IN WHICH WE CONFRONT THE UNITED STATES OF DUH
Voices from Cyberspace:
tasherbean:
You would think that a ballot measure that was funded by two Texas oil companies and two extreme right wing billionaires would be dead on arrival in ANY state, but particularly here, in California. Of course it’s being sold by the right, like everything else they try to sell, as “your taxes will go up!!” Pathetic.
3:52 PM September 10, 2010 from web
tramky:
California is essentially bankrupt, strangled by the environmental lobby and their counterparts that have dominated the California landscape—and laws—for far too long … It has been outrageous, and perhaps Prop 23 can help bring an end to it. The future of California depends on it.
6:36 AM September 11, 2010 from web
OF ALL THE BATTLES THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY HAS WAGED IN the United States to stop legislation on climate change, none displayed its brute determination better than the war it financed in California over Proposition 23, the petition to kill climate change legislation.
Despite the top-priority status Obama gave to climate change legislation when he took office, the Senate’s three attempts had gone down in flames. Fossil fuel interests succeeded in watering down these bills to such an extent that they even alienated potential backers. The last bill, sponsored by Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman, didn’t even make it to the Senate floor. Oil, coal and gas companies had proved to be the masters of the U.S. Senate.
American environmentalists turned to California as their last real hope. California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2006, was gaining support in other states and therefore posed a major threat to polluters. The state’s environmental legislation normally has impacts that go well beyond its borders. As America’s most populous state with the eighth-largest economy in the world, California has a history of setting North American standards in environmental law, which is a bit odd given that its air is among the dirtiest in the nation. It is America’s largest car market. If you want to sell cars in California, you have to meet that state’s tighter regulations, so you might as well make those regulations universal. Countries such as Canada follow standards set by California.
So in 2006, when California enacted the Global Warming Solutions Act, the first climate change regulation in the United States, its standards threatened to migrate all over America and into Canada. Which is exactly what began to happen. Soon, seven western states and four Canadian provinces—British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Québec—joined California in a cap-and-trade program and in writing regulations in a regional effort to cut emissions.
The act requires California to reduce its GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This constitutes a reduction of about 30 percent from business as usual. It also requires that by 2050 the state reduce its emissions 80 percent from 1990 levels.1 This is what the science demands and it is what many countries in the European Union have committed to. Attached to this law are a host of regulations that will start the process of emission cuts in 2012. Any delay would reduce the state’s ability to meet its targets. The act, known as Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), represented an enormous challenge to the oil companies, particularly those with refineries in California. They viewed overturning AB 32 as the fight of their lives.
Their first political opportunity came with the state elections in 2010. In February of that year, several California conservative organizations, led by the powerful Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and its 200,000 members, began a campaign to kill the act. With money from Texas and California oil companies—including Occidental Petroleum Corporation, which had recently discovered new oil reserves in California—they paid US$2.2 million to National Petition Management Inc. to collect signatures from California voters to get what became known as Proposition 23 onto the ballot for the November 2, 2010, general elections. By May 2010, they had obtained the necessary 433,971 signatures and the race was on. As the Adam Smith Foundation of Missouri, a conservative advocacy group that contributed US$498,000 to the effort to kill the global warming law, said: “California’s environmental regulations are among the strictest in the nation … Unfortunately for the rest of the nation, these poorly designed and heavy-handed regulations often work their way east and become the law of the land within a few short years.”
The wording of the proposition was important. The drafters avoided language that would outright nullify the global warming act. Instead, they sought to make it practically impossible to implement the law’s provisions. The proposition would stop any agency of the state government from implementing any laws or regulations having to do with greenhouse gases or renewable energy until the state’s unemployment rate was 5.5 percent or less for four consecutive quarters. That was the unemployment rate when the law was enacted in 2006. By 2010, it had more than doubled to 12.5 percent. It had been at or below 5.5 percent only three times since 1976, when the state began keeping employment records. So if Proposition 23 passed, the possibility of implementing the global warming legislation was basically nil.
