Killer Politics (12 page)

I have friends and supporters in the coal industry, so I have a personal interest in seeing the industry come up with a viable solution to CO
₂
emissions. If we can do so, coal deposits in America are so vast we could become energy independent. But we are in the race of our lives. Scientists tell us if we do not begin reducing greenhouse gases now, climate change has the potential to dramatically and negatively change the way we live, to the point of a planet-wide catastrophe.

But seemingly, profit trumps even the potential for global disaster, and the race is on to see how many power plants can be built before new regulations go into effect. As I write this in 2009, forty-three coal-fired plants are under construction to be “grandfathered in” before stringent new regulations go into effect requiring new plants to sequester half of their CO
₂
emissions. Up to now in this decade 5,600 MW of new coal-
fired electric power have been added to the grid. The forty-three new plants will quadruple that—and produce more than 150 million tons of new CO
₂
emissions every year. That's just wrong.

Here, again, is an illustration of how the corporate me-first greedy mentality fails to discern the difference between what is legal and what is moral. It is a symptom of what has gone so terribly wrong in America—we've learned to justify greed.

It isn't the first time that the good intentions of lawmakers have been counterproductive. Ironically, the 1970 Clean Air Act, while regulating many pollutants, did not address CO
₂
because no one was talking about climate change then. The Clean Air Act controlled particulates and sulfur, but in order to implement this new, cleaner technology, coal power companies became less efficient and as a consequence sent
more
CO
₂
into the atmosphere.

One of the most promising solutions anyone has come up with is to inject coal plant carbon dioxide back into the earth. Basin Electric Power Cooperative in North Dakota captures half of its CO
₂
when it processes coal into natural gas. The revolutionary coal gasification project cost $1.5 billion in the 1980s. However, to replicate it today would cost an estimated $4 billion.

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers told
60 Minutes,
“What we need in this country is what I would call a Marshall Plan. We rebuilt the economies of Japan and Germany after World War II. We need to rebuild our economy and transition it to a low carbon economy. We can do that. But it's gonna take trillions of dollars to do it.”

OTHER OPTIONS

I have been supportive of the ethanol industry because I believe it has the potential to play a role in energy independence. I see it as an evolving technology—away from corn and to cellulose—but it may prove to be transitional and nothing more if electric cars improve enough or if
hydrogen fuel cells become a reality. Toyota has plans to build a hydrogen-powered car by 2015. Even if it's successful, the prospects for the new technology rest upon the construction of “hydrogen stations” across the country like there are gas stations.

It is no surprise that the fossil fuel industry is lobbying hard against any legislation that will help green energy become more competitive. With them, it's all about business, and they have a whole battalion of scientists who will tell you what you want to hear. But green energy
is
getting more competitive, and clean energy will win in the end.
Electronic Business
reports that soon “leading solar electricity providers in Spain will be able to produce solar electricity for as low as 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh)—equivalent to the delivered cost of electricity from a new coal power plant.”

If that is so, and that kind of efficiency can be replicated, it will impact the coal and nuclear industries. Naturally, when we start talking about energy, people come out of the woodwork in support of nuclear power. However, in a recent study, Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh compared the cost from a new nuclear plant at 14¢ per kilowatt hour with that of a wind farm—7¢ per kilowatt hour. The study did not even address the costs of disposing of the nuclear waste. The government plan has been to store the deadly stuff underground at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Quite naturally, citizens in the state are against it.

I don't see nuclear energy as a smart play—the risks are too great. Remember Chernobyl? It laid waste to land twice the size of South Carolina. But continuing to churn out greenhouse gases could be even more catastrophic.

GLOBAL WARMING OR MAYBE A NEW ICE AGE?

According to an Associated Press report after the 2009 Copenhagen international summit on climate change, leaders aim to cap carbon dioxide at 450 parts per million, which would concede an increase in the global
temperature of 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit. We're at 390 ppm now. The report quotes NASA scientist Cynthia Rosenweig, who says going above 450 ppm “will change everything,” adding, “It's not just one or two things. There will be changes in water, food, ecosystems, health, and those changes also interact with each other.” She warns about coastal flooding, droughts, the death of coral reefs, and a chain reaction that would affect the food chain. Twenty percent of the world's known species would be endangered.

