Two weeks ago, Senator Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts) met with President Obama and “told him he would not support a cap-and-trade plan or carbon fee to limit greenhouse gas emissions.” In the Boston Globe, Brown is quoted as expressing how “excited” he is “about working with [Obama] in a bipartisan manner to come up with a comprehensive energy plan.”
Brown's not so excited, however, that he would support – in his words – “a national energy tax or cap-and-trade proposal.” The problem, of course, is that without some sort of pricing of carbon and other fossil fuel “externalities” like carbon pollution, it's extremely unlikely that we will ever achieve any of our objectives – national security, economic, environmental, you name it. Does Scott Brown understand that? Does he care?
Aside from being wrong on the substance of this issue, perhaps Brown – a Republican up for reelection in an overwhelmingly Democratic state in just 28 months – might care about the polling? In particular, Brown might want to examine these poll results from Public Policy Polling.
- “Support for Clean Energy Job Creation. 80% of voters in Massachusetts“
- “65% of voters in Massachusetts…would like to see the federal government invest more in clean energy technology”
- “76% in Massachusetts… think there should be stricter regulation of corporate polluters.”
- “The recent incident associated with offshore drilling has also increased public support for a comprehensive solution to the country's energy issues. 66% of folks in Massachusetts… say that the spill makes them more supportive of the proposal being considered in Congress right now.”
What exactly about these poll results does Scott Brown not understand? Does Brown have any desire to be reelected in 2012, or does he prefer to go down fighting – for his tea party base?
Sadly, it appears right now that Brown is opting for the latter. In doing so, Brown is not only taking an egregiously wrong position based on the merits of climate science and basic economics, he's not even being a smart politician from a purely self-interested perspective. If that continues, it could lead to an exceedingly brief stay in the U.S. Senate for Sen. Brown, at least if 65%-80% of Massachusetts residents have anything to say about it!
UPDATE: Check out this editorial by GreatPoint Energy executive vice president Daniel P. Goldman, urging Sen. Brown “and the rest of the New England delegation to support strong national energy and climate policy and take the Massachusetts experience to the rest of the nation and speed our transition to a clean energy economy.”
He is currently the most popular elected official in the state and has 55% approval ratings. There has always been a massive disconnect between his own political opinions and issue stances and those of his constituents. He won, partly because he was more likable than Coakley and bothered to campaign. He is still a likable candidate. Obviously I am not defending his positions, but we need to find a similarly likable Democrat to run against him and one who will remind voters why Brown in fact stands against the vast majority of their own professed concerns, not just on climate change but on a host of issues. He really is far far to the right of even the MA GOP.
That’s the real question I guess. Will his popularity wane over the summer and into the fall, or will it stay where it is due to some combination of apathy, hedging, and that great smile?
My guess is the latter, especially since he has both papers fawning over his personal life and character, and neither paying any attention to what he is actually doing in office. Bring out the pick-up truck in 12′ and he’ll cruise to re-election, especially with his massive war chest.
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p>We have three advantages though. His whole campaign team will be off in Romneyland for 12′, we will have a nominee committed to winning and campaigning, and he or she will be riding on Obama’s coattails in a high turnout election where many Democrats will show up. If independents break to Obama again it might help the nominee.
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p>That said we should start thinking about who to run against Brown moments after Deval get’s re-elected. Its gotta be a Washington outsider with statewide recognition and the ability to raise a lot of money with a blue collar touch. I am leaning towards Murray, though Grossman could possibly fit that bill as well, alongside a few State Senators and Boston city councilors. Anyone from our delegation will get his (or her) clock cleaned though.
On unemployment means being unemployable
And if Smart Grid or the green crowd was benevolent how come no mention of a Manhattan Project for clean energy. It is all astroturf. Chinese barracks where companies are free to dump the green ooze down a drywell in the factory floor. A wooden stake in the black hearts of carbon derivative Bernie Madoff creeps.
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p>Forget the Russian spies, you got a genuine all American malcontent right here at home.
But I don’t know how you can achieve this without raising taxes and/or energy costs. The most economically efficient way to reduce gas consumption is to raise the gas tax — yet Brown won’t even consider this.
Drill baby drill looks pretty stupid after that philosophy wrecked the gulf. It looks like energy independence is just another issues that the far right has backed the GOP into a corner where it can’t have any ideas of its own. This is why I still believe they will be blocked out of actual governance for quite sometime.
All the oil in ANWR and the Gulf will not make us petroleum independent. There just isn’t enough there. Nowhere near enough.
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p>If you are worried about energy security, you should advocate for not drilling in ANWR. When you think there may be a shortage in the future, you don’t deplete your own reserves now… you keep them. We should be sitting on ANWR and GofM reserves, not consuming them.