By making action contingent on employment, opponents of the law claimed the issue was not global warming but jobs. And every American could relate to that. As James Kellogg, a plumbing and pipefitting union representative, wrote in a column in the San Francisco Chronicle, his union supported Proposition 23 because it would “protect jobs and benefits and save California families billions of dollars in higher energy costs.” He added that any green jobs would likely go to China, where they could produce wind turbines and solar panels cheaper than in California. Supporters labeled Proposition 23 “The California Jobs Initiative.” Opponents called it “The Dirty Energy Proposition.”2 U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who was doubtful the U.S. Senate would ever pass a climate change bill, called the battle over Proposition 23 “a seminal moment in U.S. climate legislation.”
As soon as Proposition 23 won a spot on the November ballot, financial contributions to the California Jobs Initiative—the pro–Prop 23 side—began to pour in from oil companies. By the November election, 98 percent of the money had come from oil interests, the lion’s share from two Texas companies and one from Kansas. Valero Energy Corporation of San Antonio, Texas, had two of its fourteen refineries in California. (It also has a refinery in Québec, where it carries on business under the Ultramar label.) Despite losses of US$352 million in 2009 and US$1 billion in 2008, the company managed to donate US$508,000 towards the petition campaign. Once Proposition 23 got on the ballot, Valero poured in another US$4.1 million. Another major contributor was Tesoro, also of San Antonio, Texas, and with two refineries in California. It shelled out US$2.1 million. Both of these companies refine primarily a cheaper sour and heavy crude that spews thousands of pounds of toxic pollutants into the air.3 They are considered among California’s top polluters.
“These two companies have fought climate change [legislation] in Washington and want to kill it here so it doesn’t spread anywhere else,” said Steve Maviglio, spokesperson for opponents of Proposition 23. “The two companies have taken billions in profits out of this state in the last ten years. They see that at risk in the development of our clean-energy economy and they certainly will be on the hook for millions of dollars in costs to clean up their pollution. They would rather spend the money on a ballot measure than cleaning up their mess.”
The third-largest single contributor was Koch (pronounced “coke”) Industries Inc., of Wichita, Kansas. It donated $1 million through its subsidiary, Flint Hills Resources, also of Wichita. But it was Koch’s vast network of conservative advocacy groups that worried the opponents of Proposition 23 the most.
The company is owned by Charles and David Koch, brothers who rank eighteenth on the most recent international Forbes billionaires list with a combined personal fortune of $44 billion. Koch Industries, the second-largest private enterprise in the United States, had revenues of $100 billion in 2009 from a variety of businesses, including forestry products, ranching, oil refineries and pipelines that produce up to 800,000 barrels of oil a day. Their father was a founder in 1958 of the ultraconservative John Birch Society and the sons are libertarians who carry their conservative banner like warlords. In Obama’s first year as U.S. president, the Kochs spent US$20 million lobbying primarily on behalf of its oil and gas interests against emission control legislation and regulations of toxic chemicals such as dioxin. This was 36 percent more than they had spent on lobbying throughout the entire eight years of the Bush administration. In addition, they have spent millions supporting Republican politicians who oppose caps on emissions. One major recipient has been the Oklahoma climate change denier Senator Jim Inhofe.
For decades they have been leaders in financing conservative causes through a host of institutions, think tanks and foundations, many of which they created. The Kochs are the symbol of the old economy versus the new. They campaign against pretty well any regulation or law designed to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels and transform its economy to clean energy. Meanwhile, their refineries and pipelines have been convicted of an impressive list of criminal and civil violations of environmental laws. According to a 2004 article by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity,4 these have involved more than three hundred oil spills from Koch pipelines, discharges over the legal limit of the cancer-causing organic chemical benzene from a Texas refinery, gas leaks and falsifying documents. In all cases, Koch Industries escaped with relatively small fines after the Bush administration took office in 2000.
Koch’s Minnesota refinery is one of the largest importers of the high-carbon heavy crude from the Canadian tar sands. This business is threatened by low carbon fuel standards, which is why Koch has campaigned against them in the United States, particularly in California, Massachusetts and Oregon. It claims the low carbon standards would “cripple refiners that rely on heavy crude feedstocks” and would be “particularly devastating for refiners that use heavy Canadian crude.”5
Yet at the same time, they have invested heavily in ethanol production, taking advantage of government subsidies in that industry.
