"While policymakers fiddle, the threat of economic harm posed by rising sea levels, devastating storms, and drought is growing every day." "This article appeared in print as The Cost Of Inaction."
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Davenport's "while policymakers fiddle" complaint has been refuted by CNN, NY Times, Yale 360 authors, NRDC, and AP. Yale 360 authors specifically credit US government expenditures over the past 30 years for stunning US CO2 plunge:
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6/22/12, “U.S. cuts greenhouse gases despite do-nothing Congress,” CNN, Steve Hargreaves
- “Even factoring in a stronger economy, forecasters see
- greenhouse gas emissions continuing to fall….
Others take the U.S. success in reducing its energy sector emissions as a sign that its fragmented, state-based, regulatory approach has worked better than Europe’s market-based cap-and-trade approach.”
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1/15/11, “Recession Special: Cleaner Air,“ NY Times, Matthew Wald
“What the government has not mandated, the economy is doing on its own: emissions of global warming gases in the United States are down.
According to the Energy Department, carbon dioxide emissions peaked in this country in 2005 and will not reach that level again until the early 2020s.”…
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4/21/12, "Why Emissions Are Declining in the U.S. But Not in Europe," NewGeography.com, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
"It wasn't that long ago that the U.S. was cast as the global climate villain, refusing to sign the Kyoto accord while Europe implemented cap and trade.
But, as we note below in a new article for Yale360, a funny thing happened: U.S. emissions started going down in 2005 and are expected to decline further over the next decade, while Europe's cap and trade system has had no measurable impact on emissions. Even the supposedly green Germany is moving back to coal.
Why? The reason is obvious: the U.S. is benefitting from the 30-year, government-funded technological revolution that massively increased the supply of unconventional natural gas, making it cheap even when compared to coal.
The contrast between what is happening in Europe and what is happening in the U.S. challenges anyone who still thinks pricing carbon and emissions trading are more important to emissions reductions than direct and sustained public investment in technology innovation."
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6/26/12, “The Incredible Shrinking Carbon Pollution Forecast – Part 2,” switchboard.nrdc.org, Dan Lashof
.
.
“Back in February I posted about a surprising development: Despite the failure of comprehensive climate and energy legislation in 2010, U.S. carbon pollution emissions and projections of future carbon pollution have been coming down ever since....
While there has been some press coverage of these facts (see here and here) I continue to find that most people are surprised to learn about this progress….
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8/16/12, “AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low,” AP, Kevin Begos
“In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.
Many of the world’s leading climate scientists didn’t see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide....
Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for “cautious optimism” about potential ways to deal with climate change….
In a little-noticed technical report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that energy related U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. Energy emissions make up about 98 percent of the total.
The Associated Press contacted environmental experts, scientists and utility companies and learned that
virtually everyone believes the shift could have major long-term implications for U.S. energy policy.”…
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Additional citations for US CO2 drop:
6/4/12, “Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006,” Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage
“Not only that, but as my top chart shows, US CO2 emissions are falling even faster than what President Obama pledged in the global Copenhagen Accord.… Here is the biggest shocker of all: the average American’s CO2 emissions are down to levels not seen since 1964 --over half a century ago. …Coal is the number two source of CO2 for Americans. Today the average American burns an amount similar to what they did in 1955, and even less than they did in the 1940s. …It is exactly America’s historical role of biggest and dirtiest that
makes their sharp decline in CO2 pollution so noteworthy
and potentially game changing at the global level.”...
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News of US CO2 plunge has been described as:
- “Surprising,“
- “little noticed,“
- “dramatic,“
- “stunner,“
- “most people are surprised to learn,“
- “quiet but tremendous progress,”
- “major long term implications,”
- “game changing,”
- “shocker,”
- “huge contrast to the forecast.”
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Was Davenport in attendance at a recent CO2 terror profiteer dinner hosted by her employer National Journal as part of its ongoing "off the record" salons to benefit corporate sponsors?
=================================
National Journal's ""off the record" dinners with climate profiteers and others (National Journal is owned by Atlantic Media) are described as a source of revenue since the economic foundation of traditional journalism has fallen away:
7/6/2009, "David Bradley defends Atlantic Media's exclusive 'salons'," Politico, Michael Calderone
"Atlantic Media publisher David Bradley on Monday issued a full-throated defense of the kind of off-the record, corporate-sponsored "salons" that last week ensnared The Washington Post in controversy, arguing that they are both a source of revenue "and advance a legitimate purpose for a media organization — promoting debate and discussion."...
