Passing Through

Mountaintop Removal Mining: Like a Third-World Autocracy

By David Roberts

Mountaintop-removal mining -- known rather antiseptically as "MTR mining," or by the industry itself as "mountaintop mining" -- is the kind of thing most people think only happens in dystopic Third World autocracies. I can't count the number of times I've described it to people only to be told they "can't believe it happens in America."

Well, it does -- the resource curse is just as true domestically. Here's how it works:

Mountain ridges and peaks are clear-cut, stripped of all trees and other flora. Explosives are buried underground, and enormous blasts dislodge millions of tons of rock, dirt, soil, and animal and plant life. That "overburden" is then carted away or dumped into the stream and creek beds in the mountain hollows below, destroying or polluting thousands of miles of running water. Huge 20-story-tall draglines pull away the rock to expose coal seams. Similarly huge machines then yank the coal out and dump the remaining waste down into those streams.

This has all, unsurprisingly, been accelerated by President Bush, who received enormous contributions from the coal industry in his 2000 race and has fought unstintingly for it every since. After judges smacked down the notion that hundreds of tons of waste counts as "fill," the Bush administration issued a new rule (in violation of the Clean Water Act) to redefine it. The legal issues are up in the air now, but Bush got what he wanted: eight more years of mining.

So, yeah: we are literally blowing up the Smoky Mountains -- the oldest mountain range in the US.

We're also destroying some of the US's oldest indigenous communities in rural Appalachians where families have been on the same patch of land for generations. They are showered with toxic dust. Their water is polluted. Occasionally, "slurry ponds" -- standing pools of toxic sludge produced when the coal is cleaned -- break out of their walls and flood towns below. Here's one such slurry pond, perched precariously above Marsh Fork Elementary School (you can see it in the lower left):

(photo: Vivian Stockman)

Their houses shake as huge coal trucks careen up and down narrow mining roads. If they protest, they are bullied and intimidated by coal companies and often their own neighbors. Mining execs, like the loathsome Don Blankenship, buy off state judges and politicians.

And despite coal company rhetoric, residents of rural Appalachia are not compensated with jobs or economic development. The heavy use of explosives and large machinery has steadily reduced the number of jobs in the mining sector, and every community that's hosted it has been left poorer, not richer, when the coal is gone.

This is all done in the name of cheap electricity. Your cheap electricity. Feel good about that?

Anyway, I could go on (and on and on). If you're interested in learning more, here are some resources:

• Erik Reece wrote the definitive, heartbreaking piece on MTR.
• Here's a series of reports on indigenous resistance to MTR.
• Here's a photo essay on MTR's victims.
• ILoveMountains.org is a great hub for info and activism.
• The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OHVEC) does great work fighting MTR led by folks on the ground.
• Check Appalachian Voices on some common myths about MTR.
• Mountain Justice Summer trains activists to fight MTR, as does the Southern Energy Network.

And -- finally! -- for your amusement, I bring you some commercials aired recently in rural West Virginia by Walker/Cat, a company that makes heavy machinery for coal mining operations.

Here, Miss Bug explains that heavens no, blowing up mountains, dumping the rubble in streams, and covering the result with a thin layer of soil and grass monoculture doesn't "bug" her at all, ha ha!

In fact, life fairly blossoms in the wake of MTR!

Miss Bug's husband Mr. Bug is "bugged out" about activist judges. After all, he doesn't need electricity. Do you?

Miners are almost artistic in their use of equipment to blow up mountains and dump the rubble in streams.

After all, you dirty hippies don't even know where your electricity comes from!

That's only scratching the surface. There are more.

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February 19, 2008

John McCain and the Environment

By David Roberts

This is part 2 of my post on John McCain's easy ride from the media on climate change.

Conservative solutions

Perhaps you think that McCain has gone AWOL on Congressional green votes simply because he's a conservative. After all, most recent climate and energy legislation has been put forward by progressives (despite all of it garnering Republican votes, sometimes a lot of them).

Nope. There are plenty of things a libertarian-leaning leader could do on climate: meaningfully reduce counterproductive energy subsidies; reform utility regulation to introduce competition, incentivize efficiency, and reduce the traditional utility bias toward large, capital-intensive centralized power projects; change or eliminate outdated environmental regulations that hamper energy innovation and the growth of the solar and wind industries; reduce trade barriers to encourage the flow of advanced energy technologies to developing countries.

