GETTING TO #2D5A27

The future will be green or not at all. ~ Bob Brown  

Getting to #2d5a27 refers to the web color for leaf green that is the natural green color I associate with net-zero atmospheric emissions from greenhouse gases (GHG).

Leaf green - #2d5a27 - net zero emissions

 This getting to a leaf green/net-zero emission future is contrasted with our present non-green environmental status, that I characterize charitably as dull olive green, web color #bab86c. Leaf green will be center stage at the UN’s COP26 climate summit that begins tomorrow in rainy Glasgow, Scotland.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has 197 members who are each a “Party” to its annual conference.[1] The upcoming 26th Conference of Parties (COP) will gauge the Parties’ progress in dealing with climate change. This COP, like every previous one, has been pronounced “vital for Earth’s future.”

COP26 will highlight the status of many nations’ getting-to-zero pronouncements. Special attention will be paid to President Biden because his initial plans for getting to zero got hijacked last week in West Virginia.

The quasi-belligerent Dems moderate and Prog caucuses (who have been called the “never-enough caucus” by their Dem critics) are continuing to squabble about the final climate deal. If he’s lucky, I expect the president’s initial speech before the COP26 World Leaders Summit on Monday won’t be finalized until one minute before he actually addresses the delegates.

Long ago (meaning 7 days ago), his original plan was to spend $619 trillion (T) on environmental/climate benefits as part of his multi-faceted $3.5T American Family Plan (AFP). Adding to the already-sizeable public confusion, the AFP has now been relabeled the Build Back Better (BBB) Plan. This hefty sum represented about 17% of total AFP expenditures. Those spending numbers are now historical dust. They remain huge, but have considerably shrunk.

The final BBB budget will likely end up at about $1.75T. Ages ago, the Dems unfortunately choose to publicly reference their “infrastructure” programs by their Georges (their dollar value). Dollars are always important, but $1,750,000,000,000 of them far surpasses anyone’s sense of value; it just seems gargantuan.

The shrunken BBB/AFP will now provide $555B for environmental climate change restoration. Environmental advocates should count themselves as clear winners. This sum represents the single largest support for environmental benefit that the US government has ever proffered.

If this funding level holds, it represents a disproportionately large fraction (32%) of the latest, smaller BBB budget, almost doubling the environmental programs’ relative backing. Sure, some environmental activists are already complaining about the lost funding. That’s their job, I guess. But can’t they see their glass is fuller than anyone else's? It represents a gigantic six (6) times as much as the entire FY2021 EPA budget, assuming the $555B gets spent evenly across the next 10 years.

Activists mentioned that the lower environmental budget is unlikely to allow the nation to meet the president’s goal of cutting GHG emissions in half by 2030. I take such statements as probably true, but mainly offered as a place-marker for demanding additional funds in the future.

The most important piece in these climate expenditures is the Renewable Energy Tax Credits. These credits are expected to have far more beneficial climate effects than the other pieces, including the Clean Electricity Performance Program that Sen. Manchin specifically denigrated, and thus bit the fiscal dust.

The US vows to get roughly halfway to net zero by 2030 (is that 0.5-to-zero?), which seems optimistic given what’s happened so far with other GHG emission reduction efforts. Getting halfway to zero in just nine (9) years will require herculean efforts in virtually every sector of our economy and every neighborhood. These efforts will directly affect everyone’s lives. Given the decidedly non-warp speed of government, don’t hold your breath for anything happening immediately.

The US won’t be alone in confronting such trials. Every COP26 Party will face abundant ordeals in getting to net zero emissions. Nations and subnational government entities have selected various years for achieving full or partial zero net emissions. Zero emissions dates range from 2030 to 2050, the target zero-year for the largest number of nations, including the US. The 2050 date is the zero year for the IPCC’s directive to keep global temperature rises below 1.5°C relative to pre-industrial era levels. The Chinese have belatedly stated they will tardily get to zero by 2060. Better late than never? Perhaps, because China has been the world’s largest CO2 polluter since 2006. India, the world's 3rd largest carbon emitter, has yet to update its Paris emissions-reduction pledge. 

Unsurprisingly, many environmentalists believe our world is already far behind schedule in getting to zero. The annual UN Emissions Gap Report, released last week, stated we need to cut emissions seven times faster than we  already have to attain the 2015 Paris Agreement’s allegedly-binding climate goals.

