Recently, what appears to be a corporate-funded, industry front group, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, has severely criticized Al Gore for his energy use. The “Report” from the group appears to have been well timed to have been released just after the film “An Inconvenient Truth” won two Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards.

It is easy to criticize. Certainly Al Gore is the biggest target both for people who don’t like him to begin with (remember the state of Tennessee voted against its own native son in the 2000 presidential elections) and for the naysayers and cynics determined to not take any action to stabilize the climate.

This is not to condone or condemn. Certainly it would be ideal if Mr. Gore’s houses, operations, and activities were “off the grid” and fossil fuels played no role in his activities. (Solar panels are now being installed at Gore’s home).
But let’s put things in perspective. In 2005, Americans used almost 100 Quadrillion British Thermal Units of energy.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0105.html

Here is a diagram of the historical energy use in the United States:

Energy Consumption by Source, 1635-2000 (Quadrillion Btu)

Note that most renewables (solar, wind, etc.) are such a small part of total consumption, they don’t even make it onto the chart!

The magnitude of fossil fuel energy use today is so huge that it is entirely possible for any one individual, company, or organization to become carbon neutral through offsets. One can think of this as paying a premium for one’s energy use to ensure that all of the energy one uses is replaced in the system by renewable sources of energy.

Some ski resorts in the northeast are becoming “carbon neutral” by ensuring that every bit of energy that they use to make artificial snow is “generated” by windmills. Do these ski resorts have windmills on-site? NO! But they pay a premium to ensure that every bit of energy that they consume locally is replaced on the national grid by energy generated by windmills thousands of miles away from their locations.
Here is an article:
http://www.boston.com/business/gl…..to_the_trail_of_environmentalism/
And her is a diagram showing how this works:
http://www.boston.com/business/gl…../articles/2007/01/26/making_snow/

The article in the Tennessean:
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pb…..le?AID=/20070227/NEWS01/702270382
did describe Al’s offsets briefly “$432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources”. It also stated : “The home’s average monthly electric bill last year was just under $1,200″ and “In addition to the electric bill, the natural gas bill for Gore’s home and guesthouse ran $1,080 per month last year.”. Using those numbers that is about $2280 per month in energy bills.

If, as the article says, Mr. Gore is paying $432 a month for energy offsets, that is equivalent to an 19% “carbon tax” that Al and Tipper are paying to be “carbon neutral.”

Should Mr. Gore’s energy tax be larger than 19%. Perhaps. But remember this number does not take into account other direct monetary contributions made by Mr. Gore towards energy offsets and conservation (including sales from his books and the film) nor does it take into account the offsets and new energy efficiencies now being put into place by individuals, corporations, and governments who have be inspired to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Of course the report by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research criticizing Mr. Gore never mentions the offsets.
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=367

So just who is the “Tennessee Center for Policy Research” and this new Gore critic Drew Johnson, president of this center?

From its tax filings, it is pretty hard to figure out just what this center is about:
http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/9…..amp;yr=200512&rt=990&t9=A

Apparently it is a relatively new group with its first 990 filling being for 2005. The form shows and annual funding of about $100K. But it is pretty weird in that no officers are listed. No employees are listed since the total paid in wages is $48K and the form only requires that employees earning more than $50K be identified (a coincidence?).

Well, we can find more information on the “Center’s” web page:
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=89

“Prior to founding TCPR, he served as a policy analyst at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation where he authored “The Return of Fuzzy Math and Risky Schemes: How Presidential Hopefuls Would Deepen Deficits,” a major influence for the increased focus on government spending in the 2004 presidential election.In 2002, while at the American Enterprise Institute, Johnson’s research on the link between increased campaign finance regulation and rates of incumbent reelection served as the empirical backbone in the Supreme Court Case “McConnell v. FEC.” As a research analyst for the Modern Red Schoolhouse Institute in Nashville, he examined state educational standards, education reform and pedagogical use of technology.
A former Institute for Humane Studies Koch Fellow, Johnson recently completed his third term on the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Marketplace.MD Foundation. A native of Johnson City, Tennessee, Johnson holds a bachelors degree from Belmont University and a Master of Public Policy degree from Pepperdine University.”

Anybody see any red flags?

