This came up during the debate on climate change legislation, and I haven’t seen it addressed. That I haven’t seen it addressed doesn’t mean much: I don’t follow environmental issues. I do know how debates degenerate, however, and how nuance gets lost, and I sometimes pal around with environmentalists.
Ten moderate Senate Democrats from states dependent on coal and manufacturing sent a letter to President Obama on Thursday saying they would not support any climate change bill that did not protect American industries from competition from countries that did not impose similar restraints on climate-altering gases.
The letter warned that strong actions to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases would add to the cost of goods like steel, cement, paper and aluminum. Unless other countries adopt similar emission limits, the senators warned, jobs will migrate overseas and foreign manufacturers will have a decided cost advantage.
The 10 senators were Evan Bayh of Indiana; Sherrod Brown of Ohio; Robert C. Byrd and John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia; Bob Casey and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania; Russ Feingold of Wisconsin; Al Franken of Minnesota; and Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
As I understand it, the midwestern liberals, Levin, Stabenow, Brown, Franken and Feingold had three concerns: manufacturing, agriculture and home heating costs.
Climate change legislation, of course, failed, so now the focus shifts to the E.P.A.:
But there is a Plan B. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases like CO2 could be considered pollutants and gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. Although that authority went unused in the waning days of former President George W. Bush’s Administration, the Obama EPA has spent much of the past year preparing the groundwork for regulation. In the absence of a climate bill, the EPA has the power — and is legally mandated by the Supreme Court — to step in and address carbon emissions.
And….. Senator Brown has the same problem he had in 2009:
The coal industry and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, don’t agree on much. But both are trying in their own ways to stop President Barack Obama’s administration from imposing rules this year on new or upgraded power plants and large factories that use coal because, both say, the rules would hurt Ohio manufacturers and consumers.
The political context cannot be ignored, say players in this debate, because Brown would be hammered with TV and radio commercials if he favored environmental rules that critics say will drive up energy prices and lead to job losses. But they also say they believe Brown’s interest in stalling immediate regulation is based on a genuine concern for manufacturers and jobs in a state that relies heavily on coal for its electricity.
Sherrod Brown (who is my Senator) is a liberal populist. He was a liberal populist in the House before it was fashionable, and he’s a liberal populist in the Senate. He has a consistent liberal voting record, and has probably earned the benefit of the doubt. I think he has a valid argument. Before we set this up as Sherrod Brown and the polluters versus the EPA and the Clean Air Act, can we discuss the concerns of Brown, Franken, Stabenow, etc. within the context of EPA regulation of greenhouse gases?
Republicans and conservatives have decided not to engage at all in any practical or serious way on this issue, as on all other issues, so just put them in the “no solutions” column. Fine. What about Democrats and liberals? Do we have a real problem here?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I would have to argue that if regulations shift us to wind and other renewable sources, the companies would not have to worry as much about the rise in oil prices affecting their costs. Even for companies that manufacture stuff based on oil (i don’t want to write petroleum), reducing the amount of gas cars use will stabilize their prices.
kay
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Brown is worried that writing regs now will impede a recovery in manufacturing. He’s asking for a one-year delay. I don’t think it has gotten by his attention however, that he’s (also) up in 2012.
Dennis SGMM
@kay:
How will changes in US regulations impede the recovery of manufacturing? Are we going to impose them on China?
danimal
Yes. This is an issue that needs to be addressed in a comprehensive manner in which all parties see their needs addressed. Also, compromise.
Good luck with that.
kay
@Dennis SGMM:
Sherrod Brown has (always) had a focus on fair trade. I live in a conservative Ohio county that relies on manufacturing and he’s an able advocate for the idea that there has to be somewhat of a level playing field on trade agreements. His argument here is consistent with that. . He says that other countries will not have a regulatory framework like that of the US on greenhouse gases, so will have a competitive advantage over Ohio, in the short term.
I know he could stretch this out the ninth (conservative) degree and insist that the US race to the bottom to “keep” jobs, but he’s never done that. He makes a liberal competitive argument.
Holden Pattern
A couple things:
1) The countries that we’re “competing” with who don’t have those kind of restrictions are countries to which we’ve outsourced our manufacturing because our corporations can make more money paying their people shit wages and polluting their air and water than paying our people good wages and following our environmental regulations. And the politics of that have worked out so that all of the profit from that has gone to the top 0.1% of our income distribution. So Brown (and anyone with “competitiveness” concerns is playing a game where the deck has already been stacked for them to lose, no matter what.
2) The reasons that those countries don’t want to conform their regulations to carbon restrictions are: (a) “hey, developed countries, this is your carbon we’re spewing. It powers factories that serve your needs at a bargain price. So don’t get all high and mighty with us — you lost that right a while back.” And (b) “hey, developed countries, you built up your economies and your wealth on the back of cheap polluting energy and often exploitation of our human and natural resources, and now you want to throw hobbles on our ability to do the same? Really?”
If you want to deal with this stuff, you have to ball up neoliberal trade theory and throw it away, or at the very least modify it really aggressively so that you’re not just outsourcing all of your carbon and pollution problems to the poorer countries at the expense of your manufacturing base, all for the benefit of the ruling classes. The race to the bottom that neoliberal trade theory has spawned is a killer. It will destroy our economy and the planet eventually, even as it gives us some cheaper stuff. And the thing to remember is that this situation is not an inevitability, but a set of choices that the ruling classes made.
kay
@danimal:
I know conservatives, Republicans and libertarians will block anything. I think any practical debate is conducted entirely between Democrats and liberals. What’s interesting here is those two categories are overlapping in ways that they ordinarily don’t. It’s regional.
NobodySpecial
@Dennis SGMM: I’m hoping it’s obvious snark from you, because I’d hope no one’s that dumb except on purpose.
