I mean come on.  All of you Free Marketers.  The BIG AUTO makers are losing market share not by standards but because Gas if freakin $3.29 a gallon and people believe we need to watch out for your environment.  The are losing to company which has embrashed the market shift

Why, Why, Why is big business the first to cry "free market" and the first to request cover and / or protection from it.

Dumb, dumber, dumberest.

...one of the biggest presences in the 9th is the UAW.  Boucher (and Dingell, who is from Detroit) are simply representing the wishes of their constituents.

I keep forgetting F150 / F350 / etc land ... wish Ford would put something there for production that made sense for the 21st rather than mid 20th century ...

Yes there is a UAW in Pulaski Co. that has about 1400 members, but they are not particularly that strong from what I can tell.  Where are the others?  My thought was that it may be more inspired by the coal companies/factories.

Their interests are apparently aligned here...

I am not getting the UAW on this though.  GM and Ford are dying - the workers that remain are apparently stubbornly clinging to the old way of doing things, and in the process helping to push both automakers off a cliff.

UVAHoo is probably thinking UMW for the 9th district - more mining jobs equals more voters for Mr. Boucher - not like he needs them really...

Come on he's representing his constituents. Thats coal country, as hard as it may be to understand. Coal to liquid is a good process, endorsed by Warner and Webb, to transition the mines and the workforce into a more sustainable source of energy and future for that region. If he stood up and allowed one of the primary sources of revenue and a way of life to be completely nixed what kind of representative would he be?

Boucher has a great record on the environment, and in general.

We would be just using up a limited resource even more quickly, and in the process increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Yes, I understand that there is a consituency there.

to see the earth burn up.  The issue here isn't killing coal, it's about a bill that might actually prevent California and other states from setting strict fuel economy standards for automobiles, etc.  How does THAT benefit Rick Boucher's constituents?

Thank goodness for Nancy Pelosi, who "has slapped down a new proposal by top House Democrats that would have wiped out California's ability to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks."  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Her opposition means the proposal will never make it to the House floor." The paper adds:

Her message was a shot at two House Democrats -- Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., both leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who have been crafting new energy legislation that would have thwarted the state's ability to set tougher-than-federal standards to cut vehicle emissions.

So much for that!

Can someone please explain this?  I am utterly appalled.

This is what it's all about:

Automobile companies seem to be making progress in tamping down Democratic proposals for tougher fuel economy requirements, an issue that pits powerful Democrats from Michigan against some national leaders of their own party.

The chief executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler had lunch with Senate Democrats on Wednesday, less than a week before the Democratic leaders hope to bring a sprawling energy bill to the Senate floor.

The executives argued that the bill?s proposal to increase mileage requirements for cars and light trucks would be impossible to meet and would gravely damage the automobile industry.

It would increase the average mileage requirement for passenger cars to 35 miles a gallon by 2020, up from 27.5 miles a gallon now, and would apply to light trucks and sport utility vehicles as well.

But leading House and Senate Democrats from Michigan are pushing a softer approach, and they have a good chance of getting some of what they want.

This has nothing to do with coal...so much for THAT argument about why Rick Boucher is doing what he's doing (e.g., helping his constituents who depend on coal - NOT!!!). 

"executives argued that the bill's proposal to increase mileage requirements for cars and light trucks would be impossible to meet" ...

The 35 mpg, for fleet, could be -- technologically -- met today (and surpassed).  With retooling, it would be easy to meet in just a few years.  Yes, the Big Three might want to start marketing full-efficient cars with the passion that they have devoted to HEMIs and ever grander monstrocities.

Lightweighting (even of big cars), hybrids & plug-in hybrids, etc and the mileage levels can skyrocket. 

They are fighting 35 mpg for 2020 ... and this could be met virtually overnight.

What they could argue for is 'transition' assistance to get there:

* Stop the penalties for CAFE standards but create a FeeBate system to show customers, upfront, fiscal impact of buying efficient/inefficent cars. (Provide rebates for greater fuel efficiency and fees on lower fuel efficiency, with increasing the mileage target year-to-year.)
* National Health Care/Single-payer: get the retirees (and current workers) health care out of the
* Targeted USG assistance for US industry to surpass critical road-blocks -- such as battery technology
* Assistance for modernizing lines to move from building McSUVs to 21st century friendly vehicles

Etc ...

Richardson calls for 50 mpg by 2020 ... now that is a target to support.

from seat belts to airbags to anti-lock brakes to CAFE standards to...

No wonder why their companies are hemhorraging money.

The Yanks have discovered states rights. The South is going federalist. What would Thomas Nelson Page say?