* The “National Taxpayers Union” has received funding from Philip Morris and the Tobacco Institute:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index……tional_Taxpayers_Union_Foundation
* The American Enterprise Institute is a know highly conservative think tank, receives funding from extreme conservative foundations such as the Scaife Foundations, and has received significant funding from Philip Morris and ExxonMobil.
AEI has on its staff conservative luminaries including Robert H. Bork, Lynne Cheney, Newt Gingrich, and Richard Perle.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index……tle=American_Enterprise_Institute
* The Institute for Humane Studies: “acts as a libertarian talent scout, identifying, developing, and supporting the brightest young libertarians it can find who are intent on a leveraged scholarly, or intellectual, career path… The Institute receives funding from a number of large libertarian and right-wing foundations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Koch Family Foundations, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Carthage Foundation.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index……itle=Institute_for_Humane_Studies
* The Koch Family Foundation “consist of the David H. Koch Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation… Funding for the foundations comes from the conglomerate Koch Industries, the ‘nation’s largest privately held energy company, with annual revenues of more than $25 billion. … Koch Industries is now the second largest family-owned business in the U.S., with annual sales of over $20 billion.’
‘The company is owned by two of the richest men in America,’ David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch (described as ‘reclusive billionaires’), who have a combined personal fortune estimated at more than $3 billion and who have emerged as major Republican contributors in recent years. … Both David and Charles Koch are ranked among the 50 richest people in the country by ‘Forbes’.
The foundations are financed via the oil and gas fortunes of Fred G. Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society. David is a libertarian who ‘provides a significant amount of funding for the Cato Institute’s $4 million annual budget.’”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations

So we don’t know who exactly is funding the “Tennessee Center for Policy Research” or its President Drew Johnson. But Johnson sure does have significant ties to conservative groups and energy corporations. Is Johnson’s “Center” just another industry funded front-group?

All I can say is:
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone

Is progress being made in the implementation of climate policies on a state-to-state basis? Have states made progress over time? And can we actually access or grade the progress of states relative to the implementation of climate stabilization policies?

In turns out that 18 environmental NGOs, coordinated by the Clean Water Fund Massachusetts, have been able to make such assessments using guideposts and goals developed at the beginning of the decade for New England and Eastern Canada by the states and provinces themselves.

In August 2001, the six New England Governors and five eastern Canadian Premiers committed the region to a Climate Change Action Plan with the eventual goal of reducing the region’s emissions of greenhouse gases by 75-85% below 2001 levels. The Governors and Premiers identified eight “Action Items” for their regional Climate Change Action Plan towards meeting this long-term goal:

1. Establish a Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Inventory
2. Establish and Release a Plan for Reducing GHG Emissions and Conserving Energy
3. Promote Public Awareness
4. Government Leads by Example
5. Reduce GHG from the Electricity Sector
6. Reduce Total Energy Demand Through Conservation
7. Reduce / Adapt to Impacts of Climate Change
8. Reduce GHG from the Transportation Sector

So how have the states and provinces been doing in terms of implementing their own action items?

The NGOs have been able to “grade” each state’s and province’s progress on each of the action items to produce a searies of “Climate Report Cards” for the years 2004, 2005, and 2006.

The latest Report Card released in August 2006 is available here: http://www.newenglandclimate.org/Scorecard2006.pdf

The report provides quite a bit of detail for the analysis of each of the 8 action items. Fore example, relative to Pollution Reduction Goals, each Governor and Premier in 2001 committed themselves to the “goals of reducing the region’s emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2010, 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 75-85% in the long-term.”

The report found that, relative to first pollution reduction target for 2010, each of the 6 New England states received an F rating in 2006.

The NGOs took grades in each of the 8 action areas and averaged them to create a GPA (grade point average) each year for each province or state.

I have graphed the results for the 7 New England states below. The good news: one state, Maine, has demonstrated year-to-year improvement and for 2006 earns a grade of “B”. The bad news: the other states showed year-to-year degradation in their grades from 2005 to 2006 with Massachusetts falling steadily over the three-year period from a solid “B” to its current “C-”. The worst news: my own home state of New Hampshire is at the bottom of the class with a D+.

We can do better and we must do better. The 7 New England states are part of a Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. It is time to rev up our Yankee Ingenuity, pull out the stops, and show that New England can be a region that leads the Nation in the implementation of energy efficiency and renewable energy policies to assist in climate stabilization.

The current administration is “committed” to using props to put positive slants on its policies. When President Bush “landed” on the aircraft carrier to tout “Mission Accomplished” his handlers had the military turn the ship for the photo-op so that the city of San Diego would not be seen in the background.

As a former National Park Service scientist what really burns me up is when they use National Parks as their props.

In 2002 Bush duped the air quality specialists at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (my former colleagues) to stand with him at the Park as he announced his “Clear Skies Initiative.”
http://blog.nodvin.net/?p=60

Studies showed that this initiative was a sham. The administration provided data that showed that future air quality would be “better” if the new proposed rules were followed.

What they did not tell the public was that then new rules of the so-called “Clear Skies Initiative” would actually weaken regulations of the 1990 Clean Air Act making the future skies “dirtier” than if the government were to continue to follow that law as Congress had intended.

Now in the ultimate act of environmental hypocrisy, Mr. Bush’s handlers are citing a small positive step by this president to compare his accomplishments to those of a true conservationist president: Teddy Roosevelt.

Bush’s request for an increase of $258 million for National Parks in the 2008 budget is good news for the National Parks. This is an an increase that many members of Congress requested.

But let’s put things in perspective.