McCain rarely opposes any of that stuff, particularly in his rhetoric. But he hasn't done anything about it, or shown signs of having put much thought into it.

Understanding

Ultimately what a president needs more than anything is an understanding of the issue: the highest benefit and lowest costs solutions, and the way to tweak American economic rules and institutions to encourage those solutions.

McCain doesn't even seem to understand the one solution he has offered, cap-and-trade. In the Republican debate in Florida, he denied that his cap-and-trade program included a mandatory cap on carbon. (One wonders what he thought that first word was doing in there.) He has said he won't support a cap-and-trade bill unless it includes extra support for nuclear power (because nuclear power is low-carbon), not seeming to grok the fact that the whole point of a cap-and-trade program is to raise prices on carbon, offering a de facto subsidy to all low-carbon options.

More broadly, as has now become conventional wisdom, McCain just doesn't seem all that interested or invested in domestic policy. He himself has admitted that he doesn't understand economic issues very well. In an area of policymaking where the president will be beset with industries rent-seeking and think tankers offering every flavor of bogus miracle cure, that is a recipe for wasted effort and ineffective leadership.

International solutions

To his credit, McCain has said that one of his international priorities would be working with other countries to fight climate change. Unfortunately, he also parrots the conservative line that he'll sign no treaty unless China and India are involved. But the brute fact of the matter is that the U.S. bears the lion's share of the responsibility for the climate change that's already occurred and, thanks to the time lag of the atmospheric system, the climate change that will occur for the next 20 years. America is also the richest and most dynamic country on the planet, the one best positioned to create solutions. Pulling China and India into the fold is an important goal, but it will happen through bold U.S. leadership or not at all. Playing a game of chicken with developing countries hasn't worked yet.

This is perhaps the greatest challenge for a president who's serious about climate. He's going to have to help Americans come to terms with the fact that they will pay more than other countries, and sacrifice some measure of the unilateral sovereignty Bush convinced them is a transcendent good. Whether it's technology transfer or development aid, the richest and most responsible country on the planet is going to pick up a disproportionate share of the bill.

He's also going to have to coax other countries into joining us. It will require careful, persistent, delicate diplomacy, which isn't something one generally associates with a man of McCain's temper and penchant for starting wars.

Republican mavericks are Republicans

On balance, the evidence indicates that while McCain may be sincere about the need to fight climate change, there's no indication that he has a particularly firm understanding of the policy or a particularly deep commitment to following through on it.

To be crude (but, I think, accurate), these qualities wouldn't be so worrisome if McCain were a Democrat. As a Democrat, he would have members of his own party in Congress pushing him to act; he would have policy advisers with long experience and knowledge of the issue; he would seed the federal bureaucracy with officials committed to climate action, and do the same with judges on the federal bench; he would be pushed to action by his base. This is not to say that the Democratic coalition is monolithically supportive of strong climate policy, but on balance, a Democratic president will have his nominal commitment strengthened through positive reinforcement.

As a Republican, on the other hand, President McCain will be surrounded by a political infrastructure that is actively working against him on climate. In passive terms, his policy advisers and Congressional brethren simply won't show much interest in the issue. In active terms, they will be pushing him to weaken his position, water down his legislation, and moderate his rhetoric. His bureaucracy will be filled with functionaries shaped by a party that believes climate change is a lefty conspiracy. His judges will be friendly to big industry and hostile to environmental litigation. His State Dept. will be staffed with people schooled in the neoconservative doctrine of belligerent unilateralism. He will have allies at the state level -- Schwarzenegger in Calif., Crist in Fla. -- but they have only so much sway in D.C. He will, in short, be sailing against the wind.

Will McCain have the dogged persistence to push through that kind of institutional resistance and implement bold climate solutions? Is this issue meaningful enough, personal enough for him to expend political capital on it? Will he have the appetite for fighting with a Republican establishment that already views him with open suspicion?

