Blamed For (Not) Our Crazies

This year, animal rights activists in Oregon tried to get a petition on the ballot that would extend the state's animal cruelty laws to all animals, including those in the wild or being farmed for agriculture. That description may or may not seem extreme, but the practical upshots are absolutely extreme: a total ban on hunting and fishing, a ban on livestock slaughter, a ban on most forms of animal husbandry, even a ban on most types of pest control.

Unsurprisingly, it was not popular -- receiving essentially wall-to-wall denunciations from major politicians of both parties. Ultimately, it did not receive enough signatures to make the ballot, and one would think we could all chalk it up to "there are fringe radicals everywhere" and leave it there.

Or we could engage in our favorite pastime and say that the existence of this petition proves Democrats are terrible. Enter Erik Loomis' post on the initiative, which begins as follows:

Oregon Democrats: A Parody of Liberals

I cannot imagine a worse or stupider ballot measure than what Oregon liberals are trying to push here. Evidently, Democrats never want to win a rural voter ever again.

What's amazing about this is that the article Loomis proceeds to block quote tells us both that the initiative is poised to fail to qualify for the ballot and that it was generally opposed by statewide Democrats (and Republicans). So how does it reflect poorly on "Oregon Democrats"?

The people behind this initiative, I am absolutely certain, do not care a whit about "Democrats" or Democratic electoral prospects. It's a fair bet that they're not actually Democrats themselves. The only thing Democrats have done with respect to this initiative is successfully oppose it. Yet it's still framed as proof of Democratic idiocy and/or malfeasance.

The real irony is that Murc's law was created at LGM!

Making the Grade Roundup

It's grading season at Lewis & Clark. I have the entire 1L day class this semester across two sections of Con Law I, so it's a bit of a bear. But I'm almost halfway done!

You get a roundup.

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As a professor, I cannot fathom the hubris it takes to see one of your papers rejected from a journal -- the most normal possible experience for an academic -- and decide to parlay it into an entire New York Times column decrying "wokeness".

Florida is set to legalize kidnapping trans children from their families. But don't worry -- they'll only do it if the families love their kids and provide them with healthcare. Family courts in other states better start boning up on asylum law, because the phrase "well-founded fear of persecution" is going to become increasingly germane in cases where there's a possibility of the child being sent to Florida.

Local elections in the UK are seeing the Tories getting absolutely stomped. Over a thousand seats lost by the party, most of which are going to Labour and a healthy chunk of which are going to the LibDems and Greens. It's amazing what Labour can do when it isn't being led by a wildly unpopular antisemitic extremist!

Princeton under fire for hiring prominent BDS activist to a fellowship position. The twist? The activist is a member of the Israeli far-right. But the BDS thing is real -- he supported a divestment campaign against Ben Gurion University in retaliation for its allegedly "anti-Zionist" tilt.

The UAW has new leadership (I had half an eyeball on this, since I technically was a UAW member in my capacity as a UC-Berkeley graduate student instructor), and they're playing hardball against the Biden administration demanding compensation for how new electric vehicles may reduce the number of autoworker jobs.

A Galaxy FAR, FAR Away Roundup

In my last roundup, I noted that I was going on the law school job market this year -- a process that commences with the charmingly named "meat market" in Washington this fall. The first thing that law schools receive from potential candidates, however, is the "FAR form" -- a one page document that's basically the back of your law professor baseball card: all your key stats, from degrees to teaching interests to publications. The FAR form gets distributed to law schools tomorrow, and once it's out the hiring season has officially kicked off.

Though if you like, this roundup also can be sponsored by this video about Star Wars.

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Lyft is going to buy carbon-offsets for its rides. Nice.

Famed Holocaust and antisemitism expert Deborah Lipstadt: Trump didn't go far enough in condemning White nationalism.

What happened when a Labour MP tried to intervene with the Israeli government on behalf of sick Palestinian children? She faced a torrent of antisemitic abuse, that's what. Shocking story, but it's the wages of anti-normalization.

I thought this was a really thoughtful discussion between Ken White and Elie Mystal on whether things like the North Carolina gun store billboard targeting "the squad" should be protected as free speech (both -- accurately -- observe at the outset that it is protected; the discussion is about whether that doctrine is correct).

