Club for Growth Goes on the Attack

The Club for Growth, a conservative a group that isn’t afraid to attack anyone who stray from radical free-market ideology, is running $250,000 worth of negative ads against the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

The group’s president, Pat Toomey, claims Lieberman-Warner would be “extremely destructive to economic growth.” (He must not have read the recent EPA study that found the bill “could be implemented without significantly harming the nation’s economic growth over the next two decades.”)

The Hill recently reported that conservative climate deniers have concluded the “argument against climate controls is easier when focused on the economic costs instead of science.” And it’s no surprise that the Club for Growth would take this line of argument—denying humanity’s impact on our atmosphere is so 1990s.

Don’t expect the fight to simmer down anytime soon. The economic “modeling wars” will continue as the Senate inches toward a vote on Lieberman-Warner.

But here’s what’s not up for debate–the catastrophic costs of doing nothing.

A new study from Tufts University only confirms this:

Doing nothing about global warming would cost the United States dearly for the rest of this century because of stronger hurricanes, higher energy and water costs, and rising seas that would swamp coastal areas…

The Tufts study found that by 2100, annual costs would be $422 billion in hurricane damage, $360 billion in real estate losses (with the biggest risk on the Atlantic and gulf coasts, particularly Florida), $141 billion in increased energy costs and $950 billion in water costs, especially in the West. …

That adds up to an annual loss by 2100 of 1.8% of gross domestic product, the sum of the nation’s output of goods and services.

And these calculations aren’t all-inclusive:

Frank Ackerman, an economist at Tufts and one of the study’s main authors, said the impact of climate change actually would be worse than what his numbers showed “because of the human lives and ecosystems that will be lost and species that will be driven into extinction — all these things transcend monetary values.”

Gas Nears $4 a Gallon, Driving Falls 4 Percent

It looks like $4.00 a gallon really is the point where America’s drivers really start to change their behavior. CNN reports:

At a time when gas prices are at an all-time high, Americans have curtailed their driving at a historic rate.

The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded.

Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.” Records have been kept since 1942.

According to AAA, for the first time since 2002, Americans said they were planning to drive less over the Memorial Day weekend than they did the year before.

UPDATE: The downward trend in driving rates is likely to continue. “More than 70 percent of Americans say they expect gasoline prices to top $5 a gallon by the end of the summer,” the Washington Times reports.

A San Francisco Treat

Carbon-emitting companies in San Francisco will soon have to pay to pollute, albeit not much. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Jumping ahead of state and federal regulators, the Bay Area air quality district became the first in the nation on Wednesday to impose fees on businesses that pump some of the highest levels of carbon dioxide into the air each year.

The 15-1 vote by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District sets the stage for 2,500 companies and agencies – from supermarkets to gas stations to power plants – to pay 4.4 cents for every metric ton of carbon dioxide they expel, beginning July 1. The top 10 companies combined would pay more than $820,000. The fee for a large share of businesses would be less than $1.

It’s a relatively small step, but it’s an important one. And it couldn’t come at a better time, as the Energy Department recently announced that total carbon dioxide emissions have increased 1.6 percent over the past year.

What’s really needed is a nation-wide mechanism–such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax. Nibbling around the edges in certain cities and states just won’t get the job done.

Get On Down to Your Prius Dealership Today!

Yesterday, Toyota announced a major milestone in sales of their fuel efficient Prius:

Toyota’s Prius started out a decade ago as a risky experiment in green technology. Today it is the world’s first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid car to hit 1 million in sales. [...]

Toyota Motor Corp said yesterday 1.028 million Prius models had been sold to the end of April.

As gas prices continue to rise and consumers being to change their car buying habits, the Prius has been the one bright spot in a tough year for Toyota:

Toyota’s U.S. sales, down 3.3 percent this year through April, are heading for the first annual decrease since 1995. By contrast, Prius deliveries are up 23 percent in 2008, to 64,664 vehicles. Already the world’s best-selling hybrid, Prius was No. 9 in U.S. passenger-car sales through April, its highest ranking.

For those of you in the market for a Prius, get down to your local Toyota dealer soon as possible, since supplies of the car are at the “lowest level in two years”:

Toyota Motor Corp.’s Prius hybrid, the most fuel-efficient car sold in the U.S., is getting harder to find on dealer lots and commanding higher prices when customers do.

It can take up to two weeks to receive delivery of the hybrid-electric vehicle, said Mark Harding, general manager of Toyota of Santa Monica, in Santa Monica, California.

“We’ve got some in stock at the moment, but we’ve also got a waiting list,” he said. “Supply is very tight.”

“Right now, U.S. customers can get a Prius,” a Toyota spokesman warns.” Next month or the month after that, it’s tough to say.”

For McCain, It Isn’t Easy Being Green

When Sen. John McCain unveiled his plan to tackle climate change, conservative commentators were up in arms.

“As a conservative, I’m really disgusted with this,” Heidi Harris, a Las Vegas radio talk show host said. “I don’t understand why he’s so focused on climate change.”

Rush Limbaugh added:

Conservatives are angry. … I have not faced a situation where a major Republican presidential candidate sounds just like a liberal Democrat. This is embarrassing, and it is frightening.

I can’t wait to see how frightened Rush will be at the news that John McCain’s presidential website now offers “Eco-Friendly Items.” (Notice that even the web image is recycled!)

At the site, the green consumer can get shirts consisting of 70 percent bamboo, organic cotton hats, tote bags, and notebooks and mugs made with recycled materials.