Anyways, this is a hand-in-hand problem with energy prices. The spike in gas prices isn’t going away any time soon and could easily get worse. Transport costs could eat up a large portion of the savings from overseas importation for lots of goods, which means a consequent growth in local manufacturing. A growth in manufacturing would have to be in Mexico or Canada to really hurt the US job market in that scenario.
Holden Pattern
A couple things:
1) The countries that we’re “competing” with who don’t have those kind of restrictions are countries to which we’ve outsourced our manufacturing because our corporations can make more money paying their people shit wages and polluting their air and water than paying our people good wages and following our environmental regulations. And the politics of that have worked out so that all of the profit from that has gone to the top 0.1% of our income distribution. So Brown (and anyone with sincere pro-worker “competitiveness” concerns like Brown) is playing a game where the deck has already been stacked for them to lose, no matter what.
2) The reasons that those countries don’t want to conform their regulations to carbon restrictions are: (a) “hey, developed countries, this is your carbon we’re spewing. It powers factories that serve your needs at a bargain price. So don’t get all high and mighty with us — you lost that right a while back.” And (b) “hey, developed countries, you built up your economies and your wealth on the back of cheap polluting energy and often exploitation of our human and natural resources, and now you want to throw hobbles on our ability to do the same? Really?”
If you want to deal with this stuff, you have to ball up neoliberal trade theory and throw it away, or at the very least modify it really aggressively so that you’re not just outsourcing all of your carbon and pollution problems to the poorer countries at the expense of your manufacturing base, all for the benefit of the ruling classes. The race to the bottom that neoliberal trade theory has spawned is a killer. It will destroy our economy and the planet eventually, even as it gives us some cheaper stuff. And the thing to remember is that this situation is not an inevitability, but a set of choices that the ruling classes made.
kay
@Holden Pattern:
I agree with them there. I think it’s pretty silly to outsource all our pollution and then point at ‘the polluters”, as if the world had divisions in the air, and it’s no longer “our” pollution.
If they’re making the products we buy, all we did was MOVE our pollution. Greenhouse gases aren’t going to recognize lines on a map.
scav
next up? probably a manifesto from bankers and hedge fund managers insisting that no regulations should be enacted that interfere with their ability to make as much untaxed profit as mafia dons.
keestadoll
Until there is GLOBAL regulation on greenhouse gas emissions, I don’t see the point. Brown has it nailed.
cyd
Frankly, the inability to address climate change is the number one failure of the Obama administration (and, more broadly, of our political system). Wisconsin, bank bailouts, the war in Afghanistan, domestic civil rights—none of this is ultimately going to matter much, if global temperatures rise by more than two degrees. By supporting their domestic coal interests, these Democrats are giving the finger to the survival of human civilization as we know it.
I highly recommend the book Six Degrees, by Mark Lynas, which reviews projected effects of global warming on the planet. It is not a pretty picture.
RSA
I’m not an economist, but my naive view is that if I were dealing with a company that pumped out a lot of pollution in making its products, it would be appropriate to have that company pay the costs of cleaning it up. Ideally that would be built into the price of the products, but if that’s not possible then it would be reasonable to impose a tax to cover clean-up. By analogy, we shouldn’t let it be cheaper to get out-sourced products with out-sourced pollution, which means tariffs.
kay
@scav:
Okay, but Sherrod Brown is one of the most liberal Senators.
If you’d prefer to throw he and Franken in with the “enemy” without addressing the issue he raises, I don’t know where you go next with that.
Alex S.
Mankind is probably not advanced enough to deal with such a global issue on a global scale. We could use an alien attack to unite us.
MikeJ
@kay: Kay, you don’t seem to understand. There is “make everything perfect right this instant” and “ultimate deepest darkest evil”. Many on the left have really internalised the whole “you’re either with us or against us” thing.
John W.
Let me address the other side of the argument: using the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate GHG was always a fallback option because it doesn’t fit well at all, and it’s not likely to work easily at all. The structure of the CAA makes this very difficult – there’s a number of different provisions one could arguebly use, and all have drawbacks and benefits. And it’d be very, very difficult to necessarily include Sherrod Brown’s concerns with what the statute requires the EPA to take into consideration.
This is basically why the best option was a separate cap and trade bill.
Frankly, by this point the models are so bad that I’m not sure the EPA spitting into the wind will make a difference anyways.
kay
@MikeJ:
If we thought the for-profit health care industry had money to burn to oppose reform, I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet, in terms of the energy industry’s ability to lobby.
I don’t know how you get anything done without the whole liberal-populist midwestern Senate bloc, and that’s setting aside the Democrats from huge coal producing states. Even putting aside bad intent or industry lobbying, we’ve got a problem.
John W.
If one wants to get into the legal nitty gritty, this is a decent point of entry: http://www.ccap.org/docs/resources/614/Clean%20Air%20Act%20and%20GHGs_CCAP_March%202009.pdf
It’s a tad more optimistic legally than I would be, but it’s generally informative.
kay
@John W.:
Thanks. As I said, I don’t know anything about it, other than cursory reading of news.
I was just counting heads. Not good.
scav
@kay: I wasn’t interested by who’s involved, I’m just stunned by their logical train. It’s right up there with Blago’s You Can’t Try Me Because It’s Expensive During A Budget Crisis rationale.
trollhattan
Coal has been skating through one loophole after another for decades (e.g., see New Source Review under GW Bush). Coal is dirty: dirty to mine, dirty to process, dirty to transport, dirty to burn, dirty to clean up and store the waste after burning. Yet coal remains a huge part of our energy portfolio, the true cost of its use buried under subsidies and sidestepped regulations.
If a backdoor assault on coal via GHG regulation is required to bring coal power’s cost to realtiy, so be it. We can’t afford the status quo.
bemused
OT: Free Speech Tv (on Dish, Direct, wesbsite) is covering the Wisconsin protests today from 11am to 7pm Central Time.
John W.
