What does it actually do? Why is it so monumental? Who supports it? What is there to fight about?
So: it comes as a relief to many environmental enthusiasts that bills like Waxman/Markey and Van Hollen have finally made their way to the floor of congress. The same as any other hotly contested issue, these bills have met an extreme amount of media attention and many arguments have risen concerning how each policy in the bills is implemented, the philosophies of both, and exactly how the legislation could possibly affect the economy.
Even broader than the issues of implementing these policies (if and when they're voted through Congress) is the stress imposed on US policymakers to take action in the face of the approaching global summit on climate change in Copenhagen this December. The US and China have been identified as -globally- emitting 40% of the world's CO2 emissions. So we have to do something, but what do we do, and is it right?
Fighting over which bill begins at their stated and summarized goals. Both bills seek to reduce carbon emissions by nearly 85% by 2050, using the same incremental reductions in the same year periods. The bills start to differ in who to reduce these emissions:
From Mike Sandler on the Huffington Post:
Waxman-Markey contains several sections (titles) that set renewable energy standards, change fuel composition, set automobile and land use planning requirements similar to California's AB1493 and SB375, and more. The bill could also result in pre-empting regional climate programs currently under development such as the Western Climate Initiative. What it doesn't do, is say who will shoulder the costs implied in making fossil fuels more expensive. Van Hollen's bill, by contrast, does only one thing, but it's the most important thing: making polluters pay and returning the money to consumers. Waxman-Markey will work its way through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Van Hollen will start at the House Ways and Means Committee, since it involves distributing revenues from the sale of emission permits, which is essentially money. It's possible that at some point the two bills could be combined.
Length alone, Waxman certainly is the greater waste of trees; it's 600 pages to Van Hollen's 20 pages. However, Van Hollen's bill has yet to garner as much public support (according to GovTrack), while Waxman's bill has made headlines and drawn a lot of media attention...the only downside to this being that it has also dragged in a healthy dose of naysayers. Perhaps the Waxman bill is more comprehensive, but when looking over the summary on GovTrack, it becomes clear that the shear magnitude of the bill and all the tasks therein, the EPA is going to have a hefty dose of new standards to implement when it already deals with such a massive amount of enforcing....
What makes me worry now is how little we know about carbon capture programs and their environmental impact...plenty of science exists on either side of the issue, but how are we supposed to know what it will do before we try? If the Earth is already changing rapidly because of everything else we're doing, it seems like strategies should be focused on converting waste and reusing it, rather than the age-old tradition of packing it up and putting it away forever...even though carbon is natural, burying it thousands of feet down doesn't change the fact that its basically still a human-made dumping ground.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Clean Air and Water Acts and Kraft's Epochs
Progress in environmental policy is possible. Mazmanian and Kraft illustrate this in this week's readings. This is a striking improvement from past readings, many of which have cited the passing of legislation in the 1970s as a great start to a set of initiatives that eventually lost steam, deteriorating into the present, where our initiatives just don't cut the environment-saving mustard.
Both in Wisconsin's Fox River Basin and in Los Angeles, efforts to improve water and air respectively have made major headway in monumental problems, only to still suffer rising standards and greater pressure from environmental movements both local and national. Still, what is important are the giant leaps in initial cleanup and prevention, and then the necessary moves away from command-and-control regulation towards collaborative sustainable methods. In between lies the rather dense system of market incentives (the "second epoch"), however, at least in Los Angeles this system came with a number of setbacks to environmental progression as stringent legislation was relaxed.
In Wisconsin, efforts to clean up the Fox River Basin ran into a wall with their first attempts at collaborative methods, but what is most important is that the methods weren't given up on at the first sign of opposition. As Mazmanian and Kraft point out, efforts in Wisconsin showed that a cross-section of industries and municipalities could come together and share their resources to create a cleaner basin. The success (to a degree) of these efforts, should be a signal to other areas of the country facing serious pollution issues.
In Los Angeles, standards of living (and consequently local politics and industry) create a large wall blocking greater progression into sustainable efforts. As the authors point out, further progression towards cleaner air would mean great changes in the transportation habits of Angelinos...unfortunately this seems often the case in heavily polluted areas.
The trouble in Los Angeles demarcates a line of status quo that is not impassable, but still serves as the greatest barrier toward the necessary improvements in clean air. It is the status quo that many residents find comfortable and thus it is the job of many politicians to keep that status quo...in other words, let people keep driving to work by themselves and sitting in hours of traffic with their cars and air conditioners running. But, changes are being made in many other places toward more sustainable activities, and soon enough, if industry is convinced, the changes will be necessitated. At the very least, Los Angeles will have to choose its fate: impose change collectively with the knowledge that individual sacrifice will benefit all, or be satisfied with remaining a very polluted place while other initiatives across the country succeed and move forward.
