Drops in the Bucket

Akrasia is the ancient Greek word for “weakness of will,” or, in other words, acting against one’s better judgment. This past week makes me think that the U.S. might have itself a bad case of the stuff when it comes to climate questions.

As Greenwire and The New York Times report, the EPA lowered federal renewable fuel targets for the first time since 2007. Up until last Friday, the agency had hoped to have roughly 18.15 billion gallons of renewable fuels blended into the rest of the petroleum-based gasoline and diesel fuels on the market — 3.75 billion gallons of which was to include advanced biofuels not derived from corn inputs. On the revision, the nation’s fuel mix must contain 15.21 billion gallons of renewable fuels, 13.01 billion being conventional ethanol and 2.2 billion gallons of advanced biofuels. The question concerning the viability of ethanol as an alternative fuel notwithstanding, the EPA’s move appears to me to be little more than a concession to industry pressures.

That the rollback was called “a step in the right direction” by Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, disturbs me almost as much as his follow-up comment that “more must be done.” The EPA justifies its decision by appeal to the lack of market support for alternative fuels both at the pump and on the assembly line. However, the agency fails in any real way to provide an offsetting measure for the corresponding boom in domestic petroleum production in recent years. With less support for renewables and increased production of conventional fuels, reductions in emissions from nationwide automobile traffic take a huge hit.

In another equally depressing news bit, the U.S. seems to be preparing itself for a repeat performance of its 1997 Kyoto Protocol blunder. As world players gather in Warsaw, Poland for UN climate talks, the tone coming from Congress is less than enthusiastic. While some elected officials like Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) favor U.S. involvement in an international climate agreement, the two acknowledge that the present makeup of the Senate will make it extraordinarily difficult to win U.S. support for any such measure.

The President’s administration and others worldwide have pledged to develop an international arrangement to address the climate crisis by 2015, which would likely go into effect by 2020. However, sentiments from Senator John Barraso (R-Wyo.) that effectively damned EPA regulations for power plants for their economic effects as well as those of Senator Warren Hatch (R-Utah) who appealed to the “legitimate question of science” regarding the legitimacy of claims about climate change indicate that conservatives dogmatic denials of the facts might undermine yet another opportunity for the U.S. to take a leadership role in the global climate battle.

When the best evidence repeatedly points us towards taking action, we have seemed to develop a nasty habit of turning the other cheek and neglecting where our best deliberations might take us.

There is no denying that economic concerns should be an important consideration, but as my fellow columnist and editor, Zach Drennan, pointed out last week, fossil fuels — especially new, riskier extraction methods — are hardly a safe long-term investment. Investing in more resilient pathways makes more sense than leaving our future up to chance.

Policymakers, unfortunately, still see some reason to gamble on carbon — whether they are reasons to which we average citizens are blind or they are being hidden behind congressional backdoors, I cannot say. To open up fuel markets for more petroleum consumption while simultaneously resisting active contribution to mitigating problems caused by that consumption sets us up for nothing but failure. A few billion gallons of alternative fuels might only be a small portion of our total energy mix, but when we actively undermine progress, we drill holes in the water buckets that are supposed to help us put out a climate fire that is only growing.