The "Word Crimes" special issue of Israel Studies continues to generate controversy: the editors of the journal issued an apology acknowledging that "the special issue and our decision-making process regarding the publication were flawed", but also defending themselves against some of the more histrionic critiques. The editors of the special issue in turn replied to the journal editor's apology, as well as addressing the wider controversy, here.

In California, locally-assessed fees sometimes make new housing construction cost-prohibitive. Locally-assessed fees are assessed, however, because Prop. 13 took a chainsaw to localities ability to raise revenue via property taxes, and so they have to get creative if they're to bring money in.

RIP Toni Morrison.

Yes, I'm Alive

A couple of days ago, I wrote a column for Haaretz on the Netanyahu-facilitated merger of the far-right Jewish Home Party with the neo-Kahanist Jewish Power party. Since -- back in the 1980s -- prominent members of the Jewish community (including leaders of the AJC) analogized Kahane to Louis Farrakhan, and since we've all over the past year or so gotten very adept at declaring what one's obligations are when a Louis Farrakhan enters our political orbit, I suggested that it was "put up or shut up" time for Jewish community groups that regularly take stances on Israel-related issues.

Anyway, I sent the column to my editor Wednesday afternoon, so it could run Thursday morning. Then I did a bit of work, and then I tried to go to sleep.

Only to realize that somehow, all of the sudden, I was experiencing one of the worst head and chest colds I've had in my life.

It was frankly astonishing how fast it snuck up on me. I'd love to tell a story about how I pushed out this column with my last bit of strength before succumbing -- but actually I felt pretty much fine all of Wednesday afternoon into the evening. It just felt like a light-switch -- one moment I was fine, and the next it's 4 AM and I haven't even gotten a wink of sleep because my entire face is more congested than a Bay Area freeway.

The immediate upshot was that I basically wasn't able to follow any conversations that might or might not have occurred over my column. I was able to write a quick update when the AJC finally did release a statement on Jewish Power (they had not written one at the time it was published, and had indicated they would not be commenting) -- which really was my last gasp of energy, and after that I ended up staying in bed until 5:30 PM (yes, PM).

Anyway, I'm finally feeling a bit better (a lingering cough seems to be the long tail of this whole ordeal). So what did I miss?

Well, let's see: the White House is considering appointing William Happer to a climate change committee. Who is William Happer?

"The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler," Happer said on CNBC. "Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews."

"Just like" it. You know, I've heard of Jews being dehumanized by being compared to animals, or even vermin. But this must be the first time we've been reduced to the level of a gas molecule.

In conclusion, I kind of want to just go back to sleeping all day.

It's My Birthday and I'll Roundup If I Want To!

Happy birthday (actual birthday, not blog birthday) to me!

I'm actually not doing anything in particular today, though Jill and I will be going to a hockey game this weekend. In a few weeks, we're planning to invite friends over for board games. If you're wondering "why in a few weeks, David?", the answer is I just had a Super Bowl party, and in typical neurotic millennial fashion I fear it's way too soon to ask my friends to voluntarily hang out with me in a party-like setting again.

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David Roberts summarizes the Green New Deal proposal. He's pretty favorable towards it. So am I.

Weird headline aside, this is an interesting article on Israel's current state of play in Africa. In particular, Islamic extremists on the continent are starting to link their attacks to the Palestinian cause, which is in turn pulling African governments closer to Israel.

Much work needs to be done, but Israeli universities are at the forefront of supporting and integrating Israel's Arab minority, and deserve a ton of praise for it.

Partners for Progressive Israel, on the message that needs to be sent to both the right and left on Israeli and Palestinian rights

Antisemitic flyers at the University of Montana claim "Jews" are attacking the First Amendment.

On the antisemitic roots of the "Jews controlled the slave trade" canard.

Board Game Night Roundup

Let's see, what's new .... having a board game night with some friends, sent a (horribly rough) first draft of my first dissertation chapter to my advisers, been trying to put together some columns for Tablet, and have been in a real love-hate relationship with my Twitter account for the past week or so.

What's new with you?

