Gristmill

Portrait of an oil-addicted former superpower

Thu, 8 May 2008 22:32:57 PDT

By Guest author

The following is a guest essay from Michael T. Klare, author of the new book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. It was originally published on Tom's Dispatch, which has graciously permitted us to use it here.

-----

Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated the Soviet Union as the world's other superpower. Yes, the USSR as a political entity stumbled on for another two years, but it was clearly an ex-superpower from the moment it lost control over its satellites in Eastern Europe.

Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to superpower status when a barrel crude oil roared past $110 on the international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at American pumps, and diesel fuel topped $4.00. As was true of the USSR following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the USA will no doubt continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the nation's economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as an ex-superpower-in-the-making.

That the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the erasure of the Soviet Union's superpower status was obvious to international observers at the time. After all, the USSR visibly ceased to exercise dominion over an empire (and an associated military-industrial complex) encompassing nearly half of Europe and much of Central Asia. The relationship between rising oil prices and the obliteration of America's superpower status is, however, hardly as self-evident. So let's consider the connection.

Dry Hole Superpower

The fact is, America's wealth and power has long rested on the abundance of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time, the world's leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while generating a healthy surplus for export.

Oil was the basis for the rise of first giant multinational corporations in the U.S., notably John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company (now reconstituted as Exxon Mobil, the world's wealthiest publicly-traded corporation). Abundant, exceedingly affordable petroleum was also responsible for the emergence of the American automotive and trucking industries, the flourishing of the domestic airline industry, the development of the petrochemical and plastics industries, the suburbanization of America, and the mechanization of its agriculture. Without cheap and abundant oil, the United States would never have experienced the historic economic expansion of the post-World War II era.

No less important was the role of abundant petroleum in fueling the global reach of U.S. military power. For all the talk of America's growing reliance on computers, advanced sensors, and stealth technology to prevail in warfare, it has been oil above all that gave the U.S. military its capacity to "project power" onto distant battlefields like Iraq and Afghanistan. Every Humvee, tank, helicopter, and jet fighter requires its daily ration of petroleum, without which America's technology-driven military would be forced to abandon the battlefield. No surprise, then, that the U.S. Department of Defense is the world's single biggest consumer of petroleum, using more of it every day than the entire nation of Sweden.

From the end of World War II through the height of the Cold War, the U.S. claim to superpower status rested on a vast sea of oil. As long as most of our oil came from domestic sources and the price remained reasonably low, the American economy thrived and the annual cost of deploying vast armies abroad was relatively manageable. But that sea has been shrinking since the 1950s. Domestic oil production reached a peak in 1970 and has been in decline ever since -- with a growing dependency on imported oil as the result. When it came to reliance on imports, the United States crossed the 50% threshold in 1998 and now has passed 65%.

Though few fully realized it, this represented a significant erosion of sovereign independence even before the price of a barrel of crude soared above $110. By now, we are transferring such staggering sums yearly to foreign oil producers, who are using it to gobble up valuable American assets, that, whether we know it or not, we have essentially abandoned our claim to superpowerdom.

According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Energy, the United States is importing 12-14 million barrels of oil per day. At a current price of about $115 per barrel, that's $1.5 billion per day, or $548 billion per year. This represents the single largest contribution to America's balance-of-payments deficit, and is a leading cause for the dollar's ongoing drop in value. If oil prices rise any higher -- in response, perhaps, to a new crisis in the Middle East (as might be occasioned by U.S. air strikes on Iran) -- our annual import bill could quickly approach three-quarters of a trillion dollars or more per year.

While our economy is being depleted of these funds, at a moment when credit is scarce and economic growth has screeched to a halt, the oil regimes on which we depend for our daily fix are depositing their mountains of accumulating petrodollars in "sovereign wealth funds" (SWFs) -- state-controlled investment accounts that buy up prized foreign assets in order to secure non-oil-dependent sources of wealth. At present, these funds are already believed to hold in excess of several trillion dollars; the richest, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), alone holds $875 billion.

The ADIA first made headlines in November 2007 when it acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup, America's largest bank holding company. The fund has also made substantial investments in Advanced Micro Systems, a major chip maker, and the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant. Another big SWF, the Kuwait Investment Authority, also acquired a multibillion-dollar stake in Citigroup, along with a $6.6 billion chunk of Merrill Lynch. And these are but the first of a series of major SWF moves that will be aimed at acquiring stakes in top American banks and corporations.

The managers of these funds naturally insist that they have no intention of using their ownership of prime American properties to influence U.S. policy. In time, however, a transfer of economic power of this magnitude cannot help but translate into a transfer of political power as well. Indeed, this prospect has already stirred deep misgivings in Congress. "In the short run, that they [the Middle Eastern SWFs] are investing here is good," Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) recently observed. "But in the long run it is unsustainable. Our power and authority is eroding because of the amounts we are sending abroad for energy ..."

No Summer Tax Holiday for the Pentagon

Foreign ownership of key nodes of our economy is only one sign of fading American superpower status. Oil's impact on the military is another.

Every day, the average G.I. in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels. With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage, including gasoline for vans and light vehicles, diesel for trucks and armored vehicles, and aviation fuel for helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing aircraft. With U.S. forces paying, as of late April, an average of $3.23 per gallon for these fuels, the Pentagon is already spending approximately $14 million per day on oil ($98 million per week, $5.1 billion per year) to stay in Iraq. Meanwhile, our Iraqi allies, who are expected to receive a windfall of $70 billion this year from the rising price of their oil exports, charge their citizens $1.36 per gallon for gasoline.

When questioned about why Iraqis are paying almost a third less for oil than American forces in their country, senior Iraqi government officials scoff at any suggestion of impropriety. "America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi governmental expenditures. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn't have all these needs."

Needless to say, this is not exactly the way grateful clients are supposed to address superpower patrons. "It's totally unacceptable to me that we are spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding Iraq while they are putting tens of billions of dollars in banks around the world from oil revenues," said Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "It doesn't compute as far as I'm concerned."

