SOURCE: AP/Gregory Bull

Chris King fills up his truck at a gas station displaying a price of $4.59 for a gallon of self-service regular gas on Friday, February 22, 2013, in San Diego, California.

Nearly 35 million Americans are expected to travel 50 miles or more this Memorial Day weekend to visit family and friends and enjoy the outdoors, according to AAA. Nearly 90 percent of them will likely to drive to their destination, filling up their tanks with expensive gasoline or diesel fuel before hitting the road.

Gasoline prices averaged $3.66 per gallon nationwide on May 21, 2013, which is 2 cents per gallon lower than they were a year ago when the price per gallon was $3.69. But experts predict that prices will plateau or increase throughout the summer, providing little relief at the pump for American families during this vacation season. These high prices enable the five biggest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—to reap huge profits even though they are producing less oil worldwide than this time last year.

According to the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, the price of crude oil makes up 63 percent of the retail price of regular gasoline. Even though domestic oil production is booming, it has done little to protect Americans from rising gasoline prices because prices are set on the world market led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, cartel.

While U.S. oil production has grown significantly in recent years, domestic refiners are exporting more refined petroleum products so these fuels are unavailable to American drivers. U.S. refiners are currently exporting an average of 2.8 million barrels of petroleum products overseas every day, compared to 1.6 million barrels per day in 2008—less than half of today’s exports. The latest four-week export average included 828,000 barrels per day of “distillate fuel oil,” also known as diesel fuel, and 485,000 barrels per day of gasoline. Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, told the Chicago Tribune that “higher U.S. oil production and lower U.S. demand are being canceled out by exports.”

This Memorial Day weekend is the first big beach weekend since Superstorm Sandy damaged 94 percent of New Jersey’s beaches and dunes nearly seven months ago. Many communities, especially along the New Jersey coastline, are still rebuilding homes, schools, and critical infrastructure. A recent report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre found that 39,000 families in New Jersey remain displaced by the storm.

As a result, coastal communities are scrambling to prepare for visitors who are expected to head to New Jersey’s beaches this holiday weekend. A recent report commissioned for the state’s division of travel and tourism noted that “infrastructure damage to key visitor areas [is] substantial” and that access “is still limited in some areas.” The tourism industry—which brought in $34.7 billion to the state’s economy last year could be impacted by fewer visitors this year as communities are still rebuilding and some beaches have not reopened.

Beginning with the Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer, Americans will spend their hard-earned dollars traveling to visit family, friends, and the great outdoors. Meanwhile, Big Oil will be making huge profits off of these travel expenditures on fuel, while at the same time fighting for decreased public health and climate-change protections.

Here is a by-the-numbers look at what Big Oil will cost us this holiday weekend:

An expensive holiday weekend ahead for travelers

• 690 miles: Average distance Americans will travel this Memorial Day; 7 percent higher than the 2012 average.
• $105: Gasoline cost for an average trip this Memorial Day weekend.

Big Oil profits increase as Americans face high prices at the pump

• $30.2 billion: Earnings for the first three months of 2013—about $336 million per day—for the five biggest publicly traded oil companies: BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell.
• $1 trillion: Combined profits from 2001–2011 for the five biggest oil companies.
• $2.4 billion: Special federal tax breaks received by the big five oil companies in 2011.
• One minute: Big Oil makes more in one minute than what 95 percent of American households earn in an entire year.
• One-third: Proportion of the Big Oil profits used to repurchase their stock, which only serves to pad the pockets of senior executives and the largest shareholders.
• -2 percent: Reduction in worldwide oil production by the big five oil companies compared to one year ago.

Big Oil’s influence machine

• $71 million: Total direct federal campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry in the 2012 election cycle.
• 90 percent: Proportion of direct federal campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry that went to Republican candidates.
• $140 million: Total lobbying expenditures by the oil and gas industry in 2012.
• $50 billion: Total lobbying expenditures by the big five oil companies in 2012.

New Jersey’s tourism sector is essential for state’s economic growth

• $34.7 billion: New Jersey’s annual tourism revenue.
• 62 percent: Estimated percentage of tourism dollars that were spent at the Jersey Shore in 2008.
• 500,000: Number of Americans employed by New Jersey’s tourism industry.
• $1,420: Estimated additional annual tax that each New Jersey household would have to pay in the absence of state tourism dollars, in order to maintain current government revenues.

