Climate, Politics/Capitol Light©, is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion
 
 
Volume 1                                                    August 12, 2019                                                                           Issue 22
 
This week’s civil notion-- “V” is for Vitriol, When It Should Be for Victory

Dan Levitan argues in the New Republic that Republican deniers of climate change, who are now on the side of the “angels,” don’t deserve redemption by Democrats unless they own-up to the harms they’ve caused by their earlier denials. Prompting Levitan to write his article was the testimony of Republican pollster Frank Luntz before the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Luntz’s invitation was issued by the chair of the Committee, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). Unlike the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the group is not a Senate sanctioned organization. It is a group of Democratic senators wanting to examine how climate change is affecting the country and the planet and to mobilize action and support for bold climate solutions. The Committee will convene a series of hearings through 2019 and 2020 to gather expert testimony from a wide variety of witnesses.

The July 25th hearing was entitled “The Right Thing to Do: Conservatives for Climate Action.” Joining Luntz as witnesses were Kera O’Brien Vice President, Students for Carbon Dividends and Nick Huey, founder of the Climate Campaign and a member of the Utah Chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Both O’Brien and Huey are young conservative Republicans who believe that carbon needs to be priced.

                          Climate, Politics/Capitol Light©, is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion
 
 
Volume 1                                                                  August 5, 2019                                                             Issue 21
 
Budget update. Both the House and Senate are out on their August recess. They are not scheduled to return until September 6th. Before leaving town, both chambers passed a two-year budget deal that was quickly signed by Trump. The legislation raises discretionary spending by more than $320 billion over the next two years and includes a nonbinding side agreement banning policy riders on appropriations bills.

Should the deal of no riders on appropriations bills be kept, it could be a major roadblock for the climate and clean energy communities. Riders are an often used means to attach measures the administration might otherwise oppose, e.g., anything climate related, onto measures it supports or can't afford to veto, e.g., immigration and defense.

The bill also raised the nation's debt ceiling through July 2021, averting a potential debt default until after the 2020 election. The attention of Capitol Hill lawmakers now turns to appropriations.

It’s been reported by E&E News that Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, volunteered to be "at the head of the line" when the chamber begins marking up and moving spending bills. He said his staff would be working throughout August recess to draft the measure.

Upon returning in September Congress will have less than two months to finish all 12 appropriations bills before the new fiscal year begins on October 1st. The House has passed 10 of its 12 bills, including the Energy-Water and Interior-EPA titles. The Senate has yet to introduce their first bill having waited until a budget deal was signed for their committee budget allocations. (Multiple sources)

                   Climate, Politics/Capitol Light©, is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion
 
 
Volume 1                                                                   July 29, 2019                                                                 Issue 20

Note to Readers. The Senate will soon be following the House out of Capital City for their August recess. Climate Politics will drop down to one report a week during the recess.

A brew of a different sort.  Murray Energy Corp. founder Bob Murray said he had provided President Donald Trump another memo containing policy recommendations, which include pressing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to elevate coal power sales among state public utility commissions.

The coal executive hosted a fundraiser for Trump's 2020 campaign at an arena along the Ohio River. According to reports, the event drew a crowd of several hundred spruced-up donors, many associated with the energy industry. (E&E News)

• Murray was behind Secretary of Energy Perry’s proposing to FERC that coal plants should be kept operating for national security reasons—notwithstanding their contributions to global warming and being uneconomic.
• He continues to push for a reversal of the endangerment finding.
• I would imagine that the Trump will continue to express sympathy for the coal guy’s to-do list at least as long as the money holds out—just a guess.
  

On the count of 3. More than 60 media outlets have committed to a week of focused climate change coverage in September.

The effort was coordinated by the Covering Climate Now project, which was co-founded by the progressive magazine The Nation and the Columbia Journalism Review, in partnership with The Guardian.

                       Climate, Politics/Capitol Light©, is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion
 
 
Volume 1                                                                   July 18, 2019                                                                 Issue 17

This Week’s Notion:

Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden released his “Plan for rural America.” He joins other Democratic candidates, e.g., Warren, Klobuchar, and Sanders in reaching out to a constituency that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016.

Whatever else one might think the meaning of the 2020 national election to be, it represents a line in the sand for the fight against rising global temperatures. While the nation’s politicians fiddle, Earth continues to burn, and the rate of species extinction accelerates, with grave impacts on people around the world.

According to the Pew Research Center Trump won comfortable majorities of both rural white men and women, according to the exit poll. While Trump held a 10-percentage-point advantage over Clinton among white women nationally (53% to 43%), his victory margin nearly triples to 28 points among rural white women (62% to 34%). Trump led Clinton by 32 points among all white men nationally (63% to 31%), but he beat the Democrat by 48 points among white men living in rural areas (72% to 24%).

Although rural America is only 20 percent of the nation’s population, it presents an outsized opportunity for the 2020 Democratic contender for the presidency in terms of the Senate and the electoral college. Big or small, every state has the same number of Senators.

In terms of electoral votes, rural voters have proportionally more weight than large urban population centers. It’s the way the founders designed the system—until its changed presidential candidates can lose the election while garnering millions of votes more than their competition.

                    Climate Politics/Capitol Light© is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion.com
 
 
Volume 1                                                                     June 12, 2019                                                                Issue 8  
 
Renewables to feel the burn. A court ruling will allow PG&E to end as much as $42 billion in existing clean energy power-purchase agreements, which could have large implications for NextEra Energy Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and other companies. It is sure to complicate further California's ability to reduce its statewide emissions. Judge Dennis Montali of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California said he disagreed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's assertion of authority over the utility's contract choices. ( The Wall Street Journal)

Rare and inaccessible. Rising trade tensions between the U.S. and China have sparked worries about the 17 exotic-sounding rare earth minerals needed for high-tech products like robotics, drones and electric cars. (AP News)

Trash talk. When Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler goes to Japan this week to meet with other environment ministers, action on climate change won't be the priority. Instead, Wheeler plans to talk a lot about the tons of trash floating in the ocean he just flew over. 

