According to EPA’s website, the new rule was announced by EPA Chief Lisa Jackson on September 30:

“The Administrator announced a proposal requiring large industrial facilities that emit at least 25,000 tons of GHGs [greenhouse gases] a year to obtain construction and operating permits covering these emissions. These permits must demonstrate the use of best available control technologies and energy efficiency measures to minimize GHG emissions when facilities are constructed or significantly modified.”

Jackson remarked that:  “By using the power and authority of the Clean Air Act, we can begin reducing emissions from the nation’s largest greenhouse gas emitting facilities without placing an undue burden on the businesses that make up the vast majority of our economy.” EPA’s proposed climate regulation applies to the approximately 14,000 large businesses that emit about 70% of the nation’s greenhouse gases.

In Washington, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have already voiced their opposition to the proposed rule. That is far from surprising, but, paradoxically, an interesting impact of this rule might be an increase in industry support for legislation like Waxman-Markey because it provides more flexibility in meeting emission caps. Waxman-Markey’s cap and trade provision allows companies to trade pollution allowances. The new approach to climate in Waxman-Markey also attacks the root causes of global warming by promoting the development of new energy technology and encouraging greater energy efficiency. It includes programs for climate adaptation, carbon sequestration and the transition to a green energy economy. EPA’s new rule, on the other hand, is good, old-fashioned command and control. The business community might prefer a bill with both carrots and sticks, if the alternative is the current law, which only provides sticks.
 
In comparison to Waxman-Markey, the Clean Air Act is a non-comprehensive, one-dimensional approach to climate policy. EPA’s proposed rule is a hacksaw, when the Obama Administration would rather operate with a scalpel. Nevertheless, if Congress is unable to provide an elegant tool to begin the process of reducing greenhouse gases, then the EPA will simply have to use the best tool they can grab hold of.  Though outdated, the Clean Air Act is far better than nothing. This approach to environmental regulation finds its historical roots in the early days of EPA. Seven days after EPA was created in 1970, its first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, used provisions from the River and Harbors Act of 1899 to force a number of large cities (run by mayors that were not of the President’s political party) to stop dumping sewage into local waterways.

EPA’s strong action is possible because of President Obama’s deep understanding of the climate problem and his willingness to use the authorities he has available. In the 1970’s many industry groups eventually realized that the public demand for clean water and clean air would result in new and more stringent laws. Rather than opposing all efforts at change, some decided to try to shape the change they saw coming. Today, anyone running a business with even a small amount of foresight realizes that climate and energy policies are going to be changed over the next several years.  Better-managed businesses will be trying to figure out how to plan for change rather than continue to resist it.

Unfortunately, despite the President’s desire to usher in a post-partisan period, the lines only seem to be getting more sharply drawn. Let’s keep in mind that the lobbying business has grown dramatically in recent years, along with limitless electronic communication. Intense partisanship has become a big business. And there is simply more money to be made if you are part of the entrenched, hard line opposition than if you are a moderate, pragmatic deal maker.

EPA’s tougher approach to climate regulation will enable our negotiators at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in mid-December to claim that the U.S. has put in place a new policy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gases. While a new piece of legislation would be better than what we have now, using the Clean Air Act is better than doing nothing. Here comes the hacksaw.

Summarizing his reporting Duhigg observes that:
“Almost four decades ago, Congress passed the Clean Water Act to force polluters to disclose the toxins they dump into waterways and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. States have passed pollution statutes of their own. But in recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.”

The Times has also created an excellent data base on violations of water pollution rules and state enforcement of those rules. In this region, New York’s legal authorities managed only 6.4 enforcement actions per 100 violations, in contrast to New Jersey’s 53.5 per 100 violations. Connecticut was even worse than New York with only 3.7 enforcement efforts per 100 violations.

