Former Obama aide: carbon tax 'appealing'

Won't happen on this planet

"I personally think the likelihood of a big tax deal has increased," the former aide said, noting that carbon revenue could be combined with lower tax rates for people and corporations.

But others express astonishment at the thought of a carbon tax being passed by a House that just forced the White House to abandon smaller goals on revenue, like stripping subsidies from oil and gas companies.

"If it didn't work this time, how's it going work next time?" asked Ted Gayer, an economist with the Brookings Institution who supports a carbon tax. "I don't want to be pessimistic, but I didn't look at the [debt] compromise and see this as a big opening."

Freed, of Third Way, thought he misheard a reporter ask about a carbon tax -- in his mind, it's that far-fetched.

"In which country and under which Congress?" he asked. "That's as likely as me pitching for the Nats this year -- impossible."

2 August 2011

Harvard College, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the College of the Atlantic join 13 other schools on the 2012 Green Rating Honor Roll. The annual list was released yesterday by the Princeton Review, an educational services company. It evaluates learning institutions on their commitments to sustainability.

Now in its fourth year, the evaluation covers 768 colleges, scoring campuses on environmental friendliness, the strength of their green initiatives and their overall sustainability consciousness. The results are compiled from surveys, and colleges certify the responses with an affidavit. The honor roll consists of schools that received the highest possible score on a scale of 60 to 99.

David Soto, director of college ratings at the Princeton Review, said sustainability is one of most important issues to prospective students. In its "College Hopes and Worries Survey," the Princeton Review found that among 8,200 college applicants, 69 percent said that a college's environmental programs would affect their decision to apply, the second most common factor behind financial aid, which was critical to 86 percent of survey respondents.

"I think it speaks to the mindset and of students applying to school," said Soto. "Schools are really heeding the call." According to Soto, about 300 full-time college sustainability officers are now employed across the United States and 642 institutions offer degrees in environmental sustainability.

Schools in the survey were asked about their environmental degree programs, along with how much of the food budget goes toward organic and local products, whether they have school-sanctioned student groups that promote campus sustainability, their plans to address climate change and their greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.

'Problem solvers' like energy efficiency

Some colleges expressed appreciation for the recognition. "It gives us a lot of media attention," said Donna Gold, director of public relations at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. The college has 370 students, only offers degrees in human ecology and has been carbon-neutral since 2007.

However, Gold said she wants the school to be known for its academics, as well. "It's also great that we're considered one of the top 360 schools in the nation in terms of academics," said Gold. "Our calling card is our general focus and the interdisciplinary nature [of the curriculum]. The environmentalism is kind of what we do."

Marcia Kinstler, sustainability director at Georgia Institute of Technology, said that at her school, green endeavors are spurred both by students and by the school's leadership. "Our administration has long understood the need for more energy efficiency," said Kinstler. "Our students are problem solvers: 60 percent are engineers. We have civil engineers and mechanical and electrical engineers, so this is natural for them."

However, sustainability isn't necessarily the most important consideration for prospective students. "The students are glad to see the efficiency," said Kinstler. "There's a small percentage that makes that their primary criteria, but it's a very, very small amount."

Nonetheless, a college's carbon footprint is increasingly becoming an important measure of a school to potential applicants, said Soto, and the demand for this information is increasing. "I think students can use this [report] as a tool to find the best college for them."

2 August 2011

A sweeping fiscal overhaul that ties upward of $2 trillion in spending cuts to a debt-ceiling increase is poised to become law today, leaving liberals licking their wounds and the GOP declaring victory in the White House's loss of a high-profile fight to roll back oil industry tax breaks.

The House approved the debt deal, 269-161, with 95 liberals and 66 conservatives breaking from their leaders to vote no. Senate passage and presidential approval are expected today, though energy and environmental agencies and the interests that track them are only beginning to digest how the coming slashes would affect their priorities.

Among environmentalists, the reaction ranged from wincing to outrage.

"While we expected significant cuts to all domestic programs in the debt deal, we were hopeful that this austerity bill would finally end oil and gas subsidies," said Sierra Club deputy campaigns director Melinda Pierce, noting that the pact trims domestic spending to levels last seen before the passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. "Outrageously, this deal lets the oil and gas industries keep their easy money while forcing Americans to compromise their health, clean air and clean water."

Wilderness Society President William Meadows echoed that sentiment, blasting the debt-limit deal reached late Sunday for "creating an environmental debt that we can't repay" and setting up "massive cuts that threaten to damage our water, our air and our lands beyond repair."

The large-print implications of the package are clear: nearly $1 trillion in immediate cuts to U.S. EPA, the Energy and Interior departments and other domestic agencies through spending caps, and $1.5 trillion in cuts to come through a 12-member joint committee asked to find trims elsewhere in the budget. If that committee falls short, a broad funding sequestration would slice at least $1.2 trillion from sectors prized by both parties, including energy and environmental programs.

"Going forward, we see the real risk as what's going to happen in sequestration, what the committee will do," said Natural Resources Defense Council legislative director Scott Slesinger, judging that greens would "be OK, comparatively OK" in the 2012 and 2013 fiscal years.

A comparison of the total nonsecurity discretionary spending numbers proposed in several recent spending plans affirms that EPA, DOE and other agencies could have faced a grimmer short-term future. The final debt deal caps budget authority for next year at $359 billion -- not including international affairs, which was redefined as security-related -- or $23 billion less than President Obama's budget request.

The House GOP budget that passed in April, by contrast, would have set its nonsecurity discretionary spending level $50 billion lower than the debt-limit deal. A deficit-cutting plan offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that fell short in both chambers over the weekend would have set its nonsecurity discretionary cap at $439 billion, or $80 billion higher than the deal ultimately reached.

Yet the fact that EPA, DOE, Interior and other domestic spending could have taken a bigger hit did not deter House liberals, including Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman of California and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Ed Markey of Massachusetts, from lambasting the deal.

Asked yesterday about the White House contention that the 12-member joint committee could still take aim at oil industry tax breaks -- untouched in the final deal in a major win for the GOP -- Waxman demurred.

"They could look at anything," Waxman said of the committee members. "The problem is, however, that the Republicans line up against any kind of revenue raisers ... one would have thought that they would have been a lot more reasonable to avoid default, and they weren't.

"But on the other hand," the Californian added of the GOP, "they can't have it their way all the time."

Nonetheless, many senior Republicans were elated at their ability to beat back a Democratic push to consider tax-break repeals, such as those for oil and gas as well as ethanol, as part of the debt-limit debate.

"The big win here for us and for the American people is the fact that there are no tax hikes in this package," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters yesterday.

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), a top lieutenant on the Energy and Commerce Committee, used his floor speech in support of the debt plan to nudge his party toward a new top-line goal now that the borrowing limit was raised.

Decrying the "excess of regulations coming out, particularly from EPA," as an obstacle to job creation, Whitfield added: "[S]o this is an important first step in getting our financial house in order. We next need to start removing uncertainty in the regulatory side of government."

The American Petroleum Institute (API), which led the oil industry's push to defend the economic benefit of its tax benefits, declined to comment on the final debt agreement and its joint-committee structure.