AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Time Limit on 3rd Parties Signatures Upheld
Judge upholds time limit for Libertarian Party to collect ballot signatures
by David Brooks, concordmonitor.com, August 28, 2015
Efforts by the Libertarian Party to win back its official listing on New Hampshire ballots received a setback Thursday when a federal judge upheld a 2014 state law that puts a time limit on the period during which the party can gather the thousands of necessary supporting signatures.
The law in question, HB 1542, “prescribes a reasonable and nondiscriminatory ballot-access restriction that is justified by the state’s interest in requiring political parties to demonstrate a sufficient level of support,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro in a decision,which rejects a challenge to the law filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.
The law says the signatures needed to be listed as an official party on state ballots cannot be collected before Jan. 1 of the election year. This means the Libertarian Party – or any other party – must collect at least 15,000 signatures of registered voters within about seven months, before party primaries on the second Tuesday of September, to be listed officially on the 2016 state ballot.
“To use a metaphor, this signature-collection process is like a marathon that’s hard enough just to finish, and this law now demands that the Libertarian Party run the marathon in less than two hours – all while the major parties are campaigning,” said Giles Bisonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, in a press release. “This law limits voter choice and stacks the deck against candidates who . . . don’t belong to a major party.”
Bisonnette said the Libertarian Party might appeal the decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
The Libertarian Party last qualified in 1996 for ballot access in New Hampshire as a formal party, meaning it had its own column on the ballot where its candidates could be listed, but failed to get enough votes to keep that status.
Since then it has had to use petition drives to get on ballots.
Under state law, to be listed as an official party on a state ballot, a political organization has to receive at least 4 percent of the total votes cast for governor or U.S. senator in the preceding election. Otherwise it must submit nomination papers signed by enough of registered voters to equal at least 3 percent of the total votes cast in the previous election.
Qualifying for the 2016 general election ballot would require about 14,800 valid signatures. Because many signers turn out not to be registered voters or to be otherwise invalid, that probably means collecting signatures from about 20,000 people.
Before HB 1542 was passed in the summer of 2014, parties seeking ballot status could begin the signature-collection process as soon as the previous election was over, giving them roughly two years.
Reducing that time period, argued the secretary of state’s office in testimony before legislators, “will reduce the number of invalid signatures, due to death or relocation, which might arise if signatures are submitted earlier.”
One result of the extra time is that it allowed Libertarian Party to use volunteers rather than a paid petition drive, which costs between $1 and $3 per signature. The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire “estimates that funding a paid petition drive for the 2016 election will cost roughly $50,000,” wrote Barbadoro.
In his ruling, the judge acknowledged that the issue wasn’t entirely cut and dried.
“Reasonable minds can and do disagree about the wisdom of this country’s present two-party political structure, and there is little question that . . . HB 1542 promotes that structure to at least some degree by making it marginally more difficult for third parties to gain ballot access in New Hampshire,” he added. “Because HB 1542 does not breach any of the constitutional ballot-access boundaries that the Supreme Court has established, it is for the New Hampshire legislature to decide whether the law serves the interests of this State’s voters.”
As a side note, the court ruling reflects difficulties that the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is having, even as policies regarded as libertarian in nature become more prominent in politics.
“Richard Tomasso, the current state chairman of LPNH, estimates that only about 150 New Hampshire residents are registered members of the national Libertarian Party, and fewer than that are registered members of LPNH itself. . . . Only about twelve people attended LPNH’s last party convention. LPNH identifies no current member of the New Hampshire legislature as one of its members,” he wrote.
2. The New Rail Transit Bills
Hassan signs transit bills into law
by Chris Garofolo, nashuatelegraph.com, August 28, 2015
NASHUA - Nashua Mayor Donnalee Lozeau said she loses sleep over infrastructure problems like the 14-foot wide sinkhole that closed portions of Interstate 93 in Concord last week.
Alternative modes of transportation like an expanded, modern passenger rail system, she said, would help her and other city leaders sleep a little more soundly.
"We need walkers and bikers and cars and buses and trains and planes and all those things, and New Hampshire in the 21st century shouldn't be left behind," she said. "And the one thing that we're really lacking that we can make happen by continuing to work together and getting excited over our little successes is rail."