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Can't endorse this piece by David Roberts hard enough: the goal of the Green New Deal should be 100% decarbonization, not necessarily 100% renewable. If the best, fastest, cheapest way to get to the latter is through the former, awesome! But if (say) nuclear power ends up being the most direct route to the finish line -- listen, when it comes to climate change, it's all hands on deck right now.

South Florida city commissioner, on Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib: "A Hamas-loving anti-Semite has NO place in government! She is a danger and [I] would not put it past her to become a martyr and blow up Capitol Hill." Gross racism is gross.

Pranksters dupe Laura Loomer into thinking CAIR got her booted off Twitter. Wall Street Journal reporters then credulously follow along. (No matter how dumb the internet is....)

Really interesting story on the life of Maya Casablanca, a famous (in her time) Moroccan-Israeli singer who recently passed away.

National Union -- the far-right flank of the far-right Jewish Home party -- replaces Uri "I am a spy" Ariel with Bezalel "Proud Homophobe" Smotrich as its new leader. Smotrich -- who has advocated for segregating maternity wards in Israeli hospitals and denies that there is even such thing as Jewish terrorism -- is probably the only member of the Knesset to make Oren Hazan seem like a sober moderate.

I love this profile-interview of Angela Buchdahl, a prominent Korean-American Reform Rabbi, as she talks about intermarriage, assimilation, and Jewish continuity. She really speaks to my understanding of an inclusive, progressive Jewish community.

Mini-Women's March Roundup-within-a-Roundup!

• Women's March adds three Jews to its steering committee (the name I recognize is April Baskin)!
• Carmen Perez urges Jews to stay with the Women's March, despite their "mistakes"!
• Mijal Bitton (whose work I always, always love) says "no thanks, I'm out"!
• JTA gives a helpful breakdown of which local Women's Marches are and aren't affiliated with the national organization!
• Gratuitous shots at the ADL notwithstanding, Jewish Currents makes some good points on the undemocratic nature of American Jewish life while coming down on the "stick with the Women's March" side!

Post-Bacchanalia Roundup

I had my bachelor party this weekend in Chicago. That sounds wilder than it was -- my fiancee and I have the same core friend group (we all went to college together), so we rented an AirBnb and spent the weekend as a group. We did split off Saturday to do our own things (mani/pedis for the gals, an escape room for team boy -- which we completed with seven seconds to spare), but by and large it was a non-traditionally gender-unified event.

Still a blast though.

Anyway, here's some stuff that's gone on in the interim.

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In Foreign Policy, Jacob Levy has a neat essay on the philosophy of my great-grandadviser (the Ph.D. adviser of the Ph.D. adviser of my Ph.D. adviser), Judith Shklar.

Also in FP, a discussion of a possible Israeli-Palestinian confederation -- the first articulation of an outcome to the conflict outside the "classic" two-state solution model which I've found remotely compelling.

Labour's antisemitism policy under Corbyn has basically been "fuck you, Jews" in so many words, but I believe this is the first time a prominent Jewish Labour politician has explicitly said "fuck you" back to him.

Iraq has a long Jewish history, which is memorialized in a giant archive of Jewish artifacts. These artifacts were removed for safekeeping following the U.S. invasion, and unsurprisingly Iraq now wants them back. Problem: virtually no Iraqi Jews live in Iraq anymore, and they want the archives somewhere they can actually access them. For the record, this is a great example of the sort of problem intersectionality was designed to illuminate.

D.C. Circuit upholds funding structure whereby FERC gets its budget from fees assessed to natural gas pipeline projects it approves (against environmental challengers who say that incentivizes them to keep approving pipelines). The more interesting part of the case is a bit buried though -- the court concludes that Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights Amendment does not create an individualized liberty or property interest in a clean environment cognizable under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Meanwhile, the Seventh Circuit concludes that refusing to give an incarcerated transwoman medically-necessary hormone therapy -- and later, forbidding her from taking those hormones herself when she's released on parole -- can give rise to a "deliberate indifference" to medical need claim.

Man calls the police on a Black man over a basketball foul. No, seriously. What's his hashtag going to be? I vote #HardPickHal.