@trollhattan:
Coal is protected solely because of how a gigantic part of the country has an economy based on it. I don’t like it either, but we can’t expect people who represent that part of the country to say otherwise.
The natural political alternative would be building an anti-coal coalition with GOP Sens. from the west. Unfortunately, general partisan craziness has prevented that.
Dan
The environmental battles were not always fought between the political parties. Richard Nixon actually passed a number of the foundational environmental statutes that we now take for granted. Before it became a party issue, it was a regional issue. The midwest is a source for a lot of the air pollution that drifts over to the east coast. Clean Air legislation/regulation has in part sought to protect the east coast from the midwest.
Now that the republican party has picked sides in the environmental debate (and refused to engage in actual rational debate of issues) what we’re seeing is the resurfacing of regional differences among the democratic party. This coincides with the continued decline of midwestern manufacturing, with environmentalism being made the boogeyman that will not allow manufacturing to thrive.
Nick
@kay:
So? This reeks to me of the “messiah” argument people make against Obots- because he’s “liberal” does not mean its absolute. He represents an economically depressed state where manufacturing jobs have left for countries with no EPA. If businessmen are telling him they’d rather open factories in China than Dayton because they don’t want to have to follow EPA guidelines, what do you expect him to say? “Fine, we didn’t need those jobs anyway?”
kay
@scav:
I disagree. Look, they raised this once before. Climate change legislation was derailed in any event, but I would think this would have to be addressed in a way that presumes that a long time liberal in Congress isn’t a blithering idiot. Brown, Franken, et al were never considered idiots worthy of presumptive dismissal prior to this. Now they are, but just on this issue?
I can’t take that seriously. I think you have to do better than that.
jfxgillis
kay:
Yeah. But so what? Since Congress seems beyond dysfunctional in pricing carbon and we liberals have control of the executive agency unequivocally empowered to price carbon through executive action, we need to use that power to price carbon.
I’ll be sad to see Sherrod Brown lose as a result, if lose he does, but he might lose anyway and he might win anyway.
If Joe Manchin wants to poison his own state and oppress his own citizens by signing on with the coal companies, or Mary Landrieu wants to destroy the Gulf of Mexico and oppress her own citizens by signing on with the oil companies, that’s her and her state’s problem. Climate change is MY problem and I want it addressed as best we can while we can.
Nick
@kay:
and Paul Wellstone voted for DOMA.
Look, they represent manufacturing states. Brown represents a state that borders on coal country. They have a valid point, but there’s nothing environmentally liberal about what they want. They’re siding with Republicans here, they’re doing it because it benefits their constituencies.
This is the problem I have with many of the left, they don’t see this. In any given issue, there are always going to be a handful of Democrats who represent constituencies where they have to take the conservative angle. Whether it be Southern Democrats on social issues, New York-area Democrats on Israel and Wall Street, Midwest Democrats on the environment, and so on.
kay
@Nick:
Nick you’re so defensive and one-note that you completely missed my point. Jam it into your favorite frame. Make your same political argument, liberals versus pragmatists! if you want, but it has nothing to do with what I asked about this specific issue. I don’t need a lecture on Ohio interests. I live here. I volunteered for Sherrod Brown.
I’m not interested in having the fight you’re picking. I get it. I’ve read every one of the 5,000 variations on the eternal liberal v pragmatists argument. I want to move on.
I’m asking how we plan to address what I consider valid arguments from midwestern liberal populists on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases.
Chyron HR
I don’t know why everybody’s so down on Coal. Sure, I think he should put his damn cat on a diet, but apart from that he seems to be a decent guy.
James E Powell
The problem is the universal belief that, to the extent that global warming (or any other environmental issue) is a problem, somebody else should do something about it. And I/we should not have to change anything I/we are doing right now.
JAHILL10
We are looking at this the wrong way. Instead of status quo, protectionist manufacturing concerns, the move to regulate greenhouse gases could lead to a meaningful retooling of how we utilize energy in this country — making more industry, not less. China, whom everyone blames for not being green, has caught on and is building green technologies. And we’re still wallowing in arguments from the 1970s. If Brown is so liberal, why isn’t he out there advocating for green industry in his state instead of just trying to protect dirty industry?
Nick
@kay:
No, it has everything to do what with you’re asking. Sherrod Brown wants the same thing as Joe Manchin, but when Manchin asks for it, you call him a corporate whore, but when Brown is asking for it, it’s “valid.” Brown is dead wrong here environmentally, but right economically. If we’re going to take on greenhouse gases, we’re going to destroy the Midwest economically. Some people are ok with that, Sherrod Brown is not, obviously. I’m not sure which side I fall on yet.
you compromise and gut the EPA.
kay
@Nick:
Thanks so much. I didn’t KNOW that, Nick. That’s why I wrote it in the post at the top of the page.
I’m not going to engage further on the “problems with liberals” debate, because that isn’t why I wrote the post. No offense, but I’m sick to death of that. This isn’t a “liberal” problem, that will be solved if we lecture them sternly. It’s a regular old problem. OUR problem, Nick.
scav
@kay: fine, you think it’s a logical, well-founded and admirable argument? Great, fine, I find it of stunningly LCD, narrow and race-to-the-bottomish — I’m really not following why you’re after me, I was making a simple face-desk gesture. whateveh.
John W.
Until environmental threats become as salient to republicans as budgetocalypse or brown people run amuk, nothing is going to change.
Nixon signed NEPA, for heavens sake, before SCOTUS destroyed it. (All the environmental regulation you hear about government having to do before they build something – scanning and whatever – is probably the result of NEPA).
Until there’s water in the streets of Manhattan, I’m not sure anything will change. And even then, David Brooks will write about how great it is to take gondola rides to Wall Street.
Nick
@JAHILL10:
Well he does. He has supported investment in green industry, but Ohioans can’t wait around for windmills and solar panels to show up while their factories close…mainly because those windmills and solar panels will go Texas and California anyway because their climate is more conductive to them working.
