Earth Day and Net Zero

Many posts have discussed energy and the environment.

 On Earth Day, note Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot:

Is it really possible to hit net zero by 2050? Is it really possible to eliminate fossil fuels that fast? The answer is that, for both technical and political reasons, it is not possible (outside of edge “solutions” like crashing industrial civilization or world authoritarian government to ration energy usage).

The insistence on trying to do so anyway is why “be realistic—demand the impossible!” is, astonishingly, not so far from the guiding philosophy of much of today’s mainstream left, including dominant sectors of the Democratic Party.

Consider the technical feasibility of this program. As the polymath, Vaclav Smil, universally acknowledged to be one the world’s premier energy experts, has observed:

[W]e are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years. Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat…

And as he tartly observes re the 2050 deadline:

People toss out these deadlines without any reflection on the scale and the complexity of the problem…What’s the point of setting goals which cannot be achieved? People call it aspirational. I call it delusional.

Smil backs his argument with a mountain of empirical evidence in a new and hugely important paper, “Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcome.” The paper is a gold mine of relevant and highly compelling data. Smil outlines the realities of the net zero 2050 challenge:

The goal of reaching net zero global anthropogenic CO2 emissions is to be achieved by an energy transition whose speed, scale, and modalities (technical, economic, social, and political) would be historically unprecedented…[T]he accomplishment of such a transformation, no matter how desirable it might be, is highly unlikely during the prescribed period….In terms of final energy uses and specific energy converters, the unfolding transition would have to replace more than 4 terawatts (TW) of electricity-generating capacity now installed in large coal- and gas-fired stations by converting to non-carbon sources; to substitute nearly 1.5 billion combustion (gasoline and diesel) engines in road and off-road vehicles; to convert all agricultural and crop processing machinery (including about 50 million tractors and more than 100 million irrigation pumps) to electric drive or to non-fossil fuels; to find new sources of heat, hot air, and hot water used in a wide variety of industrial processes (from iron smelting and cement and glass making to chemical syntheses and food preservation) that now consume close to 30 percent of all final uses of fossil fuels; to replace more than half a billion natural gas furnaces now heating houses and industrial, institutional, and commercial places with heat pumps or other sources of heat; and to find new ways to power nearly 120,000 merchant fleet vessels (bulk carriers of ores, cement, fertilizers, wood and grain, and container ships, the largest one with capacities of some 24,000 units, now running mostly on heavy fuel oil and diesel fuel) and nearly 25,000 active jetliners that form the foundation of global long-distance transportation (fueled by kerosene).

Polarization: Econonomic Growth v. Environment

 Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Though Democrats and Republicans have long come down on different sides when considering the tradeoffs between economic growth and environmental protection, the gap between the parties has never been larger. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats, compared with 20% of Republicans, now believe environmental protection should be given the higher priority.

From 1984 to 1991, the parties expressed similar views on this matter, but by 1995 a divide became evident, which has since gradually expanded. At least half of Democrats have favored the environment over economic growth in all years of Gallup’s trend except during the economically challenged years of 2010 and 2011. Meanwhile, majorities of Republicans typically prioritized the environment from 1984 through 2000, but Republicans have not returned to that level since falling to 47% in 2001.

 

Polarization and the Environment

 Megan Brenan at Gallup:

Party is a greater differentiator than age in Americans' views about the environment, as the gaps on multiple measures between young and older Republicans are smaller than the gaps between every age group of Republicans and their Democratic counterparts. Still, unlike the homogeneity of Democrats when it comes to concerns about the environment, young Republicans worry more and are more likely than older members of their party to believe that the effects of climate change have begun.

Independents are similarly divided by age in their worry about the environment, though their degree of concern is higher than Republicans'. Yet, majorities of independents across age groups believe global warming is already having an effect.

Republicans aged 18 to 34 are significantly more worried than older Republicans about the quality of the environment. https://t.co/hqFLROA4Uk pic.twitter.com/h8YACMiCnM

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) July 25, 2022

 

Climate Change Is Here

 From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

A. The Current State of the Climate

A.1 It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.

A.2 The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.

A.3 Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

A.4 Improved knowledge of climate processes, paleoclimate evidence and the response of the climate system to increasing radiative forcing gives a best estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3°C, with a narrower range compared to AR5.

B. Possible Climate Futures

B.1 Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.

B.2 Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.

