A year ago, I wrote a post titled State of Denial, which took advantage of a nifty New York Times feature that allowed one to search the State Of The Union speech to see what terms or phrases were used by our feckless leader. In today's recap of last night's speech, the NYT ran a sidebar called The Words That Were Used, but there was no search capability to enable further analysis.

Left to my own devices, I quickly turned to Gristmill and Reuters for perspective on what Bush had said about climate change and related efforts to stem the warming.

As you would expect, David Roberts is on top of things at Gristmill with a post titled Robust SOTU Debunkery.

Reuters, on the other hand, saw the glass as half full, covering Bush's commitment to promoting clean energy technologies and fight climate change through a $2 billion investment over the next three years to a new international fund.

Let us create a new international clean technology fund, which will help developing nations like India and China make greater use of clean energy sources.

Of course, even the Reuters piece couldn't avoid the conclusion that:

Unlike last year's State of the Union message, there was little in Bush's speech this year calling for a major overhaul of U.S. energy policy.

Some would say that's because Congress just passed major energy legislation — I'd say it's because the lame duck is still convinced that "aspirational targets" are the way to go.

Too bad the NYT word finder didn't have search capability this year. I would have loved to really compare this year's speech to last year's speech.

Popularity: 27%

Didn't anyone tell our President that carbon neutral was the 2006 Word of the Year?

While he finally mentioned the serious challenge of global climate change in his speech on Tuesday, "W" clearly (and consciously) avoided a lot of the terms those of us who regularly think/speak/write about global warming rely upon to get our point across.

The New York Times has a nifty search tool that analyzes the words used in all seven of Bush's State of the Union Addresses–check out these search results:

global warming - never used
carbon neutral - never used
renewable energy - never used
wind power - never used
geothermal energy - never used
carbon sequestration - never used
carbon offsets - never used
carbon emissions - never used
greenhouse gases - never used
climate neutral - never used

global climate change - used once (2007)
biodiesel - used once (2007)
alternative fuels - used twice (2007)
clean coal technologies - used twice (2005, 2007)
safe nuclear energy - used twice ( 2006-07)
ethanol - used four times (2005-07)

So, what do all these words add up to in terms of potential policy change? In an analysis of the speech in today's Washington Post, Samuel Thernstrom, a former Bush environmental aide, said:

To be perfectly frank, I thought it was an appalling disappointment for everyone, whether you're on the right or the left. We had all been led to expect . . . that we would hear a very substantial initiative from the president. Instead, Bush's plan is essentially trivial, it's marginal.

Carbon Neutral Journal's stats are brought to you by Blue Spruce Cleaners.

Popularity: 15%

Wyoming Republicans held their caucus yesterday in Casper (Wyoming Democrats will hold their caucus on March 8). All in all, it was pretty much a non-event as only Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter garnered any support, with Romney capturing eight of 12 delegates.

What about Huckabee, Giuliani, Paul and McCain? None but Ron Paul even campaigned in Wyoming during the past year.

So what does the caucus outcome tell us about Wyoming Republican priorities? Not much at all, though it's safe to assume that Romney's support for domestic drilling didn't escape notice in this resource rich state.

Popularity: 20%

As Congress explores the merits of various proposals to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (see yesterday's post for a comparative chart of bills being considered), it should look across the "pond" to see what Europe is learning about "cap and trade" systems.

An article in yesterday's Washington Post, titled Europe's problems color U.S. plans to curb carbon gases, warns of unintended consequences that have occurred under the EU's system.

According to the article:

In some ways, Europe's program has been a success. It covers 45 percent of the continent's emissions, 10,000 companies and 27 European Union countries. It has built registries that list carbon dioxide emissions for every major plant.

In other ways, the approach has been a bureaucratic morass with a host of unexpected and costly side effects and a much smaller effect on carbon emissions than planned. And many companies complain that it is unfair.

To generalize, the crux issue in Europe is the increase in electricity costs.

Of all the effects of the new rules, the rise in the price of power has aroused the most outrage. Much of the anger of consumers and industries has been aimed at the continent's utility companies. Like other firms, the utilities were given slightly fewer allowances than they needed. But instead of charging customers for the cost of buying allowances to cover the shortfall, utilities in much of Europe charged customers for 100 percent of the tradable allowances they were given — even though the government handed them out free. Electricity rates soared.

