Streetsblog Los Angeles

Republicans on the Senate environment committee, who months ago began criticizing
the Obama administration for evaluating federally funded infrastructure
projects for their impact on climate change, today introduced
legislation that would bar the White House from making climate a factor
in environmental reviews.

The GOP senators said their bill
was aimed at ensuring the government could not delay new road and
power-plant construction to gauge its climate impacts under the
precepts of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). That
40-year-old statute that requires local planners to conduct reviews of
any transport project that could significantly impact the health of
surrounding areas.

"As it stands, NEPA is
subject to frequent abuse by radical environmentalists who want to use
litigation to impose their agenda on federal agencies," Sen. David
Vitter (R-LA), one of the measure’s sponsors, said in a statement. "Our
bill seeks
to prevent that abuse."

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), responding to a petition from green groups, issued draft guidance
in February that asked agencies to evaluate the climate impacts of new
projects estimated to increase emissions by 25,000 metric tons or more
of CO2 — the same level that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
used for its rule on mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas production.

As the EPA noted in its explanation of the 25,000 metric ton threshold,
such a level of emissions would be equivalent to 4,600 new passenger
cars or the energy use of 2,3000 new homes.

The CEQ’s guidance is not set to become final until after a period of public comment ends next month.

The potential for a cap-and-trade climate bill to set aside significant
amounts of money for reforming local land use and transportation
planning is often touted by Democrats, environmental groups, and this particular Streetsblogger.

But what does Mary Nichols,
chair of the California Air Resources Board and administrator of the
state’s landmark effort to cut emissions by changing development
patterns, think of the idea of tackling sprawl via climate legislation?

"I don’t necessarily think SB 375
[the California land-use bill] should be in a cap-and-trade bill,"
Nichols said today during a session of today’s Transportation Research
Board (TRB) conference devoted to climate change.

The
provocative question of how important a congressional climate bill
would be to transportation was first raised by EMBARQ program director Nancy Kete, a veteran sustainability advocate.

Asking
the TRB audience to consider that "whatever happens on climate change
really is not going to have much impact on transportation," Kete
praised the climate bill’s grants for transit and land-use planning but described them as unsuitable for achieving "significant, short-term" pollution reduction.

Nichols’
uncertain perspective on the path to addressing transportation — which
produces 40 percent of California’s emissions and 30 percent of total
U.S. CO2 — through climate legislation may surprise some, but it
tracks with what she described as an "unsettled" political climate
surrounding the issue of pollution limits.

Indeed, Nichols’
remarks today emphasized the importance of a federal climate plan that
did not attempt to preempt the regulations of individual states, and
California is one of several seeking a go-slow approach to greenhouse gas restrictions from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

So if climate change legislation, which faces
considerable resistance from Senate Democrats, isn’t the vehicle to
begin remodeling the nation’s transportation planning system, what is?
Kete proposed a shift in focus to the six-year federal transport bill
– though its political future is as murky as the climate measure’s.

Yet Kete’s suggestion brought a telling remark from John Stoody, an aide to conservative GOP senator Kit Bond (MO).

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As the Copenhagen climate talks reach a turning point,
congressional negotiations over emissions cuts are taking a back seat
to global debate. But some undeniably good news on the domestic front
came late yesterday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
(CBO).

The CBO found that the Senate environment committee’s climate bill, which would nearly triple
the House’s investment in clean transportation, would decrease the
federal deficit by "about $21 billion" during its first 10 years and
result in net spending decreases even after that point.

Environment panel chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was elated by the CBO’s report [PDF],
which also attached a $16 billion estimate to the bill’s 10-year
funding for transit, land use, bike-ped infrastructure and other green
transport.

Boxer said in a statement:

The CBO score shows that there is a way to design a clean
energy and climate bill that is fiscally responsible and gets the job done
– while protecting the health of our families and the planet.

But unfortunately, the money-saving news may not be enough to save the environment committee’s framework, which sparked a GOP boycott and fears that moderate Democrats from coal-dominant states would ultimately withhold their votes.