B.3 Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle, including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events.

B.4 Under scenarios with increasing CO2 emissions, the ocean and land carbon sinks are projected to be less effective at slowing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.

B.5 Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.

Earth Day 2021: The Chamber of Commerce Flips on Climate Change

Corbin Hiar at E&E News:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's move from promoting climate science misinformation to now helping the Biden administration shape climate policy was a change years in the making.

The trade association's transformation followed an internal campaign from an unlikely coalition of health leaders, top bankers and logistics executives who were tired of taking heat for their membership in the Chamber, according to sources and experts. It's part of a broader effort by the lobbying juggernaut to remain relevant in a deeply polarized Washington.

"They didn't want to fall too far behind or excluded from the climate conversation altogether," said Shaun Goho, the acting director of Harvard's Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, who's written about the Chamber's history of climate obstruction.

With serious efforts to slash emissions now high on the political agenda, the implications of the Chamber's climate reversal are still unclear.

Will the Chamber — which spent nearly $82 million on federal lobbying last year and millions more on congressional races — back aggressive emissions cuts scientists say are necessary to avert the worst impacts of climate change? Or will the association seek to delay and water down the legislative and regulatory proposals under discussion?

The Chamber's newfound support for market-based climate policies is "exactly as genuine and lasting as its membership forces it to be," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told E&E News. "It's going to have to be pushed like a great big rock every inch, and it's going to want to fall back as soon as the members stop pushing or look elsewhere."

The Rhode Island Democrat, one of the trade association's most vocal critics, played a key role in catalyzing the Sisyphean effort to change the Chamber's climate policy, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

Earth Day is 50

A number of posts have involved environmental issues. Today is its 50th anniversary of Earth Day.

From the Census Bureau:

Climate Change and Partisan Polarization

Brian Kennedy and Courtney Johnson at Pew:

A growing share of Americans say addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress, but most of the change has come among Democrats. Over the past four years, the share of Americans who say dealing with global climate change should be a top priority has increased from 38% to 52%. Among Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party, 78% say climate change should be a top priority, up 22 percentage points since 2016. But among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, there has been no statistically significant increase. Democrats are more than three times as likely as Republicans to say dealing with climate change should be a top priority (78% vs. 21%).

The share of Americans who say global climate change is a major threat to the well-being of the United States has also increased in recent years. But on this question too, the rise in concern has come primarily among Democrats, regardless of ideology. Among both moderate and conservative Republicans there has been no statistically significant change since 2013.

The Anti-Greta

Desmond Butler and  Juliet Eilperin report at The Washington Post:

For climate skeptics, it’s hard to compete with the youthful appeal of global phenomenon Greta Thunberg. But one U.S. think tank hopes it’s found an answer: the anti-Greta.

Naomi Seibt is a 19-year-old German who, like Greta, is blond, eloquent and European. But Naomi denounces “climate alarmism,” calls climate consciousness “a despicably anti-human ideology,” and has even deployed Greta’s now famous “How dare you?” line to take on the mainstream German media.

“She’s a fantastic voice for free markets and for climate realism,” said James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, an influential libertarian think tank in suburban Chicago...

In December, Heartland headlined Naomi at its forum at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where Taylor described her as “the star” of the show. Last month, Heartland hired Naomi as the young face of its campaign to question the scientific consensus that human activity is causing dangerous global warming.

“Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thunberg: whom should we trust?” asked Heartland in a digital video. Later this week, Naomi is set to make her American debut at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a high-profile annual gathering just outside Washington of right-leaning activists.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Heartland’s tactics amount to an acknowledgment that Greta has touched a nerve, especially among teens and young adults. Since launching her protest two years ago outside the Swedish parliament at age 15, Greta has sparked youth protests across the globe and in 2019 was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” the youngest to ever win the honor.

Housing in California

 In November, Noah Buhayar and Christopher Cannon reported at Bloomberg:

The median price for a house now tops $600,000, more than twice the national level. The state has four of the country’s five most expensive residential markets—Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Orange County and San Diego. (Los Angeles is seventh.) The poverty rate, when adjusted for the cost of living, is the worst in the nation. California accounts for 12% of the U.S. population, but a quarter of its homeless population.

...
Local jurisdictions in California hold enormous sway over what gets built. Officials have often caved to NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) pressure against new development, much of it in the name of protecting the environment or preserving “neighborhood character.”