Certainly, however, our allies in the region, especially the Sunni kingdoms of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that presumably look to Washington to stabilize Iraq and curb the growing power of Shiite Iran, are willing to help the Pentagon out by supplying U.S. troops with free or deeply-discounted petroleum. No such luck. Except for some partially subsidized oil supplied by Kuwait, all oil-producing U.S. allies in the region charge us the market rate for petroleum. Take that as a striking reflection of how little credence even countries whose ruling elites have traditionally looked to the U.S. for protection now attach to our supposed superpower status.

Think of this as a strikingly clear-eyed assessment of American power. As far as they're concerned, we're now just another of those hopeless oil addicts driving a monster gas-guzzler up to the pump -- and they're perfectly happy to collect our cash which they can then use to cherry-pick our prime assets. So expect no summer tax holidays for the Pentagon, not in the Middle East, anyway.

Worse yet, the U.S. military will need even more oil for the future wars on which the Pentagon is now doing the planning. In this way, the U.S. experience in Iraq has especially worrisome implications. Under the military "transformation" initiated by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, the future U.S. war machine will rely less on "boots on the ground" and ever more on technology. But technology entails an ever-greater requirement for oil, as the newer weapons sought by Rumsfeld (and now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) all consume many times more fuel than those they will replace. To put this in perspective: The average G.I in Iraq now uses about seven times as much oil per day as G.I.s did in the first the Gulf War less than two decades ago. And every sign indicates that the same ratio of increase will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will skyrocket; and that the Pentagon's capacity to shoulder multiple foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone.

Russia's Gusher

If anything demonstrates the critical role of oil in determining the fate of superpowers in the current milieu, it is the spectacular reemergence of Russia as a Great Power on the basis of its superior energy balance. Once derided as the humiliated, enfeebled loser in the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, Russia is again a force to be reckoned with in world affairs. It possesses the fastest-growing economy among the G-8 group of major industrial powers, is the world's second leading producer of oil (after Saudi Arabia), and its top producer of natural gas. Because it produces far more energy than it consumes, Russia exports a substantial portion of its oil and gas to neighboring countries, making it the only Great Power not dependent on other states for its energy needs.

As Russia has become an energy-exporting state, it has moved from the list of has-beens to the front rank of major players. When President Bush first occupied the White House, in February 2001, one of his highest priorities was to downgrade U.S. ties with Russia and annul the various arms-control agreements that had been forged between the two countries by his predecessors, agreements that explicitly conferred equal status on the USA and the USSR.

As an indication of how contemptuously the Bush team viewed Russia at that time, Condoleezza Rice, while still an adviser to the Bush presidential campaign, wrote, in the January/February 2000 issue of the influential Foreign Affairs, "U.S. policy… must recognize that American security is threatened less by Russia's strength than by its weakness and incoherence." Under such circumstances, she continued, there was no need to preserve obsolete relics of the dual superpower past like the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; rather, the focus of U.S. efforts should be on preventing the further erosion of Russian nuclear safeguards and the potential escape of nuclear materials.

In line with this outlook, President Bush believed that he could convert an impoverished and compliant Russia into a major source of oil and natural gas for the United States -- with American energy companies running the show. This was the evident aim of the U.S.-Russian "energy dialogue" announced by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May 2002. But if Bush thought Russia was prepared to turn into a northern version of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela prior to the arrival of Hugo Chávez, he was to be sorely disappointed. Putin never permitted American firms to acquire substantial energy assets in Russia. Instead, he presided over a major recentralization of state control when it came to the country's most valuable oil and gas reserves, putting most of them in the hands of Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas behemoth.

Once in control of these assets, moreover, Putin has used his renascent energy power to exert influence over states that were once part of the former Soviet Union, as well as those in Western Europe that rely on Russian oil and gas for a substantial share of their energy needs. In the most extreme case, Moscow turned off the flow of natural gas to Ukraine on January 1, 2006, in the midst of an especially cold winter, in what was said to be a dispute over pricing but was widely viewed as punishment for Ukraine's political drift westwards. (The gas was turned back on four days later when Ukraine agreed to pay a higher price and offered other concessions.) Gazprom has threatened similar action in disputes with Armenia, Belarus, and Georgia -- in each case forcing those former Soviet SSRs to back down.

When it comes to the U.S.-Russian relationship, just how much the balance of power has shifted was evident at the NATO summit at Bucharest in early April. There, President Bush asked that Georgia and Ukraine both be approved for eventual membership in the alliance, only to find top U.S. allies (and Russian energy users) France and Germany blocking the measure out of concern for straining ties with Russia. "It was a remarkable rejection of American policy in an alliance normally dominated by Washington," Steven Erlanger and Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reported, "and it sent a confusing signal to Russia, one that some countries considered close to appeasement of Moscow."

For Russian officials, however, the restoration of their country's great power status is not the product of deceit or bullying, but a natural consequence of being the world's leading energy provider. No one is more aware of this than Dmitri Medvedev, the former Chairman of Gazprom and new Russian president. "The attitude toward Russia in the world is different now," he declared on December 11, 2007. "We are not being lectured like schoolchildren; we are respected and we are deferred to. Russia has reclaimed its proper place in the world community. Russia has become a different country, stronger and more prosperous."

The same, of course, can be said about the United States -- in reverse. As a result of our addiction to increasingly costly imported oil, we have become a different country, weaker and less prosperous. Whether we know it or not, the energy Berlin Wall has already fallen and the United States is an ex-superpower-in-the-making.

Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of the just-released Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books). A documentary film based on his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation and can be ordered at bloodandoilmovie.com. A brief video of Klare discussing key subjects in his new book can be viewed by clicking here.

Congress (almost) passes a farm bill; Bush vows to veto

Thu, 8 May 2008 16:59:14 PDT

By Tom Philpott

For months now, the 2007 farm bill has been in limbo, tied up in reconciliation negotiations between the House and the Senate.

On Thursday, the bicameral Farm Bill Conference Report agreed on a final proposal. The latest version will go to the larger House and Senate next week for approval; if all goes well, it will finally go to President Bush's desk.

But since this wouldn't be the 2007 farm bill without a final dose of drama, negotiations seem far from over. "The President will veto this bill," USDA chair Ed Schafer bluntly declared in a Thursday afternoon communique.