Protecting our drinking water is a fundamental function of government. Just as we expect our streets to be safe from crime and our nation protected from the threat of terrorism, our health and welfare also depend on the provision of safe water to drink and clean air to breathe. This is basic and non-negotiable. A Times “quote of the day” last weekend came from this piece, when West Virginia resident, Jennifer Hall-Massey asked “How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” 

It is of course not an issue of technical competence, but profit and political will. There is big money in the cable and internet business and plenty of competition. Water supply is a public utility that is delivered by government and funded by use fees and general revenue taxes. This monopoly means that we have no choice when selecting a water supplier. Our water supply is also more fragile and vulnerable than the infrastructure that delivers Internet and cable TV.

The cause of this attack on our water supply is untreated and poorly managed industrial dumping of toxic substances. While this is rampant in the developing world, America, from the mid-1970’s to the late 1990’s made enormous progress in reducing these practices. Apparently, part of the lasting environmental legacy of the Bush-Cheney years is the backsliding reported by the Times in this article.

The new Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Lisa Jackson is making the right noises about increasing enforcement, and I suspect the New York Times piece will strengthen the hand of environmental professionals inside the agency that are trying to push this agenda. The article also makes the point that the focus on climate change may be pushing attention and resources away from more traditional concerns such as water pollution.  I doubt that is true, the real issue is not enough resources are going to either issue.

In any event, the issue of clean drinking water has far more political potency than climate change. Most of the impacts of global warming are in the future, and it is difficult for the average person to understand the connection between cause and effect. Moreover, the causes of climate change come from many places and the impact will also be felt in many places. Water pollution is locally caused and felt. The impact is nearly immediate and some of the impacts, like illness and skin rashes, are very visible. Because climate change is a global problem that crosses all borders, it creates real challenges for our planet’s political system which is based on sovereign nation states.  While some water pollution issues cross borders, in the U.S. the borders they cross are mainly state borders rather than national ones.

We know how to keep our drinking water clean. We have laws that require it and institutions capable of administering those laws. What we need is the political will and resources to use those institutions and enforce the laws we have. Unlike climate and health care, the structure is already in place and a national consensus was established long ago to ensure clean drinking water. The challenge to the Obama administration and the EPA is clear. What is less clear is if they are up to the task.

However, the fact remains that the green economy is creating jobs. Just as America has transformed itself from an industrial economy to a higher-end information- and service-oriented economy, we are now at the start of another transformation—to a green economy. In June the Pew Foundation released a study on this transformation, which concluded that:

The number of jobs in America’s emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007…Pew developed a clear, data-driven definition of the clean energy economy and conducted the first-ever hard count across all 50 states of the actual jobs, companies and venture capital investments that supply the growing market demand for environmentally friendly products and services.

This does not mean that the debate will be settled by these new facts, but hopefully this information will have some influence on matters. Senator John Kerry’s response to Governor Palin’s op-ed referred to the job creating capacity of a green energy economy. While it is never a good idea to predict the future, I think that a new era of climate policy is about to begin. The public understands the reality of the issue and has begun to appreciate the vulnerability of our economy to the current energy supply system.

As I have argued before, if handled carefully, climate and energy policy can help modernize our economy’s technological base and ultimately increase our standard of living. Our goal should be to ensure that the percentage of our Gross Domestic Product (G.D.P.) devoted to energy expenditure is as low as possible. According to the United States Energy Information Agency of the Department of Energy, there has been a fair amount of volatility in this indicator over the past forty years.  The first year that the federal government reported our expenditures on energy as a percent of G.D.P. was in 1970. That year we spent eight percent of the G.D.P. on energy. This grew to 11.6 percent in 1979 and peaked at 13.7 percent in 1981. In 1999 it dropped to an all time low of six percent, due to a fast growing economy and low fuel prices. However, in the 21^st century, this percentage has tended to grow. It jumped to seven percent in 2000 and to 8.8 percent in 2006, the last year for which we have government data.