Nick
@kay:
You mean the bully pulpit won’t work, we’ll have to compromise?
whoocoodanode
kay
@Nick:
I have never written a single word on Joe Manchin. Please don’t use me to advance your single argument, which is: liberals versus pragmatists and electoral politics. Make it yet again, go crazy, but don’t put me in it. It bores the hell out of me. I’ve explored that issue here well beyond my interest in it.
I have no beef with environmentalists. I’m married to one.
Stillwater
What about Democrats and liberals? Do we have a real problem here?
Yes indeedy. But the problem is alot bigger than simply protecting jobs or what would otherwise be viewed as appropriate steps to address climate change. One is that restrictions increasing costs for US business do indeed put them at an unfair disadvantage. Now, this could have been ameliorated to some extent (at least in domestic markets) by imposing a tariff on imported products to balance the market (this is precluded by WTO).
Another is that such legislation tilts the balance, from a market incentive point of view, towards countries and corporations that can produce those products without having to add in additional costs, and exacerbates the race to the bottom. That it, the structure imposed undermines the very purpose of the environmental restrictions to begin with (on a global level).
Given the WTO (and well, to be honest, when it comes to free-riders and externalities, it might be irrelevant), the only way for environmental restrictions to not differentially harm specific countries or corporate interests, as well for the restrictions to achieve their intended purpose, is to get all participants on board and operating under the same enforceable rules. Good luck with that.
So I personally think a narrow view here, adopted by Senate Democrat, is pretty solidly justified.
JAHILL10
@Nick: That doesn’t mean it can’t be manufactured in Ohio.
As for the larger argument over fair trade, the point was made above but bears repeating. The US will not be considered a fair dealer on global environmental issues until we put some skin in the game. We can’t lecture other countries on how they should be green if we haven’t at least started to clean up our own house. If we have to wait for everyone else to green up before we will…I’ll see you in Waterworld.
Zach
Cap & trade as passed in the House sells some of the permits through auctions and dedicates some of the funds raised to job training, etc. The basic idea of auctioning permits is that the money raised can be used to offset damage to communities dependent on CO2-heavy industries. It’s sort of an important point and I get annoyed when Gore et al obfuscate it by saying how wonderful our new green jobs will be in a CO2-free future. It leads to things such as giving away most of the permits for free in the House bill and having no reasonable path towards charging anything for permits in the Senate.
Given the nature of the Senate, any carbon-capping bill that could’ve passed last Congress would’ve had all sorts of state-specific compromises to satisfy these folks. As there’s zero chance of passing a bill in the House in this Congress, it’s not much of an immediate issue.
Merkin
@kay:
Not for nothing kay, but while Nick is putting the point across rather smug and cavilerly, the point you are shunning, “liberals vs. pragmatists” has everything to do with this argument. You’tr trying to present Brown as a non-pragmatist by calling him a “Liberal populist” three times in one paragraph and a whole slew of times in the comment thread, but you have to know what he’s doing here is the exact opposite of how you’re describing him.
You’re asking how to do we deal with them, you first thing you have to admit is they are not being a true liberal populists at the moment.
YellowDog
This may be OT, but Evan Bayh is retired. Feingold lost the last election. Byrd is, like, dead. Perhaps you should check the date on your source.
Stillwater
@Holden Pattern:
This. Neoliberalism, otherwise known as the race to the bottom, is codified by the WTO and other trade agreements. It’s a big problem here. Some form of global environmental standards aren’t in principle inconsistent with the WTO, or even neoliberalism, for that matter. But how to get countries and corporations to support what’s not in their economic interest, and how to enforce those regulations, is something no one sees a clear path to.
kay
@John W.:
I saw a while back (2006?) that property reinsurers (the big boys) were rewriting risk models on areas that will be affected by climate change (coastal areas of the US and elsewhere). It was in the WaPo.
That got my attention. People who have money on this are betting scientists are right, and conservative politicians are wrong. Quietly recalculating property damage/value risk exposure. Hmmm. Not just wild-eyed hippies after all.
Omnes Omnibus
@JAHILL10: Actually, buying off midwestern states with money for green manufacturing, etc., would be the way to go.
sukabi
you know if “the free market coal & oil industries” would sink some of their profits into innovation and come up with actual ways to be more efficient / cleaner instead of their multi billion dollar ad campaigns designed to blow smoke up our asses maybe we could move beyond this stupid phase of short term profit for some long term death for all.
kay
@YellowDog:
The point of the post is that 10 Senators opposed climate change on these grounds, in 2009 “again”). The remaining Senators are in the second half, which has to do with the current issue, EPA regs.
Sorry it was confusing. It’s come up again because it’s happening again.
Nick
@JAHILL10:
That is true, but then comes to next hurdle…what happens when companies say “Why should I open a factory in union-dominated Ohio and ship my parts to Texas and Arizona when I just open them in ‘right to work’ states like Texas and Arizona and not worry about shipping”
What incentive do we have for them to open factories in the Midwest? We’d have to give them tax cuts, or tax incentives that will eat up state budgets, or bust unions. None of these things wets my liberal appetite.
jfxgillis
@kay:
False dichotomy. Whether it’s yours or Nick’s I can’t say.
Look. The best way to solve the “problem” from both the “liberal” AND “pragmatist” perspective is for fossil-fuel Democrats to side with climate-change Democrats to support Obama’s EPA’s attempts to impose the most radical, onerous, nastiest, borderline totalitarian CO2 regime.
Then the climate-changers can use the threat of EPA regulation to negotiate a deal with Republicans/corporatists/rednecks-driving-F-150s on a legislative vehicle to advance climate-change policy.
But since even fossil-fuel liberal Dems won’t do that, never mind fossil-fuel corporatist Dems, that “pragmatic” solution seems beyond reach.