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p>But look, if the GOP approached the Dems tomorrow and offered this deal:
1. By 2013 we have drilling in ANWR, GofM, SE Atlantic, and even Cali coasts.
2. We net import zero oil, tar sand petroleum, or any other fossil petroleum product, and we prohibit coal-to-liquid technology as of 2013.
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p>I’d take it. Yeah, it would inevitably lead to more environmental crises like the Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon. Know what else would happen though? We’d cut our oil consumption by about 50% as of 2013, and that consumption would continue to fall as America keeps moving past our domestic peak oil. Right now the US produces about 40% of our consumption. By 2013 we could have that increased, but the fact is that our reserves won’t be able to be tapped substantially faster, so maybe we could get 25% more production, bringing us up to 50%. But, that other oil vanishes.
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p>The fact is that the GOP isn’t interested in a comprehensive plan to eliminate foreign oil — the GOP is merely interested in drill baby drill, despite the fact that any 10th grade math student could easily see that there simply isn’t enough oil in America for drill baby drill to work, climate change notwithstanding.
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p>There’s plenty of common ground between Dems and GOP, between enviro-weenies and consumerists, between warhawks and peacedoves with respect to oil. If we consume less of it, we all move in the direction of what we like most. Dems get green jobs, GOPers get a more favorable balance of trade. Greenie-weenies get less carbon emissions, consumerists get prices which don’t hinge on the price of a single unstable commodity, and more money to spend on other things. Warhawks get to lower the price of war, since lowering consumption makes the supply chain leaner and hence, war cheaper, and peacedoves get fewer wars motivated by ensuring energy flow. Yet, GOPers can’t get past drill baby drill, common sense be damned.
What kind of consumption numbers do you consider as having an impact?
After ANWAR, you wrote “coupled with a new Energy program.”
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p>So I have no idea what you mean by that, but I took it to mean something to help reduce demand for fossils — you know, both increase domestic supply and reduce demand.
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p>”A great start” is unhelpful. What’s the plan from start to finish? I’m not asking for eleven dimensional chess, but I am asking for us to consider more than a single move at a time in our two dimensional game.
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p>My numbers show that simultaneous drilling of all domestic sources could increase our domestic oil production by 25%, which would allow us to reduce our imports to the point that America was providing half of our current oil consumption.
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p>So, my question for you sir is this: once we do that, what do we do about the other half? Were I supreme Democrat, I’d agree with chief Republican on the plan I suggested above — we’d have 100% domestic supply by producing as much as frickin’ possible and then not consuming any imported.
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p>As to your question: I’m not really sure what you’re asking.
Actually he did. Clearly the words “a great start” come after the acronym ANWR. They may not be immediately after, but they are clearly not before.
Drill Baby Drill does not get us energy independence or cheaper gas at the pump. But it will make us some money and give us lots of good jobs – nothing to sneeze at.
I would argue that the Gulf has lot a ton of money and wiped out thousands of jobs, particularly in the fishing and tourist sectors, that might never come back because of this disaster.
To some extent I think part of this has to be blamed on the Democrats who are reflexively pro-environment and against compromise on some of these subjects. It is high time the party gives up its knee-jerk fact averse fear of nuclear power. Science used to be our friend, but on nuclear power some liberals are just as pigheadedly opposed to it as tea baggers are to Obamacare. France gets nearly 70% of its energy from nuclear power, the other 30% comes from mostly alternative forces. Cutting fossil fuels out of power generation would significantly free them up to use for automobiles, driving down gas prices, etc. Also it ensures that alternative energy sources like hydrogen and electric cars can be fully carbon neutral since they will not be relying on fossil fuel power plants. Nuclear energy is clean, safe, and reliable. On every other issue from stem cells, to other alternative fuels, Democrats are all for more science and R&D investment, but on nuclear power we will have none of it. I say let science be our friend on that front as well. Engineers have developed reactors that are significantly safer and cleaner, reactors that can re-use deweaponized plutonium and nuclear waste as fuel. Yet just as Republicans cater to their base by backing safe and ethical technology in stem cells, the Democrats are doing the same on nuclear power.
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p>As for ANWR I would much, much rather risk environmental devastation in the ANWR then waste another American life fighting for oil. I am just unconvinced that ANWR holds enough oil to keep us independent without cutting consumption or bolstering independent energy. It is high time we give up our NIMBY opposition to wind farms and nuclear energy. I completely agree with stomv’s compromises and would also add a moratorium on strip mining and a comprehensive bipartisan plan to get us off coal. Also both parties should be against ethanol which is not viable without significant subsidies, or at least be in favor of ending the tariffs on ethanol and sugar importation that would allow us to import from Brazil (which is almost completely energy independent due to ethanol and a far more reliable ally than S. Arabia in a far more stable region than the M. East). It is time for both parties to move past their bases and cliches and get to governance on this issue. There will be no economically and geopolitically viable America in 50 years if we don’t do this now.