Boxer’s
co-sponsor on the climate bill, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), is separately
working with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) on
a compromise climate proposal aimed at winning 60 votes in the upper
chamber of Congress.

That bill is expected to include new
subsidies for nuclear power as well as an emissions cap lower than the
environment panel’s version. Whether it maintains a respectable level
of support for clean transportation remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Boxer’s GOP counterpart on the committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), stopped in Copenhagen for just two hours today to crow that a U.S. climate bill has "zero" chance of winning congressional passage.

At
a panel discussion yesterday at the Copenhagen climate summit, American
policymakers and transit experts delivered a clear message: Walkable
urban development must be part of any effective plan to reduce global
greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks to the magic of live webcasts, I can
relay a few highlights for Streetsblog readers.

Without
directing future development toward walkable urbanism, the climate
impacts of sprawl will overwhelm other efforts to curb greenhouse gas
emissions, said Robert Cervero, a professor specializing in
transportation and land use policy at UC Berkeley. "Urban development
patterns have a significant role to play in carbon reduction," Cervero
told the audience. "Otherwise we’ll just get knocked back by land-use
patterns. Sustainable urbanism has to be part of the equation."

The
benefits of walkable development extend far beyond the efficiencies of
trains, buses, and bikes compared to cars. As journalist (and befuddling congestion pricing critic) David Owen has documented superbly, city dwellers use far less energy to, for instance, heat homes than suburbanites.

Cervero
attached some rough numbers to these "embedded energy savings." While
transit investment alone can achieve a 10 to 20 percent reduction in
America’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions, he said, factoring in
the embedded energy savings of walkable development boosts that figure
to 30 percent. That’s 30 percent compared to present-day emissions
levels. The reduction could reach as high as 60 percent, Cervero added,
compared to the level of per-capita emissions that would result from
continuing business-as-usual sprawl-inducing policies.

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(Charles Komanoff is a frequent contributor to NYC Streetsblog on energy policy, carbon taxes and transportation reform.  For a complete bio, click here.)

Only two cities of more than a million people are known to have a bicycling mode-share over 30 percent: Amsterdam and Copenhagen. As Rutgers urban expert John Pucher has documented, cycling's vibrantly high percentage of urban trips throughout Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany was not the product of amorphous cultural factors. Rather, it came about through public policies that not only made cycling safe and convenient but also made driving costly and cumbersome.

So it was disconcerting to learn that one of these measures -- limiting the supply and raising the price of central-city car parking -- is about to be compromised in Copenhagen. And the announcement could not be more ill-timed, with the Danish capital set to host the U.N. Climate Change Conference starting Monday.

The government of Denmark this week unveiled a package of incentives to jump-start the sale and use of electric cars. As the New York Times reported on Wednesday, each new electric car comes not just with a per-purchase subsidy of $40,000, but with this stunning perk: free parking in downtown Copenhagen.

Free parking, as UCLA Professor Don Shoup has taught us, comes with a high cost: greater car use. The more valuable and pricey the parking space, the greater the inducement to drive when it is given away. In the case of downtown Copenhagen, where parking probably goes for the U.S. equivalent of $25 a day, the inducement will be powerful indeed.

Consider a resident of metropolitan Copenhagen headed downtown from, say, 10 miles away. Even with petrol taxed to a price of $8 a gallon, the fuel cost of the 20-mile round-trip in a 32 mpg car is just five bucks. That's pocket change next to the $25 parking cost. But make parking free, and the $30 car trip can now be made for $5. Econometric models using price-elasticity suggest that the number of trips will roughly triple as a result -- at least until the resulting traffic chokes off some of the increase.

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The climate change bills being considered by Congress treat electric utilities very well, giving more than a third
of the revenue generated by CO2 regulation away — for free — to power
providers. This move pleased coal country Democrats while seeking to lock down benefits for consumers by averting electricity rate hikes.

But did the focus on electricity generation tackle the fastest-growing source of U.S. carbon emissions? A new report released today by Environment America has the answer: Barely.