Plumbing the depths of government for special favors and largesse is not something they do willingly. In fact, they claim that they are pulled into it kicking and screaming in order to compete in markets contaminated by political favoritism. As Charles Koch stated in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece,6 the fault lies in the government’s “market-distorting” programs:
Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations or tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay.
Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.
Because every other company in a given industry is accepting market-distorting programs, Koch companies have had little option but to do so as well, simply to remain competitive and help sustain our 50,000 U.S.-based jobs. However, even when such policies benefit us, we only support the policies that enhance true economic freedom.
For example, because of government mandates, our refining business is essentially obligated to be in the ethanol business. We believe that ethanol—and every other product in the marketplace—should be required to compete on its own merits, without mandates, subsidies or protective tariffs. Such policies only increase the prices of those products, taxes and the cost of many other goods and services.
A Greenpeace report in 2010 called Koch Industries “a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.” The brothers are the billionaires behind much of the climate change fearmongering.
Between 2005 and 2010, the Kochs spent US$47.3 million lobbying Washington against tax increases, social programs and environmental regulations.7 But they work most of their magic through think tanks. Koch money and expertise is behind the ultraconservative Tea Party movement that seeks to dominate the far-right faction of the Republican Party. Since 1997, the Kochs have given more than US$48 million in grants to a tangled group of thirty-nine conservative organizations, which together are often referred to as the Kochtopus.8 They describe themselves as research and educational institutions. The Koch-supported Heritage Foundation sums up its mission thus: “to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”9 Among the most active are the Cato Institute (which famously declared that the 2008 market collapse was caused by too much government regulation), the Mercatus Center, Americans for Prosperity Foundation and FreedomWorks, all of which the Kochs founded and continue to help finance. Their reports, websites, blogs and papers serve as a platform for climate change deniers and skeptics, who often attack the credibility of climate change science, oppose controls on greenhouse gas emissions and try to discredit scientists working with the International Panel on Climate Change. In 2009, the Cato Institute ran full-page ads in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times claiming that the “case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.” The ad claimed, “There has been no net global warming for over a decade.” This, of course, is flatly contradicted by the scientific consensus.
In Canada, the Kochs have given $175,000 to the conservative Fraser Institute, which has published papers opposing government efforts to regulate emissions, claiming, wrongly, that “from a scientific standpoint there is a powerful case to be made that [they] are wholly unnecessary.” Many other Fraser Institute papers raise doubts about the global scientific consensus on climate change. (The institute has also received $120,000 from ExxonMobil since 2003.)
Of all the Koch-funded groups, the Heartland Institute of Chicago stands out as among the most blatant and persistent publishers of climate-change skeptics. For example, the institute’s publications have run stories that claim “Electric Cars Threaten Energy Independence,” “CO2 Curbs Would Be Devastating” and “Carbon Dioxide Restrictions Will Devastate Environmental Treasures.” It holds an annual International Climate Conference that is a stage for global warming deniers.
In a 2001 statement, the Mercatus Center, which was set up by the Kochs at the publicly funded George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, told Congress that global warming is “beneficial, occurring at night, in the winter, and at the poles.” By 2009, the Mercatus admitted that man-made climate change poses dangers, but suggested that populations simply be moved out of areas adversely affected by climate change in lieu of emission reductions.10
The pinnacle of denier success came after unknown hackers stole thousands of personal emails from computers at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain. Many so-called “experts” appeared on Fox News, CNN, the BBC and other networks to claim that the emails proved climate scientists attached to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had invented, hidden or fudged data to prove that the climate is warming. Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute spearheaded the attack, appearing on radio or television twenty-seven times to voice “climategate” allegations. Five independent investigations totally absolved the scientists of any wrongdoing and demonstrated that the allegations against them were based on an incorrect reading of several of the emails. Nevertheless, the Cato and Heartland institutes continued to make their allegations, even citing each other as sources. In August 2010, Michaels took part in a Fox News show entitled “The Green Swindle” where the announcer, Glenn Beck, stated that “the emails reveal a plot among the world’s top climate scientists to hide the real inconvenient truth that the evidence supporting man-made global warming is far from conclusive.” Michaels was quoted in a September 2010 publication of the Heartland Institute attacking the IPCC. The story stated, “Key scientists working with the IPCC hid, manipulated and destroyed scientific evidence that contradicted their alarmist claims.” The story failed to mention that the scientists had been cleared.
