As President Obama prepares to embark on his second and final term, it?s worth exploring what he can do to foster progress on environmental issues and the nation?s, and world?s, energy and climate challenges. In November, I sought reader input as I reported a piece on this question for Men?s Journal. The focus is on steps that can be taken even with tight budgets and polarized politics.
The article was posted online on Friday. Here are some excerpts.
From the introduction:
The temptation is to focus on issues that inflame the public, like the?Keystone XL pipeline, but the president would do better to take a wider perspective. Keystone, for one, would pump only 830,000 barrels of oil from tar sands a day, about a third of the 2.3 million barrels of oil Canada already sends us, and a mere fraction of our heavily subsidized 19-million-barrel-a-day habit. We spoke to scientists, economists, and policy advisers, who recommended the most impactful environmental measures, ones that can be achieved over the course of the next four years. Here?s their nine-point plan to protect the planet.
Speed the shift from coal:
The best tool Obama has to reduce coal use is to implement the EPA?s existing?Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which place limits on mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel, and other toxic emissions associated with coal. But the coal industry has been pressuring the EPA to reconsider the standard, pushing to weaken regulations that could affect dozens of decades-old, heavily-polluting coal plants like Indianapolis? Harding Street Station, which has been in operation for 54 years.
For those who think cutting coal is too expensive in a recession, we must recognize the massive, $60 billion annual?health costs associated with burning this fossil fuel?? everything from cardiovascular and respiratory illness to premature death. ?You could pension off all the 80,000 workers in the coal industry for a tiny fraction of the medical bills due to burning coal,? says Burton Richter, a Nobel laureate in physics. [The rest.]
Bring more oversight to the gas age. The administration can move forward with planned rules requiring the industry to stem leaks of natural gas into the air (which is easily doable, often at a profit) and can intensify work with China and other gas-rich countries to advance gas extraction without environmental regrets. Here?s another move I outlined in the magazine piece:
Seventeen?environmental groups have petitioned the EPA?to require disclosure of chemicals used in fracking under the Toxics Release Inventory, an effective, decades-old program that already applies to most industries (including the coal industry). Likewise, contaminated water generated in fracking can be tightly regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Toxic Substances Control Act. ?Our job isn?t to promote natural gas ? the market is doing that because the stuff is so cheap and abundant,? says Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund and an adviser to the Secretary of Energy. ?Our job is to protect air and water supplies.? [The rest.]
Cut carbon dioxide from power plants:?
President Obama can do for power plants what the administration has done for vehicles: require reductions in CO2. The EPA has proposed a?Carbon Pollution Standard for Future Power Plants, which would restrict the emission of greenhouse gases, requiring coal plants, in particular, to be more efficient and cleaner. It?s up to the president to move on this proposal and use his executive power to set limits on the amount of carbon pollution new power plants can emit. ?There are no indications that the new Congress will be receptive to effective climate legislation,? says Daniel Lashof of the?Natural Resources Defense Council. ?But [Obama] can do these things without waiting for Congress.? [The rest.]
Getting corn out of gas tanks:
The Renewable Fuel Standard, passed in 2005, may sound like a high-minded environmental program. But pressing U.S. farmers to grow corn for ethanol fuel use is not good green policy. This past year, 40 percent of domestic corn crops have gone into gas tanks, even as a rise in global food prices has hurt the poorest families. And while the idea of growing fuel is a solid one, many scientists argue that turning corn into fuel has proved to be as water- and energy-intensive as drilling for oil. ?It is time to take a hard look at the carbon benefits of corn ethanol and its impacts on food prices around the world,? says Jonathan Foley, the director of the?Institute on the Environment?at the University of Minnesota. [The rest.]
I also discuss restoring bison, provisions in the farm bill that could benefit the environment, tightening control of offshore oil drilling and pressing forward ? for a host of reasons ? on United States ratification of the Law of the Sea convention.
Here?s the concluding point:
Stop subsidizing the building boom in danger zones:
The president and Congress should?cut federal subsidies?that keep the price of insurance in some high-risk zones (flood plains, coastal areas threatened by rising seas, and regions prone to wildfires) artificially ? and disastrously ? low.
?If we had never created the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), the private market would be charging much higher premiums and it would be much more of a deterrent for people living in these places,? says Eileen Fretz, director of flood management at the non-profit,?American Rivers. While we?re not likely to completely end government-backed insurance, last June?Congress passed legislation?that cut NFIP funding for businesses, second homes, and repeat beneficiaries (that is, homes that flooded multiple times). This is a good start, but we need to do more: stop giving taxpayer protection, and indirectly encouraging development, to communities behind levees. We also need to actively protect our most valuable flood protection infrastructure ? wetlands, barrier islands, and dune beaches.
Similar opportunities lie in the nation?s wildfire ?red zones,? where the government is spending $3 billion a year on wildfire protection. ?We ain?t seen nothing yet,? says Ray Rasker, an economist and director of?Headwaters Economics. Only 16 percent of private wildland now has homes, he says. ?Put climate change on top of new development, and you have a crisis.? He suggests cutting support for construction of at-risk homes, doing away with breaks like the federal mortgage tax deduction. [The rest.]
Here?s a bit more on this last point that didn?t make it into the piece but is worth adding here:
Given the disastrous impact of wildfires on communities from Texas to Colorado, President Obama can order a reexamination of forest management practices on federal lands that have resulted in huge accumulations of fuel for conflagrations. He can insure that federal agencies responsible for developing codes for construction and materials move ahead with plans for national codes and standards for building in what?s called the ?wildland-urban interface.? The standards would tighten depending on level of hazard determined through a ?fire exposure severity zoning system.?
Finally, Nicholas Pinter, a Southern Illinois University scientist studying flooding disasters, says Obama should consider broader shifts in the budget and bureaucracy at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which still is mainly focused on responding once a disaster has struck ? with only 15 percent of its spending in such instances devoted to steps that can cut known vulnerability the next time around.
?The lessons of Katrina have been learned well, at least in terms of disaster response,? Pinter says, noting that FEMA was well prepared and acted aggressively after Hurricane Sandy struck. ?The same lessons need to be applied to preparing for the next disaster,? he says. ?Cut away the unbelievable red tape ? typically three to five years of it for approval of even the most meritorious FEMA disaster mitigation project.?
There?s plenty more he can do, of course, including making the case for boosted investments in basic science, basic research by industry and programs that foster youth and public understanding of science and the environment.
If you had an ?Obama moment,? what would you say to the president?
Here are some ideas from previous posts on this administration?s energy choices
In November, I proposed initiating a Twitter discussion on the president?s environmental policies around the hashtag #ObamaEnv. I?ll do so again. Here?s the feed:
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