Scientists warn that we are approaching a point of no return when global warming will melt the Arctic permafrost, releasing even more CO
₂
, triggering a cascade of events that will be irreversible.

You'll get similarly dire predictions from the Sierra Club and even our own stodgy EPA. The Sierra Club notes, “Average global temperatures have risen already by one degree Fahrenheit, and projections indicate an increase of
two to ten degrees
within this century” (emphasis mine). The EPA warns, “Increased greenhouse gas concentrations are very likely to raise the Earth's average temperature, influence precipitation and some storm patterns, as well as raise sea levels.”

That said, let us acknowledge that historically there are other potential influences on climate greater than ours. The EPA website says, “For about two-thirds of the last 400 million years, geologic evidence suggests CO
₂
levels and temperatures were considerably higher than present. One theory is that volcanic eruptions from rapid sea floor spreading elevated CO
₂
concentrations, enhancing the greenhouse effect and raising temperatures.”

Other factors to consider are variables in the earth's orbit and the sun's intensity. The sun is presently experiencing a “solar minimum” during which there is no sunspot activity. These are typically eleven-year cycles, but scientists are watching what could be an extended lull. According to NASA's website, “careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun's brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996.
The changes so far are not enough to reverse the course of global warming, but there are some other significant side-effects: Earth's upper atmosphere is heated less by the sun.”

What NASA has not mentioned is that the last significant absence of sunspot activity, called the Maunder Solar Minimum, happened between 1645 and 1715, and caused the Little Ice Age. Scientists predict regular sunspot activity will resume its cycle in 2012, but if it doesn't, we just may see a reversal of the melting of the ice caps. Wouldn't it be ironic if, in the near future, greenhouse gases were encouraged?

All things considered, the evidence is overwhelming that mankind's actions have had a great effect on climate change and that we need to act quickly. When you look at the corresponding rise of greenhouse gases and global temperatures, it's hard to argue. You certainly can't deny that our ice caps are melting.

In fact, the climate data compiled by NASA's Goddard Institute and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) closely matches that of Great Britain's University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), the very one under fire after more than a thousand e-mails were hacked on the eve of the Copenhagen summit. Critics said the e-mails exposed manipulation of the data. I think that the fact that the CRU data almost mirrors the other research speaks for itself.

A
Washington Post
story in 2007 quoted Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a public interest group: “When you look at temperatures across the globe, every single year since 1993 has been in the top 20 warmest years on record.”

The fact that the U.S. military is making contingency plans for climate change should speak volumes about the credibility of the science. At home, efforts to protect naval bases against an expected rise in water levels are under way. Military strategists are also trying to project potential hot spots that might lead to military intervention. Consider the risk. According to the Population Reference Bureau (2003), “approximately 3 billion people—about half of the world's population—live
within 200 kilometers (124 miles) of a coastline. By 2025 that figure is likely to double.”

What if tens of millions were suddenly displaced with no food and no shelter? Society breaks down dramatically at a time like that. It will be just as the conservatives like it—every man for himself.

If dramatically reducing our CO
₂
emissions will make the difference between a stable climate or one more hostile to our existence—and the majority of scientists not on the oil lobby's payroll believe that is the case—it would be silly to have history record for our sweaty, mutant great-grandchildren that this generation wasn't willing to make the hard choices because “it might hurt the economy.”

SOLUTIONS

If mankind has inadvertently influenced the climate, what's to stop us from purposely doing so in a positive way? In a recent study, the Copenhagen Consensus Center—a respected European think tank, once skeptical about climate change—concluded that 1,900 ships could create clouds by spraying seawater into the air, thereby reflecting enough of the sun's rays to thwart global warming. The cost? Three hundred million dollars per ship—a pittance when measured against the rewards. (What we don't know is how the “cloud ships” might alter rainfall and drought conditions in the world.)

No one program will save the world from climate change but Cash for Clunkers, a program that got old polluting gas guzzlers off the road, was an imaginative and successful approach. Not only did it stimulate the car industry when it was on the ropes, but it got polluters off the road. It's one small piece of the puzzle in Obama's commitment to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 80 percent before 2050.

Another proposal to manage greenhouse gases is Cap and Trade. The program caps emissions that each country is allowed to emit. The way it would work is a government would distribute emissions credits to
individual companies, some of which will be able to keep their emissions below their cap, thereby giving them the freedom to sell these “pollution permits” to others. The incentive to cut pollution is then obvious.