As should be clear by now, I have strong doubts. I do not want to deny McCain his due -- he deserves credit for genuine political courage on climate change in a party that is actively hostile to even a modicum of sanity on the issue. But that courage is admirable only relative to that party.

Judged on its own merits, McCain's climate commitment -- relative to what's offered on the other side of the political aisle, and more importantly, relative to the increasing alarm we hear from climate scientists -- is simply and unmistakably inadequate.

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February 11, 2008

John McCain and Climate Change

By David Roberts

Though recession and war are probably higher on the public's immediate priority list, there is no challenge of greater historical consequence facing the next US president than the climate crisis. It is vitally important that the next chief executive enter the Oval Office committed to decisive and sustained action. He or she will need a firm grasp of the developing science, the political obstacles, the economic trade-offs, and the technological opportunities.

Does John McCain have that kind of deep understanding and commitment? If elected, will he be the climate champion we so desperately need?

Conventional wisdom says yes. The media touts McCain's stance on climate as evidence of his straight talkin' maverickosity. Conservative stalwarts assail McCain for his heresy (Romney attacked McCain's climate bill in Michigan and Florida). The public hails him for reaching across the aisle. Even Democrats and greens seem inclined to give him a grade of Good Enough on climate.

This is a classic case of what our president calls the soft bigotry of low expectations. Judged against his fellow Republicans, McCain is a paragon of atmospheric wisdom. Judged against the climate and energy legislation afoot in Congress, he falls short. Judged against the two leading Democratic presidential candidates, he is a pale shadow. Judged against the imperatives of climate science -- that is to say, judged against brute physical reality -- he isn't even in the ballpark.

It's time to stop grading McCain on a curve.

McCain's green bona fides, as far as I can tell, boil down to three things:

• He voted against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has sponsored or cosponsored the occasional, modest environmental protection bill (protecting whales; awarding tax credits for energy efficiency; boosting fuel efficiency). (Note, however, that his lifetime rating from LCV is a measly 29%.)
• In 2003, he and Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced the first-ever climate bill to the Senate: the Climate Stewardship Act, which would establish a carbon cap-and-trade system to reduce US emissions. It was introduced and voted down in 2003 and again in 2005.
• He acknowledges, without hedging, that anthropogenic climate change is real, and speaks eloquently about the need to address it. He has frequently criticized the Bush administration for inaction.

These aren't chopped liver. All were acts of courage undertaken in a time of Republican majority, when they offered little political reward (other than the undying love of cable news talkshow hosts). The second, in particular, was a beacon of hope for greens in a time when there were very few.

Nonetheless, we must assess these acts in light of what has come after, and the political environment we find ourselves in today.

Cap-and-trade

Relative to what's offered by other Senate cap-and-trade bills (and the plans of his Democratic rivals), the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act -- even in its 2007 incarnation -- is weak. Unlike other such bills, McCain's specifically sets aside massive and unnecessary subsidies for the nuclear industry. Its emissions targets are exceeded even by the lowest-common-denominator bill now heading to the Senate floor, the Lieberman-Warner America's Climate Security Act.

This is to say nothing of the Sanders-Boxer bill, the strongest extant climate legislation, which now boasts both Clinton and Obama as co-sponsors and includes even more aggressive targets. Beyond that, we have the plans offered by the leading Democratic campaigns, which offer bold targets, 100% auctioning of pollution permits (a crucial feature I'll return to in a subsequent post), and detailed plans for how to allocate the auction revenue to boost the green economy.

McCain has never updated his position on cap-and-trade legislation, despite the steady advance in public opinion and climate science since he introduced his bill in 2003. He has not discussed, much less matched, the ambitious targets of his Dem rivals. He has not signed onto the Sanders legislation, or even Lieberman's new bill. He has not said whether he'll vote for it, and has hinted (sub rqd) that he'll vote Nay unless big buckets of nuclear pork are added.

In short, McCain's take on cap-and-trade legislation is now anachronistic, lagging well behind what's current, what's possible, and what's needed.