Both in Wisconsin's Fox River Basin and in Los Angeles, efforts to improve water and air respectively have made major headway in monumental problems, only to still suffer rising standards and greater pressure from environmental movements both local and national. Still, what is important are the giant leaps in initial cleanup and prevention, and then the necessary moves away from command-and-control regulation towards collaborative sustainable methods. In between lies the rather dense system of market incentives (the "second epoch"), however, at least in Los Angeles this system came with a number of setbacks to environmental progression as stringent legislation was relaxed.
In Wisconsin, efforts to clean up the Fox River Basin ran into a wall with their first attempts at collaborative methods, but what is most important is that the methods weren't given up on at the first sign of opposition. As Mazmanian and Kraft point out, efforts in Wisconsin showed that a cross-section of industries and municipalities could come together and share their resources to create a cleaner basin. The success (to a degree) of these efforts, should be a signal to other areas of the country facing serious pollution issues.
In Los Angeles, standards of living (and consequently local politics and industry) create a large wall blocking greater progression into sustainable efforts. As the authors point out, further progression towards cleaner air would mean great changes in the transportation habits of Angelinos...unfortunately this seems often the case in heavily polluted areas.
The trouble in Los Angeles demarcates a line of status quo that is not impassable, but still serves as the greatest barrier toward the necessary improvements in clean air. It is the status quo that many residents find comfortable and thus it is the job of many politicians to keep that status quo...in other words, let people keep driving to work by themselves and sitting in hours of traffic with their cars and air conditioners running. But, changes are being made in many other places toward more sustainable activities, and soon enough, if industry is convinced, the changes will be necessitated. At the very least, Los Angeles will have to choose its fate: impose change collectively with the knowledge that individual sacrifice will benefit all, or be satisfied with remaining a very polluted place while other initiatives across the country succeed and move forward.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Lipschutz on Environmental Politics and Social Structure
The perspective offered by Ronnie D. Lipschutz in part of this week's reading is both fresh and engaging; overall, very enjoyable to read. Lipschutz seems to have encountered a problem we talk about in every class period, how to affect social change and what structures are blocking the way...for without social change, we have said in class, global changes benefiting the environment seem like a still-distant dream.
What was most striking about encountering Lipschutz's thesis is that he actually called out our social institutions and structures. While he repeatedly points out that our institutions are not inherently wrong, they are harmful to the environment, even though some of them exist solely to protect and conserve it. It is the capitalist perspective which encourages behavior that becomes harmful and unsustainable and if we are choosing to help the environment and slow its deterioration, we need to rethink how we live our lives on a daily basis.
Lipschutz seems to almost say that while there are a number of environmental threats, one wouldn't have to think twice about them if society hadn't already decided for us that saving the environment was critical to our survival. However, since that is a path that policymakers and citizens have chosen, he begins to explain what social roadblocks exist, and how it is exactly that we continue to fail with environmental reform. It is both a valuable and appreciable goal for Lipschutz to take on the explanation of why none of the proposed solutions have been implemented and then go ahead and point fingers at policymakers.
Still, while I believe that Lipschutz is right in saying that politics and institutions of power block the sensible progression forward into sustainability and conservation, I like his closing points in the chapter better than any. He reminds us that while it is important to remember that each of us is part a larger earthly whole, that we can only experience so much of this Earth at any given time. Thus, the most logical thing to do to start with change is to work on one's local environmental impact (he is supporting the adage think globally, act locally). To take this point one step further, I believe as a student of Political Science, that truly the strongest influence on a politician is an overwhelming cry for change from his or her constituency. All the bribes and lobbyists in the world couldn't take a policy maker's ear away from such a shout (unless they're purely evil and/or consumed by their power). Politicians, especially local ones, owe their jobs and lifestyles to the people the put them in office (at least in this country), so public outrage and action are very good ways of reminding a person in a politically powerful seat of who put them there (not to mention triggering a sincere pang of guilt).
What was most striking about encountering Lipschutz's thesis is that he actually called out our social institutions and structures. While he repeatedly points out that our institutions are not inherently wrong, they are harmful to the environment, even though some of them exist solely to protect and conserve it. It is the capitalist perspective which encourages behavior that becomes harmful and unsustainable and if we are choosing to help the environment and slow its deterioration, we need to rethink how we live our lives on a daily basis.