Wheeler, in an interview, called the debris clogging the ocean one of the world's most pressing environmental concerns. China is the top contributor of plastic pollutants. (Washington Post)

• Wheeler may have an ulterior motive—beyond dodging the issue of climate change. The meeting is thought to give the Trump administration a new opportunity to berate China in hopes of bringing them to the tariff negotiating table—or just because the admin-istration likes trashing others with their talk.  
  

                       Climate Politics/Capitol Light© is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion.com
 
 
Volume 1                                                                     June 5, 2019                                                                   Issue 6 
 
It’s benighted not be knighted. Donald Trump tells Prince Charles the US has 'clean climate' and blames other countries for the environmental crisis, in a long talk with the prince. China, India, Russia, many other nations, they have not very good air, not very good water, and the sense of pollution. If you go to certain cities … you can’t even breathe, and now that air is going up…They don’t do the responsibility. (The Guardian)

Make mine a mini. This week, Joe Biden released a lengthy climate plan on his website. Though Reuters teased his policy last month as a "middle ground" approach more moderate than the Green New Deal, the proposal looks pretty aggressive and sounds almost Sanders-esque in its ambition. (The Atlantic)

He’s free to ‘steal’ my stuff.  Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden released a comprehensive proposal to combat global climate change, adding to the mix of candidates who have made rolling back dangerous emissions a central tenet of their campaigns.

However, multiple sentences in Biden's proposal appear to lift passages from letters and websites of different organizations. The copied sentences are particularly notable due to Biden's history of plagiarism, which played a major role in tanking his 1988 presidential campaign.

The potential instances of plagiarism were first flagged by Josh Nelson, the vice president of CREDO Mobile, a telecommunications company that also aims to raise money for liberal activist groups and causes. (Business Insider)

• It should be noted that there’s a warning in this and it’s not about plagiarism. The fact that some of the loudest cries are being raised by progressives plays to the idea that they are nervous about Biden’s becoming the Democratic nominee—as opposed to one of the more liberal/progressive members of the pack.

                  Climate Politics/Capitol Light© is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion.com
 
 
Volume 1                                                                    June 3, 2019                                                                   Issue 5                                        
 
Tariff tirades. The House and Senate are back from their week of district workdays. They’ve come back to a growing list of to-do’s in an atmosphere of contention within and between both parties and between Congress and the White House.

Trump’s decision to slap a monthly five-percent tariff (up to 25 percent) on all Mexican imports beginning June 10th is consolidating Democratic opposition to the president while fracturing Republican ranks.

Mexico is the US’s third largest trading partner accounting for 14.5 percent of overall trade, i.e., exports and imports. Trump’s tariffs are expected to hit the auto and agricultural industries particularly hard. The other top four US trading partners are China, Canada, and Japan. In recent weeks Trump has either placed or threatened tariffs on all of them.

Despite what the president claims, US consumers, not the nations targeted, pay the price of his tariff tirades.

Trump’s Mexico announcement caught congressional Republicans off guard and has driven a wedge within their ranks. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has become one of Trump’s most enthusiastic fan boys, applauded the move. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is noncommittal saying only the proposal "deserves serious examination."

According to Bloomberg Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) of Iowa, whose powerful panel holds the keys to trade, tax, health, and entitlement legislation, opposes the promised Mexico levy. Other Republicans joining Grassley in opposition to the tariff are Pat Toomey (R-PA), Martha McSally(R-AZ), John Cornyn of Texas, Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rob Portman (R-OH). Their votes will be needed to pass the USMCA—the newly negotiated treaty intended to replace NAFTA and which Trump considers essential to his legacy and re-election. The House Ways and Means Committee’s top Republican, Kevin Brady, whose state of Texas, along with other border states like Arizona will be hardest hit, has called for resolution of the Mexico “problem” before June 10th when the first tariffs will be levied. Trump has promised to raise the tariff by fiver percent each month up to a total of 25 percent unless Mexico finds a way to stop migrants from Central America coming into the US.

                                           Climate Politics/Capitol Light© is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion.com

Volume 1                                                                          May 28, 2019                                                             Issue 3
 
Both the House and Senate are out on scheduled district workdays and will not return until June 4, 2019.

Who’ll sweep the forest floors now? The Trump administration announced on May 24th it will be killing a Forest Service program that trains disadvantaged young people for wildland fire fighting and other jobs in rural communities, laying off 1,100 employees — believed to be the largest number of federal job cuts in a decade.

The Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers enroll more than 3,000 students a year in rural America. The soon-to-close centers — in Montana, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Virginia, Washington state, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Oregon — include hundreds of jobs in some of President Trump’s political strongholds. In Congress, members of both parties objected to the plan.

The drawdown of the program, starting in September, will result in the largest layoffs of civil servants since the military’s base realignment and closures of 2010 and 2011, federal personnel experts said. Nine of the centers will close, and another 16 will be taken over by private companies and possibly states.

The announced killing of the program shows once again that Trump and his administration seem at times to have nothing in common with each other. Wasn’t it Trump who has vowed to help rural residents find new well-paying job opportunities? Moreover, wasn’t it the same Donald who trumped up a story about the cleanliness of Finland’s forest floors being the reason forest fires are not a problem there?