Of all Michaels’s television appearances, probably the most instructive was on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show on August 15, 2010. He appeared with Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and Gavin Schmidt, a NASA scientist. The discussion was about assessing the present danger of climate change and how to respond to it.
Schmidt: “We know that the planet is warming. This decade is the warmest decade that we have in the instrumental record. It’s warmer than the nineties. The nineties are warmer than the eighties. The eighties are warmer than the seventies … And what we anticipate is that because we continue to add carbon dioxide to the system, we are going to continue to warm decade by decade by decade. The exact magnitude of where we are going to go is going to depend a little bit on the system but also on the decisions that we make as a society to either reduce carbon emissions or just carry on with business as usual.”
Fareed Zakaria then asked Michaels if there was anything there that he disagreed with.
Michaels: “It’s very clear that the planet is warmer than it was and that people have something to do with it. What we’re concerned about is the magnitude and the rate of the warming … Simply saying that we should reduce emissions may actually be the wrong thing to do at the moment if you don’t have the technology to really effectively do this and to do it globally.”
Fareed asked: “What do you mean we can’t do it effectively? We know how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We just stop using fuels that emit it. It may not be economically pleasant but that’s different. We know how to do it.”
Michaels replied: “We don’t have a replacement technology. We simply don’t have it.”
Fareed: “I agree with that but that’s different from saying we don’t know how to do it.”
Fareed then turned to Sachs and asked how, if we don’t know how to wean ourselves off our fossil fuel–based way of life, we are going to solve the issue.
Sachs: “I think what Pat [Michaels] says is absolutely correct that you need a plan. But we need to get started now … I believe that the costs of inaction are so frightening for the world that they are beyond our imagining … They could be devastating for hundreds of millions of people. They could lead to war. They could lead to famine and that is not hyperbole. That is a very hard-headed assessment.”
Fareed turned back to Michaels and asked: “When you hear all this doesn’t it worry you? … Don’t you want to do something about this?”
Michaels replied that what worries him are “opportunity costs.” He explained that the climate change legislation that had gone before the U.S. Senate “would have cost a lot and been futile and when you take that away and when the government favors certain technologies and politicizes technologies you are doing worse than nothing. You are actually impairing your ability to respond in the long run. And that’s my major concern with this issue … I’m advocating for efficiency.”
Fareed: “Some people say that you are advocating for the current petroleum-based industry to stay as it is.”
Fareed: “And that a lot of your research is funded by these industries.”
Michaels: “No.”
Fareed: “Is your research funded by these industries?”
Michaels: “Not largely. The, uh, fact of the matter is …”
Fareed: “Can I ask you what percentage of your work is funded by the petroleum industry?”
Michaels: “I don’t know. Forty percent. I don’t know.” Then he went on to say that technology will change “in a hundred years and we will very likely not be a fossil fuel–based economy in a hundred years.”
Fareed: “You’re confident we will be around in one hundred years.”
Michaels: “Oh yeah.”
Fareed then turned to Schmidt and asked what would happen if mankind did not take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Schmidt: “If we [allow business as usual to continue] we will end up with a different planet. We will end up with a planet that won’t be recognizable in terms of where crops can be grown, that won’t be recognizable in terms of where rain is falling, that won’t be recognizable in terms of where glaciers are and ice sheets are and where the sea level is.”
Sachs: “And to put that in human terms, that’s a catastrophic planet. Not just a different planet … The ironic point is the combination of the technologies we have already in hand and those that are close on the horizon—if we do this sensibly we can do this at low cost, save the planet and save the economy.”
Time was almost up. Michaels quickly interjected the last word: “And every time we threaten an apocalypse and it doesn’t happen we cheapen the issue. Thank you.”
Stunned silence. Michaels had come full circle, embodying the merry-go-round that has paralyzed debate in the United States. The advocate for climate denial had now agreed on CNN that the planet is warming and we’re responsible. The advocate for no government intervention was now claiming that all he wants is an efficient plan. Michaels was looking suspiciously like a liberal. But then he inserted his parting shot: “Every time we threaten an apocalypse and it doesn’t happen we cheapen the issue.” It was aimed at Sachs and Schmidt, implying that they are cheap doomsayers. Michaels was saying that we shouldn’t warn people about the dangers of walking on thin ice because until someone actually falls through the ice you would be, in his words, “cheapening the issue” of the dangers of thin ice. Of course, this makes no sense. But when you are pouring oil on a burning planet, baffling the public about what is actually happening is the only weapon you have.