Lipschutz seems to almost say that while there are a number of environmental threats, one wouldn't have to think twice about them if society hadn't already decided for us that saving the environment was critical to our survival. However, since that is a path that policymakers and citizens have chosen, he begins to explain what social roadblocks exist, and how it is exactly that we continue to fail with environmental reform. It is both a valuable and appreciable goal for Lipschutz to take on the explanation of why none of the proposed solutions have been implemented and then go ahead and point fingers at policymakers.
Still, while I believe that Lipschutz is right in saying that politics and institutions of power block the sensible progression forward into sustainability and conservation, I like his closing points in the chapter better than any. He reminds us that while it is important to remember that each of us is part a larger earthly whole, that we can only experience so much of this Earth at any given time. Thus, the most logical thing to do to start with change is to work on one's local environmental impact (he is supporting the adage think globally, act locally). To take this point one step further, I believe as a student of Political Science, that truly the strongest influence on a politician is an overwhelming cry for change from his or her constituency. All the bribes and lobbyists in the world couldn't take a policy maker's ear away from such a shout (unless they're purely evil and/or consumed by their power). Politicians, especially local ones, owe their jobs and lifestyles to the people the put them in office (at least in this country), so public outrage and action are very good ways of reminding a person in a politically powerful seat of who put them there (not to mention triggering a sincere pang of guilt).
Monday, September 7, 2009
Week One: Contemplating the Abyss
After finishing the excerpt from Speth's book and somewhere into the first chapter of Kraft's Environmental Policy and Politics, I found myself in a familiar state of mind. A dark cloud, bursting with heavy drops of depression and doom, hung over my desk.
I have been developing a strong distaste for the drastic and lucrative language of death and destruction that often accompanies such materials. While I agree that these problems are serious, current, and require immediate action, the immense flooding of these facts about the deterioration of Eath's environment has snowballed into sensory overload. The consequence of such large informational storms is often apathy, an emotion too often equated with my generation.
Therefore, it was with particular appreciation that I read through Toward Sustainable Communities (Mazmanian and Kraft), which shifted focus from the various crises overtaking the globe into a discussion about the development of policy to counteract these destructive and threatening changes. TSC shed light on US regulation without accusing with an open-ended bias the failures of the command and control system. Yes, each epoch that Mazmanian and Kraft identify displays a developmental shift, and each incorporates a healthy dose of criticism toward its contemporaries, but where TSC succeeded with me was here:
Where Kraft and Speth had both called for a public discussion on how and why to improve current policy failures and also how to combat the many environmental problems, they failed to discuss themselves. I interpreted TSC to have a conscience...Mazmanian and Kraft do list the undeniable progress the EPA made in the 1970s, but they made a point to also include the implications of such a large and tough bureaucratic agency in attempting to constantly adapt and regulate a growing number of environmental challenges. This is the conscience that the other readings call for, yet fail to fully implement. Speth’s chapter, while informative, assumed a degree of doom that was irreversible, even if he personally maintains hope. Kraft as well, dedicated much of his first two chapters to an outline of pressing issues by the numbers, which, when read closely, spell out doom just as much as Speth’s prose.
I have been developing a strong distaste for the drastic and lucrative language of death and destruction that often accompanies such materials. While I agree that these problems are serious, current, and require immediate action, the immense flooding of these facts about the deterioration of Eath's environment has snowballed into sensory overload. The consequence of such large informational storms is often apathy, an emotion too often equated with my generation.
Therefore, it was with particular appreciation that I read through Toward Sustainable Communities (Mazmanian and Kraft), which shifted focus from the various crises overtaking the globe into a discussion about the development of policy to counteract these destructive and threatening changes. TSC shed light on US regulation without accusing with an open-ended bias the failures of the command and control system. Yes, each epoch that Mazmanian and Kraft identify displays a developmental shift, and each incorporates a healthy dose of criticism toward its contemporaries, but where TSC succeeded with me was here:
Where Kraft and Speth had both called for a public discussion on how and why to improve current policy failures and also how to combat the many environmental problems, they failed to discuss themselves. I interpreted TSC to have a conscience...Mazmanian and Kraft do list the undeniable progress the EPA made in the 1970s, but they made a point to also include the implications of such a large and tough bureaucratic agency in attempting to constantly adapt and regulate a growing number of environmental challenges. This is the conscience that the other readings call for, yet fail to fully implement. Speth’s chapter, while informative, assumed a degree of doom that was irreversible, even if he personally maintains hope. Kraft as well, dedicated much of his first two chapters to an outline of pressing issues by the numbers, which, when read closely, spell out doom just as much as Speth’s prose.
Critically speaking, while all the facts and numbers about the crises the Eath is currently facing are important, the information overload the public receives about these problems every day can have a negative effect. TSC’s approach to reflecting on past and present policies and processes in light of the changing environmental challenges was inherently (and personally) more encouraging.
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