Climate-change fueled extreme weather impacts tourism

• 94 percent: Proportion of New Jersey beaches and dunes that were damaged by Superstorm Sandy.
• 27 million: Number of cubic yards of sand that the Army Corps of Engineers will replace along the New Jersey and New York coastlines to restore storm-damaged beaches. Thomas Herrington, professor of ocean engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, said the amount of sand lost to Superstorm Sandy is “unprecedented” and equal to what is typically lost over the course of a decade.
• 4: Number of states with significant wildfires in their national and state forests as of May 20, 2013. (The states: California, Florida, Minnesota, and Montana.) 
• 3,800: Number of acres currently burning through the Los Padres National Forest in California. As of May 20, 2013, the fire was only 25 percent contained.
• 1 million: Estimated annual visitors to the Los Padres National Forest between 2005 and 2009.

Big Oil behaving badly, again

• 210,000: Total number of gallons of tar-sands oil spilled by a pipeline leak in Mayflower, Arkansas, in March 2013. The failure of the nearly 70-year-old pipeline owned by ExxonMobil forced 83 people to evacuate their homes.
• 126,000: Number of gallons ExxonMobil had yet to recover as of early May. The same pipeline ruptured a second time on May 1, 2013 in Ripley County, Missouri, spilling 42 gallons of oil.
• $14 billion: Estimated minimum cleanup costs for BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 that killed 11 oil-rig workers and gushed 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
• $75 million: Limit on liability that oil companies currently face for future offshore-oil blowouts regardless of actual damage.

Keystone XL pipeline won’t lower gasoline prices

• 0 (zero, nada, none): Guaranteed percentage of oil transported by Keystone XL to Gulf Coast refineries that will remain in the United States after refining into gasoline or diesel fuel.
• 0 (zero, nada, none): Impact of Keystone XL pipeline on U.S. gasoline prices. Christopher Knittel, professor of energy economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testified on May 16, 2013, in the House that, “There will be no appreciable changes in the world oil price, certainly not enough to base policy decisions on it.”

Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant to the Energy team at the Center for American Progress. Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center.

CAP Senior Fellow Daniel J. Weiss testifies before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Read the full testimony (CAP Action)

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on “American Energy Security and Innovation: Grid Reliability Challenges in a Shifting Energy-Resource Landscape.”

Discussing electricity security and innovation while ignoring climate change is like discussing personal health while ignoring cigarette smoking, diet, and exercise. Any examination of this shifting landscape must acknowledge that our electricity-generation systems produce much of the carbon pollution responsible for climate change and that the effects of climate change impair electricity reliability. Since coal-fired power plants emit one-third of the climate pollution in the United States, it is irresponsible to assess changes in our electricity system while ignoring climate pollution and its impacts.

Americans understand that extreme weather is related to man-made climate change that costs our economy billions of dollars annually. A recent poll from Yale University and George Mason University found that many Americans believe that global warming caused recent extreme weather and climatic events to be “more severe.”

Extreme weather events—including storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires—threaten electricity reliability. The Congressional Research Service concluded that, “[P]ower delivery systems are most vulnerable to storms and extreme weather events.”

CAP Senior Fellow Daniel J. Weiss testifies before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Read the full testimony (CAP Action)

SOURCE: AP/Jim Cole

Fishing boats are seen at the commercial fishing pier, Wednesday, February 1, 2012, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

On May 1, 2013, New England’s groundfishermen began operating under a harsh new set of catch limits that will curtail fishing effort and inflict massive economic pain on an industry that’s already struggling to remain afloat. As fishermen come to grips with their new regulations, and regulators fret about the impact that their unpopular decisions will have on one of America’s most historic industries, we should take a moment to consider the fate of a similar fishery just a few hundred miles northwest.

In 1992 the Canadian government shocked the Newfoundland fishing industry with an announcement that it was imposing a moratorium on cod fishing. The decision incensed the fishing population: 20,000 people lost their jobs overnight. John Crosbie, then-minister of fisheries and oceans, was cornered by a mob of fishermen and infamously proclaimed, “There’s no need to abuse me. I didn’t take the fish from the goddamn water.” Crosbie later called the decision to shut down the fishery the hardest one he ever had to make as minister.

Newfoundland’s moratorium on cod fishing was initially intended to last just two years. But more than 20 years later, the commercial fishery is still closed. It wasn’t until July 2012 that scientists even began to see the first glimmer of hope for a recovery of the depleted cod populations that were once so robust they drew Europeans across the Atlantic centuries before Christopher Columbus ever set foot in the “New World.”

In 1991, just one year before the Newfoundland closure, New England fishermen set an annual record, landing nearly 18,000 metric tons of cod from the Gulf of Maine. For the 2012 fishing year that ended earlier this week, the total catch was approximately 2,300 metric tons—not even two-thirds of the amount the new regulations would have allowed fishermen to harvest. The trend is clear: Gulf of Maine cod populations are dangerously depleted.