And Americans are baffled. While NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration join the IPCC in concluding that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that there is “very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming,” polls showed that by the fall of 2010 Americans had become increasingly doubtful. The Kochtopus seemed to be working.
In July 2010, the Koch brothers turned their guns on California and began pouring money into defeating AB 32. The arsenal was not just the Kochs’ million-dollar donation. The Tea Party movement had given them an army of acolytes to serve the cause. The Koch-funded FreedomWorks sent in the youthful Brendan Steinhauser, its director of federal and state campaigns. Steinhauser was fresh out of the University of Texas, where he had published a book called The Conservative Revolution on how to organize conservative clubs on college campuses. Before coming to California to help organize the Tea Party, Steinhauser had attended the Heartland Institute’s climate change conference in Chicago, where he learned the denial creed. “The basic arguments of most of the scientists at the conference are that climate change has always occurred, with cooling and warming trends; that it is probably due mostly to natural variability; that CO2 has not made a major impact in the climate change trends; and that man has very, very little impact on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere,” he wrote in his blog conservativerevolution.com. “These scientists have basically debunked the hoax of global warming alarmism, point by point. Every conservative activist should watch their speeches, read their books and articles and keep up with their blogs … We can win the propaganda war if we highlight our best minds in this battle and work to get them more exposure.” In California, Steinhauser turned his talents to defeating the “left’s lies about global warming,” as he put it. He tried to rally his Tea Partiers behind Proposition 23, telling them to “bombard” Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor, with letters urging her to support Proposition 23. Whitman opposed it.
Eight weeks before the election, the two sides appeared to be in a dead heat. A concerned California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, charged that Proposition 23 was motivated by “self-serving greed.” Speaking at the fourth anniversary of AB 32, he said, “Does anybody really believe they are doing this out of the goodness of their black oil hearts—spending millions and millions of dollars to save jobs?” He called California “America’s last hope for energy change.”
The ballot box wasn’t the only battlefield. There were a growing number of lawsuits or threats of lawsuits. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, joined by the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Small Business Alliance and the Western States Petroleum Association, sued the state over expenses incurred in implementing AB 32. The oil industry challenged California’s low-carbon fuel standards.
In addition, Texas, Nebraska and Alabama threatened to sue California if Proposition 23 lost. They claimed that AB 32 violated constitutional rights relating to interstate commerce. In particular, they were talking about the flow of electricity from coal-fired power plants. As of this writing, North Dakota says it is considering suing Minnesota, claiming its 30-percent emission reduction law illegally restricts North Dakota’s coal-fired power plants, which supply electricity to Minnesota. In another case, Alabama backed the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in a lawsuit filed by North Carolina. TVA operates eleven coal-fired power plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky, which pollute North Carolina. North Carolina had won an injunction forcing TVA to install emission control scrubbers on four of the plants by 2013 to comply with North Carolina law. The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in July 2010, thereby restricting a state’s ability to legislate emission reductions that might affect other states.
With five weeks to go before the elections, the supporters of Prop 23 had raised US$8.4 million and began rolling out the television ads. They featured your average middle-class California housewife staring into the camera with worried eyes and a handful of presumably unpaid bills: “I want to do my part on global warming,” she says. “All Prop 23 says is let’s wait until people are back to work and we can afford it.”