The sticking point is subsidy reform, or lack thereof. "This legislation lacks meaningful farm program reform and expands the size and scope of government," Schafer stated.

Many sustainable-ag and rural advocates would cheer a Bush veto. On the Center for Rural Affairs blog, Dan Owens recently laid out their case:

We will have the opportunity to fight again, and ... I have real hope that we can do better, that we can win more, that we can get a farm bill that is better than the one about to pass Congress. And we can try again in 2009. But if the bill becomes law, we will have to wait until 2013.

Others, however, disagree. They argue that the bill contains valuable provisions that need to be passed -- small victories that will be surrendered if farm policy reverts to the 2002 farm bill.

Below I'll try to hash out what precisely this latest version contains. I'll also be trying to get movers and shakers in the sustainable-ag/food-justice world to give their perspectives.

The most controversial bit in this farm bill is the commodity title -- the program through which the government ostensibly tries to smooth out the financial uncertainty of farming. The title has evolved over the years into a funnel that delivers cash the great bulk of its cash to the largest farms, doing little to balance out swings in supply and demand.

Bush wants to cut the subsidies because they have become a sticking point in global trade deals, and presumably because of Iraq-related budgetary concerns. Most sustainable-ag advocates would like to see them replaced with more equitable and effective ways of smoothing out supply and demand troubles.

This Associated Press piece digs into the details of the current commodity title, and how the limits it places on subsidies fall short of what critics including the Bush administration had wanted. In an emailed communique, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition summarized the title like this:

Comprehensive payment limitation reform was not included in the bill. ... the net result is no change in the highly skewed status quo on payment limits for direct and counter-cyclical payments.

The latest version also includes a controversial "permanent assistance fund" worth $3.8 billion. A couple of months ago on Gristmill, Britt Lundgren and Jason Funk of Environmental Defense Fund called this provision a "a disaster for taxpayers, most farmers, and the environment."They say it encourages farmers to cultivate disaster-prone land. Bush, too, has sharply criticized this provision.

If the commodity title and the disaster fund are considered a disappointment, other provisions -- ones that, unhappily, involve far less money -- have drawn support.

The Community Food Security Coalition reported in a Thursday email that the new version contains funding for Community Food Projects -- vitally important programs designed to bring fresh, healthy food to places that now have little access. Writes acting policy director Steph Larsen:

The great news is that Community Food Projects (CFP) is in the final language, and we have $5 million in annual mandatory funding for the next 10 years! As you may recall, this year we started out with no money due to new congressional budget rules that cuts the funding for small programs. New language for CFP should fix this problem so that for the next Farm Bill, CFP will be able to build on the $5 million instead of starting from scratch with zero dollars. And with mandatory funding, we will not have to fight for these dollars every year.

Larsen added the bill also allows public to favor local farms in bids for school food. "This change will eliminate [a major] barrier for schools to support local agriculture and will make Farm to School programs easier to establish."

(Before anyone gets too excited, the bill does not add any funding to the miserly National School Lunch Program budget. Now schools can theoretically buy local; but they still have $.70-$1.00 to spend per day on ingredients for each kid's lunch.)

The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition also points to several victories, especially with regard to the Conservation Title. This title tries to balance the produce-as-much-as-possible thrust of the Commodity Title by giving farmers incentives to manage their land in ecologically sound ways.

The SAC declared the Conservation Title in the current version an overall "win," since it delivers "$4 billion net increase in mandatory spending, combined with $2.5 billion in savings from Conservation Reserve Program, for total new funding of $6.5 billion, and a continued rebalancing toward working lands conservation."

SAC also points to several "wins" in boosting funding for organic agriculture, including a "nearly five-fold increase to help cover the costs of organic certification," and a "a seven-fold increase" in funding for organic farming research and extension." It should be noted, though, these outlays amount to sums in the tens of millions over five years, while the cash devoted to industrial-scale farming runs to billions every year.

As for my beloved "packer ban," which would have forbid meat packers like Tyson from own livestock -- well, that didn't survive negotiations.

All of this must be thought through and digested. More soon.

Notable quotable

Thu, 8 May 2008 16:20:27 PDT

By David Roberts

"Are there negatives associated? Sure. But 50,000 people die per year in our highway system, and you don't think about that when you get into your car. And you shouldn't."

-- Fred Palmer, senior vice president for governmental affairs at Peabody Energy (formerly Peabody Coal), responding to a question about air and water pollution from coal

Cause of death: apathy

Thu, 8 May 2008 15:39:02 PDT

By Joseph Romm

The fading hopes for the Lieberman-Warner climate bill have all but ended (see E&E News, "Sponsors lower expectations for Lieberman-Warner bill," $ub. req'd, reprinted below).

Serious climate legislation had been in critical condition for some months (see "Boucher lets conservatives block House climate bill" and "Don't hold your breath on Lieberman-Warner passing in 2008."). Doctors and family members finally pulled the plug this week, and the patient appeared to lose all vital signs. The coroner listed "apathy" as the cause of death.

The only hope for revival now rests in the faint possibility that Lieberman-Warner turns out to be either an immortal cop, a vampire private detective, or possibly a relentless, indestructible killing machine from the future that had taken on the guise of so-so climate legislation in an effort to fulfill its mission of ruining life on this planet for Homo "sapiens." (Note to self: That was a bit harsh.)

More seriously, too many senators simply wanted to do too much watering down of L-W, plus we have the little-known provision of the Constitution that says all pieces of legislation aimed at sparing billions of people from unimaginable misery must receive 60 votes. The messy details are below:

Senate sponsors of a major global warming bill lowered expectations yesterday on their chances for final passage as aides scrambled behind the scenes to complete a revamped version of the legislation before next month's scheduled floor debate.

Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) shrugged off suggestions she is having trouble winning over moderates and conservatives from either party in her quest to find 60 votes and squash an inevitable filibuster.

"To tell you the truth, we don't know if we'll wind up getting 60 votes this time," Boxer said in an interview. "But we do believe we're making tremendous progress and we're going to start the debate."

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who provided a critical swing vote for the climate bill last winter when it moved out of the EPW Committee, provided a similar assessment. "I don't think we can count on 60 at this point," he said.