While Congress deliberates, legislators in Olympia, Washington are already facing the issue of how much electricity might cost if legislation is enacted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sunday's Seattle Times ran a story titled Twist in climate change fight pits corporations against each other.

The bills under consideration in Olympia would

forbid utilities from making new investments or signing long-term contracts to get power from plants that produce a lot of greenhouse gases.

…to get the state's biggest utilities not to resist, lawmakers have added several provisions to the bills relating to how highly regulated power rates get set.

Of course

some of the biggest power users in the state contend the provisions would hand too much power to the utilities, potentially translating into higher power bills.

While debate continues in Olympia, our U.S. Senators and Representatives would do well to look to both Europe and Washington state for real-life examples of the complexities of legislating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Bottom line: you can't please all the people all the time. There are some tough choices ahead; tough choices that must be made with one thought in mind–we've got to find the most effective way possible to curb greenhouse gas emissions. It won't be popular and it may be expensive, but it's absolutely necessary.

Carbon Neutral Journal's thoughts are brought to you by Hawtin Jorgensen Architects.

Popularity: 7%

President Bush doesn't seem to be in a hurry to accomplish anything.

I'll leave the subject of Iraq to another genre of bloggers–y'all know what I'm talking about here.

On June 11, 2001, in a Rose Garden speech, our President said:

I've just met with senior members of my administration who are working to develop an effective and science-based approach to addressing the important issues of global climate change…

By increasing conservation and energy efficiency and aggressively using these clean energy technologies, we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by significant amounts in the coming years.  We can make great progress in reducing emissions, and we will…

Our administration will be creative.  We're committed to protecting our environment and improving our economy, to acting at home and working in concert with the world.  This is an administration that will make commitments we can keep, and keep the commitments that we make…

Fast forward to another sunny day in the Rose Garden–almost six years later. Last Monday, Bush announced that he had instructed the E.P.A., and the Departments of Transportation, Energy and Agriculture to explore regulatory options to achieve "20 in 10"  (reducing the projected growth of oil consumption within 10 years to a level 20 percent lower than current forecast, a goal the President mentioned in his 2007 State of the Union address). Oh yeah, he said he expected the process to be complete by the end of 2008–another 18 months from now.

Response to Bush's speech has been tepid, at best. Speaking to the New York Times, David Doniger, policy director for the climate center of the Natural Resources Defense Council said:

This really amounts to saying, "Trust us, we’re doing something." It’s a clever effort, maybe a half-clever effort, to slip out of a corner. We haven’t been promised any specific reduction in global warming pollution, or any specific increase in the efficiency in cars.

Doniger also pointed out the fact that:

the president’s directive seemed to limit the E.P.A.’s flexibility by requiring that it act with sister agencies, meaning, “they can only walk as fast as the slowest one of them.”

Representative Edward J. Markey, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, called the announcement “a stall tactic.”

Goals are great in soccer and hockey, but when it comes to cutting our oil dependence and addressing global warming, it can’t be fun and games anymore for this administration. In effect, the president asked his agency heads to share ideas and come up with a plan that is due three weeks before he leaves office. Our oil dependence is too high, and the threat of global warming is too great, to allow half-measures and delay to take the place of action any longer.

The office of California Attorney General Jerry Brown offered this point of view:

While Mr. Bush was in the Rose Garden today stating his desire to “cut America’s gasoline usage by 20 percent,” his own lawyers were in a San Francisco federal court defending his administration’s scandalously inadequate fuel efficiency standard for SUVs, pickups and minivans.

Brown applauded the president’s favorable comments on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cutting back on gas-guzzling, but urged the President to take two immediate steps: 1) tell the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grant California and 12 other states permission to reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and 2) junk last year’s token 1-mile-per gallon increase in fuel efficiency standards and “propose something real.”

Brown added:

The president doesn’t offer a single concrete proposal on how to combat global warming and instead directs his bureaucracy "to work together" to come up with a plan."

Let's face the facts here folks: does anyone really think the Bush bureaucracy is at all interested or capable of coming up with a timely plan to combat global warming? I don't.

Carbon Neutral Journal's rants are brought to you by Vertical Media.

Popularity: 10%

The way news cycles and the legislative process work, you typically don't get a sense of major accomplishment just from paying attention to daily coverage of the progress of particular bills. It's really only after all is said and done that you can look at the whole picture and fully appreciate the body of work that has been written into law.