Lozeau joined Gov. Maggie Hassan and multiple transit and commerce officials at Nashua City Hall Thursday morning for a ceremonial signing of two bills designed to push the state closer to extending a commuter rail line from Massachusetts to Nashua and farther the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport.
Senate Bill 63 amends the language for the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority to make the agency more efficient and more appealing for grants while Senate Bill 88 established a committee to study public-private partnerships for intermodal transportation projects.
Hassan said the $4 million included in her capital budget for an environmental and engineering assessment related to commuter rail was denied by a Republican-led Legislature, but the newest measures are a step in the right direction because they improve the possibility of expanding transit options critical to the state's future.
"A modern transportation infrastructure is so essential to the success of New Hampshire's people and businesses and encouraging long-term economic growth, which is what we all want to stay focused on," Hassan said.
Michael Izbicki, chairman of the Rail Authority, said the new statutes represent an important milestone in expanding rail along the capital corridor.
"Along with helping NHRTA operate more efficiently, this legislation could help open the door for New Hampshire to seek out alternative funding sources for critical infrastructure improvements, including rail," Izbicki added. "NHRTA, the state's two largest chambers of commerce, 68 percent of New Hampshire residents and a growing list of businesses all agree that we need to invest in the state's rail infrastructure, and this legislation gets us closer to that goal."
While the highlight of Senate Bill 63 is the creation of an advisory board for the transit authority, it also streamlines its governing board structure to make it more manageable.
Izbicki said the agency's previous governing committee will now become its advisory board. The new governing body is smaller, making it easier to get a consensus for project money and more attractive for federal funding.
"One of the criteria for a funding agency or grant agency ... is to have a small governance board because they have experience working with large boards and nothing gets done. There's too many people," Izbicki said. "So what they recommended to us in the study phase is we take this 28-member governance board, make that an advisory board and then set up a smaller governance board."
Among those on the rail transit advisory board are the mayors of seven New Hampshire cities including Nashua, a representative from the Merrimack and Bedford municipal councils and designees from each of the nine regional planning commissions.
The second bill establishes a legislative committee to identify potential revenue sources to fund passenger rail and other intermodal opportunities. With the possibility of new funding sources, advocates are optimistic they can shift the cost burden off taxpayers.
"In a state with limited funds, these kind of partnerships will certainly benefit the state and allow us to do things that we would probably not be able to do," said state Sen. Bette Lasky, D-Nashua.
Lasky was the prime sponsor for both measures. She said the goal of the second bill is to introduce future legislation to enable additional advances in public/private partnerships, which have become more viable across the country, providing a needed financing option for infrastructure improvements.
One Denver project has $1 billion in private financing to construct three new commuter rail lines in the Colorado capital while the Virginia Department of Transportation is relying partially on private funding to redevelop 14 miles of lanes in the congested D.C. beltway.
These types of partnerships carry a number of potential benefits, Izbicki said, like engaging private sector innovation to help drive down costs and sustain price certainty.
While the growth of rail has received a fair amount of bipartisan support among lawmakers and businesses, fiscally conservative leaders say the state's infrastructure priorities must come before building a passenger rail line. Opponents argue the state is better served using transportation money on deteriorating roads and bridges or widening the interstate highways.
Supporters, nevertheless, point to the New Hampshire Capitol Corridor Study that indicated a regional rail alternative running 73 miles from Boston to Concord - serving two stations in Nashua, one in downtown Manchester and one at the airport - would offer economic benefits with modest investments from the state, while acknowledging that progress is slow.
"I've said before and I'm sure I will have to continue to say it, reaching our ultimate goal for this is a marathon, not a sprint," said Tracy Hatch, president of the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce, adding that the possibility of commuter rail coming to the city would serve as a significant economic driver for the corridor.
"We're not going to do it overnight, but for every setback or disappointment we may see, we also have the opportunity to celebrate successes," she said.
Lozeau said the rail project might move at a snail's pace, but it's moving.
"There have been steps along the way that are getting us where we need to be, and in New Hampshire we have to show people that there is another way to think about things," she said.
3. Don't Clog the Lanes Driving There
Chris Christie in Laconia Saturday Morning
from Lizzie Price, nhdp.org, August 27, 2015
I wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is going to be in your area
on Saturday morning and its up to us Democrats to keep him honest while he’s in
the state. He’ll be at the Laconia VFW Hall (more details below) at 8:30 am
Saturday. We want to make sure he's asked tough questions while he's in New
Hampshire! More details below!