This report stressed that the dozens of countries that have pledged to reach zero emissions by 2050 is reassuring and could certainly limit future warming. However, many of those long-term, macro-level plans remain “vague” and “incomplete.” In addition, these plans fail to itemize near-term actions that would put nations on a track to realistically achieve the promised, longer-term goals.

More detailed plans are certainly needed, but politicians fear their public reception. More specific plans will require confronting and resolving torturous trade-offs. Transitioning to a leaf green future will make or break whether these political plans gain public support and success.

This is why politicians simply want to go on record saying, “I’m in favor of saving the Earth by achieving net zero emissions by year X,” with that date futuristic enough so they’ll be comfortably retired by year X, out of the public’s eyes.

Getting to leaf green zero emissions will be a disruptive, divisive and costly process. Fundamentally, it means ending the fossil-fuel era that began more than 250 years ago during the Industrial Revolution. Getting to net zero emissions will suffer from the abiding problem of archetypal technologic policy-making. Specifically, offering everyone far-off future rewards (leaf green grandeur in 2050), in return for soon paying sizeable expenditures with socially-uneven costs. It’s naïve to assume everybody will accede to such government plans and mandates; their social discount rates aren’t low enough. Many Dems, with nary a Repub, thus are warily proclaiming a net-zero emissions victory by 2050.

NOAA announced in June that atmospheric CO2 concentration has reached its highest level ever, 419 ppm. Corroborating this finding, the International Energy Agency (IAE) predicts that CO2 emissions will swell 4.8% in 2021, as energy-related demand rebounds across our planet.

Numerous non-leaf green legacy technologies will have to be discarded, soon. Regrettably, the IEA has shown many essential technologies for getting to decarbonization – expanded electrification, large-scale energy storage, carbon capture, biomass and low-carbon hydrogen fuels – are currently nowhere near market-ready. Thus, there is a stark divide between the politicians’ stated climate goals and the availability of proven, reliable, cost-effective technologies to actually realize these needed goals.

In addition to very rapid technological change, changes in people’s behavioral choices will be required to achieve getting-to-zero goals. Understandably, such needed behavioral modifications pointedly have not been meaningfully discussed.

California has been on the leading edge of decarbonization policy. The Golden State has now banned the sale of internal-combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2035[2] as well as the use of ICE lawn mowers and leaf blowers. [I have a mature, hand-push rotary lawn mower for a cut-rate price, in case you’re interested.]

Public officials have failed to state that getting-to-zero will involve changing every citizen’s life in small and not-so-small ways. For example, politicians are assuming that 14 years from now (2035) every adult in California and beyond will eagerly buy only a new electric vehicle for their personal transport and a new heat pump (or hydrogen furnace) for their home’s space conditioning. Electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, now account for 1.8% of 2020 US auto sales; 4.9% of households have chosen to purchase a heat pump for their heating-cooling and/or water heating.

The BBB/AFC programs’ legislation, now 1,684 pages long and counting, is being written hurriedly, with much midnight oil being proverbially burned. This legislation has been subject to vigorous lobbying efforts, but few public committee meetings. The Biden administration has been desperately seeking new means to control GHG emissions and pay for their curtailment that are copesetic with Sens. Mansema. Cooler heads prevailed when the Dems wisely torpedoed a brief resurrection of Sen. Warren’s wealth tax as a funding mechanism.

One observer stated that there’s no dimension of life that will be untouched by California’s and other regions' decarbonization agendas. Recent laws that Governor Newsom has signed, and President Biden hopes to sign, in this realm contain acres of small print that focus on GHG emission reductions as well as a plethora of unintended consequences. Let’s hope citizens believe in these efforts’ value and support them 373 days from now.

Here’s to achieving a leaf-green future as coolly as possible.

 

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[1] The UNFCCC includes all UN member states, plus the UN observer State of Palestine, UN non-member states Niue and the Cook Islands in the South Pacific Ocean and the supranational European Union. In addition, the Holy See is an observer state. Will the Pope bless this COP’s efforts? Hopefully.

[2] In 2020, California sold 1.64 million light-duty vehicles, the largest of any state; including 8.1% plug-in EVs, which includes EV hybrids as well as solely battery-powered EVs. 