So. End result. Sherrod Brown is fucked. That’s a problem, Yes, but only he can solve it.
JAHILL10
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly. And I think that is the direction Obama is headed with his recent green industry tour. If the House doesn’t completely hamstring him he will invest a lot more $$ in that area of the country. I mean, why not? They have the skilled labor and the manufacturing base. It makes business sense as well as political sense.
kay
@Merkin:
I disagree. Brown is acting as he always does. His concern is higher heating costs and manufacturing jobs. Those have been his concerns since he was in the House.
I think the boxes you’re putting these Senators in are are too small. I know the language we use is limiting: “populist”, etc. (these posts would be 5000 words if I can’t use shortcuts) but I don’t think we have to be so limited in how we think. Brown is asking for a solution in good faith. He’s not abandoning anything. He’s acting regionally, sure, but I would submit that part of a senator’s job is to act with regional interests in mind. I don’t think he’s unaware of 2012, (politics of this) but he’s engaged honestly on the issue, I think.
JAHILL10
@Nick: The problem with Right to Work States is that their workforce is exactly worth what they are being paid. Building the latest green technologies is not like slapping together a La-Z-Boy.
(My sincerest apologies to anyone connected to the furniture making industry.)
Stillwater
@kay: Whether he’s acting in good faith on this issue or not, if there is a good argument that his position (independently of his motivation) is justified – and perhaps even correct – then who cares? It’s about the policy, not about the intentions behind the policy that matters.
Also, I think you’re right about acting regionally. The liberal dream of universal justice and all that (one which I share) can’t be achieved unless changes take place locally, and by consensus. The claim that he ought to surrender regional interests in pursuit of larger liberal goals, goals which may in fact be undermined by the legislation at issue, makes no sense.
kay
@Merkin:
.
I think we have a different definition. I think Sherrod Brown would argue that a liberal populist from Ohio has to think about (higher-paying) manufacturing jobs and higher home heating costs in cold states. Even non-union manufacturing jobs in my county pay better than service jobs. Those are, in fact, middle class concerns. He can’t just skip blithely by that. It’s a real conundrum for him, and I think it can be acknowledged without kicking him out of the populist camp.
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
This is good. It’s a nice fit, because Ohio (like Wisconsin) has a big ‘ol university system to put towards developing the ideas. The )small) start we made there has been (I think) popular. They want it developed and manufactured in-state.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Kay “…at the start of the end. And there’s always more.”
Merkin
@kay:
See, now you’re saying a liberal populist in Ohio has different views than, say, one in California. Cause a liberal populist in California will say your higher-paying manufacturing job isn’t worth the damage its doing to the environment.
Corner Stone
@Merkin: God dammit Nick, will you stop your sockpuppeting bullshit.
John W.
@kay: I’m not surprised. That’s something, I guess. I just wish we could make people who have no interest in coal to see that.
When people have a financial interest in protecting coal, that’s what they’re going to do.
@Merkin:
Of course regional differences matter. A liberal populist in California is different from one in Ohio is different from one in Utah.
Nick
@kay:
Ok, so how is this different with Mary Landrieu or Mark Begich who have one of the largest populations of constituents with jobs in the oil industry, or Joe Manchin and John Rockefeller vis-a-vi coal, or Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson with insurance, or Chuck Schumer and Wall Street?
I mean all I’m saying is that people like me have longed been mocked by people like you for making the same exact arguments.
Merkin
@John W.:
Which was the point Nick was making, but I’ll shutup now, lest CornerTroll mistake my defense of Nick as “sockpuppeting”
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: There is a difference between saying “I cannot support this unless ….” and saying “I cannot support this.”
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not really, everyone says “unless,” it’s just the “unless” is usually something impossible to achieve.
Corner Stone
@Merkin: It speaks for itself Nick.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: Well, fuck it then. Let’s just give up. The Republicans control the messaging and the best anyone can ever do is slow the inevitable crumble.
ETA: Brown had a very specific “unless” and it is something that could, and should, be addressed.
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well I’m sorry you want to give up because it wasn’t easy.
Nick
@John W.:
Yeah, this couldn’t possibly be the reason why Democrats can’t unite behind the single message.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: Christ, you are being an idiot.
FlipYrWhig
@sukabi:
But coal industry research shows that our asses are the best place to store toxic effluents! Where else is that smoke going to go, huh? :P
Villago Delenda Est
Here’s what needs to happen here, to change a few attitudes:
Shove latinum down the throats of some of these Feregni bastards, and then ask them if they can breath it?
This obsession with profit above all other things will eventually cause this species to go extinct. But that’s the long term, beyond the end of the current fiscal quarter.
FlipYrWhig
It used to be that the “solution” to these regional dynamics was some measure of bipartisanship. You’d have some coal-state Democrats speaking up for their local interests, but you’d also have some non-coal-state Republicans speaking up for theirs. Somewhere in the complex ideological/regional horse-trading you might get a trade-off that worked or at least moved a click in the right direction. That doesn’t happen anymore because Republicans decided they were a monolithic force for evil.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: I want to know how this will affect year-end bonuses. See, I am thinking long term.
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
Unless I’m missing something, his “unless” is “unless you exempt Ohio completely”
I’m not sure how that differs from Mary Landrieu’s “unless we drill the fuck out of the Gulf of Mexico” or Joe Lieberman’s “unless we fluff up Hartford’s insurance giants”
jfxgillis
@kay:
Exactly and precisely one-hundred-and-eighty degrees wrong, as JFK argued in one of the most important but least-commented-upon speeches he ever made, on the Floor of the United States Senate when he became the only Senator from New England to support the construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
Now of course whenever I cite that speech I get told “Of course, he had national ambitions that overrode his regional parochialism,” and … Yeah. Again. So what?
He was right whatever the motivations.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: Something like I suggested here would go a long way towards assuaging Midwestern liberal populist concerns.