Here are a few questions that he hasn’t answered:
- How do you square your opinion that drug laws shouldn’t be changed with your view that too many people are locked up for minor offenses?
- In the wake of the SCOTUS Voting Rights Act decision, should the federal government pay a role in ensuring voting rights?
- Do you support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion?
- Should we raise the capital gains tax?
- Should there be a national registry of guns?
Laconia VFW Hall
143 Court Street
Laconia 03246
Saturday, August 29, 2015 from 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM
(EDT)
Let me know if you are able to attend!
Thanks,--
4. Untruths in the Service of Ideology
Planned Parenthood Deserves N.H. Support
by Barry Smith, vnews.com, August 27, 2015
I have been dismayed in recent weeks to hear some of our elected leaders in New Hampshire and in Washington, D.C., distort the science and ignore the tremendous public health contributions of a valued health care provider in favor of extreme political rhetoric and false, medically unsound claims.
As the former chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and a longtime women’s health provider in New Hampshire, I’ve been proud to testify many times before the New Hampshire Legislature on bills concerning women’s health care and specifically on the funding of Planned Parenthood.
I have said each time that if the pro-life groups wanted to see fewer abortions, we should triple the funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides 2.7 million women, men and young people with health care every year, including affordable birth control and family planning counseling, lifesaving cancer screenings and well-woman exams. More than 90 percent of the care Planned Parenthood provides is preventive, and it does more every year to prevent the need for abortion than most other medical organizations.
I proudly join my colleagues who wrote in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial that “We strongly support Planned Parenthood not only for its efforts to channel fetal tissue into important medical research but also for its other work as one of the country’s largest providers of health care for women, especially poor women. . . . The contraception services that Planned Parenthood delivers may be the single greatest effort to prevent the unwanted pregnancies that result in abortions.”
Planned Parenthood of Northern New England serves nearly 42,000 patients across Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont each year. Over half of the visits to Planned Parenthood health centers in Northern New England were for family planning, counseling and contraception, and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England provided care to many patients across the states who could not afford care elsewhere: 65 percent of those patients across the three states had an income of less than $17,505 per year.
When all of these facts are considered, the vote earlier this month by New Hampshire’s Executive Council to sever state contracts funding Planned Parenthood’s preventive health services is downright irresponsible. These contracts have been in place for 40 years, with great benefits for not only Planned Parenthood patients but for our communities and our state. New Hampshire consistently has among the lowest teen pregnancy rates and the best maternal health outcomes of any state in the country, and the work of Planned Parenthood plays a significant role in these public health achievements.
It is deeply disappointing to see those benefits dismissed and diminished to focus on degrading misinformation that would disable an organization that provides so much benefit to our region. Tissue donation is a legitimate medical practice, and has helped lead to important medical research and breakthroughs such as the polio vaccine and research into many diseases such as Parkinson’s and diabetes. What’s important for everyone to recognize is that almost every person in America benefits from the research done using fetal tissue, and Planned Parenthood in some parts of the country helps facilitate this and makes it possible.
New Hampshire is now being referred by some as “ground-zero” in the fight over defunding Planned Parenthood, so I urge our elected officials to be responsible in their rhetoric. And I urge my colleagues in the medical community to join me in speaking out to defend this high-quality, cost-effective organization that has done so much to advance the health of our families and communities. There is simply no way for other health care providers to meet the tremendous need for health care in New Hampshire without Planned Parenthood. The well-being of millions of women depends on Planned Parenthood health centers across New Hampshire and around the country. And the future of Planned Parenthood depends on all of us speaking the truth to these misleading political attacks.
Dr. Barry Smith is professor emeritus and former chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.
5. New Gubernatorial Poll
New poll finds Hassan leading Sununu, Bradley in potential matchups
by John DiStaso, wmur.com, August 27, 2015
MANCHESTER, N.H. —A new poll released Thursday shows that Gov. Maggie Hassan currently leads two potential Republican challengers to her possible reelection bid, but that in each case, it’s a close contest.
Hassan continues to keep the New Hampshire political scene guessing about her political future. She continues to be mentioned as a prime potential candidate for a U.S. Senate battle against Kelly Ayotte, but she has said she will not make a decision until after the state budget stalemate is resolved.