With our shrinking economy and increased fuel prices the amount of our nation’s wealth devoted to energy may be growing once again. The question we need to address in the long run, is how do we reduce the price and also the unpredictability of energy costs? Fossil fuels are subject to a wide variety of unpredictable cost factors—ranging from increased use of automobiles in China to Middle East politics. In the long run, however, the cost of fossil fuels is bound to grow. While the Earth retains huge quantities of fossil fuels, we are not making any more of the stuff. Each day that we burn fossil fuels less of them remain. Fossil fuels will continue to get more difficult and more expensive to extract, and the environmental impact of extraction will not let up. While fuel extraction can be made more cost-effective and environmentally friendly through the use of technology, the fundamentals remain: fossil fuels will become more expensive over the next century. In contrast, look at the cost of computing. According to Moore’s Law, a truism first popularized by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, the processing power of microchips doubles every 18 months and the cost of computing drops every year. Anyone who buys a laptop knows that they keep getting more powerful and less expensive. Solar technology has the potential for the same type of cost reductions over time. The basic fuel of solar power, the sun, will always cost the same to tap into—zero. Solar cells and batteries will only get less expensive as a mass market develops and as technology improves.

What is most impressive about the way Congress is approaching climate change policy is that they are linking it to the use of energy. The Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill recently passed by the House of Representatives not only sets a regulatory cap on carbon emissions, it also encourages energy efficiency and renewable energy to ensure that we can actually achieve these caps without shutting down the economy. While the start up of the green energy economy will require investment, the pay-off potential is enormous. In the case of the emerging climate policy, the anti-tax mantra of the Republican right is in reality an anti-investment policy. It is unfortunate that they are “rounding up the usual suspects,” but I continue to hope that the approach taken by Waxman-Markey emerges as the national consensus.

Broder seems surprised that the Obama administration is moving carefully to build consensus behind new policies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. He identifies actions the administration has taken to move climate change forward and then seems perplexed when it pauses to reflect and build consensus. I’m not sure why anyone would expect President Obama to be aggressive and reckless when everything about him seems persistent and careful.

The transition to a “green” economy will take a long time, and it will require determined, constant and strategic effort. Rapid, risky and symbolic actions may make dramatic news stories, but they are not going to do much to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The electricity that allows me to sit at my computer and write these words is wholly dependent on the fossil fuels that power New York City’s electrical grid. The still fragile economy, which saw the shedding of nearly 700,000 jobs in the United States last month, is fueled in the same way. It is clear to me and an increasing number of world leaders that this is not a sustainable energy future. What is less clear is how we get to one that is.

The policy prescription is obvious in general, but complex when you get to specifics. Think about congestion pricing. It is clear to many of us that when there are too many vehicles on the streets of lower Manhattan to move freely, someone needs to figure out a way to reduce traffic. But how do you do that without destroying the vibrancy of the local economy?

If you set a price on bringing a vehicle downtown, what is the correct price? In addition to policies that “push” cars off the street, you also want to make mass transit convenient and comfortable to “pull” people down underground as well. 

To make this real we need to answer specific questions. How much do we charge as a congestion fee? How much do we invest in new transit infrastructure and technology? No one really knows. We need specific answers, but do not have enough experience and hard data to do more than guess. The same is true of the transition to a fossil-fuel-free economy. What should it cost to emit carbon dioxide? How much should we invest in new energy technology? How do we push the economy off fossil fuels and pull it toward renewable energy?

There is no question that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. There is also no question that we will not do this quickly enough to stop global warming. So we will also need to sequester and store the carbon dioxide we have already emitted and will continue to emit. We will need both a regulation limiting carbon emissions as well as a tax on the carbon dioxide that is emitted.  But how quickly can we reduce emissions?  What is technologically and economically feasible? What are the positive economic impacts that will come from the technological development of alternative energy and increased energy efficiency? What are the negative economic impacts of the increased price of energy that will come from a tax on carbon and/or a cap on carbon dioxide emissions? The simple answer to both of these questions is that no one knows.

I have seen plenty of compelling analyses based on many sophisticated mathematical models of what this energy future should look like. While these models help us understand the complexity of the issue, none can predict the future. We are going to have to do this the old fashioned way – through trial and error.  We will end up formulating climate policy the same way we have developed all the other environmental policies we have set to date. We will start with less stringent standards than the ones we will eventually adopt.