Nuclear Power: The Macho Man's Manly Path to Global Salvation

I've written a bit about nuclear power before, and how it may be our best hope at achieving deep decarbonization in a reasonable time frame while still meeting our electricity needs. Put simply, nuclear power has three characteristics that make it extremely attractive from a decarbonization perspective:

1. It's high capacity.
2. It's zero-emission.
3. It's dispatchable.

Back in the day, nuclear energy was attractive for a fourth reason -- people thought it would be inexpensive. Nuclear energy would famously be "too cheap to meter". This turned out to be a less than oracle-esque prophecy. Nuclear power plants have long been plagued with cost overruns, and their skyrocketing expense (along with a few very public safety scares) is what caused a long freeze in nuclear construction from which we are only just beginning to see a thaw.

But from my vantage, the issue blocking us from pursuing necessary anti-climate change action isn't monetary. We have the resources to do it. The problem is, for lack of a better word, cultural. Conservatives have gotten it into their heads that fighting climate change and promoting renewable power is something only woolly liberal hippies care about, because they hate capitalism or something. And since Cleek's Law states that "Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily," that means conservatives oppose pretty much anything on the clean power agenda.

Enter nuclear energy. Nuclear power is not coded as liberal -- if anything, its public valence is probably still more anti-environmental stemming from "nuclear-free zone" politics emerging out of the 70s and 80s (nuclear waste controversies stemmed from whether holding sites designed to last 10,000 years were sufficiently permanent. Given that we're staring down catastrophic climate change by the end of this century, that timeframe looks adorably quaint). It's muscular -- nuclear energy is something big, bad-ass countries produce -- unlike solar power which might turn your calculator on if you're not in a dark room. Sure some people fret about "safety" (although nuclear power is on net actually quite safe), but conservatives actually tend to be less risk-averse when it comes to nuclear energy than liberals. And conservatives actually have no problem expending resources when it comes to things they care about -- like funneling money to really rich people or building jet fighters.

Basically, nuclear energy is culturally coded in a way that makes it acceptable to conservatives in a way that other clean power sources aren't. And so regardless of whether it's theoretically possible to go 100% clean power without resort to nukes, nuclear energy is unique in its ability to not be rejected out of hand by conservatives who hate what renewable energy represents -- limp, paternalistic liberalism that wants to take away American muscle and replace it with some Dutch windmill and hippie solar communes.

Now I want to be 100% clear: This is a profoundly stupid reason to push for nuclear power (there are good reasons, but "nuclear power is manly" is not one). As a human, I'm embarrassed that the argument has come to this -- that we can only convince people to endorse global salvation if we can frame in a way that allows them to feel sufficiently manly about it. But we're past the point where my pride matters. If conservatives need to feel like they're sticking it to liberals and environmentalists by promoting nuclear energy, har-dee-harharhar, I say we indulge them.

So let's go, conservatives. Make electricity great again. Back a big nuclear energy push. That'll show me and my liberal pals what's what. It's the macho, manly way to save the planet.

Will Nukes Save the World?

David Roberts has a good beginner's rundown on what it will take to decarbonize the economy (and, accordingly, avoid the catastrophic global warming scenarios that are likely if we stay on our current path). As we've discussed on this blog, decarbonization is inextricably linked to electrification -- we want more of our energy needs met by electricity, and specifically carbon-emission free electricity.

The big challenge is that the most obvious renewable resources -- wind and solar -- have massive scalability issues because they are not dispatchable power resources. They don't generate power on an as-needed basis, they generate when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. And because electricity supply must meet demand on an instantaneous basis, the inability to control when wind and solar resources generate power is a huge problem that makes it virtually impossible for them to meet 100% of power load requirements without massive overbuilding.

What we need, then, is a dispatchable resource that can lower our carbon emissions. Natural gas is a possibility -- kind of. It is much cleaner than coal, but still emits carbon. Roberts estimates that switching primarily to natural gas could get us to roughly 60% decarbonization. That sounds pretty good, even if the target we need to hit is actually 80% - 100%. But there's a big problem:

Natural gas is cleaner than coal (by roughly half, depending on how you measure methane leakage), but it’s still a fossil fuel. At least without CCS [Carbon Capture Sequestration], it is incompatible with decarbonization beyond 60 percent or so.

If you build out a bunch of natural gas plants to get to 60 percent, then you’re stuck shutting them down to get past 60 percent.

