefly mentions that rebates might be used to “correct the regressive elements of the tax,” but why not simply return the entirety of the gas tax revenue through a rebate? Better yet, why not use the extra revenue from the gas tax increase as a means to cut the income tax rate to both encourage energy conservation and alternatives and spur economic growth at the same time? I’ll confess I don’t know how the “anti-tax establishment” would respond to such a proposal, but I find it hard to believe that a revenue-neutral proposal that reduces our dependence on sponsors of terrorism and involves an income tax rate cut would elicit significant opposition from the Right.

Parenthetically, a gas tax is not the only way to reduce oil consumption, and probably not the best. As I have noted in the Harvard Salient (though I am by no means the first to do so), a revenue-neutral carbon tax would be more comprehensive, and probably cheaper to collect. I have also explained in the HPR that urban traffic congestion could be substantially reduced through congestion pricing, which has been used with great success abroad.

All that said, Will is absolutely right that government should take action to reduce gas consumption, that the tax code is probably the best way to do this, and that the American political environment makes this extraordinarily difficult. But it’s not fair to blame the “anti-tax establishment” as an obstacle to reform when what he is talking about could easily be achieved without a net tax increase.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton pushed the last bill through Congress to increase the gas tax. Even this, however, was watered-down reform; the tax was not indexed to inflation and increased the price of gas by only 4.3 cents per gallon. The modesty of the increase should not be surprising: since 1993, no prominent American politician has seriously supported a major increase in the gas tax. Virtually everyone agrees that supporting the gas tax is political suicide. As Michael Cragg, an energy consultant at The Brattle Group, told the HPR, “It’s hard to see in this political environment how you’d get a gas tax passed.”

A similar consensus exists among economists, but on a different issue. According to a study in the Journal of Economic Literature, the vast majority of economists support a gas tax in order to make the private cost of driving a car reflect its actual social costs: global warming, air pollution, traffic congestion, and highway maintenance. Economists from across the political spectrum—Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and even the chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, N. Gregory Mankiw—have come out in support of raising the gas tax.

How can a policy make so much economic sense and garner so little political support? Significant obstacles, including the anti-tax movement, vested interests in low energy prices, regional differences, and America’s short election cycle, have historically made the gas tax unpopular and unfeasible. Our energy future and climate security depend on either tweaking the tax to make it more politically palatable, or exploring creative alternatives.

The Anti-Tax Establishment

Perhaps the most fundamental reason why a higher gas tax is so controversial is because it hits everybody, and hits them in a very public way. William Gale, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center, told the HPR that the anti-tax movement “will seize on every tax,” and the gas tax is an easy target. Represented by vocal advocacy groups such as Americans for Tax Reform and the various Tea Parties, the anti-tax movement “does not make a distinction between distortionary and distortionary-correcting taxes,” Gale said.

“They just hate all taxes,” he continued, “and every attempt at an increase in taxes becomes an opportunity for [their] political gain.”

Looking closer at the particulars of the gas tax raises an equally problematic obstacle: the culture of low energy prices. According to Henry Lee, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, America’s energy policy has been governed by a single goal for the last 40 years. “Americans for almost two generations have lived under the idea of cheap energy,” he explained, making it almost impossible to pass laws involving price increases. At this point, such laws could seem almost un-American.

Democratic Divisions

The gas tax also raises a thorny question of fairness. Rural inhabitants, who drive farther and more often than do urban residents, would face steeper costs if the federal gas tax went up. Politicians that represent rural districts are simply responding to their constituents’ concerns by opposing the gas tax.

Gale identified this “urban-rural divide” as one of the two most salient obstacles to the gas tax, in addition to the anti-tax movement. Recognizing these regional disparities raises questions about institutional problems in American democracy. To say, as many do, that lack of progress on the gas tax is part of a Big Oil conspiracy ignores the ways in which representative democracy can often forestall consensus.

America’s short, two-year election cycle is a major barrier to passing a higher gas tax. Politicians tend to ignore proposals that involve an immediate, perceivable cost and provide less tangible, long-term benefits. Thomas Sterner, former president of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, told the HPR that this is the “big problem” of gas tax politics. In countries with short electoral cycles of two to four years, attempts to increase the gas tax “will only cause protests,” Sterner said. It can be very difficult to promote farsighted, technocratic solutions in a political environment defined by short-term gratification.

Tweaking the Gas Tax

Recognizing that political barriers will make increasing the gas tax difficult, policymakers need to start thinking outside the box. One possibility, Sterner proposed, is the “fuel price escalator,” raising the tax gradually over the course of many years. Sterner said that this is “the only workable model.”

By making the price increases less immediate, the fuel price escalator resolves some of the difficulty posed by an electoral system focused on short-term gain. This explains, in part, how the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher was able to move from a relatively low gas tax to one that charges over 300 percent of the retail price, the highest in Europe.

Efficient use of revenue from the gas tax, Sterner said, is also important. The careful use of rebates can correct the regressive elements of the tax and can also make the increase in fuel prices more palatable to rural residents. Furthermore, the gas tax is essential for deficit reduction. “It’s becoming abundantly evident that we need the money,” Gale said.