Aides to Boxer and Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) have been working over the last few weeks on a substitute to their original climate bill with several changes compared to the version adopted in committee last December. Lieberman said he expected the manager's amendment would get wider circulation Monday, with a public rollout shortly after.

"The whole idea is to get a draft out to our colleagues, to stakeholders, and we presume, to the public to see what we're thinking," Lieberman said. "And then invite responses so we can continue to improve it."

Warner yesterday said he was looking for changes before the floor debate that would allow the president to "pull back the throttle" if the legislation's emission targets cannot be met with available technology, or if the U.S. economy was under stress through, for example, $5 a gallon gasoline.

Boxer has also promised several changes to the bill, including a "deficit reduction" amendment, as well as greater oversight of the carbon markets and specific funding directed toward cities to help promote energy efficiency and mass transit.

Many demands

The Lieberman-Warner-Boxer camp is facing increasing demands from all corners of the Senate to change the bill that would establish a cap-and-trade system with midcentury emission limits of 70 percent below 2005 levels.

Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown told the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week he was holding out in his support for the Lieberman-Warner bill because it did not do enough to protect his home state's manufacturing jobs while still stimulating investments in alternative energy. "I have serious concerns about any climate-change bill that doesn't take into account energy-intensive industries like we have in Ohio -- glass and chemicals and steel and aluminum and foundries," Brown said.

"He's concerned," Brown spokeswoman Joanna Kuebler explained yesterday. "He's leaning toward a no."

Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said in an interview that she is also pushing for changes in the Lieberman-Warner bill to benefit her home state's abundant supplies of hydropower. "We want to make sure people who are already good at reducing CO2 emissions will continue to do that and not be penalized," she said. Cantwell explained that she has not joined the bill as a cosponsor because she wants to keep working on it.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he wants a more beneficial emission allocation system for his state's rural energy producers.

"Obviously, I represent a state that's a significant power producer," Conrad said. "Most people don't think of North Dakota that way. But we produce electricity for nine states. We have the largest coal gasification plant in the country. We have very large reserves of lignite coal."

In contrast, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) maintained that he is a long way from backing the Lieberman-Warner bill. Instead, he is taking a close look at an alternative climate bill circulated from Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) that opens with tax incentives for new energy technologies but falls back on cap and trade if the other ideas have not worked by 2030.

"It's a more realistic approach to what technology is going to be required," Nelson said. "Just legislating it doesn't get you there."

(Note to Nelson: Nooooo!)

On the Republican side of the aisle, Sen. John McCain of Arizona plans a major climate-themed speech Monday in Portland, Ore., that his aides say will spell out in greater detail what he hopes to do on the issue if elected president this November. McCain will cover issues relevant to the Lieberman-Warner floor debate, including how to limit costs to the U.S. economy and also how to safeguard U.S. manufacturers concerned about international competition, an aide said.

Back in Washington, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) spoke on the Senate floor yesterday on a different method for using what are projected to be hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue raised through an auction of emission credits. Gregg suggested the auction revenue could go toward reducing personal income taxes, as opposed to its current function with Lieberman-Warner, which ranges from research and development of new energy technologies to helping low-income energy consumers.

"This should not be a windfall that expands the size of federal government," Gregg said. "It's not right to do that."

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

It's Barack vs. Britney

Thu, 8 May 2008 14:51:50 PDT

By Sarah van Schagen

And Barack is winning ...

A national environmental policy?

Thu, 8 May 2008 14:33:15 PDT

By Joseph Romm

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.

-----

The fact that our country has a National Environmental Policy Act means we should have a national environmental policy, and any national environmental policy is bound to take into consideration global warming, right?

Wrong on two counts.

The U.S. is sorely lacking an updated environmental policy. It's been over a decade and counting. With the EPA as example, and based on its condition as of late (see here and here), the climate's looking grim.

As for a cohesive national policy that takes into account global warming's causes and impacts? Think again. States have been infinitely more active than our federal government (and we thank them).

Presented with this gaping problem, Christopher Pyke and Kit Batten co-authored and released a paper Tuesday entitled "Full Disclosure," calling for an executive order by the next president to require consideration of global warming into federal policy decisions under the National Environmental Policy Act. They argue the government has this ability and is already authorized under NEPA to exercise it.

The paper's release was celebrated with an event hosting former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, Professor Jonathan Cannon, former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, and co-authors Pyke and Batten. You can read a brief description here.

The description closes as Sec. Babbitt closed his keynote, and as I think it's worth closing this post. The magnitude of global warming -- its causes, its solutions, its consequences -- is such that it forces a question so simple and straightforward, one that we often neglect and yet one that will ultimately define our country and our leadership: Does our government have the honesty and compassion required to talk to its citizens about their future?

Right now, we don't. But we should, and we could ...

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

On the Ball: Balls, balls, and more balls

Thu, 8 May 2008 13:43:49 PDT

By Sarah K. Burkhalter

Ado, ado, ado. It's been a while since our last sports roundup, so with no further ado:

Baseball: Major League Baseball was all about Earth Day. The Seattle Mariners hosted the league's first carbon-neutral game, while the uniforms of the Boston Red Sox displayed a pair of red socks in a green recycling logo. (Reaction from Grist Prez -- and Sox fan -- Chip Giller: "This is butt ugly! And what does the recycling sign have to do with energy issues?") Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Phillies have bought 20 million kilowatt-hours of renewable-energy certificates. The L.A. Dodgers have unveiled a new stadium plan that includes a dedicated bus lane -- and two new parking garages. And toxic soil from the excavation site for the Minnesota Twins' new ballpark gets dumped by the river. If the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball is more your style, the Long Island Ducks are going green too.

Basketball: Basketball star Steve Nash is the source of perhaps my favorite quote ever: "When the Suns get hot, that's good. But when the earth gets hot, that's bad." Ha! He's also endorsed by Nike and stars in this ad for their recycled shoe:

Artificial sporting surfaces: Artificial field turf has been all up in the news lately -- so much so that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating whether it poses a health risk. Meanwhile, artificial snow is criticized for being highly energy- and water-intensive.