Public Policy Polling of North Carolina, known as a Democratic-leaning pollster, earlier this week released a poll showing Hassan trailing Ayotte by a single percentage point. But with the poll’s margin of error at 3.4 percent, it is a dead heat.
Thursday, PPP matched up Hassan against two Republicans who are viewed as possible candidates for governor.
With the margin of error for this poll also at 3.4 percent, Hassan led Executive Councilor Chris Sununu 48 percent to 41 percent, with 11 percent undecided. She led state Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley 48 percent to 39 percent, with 13 percent undecided.
PPP said 38 percent of its 841-likely voter sample were independents, 31 percent were Democrats and 31 percent were Republicans. The poll was conducted Aug. 21-24.
The poll showed 48 percent of those surveyed approved of the job Hassan is doing as governor, while 42 percent disapproved. In a WMUR Granite State Poll conducted in mid-July, 54 percent said they approved of Hassan’s job performance, while 30 percent disapproved.
The PPP poll this week showed that 38 percent approved and 46 percent disapproved of Ayotte’s job performance.
PPP matched up Sununu and Bradley against three potential Democratic candidates for governor in the event Hassan does not seek reelection.
Sununu and Bradley out-polled former New Hampshire House Speaker Terie Norelli, 39 percent to 34 percent, and 39 percent to 33 percent, respectively.
Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern trailed Sununu, 39 percent to 32 percent; and Bradley, 38 percent to 31 percent.
Executive Councilor Chris Pappas trailed Sununu; 38 percent to 34 percent; and Bradley, 38 percent to 33 percent.
Neither the two Republicans nor the three Democrats were viewed favorably, although, according to the poll, Norelli, Van Ostern and Pappas are far less well-known than Sununu and Bradley.
Sununu was viewed favorably by 32 percent and unfavorably by 39 percent with 29 percent unsure, while Bradley was viewed favorably by 23 percent and unfavorably by 33 percent, with 44 percent unsure.
Pappas was viewed favorably by 9 percent and unfavorably by 16 percent, while 75 percent said they were not sure. Norelli was viewed favorably by 13 percent and unfavorably by 14 percent, while 73 percent were unsure. And Van Ostern was viewed favorably by 10 percent and unfavorably by 11 percent, while 79 percent were unsure.
On issues, 85 percent of those polled supported requiring a criminal background check for firearms buyers, while 9 percent were opposed. Increases in the federal minimum wage were backed by 71 percent, while 12 percent supported keeping it at $7.25 an hour and 12 percent supported eliminating it entirely. Opinion on the Affordable Care Act was split, with 44 percent supporting it and 43 percent opposing it.
Meanwhile, PPP found that two-thirds of Granite Staters believe it was unfair of the National Football League to impose a four game suspension on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady as a result of “deflategate.”
For poll results, click here.
6. Ayotte and Birthright Citizenship
Kelly Ayotte Claims She Doesn’t Share Trump’s Views on Immigration, Facts State Otherwise
by Ajacobs, nhdp.org, August 28, 2015
Concord, N.H. – While Kelly Ayotte yesterday told Paul Steinhauser of NH1 News, “I don’t share [Donald Trump’s] views on immigration,” the facts state otherwise.
The truth is, as NH1 previously reported, “Candidate for Senate Kelly Ayotte back in 2010 offered her support for amending the Constitution to get rid of birthright citizenship,” years before Donald Trump came under fire for advocating the very same position.
Ayotte’s recent efforts to distance herself from her shared policy positions with Trump come after Ayotte said Trump running for president is “a positive thing,” and he returned the favor saying he’d pick her as Vice President if she’s “hot at the time.”
“As Donald Trump continues to take heat for his offensive and extreme views on immigration, it’s no surprise that Kelly Ayotte is now trying to run away from their shared position on ending birthright citizenship,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley. “Ayotte’s attempts at damage control can’t change the fact that she was years ahead of Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Rand Paul and Chris Christie with her extreme position on amending the constitution to end birthright citizenship.”