Nick
@jfxgillis:
he made that speech in 1954, he had little chance of national ambitions coming to fruition in 1956 and he had to face Massachusetts voters in 1958 when Massachusetts was still a swing state politically. If he did it for his national ambitions, it was still damn risky.
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sure, and I like mentioned earlier, Sherrod Brown supports that, but Ohioans unemployed because polluting factories closed can’t sit around and wait for windmills to show up in 5 years.
Senators like Sherrod Brown are more than happy to take your green money, and he has been, but he still wants the EPA out of his state.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: So what do you suggest?
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
One thing that seems to be missing from this discussion, although it’s been touched on, is acknowledgment that we have two conflicting objectives — protecting the environment and protecting the economic life American workers. There are aspects of both that are mutually exclusive at this point in history. A serious politician has to choose positions that optimize the degree to which each can be achieved for his/her constituents. Dogmatic adherence to principle is counterproductive. Brown and the other Midwestern politicians have taken “liberal populist” positions that they presumably thinks are in the best interests of the people they serve and a non “liberal populist” position on this issue that they presumably think is also in their constituents’ interests. I may disagree with their position, but I really can’t fault them for it, and I don’t think this falsifies their liberal cred.
The problem of conflicting objectives is exacerbated by conflicting interests of different regions of the country — Dan @26 mentioned one:
and when one region suffers an economic setback, there are ripples and domino effects on others.
The argument about how/whether principles are being adhered to is not helpful or, in my opinion, relevant.
ETA: Yes, I know that some politicians take positions based on their political popularity rather than the actual best interests of their constituents.
jfxgillis
@Nick:
I like to think so, but then I’m a total sap for the Kennedys so I’m biased.
However, iirc, there’s also some indication from the mass of documents (can’t find the link offhand) that he defied Old Joe himself to cast that vote, and THAT really was damn risky.
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
I suggest you drop this carbon pricing nonsense and focus on creating green energy and green industry in the meantime so people will be entice to give up polluting industries. If you already have something else in place to lure people away, it makes it much easier than trying to force uncertain change in uncertain times.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: And how long does it take for those new regs to take effect? Things can be ramping up and others are ramping down.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: All carrot, no stick?
Villago Delenda Est
@Nick:
Ohioans are unemployed becasue the vermin at the top want to steal their labor, and it’s easier to steal labor in India and China than it is in this country, but they’re working on it.
Moving the polluting industries overseas solves nothing for most of us. Oh, it’s just dandy for the Ferengi shitstains, who reap the profits and imagine that the gates on their community and their security goons will keep the air and water pollution from disturbing their pool parties.
The carbon emissions must be dealt with globally. We CAN have economic growth and a clean environment. It’s just that the Ferengi shitstains don’t profit as much from it, and not in the short term. Short term profit is ALL that matters, and our courts ENFORCE that notion, no matter how myopic it is.
RalfW
Al Franken, yikes. I would have expected Amy K to be the one from here. Bummer!
Pamela F
@kay:
Hi kay, good post. You said your husband is an environmentalist so I was wondering if you’ve read Jon Rinn’s recent 2 part series on The People’s View? Would love to get you/your husbands feedback on it.
A point that came up in his second diary concerned the idea that climate change scientists/environmentalists might be more effective with a backdoor approach, i.e., talking about the subject in terms of national security and innovative JOB creation.
If any of you Bj readers have read these posts, I’d love to hear your opinions. Somehow, we’ve got to move this discussion beyond a left/right issue or lefty ideology/pragmatist. These boxes are too restrictive to effectively address, yet alone deal, with the problem.
Fwiffo
Why not impose a tariff on goods imported from countries without carbon restrictions? That way everyone has to pay for their negative externalities. Seems like a simple, market-based solution.
Corner Stone
The subject is GHG, the environment, et al. But the real issue is Cheap Labor Conservatism.
That’s all this is about, and that’s what is being negotiated. Not environmental concerns.
Stillwater
@Fwiffo: Violates the WTO.
Wile E. Quixote
@NobodySpecial:
It’s already happening. Transport costs are mentioned as a factor as well as the cost of capital (it’s expensive to have goods tied up in a six to eight week long pipeline) and the inability of American firms to monitor the quality of the goods produced in Chinese factories.
Villago Delenda Est
@Stillwater:
The WTO is quainter than the Geneva Conventions.
Fuck the plutocrats. With a rusty chainsaw. Sideways. Ungreased. Tainted with plutonium.
Redshift
@sukabi:
Ah, but funding ad campaigns and climate-change denial propaganda and buying politicians is cheaper than innovation and efficiency, so that’s what the free market drives them to do, just like it’s cheaper in health care to come up with creative ways to deny claims than it is to become more efficient at processing them. Despite the protestations of market fundamentalists, companies won’t do the right thing if it’s more profitable in the short term to do the wrong thing, which is why regulation is needed to align the two.
Djur
Apparently the mere act of expressing reservations about any Democratic tentpole issue magically makes Russ Feingold, Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, etc. “moderate Democrats”. Because Obama and the Democratic leadership are inherently liberal, right, and thus any Democrat who criticizes them is a moderate, except for Dennis Kucinich, who is some kind of wacky space alien.
It’s much easier to make any political debate within the Democratic party about “moderates vs. liberals” instead of considering regional interests. Democratic legislators tend to be more (electorally) invested in regional interests, while most Republican legislators are more or less interchangeable. But that makes it so hard to cover Democratic internal politics, so let’s just all give up.
Bob Loblaw
@RalfW:
There is no such thing as an unalloyed good politician.
They’re all puppets in one form or another. And if you can’t be bothered to see the strings, that’s your own issue.
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
you can use the stick if you want, but keep in mind you’re going to whack a hundred thousand or so voters with it and they may not be forgiving and understanding, nor will be the people representing them in Congress like Sherrod Brown
Corner Stone
@Wile E. Quixote: From your link:
“the first increase in manufacturing employment since 1997.”