Beijing Olympics 2008: The city will halt all construction-related digging and concrete pouring from July 20 until Sept. 20 to help clear the air. At least one statistics official believes the impact on Beijing's economy of factory shutdowns and driving restrictions will be minimal. Concerns about air pollution linger; Australian athletes are being screened for asthma, and European athletes will take part in an asthma study while there, though a European anti-asthma organization says asthma sufferers face no increased health risk at the Games. And to tout the green symbolism of the Games, Chinese artist Yuan Xikun and U.S. enviro-artist Robert Wyland exchanged paintings in a symbolic ceremony touting the Games' greenness.

London Olympics 2012: The city is getting going on cleanup and construction. Says Tom Russell, head of the Olympic Legacy Directorate of the London Development Agency, "It's an unparalleled opportunity for city-making."

Sochi Olympics 2014: Greens are concerned that Olympic preparations in the Russian city will irreparably harm the environment.

Soccer: Austria is co-hosting the European Championships with Switzerland in June, and says the event will be green, though critics say organizers should focus more on mitigating emissions from travel than on energy-efficient stadiums and reusable drinking cups. Meanwhile, South Africa is pledging to make the 2010 World Cup green by offsetting emissions and planting trees. Be that as it may, the London Telegraph charges that -- gasp! -- "football's green claim is really a red herring."

Skateboarding: A bunch of people were invited to skateboard star Bob Burnquist's house for a pre-Earth Day party, but you weren't one of them. Sorry.

Golf: "How green is golf?" wonders Golf Digest. Say golf-course operators: quite green, we promise!

And if you're into the whole eco-athlete thing, perhaps you'd like to check out EcoAthlete.

Holiday on ice

Thu, 8 May 2008 13:15:47 PDT

By Joseph Romm

For nearly two months now, Sen. Clinton has been outperforming the closing polls in primary state after primary state. And no one can possibly say that Sen. Obama had a good past three weeks, with the reemergence of Rev. Wright. Yet this time, he outperformed the recent polls in both states.

This suggests that in the only other big issue to rise in the last week of the campaign -- the gas tax holiday -- Obama did not lose votes taking the principled position. As I (and many others) have blogged, a gas tax holiday would most likely benefit the oil companies more than the the average consumer. Also, it sends a terrible message about future climate policies (namely that some weak-kneed president might roll back carbon prices the first time the economy hit a rough patch after a cap-and-trade system was passed) -- see "A gas tax holiday would be cynical and indefensible."

Clinton proposed the gas tax holiday April 28, eight days before the two primaries. So what happened among late-deciding voters? Here is the answer, based on CBS' exit poll numbers (overview here):

Twenty-five percent in Indiana and 20 percent in North Carolina decided in the last week.

In North Carolina, Obama took those voters 54 percent to 44 percent (a 31,000 vote margin). In Indiana, Clinton took those voters 56 percent to 44 percent (a 38,000 vote margin), which is not quite as high as her percentage of late deciders in Pennsylvania. So late deciders were pretty much a wash.

Again, I conclude that the gas tax issue did not play very much, if it all, in Hillary's favor, even though, on the surface, it appears to be a very attractive populist issue.

The story of the last seven days

The Washington Post has a long narrative on the days leading up to the two primaries, "After One of Campaign's Roughest Patches, Obama Tried to Change the Narrative." The part on the gas tax is especially interesting.

I tend to think that Clinton may have won the issue slightly on a direct, tactical level but really lost it by much more on a strategic level in that it allowed Obama to get back on message (and it also seems to have hurt her with the superdelegates, which, since they are the party leaders and members of Congress, is good news for future energy/climate policy). Indeed, the Post reported:

Cornell Belcher, an Obama pollster who declined to give out his polling numbers, said: "The whole gas tax thing, it isn't about whether it's working in the polls."

The bottom line is that Obama's position was not a losing position. That bodes well, I think, for both of the fall campaign against Sen. McCain, and an Obama presidency, should he win.

The view down under

Finally, I was struck by the words of John Quiggin, an Australian economist whose climate writings I admire, in a post from Saturday, "Holiday from Sanity":

I was pretty much stunned into silence by the proposal for a gasoline tax holiday put forward by John McCain and Hillary Clinton. I won't bother repeating all the reasons why this is a terrible idea (when Tom Friedman has your number, I'd say your number is up).

Just a couple of observations. First, I find it hard to see how anyone serious can support either McCain or Clinton after this.

Second, the fact that the proposal has lasted this long suggests to me that the chance of any serious U.S. action on global warming after the election is not that great. Without the U.S., we won't get anything from China and India either, so that means we're setting course for disaster. Perhaps if Obama wins, he'll be able to turn this around, but this episode has me very depressed.

So even seemingly small digressions in the U.S. presidential race do get noticed around the world. I hope Quiggin -- and others who are working internationally to avoid catastrophic climate impacts -- will take some heart from the Tuesday vote. I did.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Tasty, tasty justice

Thu, 8 May 2008 12:27:21 PDT

By Erik Hoffner

Global Oneness Project has finished a great new series of interviews with Brahm Ahmadi, co-founder/director of People's Grocery. Their food justice work is crucial to Oakland: like many cities, there are usually lots more opportunities to buy beer or smokes on every block than fresh, healthy fruits and veggies. Check out this inspiring 8-minute film to get some new ideas for how we can reconnect urban populations and the planet through food. The sidebar clips are great, too, as are all the short films on this site I've viewed.

Five bucks a gallon?

Thu, 8 May 2008 11:28:33 PDT

By Joseph Romm

Goldman Sachs' Arjun N. Murti said this in a May 5 report:

The possibility of $150-$200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next 6-24 months, though predicting the ultimate peak in oil prices as well as the remaining duration of the upcycle remains a major uncertainty.

That would mean gasoline prices of $5 to $6 a gallon. Unless, of course, we permanently suspend the gasoline tax, in which case gasoline prices would only be $5 to $6 a gallon.