Already, the Drudge Report has linked to a story about the site. I’m betting it’s only a matter of time before other conservatives pounce.

Wind: 20% By 2030?

Wind energy could provide us with a fifth of our energy needs by 2030, an Energy Department report finds. The AP reports:

Two decades from now Americans could get as much electricity from windmills as from nuclear power plants, according to a U.S. government report that lays out a possible plan for wind energy growth.

The report, a collaboration between the Energy Department research labs and industry, concludes wind energy could generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2030, about the same share now produced by nuclear reactors.

Such growth would pose a number of major challenges, but is achievable without the need of major new technological breakthroughs, said the report released Monday.

This level of wind energy production would be a major step towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

If wind energy’s share of power production grows to 20 percent, natural gas consumption is expected to decline by 11 percent and coal consumption by 18 percent in 2030, said the report. As a result carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming would be reduced by 825 million metric tons a year.

“This is the equivalent of taking 140 million cars off the road,” said [Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association.]

While this kind of growth is possible, it won’t be a breeze:

It would require improved turbine technology, “significant changes” and expansion of power line systems and a major expansion of markets for wind energy to accommodate an annual growth rate of 16,000 megawatts of electricity a year beginning in 2018, more than five times today’s annual growth.

Big Oil’s Big PR Campaign

Record gas prices are “prompting Americans to drive less for the first time in nearly three decades, squeezing family budgets and causing major shifts in driving habits.” And more Americans feel the same way Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) does about Big Oil:

Major oil companies “are getting away with murder” and “gouging” consumers as the price of oil continues to soar, Michigan Sen. Carl Levin said Thursday. […]

“The oil companies are getting away with murder,” Levin said. “Their profits are achieved at the pain and suffering of the American people.”

And what are the oil companies planning to do to change public opinion? Spend more of their massive profits on alternative energy research?

Nope. Instead, they plan to pump millions of dollars into a massive public relations campaign. The Washington Post reported last week:

Faced with a national outcry over the high price of gasoline and soaring profits for energy companies, the oil and gas industry is waging an unusually pricey campaign to burnish its image.

The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s main lobby, has embarked on a multiyear, multimedia, multimillion-dollar campaign, which includes advertising in the nation’s largest newspapers, news conferences in many state capitals and trips for bloggers out to drilling platforms at sea.

The intended audience is elected officials and the public, with an emphasis on the latter. The industry is trying to convince voters — who, in turn, will make the case to their members of Congress — that rising energy prices are not the producers’ fault and that government efforts to punish the industry, especially with higher taxes, would only make pricing problems worse.

API has only said it would spend less than $100 million a year, but according to ad exec Bill Replogle, this “dwarfs” the amount most groups spend on issue campaigns.

At least the oil lobby isn’t setting the bar too high:

“There’s no expectation that the public will end up loving the oil and gas industry,” [API President Red Cavaney] said.

Another Growing Green Sector: Lobbying

One way Big Oil achieves its political objectives–for example, making sure their tax breaks stay on the books–is through the millions of dollars they spend annually on political contributions and lobbying.

The renewable energy industry is doing its best to catch up. The Politico reports:

Ten years ago, the alternative energy industry spent less than $2 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. As Congress began moving on two global warming bills last year, that spending reached nearly $16 million.

The American Wind Energy Association spent $815,700 on lobbyists last year, according to lobbying disclosure reports. The National Biodiesel Board shelled out $1.2 million — more than double its lobbying budget for 2006. [...]

In 1998, the alternative energy sector accounted for $308,000 in donations to candidates. So far this cycle, green industry donors have given nearly $528,000 — putting them on track to match or surpass their high water mark of nearly $957,000 in 2000, when global warming guru Al Gore topped the Democratic presidential ticket.

But Big Clean has a long way to go before they approach Big Oil’s ability to influence:

To be sure, the investment of the green companies in Congress pales in comparison to that of the established energy sector players.

Political giving by the oil and gas crowd this cycle has already surpassed $11.5 million — roughly 22 times more than the energy sector’s green newcomers.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas industries are a perennial entry on the center’s list of top lobbying sectors. They spent $82.6 million on lobbying last year, up from a record-breaking $75.3 million in 2006.

As oil and gas prices continue to climb, and with Lieberman-Warner possibly coming up for a Senate vote in June, don’t expect Big Oil’s spending spree to slow in 2008.

The SUV Era ‘Is Over’

The sustained high price of gas has meant Americans are consuming less gas for the first time since 1991. “Gas consumption so far this year is down about 0.2 percent compared to last year,” McClatchy reports.

Gas prices are also changing the behavior of new car buyers. It looks like the Hummer is giving way to the Honda Fit (a car which would be a tight squeeze for former Hummer lover Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

From the New York Times:

Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.

In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.

In another first, fuel-sipping four-cylinder engines surpassed six-cylinder models in popularity in April.

“It’s easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here,” said George Pipas, chief sales analyst for the Ford Motor Company.

Could this be the tipping point where American drivers fall out of love with huge SUVs? It’s becoming more likely each day the price of gas remains high:

“The era of the truck-based large S.U.V.’s is over,” said Michael Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation, the nation’s largest auto retailer.

Sales of traditional S.U.V.’s are down more than 25 percent this year. In April, for example, sales of G.M.’s Chevrolet Tahoe fell 35 percent.

Full-size pickup sales have fallen more than 15 percent this year, with Ford’s industry-leading F-Series pickup dropping 27 percent in April alone.