As Broder’s piece indicates, The Waxman-Markey climate bill, which I wrote about in an earlier piece, provides an aggressive approach that changes the political equation and allows the Obama administration to play the role of climate moderate. We’ve seen this approach before. In building a consensus approach, the White House can point to the Waxman proposal and tell industry insiders that if they don’t play ball the law will end up even more extreme.

During the debate leading to the 1970 Clean Air Act, then-Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed banning the internal combustion engine. Suddenly the catalytic converter seemed a lot more technologically feasible to auto industry lobbyists.  The climate issue will follow the same well-worn path to environmental regulation we have seen before. It will be made more complicated by the international dimension of the issue, but the general pattern will look the same.

From my perspective, the key issue is to start this trial and error process as quickly as possible. Let’s avoid the symbolic debate over the level of reductions we will achieve in 2050. Let’s focus on what we can do by 2010 and 2012. Let’s get started.

"With concerns over climate change intensifying, electricity generation from coal, once reliably cheap, looks increasingly expensive in the face of the all-but-certain prospect of regulations that would impose significant costs on companies that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

As a result, utilities' plans for new coal plants are being turned down left and right. In the last two-and-a-half years, plans for 83 plants in the United States have either been voluntarily withdrawn or denied permits by state regulators. The roughly 600 coal-fired power plants in the United States are responsible for almost one-third of the country's total carbon emissions, but they are distinctly at odds with a growing outlook that embraces clean energy."

The Times piece goes on to discuss the expense of the technology to capture and store carbon and the expense and unreliability of renewable sources of energy. This is a worn out argument. The article also presents the usual environmental and industry advocates arguing on each side of the issue. The Edison Electric Institute can be relied on to argue that new technology will cost too much and threaten our electric supply. I wonder what old Thomas Edison would say if he knew that his name is now being used to oppose the development of new technology?

Why does this tired argument keep getting repeated? The cost figures on carbon capture and storage are based on assumptions that cannot be tested. We don't really know how much this will cost. The estimates that carbon capture and storage will more than double the cost of coal fired power plants is clearly too high. Since it hasn't been done, it's easy to see why investors would believe that the first ones will be quite expensive. I'm sure that's true, but it's not really relevant. The private sector should not and will not pay the cost of developing this technology. Government will need to subsidize this until it becomes cost effective.

The debate on carbon dioxide regulation seems caught in the same rhetoric we saw in the 1970's and 1980's over more conventional environmental regulation. There was similar discussion about how arbitrary and sudden government regulation was going to shut down American business. Anyone who actually observes regulation in this country knows that the "business of America is business". Regulations are implemented slowly, with negotiated schedules and great care. Businesses are given plenty of time to clean up their act. Moreover, regulations and rules allow the good guys to do the right thing and compete on a more level playing field. And without environmental regulation there is no pressure to develop new and cheaper technologies that produce without polluting.

As for the cost of renewable energy; solar power, wind power and battery storage prices will also come down as the technology develops. Think of computers. The computer I am writing this on sits on my lap and is more powerful than the million dollar plus mainframes of the 1960's. As mass markets are developed and technology is refined, prices come down and today's infeasible ideas become tomorrow's everyday experiences.

How do we get this done? How do we go from here to there? In the case of computers, a lot of the basic Research & Development came from the Defense Department and NASA. Our rockets, missiles and space capsules needed smaller, more powerful computers. And then there's the internet that was also developed by government: Our military computers needed to communicate with each other. One thing led to another and eventually we had an internet. Government paid the costs of development and then it was turned over to the private sector and a new industry was created.

Sometimes national security drives the development of technology- sometimes it is public health. Cities like London developed sewers and indoor plumbing to prevent disease. Cities like New York developed a hugely expensive water supply system because local sources were polluted. I'm sure someone was saying: Do you know how expensive this indoor plumbing will be? We will all go broke installing these pipes and pumps everywhere!