Why should we listen to Murti? Well, back in 2005, when prices averaged under $60 a barrel, he was one of the few Wall Street analysts who predicted oil could soon hit $105 a barrel -- or higher if we don't take the right actions quickly:

There will be a peak in production earlier than expected, and that post-peak decline will be more dramatic than currently assumed unless there is a sustained increase in investment in oil and gas production, greater consumer efficiency and alternative energy.

That may all seem obvious, but it has come as a big shock to Detroit, D.C. policymakers, truckers, and apparently most of the American public. Certainly the fundamentals of oil supply and demand have changed, probably forever, as I have repeatedly written. And as Bloomberg reports, Murti is not alone:

Deutsche Bank AG Chief Energy Economist Adam Sieminski, who forecasts oil averaging $102.50 next year, today said Asian demand and limited extra supply will keep pushing oil to record levels. There's a "huge risk" that prices will rise to a level, perhaps $200, "when demand finally collapses because ordinary people can no longer afford to burn as much energy as they are burning now," Sieminski said in an April 25 report.

I tend to agree that the price is likely to keep rising over time (with occasional dips) until there is serious demand instruction. Most people, including me, thought that would have happened by now. But obviously prices are going to have to go considerably higher. Key factors include:

China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, has more than doubled oil use since New York crude oil dropped to this decade's low of $16.70 a barrel on Nov. 19, 2001. Record prices have failed to stem rising consumption in developing nations, with demand led by China, India and the Middle East ...

In Venezuela, production has slumped to about 2.34 million barrels a day from almost 3 million barrels a day in 2002, according to Bloomberg's estimates, before President Hugo Chavez fired almost 20,000 workers who had closed the state oil company in an attempt to overthrow the government.

Iraq's oil production has yet to reach levels attained before the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 as the country struggles with sectarian fighting and attacks on its energy infrastructure.

Mexico's production has fallen below 3 million barrels a day since October as Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, failed to compensate for a 30 percent drop at Cantarell, its largest field, which accounts for 40 percent of output.

And, of course, Russia may have seen peak production (as the Financial Times wrote recently):

Leonid Fedun, the 52-year-old vice-president of Lukoil, Russia's largest independent oil company, told the Financial Times he believed last year's Russian oil production of about 10m barrels a day was the highest he would see "in his lifetime." Russia is the world's second biggest oil producer.

Mr. Fedun compared Russia with the North Sea and Mexico, where oil production is declining dramatically, saying that in the oil-rich region of western Siberia, the mainstay of Russian output, "the period of intense oil production [growth] is over."

But what about OPEC?

Spare production capacity of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is low and the group's exports may fall because of "lackluster" supply growth and rising domestic consumption in member countries, the Goldman analysts said.

Goldman's bottom line is not pretty:

"The core of our super-spike view has been that a lack of adequate supply growth coupled with price-insulated non-OECD demand growth" is leading to higher prices, the analysts said. That could result in a "sharp correction in oil demand."

And, by the way, don't blame speculators:

There's a fundamental misperception that so-called speculators are driving prices to unjustified levels, the Goldman analysts said. "Unfortunately, we do not think the energy crisis will be solved by finding and punishing the big bad speculator."

Commodity investors, the Goldman analysts wrote, are "helping to solve the energy crisis" by speeding up the process for oil companies to spend more on energy projects and at the same time encourage efficiency.

I agree. Anybody who is helping to forward price the coming peak in conventional oil production is doing all of us a favor.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Better homes and gardens

Thu, 8 May 2008 10:50:54 PDT

By Tom Philpott

Viewed through a wide lens, the world's troubles seem overwhelming: climate change, pointless war, spreading hunger, surging food and energy prices, etc. There's a tendency to seek big-brush answers to these vast problems, to ask: what's The Solution? Failing inevitably to find it -- much less implement it -- we plunge deeper into despair and political impotence.

Of course, taking a broad view of the world is critically important. But that perspective may be better at providing fodder for analysis than it is at delivering real answers. Our problems may be so big precisely because we tend to think so big. The real action may be in small things; the real solution might be in lots of little solutions.

I got to thinking about this after reading an excellent New York Times piece by Tracie McMillan on a topic dear to my heart: urban farming. Writes McMillan:

For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers ... are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block.

By no means is this just a New York City phenomenon:

This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that, like East New York [an economically devastated Brooklyn neighborhood], have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land.

What could make more sense than growing food amid dense settlements, generating income and healthy food in areas that lack broad access to either?

The trend has been developing for years. I visited the farmers market run by East New York Farms -- the one highlighted by MacMillan -- way back in 2003. Already it was buzzing with excitement, and much of the food on sale had been grown within blocks of the market.

MacMillan provides a great overview of where urban farming stands five years later. She highlights success stories, like Milwaukee's legendary urban farm Growing Power, a one-acre wonderland of "plastic greenhouses, compost piles, do-it-yourself contraptions, tilapia tanks and pens full of hens, ducks and goats." Growing power grossed $220,000 from that small plot last year, MacMillan reports.

Projects like Growing Power offer a much more hopeful vision of the future of food production than ones like this: a bunch of central bankers sitting around and plotting a world in which industrially grown commodity crops whip around the world, unfettered by local concerns.

That vision inevitably trains itself on places like the Amazon rain forest, already being gobbled up in service of globalized industrial-food production. One of the world's great industrial-ag magnates recently offered up this bit of wisdom:

With the worsening of the global food crisis, the time is coming when it will be inevitable to discuss whether we preserve the environment or produce more food. There is no way to produce more food without occupying more land and taking down more trees.

Such thinking may be big, but is it smart? Hearteningly, McMillan reports that the U.N. may be beginning to take urban agriculture seriously.

The city's success with urban farming will receive international attention on Saturday when, during an 11-day conference in New York, 60 delegates from the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development are scheduled to visit Hands and Hearts [a market garden in Brooklyn], the Bed-Stuy Farm and two traditional community gardens in Brooklyn.

U.S. city planners, take note. Cities don't always embrace the pioneers who turn abandoned land into centers of biodiversity and food production. In L.A. a couple of years ago, city officials cravenly handed South Central Community Farm over to a developer. That fellow bulldozed an extraordinarily productive farm; last I heard, he intended to erect in its place a warehouse for distributing goods imported from Asia to Big Box stores throughout the West.