Beyond cap-and-trade

As anyone familiar with the issue -- e.g., Goldman Sachs -- will tell you, a mandatory, declining cap on carbon is only the first step toward effective climate policy. It is necessary but not sufficient. That's why Democrats in Congress are pushing a number of supplemental bills, attempting to raise vehicle fuel-economy standards, remove tax breaks from fossil fuel industries, change utility regulation to encourage efficiency, boost basic research funding, extend production tax credits for renewable industries, and establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard to boost the amount of renewable energy in the U.S. mix.

Voting against these measures would boost McCain's cred with the conservative base, but damage his green credibility. Voting for them would do the reverse. So what has Mr. Straight Talk done?

He has gone AWOL:

• On June 21, 2007, the Senate voted on the Baucus amendment to the energy bill, which would have removed some oil company subsidies in order to fund renewable energy. The amendment failed to pass. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On the same day, the Senate held a cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill. The vote succeeded. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On Dec. 7, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat on the energy bill, which had become substantially bolder after being aligned with the House version. The vote failed. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
• On Dec. 13, 2007, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill, which had the Renewable Portfolio Standard stripped out of it but retained a measure that would shift oil company subsidies to renewables. The vote failed -- by one vote, 59-40. Where was McCain? He didn't vote -- the only Senator not to do so.
• On Feb. 6, 2008, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass a stimulus bill containing a number of green energy incentives. The cloture motion failed, by one vote. Where was McCain? He didn't vote -- again, the only Senator not to do so.

You get the idea. The Democrats in Congress have been struggling to change US energy policy, to raise standards and shift some federal expenditures from fossil to renewable energy. In several cases, McCain could have made the difference between success and failure. In some cases -- as with regard to, e.g., the stimulus bill -- McCain's campaign has claimed that he would have voted against it anyway, so the result wouldn't have changed. In this way, McCain gets to signal to political insiders on the right that he's with them, without putting himself on record where the public can see it. That's a funny sort of straight talk.

On the campaign trail, McCain said: "Of course we want renewable energy. Of course we want better standards. I want to do everything I can to see that wind, solar, hydrogen, ethanol ... and all of these, including nuclear power, [are put to better use]." Everything he can? Well, one of the things Senators can do is vote on legislation. So maybe not everything.

Watch for my next post for more on McCain's easy ride from the press on climate change.

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February 11, 2008

Will the Media Give McCain a Free Pass on Climate?

By David Roberts

After a decisive Super Tuesday win, John McCain is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. (Why? I'm with Ross Douthat: it was luck.) It's time to start thinking about what a campaign against him is going to look like.

According to the Villagers, McCain is a maverick, and nowhere is that alleged quality more evident than in his pundit-titillating (punditillating?) position on climate change. He is the Republican apostate, a visionary who has reached across the aisle. Why, now that McCain is the Republican nominee, we're practically guaranteed to get bold action on climate no matter who wins! Right?

McCain will be running as a climate champion against a Democrat who claims the same mantle. There's two ways the political media could cover it:

1. It could probe a little deeper: seek to clarify the strength and detail of each candidate's climate/energy plan; uncover those policy positions that distinguish one candidate one another; compare their respective records on the issue.
2. Or, the media could write off climate as a non-controversy that's not worth covering.

History does not inspire confidence. Recall, if you will, the 2000 presidential race. Seeking to counter Al Gore's perceived advantage on the environment, Texas governor George W. Bush pledged to instruct his EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

The media, which had covered climate change as a he-said she-said controversy if at all, breathed a sigh of relief. Aaah, now we can talk about interesting stuff. And poof! The issue disappeared. Al Gore gave speeches and released statements on global warming (yes, really), but he couldn't pay reporters to cover them -- or the public to give a damn. The political significance of global warming was reduced to nothing.

Could it happen again? Could climate vanish from the political radar just as it's gotten a toehold?

Let's hope not. Remember what happened last time. In March 2001, just three months into his presidency, Bush -- acting at the behest of energy lobbyist and future Mississippi governor Haley Barbour -- reversed his pledge on CO2 and withdrew from the Kyoto process. He embarrassed and rendered ineffectual his EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman. He sent an unmistakable signal to international partners that the US was not interested in multilateral action on climate.