According to industry expert Kari Manlove, the pollution permits could be given away or auctioned off “with the funds going to alleviate rising energy prices for low-and middle-income Americans, and invest in the infrastructure and low-carbon technologies that are needed to transition our economy to one that's low carbon.”

Make no mistake. This will require sacrifice. That we will sacrifice is a given. If we cannot minimize climate change, we will pay dearly. The question is, Do we have the character to sacrifice now? Perhaps that sacrifice is being forced upon us. According to the
Washington Post,
U.S. carbon emissions fell by 2.8 percent in 2008 because of the recession, the largest decline since 1982.

The ultimate test, when it comes to climate change, is the ability and willingness of industrial and emerging powers to agree on solutions. The outcome rests largely in the hands of two nations, the United States and China.

China, the world's biggest polluter, is on track to emit more carbon in the next thirty years than the United States has in our entire history. But before we get too smug, we should remember our per-capita emissions are still four times higher than China's.

No doubt it will seem disingenuous of America, as the largest energy consumer, to say, “Sure we got to build our country without all those pesky carbon caps, but the rules have changed. Do as we say, not as we did.”

But the rules
have
changed, and the climate is threatening to change our world in a big way. It is imperative that we understand this threat to mankind. Even if the United States can cut carbon emissions by 80 percent before 2050, and other nations follow suit, we may not be able to avoid
significant
climate change. Maybe all we can do is avoid
catastrophic
change. We have an obligation to our children and grandchildren to try.

The stakes couldn't be higher.

From Melting Pot to Meltdown

A MILLION SOLDIERS ONCE MANNED THE FOUR-THOUSAND-MILE-LONG
Great Wall of China in an effort to keep out Nomadic tribes. It's an ominous historical reminder of the importance and difficulty of protecting national borders. Difficult? Some say futile. Even then.

Now, “You live in the age of interdependence,” Bill Clinton says. “Borders don't count for much or stop much, good or bad, anymore.” Yet here we are at a crossroads when it comes to illegal immigration and homeland security. Do we abandon any hope of controlling our borders, or do we cling to our sovereignty? From a utopian point of view, borders should be unnecessary, kingdoms should be dispensed with, and the goodness of man should triumph. Yet mankind has not evolved to that point. We would be fools to keep the front door unlocked.

There are two major problems with porous U.S. borders: First, we want to defend our borders against attack. Second, because the resources of any country are finite, we need to defend our economic infrastructure.

Allowing millions of illegal immigrants to live here—in the shadows—undermines the structure of our society. This shadow workforce
both exploits and is exploited by our system. Its presence drives down or stagnates the wages of American workers while giving some businesses an unfair advantage over those who choose not to hire undocumented workers. It is not unusual for members of this shadow workforce to be mistreated and cheated—after all, what illegal worker is going to go to the authorities?

Any organization, whether it's the Boy Scouts or the U.S. government, needs to be able to identify its membership. The primary reason for existence of the government is to pool resources so we can collectively do what we cannot achieve individually. You have to know where the people are so you can properly allocate resources. But when it comes to illegal aliens, we don't know as much as we should.

Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants living in America range from 7 million to a 2005 Bear Stearns estimate of 20 million. The U.S. Border Patrol estimates this population to be somewhere between 12 and 15 million. The common estimate is 12 million, but we really won't know until the day we either deport all of these people (impossible) or grant them the right of citizenship, which would be a tall order.

According to Pew Hispanic Center research, “Mexico is by far the leading country of origin for U.S. immigrants, accounting for a third (32%) of all foreign-born residents and two-thirds (66%) of Hispanic immigrants.”

Immigration has been put on the back burner by the Obama administration while it wrestles with other issues, like the collapsing economy and health care. Immigration reform is not an issue that will produce any kind of political capital and could well prove to be divisive enough to undermine the presidency. It would be unwise, however, for the administration to ignore the issue of illegal immigration for too long. There's an old adage that says when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you have to do is stop digging. As long as we ignore the immigration is
sue, we will continue digging ourselves a deeper hole.