The opposition to Prop 23 assembled a broad base of individual, corporate and institutional supporters who by October 2010 had contributed more than US$12.7 million, which was 50 percent higher than the amount their antagonists, the oil companies, had donated. In all, activists formed fourteen committees opposing Prop 23. Most of them worked through a central committee called “No on 23—Californians to Stop the Dirty Energy Proposition.” Major contributors included the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, ClimateWorks Foundation, the National Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council of New York. Tom Steyer, an asset manager, cochaired the opposition and gave US$5 million to the cause. Movie director James Cameron, creator of the eco-movie Avatar, tossed in US$1 million.11
The “No on 23” ran ads targeting the Texas oil companies’ funding of Prop 23. One ad opened with photos of wind turbines and workers installing solar panels before fading to images of belching oil refineries. A male voice said: “California is outlining a clean energy future, a growing work force of bright Californians to harness wind and solar power to move our state forward. But two Texas oil companies have a deceptive scheme to take us backwards. They’re spending millions pushing Prop 23, which would kill clean energy standards, keep us addicted to costly polluting oil and threaten hundreds of thousands of California jobs. Stop the job-killing, dirty energy proposition. Vote no on 23.”
As California debated Prop 23, it was once again experiencing record-high temperatures that threatened to cause another season of wildfires. The United States National Academies, the main scientific advisers to the nation,12 published studies that showed wildfires in the western United States were up sixfold over the last thirty years. The Academies’ models indicated that a one-degree-Celsius rise in temperatures increased the area of burn as much as 312 percent in the Sierran Steppe mixed forest regions of northwestern, northern and eastern California, 231 percent in the central dry steppe and 74 percent in the southern semidesert and desert.
Oil, gas and coal companies around the world keep pushing the envelope, lobbying politicians to take no action that will slow their growth. In most cases, they are the ones with access to government and they are the voices that governments listen to. Their trump cards are jobs and potential tax revenue.
In Canada, a country with vast potential clean-energy resources including the ideal combination of powerful and consistent wind, ample sunshine and hydro, fossil fuel interests have successfully thwarted effective emission reduction regulations. The Canadian lobby registry shows that lobbyists hired by these companies are among the largest special interest groups on Parliament Hill. They lobby not only to shape legislation in the industry’s favor but also to ensure that those industries benefit from the billions of dollars in government grants being issued for clean-energy and emission reduction projects. Since 1996, 1,570 climate change lobbyists have pounded the halls of Parliament. Their client list has steadily increased since then from just 13 to 109. While some of these lobbyists represent environmental organizations, educational and health institutions and diverse industries, the largest single group represents the fossil fuel producers, who have employed 465 lobbyists since 1996. The registry shows that they have repeated access to the Prime Minister’s Office and to the offices of his cabinet ministers.
Their pressure has been unrelenting. Stéphane Dion, environment minister in the Liberal government from 2004 to 2006, recalls, “It’s almost daily. They say, ‘What can we do? There is no technology possible [for emission cuts]. Can you exempt us? Please.’ This kind of pressure [is] always, everywhere.”
Most of it comes from Alberta, the base of Canada’s tar sands industries. Although it is home to just 10 percent of Canada’s 33 million people, Alberta is responsible for about 70 percent of the country’s oil production. With its refineries, gas flaring, coal-fired power plants, and tar sands (also known as oil sands) processing, it spews out one-third of Canada’s greenhouse gases. That figure is expected to rise to a high of 50 percent by 2025 as emissions from mining, oil and gas extraction and refining increase substantially. Indeed, from 2004 to 2007 alone, Canada’s emissions from mineral extraction increased 61 percent, “largely due to increased activity in the Alberta oil sands,” according to Canada’s 2008 National Inventory Report on greenhouse gases. Since 1990, emissions from Alberta’s mining of the oil sands have increased more than 200 percent.13 At the moment, the tar sands emit about 36 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually into the atmosphere. This is almost equal to the emissions from Canada’s 12.4 million cars. And it is just the beginning. Plans to double oil production by 2020 mean greenhouse gas emissions could more than triple to as high as 127 million metric tons a year, according to industry predictions. So when the international scientific consensus warns us that the world is teetering on the brink of catastrophic climate change, Canadians roll the dice betting that this isn’t true. It’s not a gamble intelligent people would make. And it’s certainly not a gamble Canadians have any right to make.