BUILDING BACK BETTER DREAMS

Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well. ~ William Shakespeare (King Lear) 

The Dems’ much-vaunted and massively comprehensive “Build Back Better” (BBB) agenda was first discussed by Joe Biden before his inauguration last January. Since then, it has evolved on a regular basis. The BBB includes three major pieces: first, the covid-19 relief American Rescue Plan (ARP) with a $1.9 trillion (T) budget that Congress passed via reconciliation in March. Second, the American Jobs Plan (AJP); and third, the American Families Plan (AFP).

I liken the Dems’ process for passing the Build Back Better legislation to constructing a 271-piece jigsaw puzzle, filled with oddly, sometimes changing shaped pieces. There are now 220 Dems in the House and 50 in the Senate, plus the vital, tie-breaking Dem VP, Kamala Harris piece in the Senate, totaling 271. The Dems’ have been wrestling for months among themselves to design and secure the best AJP and AFP programs. At times, their conduct seems as if each and every Dem piece claims to be at the center of the puzzle.

So far, puzzle masters Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have been reasonably successful in their initial rounds of piece placement. Their efforts produced passage of the important ARP package that the president signed into law on Mar. 11. Sen. Schumer succeeded in the Senate’s passing the AJP on August 10. The AFP is stuck in both branches by the Dems’ internal struggles. The process has a ways to go before a hoped-for victory can be realized. 

This puzzle-making process is complicated. The Dems’ Progs and moderates have distinctly different ideas about what’s best for the AJP and AWP as well as themselves. In no small part because they likely will face different prospects for winning their Nov. 8, 2022 mid-term elections, depending on the BBB’s final construction and its public reception. These elections are mentioned now in the media as if they will happen the day after tomorrow. It’s actually 386 days from today.

The $1.2T AJP, primarily a physical infrastructure component of the BBB, was passed by a bipartisan majority in the Senate 69-30 and is now awaiting a contentious and delayed vote in the House. When the White House first proposed the jobs plan, they budgeted $2.6T expenditures to be spent over 8 years. Negotiations with Congress reduced this initial budget by 46% to $1.2T. This budget apparently includes a mere $550 billion of new funding, whatever that means. Many media outlets now further deflate the AJP to a $1T effort; apparently for Congress and the media $200 billion (B) is rounding error. After hearing these numbers, my sense is they’re at best illusory until the president signs his name on the laws.

This significant budget deflation in the AJP’s initial fiscal scope isn’t that unusual; it’s an almost normal part of the thoroughly arcane legislative process as many expenditure bills wind their way through multiple House and Senate committees to eventual floor votes.

The Dems’ internecine struggle between the Progs and their more moderate colleagues regarding the size and focus of the AFP has occupied media headlines for several months. The Progs outlined an initial budget of a utopian $6T for their family “infrastructure” support plan. Such colossal largess never was in the minds of moderates, fearful of their ensuing mid-term election chances. For a while now, the AFP has hovered at $3.5T. Progressive Dems’ dreams about such fiscal bounty wax mildly euphoric even at this lower budget level.

Altogether, the BBB plan could total $6.6T over the next decade. That is a lot of money, no matter how you dice it. This sum represents $19,800 for each and every US adult and child. The plan covers everything from free infant preschool and community-college tuition, expanded Medicare/Medicaid coverage, new electric bike and increased electric vehicle subsidies, much-reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to lots of things in-between.

The scope of the BBB plan is so wide-ranging that no one really knows its exact content, only its rough cost – to the nearest hundred billion greenbacks or so. The White House Fact Sheets for the AJP and AFP list 69 different activities these two programs will undertake.

Unfortunately, such dramatic programmatic breadth is not accompanied by a comparably large margin for the Dems’ congressional votes. They have no votes to spare in the Senate versus the Repubs, and only 3 in the House.

This political headwind has struck the Dems in the guise of Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema or as they’ve colloquially become known, Sen. Mansema. Neither the AJP or AFP will become law without Mansema’s two Senate votes.

Last week the thoroughly enigmatic Sen. Sinema took a brief Parisian jaunt in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, despite there being no saguaro cactus but surrounded by sublime baguettes. Perhaps her respite will provide perspective allowing her to explicitly state her AJP objections.

