Obama's Climate Plans Face Long Fight 229
An anonymous reader writes "He hasn't even given his Tuesday speech yet but Obama's plans to tackle climate change are already raising objections in Washington. From the article: 'When President Barack Obama lays out plans to tackle climate change in a speech Tuesday, including the first effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, he will unleash a years-long battle that has little assurance of being resolved during his time in office. The president has called climate change a "legacy issue," and his speech may head off a backlash from environmentalists should his administration approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. But the address is unlikely to blunt criticism of Mr. Obama's approach from the left or the right.'"
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Informative)
Not just futile, most "useful" measures would require legislative action, which is practically impossible these days.
That said, if I could choose one single bill to have signed into law, it would be the "Open Fuel Standards Act" which was brought up a few years ago, but didn't get a vote. This would require all new cars sold in the USA to be fully flex-fuel capable. (There are already a lot of "flex-fuel" cars on the market, but many are only able to use ethanol. The OFSA would mandate compatibility with methanol and butanol as well.) This would add about $100 to the price of each car, which is much less than an after-market retrofit would cost.
The point of all this is to break the effective monopoly on transportation fuel held by petroleum and bring true competition to the market. Methanol may be only 80% as energy dense as gasoline, but last I checked it was only about $1.50/gal. And unlike ethanol, methanol can easily be made from any kind of biomass, so this would also decouple the alternative fuel supply from food crops like corn. Best of all, it would stem the tide of cash that currently flows out from the USA's collective pocket, which is around $400 billion annually. That kind of economic "stimulus" would be a nice bonus too.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Informative)
Without comprehensive, cooperative, enforceable international standards and practices, it's all just political showmanship.
The average American pollutes more (partly by proxy, through their economic decisions) than almost any other kind of human on the planet. We cannot ask others to do what we are not willing to do: that's a special kind of bullshit. Leading from the rear is how we got into this mess. Put civilian lawmakers who decide we're going to war on the front lines (have them carry a radio or something) and see what happens, some things will shift very quickly.
When global issues are at stake, global cooperation is required. It might start with a less-corrupt, more efficient United Nations with unselfish participation by the member states to give it a sense of legitimacy. That would be the ideal.
The UN will never have legitimacy as long as it retains its structure, ruled by the UNSC. Guess who the most puissant nation on the UNSC is?
My gut feeling is that nothing, if anything, substantial will be done until the international capital oligarchs sense a real financial threat.
As long as they stay on top of the order, they don't seem to care much what it looks like...
Really it doesn't matter in the USA (Score:4, Informative)
Really it doesn't matter what we do in the USA if Asia and the middle east are 1000x worse with a larger population.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:2, Informative)
No, actually, the rational people do not agree on what needs to be done or even whether anything needs to be done. It is only the irrational people that agree that extreme and possibly quite useless things need to be done.
Rational people look at the facts that the earth is still cooler than before the medieval cold spell and that the temperature increase halted for the last 15 years, while irrational people do not want to be confused by these facts.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, what? By what measurement? Most Americans don't produce anything.
You have to admit: this is an utter nonsense statement.
No, no I don't. [yahoo.com] Most Americans are engaged purely in the rearrangement of deck chairs into temporarily pleasing patterns.
Re:"may head off backlash" (Score:5, Informative)
Congress may have legislative power, but Obama has some sway over the Department of Energy. If he tells them coal must use CCS (Carbon Capture and Sequestration), for instance, it is up to the DoE to develop a plan to implement it, because let's face it, coal plant owners will never do it voluntarily because it makes no sense from a business standpoint. 30% less efficient and therefore 30% less profitable to... save the environment? Why would you do that if you can spend 1% (or less) supporting global warming doubters that say it isn't an issue?
Re:"may head off backlash" (Score:4, Informative)
See 350.org, please follow your own advice, and learn to think about what is required to achieve a reduction of 30+ppm of CO2, hint it looks more like the Flintstones and less like the Jetsons.