Mark Rudolph, a twenty-year veteran lobbyist who represents Suncor and Shell Canada, suggested that lobbying in the provincial capital of Alberta is unnecessary since the government is entirely on the industry’s side. Alberta, in effect, represents the single most powerful lobby in Ottawa, according to Rudolph. “The [Alberta] government … takes somewhat of the same point of view as the denialist companies,” he told me. “And they basically say to the feds—despite the fact that they are political brethren and the majority of the [federal] cabinet is from Alberta—‘Back off. This is our domain. Don’t bother us.’ ”14
Not only has the oil industry’s Ottawa lobbying won them a reprieve from greenhouse gas emission regulations, it has also earned them billions of dollars in current and promised grants to develop carbon capture and storage technology. In 2007, Canada’s major oil companies, along with some other energy-related businesses, created the Integrated CO2 Network15 (IC02N) to lobby for “a proposed carbon capture and storage system for Canada.” With offices at Suncor headquarters in Calgary, it employs six lobbyists, including three who had been senior policy advisers to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The main aim of the network, which includes two major coal utilities, is to secure financing for carbon capture.
That lobbying has paid off. In October 2010, Harper joined Alberta premier Ed Stelmach in making the unproven technology of carbon storage a cornerstone of Canada’s carbon reduction strategy. The leaders announced grants totaling $1.6 billion to finance two pilot projects to capture and store carbon from two coal-fired power plants owned by two members of the IC02N, Shell Energy and TransAlta Corporation. IC02N’s website says carbon capture and storage could reduce Canada’s CO2 emissions by 20 million tons, or 2.6 percent. But the enormous cost of such a nationwide push—estimated at about $16 billion—obscures the true picture of how far Canada has to go in curbing its emissions The effort would fail to capture even the carbon equivalent of a single tar sands project. In April 2012, TransAlta pulled out of the project claiming it made no economic sense. And with this retreat the cornerstone of Canada’s GHG reduction program crumbled like an oatmeal cookie.
In the end, however, few Canadians appear to care much about climate change. In the federal election of May 2011, the only politician who discussed it was Green Party leader Elizabeth May. Her determination paid off. With the help of the Canadian environmental activist community, which blitzed her British Columbia riding with a telephone campaign pleading with local voters to send an environmentalist to Ottawa, she won the Green Party’s first seat in Parliament. Across the country, however, the Green’s share of the vote fell to 4 percent, from 6.8 percent in 2008.
Just ahead of Canada on the global per-capita emitter charts is Australia. It is the world’s hottest and driest continent and has recently experienced record cycles of drought and flooding that climate models indicate will worsen. Projections show that the kind of temperature records which have brought yearlong droughts while flooding coastal areas will become normal seasonal weather patterns, implying extreme temperatures that would be unlivable. Droughts will be 10 to 40 percent more intense, as will flooding.
Yet, like Canada, Australia has been slow to act. The main reason is that coal is the primary source—81 percent—of the energy fueling its industries and homes. Coal is also the cornerstone of its foreign exchange earnings, representing about 20 percent of exports, or $55 billion. Coal power is responsible for 38 percent of Australia’s greenhouse gases. Still, the country’s production and use of coal continue to rise. Production is up about 100 percent since 1990 and is projected to double again by 2030.16
Ignoring the threat of climate change, over the last two decades Australia has purposely built up its coal industry and used the promise of cheap fuel and extensive bauxite reserves to entice heavy breathers such as energy-intensive aluminum refineries to its shores. As a result, its economy has become increasingly reliant on coal exports and these huge greenhouse gas emitters. Coal alone contributes annually more than AU$50 billion in export revenues, according to the Australian Coal Association. The four largest companies operating mines in Australia earned about US$6 billion in clear profit in 2009 and well over US$75 billion in revenue. Coal royalties make up about 10 percent of the revenues of the coal states of Queensland and New South Wales.
Despite its modest commitment to reduce greenhouse gases to a mere 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, Australia plans to double coal exports. Its coal exports already represent more than 750 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually,17 which is almost equivalent to all the emissions generated by Canada. About 80 percent of its exports go to China, Japan and other Asian countries to fuel their largely dirty plants and industries. To keep the exports flowing, the country has undertaken a rapid expansion of existing mines, resurrecting old mines and creating new ones.
Australia’s coal economy wields enormous influence over government policy, not only through the mining companies themselves but also through unions and the heavy industries that rely on cheap coal. So far, Australia has done little to reduce its emissions. It’s a country that recently built a new coal terminal and wharf a meter higher than normal to account for rising sea levels. Australia, like Canada, has chosen to build itself a monster and now it has to feed the beast.