Bradley described that revenue as a
legitimate justification for the salons at a time when
"the economic foundation beneath journalism is falling away."
"The imperative," he said, "is to rebuild journalism on different financial pillars. One of them, and not inconsequential to us, is events — of all types."
Atlantic has been particularly aggressive in staging events, the most famous of which, the Aspen Ideas Festival, was under way last week when the controversy over the Post's proposed dinners first began.
Some of the dinners he has hosted are, Bradley said, "for my own interest and my own account," a reference to a series of off-the-record evenings with newsmakers he has held for a select group of prominent Washington reporters. Those are different, he said, from the dinners that have corporate he said, from the dinners that have corporate sponsors, which usually have about 30 participants, including members of Congress and administration officials, and follow a prescribed format.
The sponsored dinners, he said, "usually run about two and a half hours. If I am there, I give welcoming remarks and thank the sponsor. Most of the time, the sponsor responds with his or her own welcoming remarks. Then, and for the remainder, our moderator — typically an Atlantic Media editor or writer, though sometimes a journalist from another enterprise — directs the whole table in conversation. There is no constraint placed on either the moderator or our guests as to the questions raised or the opinions expressed."...
They are always off-record, he (Bradley) said, because "there is a great deal of constructive conversation that can take place only with the promise that no headline is being written." He also emphasized that while corporate sponsors will have input into the dinner, Atlantic Media has the final say in the topics and guest list.
Still, corporate clients clearly help set the agenda.
Atlantic spokesperson Zachary Hooper told Talking Points Memo on Monday that "the corporate sponsor comes to us and says, 'We're interested in having a discussion on a certain topic.'" And some corporate sponsors, TPM reported, have included AstraZeneca ("Healthcare Access and Education”); Microsoft (“Global Trade”), G.E. ("Energy Sustainability and the Future of Nuclear Power"); Allstate ("The Future of the American City"); and Citi ("The Challenge of Global Markets").
When asked by TPM, Hooper declined to comment on how much a corporation pays to sponsor an event, so it is unclear if the Atlantic asks anywhere in the $25,000 to $250,000 range described in the Post's flier that advertised for underwriting opportunities."...
==================================
More from Yale 360 authors that laws Davenport seeks aren't the answer:
2/27/12, "Beyond Cap and Trade, A New Path to Clean Energy," Yale 360, by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
"Proponents of U.S. emissions limits maintain that legally binding carbon caps will provide certainty that emissions will go down in the future, whereas technology development and deployment — along with efforts to regulate conventional air pollutants — do not.... But the cap-and-trade proposal that
failed in the last Congress, like the one that has been in place in Europe, would have provided no such certainty. It was so riddled with loopholes, offset provisions, and various other cost-containment mechanisms that emissions would have been able to rise at business-as-usual levels for decades."...
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Global Warming ‘action’ was institutionalized in US government in 1990 by George Bush the 1st in the “U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990.” CO2 reduction is mentioned near the end..
Devoting 13 federal agencies to ‘climate’ matters is hardly lagging in “action.”
Trillions have been taken from US taxpayers for climate endeavors via agency budget allocations, tax subsidies, diversion of US military to climate or green projects, countless federal regulations, vast sums shipped out in no strings foreign aid for ‘climate’ capacity building, etc.
Other countries’ CO2 hasn’t dropped despite hundreds of billions spent on cap and trade and extra taxes. This isn’t to say the US government hasn’t become business partners with the ‘climate’ industry.
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11/19/12, “More than 1,000 New Coal Plants Planned Worldwide,” Damian Carrington, UK Guardian
.
“India is planning 455 new plants compared to 363 in China, which is seeing a slowdown in its coal investments after a vast building program in the past decade.”…
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11/28/12, “Toxic effect of China environmental nondisclosure,” MarketWatch, via Caixlin online
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12/13/10, “Perverse’ CO2 Payments Send Flood of Money to China,” by Mark Schapiro, Yale Environment 360
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1/16/13, “China’s Green Leap Backward,” The Nation, Lucia Green-Weiskel-----------------------------------------
Above, August, 2007: “China’s industrial growth depends on coal, plentiful but polluting, from mines like this one in Shenmu, Shaanxi Province, behind a village store,” NY Times.
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3 SEIU ads ran alongside Davenport's article, a banner across the top, another at top right, and another farther down the page
on the right.
SEIU's ad promoted its "Healthcare education Project," "Protect Hospital Outpatient payments." .
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