MANY ARE HERE TO STAY

When all the political commotion about migratory labor has come and gone, one fact will remain. You aren't going to round up 12 million Mexicans and bus them back over the border. Hell, George Bush couldn't clear out New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, and those people
wanted
a ride! We'd have to become a police state to deport so many people.

Pragmatically, the United States could so harshly penalize people and businesses who employ illegal workers that most would be unwilling to take the risk of hiring them. Jobs would dry up. Word would go out across our borders. Immigration would slow. No administration has mustered the will to do that, but at some point we are going to have to enforce the law. The Bush administration was content to look the other way. Driving the cheap labor out of the country would upset business interests and it could harm some industries, among them agriculture, which has historically leaned on migrant workers for backbreaking labor in the fields, dairies, and apiaries. The Obama administration has to decide if it has the will and the manpower to do what previous administrations would not. Even if producers can hire enough domestic workers, these workers will not work as cheaply, and that will drive up some food prices. Certain liberals will be angry, too, because of their sensitivity to anything that could be construed as racism.

Intellectually, we know that the inability to control our borders is bad for the economy and bad for our country in general, and cannot continue. But what about the illegal workers that are already here? This is a hot potato that neither party will take on alone—nor should they. If ever the two parties needed each other for political cover, this is the issue. If we, as a nation, can muster the political will to strictly enforce labor
laws and penalize employers who hire undocumented workers, many undocumented workers will return home.

Then—and here's where Big Eddie's reality check comes in—after the dust has settled, what you have to do is create a process to allow those remaining—with the exception of those with criminal records—U.S. citizenship. Failure to do so means relegating these undocumented workers to a no-man's-land where they can be forced to work for next to nothing and live in poverty, essentially forming a permanent underclass.

I predict the Republicans will fight any reasonable plan tooth and nail for a number of reasons. For one thing, they are the party of big business, and big business loves the way cheap labor suppresses wages and kills unions. Their natural instinct is to do what is right for the pocketbooks of industry rather than what is best for the American worker and the country as a whole, long-term.

Second, Republicans are scared to death that most of those Mexican-Americans, if ever granted citizenship, will vote for Democrats and sink the GOP for generations. Third, there is a racist streak a mile wide running through the Republican Party. It may come in the form of code words and innuendo, but it is there just the same. There is real fear of diversity. According to Pew Research, by 2050, Hispanics will make up 29 percent of the population in the United States.

At this point in our immigration discussion, it is important to offer some perspective and remember that many people of Mexican heritage are indigenous to the Southwest. Since the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which expanded U.S. territory, generations of Mexicans have been living in and providing migratory labor in places like California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. In other words, their presence here is completely natural.

We all know America has been strengthened through legal immigration. From Einstein to Edward Teller to Isaac Stern to Cesar Chavez, immigrants have transformed our country. But unchecked, illegal immigration threatens to overwhelm our resources. With high unemploy
ment, we simply have to look out for the American worker—and that includes the Hispanic Americans who are here legally.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT IMPACT

It's no surprise that so many people want to come to America. It is still a country that blesses its citizens with limitless ways to better their lot in life. And despite the very real class warfare going on here against the American worker and the middle class, the United States remains a land of opportunity and hope. If you weren't here, you'd want to be.

Who can fault a young Mexican for slipping across the border for a job that will save his family from poverty? NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was supposed to change all that, and indeed, many American factories (and jobs) did relocate to Mexico. But then many of those factories and jobs moved on to China and India, where an even cheaper labor force undercuts even the wages of the poorly paid Mexicans, in a global race to the bottom line. This is a race that only the top brass at international corporations can win.

If we cannot slow illegal immigration to a trickle, the whole notion of granting citizenship to those already here is pointless. With one hand we should welcome these new citizens. With the other, we have to shut the door behind them.

Conservatives like to say there are some jobs Americans won't do, but I don't believe that. If you are an American carpenter with a mortgage, health care premiums, and kids in college, you cannot afford to work as cheaply as an undocumented Mexican carpenter.

The combination of low-cost labor from Mexico and outsourcing to low-cost laborers in China and India has conspired to stagnate or shrink the wages of the average American worker. By playing one workforce against another in countries that don't have the restrictions against pollution we do, corporations profit handsomely while minimizing any advancement of the human condition.