It would be very difficult to strand all those assets. There would be a lot of resistance. It’s just one example of path dependence in energy — choices, once made, tend to perpetuate themselves through inertia. Leaning too heavily into natural gas in the next 20 years will make it more difficult to pull away in the subsequent 20.

Enter nuclear power, the new darling of (some) environmentalists. Nuclear power has a high capacity (it can generate a lot of power), zero-emission (no carbon), and dispatchable -- a holy trinity if your only goal is to decarbonize. It isn't renewable (though I don't think there's any immediate risk to our nuclear fuel reserves), and of course nuclear power has other risks and associations which make it politically controversial. But it strikes me as the most straight-forward, feasible, and immediately accessible method for taking big chunks out of our carbon footprint right now.

What are the alternatives? The best one is high-capacity energy storage (which can convert a variable resource like wind into a dispatchable one like nuclear). But the technology to have such storage on the scale and flexibility necessary is just not there yet, and while it's more than an eye-twinkle, it's also not particularly close at hand. After that, we could simply engage in massive, massive overbuilding of wind and solar. But even then we'd need to also basically globalize our transmission network (and massively upgrade that too), so that we could be confident that the wind is blowing/sun is shining somewhere.

Roberts indicates that there is a debate between those who think we can go 100% renewable (no nuclear, no CCS) versus those who want those options on the table. Count me decisively in the latter camp. It might theoretically be possible to design a grid system available today that is zero-emission and entirely renewable. But the political, economic, and technological obstacles to putting it together are more than formidable, they are towering. Nuclear power is a technology we have now, that checks all of the key decarbonization boxes.

Electrification, Electric Utilities and the System Working

When it comes to social change, I tend to prefer working within the system rather than seeking its radical overhaul. This isn't due to any particular love for the system we have. Rather, it's for the more prosaic reason that widescale systematic change is really hard, and so if you can achieve your ends through the system that's already in place you might as well go for it. I also have a belief -- perhaps naive, perhaps not -- that the modern liberal state and society presents such a variegated slate of interests, motives, and desires that the creative reformer should be able to concoct a cocktail where it is in the interest of system-level players to spit out the social good you want.

On that note, I found very interesting this article by David Roberts on the potential synergy between large-scale electrical utilities and environmentalists seeking decarbonization. The first part of the argument is the observation that, if you want to decarbonize our economy, you want as much of it running on electricity (as opposed to, say, petroleum) as possible. Instead of gasoline-powered cars, electric cars. Instead of oil heaters, electric heaters. Instead of gas stoves, electric stoves. And so on. Electricity isn't always renewably produced, but it can be -- through wind, solar, hydro, or nuclear. So the more we switch over to running things on electricity, the more opportunities there are to replace carbon-intensive fossil fuels with zero-emission sources.

The second part of the argument asks what large-scale utilities -- big legacy corporations that are more or less the definition of "the system" -- want. And the answer is, intuitively enough, more electricity demand. Over the last few decades, electricity demand has begun to flatten -- a large problem for utilities who generally make their money not on the sale of electricity (they only recover marginal costs) but on returns on capital investments (e.g., building a new power plant). If there is no increase in electricity demand, there's no need for new plants, and so there's no new capital investments to make a return on.

Putting two and two together: Utilities want a world in which they need to build more power plants. Environmentalists want a world in which more of our energy comes from electricity -- specifically, zero-emission electricity. It seems like a deal can be struck: environmentalists support electrification on the condition that the new electricity produced be primarily zero-carbon.

In short, there's a massive and influential player inside the system with a vested incentive to promote environmental reform. Leveraging that may not be as fun as seeking to blow up the system of large corporations who profit on energy sales, but it is far more likely to actually happen.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXIX: Plummeting Caviar Stocks

Rich people, as a rule, love caviar. And Jews, as any good anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist knows, are all rich. But the really woke anti-Semites know that Jews don't eat caviar (it's not kosher). And with caviar-producing sturgeon facing threats from invasive species -- well, it's not hard to put the pieces together (particularly if every puzzle has the same answer):

“Introduced species can disturb the ecosystem of an area,” Seyyed Jafar Mousavi[], the Deputy Head of Intelligence and Operation Department at the Biological Headquarters of Civil Defence Organization, said in an interview with Mehr News Agency, as translated by IFP. 