Parts of the state were downzoned starting in the 1970s, making it harder to build dense urban areas and contributing to racial segregation and sprawl. Three-quarters of the residential land in Los Angeles is restricted to single-family homes, according to UrbanFootprint, software that helps government and businesses understand cities and urban markets. In San Jose, the figure is 94%.

California also has a distinct burden: Proposition 13, a measure approved by voters in 1978 that limits property-tax increases on homes until they’re sold. That’s been a boon for Baby Boomers who’ve lived in their houses for decades and aren’t assessed at anything close to their property’s market value. But it’s especially unfair to their children, who are in effect subsidizing their parents’ generation.

Prop 13 also created a fiscal incentive for many cities to favor new commercial development over residential construction—and heap fees on developers to fund budget gaps.

For decades, many Californians have just moved farther out of town to find cheaper places to live. But as climate change increases the intensity and frequency of wildfires—leading to devastation and billions of dollars in costs—officials may decide to put some areas off-limits for new construction.

 Thomas Fuller at NYT:

The reasons for California’s high costs, developers and housing experts say, begin with the price of land and labor in the state. In San Francisco a construction worker earns around $90 an hour on average, according to Turner & Townsend, a real estate consulting company.

But non-construction costs also weigh heavily.

Not taking into account the price of land, around one quarter of the cost of building affordable housing goes to government fees, permits and consulting companies, according to a 2014 study by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

For a building to be defined as affordable housing it typically obtains tax credits and subsidies. A single affordable housing project requires financing from an average of six different sources — federal, state and local agencies, said Carolina Reid, a researcher at the Terner Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a forthcoming analysis of affordable housing costs.

She called the process “death by a thousand cuts.”

 Some cite the California Environmental Quality Act.

California law permits anyone to object to a project under the act, which when it was signed by then Governor Ronald Reagan in 1970 was seen as a landmark effort to protect the environment from reckless development.

Today the law is often used as a legal battle ax by anyone who wants to slow a project down or scuttle it altogether, Mr. Jones and many developers and experts say.

“At very little cost one individual can take a project and tie it up in years of litigation,” said Douglas Abbey, a lecturer on real estate at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Hot Year

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

Earth’s warming trend continued in 2019, making it the second-hottest year in NOAA’s 140-year climate record just behind 2016.

The world’s five warmest years have all occurred since 2015 with nine of the 10 warmest years occurring since 2005, according to scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

It was also the 43rd consecutive year with global land and ocean temperatures, at least nominally, above average.

The average temperature across the globe in 2019 was 1.71 degrees F (0.95 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average and just 0.07 of a degree F (0.04 of a degree C) cooler than the 2016 record.

Ocean heat content, which describes the amount of heat stored in the upper-levels of the ocean, was the highest ever recorded. High ocean-heat content can contribute to sea-level rise.

NASA scientists, who conducted a separate but similar analysis, concurred with NOAA’s ranking. NASA also found that 2010-2019 was the hottest decade ever recorded.

Measuring Public Opinion on Climate Change

Andrew Freedman at Axios:

The monthly peak amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere in 2019 jumped by a near-record amount to reach 414.8 parts per million (ppm) in May, which is the highest level in human history and likely the highest level in the past 3 million years.

Matt Motta,Dan Chapman, Dominik Stecula, and Kathryn Haglin at WP:

We find that minor and seemingly arbitrary differences in the way public opinion researchers ask questions about climate change can have major effects on their findings.

For example, some surveys ask respondents to choose whether they think climate change is caused by human activity or natural causes (we call this a “discrete choice” question). Others ask respondents how much they agree or disagree with the idea that climate change is human caused, using Likert scales ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.

Because surveys take time to administer and ask questions about topics that some might find uninteresting, some people simply agree with questions they are asked — a phenomenon known as acquiescence bias. Likert-style questions can therefore inflate the number of people who say they “agree,” no matter what the question is about.

Surveys about climate opinion vary in other ways as well. For example, some explicitly tell respondents that they can say they “don’t know” their stance on an issue, while others do not.

And because many Americans do not consider climate change to be a high priority, some surveys explain what climate change is (“introductory text”) before asking respondents questions about it. On politically contentious issues, like climate change, the use of introductory text like this has been shown to increase partisan disagreement.