Sen. Manchin laid down his political Maginot Line on Oct. 14 when he said he was not in favor of the AJP’s Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP). This program will provide incentives for electric utilities to increase their annual investments in renewable power sources, and penalties if they don’t. He also previously mentioned he’d like to see the AJP’s budget reduced to below $2T. Reducing the scope and spending for the AFP is thus a reasonable likelihood.

In response to Sen. Manchin, the White House is seeking alternative mechanisms to reduce GHG, including creating a carbon tax. Many economists have long supported a carbon tax, but it has uniformly failed politically when attempted at the state level.[1] It’s very hard to see how the administration could support such a tax when the president has strongly vowed not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 and given its singularly unsuccessful political history in the US. Talk of a carbon tax as a CEPP replacement mostly signals desperation within the administration.

Sen. Manchin’s complaint about the CEPP is that it will suffer from a significant free-rider problem, expressing that he has ”concerns about using taxpayer dollars to pay private companies to do things they’re already doing.” I suspect Sen. Manchin’s free-rider criticism is mostly a red herring about green energy policy, given that bituminous coal runs through his veins.

A growing number of regulated electric utilities have increased their green power production because of state-mandated Renewable Portfolio Standards, not federal rules. However, only 38 states have such standards currently.

Last year, renewable power accounted for 20% of US electric power generation, an all-time high, but still just one greenish kWh for every five brownish ones produced. The CEPP will provide uniform, nation-wide incentives and penalties for expanding green/renewable power’s share of national electricity production.

I’m surprised the president folded so soon against Sen. Manchin; he should call Sen. Manchin’s bluff on the CEPP. Without the CEPP, the AJP will suffer diminished projected GHG emission reductions by as much as 33%. That would represent a significant tragedy of the capitol commons and beyond in the real US. If the White House agrees to remove or curb the CEPP in order to pass the AJP, it will also complicate President Biden’s discussions at the up-coming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.

There’s no doubt that furious closed-door brokering of alternative specifics for the final AJP and AFP will continue on the Hill and the White House for a while longer. Several pieces of the BBB puzzle have yet to be placed on the table. I hope the Dems understand that outlaying ever-larger funds to government agencies does not necessarily mean citizens’ lives will be ever-better or ever-more equitable. Because of their scope, these programs will be subject to hefty amounts of unintended consequences. From their outset, these programs must be appreciated as successful and effective or blowback will hamper the Dems.

It’s worthwhile remembering that the total federal budget for last year (FY2020) was $6.6T, the same dollar amount that the BBB is hoping to spend additionally over the next 8-10 years. Enlarging the federal governments’ duties – and consequent amplification of state and local government activities – needs to be done effectively.

Recent expansions in such obligations have been shaky, include those providing child care and rent relief payments. Fewer than 60% of families with incomes less than $25,000 properly received their due monthly child benefits. California barely managed to distribute less than 2% of its $5.2B of federal rent relief funds during the program’s first 3 months last year. The CA agency responsible for providing this benefit cited problems with its anti-fraud procedures. Perhaps the agency believed if it provided an all too slender amount of relief funds to qualified applicants, they would not have to worry as much about fraud? Such shoddy implementation results in exasperation, as well as the public’s downgraded view of government competency.

Unfortunately, there’s been little if any discussion about how the proposed panoply of significantly large benefit programs in the BBB will actually be implemented. Polling shows that the administration’s wobbly implementation of several recent programs is one factor that has just reduced by more than 20% the public’s support for having the government “do more to solve the nation’s problems.”

This is not good news for the Dems. The institutional stress on public agencies that will have responsibilities for successfully administering these giant, complex programs will be immense.

Dems, particularly Progs, would be wise to head such forewarnings. The Dems require strong, positive public support to extend and broaden their big BBB programs. This can happen by reducing the number and/or scope of several BBB programs, allowing each one to receive relatively more funding and attention, even if the top-line budget is reduced as it likely will be.

Although a majority of the public has all too little knowledge about specific BBB programs, recent polls say the most popular AFP programs are universal prekindergarten and reducing Medicare drug prices, the least popular is free community college.

Assembling the BBB puzzle will take insight, care and modesty. The Dems should remember Shakespeare’s Learian lament that demanding perfection can result in gaining next to nothing. They should consider fewer BBB programs to do better, not all of them and do worse.