Some species can do more harm than good to an ecosystem, he noted. 

He noted that Caspian seal, Kilka and Sevruga fish belong to the Caspian Sea; however, comb jellies are alien species that have come from the Atlantic Ocean. 

“We firmly believe that the Zionist regime [Israel] is behind the conspiracy of nuisance species as they had sworn to do so,” Mousavi added.

Good catch (get it? "Catch"? Because fish)! The goyim will fall to their knees if the Zionist cabal can deprive their leaders of their precious caviar!

Net Metering in Nevada

At Vox, David Roberts has a really good piece on the status of "rooftop solar" programs in Nevada. What I particularly like about this post is that it gives a fair shake to the problems such programs cause for incumbent utilities, even though Roberts (like myself) is broadly sympathetic to rooftop solar and so opposes utility efforts to stifle them. If you're interested in the future of renewable power and electricity markets, and want to get a perspective on the situation that doesn't gloss over the real transition problems that exist (often called "stranded costs"), I highly recommend you take a gander.

Midweek Roundup: 5/20/15

Blog's been quiet, but a roundup will fix that!

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Even in the South, where entrenched utilities rule, Florida stands out for its anti-competitive electricity policies. But a rare Enviro-Tea alliance may change that to enable California homeowners to access the state's abundent solar resources.

Speaking of conservatives doing unusual things, Nebraska looks set to abolish the death penalty. Says one GOP state senator: "If government can't be trusted to manage our health care ... then why should it be trusted to carry out the irrevocable sentence of death?" Not quite the argument I'd make, but that's what happens when you work bipartisan.

Seeds of Peace is just one of many fantastic groups that approach conflict-resolution by bringing people together, rather than driving them apart. It's a great organization worthy of your support.

Reading about this conference, which focused on remedying growing gulfs in the Jewish community over various Israeli policies, is quite depressing. There's this weird disconnect wherein conference participants take views that really aren't that far from J Street, but are appalled that anybody would listen to a terrible group like J Street. It's a weird sort of denialism and it doesn't exactly inspire confidence at the ability to right ship.

Hey, remember that oft-heard complaint about how Palestinian leaders say one thing to Western audiences and another to the people at home? That's what springs to mind when I hear Bibi insist to an EU envoy that he supports a two-state solution.

Supreme Court To Review Demand-Response

The Supreme Court has granted cert to review a challenge over FERC's efforts encourage "demand-response" policies. As incredibly dry as that sounds, this is a significant deal in energy/environmental area. The NYT article linked above actually gives a pretty decent summary of the issue, but I'll give my own quick take.

"Demand-response" refers to policies which give consumers price breaks when they consume electricity at off-peak times (as opposed to those times when energy usage is highest, like mid-day). In of itself, this doesn't "save" energy -- it just shifts usage around -- but it matters from an environmental standpoint because of the way power dispatched. Electricity supply and demand must be matched perfectly and instantaneously -- we produce exactly the amount of power that we need to consume. Functionally, that means that certain base generators are (more or less) always on, and then as demand rises additional generators come online to meet peak demand. Typically, these peak generators are older, more expensive, and dirtier than the base load generators -- hence the environmental benefits of demand-response. It also comes with reliability benefits -- reducing the peak electricity spikes means lessening the chance that the system will be overloaded. The losers, of course, are the operators of the expensive and dirtier peak-load plants.

The legal challenge here has to do with how the regulatory authority over electricity is allocated between the federal government (FERC) and the states. The Federal Power Ac, the main federal statute on the matter, grants FERC the authority to regulate wholesale (sale-for-resale) power transactions while preserving retail regulation to the states. Demand-response intuitively is more retail than wholesale -- it relates to when end-use consumers use their power -- but FERC attempted to structure its regulation in such a way that it created a wholesale-based demand-response framework. The D.C. Circuit didn't bite, ruling 2-1 that the program was actually impermissible retail regulation, and that is the decision under review by the Supreme Court.