Public Opinion on Climate Change: International Perspectives

Oliver Millman and Fiona Harvey at The Guardian

The US is a hotbed of climate science denial when compared with other countries, with international polling finding a significant number of Americans do not believe human-driven climate change is occurring.

A total of 13% of Americans polled in a 23-country survey conducted by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project agreed with the statement that the climate is changing “but human activity is not responsible at all”. A further 5% said the climate was not changing.

Only Saudi Arabia (16%) and Indonesia (18%) had a higher proportion of people doubtful of manmade climate change.

Americans were also more likely than any other western country polled to say they did not know whether the climate was changing or people were responsible – a total of 13% said this.

But despite these views, the great majority of US citizens do accept the science of climate change, with nearly four in 10 saying human activity was at least partly responsible, potentially with other factors, and a further third taking the stronger view that human activity is the dominant cause. 

...
Americans also appear unusually prone to climate-related conspiracy theories, the YouGov data suggests. A total of 17% of those polled agreed that “the idea of manmade global warming is a hoax that was invented to deceive people”.

Global Disasters: Gradual, then Sudden

At WP, Robert Kagan notes that the Saudi government's assassination of a journalist is one bad sign among many:  "There have been many other similar warning signs: China’s arrest of the head of Interpol; the Burmese military’s campaign of genocide against the Rohingya; the systematic and deliberate slaughter of civilians in Syria, including by outlawed chemical weapons; the Russian invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea."  Kagan continues:

We want to believe that Hitler and Stalin were bizarre products of another era. But the Hitlers and Stalins are all around us, waiting to reveal themselves if given half a chance. Today we know a Vladimir Putin who has grand ambitions but not yet the capacity to realize them. He reveres Stalin, but he is not Stalin. But what would a less constrained Putin be? Today a more powerful China is abandoning the cautious foreign policies of Deng Xiaoping’s weaker China. What will an even less constrained China be like? Who can say whether either of these powers might in time become a threat on a par with those we faced in the past if they are allowed to expand their regional and global influence by military means?

And how quickly might this happen? Quicker than we think. A character in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” asked how he went bankrupt, responds, “Gradually and then suddenly.” That is a fair description of how the world order collapsed before the two world wars, and of how it likely will collapse in our own time. Welcome to the jungle.

From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society, the IPCC said in a new assessment. With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said on Monday.

The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C was approved by the IPCC on Saturday in Incheon, Republic of Korea. It will be a key scientific input into the Katowice Climate Change Conference in Poland in December, when governments review the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.

...
The report's full name is Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.

"One of the key messages that comes out very strongly from this report is that we are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes," said Panmao Zhai, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I.

The report highlights a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C, or more. For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2°C.

"Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5°C or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems," said Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II.

Projection of a Rise in Global Temperatures

At WP, Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney report on aenvironmental impact statement by the  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA),ssaying that the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees by the end of this century.

A rise of 7 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 4 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe.

But the administration did not offer this dire forecast as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.

The statement was part of an effort to justify freezing  federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. Although the policy change would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would make little difference in temperatures.

Cabinet Communicators!

Kevin Bogardus at E&E News:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last year praised President Trump's decision to pull the United States from the Paris climate accord.

Her staff later told her what she had said about it.

DeVos' chief of staff approved the secretary's two-sentence statement on Trump's exit from the climate change agreement, with her espousing the president's rollback of "overreaching regulatory actions" and keeping his promise "to put America and American workers first." Aides later worked to bring it to DeVos' attention, according to emails obtained by E&E News under the Freedom of Information Act.

The emails offer a behind-the-scenes look at how the White House ordered agency leaders to publicly praise Trump's announcement on Paris, which was a year ago today. Cabinet secretaries and their communications shops jumped into action, with messages ranging from DeVos' vague praise of putting "America first" to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross decrying the "economic carnage" of the climate treaty.
...

DeVos was one of several Trump Cabinet officials to issue statements on the president's Paris decision. At least nine officials, including many not heavily involved in the move to withdraw from the agreement, released statements that day (Greenwire, June 2).

The public relations push came after a request from the White House, according to other records obtained by E&E News under FOIA.

"Cabinet Communicators!" Kaelan Dorr, then an aide in the White House press office, said in an email a little over two hours before Trump announced his decision.