And he set the stage for eight long years of obstructionism on climate. Just this past year, he has ignored a Supreme Court ruling that CO2 should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and regulated by the EPA -- the agency is still dragging its heels on an endangerment finding. He had the EPA deny California the waiver it would need to implement its own CO2 regulations, defying the agency's own analysts, common sense, and even the positions of all four Republican presidential candidates. And he whittled the ambitious 2007 energy bill down with veto threats, only to claim credit for it when a weakened version passed.

Will the media learn from its mistake, or will it give the candidates another free pass on climate? If it does look a little closer, it will find that McCain is no green champion (more on that in a subsequent post). It might even force McCain to put or shut up on this issue -- while voters who care about it still have a chance to act on their convictions.

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February 7, 2008

Obama v. Clinton: Who's Greener?

By David Roberts

If you're a political junkie like me, all you can think about is the primary and the general election beyond. Can you remember a primary season so dynamic and volatile, so dramatic, so filled with hope and trepidation and the stirrings of something historic? I can't decide if I love it or I'm going to have an ulcer by November.

Today I want to take a look at the Dem candidates. Do green issues offer a way to differentiate them? A way to help wavering primary voters decide which way to go?

Sorry, but not really.

In terms of climate/energy policy proposals, there's not a whole lot of distance between Obama and Clinton. On this issue as on so many others, they both followed Edwards' early lead and ended up with strong, ambitious plans. Both would substantially cut greenhouse gas emissions and boost clean energy; both pitch sustainability as an issue of shared sacrifice and economic opportunity; both have an impressive grasp of the policy details. Some resources:

• My analysis of Clinton's plan is here, of Obama's here.
• A more thorough factsheet on Clinton's green record is here; Obama's here.
• An interview with Clinton on green subjects is here; Obama here.

I'll look at the merits of some of their proposals in subsequent posts; for now I want to focus on what differentiates them.

Thing is, there isn't much. There are episodes in their respective pasts that give pause. Clinton burned all those tires (long story). As a Democratic power broker and high-powered lawyer of long standing, she's been cozy with some fairly unsavory corporate players, from Alcoa to Wal-Mart.

Obama, on the other hand, is an Illinois pol. That means he is, by necessity, a little friendlier with coal, ethanol, and nuclear interests than greens might like. Those allegiances led him to vote for the monstrosity that was the Energy Act of 2005, a porkfest that funneled subsidies to all three interest groups (Clinton voted against it). Early last year, he pushed legislation boosting liquid coal. (When greens threw a fit he backed off somewhat, making clear that liquid coal is kosher only if it meets low-carbon fuel standards.) As the NYT exhaustively documents, he gets big campaign contributions from Exelon, a nuclear outfit based in Illinois; his campaign adviser David Axelrod once consulted for the company.

There is, however, no smoking gun of quid pro quo in either's career, and both are well-regarded by greens. Various commentators have blown past transgressions up to make the case that Clinton is secretly an earth-hating corporate sellout, or that Obama is, or that both are. Call me cynical, but all the above seems like relatively run-of-the-mill parochial politics to me. You'd be hard-pressed to find a politician that doesn't have compromises like this in his or her past. If you wanted pure green positions -- no new coal plants, no corn ethanol, no nukes under any circumstances -- I'm afraid your hopes died with the Edwards campaign (or the Kucinich campaign ... is that one dead yet?). Between the two remaining Dems, neither their histories nor their campaign proposals yield an obvious green favorite.

It comes down to these questions:

1. Who will be more effective at getting a green agenda past the many obstacles it faces?
2. Who will do more to help downticket races and usher more Democrats into Congress?

There's been a lot of chatter about "theories of change" this election, but if you ask me, personal style matters a hell of a lot less than the number of reliable votes in Congress. So who'll get more downticket Dems elected? I think, as his recent endorsement by a string of red-state Dems attests, Obama will. He's got broader appeal with the Independents and wavering Republicans that will make the difference in close Congressional races.

So in the end, if I was forced at gunpoint to pick the greener Dem this election, it would be Obama, but only based on second-order effects, and only barely. By far the larger story this season is that both Democratic choices are advancing a green agenda substantially more ambitious than what was proposed by Kerry, Gore, or Clinton. It's hard for green Democrats to go wrong this year.

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February 4, 2008

Green Middleware

By David Roberts

Greetings, Nationeers.