Hence, as a legal matter this is less an "environmentalism: yay or nay" case than it is a "federalism/administrative law" case. Still, ideologically speaking the Court often has a left-right breakdown regarding the extent of federal power and the degree to which the judiciary ought defer to federal agencies. On that note, one encouraging sign for FERC is that Justice Samuel Alito is recusing himself from the case.

Energy Lobbying, Environmental Costs, and Zero-Sum Competition

Exelon Corporation, one of the largest energy companies in the United States, has come out in favor of the EPA's Clean Power Plan and has even asked for a carbon pricing schema. This stands out, as one does not typically expect to see large energy companies endorsing aggressive carbon regulation. And I should hasten to add that what follows is not a specific speculation on Exelon's motives. Exelon might have any number of reasons for the position it's taking, not the least of which could be a fear that absent their intervention the EPA plan could end up being more environmentally protective (and thus more economically burdensome). Nonetheless, in general it does seem a little odd: why would an electricity company support EPA rules that almost certainly would place greater costs on its line of business.

The answer might lie in the difference between competitive and monopoly electricity markets. In the former there are multiple firms competing for customers and market share. In the latter, there is a single firm with a guaranteed franchise and customer base. These two models have been struggling for primacy in the electricity sector for the past several decades -- as it stands, we have competition in the generation and wholesale sectors, whereas most (but not all) states have maintained a retail electricity monopoly. At first glance, though, this different market structure is unrelated to support of greater environmental regulations. For either it increases costs, and we can stipulate (though this may or may not be true) that it equally increases costs for firms operating in a competitive versus a monopoly context. It is therefore unlikely that any firm will unilaterally adopt superior environmental restrictions (with some allowance for trying to gain public goodwill or carve out a unique market share). And so it seems unlikely that any firm would lobby to put in place a regulatory regime which increases these costs.

But look a little closer. For the monopoly firm, a policy proposal which increases its costs is an unmitigated bad. The cost increase may be minor, in which case it will be moderately opposed, or significant, in which case it will be significantly opposed, but there is never a corresponding benefit to the cost increase. But in a competitive world, things are different because there is also the opportunity to take over one's competitor's turf. Here, cost increases can be a good thing if one is in a position to better ride them out than one's adversaries. Imagine Company A has already significantly invested in renewable energy infrastructure such that new carbon mandates are likely to only cause a small price increase. Company B, by contrast, is less prepared to handle these new mandates and would be forced to increase prices quite a bit. Company A may well lobby for the regulatory shift because it would give it the opportunity to gobble up market share currently held by B.

This matters because it suggests that, in a competitive context, there is sometimes a business incentive for firms to lobby on behalf of cost-increasing environmental regulation where it feels it can better absorb the costs compared to other companies in the field. To the extent that environmental regulation often in practice needs business buy-in to be effective, this is an avenue worth exploring.

I said that this was not a speculation on the Exelon situation, particularly, and it isn't. That said, I did notice that the speaker who delivered this missive to FERC was described as "Exelon’s senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs and wholesale market policy." If Exelon's wholesale division (remember that wholesale electricity is a competitive sector) thinks that it is better positioned than its rivals to meet EPA carbon requirements, then that would explain why it would come out in support of this initiative even though in absolute figures it probably will raise its cost of doing business.

Double-Counting RECs

Today I wrote a guest-post at the Legal Planet blog (a joint UC-Berkeley/UCLA project) about an interesting challenge before the FTC on how Vermont's Green Mountain Power makes renewable energy claims.

When a generator produces renewable electricity, the power company is entitled to a "Renewable Energy Credit" (REC) (typically 1 megawatt hour of renewable electricity equals one 1 REC). RECs represent the electricity's renewable attributes. These RECs can be bundled or unbundled from the associated electricity. If they're bundled (kept together), then the consumer of the electricity also receives the electricity's renewable attributes -- effectively, the customer is getting green power. But the electricity can also be unbundled from the REC, with different consumers receiving each product. In that case, the consumer who receives the electricity is not actually receiving "clean" electricity -- only the recipient of the REC is (basically, the REC recipient is off-setting dirty power she consumes from another provider).

The FTC petition claims that while Green Mountain Power claims to supply renewable energy to its consumers, it actually sells the associated RECs to other entities elsewhere in New England. This is misleading, since once the RECs are unbundled the electricity consumers are not actually receiving renewable power.