More recently we had some of the same arguments raised against paying the cost of installing air pollution devices on cars and power plants and against spending billions of dollars on sewage treatment plants. We did all of that and the economy continued to grow. In fact, the economic benefits of cleaner air and cleaner water far outweighed the costs.

Here is the fundamental truth that it is time to face: Just as we needed to develop new public health technologies to survive in cities when they went over a million in population, we must now invest in world-scale technologies to survive on a planet of seven billion people. The climate problem is the first planet-wide stress we know about. Others will surely come. We need to learn how to develop and implement the 21^st century equivalent of indoor plumbing.

We are capable of making this transformation but it requires that we escape from the environment- economic growth tradeoff paradigm we see on the front page of the Sunday New York Times Business Section. We need to work on the push and pull of carbon dioxide reduction. We need to regulate and set a cap on carbon dioxide.  This should be done with mandatory reduction targets, a tax on fossil fuels and a trading system to allow the most efficient reductions possible. In addition we need to spend money on the basic and applied technology of carbon sequestration, renewable energy, energy transmission and energy storage. We need cheaper and smaller solar receptors and cheaper and more efficient batteries.

Clean coal may be a fiction in 2009, but if we are to use coal for electricity, we must develop better ways to mine and burn coal. As my Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner eloquently argues, no matter how fast we develop renewable energy, we will continue to use fossil fuels for many years. He estimates the costs of sequestration will come down dramatically as technology and a mass market is developed. The problem is developing the technology and mass market. Government can and must stimulate the technology and market.

In the long run fossil fuels will be more expensive than other sources.  Fossil fuels are finite and must be mined from within the planet. They will get harder to mine and scarcer and for those reasons will eventually be more expensive. We need to accelerate the development of the new technology of energy. Let's end these 20^th century debates once and for all and get on with the job.

I suppose I should be grateful that at least Senator Obama was able to use this campaign to give a superb speech in Philadelphia on race. That will be a speech that will be quoted for many years to come. It demonstrated that the public can understand a complicated message. Maybe modern presidential campaigns can only absorb one meaningful statement per campaign. The spectacle of Senator McCain shouting to drill here and drill now for oil was simply too much to take. Given his history and past record on the environment and climate change it is really shocking to hear McCain sink to this level.

Both candidates are reading polls and certainly the rapid rise in gasoline prices has had a deep impact on the electorate. But why do these campaigns keep assuming the public is incapable of learning and absorbing the truth? Yes, people are angry about high gasoline prices and the oil industry’s tax breaks and extraordinary profits. But policies like Obama’s "emergency energy rebate" (from “windfall” profits) and McCain’s gas tax suspension are bad public policy. They encourage people to use more gasoline. I know that the political problem in this campaign is the high cost of gasoline, but the real problem is that we use too much in the first place. This is the moment to educate the public on the need to develop alternative sources of energy. Instead, we get this descending spiral of nonsense piled on top of nonsense.

The modern media does not seem capable of communicating nuanced facts. Everything must make it into sound bites that can be repeated in the endless loop of 24/7 TV news. Like a pop song with a hook, the news now has its own top 40 of snappy phrases that raise our emotional temper without really telling us anything. While local and state political campaigns have shown some ability to break away from these limits, national campaigns seem to turn on images like John Kerry windsurfing and Mike Dukakis sticking his head out of a tank. Obama should be happy he’s able to sink an outside shot—that image rather than one of him engaging in the issues may very well give him the election.

It is of course the academic in me which insists on seeing national political campaigns as great opportunities to teach. I know that presidential campaigns do not allow the candidates the luxury of educating the public. They need to be presidents before they can do that. Of course, once they get elected the first time, they start their campaigns to get re-elected.

The energy issue is the most profound issue that we have faced in a very long time. Our economy, environmental quality and national security depend on our ability to solve this problem. We have made little progress in addressing these issues since the late 1970’s when everyone laughed at Jimmy Carter in his cardigan declaring the energy crisis to be the moral equivalent of war. Unfortunately, the current administration decided to fight a shooting war over energy supplies rather than its “moral equivalent”, but Iraq is an indication of the futility and foolishness of wars for resources.