Holy jeebus crackers.
RalfW
@Bob Loblaw: Gee, thanks Bob. I used to think Al Franken had a halo, but you fixed that for me.
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
pretty sure they take effect immediately.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: Regulations almost always have phase in times and grandfathering. As far as sticks go, they must be used in conjunction with carrots. Offering incentives to go green, compensation for dislocation, and penalties for noncompliance at the same time will be more effective than doing any one of the options on its own.
jfxgillis
@Djur:
I don’t know why this is so hard to understand. The best way to protect regional interests is to stop trying to protect regional interests.
If the fossil-fuel Dems line up behind Obama and EPA enforcement, that gives Obama a weapon he can use to force Republicans and fossil-fuel profit-maximizers to the table to advance a climate agenda.
THEN you’ll have REAL negotiation occurring where real compromises and tradeoffs and cost and benefits can be addressed. THEN Sherrod Brown, et al., can return to their constituents with a real achievement protecting their interests as best as feasible in the circumstances.
How the fuck does tagging Obama and the EPA as enemies of Ohio (or WV, or MI, or LA, or MN, or WI) help either the populations of those states, or the country, or the world, or contribute to the strength of re-election campaigns of either Brown or Obama?
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
Except this has been tried in some places and it failed. The stimulus had a lot of green incentives. People didn’t take the incentives and cut jobs and moved factories when they were threatened with penalties. If a company can avoid paying a fair wage and pollution penalties by moving factories to China and Mexico, why wouldn’t they? That’s what they’ve been doing.
To his credit, Brown has support making it harder or impossible for them to do that.
The stick doesn’t work when they’re wearing armor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nick: Again, we are back to my earlier sarcastic comment about giving up. You said you want to offer incentives. Now you say incentives get ignored. It sounds like you are saying we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If that is true, why bother?
S. cerevisiae
This is all just whistling past the graveyard. If we don’t get a handle on greenhouse gasses all these economic arguments are moot. But seeing all these arguments makes me realize that the foot dragging will just go on and on while the CO2 keeps climbing and our grandchildren get a ringside seat to the sixth mass extinction.
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
I told you what to do. I said build a green industry alongside the one that exists and lure business away. Once it becomes too expensive, too tedious and too old-fashioned to use fossil fuels, when they are being left behind and losing business, they’ll stop doing it.
You don’t want to hear what I’m saying because you want to believe you can beat them into submission. You can’t. The only thing you can do is try to create another way to lure the public away from fossil fuels. You can’t force them into it. They’ll just rebel.
Sly
@jfxgillis:
That’s an interesting take on the speech, but not one that I’m seeing in the text. His support can be boiled down to a few essential points:
1) The seaway would not produce any significant harm to the port of Boston, but rather would create an economic benefit.
2) That the seaway would provide a greater benefit for the Great Lakes region than it would Massachusetts, or New England in general, is not a good reason for New Englanders to oppose it. In fact, such a position would make it more difficult for New England to advance its own regional concerns: “I would say that it has been this arbitrary refusal of many New Englanders to recognize the legitimate needs and aspirations of other sections which has contributed to the neglect of, and even opposition to, the needs of our own region by the representatives of other areas.”
3) Canada is going to build the seaway anyway, and if the U.S. doesn’t participate than we will effectively have no say in the regulation of it: “Mr. President, our ownership and control of a vital strategic international waterway along our own border would be lost without passage of this bill. If Canada builds the seaway alone, it may not only be a more expensive proposition, due to the difference in topography, requiring higher tolls over a longer period of time, but the Seaway will still be paid for to a great extent by the American interests whose use thereof will be many times greater than the Canadians. Thus the economy of the United States will have paid for the greater part of the Seaway at a higher cost, but the United States Government will have no voice in the decisions regarding tolls, traffic, admission of foreign ships, defense and security measures, and priorities.”
What Kennedy articulated in that speech was the necessity of regional actors to negotiate for the betterment of all involved. That there are still sectional interests (which, in this case, Kennedy argued were at best short-sighted and at worst abject falsehoods), but that these interests can’t just pick up their toys and go home every time someone else wants something. Democratic politics demands mediation, and privileges mediation as the most practical long-term path to both regional and national success. What Kennedy argued against were not so much sectional arguments in general, but sectional arguments that were demagogic.
Omnes Omnibus
@ Nick @108: Where did I propose beating anyone into submission? The closest I came to anything like that was a suggestion of a combination of incentives, compensaton for dislocation, and penalties. Carrot and stick.
Cermet
All these discusions are just farts in the wind (so I’ll add mine)- peak oil will end all arguments about coal – being the dirtist, largest green house gas will mean little once peak oil begins to bite late next year and then we will all love it and ask for more.
AGW? Yes a fact that future unluckly people in the third world that did not cause it will die in the millions as we fight over scraps here … wake up people. Energy is the one issue that matters for ALL aspects of what we want as the “good” life and finding something clean (neither fission nor solar or wind really does this but could be a small part of the answer) is the only issue that should matter and be discused.
This is like looking for an honest man in the market three in the morning … not there.
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
The stick part, I mean what were you planning on doing with the stick?
jfxgillis
@Sly:
Well. Yes. ‘Twas my point.
Moreover, whatever else he said about the specific instance at hand, he also made a a general, abstract, theoretical point about the “functions” of a United States Senator:
It’s pretty clear to me that as a matter of principle the “well-being of the country” and “necessary and appropriate … national policies” must ultimately prevail over sectional interests.
JAHILL10
@jfxgillis: Well said.
NobodySpecial
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s ALL Nick ever says, Omnes. Why argue with the plant?
jfxgillis
@Nick:
Dunno about Omnes, but I’m the stick guy. Carrots are just corporate welfare ultimately.