Global economics are incredibly complex, but it is very clear to me that America has the most to lose and that in America today, the biggest loser of all is the middle class, the very economic engine that built this nation. Jobs go to China through the front door; cheap labor streams across the border through the back door—all to the advantage of big business. Jobs go to the lowest bidder.

Even if you ignore the fact that illegal workers depress American wages and disposable income, there is an argument that each low-skilled illegal immigrant is a net drain on our society. Robert Rector, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in his study
The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Households to the U.S. Taxpayer
that two thirds of illegal immigrants fall under the “low skill” category. Using government figures, he calculated wages, taxes paid, and how much aid low-skill workers receive from government programs. He asserted that the average low-skill household received $22,449
more
in benefits each year than it paid in taxes.

Take education for instance. In California, the sixth largest economy in the world, where 7 percent of the population (2.7 million) is illegal, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, the annual cost of educating a student in public school is well over $7,000. In 2009, with state government groaning under a $27 billion deficit, some citizens advocated denying welfare benefits to the illegal immigrant parents of U.S.-born children, something proponents say would save $640 billion a year. Overall, California officials, as reported by the
Los Angeles Times,
estimate the cost of illegal immigrants to the state in education, jails, roads, police, and fire protection to be as high as $6 billion a year.

Yes, these illegal workers do contribute to the economy. The Social Security Administration reported a net gain of $12 billion in 2007 from undocumented workers.

We can look at these numbers until we're blue in the face, but the big picture is still this: There are 12 million people illegally in the United States at a time (November 2009) when there are more than 15 million Americans looking for a job.

This is about jobs.

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) says there is no social program as effective as a good job. This isn't a case of the handouts and entitlements the conservatives complain about; this is about getting Americans back to work. Conservatives shouldn't continue to support, under the table, cheap illegal labor and then complain about the cost of safety nets for unemployed Americans. Of course, most conservatives haven't connected the dots.

Isn't it obvious that this is an issue we have to face before it gets any worse? If it is not a crisis now, it is a crisis waiting to happen.

POSITIVE SIGNS

One of the best ways to stem the tide of illegal immigrants from Mexico is for the Mexican economy to bloom. Things may be trending the right way for the Mexican labor force. According to
BusinessWeek,
“in 1996, Chinese labor cost about one-third [as much as] Mexican labor. Today, Chinese labor costs are about half of Mexico's—$1.69 per hour, on average, in 2007, compared to $3.46 per hour, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). In another year or two, according to estimates, hiring a Chinese worker will cost about 85% of what it costs to hire a Mexican worker.”

If the cost of production in Mexico—and labor is always a big (often the biggest) influence on costs—becomes competitive with China, it stands to reason that more production will take place domestically in Mexico. That means more jobs for Mexicans, which should take some pressure off the border.

THE NEW NORMAL

For better or worse, there is a great economic leavening going on when it comes to the global workforce. The result is what people are starting
to call the New Normal. We saw the symptoms under George W. Bush when wages stagnated and began to creep backward. Median household income, adjusted for inflation, declined from $47,599 in 2000 to $46,326 in 2005—a $1,273 average loss per family. Of course the scheme to enrich the rich at the expense of the middle class wasn't hatched under Bush II (though he did nothing to stop it), it was hatched in the Reagan years. I'm sure in twenty years die-hard unemployed conservatives will still build altars to Reagan in their tent cities across America. Some people never catch on.

While the North American Free Trade Agreement was initiated under George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton became NAFTA's champion—to my mind the biggest mistake of his presidency. That giant sucking sound you heard, as Ross Perot predicted, was an estimated 1.7 million jobs lost to NAFTA from 1994 to 2002. Industries in California, New York, Michigan, and Texas were hit especially hard.

NAFTA was supposed to be a miracle cure for our illegal immigration woes. Instead, with Chinese workers working for less than Mexicans, Mexico found itself losing jobs to China. By 2003, according to the
Voice of America,
170 Mexican factories had relocated to China.

George W. Bush followed up Clinton's NAFTA mistake with pure indifference to the increased pressures on American families. His lack of oversight encouraged health care premiums to skyrocket 80 percent on his watch. Energy costs climbed dramatically, too. Gas was $1.47 when Bush took office; it hit $4.00 on his watch. And the cost of a college education rose 44 percent during Dubya's years at the helm. It is pretty obvious that he was much more concerned with taking care of big business than with watching out for the average American.