Here is a graphic from the NY Times that shows how much CO2 is emitted for various gasoline replacement technologies.

As you can see Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) without sequestration is horendously bad, and even with sequestration gives a net gain of CO2 for the environment.

--morris

Democratic Candidate
House of Delegates - 40th District
morris@morrismeyer.com

On this chart, coal-to-liquids is obviously an environmental disaster, but what about solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, wave, and of course the best of all - energy efficiency?  All of those would result in a 100 PERCENT reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuels.  Same thing with nuclear power, by the way.

P.S.  Good luck to Morris Meyer on June 12.  RK unanimously endorsed Morris, we have donated money to his campaign, and we are strongly pulling for him to win his primary on Tuesday.  Go Morris!

First, thanks Lowell for posting the story. 

I hope that we can talk more about this and why Boucher did this and feels the way he does.  As with any candidate I'm looking at, I look at their campaign donors and their voting record.  His voting record looks liberal-based.  However, at least for the '08 cycle, his receipts are from the Energy/Natural Resources sector.  Didn't look at previous cycles.

I'm in a quandry why Boucher feels so strongly on his position.  Certainly California can't or shouldn't wait for the whole country to decide on fuel efficiency standards! 

He's not protecting coal by preventing California and other states from raising fuel economy standards on cars.  So why is he doing this?  Any answers?

Lowell: The answer is that this is not about oil. This is about states rights. Gar Alperovitz, an old liberal/progressive scholar at U. of Maryland, has been writing about this for a few years now. I might have brought up that here in northern New Hampshire a few of us at the beginning of the war on Iraq used a states rights defense claiming that under Jefferson's view of the Constitution states did not have to participate. This was also part of and related to the Vermont secession movement - you see signs all over here now saying "U.S. out of Vermont." The people involved, including myself, were very knowledgeable about Hamilton/Jefferson and the states rights issues in the Civil War. We used lawyers and scholars from Quebec secession movement and the League of the South. Some of us forwarded this concept to varied scholars. One of them was Jerry Brown, who was then major of Oakland and who is now California's pit bull Attorney General, and who is leading this fight on behalf of CA if I understand it correctly. Gar wrote a variety of articles on these nascent northern left-wing and progressive secession movements. One in The Nation included northern secession as "one of the ten bold ideas of the new century." I follow this issue very closely: There is no question in my mind that the one person listening to the states rights argument is Arnold Schwarzenegger. With Jodi Rell, Connecticut governor, they all but threatened secession several weeks back in a Washington Post op-ed. The idea is beginning to catch on. Those of us who started this bit of mischief/agitation here in northern New England all had long experience in the South. We knew that northern people did not fully understand the issues at stake between Hamilton and Jefferson which led to Civil War but once they did they would find states rights defenses against the federal government just as Jefferson did (I also proposed to Barney Frank's office that they could use a states rights defense for gay marriage in Massachusetts and they did). My feeling right now is that this can of worms will not be closed and this will become a (perhaps the) critical issue at the beginning of this century.
This is one of Gar's articles about California division.
http://www.nytimes.c...

If so, I would strongly oppose that, as frustrated as I am with the Bush Administration on a whole host of issues.  But maybe I'm reading this wrong...

My point of view was and is the same as Jefferson's. The only real defense against federal mischief - whether it is the war on Iraq, advancing nuclear weapons to the border of Russia and risking nuclear war or a refusal to curtail coal emissions - is strong state and regional identities. That is what we are seeing develop now in California and New England with Jodi Rell joining in with Arnold (next to join Arnold's position will be Mike Bloomberg). Secession is in fact impossible: we are inextricably linked by language, history, geography and culture; the issue is shifting rights and responsibilities from fed to states and regions. Pelosi, Schwarzenegger and Rell are calling here for devolution - shifting power [rights and responsibilities] from an omniscient and all-powerful fed government [Hamilton's position] in a cultural shift to enable regional development [Jefferson's position] if the feds refuse to allow the states to join the rest of the world in reducing greenhouse gases; allowing the states to do so as CA wants to do is indeed devolution. California under Arnold has already defied federal law and the tradition since 1865 by making its own agreements with England and British Columbia & he was all over Canada doing the same this past week. The feds have refused to act because they think they might need Arnold. Boucher is calling for federal dominance. Prelude to division in the 1860s was when South Carolina refused to pay tarriffs established by the feds. President Jackson said they must pay. That carried the day from then till now. But we are seeing now a variation of the same authority issue, this about emissions and green house gases. The Hamilton/Jefferson argument is who should hold the power; who should dominate; states or federal?