The
report tracks state-by-state progress in reducing carbon emissions. The
chart shown below depicts the national totals for emissions by sector
of the economy, with the fifth column from the left depicting the
percentage change between 1990 and 2007 and the sixth column depicting
the percentage change between 2004 and 2007.

Electricity was indeed the fastest-growing producer of U.S. emissions
during both time periods, rising by 32 percent in the 1990-2007 period
and 3.4 percent during 2004-2007. But transportation emissions were a
strong No. 2, rising by 27 percent from 1990 to 2007 and 3 percent
during 2004-2007.

The
two columns on the far left show that during the last four years, U.S.
commercial, residential, and industrial emissions have decreased in
real terms while electricity and transportation emissions are on the
rise.

The report’s authors acknowledge that the period they
studied saw "very little" increase in vehicle fuel-efficiency
standards, which are set to rise
notably in the coming years. But considering that transportation
emissions are rising at such a healthy clip, it’s natural to ask
whether the Senate climate bill should set aside
more than 3 percent of its revenue for clean transport — and why the
House bill did so much worse, making its 1 percent allocation optional.

The Senate’s propensity for filibusters, delay, and fruitless attempts at bipartisan deal-making is earning it quite the reputation these days. And climate change legislation, with its big-ticket implications for transit and urban development in general, is becoming increasingly caught up in the Senate’s peripatetic politics.

The
Finance Committee held a hearing today on the job-creating implications
of its climate bill, which would set aside hundreds of millions of
dollars for annual clean transportation grants. Neither the transit
industry nor the renewable energy sector was invited to testify,
although two oil industry-backed witnesses were brought in to criticize the measure.

During
the hearing, Finance chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) sounded hopeful notes
about the need to address carbon emissions. "We should recognize that
in the case of [regulating] acid rain, the
negative consequences were far less than projected," Baucus said. "We
should keep this
in mind when similar claims are made about the effects of legislation
to
address climate change."

And on a conference call with
reporters today, the Finance panel’s senior Republican, Chuck Grassley
(IA), gave a reluctant but upbeat assessment of GOP senators’ openness
to a bipartisan climate deal:

Well, we have one, Lindsey Graham, working with [Sen. John] Kerry [D-MA] on some sort
of a compromise — if it would include nuclear and would include
offshore drilling. I don’t know whether that’s good enough to offset
the bad that’s in the bill or not. I don’t think it’s good enough for
me. But you’ll at least him working there. And I wouldn’t want to say that there’s not two or three other senators.

Two
or three Republicans is not a lot, to be sure. But the climate bill
will need all the votes it can muster to surmount a Senate that’s dominated by smaller, rural states — such as Baucus’ and Grassley’s.

The Senate environment committee approved its climate change bill today on a 10-1 vote, shrugging off a boycott by all of the panel's Republicans but missing out on the chance to consider amendments to the lengthy legislation.

The environment panel's chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had offered Republicans several days to abandon their walkout, promising time to consider GOP amendments and a complete Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) modeling of the bill before it comes to the Senate floor.

But environment committee Republicans were unmoved, insisting on an immediate five-week delay for EPA analysis despite testimony from the EPA that such work would produce little new information. Boxer's GOP counterpart on the panel, Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), seemed to delight in forcing the chairman's hand as he labeled the no-amendments move the "nuclear option."

The question now becomes whether the specific proposals added by Boxer's panel -- including grant programs for transit and clean transportation that nearly triple the funding approved by the House -- can survive a long slog through as many as five other committees.

Boxer insisted this morning that "many things in this bill ... are going to be part of that comprehensive bill" that ultimately reaches a full Senate vote. But others on the committee acknowledged that the bill's one-party approval would not bode well for its political prospects.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the chief sponsor of efforts to boost the climate bill's clean transportation provisions, described himself as "very, very, very disappointed," particularly given the loss of a chance to amend the legislation.

Carper submitted an amendment that would have added more than $400 million to the bill's annual set-aside of climate money for transit, inter-city rail, local land use planning and other projects.  "I don't like this process," Carper said this morning. "I don't think any of us do."

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The Senate environment committee is slated
to begin formally voting on its climate change bill today in an
atmosphere of high drama, thanks to Republican members who have vowed to boycott the proceedings in a bid to delay the legislative process.