 

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[1] Failures include two ballot attempts by the State of Washington to initiate a carbon tax. Several other states have proposed carbon taxes, none have been implemented. The city of Boulder, CO initiated a local carbon tax in 2006; it’s still in effect. A federal carbon tax is regularly proposed in the Congress, but no formal carbon tax legislation has ever passed. 

 

 

DROUGHT IN THE WEST

This is the end of innocence. ~ Don Henley  

Once again, California and the western US is suffering from a significant water drought. Water, a precious finite resource that sustains our lives, is a common resource needed by every living organism. Even though we 39.6 million residents innocently do not want to admit it, periodic droughts have been an all too regular feature of our environmental landscape for centuries.

Over the last twenty years, three out of four years in California and the American West have been drought years. It’s hardly surprising, given that we live in a semi-arid region. The US Drought Monitor shows that over 90% of California currently is suffering from “extreme” or “exceptional” water drought conditions. The on-going drought has contributed to 11 major fires and 7,738 incidents in the state according to Cal Fire this season.

A drought emergency was declared in May by the California Water Resources Control Board (Board). For the first time ever the US Dept. of Interior declared on Aug. 16 a water shortage on the Colorado River basin that provides much water to seven western states, including southern California. Last year, California received an out-sized 62% of the Colorado River Lower Basin’s water allocation. Starting in Jan. 2022, farmers, ranchers, and irrigation districts will be forced to use less water.

The Board has already reduced the amount of water CA farmers can draw from rivers and streams. These reductions are unusual because in well-endowed water politics, water power usually runs uphill to Sacramento. Although bountiful, the state’s agricultural output accounts for only 0.8% of the state’s GDP, but more than 80% of its potable water usage. Such water-intensity illustrates that no one can grow almonds, artichokes, grapes or lettuce without “liquid gold.”

If California wants to reduce its water consumption, agriculture is where decreases need to start first and foremost. The price of farmers’ irrigation water has been deeply subsidized by state and federal agencies forever. With its slight cost, California ag irrigators, as well as other users have had no economic incentive to conserve or efficiently use water.

We desperately need a completely-justified increase in water pricing. Who knows, perhaps this drought might entice water policy-makers to properly raise water’s price so the reduced volumes of H2O available for agricultural irrigators would be used far more effectively. Non-ag, residential customers would be incented to use Xeriscaping methods and otherwise conserve. Lawns would become an endangered “species.”

Surface irrigation systems – also called flood irrigation where water is pumped onto an entire farm section – is highly water-wasteful. Unsurprisingly, surface systems are the most commonly used ag water irrigation system, principally because of its very low initial capital cost. California almond growers, who use about 14% of California’s prime, irrigated their cropland, overwhelmingly use surface irrigation. Drip irrigation systems are far more water-efficient, providing water only to the individual plant’s root systems. Much of California’s wine-grape industry, which uses about 7% of the state’s prime, irrigated cropland, employs drip systems.

So far, Governor Newsom has imposed no water-reduction mandates for non-agriculture water usage that we citizens consume. It’s probably only a matter of time, now that the recall election is history.

Unlike the last drought that ended in 2016, the federal government swiftly has reduced water allocations by 75% in the Central Valley Project (CVP) to farmers and cities. The CVP provides about 20% of the state’s potable water through its huge system of reservoirs and canals. Reservoirs, like Shasta Lake shown below, are now less than 25% of capacity, and continue to drop rapidly every day.

 

Shasta Lake/reservoir, July 2021.

Before the winter rains hopefully begin in a month or so, it is vital that federal and state water policies throughout the western US are changed. Like others before it, this devastating drought’s impacts are caused in no small part by misguided policies in the water market.

It’s an unfortunately fine example of a liquid tragedy of the commons. This tragedy can be mitigated by increasing everyone’s water price to properly reflect its true, essential value. In addition, water districts can incentivize conservation by providing bill credits and rebates to customers who have reduced their usage by some minimal percentage – say 20% – via conservation or installation of water-saving methods that will decrease future usage. Such incentives have produced impressive reductions in electricity usage, but all too many water utilities and districts seem inured to their value. This hesitancy needs to end.