My goodness, how quickly you folks are to attack one of the most intelligent, dedicated and senior members of the Democratic party in the House.  There is no question that Federal environmental legislation and regulations, particularly with relation to the statutes of 50 states, is a most complex mosaic and although the issue global warming has become the cause celebre' or flavor of the month it gives none of you the right to attack a long standing member of our party.  The only "embarassment" is the headline of this post.  I sure hope that the majority of Democratic voters show more prudence and restraint than those on this board ready to go after a loyal member of this party, or our future efforts to maintain and build on this fragile majority will not last long.  How many of you have studied the actual language of the proposed bill?  How many of you have studied the actual language of the existing legislation of the various states potentially affected?  Just simmer down and see how this issue plays itself out.  To rush out and attack such a loyal and respected member of our OWN party is simply foolish and self-destructive.

People are getting more and more antagonized with every additional indication that Boucher is pursuing this course.  I agree, Boucher has been a great public servant overall, but does anyone have an explanation for what on earth he's doing here?  I mean, it's only about the future of our planet...no biggie!!! (snark)

Sit back and wait for legislation to pass and then say "jeez, that really is a horrible provision ... oh well, it is law ..."

And, well, the Democratic Party is not an autocracy.  I am prepared to lavish praise (and have) when merited.  But, according to my read of your post, criticism is not allowed?

It truly angers me when people say, "he/she is a good Democrat, so you can't criticize them when the f*** up big time."  What the hell, we're just supposed to sit back and let Rick Boucher, John Dingell, and whoever else screw over the planet?  We're supposed to "simmer down" while the planet is burning up?  Don't think so!

I am very proud and greatful that Rick Boucher represents the 9th District of Virginia. He has done so much for our region of the last quarter of a century that I find it hard to make a complaint. I can only imagine how things would be if someone like Bill Carrico or Kevin Triplett was our congressman.

However, I see nothing wrong with letting California set its own standards and lead the way in reduction of CO2 emissions.  Boucher said that letting California set its own standards would just create more "regulatory confusion" with little effect on solving global warming. I find that hard to beieve, since California has always been a leading state and has set trends in areas such as transportation, environmental protection, and civil rights.

I am going to let things play out a bit before I solidify my opinion. I am however awful greatful that Nancy Pelosi is our Speaker of the House. 

...that Rick Boucher, who is such a great Congressman overall, could do this.  I'm seriously feeling ill.

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that the forces of the status quo would put up a fight of some sort.  I am not sure what Boucher means when he says "We'll see" - what kind of leverage does he have other than to put a poison pill into a bill somewhere along the line, and if it did, wouldn't it be possible for the House as a whole to remove it with an amendment?

And that assumes that all of the members of the committee go along with this sort of thing.

I am sympathetic to the folks in his district though, but if to solve global climate change we have to stop mining coal, we  ought to try and steer whatever work related to renewable energy that we can to districts where they do coal mining.

anytime soon.  Hopefully, we can develop technology to sequester and store carbon from coal in an economical way.  THAT is what Boucher should be pushing for, not to block California from regulating vehicle fuel economy standards!

It seems like a desperate techno-fix that would allow us to continue on with business as usual, and it isn't clear what the costs would actually be, and would only be good as long as the coal holds out.

People talk a lot about renewables - solar, wind, etc, etc.  The usual knock is that they aren't there 24/7.  But there was an interesting discussion the other day:

http://europe.theoil...

essentially about concentrating solar power.  Not PV - this is where you collect the sunlight and use it to heat something, and then convert the heat to electricity.  The advantage is that heat can be stored (i.e. as a hot fluid) and then used to make electricity after the sun has gone down.  A second advantage is that it is quite a bit cheaper than PV.

The article that I linked to was suggesting an ambitious proposal to set up solar power plants in North Africa where the sunlight is the best.  They would then use high-voltage DC lines to bring the power to Europe (HV DC used to minimize transmission losses).  They had a quote:

A new report ('TRANS-CSP') commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety has calculated that solar electricity imported from CSP plants in North Africa and the Middle East could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, and that includes the costs of transmitting it. The main conclusions of the TRANS-CSP report are described in the press release 'Power from deserts'.

There isn't any reason why the U.S. couldn't do something similar.  Arizona and New Mexico have the sunlight, are relatively cloud-free, and have the land area to easily supply all of the electricity that we currently use.

Is the title for a post that I did on this subject recently. 

Personally, I like the concept for moving CSP (and other renewable) energy across a broad area via HVDC. From the US deserts to major cities ... from windy areas to becalmed areas ... etc ...