It is expected that later this year, Congress will take up (and probably enact) some form of "cap and trade system" for carbon dioxide. The essence of a cap and trade system is a business will buy/get permits from the government to emit carbon dioxide. Once you have the permit, if you have excess permits, you can sell them to somebody else who needs them. If you don't have enough permits, you will have to buy permits from somebody else or face some consequence for reaching/exceeding your limit. While the sentiment seems to be to pass a "cap and trade" system, the devil will be in the details. There are major sub-issues to be decided that will impact whether or not it will work and whether or not it can pass.
1) Level of Carbon Dioxide Permitted -- At one level, this issue is the most important issue on the table. It is accepted, at least among those supporting cap and trade, that we need to reduce the level of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in this country over time. The bigger questions is by how much and how quickly. We have seen in other areas that, when deadlines for major changes are too quick, business will come back and try to get extensions. (There will probably be some of this anyway but, if the targets are realistic and there are excess permits available for purchase, they are less likely to succeed.) The likely way that these targets will be reached will be by permits of different length. Sort of like the bond market, there will be permits that expire in 20 years, in 15 years, in 10 years, and in 5 years.
2) What Uses Need a Permit -- This issue is probably the second most important issue. Most carbon dioxide currently being emitted comes from either energy production (primarily electricity) or energy consumption (primarily gasoline). You can reduce carbon dioxide both by encouraging producers to switch to cleaner alternatives and by reducing consumption. So do you include some incentive to switch to more fuel efficient energy consumers by requiring some permit based on estimated life time consumption for things like light bulbs, cars, computers, tvs, new homes, etc. or do you just hit the permits on the businesses that actually produce carbon dioxide. And how does gasoline fit into this mix?
3) How are Permits Allocated -- There are basically two options for the original allocation of permits -- government grant or auction of permits. From the point of view of businesses, they would rather a government grant. That limits the original expense of imposing the system and takes speculators out of the initial system. However, an auction is a way to raise revenue for the government and gets government out of selecting the winners and losers in the initial allocation. Right now it seems that the Obama Administration would rather an auction.
If you go through the list of all sub-cabinet positions for all of the departments and all of the Executive Office positiions that require Senate confirmation, you get over 300 positions requiring Senate approval. That number ignores all of the U.S Attorney slots, all of the U.S. Marshall slots, all of the Ambassadors, and any judicial vacancies left hanging. While I would like to see at least my local U.S. Attorney and my local U.S. Marshall slots filled (and any local judicial vacancy), I am going to limit this post to the sub-cabinet positions. (Obviously filling the Commerce Secretary slot is also urgent.) Clearly, it takes time to fill all of these positions and there is a lot of discretion given to the Secretaries to fill the sub-cabinenet posts in their Department. But what follows are the positions that I think need to be filled ASAP (and I hope for comments as to your thoughts on which ones need to be top priority).
Executive Office -- A lot of the positions remaining to be filled are assistants to people already named. The one major office without a director named is the Office of Drug Control Policy. While this office does some "coordination" of federal drug policy, it is not a real urgent position as it is more a podium-type post that does data collection than a position that has real power.
State Department -- Arguably, most of the sub-cabinet positions in this Department are urgent. However, I would emphasize the following positions: Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, and Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs. These are the hot spots that are currently boiling over and we need someone with specific responsibility for them.
Treasury Department -- Again, you have numerous positions that could be called urgent. I would emphasize four as needing to be filled yesterday: Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions, Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, and Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy. With the stimulus bill working its way through and decisions to be made about the remaining TARP funds, you need someone with direct responsibility for these issues.
Defense Department -- While perhaps not the most impotant given the joint command structure, I would still emphasize filling the positions of Secretary of the Army, Secretary of the Navy, and Secretary of the Air Force. Those folks are the main civilian go-betweens for each of the individual branches.
A lot of people who like "politics" are interested in who wins elections. They follow polls like others follow the markets, they know every detail of a candidate no matter how minute. And then come the elections, and people focus on the NEXT set of elections and forget that in between, the winners govern, and those things can have very good or very bad consequences.
Here in Pennsylvania, we get winter. Sometimes mild, like the years that it hits 60 degrees in January on a few days. More usually, a lot of nights where the temperature dips into the teens. In 1994, we had an ice storm that lasted so long the temperature didn't hit double digits for almost 8 weeks. The vast majority of years, we depend on heat to survive.
We have not yet had the kind of winter ice storm that has hit New England, nor the artic blast that has gripped the Great Plains. When something like those events happen, they are no one's fault: shelters open, The Guard is deployed. It's an emergency and people respond as they should.
Sometimes, heating disasters are not a natural disaster: they're man-made.