"Please join our surrogate briefing call at the below number at 1:30pm. We need all Cabinet agencies to prep statements of support for the decision being announced at 3:00pm in the Rose Garden," he said, asking those statements be sent to him and other White House press aides for approval within 30 minutes of the call's conclusion.

"No exceptions," Dorr said, adding that talking points would also be distributed after the call.

Interest Group Notes, Continued

The Washington swamp is bigger than ever.

Arden Farhi reports at CBS:

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt rented a bedroom in a Capitol Hill condo from the wife of a Washington lobbyist for $50 a day from mid-February through the end of July in 2017, CBS News has confirmed. Pruitt's daughter also lived in the condo while she was interning at the White House.

Pruitt's rent equates to about $1,500 a month, but the terms of the deal were favorable. The deal required Pruitt only to pay the nightly rate when he stayed there, and he was not charged for nights when he slept elsewhere. Pruitt traveled regularly, often returning to Oklahoma on the weekends. Documents released by the agency confirm that ethics officials at EPA signed off on the arrangement. Over the course of the five-and-a-half months, Pruitt paid $6100 in rent, about $2150 less than someone paying his rate every night.

Pruitt's landlord was Vicki Hart, the wife of Steven Hart, a Washington lobbyist whose firm represents a number of fossil fuel companies.

Juliet Eilperin at WP:

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has appointed 15 representatives of the outdoor recreation industry to advise him on how to operate public lands, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post, including three people whom department officials flagged as potentially having a conflict of interest on the matter.

The membership of the “Made in America” Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee, which Zinke launchedin November, marks the third time the secretary has assembled panels dominated by industry players to help chart policies affecting their businesses.

Many of the members of the Royalty Policy Committee hail from the oil, gas and mining industries; the new International Wildlife Conservation Council is largely composed of people with ties to trophy hunting.

 A March 8 report from AP:

President Donald Trump and his appointees have stocked federal agencies with ex-lobbyists and corporate lawyers who now help regulate the very industries from which they previously collected paychecks, despite promising as a candidate to drain the swamp in Washington.

A week after his January 2017 inauguration, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that bars former lobbyists, lawyers and others from participating in any matter they lobbied or otherwise worked on for private clients within two years before going to work for the government.

But records reviewed by The Associated Press show Mr. Trump's top lawyer, White House counsel Don McGahn, has issued at least 24 ethics waivers to key administration officials at the White House and executive branch agencies.

Though the waivers were typically signed by McGahn months ago, the Office of Government Ethics disclosed several more on Wednesday.

Expertise

 Damian Paletta and Josh Dawsey at WP:

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson privately warned senior trade officials on Tuesday that President Trump’s proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum could endanger the U.S. national security relationship with allies, according to five people familiar with the meeting.

The morning meeting came as Republican lawmakers grasped for a strategy to persuade Trump to change his mind, with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), who had loudly criticized the plan on Monday, telling members in a closed-door meeting not to bully Trump on the decision. He said it could backfire and make things even worse.

And then on Tuesday evening, top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who had been furiously fighting the tariffs for months, announced his resignation. His exit will remove the most vocal critic of Trump’s new trade agenda from internal debates.
...
Those who opposed the tariffs were disappointed in Robert E. Lighthizer, an official involved in the discussions said, because he expressed skepticism in private but usually not in front of the president. And Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, did not work to sway his father-in-law against the tariffs, senior officials said.

The president considered the advice, but said he was skeptical of economists and their data. He had promised this sort of policy as a presidential candidate, and it was popular with his base. At the time, Porter, who opposed the tariffs, told others they would need to find new ways to sway Trump, people involved in the debate said. Almost everyone in the West Wing was opposed, two White House officials said.

Emily Holden and Jeremy C.F. Lin at Politico:

More than 20 top political appointees and nominees across the Trump administration either decline to acknowledge that humans are the main cause of climate change or say that significant questions exist about how much people contribute to the problem. A few even say global warming could be a good thing or might not be happening at all. Their views are in stark contrast to mainstream science, raising questions about how they will make decisions about the impact of climate change on issues like energy policy, disaster planning and national security.

And just a reminder that "The Death of Expertise" is available as a book, Audio CD, on Audible, and soon, as a trade war https://t.co/hkjY0hapwf

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 7, 2018

Bad Morale at EPA and FBI

Lisa Friedman, Marina Affo and Derek Kravitz at NYT:

More than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels last seen during the Reagan administration.