AND NATIONALLY
7. An Orange Candidate for Angry Whites
Trump’s Appeal
by Nancy LeTourneau, washingtonmonthly.com, August 20, 2015
It’s been fascinating to listen to pundits try to capture just what it is that Donald Trump is tapping into with the extremist base of the Republican Party. You hear words like “populist anger” a lot. And the fact that he is appealing to white working class voters (mostly men).
But I’d suggest that you take a minute to watch The Donald talk to Bill O’Reilly Tuesday night. See if you can count the number of lies that he tells.
If rationality mattered to any of the people Trump appeals to, the following information might be important:
* We are not experiencing a crime wave in this country. As a matter of fact, “crime rates in the United States have been on a steady decline since the 1990s.”
* First generation immigrants (including those who are undocumented) actually commit fewer crimes than those who are natural born citizens.
* We are also not experiencing a wave of undocumented immigrants coming across our border. As a matter of fact, “the number of unauthorized immigrants currently living in the U.S. has stabilized in recent years.”
* Rather than a wave of new unauthorized immigrants, 62% of undocumented adults have lived in this country 10 years or more.
Taking all that into account, it’s pretty safe to say that Trump isn’t appealing to the “rational” side of Republican voters. Rather, I’d say this map pretty well sums upwhat’s going on.
If you were to overlay that with a map showing Trump’s appeal to white voters, I’d suggest that the correlation would be pretty strong (especially from Texas to the East Coast).
The world is changing for these folks and they’re scared to death about that. If you add the fact that the country just elected its first African American President…twice…you get a couple of the factors that Tim Wise called “the perfect storm for white anxiety.”
The furor Trump is both tapping into and fanning is simply a continuation of theconfederate insurgency we’ve been seeing for a few years now. It’s time we named it for what it is and get on with building the Third Reconstruction.
8. It Doesn't Work
http://www.washingtonmonthly.
Conservative Policies Just Don’t Work: Immigration Edition
by David Atkins, washingtonmonthly.com, August 23, 2015
I’ve frequently used the devastating failure of Sam Brownback’s conservative economic experiment in Kansas to show that conservative policies aren’t just morally and ethically wrong, but also simply dysfunctional and counterproductive at a basic utilitarian level. Most educated people understand this about supply-side economic policy by now.
It’s also, of course, true of social policy. We know that sexual repression, abstinence education and social stigma is the surest way to increase unintended pregnancy, STD transmission and infidelity. We know that you can’t actually “pray the gay away” even if you wanted to.
And it’s true of immigration policy, that very hot topic at present. Dave Weigel at the Washington Post reminds us of the utter failure of Trump-style immigration policy, in the very state where Trump decided to host his stadium rally:
Alabama, which hosted the largest rally of Trump’s presidential campaign Friday night, had been a test kitchen for Trump-style crackdowns on undocumented workers — and it had not gone well.
In 2011, a new Republican legislature and governor enacted HB 56, the Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act. Chief sponsor Micky Hammon warned the undocumented population that he would “make it difficult for them to live here, so they will deport themselves.” Renting a house or giving a job to an “illegal” became a crime. Police were empowered to demand proof of citizenship from anyone who looked as if he or she might lack it. School administrators were instructed to do the same to children.
The backlash was massive — a legal assault that chipped away at the law, and a political campaign that made Republicans own its consequences. Business groups blamed the tough measures for scaring away capital and for an exodus of workers that hurt the state’s agriculture industry. After Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election, strategists in his own party blamed his support for the Alabama attrition policy. Those critics included Donald Trump.
It wasn’t just a political failure and black eye for the state. It was also a direct policy failure. As in other states that tried similar experiments, the agriculture sector suffered greatly as workers driven away by hostile policies were not easily replaced.
Asked about the law, Alabama voters rarely say that it worked. Large farms spent millions training new workers. The Byrds conceded that the agriculture sector suffered after some immigrants fled the state. “Most of them left and didn’t come back,” said Terry Darring-Rogers, who works at a Mobile law firm specializing in immigration.