For 30 years up until 2004 there was a law that said the utility companies couldn't turn off anyone's heat during winter. Then came Act 201. It came from a push from a lot of elected officials who believe if you cannot pay for utilities, you cannot have heat. The other side contends that as a PUBLIC utility, there is an obligation to provide essential services. One of the most outrageous parts of Act 201 is that it allows for shut-offs on Fridays. The problem is that sometimes shut-offs are in error, and the situation cannot be rectified until Monday if the power is shut off at 5 on Friday. Act 201 also cut the consumer protection which said that shut-offs need to be accomplished in person. (The Act still calls for in-person shut-offs in winter, but that is not always enforced.)
So, if there are infants and children and a mother waiting for a late support check, in-person would catch it, and maybe grant a few weeks of respite to get things fixed. Perhaps the resident has Alzheimers or other mental deterioration problem and has fallen outside any other safety nets. Perhaps the person had a bad accident, was in the hospital, and is now home in very bad condition, and has not yet caught up on the bills.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) is supposed to keep track of information related to Act 201. From a Philadelphia Inquirerreport:
On Monday, the PUC is due to report to the legislature on how well Act 201 is working. Also due next week are data from Pennsylvania utilities' annual cold-weather surveys, which last year identified nearly 17,000 households around the state that were entering winter without a working source of central heat after a utility termination.
Through October, Peco Energy had terminated 68,758 of about 1.4 million residential customers - a 41 percent increase over the same period in 2007. Peco's reconnections had also risen in that same period: up 43 percent over 2007, to 45,923, according to PUC data.
Terminations by Philadelphia Gas Works also jumped, 26 percent, to 28,426 of the 480,000 households it serves. The municipal utility said this week that about 9,000 households still lacked service, despite efforts to work out payment plans and connect customers with sources of assistance.
Let me start of by saying that I am the kind of liberal that cares about a lot of things, but the environment trumps them all. We only have one world, and if we screw it up, that's it. I do believe what science is telling us -- that there is a point of no return, and if we cross that point in terms of climate change, the results will be disastrous. As an engineering student who is specializing in sustainable energy engineering, I know that the danger of total worldwide catastrophe is greater then anyone wants to face. It's a crisis; one that we must respond to with immediate action, or our progeny will forever pay the price. Unfortunately, it is the hardest crisis for the American people to face, the hardest one for them to even believe. The right - not just the far right either - makes this even harder by constantly trying to manipulate the facts, to downplay the importance of science, and to play to peoples constant concern over the price of anything going up. Although this has mostly to do with money for big oil, I have my own little conspiracy theory that it has something to do with believing in the end of days, and that if we destroy the world it will be OK because then Jesus will return and save their souls. Personally, I love Jesus, but I think he wants me to protect the planet that God gave us, not destroy it.
That being said I want to emphasize that I am a FIRM supporter of human rights, of gay rights, of workers' rights, of equal opportunity, of equality, of an economy that doesn't create capitalist kings, and many other Democratic (big D) issues. I am appalled to my soul about torture, and my blood boils when I talk to people about Prop 8, etc. I say that because I don't want to get into a debate about what is more important between the environment and so many other incredibly important things, such as health care, civil liberties, and ending torture.
I actually learned about the selection of Steven Chu, as Secretary of Energy, in class today, the last class of the semester for Sustainable Energy Engineering (Mechanical Engineering 6800). It was almost divinely inspired that I did, because the whole class focused on the science behind climate change (the science is quite simple and undeniable by the way), the consequences of climate change, and the engineering behind a whole plethora of sustainable engineering technologies. My professor - Dr. Kent Udell - actually came from Berkeley and knew Steven Chu personally. He is also the Chair of our Department here at the University of Utah, and someone whom I greatly admire. He has aggressively pushed to make sustainability a theme of the ME department, even at the expense of pissing a lot of people off. He has not been afraid to talk about politics in class, even criticizing W. at times. Although I personally can't stand the guy, he has made a huge difference in making sure that engineers come out of the state of Utah ready and motivated to work on solving the energy crisis. In fac the class itself was retooled by him to be about Sustainability, whereas before it was about energy generation in general.
I decided that instead of talking about a video, I will just embed it. For me, this appointment made all the effort I put forth to elect Barack Obama worth it. Despite the taunts of the neo-cons, I never expected Obama to walk on water. In fact, I have always been prepared for him to compromise to get things done (as long he showed a little bit more back bone then the Democrats in Congress). But to appoint someone like Steven Chu as the Energy Secretary shows a commitment to the environment that I could not have dreamed possible from ANY politician, even Barack Obama.
I guess I am kind of in shock that this announcement hasn't been the biggest headline on every liberal newspaper and blog in the country, but then again I am a little biased. Watch the video, all nine minutes of it, and get a glimpse of what the future of America's energy policy has in store for it. Then please, let me know what you think.
A lot of people who like "politics" are interested in who wins elections. They follow polls like others follow the markets, they know every detail of a candidate no matter how minute. And then come the elections, and people focus on the NEXT set of elections and forget that in between, the winners govern, and those things can have very good or very bad consequences. 