Of the employees who have quit, retired or taken a buyout package since the beginning of the year, more than 200 are scientists. An additional 96 are environmental protection specialists, a broad category that includes scientists as well as others experienced in investigating and analyzing pollution levels. Nine department directors have departed the agency as well as dozens of attorneys and program managers. Most of the employees who have left are not being replaced.

The departures reflect poor morale and a sense of grievance at the agency, which has been criticized by President Trump and top Republicans in Congress as bloated and guilty of regulatory overreach. That unease is likely to deepen following revelations that Republican campaign operatives were using the Freedom of Information Act to request copies of emails from E.P.A. officials suspected of opposing Mr. Trump and his agenda.

At NYT, Adlam Goldman and Maggie Haberman report on the FBI:

Mr. Trump’s verbal assaults have put Mr. Wray and his leadership team in a difficult position. Mr. Wray is trying to move past his predecessor’s era and make sure there is not a whiff of politics at the F.B.I. He has promised the F.B.I.’s work would be based on the “facts, the law and the impartial pursuit of justice — period.”

Yet Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress are making that task much harder.

Current and former F.B.I. officials say Mr. Trump’s criticisms, and those of normally supportive Republican members of Congress, have damaged morale in some quarters of the bureau. Senior agents have expressed fear that if their names appear in the news media, they will be singled out for attack by politicians. 

During a congressional hearing this month, Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, asked Mr. Wray about the political views of some of his top agents. F.B.I. officials said they were stunned that Mr. Gohmert singled out a seemingly random group of agents. Several of those mentioned had nothing to do with either the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, or the F.B.I.’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Body Language on the Senate Floor

David Dayen reports at The Intercept:

SOMETHING VERY UNUSUAL happened in the U.S. Senate today: a vote scheduled by the majority leader failed. The legislation would have repealed an Obama-era rule designed to prevent methane emissions from leaking out of drilling operations on public lands. Brought up under the Congressional Review Act, the resolution only needed 50 votes to pass the Senate, after already passing the House along party lines. But it failed 49-51.

McCain cast the decisive nay vote, perhaps a protest against the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

McCain’s conduct during the Senate vote also raises red flags. In the C-SPAN video of the vote, McCain can be seen in heated discussion with John Cornyn, R-Texas, the number two man in the Senate leadership, along with John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and an unidentified senator with his back to the camera. After yelling at them for close to a minute, McCain goes over to the Senate clerks and gives a thumbs down to record his vote. He then storms out of the chamber, as Cornyn raises his arms in mild protest.

McCain has a reputation for being a little, shall we say, vindictive. It’s not out of the question at all that he would torpedo this vote, regardless of his ideological preferences, because of a fit of pique about the FBI director he admires getting unceremoniously dumped.

The video (h/t CH):

Congressional Review Act

Michael Grunwald reports at Politico:

The Congressional Review Act, a 21-year-old law that created a fast track for wiping out “midnight rules” finalized late in a presidential administration, had been used only once before this year. But Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have already deployed it 11 times to strike down Obama-era regulations. In fact, those 11 CRA resolutions are the only substantive bills Trump has signed so far; it’s quite possible that the CRA will produce the entire legislative legacy of his first 100 days. And just about all the resolutions Trump has approved—as well as two others that await his signature—represent victories for traditional Republican lobbying interests like the NRA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and fossil-fuel industries, muscled through Congress on strict party-line votes. None of them evoke the drain-the-swamp anti-establishment populism that Trump rode to the presidency, which may help explain why he’s been so uncharacteristically quiet about them.

The highest-profile CRA bill so far gave internet service providers permission to track and sell their customers’ data without permission; a YouGov poll found 74 percent of the public wanted Trump to veto it, while 11 percent thought he should sign it, but he signed it without fanfare last Monday night. The same evening, he quietly struck down one Obama rule requiring employers in hazardous industries to keep better records of on-the-job injuries, and another preventing the killing of bear cubs in their dens and other extreme hunting practices in federally protected wildlife refuges in Alaska. Trump’s very first CRA bill was an anti-anti-corruption measure, blocking an Obama effort to force oil companies to disclose payments to foreign governments; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had personally lobbied against the rule as CEO of ExxonMobil, telling lawmakers that undisclosed payments were vital to Exxon’s business in Russia.