In New York in the late 1990s, a profoundly petty fellow called Rudolph Giuliani tried by fiat to auction off most of the city's community gardens, including many profiled by McMillan. Happily, because of concerted organizing by activist-gardeners, that attempt ended up scarcely more successful than Giuliani's presidential lunge.

SKB and BPA on NPR

Thu, 8 May 2008 10:21:51 PDT

By Sarah K. Burkhalter

I was on NPR talking about bisphenol A (that nasty chemical all up in our plastics). Audio is here.

I expect these questions will be forthcoming:

Do you always sound a bit froggy? No, I was a wee bit sick.

Do you always make up rhymes on the spot? Yes. Yes, I do.

Straight as a circle

Thu, 8 May 2008 09:52:40 PDT

By Joseph Romm

Has the oil industry borrowed the (laughable) tagline of presidential candidate John McCain? As Fox Business reported last Friday:

The American Petroleum Institute took out a full-page ad in USA Today, and other major media were tapped this week to provide "straight talk on earnings." The earnings that need "straight talk": ExxonMobil's $11 billion quarterly profit, and Chevron's $5.2 billion quarterly profit.

(Note to Big Oil: When Fox doesn't give your spin favorable coverage, you've definitely become the Britney Spears of industries.)

Apparently, the oil companies think that people will ignore their bloated profits once they see a chart showing earnings in "cents per dollar of sales," claiming:

In fact, first quarter 2006 earnings for oil and natural gas companies were slightly less than the average for other U.S. industries.

(Cue the violins, cut to a small starving child in Nigeria shedding a tear for the below-average earnings of the world's fattest fat cats.)

Well, I suppose you can fool some of the people all the time. After all, straight talker McCain denies his cap-and-trade system is "mandatory." And he claims his gas tax holiday will actually benefit consumers -- presumably because oil companies will generously lower their prices rather than, say, simply charging people the pre-holiday price because they know people will pay that price. Yeah, that's the ticket. And you have millions of dollars waiting for you in the Central Bank of Nigeria ...

An intriguing side note: If you Google "straight talk on earnings," you'll see a link to a PDF of the ad, but it has apparently been removed. I wonder if the McCain people complained about the plagiarism -- not that the McCain people would ever have to worry about somebody attacking a political candidate for guilt by association. If, however, you click on "View as HTML," you'll see the ad is still somewhere in cyberspace.

The truth is out there.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Cost-benefit environmentalism

Thu, 8 May 2008 08:12:22 PDT

By Guest author

This is a guess essay from Richard L. Revesz, Dean of New York University School of Law and co-author, with Michael A. Livermore, of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, published this month by Oxford University Press.

-----

Failing the cost-benefit test

The R. Gallagher coal-fired power plant in Indiana emits over 50,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per year. Sulfur dioxide is a major component of particulate matter -- a form of pollution known to cause adverse cardiovascular and respiratory health effects. Sulfur dioxide also mixes with other pollution in the atmosphere to form acid rain. As a result of these adverse health effects, the Office of Management and Budget estimates that each ton of sulfur dioxide released into the atmosphere imposes $7,300 in costs on the American public. This means that the R. Gallagher facility imposes over $370 million worth of costs each year.

Environmentalists have fought for years to clean up or shut down dirty power plants like R. Gallagher. According to an analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project, the dirtiest fifty plants account for 40 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, but only 13.7 percent of the electric generation. If we cleaned up the worst of the worst, we would make tremendous progress in improving the quality of the nation's air.

What makes the existence of plants like R. Gallagher so galling is that there is absolutely no reason why they should be allowed to pollute the way they do. Given the massive social costs imposed by plants like R. Gallagher, it makes basic economic sense to invest in pollution control technology -- or even build an entirely new efficient plant next door and shut the facility down entirely.

The Bush administration has had almost eight years to fix the problem of R. Gallagher. Despite its professed allegiance to the cost-benefit principles that reveal pollution from the plant as an economic disaster, the administration has done nothing to stop it. Congress, which contains many ostensible fans of cost-benefit analysis as well, hasn't closed the grandfathering loophole in the Clean Air Act that keeps R. Gallagher in business. When tougher environmental regulation is so clearly backed by sound economic analysis, the only explanation for the policy gap is a failure of the political process. This is not an ideological question; it is not a question of competing values. R. Gallagher, and similar polluting plants, stand as perfect monuments to a political system that has failed the American public.

Eighty percent of success is showing up

But these dirty plants can also serve as an example of how environmentalist can use economics to forward their agenda. Since Ronald Reagan placed cost-benefit analysis at the center of his deregulatory agenda in 1981, environmentalists have developed a strong allergy to economic analysis. They rarely participate in the debates over how cost-benefit is conducted, and do not place economic analysis at the center of their arguments for new and stronger regulation. On the other hand, antiregulatory groups like trade associations representing industrial polluters and conservative think tanks have embraced cost-benefit analysis. They argue that economic analysis shows deregulation is a good thing.

The asymmetry of participation has had several negative consequences. First, proregulatory interests consistently lose ground before the courts and OBM, which for nearly three decades has reviewed all "significant" regulations. Because OMB and the courts look to cost-benefit analysis, groups that cannot frame their arguments in economic terms are bound to lose.

Second, cost-benefit itself has become biased against regulation. It has been shaped by antiregulatory interests with little input from proregulatory interests, resulting in the adoption of several flawed techniques that tend to underestimate regulatory benefits and overestimate regulatory costs.

Finally, proregulatory interests have lost public approval as they have allowed themselves to be portrayed as extremists in pursuit of "big government." This loss of public support saps political will for new and updated regulatory programs.

Environmentalists made a particularly grave error by failing to advocate for more neutral cost-benefit analysis during the Clinton administration. When Bill Clinton took office, many expected him to drop cost-benefit analysis from the process of regulatory review. Instead, he embraced it, and took some steps to make it more transparent and fair. Environmentalists had eight years to try and remove the antiregulatory biases from cost-benefit analysis, but they let the opportunity pass. I served on an EPA committee charged with making recommendations about cost-benefit analysis to the agency, and during all of our meetings -- which were always well attended by industry groups pushing an antiregulatory agenda -- environmentalist never came. When negotiations are conducted with an empty chair in the room, it is hardly surprising when the results come out skewed.

