Climate Bills and a Green Economy

More Americans Say Global Warming Exaggerated

March 11, 2010

Reuters - A growing number of Americans, nearly half the country, think global warming worries are exaggerated and more people doubt that scientific warnings of severe environmental fallout will ever occur, according to a new Gallup poll.

The new doubts come as President Barack Obama pressures Congress to produce legislation significantly cutting smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for climate change problems.

Gallup's survey was released on the same day that the Obama administration unveiled in Texas a public-private report underscoring threats to birds as climate change alters their habitat and food supply, pushing many species to extinction.

With congressional elections in November, many lawmakers are hesitant to take on a controversial energy and environment bill, especially if voter interest is waning.

Around the world, concerns about climate change have dipped as economic worries took higher priority, according to a Nielson/Oxford University survey in December, which found the highest concern was in Latin America and Asia-Pacific countries like the Philippines, where typhoons are a big threat.

While U.S. worries about climate change fell significantly in the Nielson poll, they did not come close to some eastern European countries such as Estonia, which ranked bottom.

In response to escalating attacks from global warming skeptics, the Union of Concerned Scientists on Thursday released a letter they said was signed by more than 2,000 climate scientists and economists, including some Nobel prize winners, urging the U.S. Senate to pass a climate change bill.

"The strength of the science on climate change compels us to warn the nation about the growing risk of irreversible consequences ... as temperatures rise further, the scope and severity of global warming impacts will continue to accelerate," they wrote.

The Gallup poll, conducted March 4-7, indicates a reversal in public sentiment on an issue that not only involves the environment, but also economic and national security concerns.

Forty-eight percent of Americans now believe that the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated, up from 41 percent last year and 31 percent in 1997, when Gallup first asked the question.

The survey follows reports that some of the scientific details of findings that went into international global warming reports were either flawed or exaggerated.

Supporters of a global effort to keep the Earth's temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels agree that scientists need to be more fastidious in their research, but there is overwhelming evidence that a warming planet will lead to ice melting, flooding, drought, refugees and the spread of disease.

The United States has made a non-binding pledge to seek a 17 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, from 2005 levels, mostly by switching to alternative energy, such as wind and solar power. But without legislation from Congress, that goal is unlikely to be met.

The Gallup poll of slightly more than 1,014 adults has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percent.

A majority still believes global warming is real but that percentage is falling, with the average American now less convinced than at any time since 1997.

Thirty-five percent said in the latest poll that the effects of global warming either will never happen (19 percent) or will not happen in their lifetimes (16 percent).

U.S. East Carbon Prices Inch Up in Quarterly Auction

March 12, 2010

Reuters - Prices for permits allowing power plants to emit the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the U.S. East rose slightly in the latest quarterly auction, states in the regional market said on Friday.

The prices for the market's first control period, which runs until 2011, rose 2 cents to $2.07 a ton in an auction held earlier this week, said the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a group of 10 states that run a cap-and-trade system on emissions from power plants.

The slight gain came as a bit of relief to brokers, traders, and government officials trying to build the nascent U.S. carbon markets. They hope to create a system that rewards polluters with credits they can sell for making investments in clean energy, such as solar and wind power, or switching to cleaner fuels, such as natural gas instead of coal.

"With each successful auction, the RGGI states continue to show that cap-and-trade works and can jump-start a green economy with fewer emissions, lower electric bills and more jobs," said David Littell, chair of the RGGI board of directors.

RGGI prices for permits in the first period had fallen in the previous three auctions as the recession and low prices for clean-burning natural gas had depressed demand for the permits.

In the latest auction, allowances for the 2012 to 2014 control period sold for $1.86 a ton, clinging to a record low the permits got in the last auction held in September, RGGI said. Each permit allows the holder to emit one ton of carbon dioxide.

Not all of the permits sold in the later period, with 46,992 permits out of 2,137,992 available failing to find a buyer, the group said. Unsold permits may be sold in future auctions according to each state's rules.

All of the 40,612,408 allowances in the first period sold.

RGGI said the auction, the group's seventh, raised nearly $89 million for investments in clean energy and energy efficiency programs.

Environmentalists have worried that some states facing budget deficits may be trying to use the funds raised by RGGI for other purposes.

The regional market was formed at a time when there was no federal action on regulating the gases blamed for warming the planet. The formation of a national cap-and-trade market on emissions from power plants, vehicles, ships and planes is far from certain as it faces opposition from lawmakers in energy-rich states.

U.S. senators crafting compromise climate legislation have said they have not settled on a mechanism to create a price on carbon. But putting a cap-and-trade market only on power plants, which emit about 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, may be an option.

The states in the RGGI pact are: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.