I go into some more detail in my guest-post. If you're interested, I encourage you to check it out.

Beautiful Scenic Vistas are Just the Gift-Wrapping

This might actually be the dumbest thing I ever read:

Bryan Fischer, the director of issues analysis of the conservative fundamentalist American Family Association, on Thursday told a so-called “expert” who denies climate change that not using God’s fossil fuels would be like “crushing” someone’s feelings by rejecting their birthday present.

The Cornwall Alliance’s Calvin Beisner, who has previously said that believing in climate change “is an insult to God,” explained on Thursday that the Bible said it was also very rude to not use oil, coal and natural gas.

Fischer likened the situation to a birthday present he was given at the age of six. “I opened up a birthday present that I didn’t like, and I said it right out, ‘Oh, I don’t like those,’” the radio host recalled. “And it just crushed — and the person that gave me gift was there. You know, I just kind of blurted it out, ‘I don’t like those.’ And it just crushed that person. It was enormously insensitive of me to do that.”

“And you think, that’s kind of how we’re treating God when he’s given us these gifts of abundant and inexpensive and effective fuel sources,” Fischer added. “And we don’t thank him for it and we don’t use it.”

“You know, God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them.”

Oh my goodness. Although I have to say if you had asked me to predict who would say the dumbest thing I'd ever read, Bryan Fischer would have been a top candidate, right alongside Steve King.

Premature SCOTUS Roundup

I thought I was taking a SCOTUS tour tomorrow, but it's next week. Sorry for forcing folks to rearrange their schedules because I can't successfully read outlook.

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The top rate of the original income tax, established in 1913, was 7 percent. Four years later, it was 67%. Cynics might suggest that, given the timing, and the fact that the bill which hiked it was called the "War Revenue Act", this increase probably was attributable to the US entering into, you know, a war. Silly liberals.

Neat-o story about an Israeli law school with a program focused on providing legal education to religious leaders (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and otherwise). Israel (regrettably, in my view) maintains a system of religious courts (each religion controls its own members' affairs), but many of the religious leaders who serve on these courts have no legal background.

The big polling news is not a poll at all, but reports that Daily Kos will be suing its former pollster, Research 2000, for fraud.

Without commenting on the underlying case itself -- you can be charged with being an "unruly child" in Ohio? Really?

The Vatican is angry at one of its Cardinals who helped expose sex abuse inside the Church. Perhaps it come steer some of that ire towards the abusers (and their enablers) instead?

"The Green Prince" -- the son of a top Hamas leader who became a spy for Israel -- has been granted asylum in the US.

Richard Lazarus Takes Post on Oil Spill Commission

Congratulations to Georgetown Law Professor Richard Lazarus, who was just appointed staff director of The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Professor Lazarus, in addition to being an experienced Supreme Court advocate, is a specialist in an environmental and natural resource law, and will thus be an invaluable asset in, you know, trying to save the planet.

On a more personal note, Professor Lazarus was a personal mentor of mine back in high school (I was on the debate team with his son), and we've maintained off-and-on contact with him in the intervening years. In fact, we were supposed to meet to catch up earlier this month, but, as he put it, "something came up". I'll say!

Broomball Roundup

They play with weak-sauce rules here at Chicago, but I'm just excited to retake the ice.

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Early reports of a possible coup attempt in Niger.

Crazed South Carolina state Rep. wants to eliminate the use of US currency in his state.

Given that I don't drink at all, I found Alyssa Rosenberg's story of how she learned to drink surprisingly fascinating. Then again, she is just a really good writer.

BBC interviewee: One million Jews are secretly available to aid Mossad assassins.

Phoebe Maltz says she's too tired to give thoughts on the Wieseltier/Sullivan quasi-anti-Semitism throw-down, but even her exhausted contribution is pretty spot-on. Still, you should scope the older, longer version.

It must be tough being a news writer who can't even rely on he said/she said. Sometimes, one side is just wrong.

Whaling protesters as pirates?

This strikes me as pretty thin gruel in terms of a benefit for joining the UNHRC.

Israeli foreign ministry apologizes for snubbing J Street-linked American Congressman. This is yet another case of Deputy FM Danny Ayalon unilaterally embarrassing his country.