Cost-benefit biases

Many fallacies have made their way into cost-benefit analysis because of this lopsided participation. For example, it too often accounts for unintended negative consequences of regulations without also accounting for similar positive consequences. When setting fuel efficiency standards, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration assesses negative consequences -- like deadlier auto accidents associated with smaller cars -- while ignoring positive side effects -- like reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The result is weak regulation.

Another example in debates over environmental regulation is the myth of the "health-wealth" tradeoff -- the notion that any economic regulation, by reducing economic productivity, will result in loss of life, because income and wealth is correlated with longer life. However, the assumption underlying the idea of a health-wealth tradeoff -- that higher income causes people to be healthier -- is contradicted by the most recent research on the subject. This research shows the inverse causation, that better health leads to higher income, and that education causes both higher wages and better health.

These two fallacies are among many others that bias cost-benefit analysis against environmental regulation.

Mending cost-benefit

As a new administration enters office, it is important that environmentalists not miss another opportunity to reform cost-benefit analysis. It is not going away. For nearly thirty-years, cost-benefit analysis has been required of all major federal regulation. It has been embraced by both Republican and Democratic administrations, and it is exceedingly unlikely that any new administration will jettison it altogether -- it is simply necessary to anticipate the likely economic effects of large regulatory programs.

Perhaps more importantly, cost-benefit analysis can be used to promote the agenda of environmentalists. As we all know, climate change poses grave risks at a global level. Dealing with those risks will not be easy -- or cheap. While all three presidential candidates acknowledge that climate change is a problem, and that controls on greenhouse gases are necessary, there is great distance between a campaign promise and a final rule. In order to convince politicians and the American public to overcome their concerns about the tectonic economic shifts greenhouse gas controls will create, environmentalists will need to muster sound analyses showing that their views are justified by good economics.

The country is also in the midst of an economic slowdown, following on the heels of stagnant growth in wages during the Bush administration. Economic anxiety is growing, as recent focus in the Democratic primary on NAFTA and the price of gasoline demonstrates. Without sound economic analysis showing that strong environmental regulations are needed, a public in the grip of job-losses and economic insecurity will look askew at proposed regulation deemed to be "burdening" the economy.

This time, instead of fighting -- futilely -- to end cost-benefit analysis, environmentalists should fight to mend it. For the past three years, my co-author Michael Livermore and I have studied how cost-benefit analysis has been used, and abused, in environmental law. These abuses are not inherent in cost-benefit analysis, but have arisen because the debate over how cost-benefit analysis has been dominated by industry trade associations and antiregulatory scholars. The only way to transform cost-benefit analysis into a more neutral tool is to take up the debate, to show where cost-benefit analysis has been twisted to justify and antiregulatory agenda.

That is why New York University School of Law will launch an Institute for the Study of Regulation this summer. The purpose of the Institute will be to correct the antiregulatory biases in cost-benefit analysis and show that smart environmental and public health regulation is justified on economic grounds. We hope to work with other organizations in the environmental and public health community to show that regulation is part of a thriving and efficient economy and that under-regulation can be just as costly in economic terms as over-regulation.

There are many symbols in the history of the environmental movement: Storm King Mountain, TVA v. Hill, the Warren County PCB Landfill. Each represents important steps that were taken in this country towards environmental responsibility. By forging a new cost-benefit environmentalism -- one that does not fear economic analysis but instead uses both reason and compassion to justify strong environmental rules -- perhaps R. Gallagher can become a symbol of something other than political failure. By using economics to show just how wasteful under-regulation can be, cost-benefit environmentalism can be the key to creating the political coalition necessary to make America richer by regulating more wisely.

Missing Johnson

Thu, 8 May 2008 06:52:09 PDT

By Kate Sheppard

The U.S. EPA is committed to transparency, representatives of the agency testified yesterday before a subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing was called to look into recent allegations of politicization and secrecy within the agency.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson -- the man everyone wants to hear from on the subject -- didn't accept the invitation to attend, so George Gray, EPA assistant administrator for research and development, got to sit in the hot seat.

In his testimony before the Subcommittee on Public Sector Solutions to Global Warming, Oversight and Children's Health Protection, Gray defended the agency's policies on keeping meetings with the Office of Management and Budget secret, and criticized recent reports from the Government Accountability Office that have concluded the agency lacks transparency and has allowed politics to undermine science in making decisions to protect the health of both people and the planet.

"I disagree with GAO," Gray told senators. "It has always been our policy that discussions within our agency and with other agencies be kept within them." Despite that, Gray maintained that "transparency is very important" to the agency.

EPW Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) rejected Gray's claims. "You've lost all credibility with me," she told him. "How can you sit there and say that I'm for transparency and then say you agree with OMB that these meetings should be kept secret?"

The hearing addressed a number of concerns about the subversion of science for political reasons within the agency, most notably its recent ruling on ozone standards, a decision which George Bush himself apparently stepped in to undermine. It also examined the new Union of Concerned Scientists survey of 1,600 EPA staff scientists who reported mass politicization and political interference within the agency.

Last week's firing of Mary Gade also came up. Gade, top regulator at the EPA's Midwest office, is believed to have been pushed out because of her efforts to force Dow Chemical to clean up dioxin contamination. Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who has taken the lead on investigating the Gade case, said at the hearing that her firing "smacks of similar activities we have seen in the Department of Justice recently," hinting at the U.S. attorney firings scandal. Gray said he was unable to respond to any questions on the Gade case as it was outside his area of responsibility.

For most of the hearing, Gray took the heat for the absent Johnson, who has turned down several recent invitations to appear before the subcommittee on the subject.

"Johnson declined the opportunity to testify today," said Whitehouse. "The last few times he did appear, his answers have been less than forthcoming ... I suppose if he were here today I'm sure it would be no different. Nevertheless, it would be nice if he showed up."

Johnson was also scheduled to appear before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the ozone standards today, but canceled yesterday, citing a "recurrence of ongoing back issues stemming from a car accident years ago."