I want Obama to write TOTALITARIAN carbon emissions restrictions through Clean Air Act authority, which authority has been explicitly ratified by a very recent Supreme Court decision exactly on point.
I want those carbon emissions regulations to be stringent enough to drive a significant segment of the industry into bankruptcy and to cause the layoff of hundreds of thousands of fossil-fuel workers.
THEN I want Obama and the Democrats to go to the Senate and say “Pass a fucking Climate bill or else ….” and then promulgate the regulations by publishing them in the Federal Register and such.
These Senate fuckers won’t do anything without a stick upside the head. So fuck those fucking fuckers. Now, if they DO pass a climate bill, that bill is the venue where Sherrod Brown and Al Franken can protect their constituent interests.
But we’re not getting anywhere until we get a bill and we’re obviously not getting a bill without a beating. So, break out the club and start whacking.
Nick
@jfxgillis:
what makes you think they’ll do something even with a stick upside their head?
Merkin
@jfxgillis:
Real populist you are.
This is the problem with liberals. First they’re all “we need to be for the people. Why aren’t Democrats for the working class. We need fair wages and working class jobs”
but then when it comes to the environment, it’s “well fuck the workers. If your job is killing the polar bears, then fuck you.”
I can’t possible understand why liberal arguments go nowhere in the Midwest, Gulf Coast or Appalachia.
Nick
@jfxgillis:
The Senate wasn’t created for the interest of the country, that’s what the House is for, it was created for the interests of the states. Before 1914, Senators were selected by state legislatures.
Sherrod Brown isn’t a representative of the American people, he’s a representative of the state of Ohio, and that state of Ohio is his primary concern.
jfxgillis
@Nick:
We already know they won’t do anything, period. That’s because they had 60 votes, a bill from the House, a sympathetic Oval Office and a Supreme Court decision exactly on point and they still didn’t do anything when it would’ve been relatively easy.
So. Now. Fuck those fucking fuckety fucks. We have a weapon to coerce them to act in the executive authority buttressed by the Supreme Court.
jfxgillis
@Merkin:
Did I say I was a populist?
It’s obvious that the genuinely frightening issue of carbon emissions won’t even be addressed until we scare some folks into waking the fuck up and dealing with it, and if the prospect of job loss is the weapon at hand, that’s the weapon you use.
Years ago, (many MANY years, I think it was the Alaska pipeline controversy or the original wildlife refuge drilling issue) Alexander Cockburn wrote a column mocking the construction unions support for the project by pointing out if the proposal was to build Auschwitz the unions would be all for it because it “created jobs.”
Well, if the fossil-fuel profit-maximizers hire people to destroy the environment, those are bad jobs even if they’re “good” jobs.
EVERY attempt at a prudent, science-based sustainable approach has been defeated by this ridiculous devil’s bargain between profit-maximizers and wage threats, so at some point we have to say NO MORE. Fuck the companies, fuck the stockholders, fuck the employees.
jfxgillis
Nick:
Nope. Read The Federalist Papers or better yet, Madison’s Notes.
The Upper House was created to provide the larger and longer view.
The Great Compromise was simply an artifact of then-contemporary frictions that actually almost never ended up mattering as the North/South, industry/agriculture frictions came to dominate over the feared large state/small state frictions.
mclaren
This is why our species is doomed. Removing greenhouse gasses from the manufacturing process raises costs, which makes your products uncompetitive. The high-cost producers go out of business, while the polluting high-greenhouse-gas-producing manufacturers take over the market. Meanwhile, the planet roasts.
Smart primates, foolish choices.
The logical solution is to eliminate capitalism, since it’s clearly fatal to the planet. Therefore, given the choice, we’ll obviously let the planet die rather than end capitalism.
The free market is a suicide pact between duellists armed with flamethrowers standing hip-deep in a basement full of gasoline.
Omnes Omnibus
@NobodySpecial: My bad. I am okay with arguments woith people over what should be done or how it should be done, but, Jesus, people who basically suggest that nothing can be done annoy me (as do people who argue that nothing should be done because people voted for Walker and deserve what they get/the US is evil and must be destroyed/humans are a virus/etc.).
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nick’s raison d’etre.
cynickal
@Stillwater:
China violates the WTO all the time.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-09-16/international-business/28256874_1_wto-rules-wto-dispute-world-trade-organisation
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/china-vs-the-wto/52702/
http://ferroalloy.metalfirst.com/subsites/news_detail.php?id=4639
Not to say that 2 wrongs make a right, but they chronically and consistently under-cut and dump on markets to drive American and European businesses bankrupt.
The difference is the EU members will take China to WTO court. While the US just shakes it head and say, “Well… there you go again.”
tkogrumpy
@NobodySpecial: Well for one thing, his argueing has made me see how corrosive Nick’s input has been to this discussion. Thanks Omnes Omnibus!
Chris Harlos
1) Listen and learn from the climate scientists.
2) Pass a carbon tax. The receipts should be distributed on a sliding scale basis (more for the poor, less for the rich) to all Americans,so the effect of higher prices will be offset.
3) End all subsidies for Big Oil, Big Coal. Ban fossil fuel extraction.
4) The U.S. should invest in renewables, big time. A path to 100% renewably based energy within 30 years was set forth in a recent Scientific American. We have the technology, and the money, but no political will. An obvious funding source: end our oil wars in ME/Asia.
5) Yes, some industries will be losers, but winners will emerge as well. The government can soften the blows to workers. Investors and creditors are big boys…win some. lose some.
Our children’s lives will be immiserated, and even shortened, by man made pollution causing catastrophic climate change. It’s a no brainer. Our current economy is in collapse in any event, so Senator Brown should step up and propose some real, positive programs that will address our biggest challenge.
CayPDX
We are Easter Island.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick:
Maybe the Democrats need more sockpuppets, Nick. Can ya get on that for us?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, but there was like four other commenters that showed up and agreed with him.