* The National Parks have been underfunded for decades.
* According to the National Parks Conservation Association, right now, our national parks face an
annual operating shortfall of more than $800 million.
* The proposed increase is only about 2% above 2006 actual levels; and only about $14 million higher than the 2002 actual appropriation.
* Of the $228 million “increase” in park operations, $211 million is at the expense of other NPS programs including historic preservation, construction and major maintenance, and land acquisition and state assistance, compared to the 2006 actual appropriation.
* The President’s proposal calls for more privatization of National Park services and infrastructure: The proposal calls for an additional $100 million in appropriations that would be allocated (if Congress authorizes the scheme) on a “dollar for dollar match” with private money. (This would require NPS personnel to spend precious time seeking private sector funds to support basic capital improvements/maintenance and would ensure that projects favored by private investors will get priority over those that would likely be in the best interests of the public).

So the President’s proposed 2008 budget of $35 billion asks for a whopping $258 million for National Parks with much of that increase actually coming from redirected funds from other NPS programs.

This hardly takes care of the chronic NPS budget backlog.

Let’s make no bones about it, multiple administrations have been completely negligent in their responsibility for maintaining the National Parks: “America’s crown jewels.” (I am many of my colleagues were particularly aggrieved of the Clinton Administration’s mishandling and displacement of the NPS science program).

But citing President Bush’s “commitment” and comparing him to Teddy Roosevelt for just shuffling a few chairs around the budget deck of of the sinking National Park Service system goes much beyond the pale.

http://tinyurl.com/29s8xp

February 11, 2007
New York Times Editorial

T.R.? He’s No T.R.
http://tinyurl.com/2muhje

Whenever President Bush is being hammered for his environmental policies, as he has been recently for his timid approach to global warming, he heads for a national park to reveal a hidden kinship with nature and, in effect, to promise a new day.He did so again last week, visiting Shenandoah National Park to announce a sizable increase in the National Park Service’s budget. The photo op elicited suggestions from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that Mr. Bush was somehow channeling Teddy Roosevelt. From Tony Snow, the White House spokesman and resident fantasist, it prompted the incredible claim that Mr. Bush had in fact been “keenly committed both to environmentalism and conservationism from the start.”

From the start? The choice Mr. Bush faced on the day he took office was between two competing Republican approaches to environmental matters — the callous disregard for the country’s natural resources displayed during the Reagan years and the responsible stewardship of those same resources associated with Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Bush unhesitatingly chose the former.

The result was an across-the-board antiregulatory crusade aimed not only at undoing Bill Clinton’s environmental legacy but also at weakening bedrock economic law stretching back to Richard Nixon. It was orchestrated by the ideologues and industry lobbyists whom Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney installed in nearly every important position where environmental policy is made. The one exception was Christie Whitman, who finally tired of being told to do industry’s bidding and retired to private life after two uncomfortable years as boss of the Environmental Protection Agency.

It is impossible to find Teddy Roosevelt’s ghost in any of this. One suspects, for instance, that Roosevelt would have tried much harder to protect fragile landscapes than the Bush administration has in its frantic drive for more oil and gas resources in the Rocky Mountains. One suspects — knows, even — that Roosevelt, who started the national wildlife refuge system, would not have pushed for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Similarly, Roosevelt would not have declared — as Gale Norton, Mr. Kempthorne’s immediate predecessor, did in 2003 — that America had already acquired enough protected wilderness; he would have demanded more. He would not have rolled back, as Ms. Norton did, environmental rules governing mining for gold, copper and lead. He would not have countenanced the demolition job that Mr. Bush’s Forest Service has done on the web of forest protections it inherited from previous administrations. He would not have tried to scuttle one of the most important acts of environmental stewardship in many years, Mr. Clinton’s roadless rule, which made 58.5 million acres of the national forests off limits to new road building and development.

And Roosevelt would certainly have kept his word. Mr. Bush made three big promises in this area in the 2000 campaign. One was to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. He reneged on that one almost immediately. The second was to finance the federal government’s core open space program, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, at its annual authorized level of $900 million. He has shortchanged it badly every year and this year he is asking for $85 million.

The third promise was to put more money into the national parks. Here history may give Mr. Bush higher marks, thanks largely to the entreaties of Mr. Kempthorne, who pressed for and received a commitment of $258 million in new spending this year and a guarantee of $1 billion over 10 years. The parks have been starved for years (and not just by this administration), and people who care about them have every reason to be pleased by the prospect of a substantial increase in the budget.

We can also hope, of course, that this represents a turnaround in Mr. Bush’s thinking, and that in the next two years he will offer up an energy policy focused more on new technologies and conservation and less on the old extractive industries; a public lands policy that spares our last wild places; a meaningful strategy for global warming; and on and on into a Rooseveltian future. But neither gratitude for a few extra dollars for the parks nor our stubborn belief in the possibility of redemption should blind us to six years of bad policies.

After years of first denying global warming was occurring, then admitting it was occurring but that it was “natural” (and that humans could not have anything possibly to do with warming on a global scale, now one of the lead deniers, Patrick Michaels (ExxonMobil funded), now says that scientists of course knew that green house gases would eventually result in a warming Earth but that we just better “Live with it” because there is nothing humans can do about it!