Carter was right, we need a national mobilization to address our energy crisis. People need to understand the facts about energy, climate change and the absolute centrality of the need for renewable energy. It may be a difficult and complicated case to articulate in a presidential campaign, but we really need both McCain and Obama to try to help the American people learn this issue. Both of these candidates emerged from the primaries because they offered the American public the promise of a different sort of politics. Obama offered change and McCain offered straight talk. Now, it seems as if the only change is the end of straight talk.

As I watched these candidates move around in the security and media bubble of the modern Presidential campaign I was thinking that they must feel as if they've been abducted by aliens. Poor Barack Obama-he's going to travel to Iraq so he mentioned that while he was there he might listen to what the military folks have to say. Suddenly "Obama is moving to the right on the war". And poor John McCain- who told him that he had to smile all of the time? When he laughs at something funny his eyes smile and he seems to laugh with his whole being. When he has to wear his media-consultant smile it's genuinely painful to watch.

For Obama, the issue the other night was moving his acceptance speech from the 20,000 seat venue to the 70,000 seat venue. This was considered by the punditry to be an example of the same ego mania that resulted in the faux presidential seal podium plaque of the other week. Never mind that John Kennedy gave his acceptance speech in the 100,000 seat Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960. This was considered a move worthy of news time on all the 24 hour news channels. I could only take so much of this stuff, so I turned on the stereo, opened a book and turned off the tube.

I hope these guys running for President are not watching this nonsense too much. I know that CNN's ratings have been going up with this endless Presidential campaign. There must be money in this campaign coverage or these folks would be paying more attention to Christie Brinkley, A-Rod and Madonna. I know that like any long-running soap opera, the show needs some plot twists to keep the viewers watching. Is McCain really too old? Is Obama a closet conservative? Is he a closet Muslim? Is McCain still a maverick or has he sold out to the dark side of the force? Stay tuned to this channel....

Has anyone noticed that there really are some critical "issues" out there? It's true that Presidential races are not just about "issues" but about the character of the candidates. In an uncertain world, we don't really know what challenges we will face in the next four or eight years. What worries me is that we have designed a Presidential selection process that virtually guarantees that only unbalanced people will enter the race. If Obama and McCain where normal folks before running for President, it's hard to believe they are normal today. In other words, you probably have to be crazy to run for President, but if you're not at the start of the campaign, you've got to be by the end of it.

Getting to the issues, let me mention that over a billion people on the planet are living in dire poverty. What is America's moral responsibility to those people? The planet is getting warmer and we are having trouble making sure there is adequate food and water for the humans who live here. Here in the United States of America we have created wealth and health unequaled in human history. However for the first time it is not clear that our children's life will be as good as ours. While we moan about gasoline approaching $5 a gallon, we still seem unwilling to make the investments in the infrastructure, scientific research and education that will be needed to make our wealth sustainable.

In 1798 Thomas Mathus published An Essay on the Principle of Population. Simply put his theory was that population would grow faster than food supply on our finite planet. The one element that he could not fully factor into his theory was the impact of technology. Technology has made it possible for us to live longer and healthier (which increases demand on food), but also has allowed us to grow more food than we ever could naturally. Technology has allowed us to both poison and detoxify our natural environment

Despite the wonders of modern technology, we are seeing the strains in our technologically dependent world. What are our candidates saying about these fundamental issues? We need to invest in our future. We need to build our educational institutions to make sure our kids can compete in the global economy. We need to invest in science and research and development. We need to spend money on infrastructure-especially alternatives to fossil fuel based transportation. That may mean a little less partying today to ensure that our way of life is sustainable. I know that this is not the stuff that tests well in the focus groups convened by political consultants. Still, I suspect that with some leadership, Americans would respond to a real challenge. Many of us would support a candidate who acknowledges these issues and makes it clear that we have the capacity to deal with them. While I'm not expecting it in this campaign, I'd like to be proven wrong. Maybe the candidates can escape from the Alien space ship they are travelling in and let us know what they really think.