You all know James Inhofe, the Republican Senator from Exxon Mobil Oklahoma who famously declared the Global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” on more than one occasion. Yet this fierce opponent of Al Gore and anyone who would curb carbon emissions from the burning of gasoline in your car or coal by your local electrical utility, has suddenly decided to join two of the greenest members of the Senate, Democrats Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts in a bill to (sort of) fight global warming.
Not by curbing all the CO2 that comes out of someone’s Hummer. That would be heresy. Instead, he will sponsor with Kerry and Boxer a bill seeking to study “black carbon” deemed to be one of the principle accelerants of global warming in the Arctic. What is “Black Carbon?” you ask. Well …
The target of the bill is black carbon, commonly known as soot.
Black carbon warms the atmosphere by absorbing sunlight. When it falls in the Arctic it causes ice and snow to melt faster. In the United States and Europe, soot comes from diesel engines and agricultural crop burning; in the developing world the major sources are home heating and cooking fires. In just the last two years, scientists have found that soot may be responsible for up to half of the rapid melting of Arctic ice and snow. (For a two-minute black carbon primer, visit www.stopsoot.org.
Why is he sponsoring this bill? Why did he and his Republican colleagues agree to pass this out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by unanimous consent? Well obviously, this bill attacks a carbon emissions that will have less effect of his major clients campaign contributors, Big Oil, than on other sources of carbon in the atmosphere. And I’m sure it will make his Republican colleagues look a little bit better when they come up for re-election in 2 or 4 years to tout their support for this bill.
However, perhaps because the real reason why is that there is a better bill being promoted in the House of Representatives to fight the production of soot or black carbon.
A House bill, by Jay Inslee of Washington, Mike Honda of California and Peter Welch of Vermont, calls on the EPA to take “immediate action” to control black carbon emissions. In a speech last month, Nobel Prize laureate and former vice president Al Gore called on the world to curb black carbon by burning less diesel and wood. And the eight nations of the Arctic Council, including the United States, have just adopted a declaration urging “early action” on black carbon and other “short-lived climate forcers” such as methane.
See, all Inhofe and his colleagues really hope to do is weaken the House bill. A bill to study “black carbon” is next to meaningless. A bill to actually do something about it by mandating EPA regulations might cost his “friends” in the oil business a few bucks. In other words its a delaying tactic. And there is little reason for delay:
Carbon dioxide, from automobile exhaust and other sources, stays in the atmosphere for decades, so cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions could take a relatively long time to reverse warming trends. Black carbon, on the other hand, stays in the atmosphere for only days or weeks, so reducing emissions will have an immediate cooling effect. Deep and immediate cuts in carbon dioxide are still urgently necessary, but quick action on black carbon will buy valuable time for the Arctic, forestalling global warming tipping points like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
There are plenty of technologies around today that could limit black carbon emissions immediately, such as retrofitting older diesel burning trucks to burn cleaner diesel fuels, requiring ships to use cleaner fuels that produce less soot, cleaner burning stoves that burn wood, etc. It is much needed:
For the developing world, cleaner-burning stoves that cut black-carbon emissions are also key. Charitable projects to supply stoves are under way, but the United States and Europe can speed progress by increasing aid. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should direct the State Department and Agency for International Development to ramp up financing and technology transfer to reduce black carbon emissions in the developing world. Even in the current recession, there can be no greater priority for sustainable development, the Arctic and the global community.
And cutting black carbon will not only buy time for the Arctic, but will also improve health dramatically at home and abroad. From the smoggy suburbs of Los Angeles to rural villages in India and China, soot is a major cause of respiratory and heart disease, estimated to be responsible for 1.6 million deaths a year worldwide.
But that would require government action worldwide, including a major effort by the US government to provide domestic and foreign aid to subsidize the use of cleaner burning technologies. And that, you can rest assured, the Republicans in Congress would oppose.
So why are Kerry and Boxer getting into bed with Inhofe? Do they think that when these two competing bills come up for reconciliation in the joint House and Senate committee that they can still get the tougher regulation from the EPA through in the final bill? Maybe they don’t want to have a fight over regulation of balck carbon now, but later in the year. Who knows. But Inhofe is a snake. He may appear to be shedding his skin on this issue, but the underlying venomous reptile is still there even if he looks all new and shiny and harmless. I assume that he’s betting he can defeat any final bill regarding black carbon if it calls for anything more than “studying” the problem, or at the very least weaken EPA’s mandate to take action. I don’t trust him and his fellow Republicans sudden cooperation on this particular bit of “green legislation” and neither should you.
Update [2009-6-4 15:14:18 by Steven D]: The article quoted from above was written by Erika Rosenthal of Earthjustice. Their two-minute primer on black carbon can be found at
www.stopsoot.org.
Lax regulations on international shipping leads to shockingly terrible levels of pollution: “15 of the world’s biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world’s 760m cars”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution
I’m still angry about Baucus and healthcare.
thanks, steve.
It’s kinda silly that Inhofe even sits on E&PW, let alone serves as ranking member.
Seems like nobody watched ABC’s “Earth 2100” program this week. It was the most dire prediction of the end result of present behavior I’ve ever seen in the media, including anything by Gore. Essentially that business as usual now will mean the collapse of civilization, of humanity as we know it, in less than a century.
I haven’t seen a word about it anywhere since. There were aspects to criticize, but nobody was interested, apparently. So the problem is so much bigger than corrupt fools like Inhoff — he and his kind could get swept away by Jesus or something this afternoon and we’d still be on the same path to the inferno we’re on now. I’ve come to suspect that at some level we feel that it’s time for us to go and there’s nothing to be done about that.
The EPA essentially has the power to regulate CO2 anyways after their ruling declaring CO2 a hazard, which means the polluters know that they can either face the heavy hand of the EPA with no say or they can pressure people that would normally be against regulating CO2 into participating in a compromise.
Interesting to see the dynamic play out.
Interesting, Stephen D.
I’d like to hear more on the parliamentary maneuvering as this bill works its way through the Senate.
There are a range of strategies that Inhofe could employ, and oddly, ‘paralysis by analysis’ isn’t one of them in this instance, if you’re correct about Inhofe’s strategy.