The
GOP gambit is intended to push the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct a complete
analysis of the Senate climate bill, a task that could take upwards of
five weeks.

The senior Republicans on the six Senate committees with jurisdiction over climate change renewed their entreaties in a letter sent yesterday to environment panel chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA). They wrote:

While
such analyses are never perfect, they are an essential aspect of the
legislative decision-making process when policy changes of such
consequence are in play. As is the case with legislation itself, these
analyses are worth the time and resources required not only to get them
done, but to get them done right.

As Grist’s David Roberts observed
on Friday, the Senate climate bill is largely similar to the House
version that was passed in June after in-depth analysis by the CBO and
the EPA. Performing another full workup of the Senate climate bill,
then, would serve little purpose other than to push its consideration
past next month’s global environmental talks in Copenhagen — notching
a political win for GOP leaders.

So how can Boxer take up the
bill with only Democrats in attendance? The answer is a complicated one
that relies on a specific interpretation of committee rules and
precedents; but even if work can begin today, it’s unclear whether amendments to the bill can be considered without a GOP presence.

The Republican senators referred to this outcome in their letter to Boxer:

We
understand that there may be an effort to report [the Senate climate
bill] from the [environment] committee not only without a satisfactory
analysis, but also without sufficient opportunity to address the
bipartisan concerns raised over the course of legislative hearings on
the measure.

In fact, neither Boxer nor Sen.
John Kerry (D-MA), the Senate climate bill’s co-author, likes the idea
of pushing the legislation through its first committee votes without a
debate on amendments. Kerry released a statement yesterday afternoon
noting that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) supported emissions limits during
his presidential run last year and asking "everyone to come back to the
table," sentiments also voiced by Boxer.

Limiting amendments to the climate bill would also have consequences for transportation policy.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) has submitted a
proposal to increase the bill’s annual set-aside of revenue for clean
transport by more than $400 million.

If his amendment comes
to a vote, it could well be approved, given that six of the environment
panel’s 12 Democrats have signed on to Carper’s bill dedicating more
climate money to transit. But if no amendments are considered, the
chances of increasing the bill’s clean transport funding — which is
already nearly three times the size of the House version — would get notably slimmer.

Yesterday, the Senate environment committee held the first in a three-part marathon of hearings on its climate change legislation, with supporters singling out the bill's investments in clean transportation even as one senior Democrat notably withheld his support from the measure.

The Senate climate bill calls for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. emissions by 2020, relative to 2005 levels. The legislation also sets aside nearly three times as much money for transit, inter-city rail, and other cleaner-burning transport than a similar bill passed by the House in June.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), a sponsor of the effort to focus more climate revenue on transportation, credited environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) with doing more for transit than her House counterparts.

"It will make a huge difference on the infrastructure we need to conserve energy," Cardin said of the Senate climate bill. "We do subsidize the passenger car more than we do public transportation in this country. We need to change that."

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood also hailed the bill's dedication of valuable emissions allowances to rail, while reminding senators that the economic stimulus law's $8 billion high-speed rail fund would represent only the tip of the iceberg for America's under-performing passenger trains.

"We know [rail] is cleaner-burning," LaHood said, "and we know that when someone's on the train, they're out of their automobile. The benefits will be enormous in terms of getting CO2 out of the air."

But amid the hosannas for the climate bill's transportation provisions were signals of the rough political journey that faces the Senate legislation.

Republicans on the environment panel reiterated their vow to delay a committee vote on the climate bill, which was co-authored by Boxer and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), until they are satisfied with the amount of time given to examine the plan and for analysis to be done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). All GOP members of the committee left today's hearing before the four Obama administration witnesses had finished taking questions, further underscoring the partisan tension.

And Republicans were not alone in their criticism of the climate bill. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the powerful Finance Committee that plans to claim jurisdiction over emissions allowances -- including those for transit -- said he would pursue a softening of the bill's emissions reductions targets (which are already softer than international goals) and a preemption of the EPA's ability to regulate CO2. Baucus said:

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