But many Republicans have already forgotten that lesson, allowing their ideology to overwhelm their common sense in the belief that it wasn’t state conservative policy that failed, but the federal government’s interference that stymied it:
To Republicans, the lesson of HB 56 was no longer that it failed. The lesson was that it had not been permitted to work, stymied by the Obama administration. That theory took shape in the displays in some Robertsdale stores, where a sign declaring compliance with ÂE-Verify was posted above an even larger ad from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Some people will never learn, no matter how much self-inflicted failure they endure. When Josh Duggar and countless similar self-righteous conservatives are exposed as cheating molesters, it doesn’t cause conservatives to question whether their belief system might be causing those problems. They just double down. When abstinence education causes more teen pregnancy than responsible sex education, conservatives double down on the slut shaming. When tax cuts on the rich and wage cuts to government workers lead to economic recession, Republicans don’t question their core economic beliefs; they just claim they weren’t allowed to go far enough.
In a way, modern conservatives are similar to the Communists of old. No matter how obvious the ideology’s failure, the response is always that the policies were not enacted in a strong and pure enough manner.
That inability to come to grips with failure and adjust course, and that insistence on doubling down in the face of adverse results, is part of why many consider modern conservatism to be an almost cultic movement. Its adherents long since stopped caring about the evidence or empirical results. It’s all about who can prove truest to the faith, and maximally annoy and rebel against the evil liberal heathens. Policies and results are really beside the point.
9. Economic Impacts, Political Factors
Climate wonks focus on economics. They need to pay more attention to politics.
by David Roberts, vox.com, August 20, 2015
Citi GPS (a research arm of Citibank) has issued a magisterial new report that is both a detailed exploration of the economics of climate change policy and an attempt to answer the perennial question of whether acting aggressively to avert climate change is "worth it."
The report, written by a diverse group of scholars and analysts, digs deep on dozens of issues, including the size of investments needed to avert 2 degrees of warming, instruments for structuring those investments, the merits of various ways of measuring renewable energy costs, the proper societal discount rate, who stands to win and who risks "stranded assets," and ... lots more. It's 122 pages of dense, wonky goodness.
I'll just summarize the top-line findings, though, because I actually want to pivot off of this report to discuss something else.
The clean path requires roughly the same total spending on energy as the status quo path
The heart of the report is a comparison of two scenarios out to 2040: inaction (meaning a business-as-usual continuation of the current energy mix) versus action ("investing more heavily in low emissions technologies such as renewables, investing less in fossil fuels, in particular coal in power and oil in transport, and investing significantly more in energy efficiency to reduce overall energy usage").
The headline findings are twofold. First, "Citi’s ‘Action’ scenario implies a total spend on energy of $190.2 trillion while our ‘Inaction’ scenario is actually marginally larger at $192 trillion." In other words, the total energy investment necessary is slightly lower in the low-carbon scenario.
This is due to three things: First, aggressive investments in energy efficiency reduce overall energy use; second, shifting away from fossil fuels yields a large ($1.8 trillion) reduction in fuel and capital costs; and third, renewables, though they currently cost more on average than fossil fuels, rapidly get cheaper.
So the action scenario envisions total energy spending rising in the short term, as investment shifts to renewables (though even at its peak, that extra spending never amounts to more than 1 percent of global GDP), but decline in the long term, as efficiency kicks in and renewables decline in cost.
This chart shows the total difference in energy spending between the action and inaction scenarios:
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As you can see, the massive decline in spending on coal for power and oil for transport more than outweighs increased spending on other sources.
(Wonk note: The report acknowledges that its projections differ substantially from the International Energy Agency's because it assumes a much faster decline in renewable energy prices, more in line with historical experience and current trends. In the action scenario, renewables go from 6 percent of total global energy in 2012 to 34 percent by 2040.)
The clean path avoids potentially enormous climate damages
The second headline finding is about avoided damages. The action scenario results in about 200 gigatons fewer CO2 emissions than the inaction scenario, cumulative through 2040. Those avoided emissions mean avoided climate impacts.
Is it worth paying to avoid those impacts? Why, yes.
Acknowledging how difficult it is to predict future damages, the authors take a median estimate from recent climate science and then compare it to the extra upfront investments required to drive a rapid shift to renewables. Turns out those investments have "returns at the low point of between 1% and 4%, rising to between 3% and 10% in later years." Sounds like a pretty good deal.
(Wonky note: This is likely a lowball estimate, since many of the "co-benefits" of reducing fossil fuel use — environmental, health, and social — are difficult to quantify and generally get left out of climate integrated assessment models.)