First off, thanks to the magazine for giving me this opportunity. It's a great honor. I'm going to dive into substance very soon, but first I wanted to get a brief bit of navel-gazing meta talk out of the way.

For those of you who don't know, I write full-time for Grist, an environmental news site.

See there? When I said "environmental"? Your mind drifted to gauzy natural landscapes and earnest, affluent white people with placards. That drives me crazy. If I accomplish nothing else this month, I hope to offer a new set of associations.

When Grist hired me five years ago, I did not consider myself an "environmentalist." To me the word conjured not so much a set of policy positions as a subculture, with the emphasis on cult. It was a set of clothing, music, and activity choices I had little affinity with and associated with a degree of self-righteousness. I'd never hung out with environmental activists. I didn't want to subordinate my other interests (horserace politics, social and economic justice, rule of law, the web). I'm an unreconstructed urbanite with no particular love for critters, trees, or hiking/climbing/kayaking. I enjoy irony, political wonkery, pop culture, and bacon. I hate jam bands.

So I worried at first.

Over time I discovered an idea space filled with fascinating questions of technology, economic policy, social justice, foreign relations, political strategy, ethics, and (my first love, my grad degree) philosophy. I found extraordinary people -- lobbyists, entrepreneurs, organizers, analysts -- who bore no resemblance to the dirty hippies of lore. My stereotypes quickly proved inadequate to the historical moment.

Nonetheless, I found something missing. It's what I've come to think of as the middleware of any movement: the pundits, bloggers, influencers, commenters, emailers, Diggers, Facebookers, and Twitterers, the people who filter, synthesize, and communicate what's going on to the broader public. Middleware is how the progressive diaspora becomes something more than the sum of its parts -- a networked, distributed intelligence. It's what the conservative movement has had for decades, and the green world sorely lacks.

That's where Grist comes in. We are the finest online manufacturer of green middleware (^TM!). We're trying to facilitate that green network, and play an important role in it. I'm happy to report that it is growing with dizzying speed. Over the course of the month I'll point you to some other great sources.

Anyway, my goal this month is not to get you to sign any membership forms or take any pledges or listen to Phish (not that there's anything wrong with that). It is merely to convince you to begin thinking of sustainability as an organic (ha ha) aspect of your progressivism.

Later this week: the presidential race!

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February 4, 2008

So Long, Farewell

By Jessica Valenti

I just wanted to say thanks so much to The Nation for having me kick off their great new blog - it's been so much fun. (An especially big thanks to Peter Rothberg.)

You can always catch more of my writing at Feministing and (shameless plug alert) in my book, Full Frontal Feminism.

On another note, I'm really looking forward to reading the upcoming blogging from Dave Roberts so keep watching this space...

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February 4, 2008

Segregating Women to "Save" Them

By Jessica Valenti

Last week Mexico City unveiled women-only buses as a way to battle the increasing sexual harassment on public transportation.

Some men treat women so badly that the subway system has long had ladies-only cars during rush hour, with police segregating the sexes on the platforms.

But that hasn't helped women forced to rely on packed buses, by far the city's most-used form of public transportation -- until this week.

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January 28, 2008

Commemorating Roe's 35th Anniversary

By Jessica Valenti

For the past two years, I've blogged for choice on the anniversary Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal. Today, on the 35th anniversary, NARAL Pro-Choice America is calling on bloggers to answer this question: Why do you vote pro-choice? I'll be featuring links to blog posts throughout the day, but to kick things off - here's why I vote pro-choice.

I vote pro-choice because I believe in bodily integrity;

I vote pro-choice because I want the Hyde Amendment to be repealed;

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January 22, 2008

Sexist Hell Freezes Over

By Jessica Valenti

I never thought I'd see the day when career sexist Chris Matthews would apologize for his comments about Hillary Clinton.

In a nearly four minute mea culpa, Chris Matthews apologized for saying that Hillary Clinton only got to where she is because of sympathy over Bill's indiscretions.

Was it fair to imply that Hillary's whole career depended on being a victim of an unfaithful husband? No. And that's what it sounded like I was saying and it hurt people I'd like to think normally like what I say, in fact, normally like me.

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January 18, 2008