In 2009, Australia proposed a mining or carbon tax that would help pay for the conversion of 20 percent of the country’s energy to renewables by 2020. The coal companies threatened closure of mines and launched a AU$22-million campaign against the tax. Macarthur Coal chairman Keith DeLacy suggested Australia wait until the rest of the world imposes a mining tax so Australian coal will maintain its competitiveness. “Let’s get the whole of the world working together on this,” he said. As he knew only too well, there is little hope of that happening in the near future. The proposed mining tax has been watered down to such an extent that the industry has saved about $60.5 billion over ten years.18 The industry then announced billions of dollars in expansion plans.
The intransigence of industry had by the middle of 2011 delayed indefinitely implementation of Australia’s proposed cap-and-trade program, called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. If the program is ever implemented, the government has promised many companies financial compensation. According to a report by RiskMetrics Group for the Australian Conservation Foundation, assistance promised during the first five years of the scheme would include AU$2.8 billion for Rio Tinto, AU$1.7 billion for Alcoa and AU$1 billion for steelmaker Bluescope. The top twenty polluters will reap AU$11.7 billion.
The Australian Coal Association also wants money to compensate coal producers for any losses. These producers include Anglo American Metallurgical Coal, whose chairman, Seamus French, claimed in a widely distributed company report that the trading scheme would cost Australia 126,000 jobs. “Australia is walking the plank,” he wrote, but offered no proof.19
At the UNFCCC climate talks, Australia is often an eager participant, chairing various committees and working groups. At home, meanwhile, it continues to build its coal empire.
On November 2, 2010, Californians voted 61.4 percent against Prop 23 and thereby reaffirmed their support for the climate change legislation. Even central valley counties, which are traditionally conservative, opposed Prop 23, albeit by slim margins. Despite an economy deep in recession, Californians would not be diverted from putting the environment first. Thousands of individuals joined clean-energy companies and environmental NGOs to contribute almost US$30 million towards the ultimately successful campaign, more than doubling what the oil companies had spent. Big oil was outgunned and outmaneuvered. Its scare campaign was turned against it. California did not see its future buried in the rearview mirror. It looked forward towards clean energy. The oil companies would now have to spend their money to comply with the state’s climate change law—or find a court to outlaw it.
The defeat of Prop 23 was timely. It served to build a powerful bipartisan fortress in a corner of the United States where a degree of climate change sanity ruled. With, as a result of the 2010 elections, the House of Representatives in Washington back in Republican hands and the emergence of the newly elected power bloc of Tea Party climate change deniers, any hope for progress on climate change would have had to be abandoned had the companies won in California.
Unfortunately, nothing is ever certain in America. Victory is never complete. On the same ballot as Prop 23 was a crack in California’s environmental shield through which a lesser-known and far more complex petition called Proposition 26 emerged. Critics called it the “sleeper law.” Few voters even bothered to mark its ballot entry. Fewer still knew its repercussions. On the face of it, it seemed like an honest attempt to stop the state from imposing unjustified taxes. But its scope is worrying and its effects on environmental legislation potentially devastating. It forces the state to approve any new fee or levy by a two-thirds “super-majority” instead of just a 50 percent vote. The reality is that the law increases the difficulty of imposing fees on polluters.
Most of California’s antipollution measures are financed by fees imposed on industry. So the impact of Prop 26 could be enormous as California attempts, under AB 32, to impose a fee structure designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to a study of Prop 26 by the University of California at Los Angeles’ School of Law, the law will “make it harder to impose or revise fees to fund these [emission control] programs in the future.”
To understand the true intentions of Prop 26, you simply have to look at who was behind it. Fossil fuel interests and the tobacco companies were the main donors.20 Chevron Corporation alone contributed US$3.7 million—almost one-quarter of the US$17 million spent to support the new law. While activists successfully campaigned against Prop 23 by targeting two Texas oil companies, Chevron crept to victory in a flanking action.
Ground the oil industry lost in the failure of Prop 23 could be restored by Prop 26. For these billion-dollar companies, battling pollution laws is a reflex action where the instinctive maximizing of profit trumps moral integrity and the overall well-being of society. They too are caught in their own “remorseless working of things.”