The current gas tax can no longer keep up with escalating road and highway spending; this year’s highway appropriations were made possible only by siphoning funds from the general budget, which, according to Lee, has never been done before. Lee noted, “You’re going to have to have a change in the system in the next five years,” because there is “no way” Congress can continue propping up the transportation budget with general funds.

A final component of a revised gas tax might be a price floor, which would keep the price of gas relatively stable by taxing the difference if the price dipped below a certain mark. This would create a predictable environment for long-term investment in new-energy technologies that hold the key to a low-carbon economy. As Lee explained, “[Oil price] volatility gets people to under-invest.” By giving investors a stable price they can use to gauge the cost-effectiveness of future energy sources, a price floor could contribute to innovation.

The disconnect between good policy and good politics is one of the most frustrating dilemmas of American democracy. Absent substantive change in the near future, the United States risks heightened fuel price volatility, decreased economic competitiveness, and the negative effects of climate change.

Policymakers will need to search for creative solutions that are both true to the spirit of economic efficiency and more palatable to constituents focused on short-term interests. If they are able to do this with the gas tax, they might learn lessons that can be applied in other difficult and thorny areas of public policy, like immigration and entitlement reform.

Will Rafey ‘13 is a Staff Writer.

Infographic: Neil Patel

Photo Credit: Flickr (Indy Charlie)

I suspect that this new twist will produce tax credits and incentives for nuclear power and “clean coal” even larger than the ones already agreed upon.  My reason: the ads in the last issue (April 29) of The New Republic.  One from an electric-company-funded climate-advocacy group, one from a nuclear advocacy group, one from a builder of nuclear power plants, and the back cover from the builder of a “clean coal” plant.  The coal and nuclear crowd’s lobbyists are putting the full-court press on the Democrats, while Kerry has already announced that the oil companies like his bill; it may be difficult for them to take that back.  With that in mind, I think that coal and nuclear will take much of the pork that was meant for offshore oil.  And I don’t think that Republicans will fight too hard for their supporters in the oil industry, just as they seemed to have given up the Wall Street fight.

Photo Credit: Flickr (wallyg)

The HPR is also experimenting with new forms of content in this issue, and I’m not just referring to the Obama Mad Libs (p. 5). In addition to five traditional, interviews based articles, the Covers section features excerpts from two personal essays by African Harvard students (p. 17-18). We think that this new sort of content remains true to the magazine’s political focus while providing a fresh style and a new perspective. The full versions of these essays are available on our website, harvardpoliticalreview.com.

The other sections of the magazine have stayed closer to their traditional roots, but they are no less interesting for it. In the U.S. section, we cover a couple of political hot topics du jour: the filibuster (p. 21) and the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts (p. 24). Clearly the Senate is the fulcrum of American politics right now; the country will go one way or another, depending on what happens there. At press time, it looks like the Democrats may have found a way around the filibuster. But the last year has surely reminded us that it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

In the World section, we have one country-specific article (on Chile’s presidential election, p. 28), one regional article (on Europe’s integration of Muslims, p. 30), and one worldwide article (on the Copenhagen climate change conference, p. 26). The theme is challenge: the challenge of spurring collective action on global warming, the challenge of adapting the Old World to new realities, and, in the case of Chile, tragically, the challenge of recovering from a natural, economic, and human disaster.

In Books & Arts, we have a review of Clint Eastwood’s Invictus (p. 32), which is an interesting read especially in light of the Covers article on South Africa and the upcoming World Cup (p. 9). Sports can be inspiring, our writers conclude, but do they hold as much potential for real change as some have ascribed to them?

Finally, rounding out this internationalist issue of the HPR, we have a couple of foreign policy-related interviews: one with Thomas Ricks, author, journalist, and Foreign Policy blogger (p. 36), and another with Stephen Walt, Harvard professor, author … and Foreign Policy blogger (p. 37).

But before you delve into the deep stuff, check out our special feature in the Front Section, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Africa.” We hope that this issue of the HPR provides you with many more than that.

Although oil prices are currently holding steady at a little over $80 a barrel, high but not stratospheric, there is a growing concern that the world is heading for a global oil crunch. Not tomorrow, but over the next five years. As Asia consumes an exponential volume of fuel and experts revise their estimations of proven oil reserves, skepticism over the ‘sustainability’ (I know it’s not the first word to come to mind) of our current energy situation increases. When you add this to the potential of the Iran nuclear crisis leading to an unprecedented Middle East conflict, in which the Iranian regime carries out its threat of mining the vital Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. may be in immediate danger of, if not having access to enough oil, then paying astronomical prices for each barrel. Hence, the current rush around the world to secure more reliable sources of energy. Hence, the E.U.’s fast-tracking of the Nabucco pipeline. Hence, the recent furore over the potential of huge untapped Shale gas reserves located throughout America and Europe. Hence, the increasing willingness of the industry’s mega-groups to go to ever greater lengths to drill. Hence, Obama’s authorization of more exploitation.

In an ideal scenario, we would all be driving electric cars and getting our power from the wind farm 10 miles away. But that’s not about to happen. As the developing world continues to industrialize, the world is only getting more addicted to fossil fuels. At the rate the West is fulfilling its clean-energy goals, it will be an inestimably long time before we are even close to abandoning our reliance on oil and gas. In the meantime, we can do our economy and our national security a favor by getting more carbon out of our own territory.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geowombats/137786254/