This is certainly the case with the accomplishments of the recently concluded Oregon legislative session. Thanks to Jesse Jenkins and It's Getting Hot In Here, we can look back on what Jesse calls a "landmark year for clean energy and the environment."

The 2006 Elections saw Democrats strengthen their majority in the Senate and squeak out a one vote majority in the House while Oregonians re-elected Governor Ted Kulongoski who made clean energy a top priority of his second term. The Governor and the Legislature certainly delivered this year, passing a slough of bills this session promoting renewable energy generation, renewable transportation fuels, increased energy efficiency and even took an initial step towards addressing climate change.

Here’s an abbreviated version of Jesse's recap of the flurry of activity in Salem this session:

Perhaps the most high profile, and arguably the most important, piece of clean energy legislation to pass this session was the 25% by 2025 Renewable Energy Standard legislation, the Oregon Renewable Energy Act.

Succeeding where it failed last session, the Oregon Legislature also passed a bill promoting the use of renewable biofuels in the transportation sector. The biofuels bill, HB 2210, includes a package of tax incentives promoting the production of biofuels and feedstocks in Oregon.

The Legislature also expanded two popular and successful tax incentives supporting renewable energy and energy efficiency investments. Eventually rolled into an omnibus tax package, HB 3201 , expansions of Oregon’s Business Energy Tax Credit and Residential Energy Tax Credit passed with unanimous support in the House early in the session and finally passed the Senate in the final days of the session.

Rounding out a series of measures that ought to secure Oregon’s position as a leading pro-solar state, HB 2620 also passed this session and provides that public improvement contracts for construction or major renovations of public buildings appropriate at least 1.5 percent of the total contract price to pay for the installation of solar energy technology, including solar electric, solar water heating and solar space heating systems.

A bill establishing minimum efficiency standards for a number of additional home and commercial appliances not previously covered by efficiency standards passed the Legislature this session as well. While not including as many appliances as originally hoped, SB 375 will help Oregonians save energy, reducing our energy costs and environmental impacts.

Last but definitely not least, the 2007 Legislature passed it’s first piece of legislation specifically addressing global warming in Oregon!

The Global Warming Integration Act codifies greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals (10% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 75% below 1990 levels by 2020) and creates the Oregon Global Warming Commission which will coordinate local and state efforts to halt growth of greenhouse gas emissions. It will also fund a new Oregon Climate Change Research Institute within the Oregon University System.

Of course, my cut-and-paste doesn't do justice to Jesse's original post, which is well worth reading in its entirety. It does, however, reinforce the point of view that a thorough look back is well worth taking.

Carbon Neutral Journal's news coverage is brought to you by High Country Linen Service.

Popularity: 13%

Given Portland’s reputation for being one of the greenest cities in the world, I expected to open this morning’s Oregonian and read some newsy article about the latest green initiative. Instead, I discovered a fascinating AP story titled Palm Desert Mends Energy-hog Ways.

My 94 year-old mother lives in Palm Desert and, every time we visit here there, we’re struck by all the energy inefficiency.

As the AP writer says:

Palm Desert is the epitome of environmental excess.

Tourists and homeowners live in air-conditioned comfort in this desert resort where the mercury can climb past 110 degrees for days on end. And though the city gets no more than a trace of rain all year, it has lush green fairways, turquoise swimming pools, manmade waterfalls and an artificial lagoon so big that hotel guests are taken across it in gondolas.

So, you cannot imagine how surprised I was to read that Palm Desert’s city government strives to reduce energy use by 30% over the next five years! And they’re not just talking municipal government use.

As I was reading the story, I wondered: how on earth did Palm Desert’s city fathers come around to such an aggressive point of view, much less dub it the Estonia Protocol.

Palm Desert officials made the pitch to state regulators while steaming across the Baltic Sea from Estonia to Sweden after a 2005 energy conference.

That pitch resulted in

$14 million for an energy-saving demonstration project, on top of more than $50 million the city already receives from the state for various energy efficiency projects.

The bottom line: according to Michael Peevey, California Public Utilities Commission president;

If they can do it or come close (30% reduction), most communities in the U.S. can do it.

Carbon Neutral Journal's news is brought to you by High Country Linen Service.

Popularity: 18%