Energy & Environment

As President Obama continues to reconstitute his cabinet he should keep in mind that an understanding of the changing nature of oil will be essential for those in his top team well beyond the Secretary of Energy.

Tomorrow’s oils are not the same as twentieth century crude, or each other. Unconventional oils range from ancient tacky oils that resist flow to ultra-light petroleum liquids trapped in tight shale rocks to immature solids that must be retorted into oil. They require vastly different extraction methods, processing techniques, geographies, petroleum product slates, oil prices, energy markets, and trade patterns.

America has an opportunity to reimagine how we think about energy. 

As the seventh chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, I could not be more excited to step up to the challenge of strengthening U.S. energy policy. 

President Barack Obama embarked on his second term with his inspiring inaugural promise to “respond to the threat of climate change” lest we “betray our children and grandchildren.” He can begin to turn ambition into action at this year’s State of the Union on February 12, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

Of all the bold political moves made by Obama, few are as audacious as his deliberate invitations to be compared to our nation’s greatest president Obama announced his candidacy for president at the site of Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech and was sworn into office on Lincoln’s Bible. Like Lincoln, President Obama is a great orator. But Lincoln is revered not for his great speeches, but for his actions at the moment of America’s greatest crisis. For President Obama to be remembered as a great leader, he must act decisively on the existential threat of our era, climate change.

It thus makes sense to look to Lincoln for guidance. In the decades before the Civil War, Americans struggled to reconcile deep qualms about slavery with the wealth it brought to the young nation. The country’s political class was dominated by the entrenched power of the wealthy southern “slaveocracy” committed to the preservation and the expansion of their “peculiar institution.” Failing to challenge the power of King Cotton, weak presidents instead accommodated the slave power. James Monroe ratified the Missouri Compromise, Millard Fillmore agreed to the Compromise of 1850, Pierce and Buchanan dithered as Kansas bled – until Lincoln drew a hard line against slavery’s expansion into the West.

Speaking on the steps of the Illinois State Capitol, two years before he was elected President, Lincoln described the urgency of the threat facing the Union. “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free, I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” Lincoln’s greatness derives from his willingness to force the nation to admit that freedom and slavery could not coincide — that continued inaction, indecision, and compromise meant the end of the nation. Through the nation’s deadliest war, against widespread demands for another round of compromises, another expansion of slavery, Lincoln held firm.

With the 2012 elections now firmly behind us, there is a lot of soul-searching going on about what the Republican Party has to do to regain its electoral footing. This critical conversation must address our party's increasingly extreme positions on science and the environment, which are bad policy, bad politics, and at odds with our party's impressive environmental legacy.
 
Many in our party have emphasized that we must seek out votes without compromising our values. I wholeheartedly agree, which is one reason Republicans need to reconsider their opposition to environmental protections that are based on sound science. By doing combat with scientists and siding with polluters over public health, members of our party are contradicting core Republican principles.

As the 113th Congress unfolds, I’d like to bring some attention to H.R. 3798, a bill that was introduced in the House exactly one year ago to improve welfare for some of the most abused members of society -- our farm animals. About 95 percent of all eggs consumed in America today are produced in battery cages, wherein each hen spends her entire life with less floor space than a piece of paper. Over the course of 15 years, H.R. 3798 would have effectively transitioned hen housing to ‘enriched cages’ that would have allowed hens nearly double the floor space they are allowed today, and been equipped with environmental features, such as perches and nesting boxes. The bill was moreover only predicted to raise retail prices by 6.1 cents/dozen by the year 2030. The terms of the bill were the result of a compromise between the United Egg Producers (UEP) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), two parties that have historically been at drastic odds but came together in support of the bill because doing so was far more economical than continuing to fight individual battles over state initiatives. Sadly, like many bills on farm animal welfare, H.R. 3798 died in committee. Our farm animals have a right to a basic quality of life, and we need such national legislation to establish an acceptable status quo, as well as better regulation of alternative farming systems that exceed the status quo.

In his election night speech, President Obama called for a new era of bipartisanship to work through some of the immediate issues facing our nation – the fiscal cliff, unemployment rates, the economy, our energy dilemma. The list goes on.
 
In the weeks following, it was great to see Congress show its meddle in working together for the American people. The bipartisan agreement around the fiscal cliff is meaningful for a great number of reasons, but perhaps most importantly, it could lay the groundwork for a new age of cooperation between the two parties.

This week, I cast a vote in favor of a bipartisan deal to avert the worst consequences of the “fiscal cliff.” After months of tireless negotiating and frustrating brinksmanship, this proposal passed the House with 90 percent support from the House of Representatives’ Democratic caucus. It was undoubtedly an imperfect deal, one that I would make substantial changes to if the drafting was left solely to me. However, when faced with the bill before me, I believed – on balance – it was best for the country and my constituents to support the proposal, and live to fight for our causes and values another day.

As the year winds down, it’s a good time to look back at what was one of the biggest alarm stories of the year: the alleged health impact of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA). Were the claims true, and what might we expect to happen in 2013?

In 2012, news headlines were awash with faulty claims about dangers lurking in food, cosmetics, cleaning products, and even cash register receipts — all allegedly posed by BPA. Green groups targeted their message to women, who were — and continue to be--barraged with one-sided stories suggesting that BPA containers pose a serious threat to our children.

A crisis is unfolding now in the nation’s heartland. The livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers, shippers, towboat and barge operators, and the movement of more than $7 billion in critical commodities and exports are caught up in an economic emergency that will undoubtedly have national consequences. The summer’s severe drought combined with a deliberate reduction in Missouri River flows have left the Mississippi River, the nation’s waterborne superhighway, critically impaired, and an effective closure of the Mississippi to barge traffic may very well be upon us.