Citi's report confirms lots of other recent analyses
So, this incredibly deep and wide-ranging research project has concluded ... more or less the same thing all the other research has concluded: "The incremental costs of following a low carbon path are in context limited and seem affordable, the 'return' on that investment is acceptable and moreover the likely avoided liabilities are enormous." In other words, we can easily afford the cost of transitioning to a low-carbon system; we cannot afford the costs of failing to do so.
As I said recently, at least directionally speaking, this is the conclusion of an increasingly huge body of research. (The rapidly falling cost of renewables has only made the case stronger.) At this point, those who claim that a clean-energy transition would harm the economy face the burden of proof.
Okay, a clean energy transition is "worth it" — now what?
For years and years, climate analysts and economists have focused on cost-benefit analysis — whether the costs of climate mitigation are justified by its benefits. This remains the overwhelming focus of most climate policy research.
At this point, though, the pile of research showing that it is worth has gotten pretty damn high. More is always welcome, of course, but at a certain point it becomes reasonable just to accept it as an established fact. Insofar as we can have confidence in the wisdom of a large-scale, coordinated global effort like this — and of course there's tons of speculation and uncertainty involved — we're pretty confident in the wisdom of this one.
So ... now what?
After reviewing the evidence, the report says this: "Given that all things being equal cleaner air has to be preferable to pollution, a very strong 'Why would you not?' argument begins to develop."
Hm. Indeed. Why would we not? More to the point, if it makes so much economic sense, why are we not? Why, when study after study has found that we ought to be acting aggressively to transition to clean energy, does actual movement in that direction remain tentative, halting, incremental, and insufficient?
The report doesn't pursue the question. Instead, Citi being Citi, it turns to "the potential solutions that financial markets can offer," including "new [investment] instruments, vehicles and markets."
And that's fine. Market analysts gonna market analyze. Financial instruments can surely help.
But actually answering the question "why would we not?" requires more than economic models and market analysis. It requires an understanding of power, of political economy.
The clean-energy transition will create winners and losers, which shapes politics
While the net public benefits of a transition to low carbon will almost certainly outweigh the private costs, those costs will not be spread evenly. There will be winners and losers. To wit:
In financial terms, we estimate that the value of unburnable [fossil fuel] reserves could amount to over $100 trillion out to 2050. The biggest loser stands to be the coal industry, where we estimate cumulative spend under our Action scenario could be $11.6 trillion less than in our Inaction scenario over the next quarter century, with renewables, wind and nuclear (as well as energy efficiency) the main beneficiaries.
As for oil and gas, the story is somewhat more mixed, as I've written before. Taking coal out of electricity will help natural gas in the short run, especially in the US. But anything that raises carbon prices at the margins will hit risky projects like liquid natural gas and non-US shale gas first, working its way down to heavy oil, oil sands, and deepwater drilling.
Point being, the costs of a clean-energy transition fall unevenly, which will in turn create pockets of intense social and political resistance. It's always worth revisiting this immortal quote from Niccolo Machiavelli:
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them."
Wanted: a report on climate political economy as deep and detailed as Citi's report on climate economics
So here's what I'd like to see: a report as extensive as Citi's, conducted by an equally distinguished group of researchers, about the political economy of the action scenario. Which companies, industries, and governments face threats to which interests? Which industries give money to which public officials, and through what channels? Which industries do public officials gravitate to when they leave office? Which spend the most on lobbying? What domestic and international levers do industries and governments have at their disposal to impede or delay the transition?
In short, I want a report that answers "why would you not?" — a report that canvases potential winners and losers and charts their sociopolitical capacity to accelerate or delay the transition.
In my experience, popular conceptions of political economy tend to be pretty crude. "Big Oil buys politicians" — stuff like that. Not that it's necessarily wrong in spirit, but it would be helpful to both investors and social changemakers to have a more sophisticated understanding of the channels of power and influence involved in the ongoing energy transition.
I'm not sure what organization could or would take on a research project like that. Political economy is even more volatile and difficult to predict than markets. It would necessarily involve a mix of reportage and analysis, something like political scientist Theda Skocpol did for the 2009 cap-and-trade fight, only on a larger scale and in real time. (I had some issues with Skocpol's analysis, if you're into that sort of thing.)
I don't know who could pull off a comprehensive political economy analysis like that. But someone needs to do it. As I've written before, having a model scenario doesn't help much if you don't understand the sociopolitical barriers to implementing it.
FINALLY double vision
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