I just got out of a meeting between Gazette editors and Charles Patton, who is succeeding Dana Waldo as president of American Electric Power’s Appalachian Power subsidiary here in West Virginia.
It might come as a shocker to those in the coal world who are celebrating the death of congressional legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions, but here’s what Patton had to say about lawmakers’ inaction:
We were disappointed that no action was taken. We understand why there was great opposition in the Midwest and especially in coal-producing states.
But the dilemma we face as an industry is there appears to be some amount of inevitability that something in the carbon world is going to happen.
Patton — who spent a good share of his career working as a policy person and lobbyist for AEP and related companies — lamented that climate change legislation has become such a partisan issue in Washington, D.C., and noted that during the Bush administration many more Republicans (including Sen. John McCain) supported passage of a climate bill.
Clearly, power companies like AEP would prefer congressional action to greenhouse gas regulations written by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — and certainly to lawsuits and court rulings like the one AEP is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
But Patton noted that the industry needs certainty and predictability, and needs time to put into place whatever emissions controls are needed or fuel switches or other actions are required. And he knows that in order for carbon capture and storage technology to be widely deployed, utilities must be given an incentive to do so in the form of some kind of emissions limits:
We can’t turn on a dime. It takes years and years to plan and develop generation capacity. So we need to know what the future holds to allow us to successfully plan for the future.
I’ll have more from our discussion with Patton in tomorrow’s Gazette …
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To operate a huge company like AEP, one has to have respect for the basic laws of nature, as science has been able to discern them. That’s why AEP supports putting a price on atmospheric carbon emissions.
Those laws, as discerned by science, are now clear. They dictate that if we do not radically cut atmospheric carbon emissions, humanity is rapidly headed for a hellish climate unlike anything our species has ever seen.
What makes me sad, sad, is to think of the well-educated enablers in Charleston (and elsewhere) office towers who are standing in the way of preserving this Earth for our grandchildren. Political leaders like Senator Rockefeller are making a mistake to listen to these tragic, fearful voices. A much better path is available — let’s get on it, now!
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I agree with Thomas. It is very sad that the Republican Senators cannot get beyond being total obstructionists and the Democratic Senators can’t get beyond their “fear”. What we need are true leaders who can be honest with their constituents about the real facts of climate change and who can make the hard decisions based on those facts. Senator Rockefeller should be one of those leaders; but instead, he has chosen to put his head in the sand. One wonders how this Congress will be judged 20 to 50 years down the road. I sure don’t think anyone will be admiring it’s courage.
The enactment of some form carbon tax is probably unavoidable. If it happens, some of this money must be paid to our coal producing counties to help promote economic diversification.
We are all frightened by the out of control levels of government spending. This has been highlighted by the release of an audit showing $8.7B in funds sent to Iraqi cannot be accounted for. None the less, a carbon tax will hurt our people and our people should receive a portion of the carbon tax to help them rebuild their economy.
We have been able to create a lot of developable land through mountain removal mining. Now the mission is to market it. The most obvious way is to make a tourist attraction a part of a post mining land use plan. Once people begin to visit the site someone will decide that just further along the ridge would be a great place to locate their manufacturing plant.
Here’s an interesting article on why putting a gradually rising price on carbon pollution and returning most of the money directly to American taxpayers is a serious strategy:
http://www.thenation.com/senate-climate-bill-dies-does-environment-win
Here’s an excerpted quote:
The fate of the climate . . . may now turn on the environmental lobby’s willingness to embrace the alternative that has been there all along: a revenue-neutral, steadily rising carbon fee, the proceeds from which would be redistributed to Americans via equal monthly dividends—or, in a variant favored by some economists, in which the regressive and anti-jobs payroll tax is phased out as carbon fee revenues ramp up.
“A climate bill based on a revenue-neutral and rising carbon fee would not require a cap-and-trade market in carbon derivatives; would be transparent and hence less vulnerable to the K Street carve-outs that turned cap-and-trade bills into laughing stocks; could be imitated internationally (since carbon fees are fungible while carbon caps are not); and wouldn’t require a PhD in complexity to grasp. Indeed, one such bill, America’s Energy Security Trust Fund Act of 2009, sponsored by Connecticut Democrat John Larson, is all of twenty-one pages, versus upwards of 1,500 for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that squeaked through the House last year and the similar Kerry-Lieberman bill that just died in the Senate. Yet the emission reductions under the Larson bill would be two to three times as great as those from Waxman-Markey.
“We can drive emissions reductions throughout the economy while protecting Americans’ pocketbooks if we reframe the climate debate. Cap-and-trade is dead, and not a moment too soon. With its simplicity, its transparency and its economic rewards for everyone but die-hard polluters, fee-and-dividend could be a political winner. If environmentalists and others who care about averting climate catastrophe can unite around this approach, the public is ready to be convinced and, one hopes, mobilized. And, as two centuries of struggle for racial, labor and gender justice should have taught us, a mobilized public is essential to winning the climate battle.”
My personal expert/friend on these issues told me in an e-mail:
“Whatever does emerge in the months/years to come will need to be simpler, more transparent, more fair to consumers, more clear in sending economic signals to all sectors, more efficient than what we have seen so far — in order to get the Republican votes needed, and the wavering Democrats who will only be moved from solicitous concern about the views of special interests by a voter demand for recycling the dividends in some form to them.”
Sounds plausible to me. Yes, we can!