There’s no concrete evidence yet that New England’s groundfishery faces the same fate as Newfoundland’s groundfishery, but there’s no reason to think it won’t. Some conservation groups have called for a shutdown of New England’s cod fishery similar to the one in Newfoundland two decades ago. To date, regulators have rejected those calls, but they were legally required to implement new restrictions for the 2013 fishing year that began on May 1. The new catch limit for the once-bountiful Gulf of Maine cod is 814 metric tons—less than 5 percent of the peak harvest level of 17,700 metric tons in 1991 and just 22 percent of last year’s quota, which was set at about 3,700 metric tons.

Back in January, at a meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council, John Bullard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s top official in the northeast region, told the assembled crowd that a “day of reckoning” was coming to America’s oldest fishery. New science had shown that the populations of several fish species were in far worse shape than previously thought, and under the law that meant 2013 would be the first year catch limits would have to reflect this new reality.

Still, NOAA officials have faced increasing pressure from powerful politicians, acerbic journalists, and stalwarts of the fishing industry, who have all demanded that it find a way to circumvent the law and impose less drastic catch limits on several species of fish. On this point, however, the law is clear: Catch limits cannot exceed levels set based on the “best available science.”

The law does include a provision allowing for “interim measures” to be imposed for one year that allow catch limits higher than scientists recommend in cases such as this one, where new science shows a dramatic change in the health of a fish population. NOAA and the fishery-management council took advantage of that clause in setting the catch limits for 2012. Industry members and their advocates lobbied the agency unsuccessfully, asking it to impose a second interim year for the 2013 fishing year and basing their argument on a somewhat convoluted interpretation of the law.

Despite the pain these cuts will inflict on fishing and affiliated shoreside businesses, NOAA was right to reject the desperate appeals and adhere to both the letter and intent of the law. These cuts are not arbitrary: They reflect a reality of what is happening to fish populations in the ocean. Some fishermen still claim they’re finding areas where cod are abundant, and thus they believe the science must be wrong. But research by the independent Gulf of Maine Research Institute has shown that this evidence is simply anecdotal. Cod congregate in groups so it often appears that the population is healthy, but the number of areas where these groups can be found is shrinking each year.

The science is right: Fish populations are decimated. As of April 24, six days before the end of the 2012 season, fishermen had caught just 61 percent of their annual total allowable catch of Gulf of Maine cod. And these guys are the best in the business: New England fishermen have been able to find fish for centuries, and their expertise has been passed down from generation to generation. If the fish were out there, the New England groundfishermen would find them. And yet they haven’t even been able to land two-thirds of the amount they’ve been allocated.

So, if we accept that the science at least approximates reality, that means allowing fishermen another year of interim regulations that allow them to take more cod than the population can replace, which at best only serves to delay the ultimate pain of further reductions—and at worst it could cause irreparable harm to the fish stock.

The fishermen confronting John Crosbie on the pier in 1992 insisted that the collapse of the fishery wasn’t their fault. At a rally earlier this week in Boston, fishery leaders and their political supporters made the same claim: It’s not the fishermen’s fault, they said. Fishermen have stayed within their catch limits since implementation of the latest plan to rebuild groundfish stocks in 2004.

Unfortunately, the root of this problem runs deeper than that. Overfishing was rampant in the North Atlantic for decades prior to the creation of the rebuilding plan. And because of the fishery-management structure in place in this country, industry members played a key role in setting those catch limits. Until changes in the law took effect in 2010, the council was allowed to set those caps far higher than scientists recommended.

It is true that fishermen can’t be blamed for the entirety of the current state of affairs—climate change, pollution, and other environmental factors have undoubtedly also played a role—but it is disingenuous to suggest they carry no fault at all.

Still, pointing fingers and assigning blame doesn’t put anyone back to work or help fish populations rebuild. To do that, the industry will need money and creativity from policymakers and bureaucrats alike. NOAA recognized this when it declared the fishery a disaster last fall, making it eligible to receive federal funding. And as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said during this week’s rally, “A disaster is a disaster whether we’re talking about crops or we’re talking about fish. Washington rushes in to help our farmers. Washington needs to rush in to help our fishermen.”

Don’t hold your breath, Sen. Warren. Following last week’s sudden burst of legislative efficiency to resolve the sequestration-related Federal Aviation Administration furlough problem that caused widespread flight delays—on the cusp of a congressional recess when many members usually fly home to their districts—it seems Congress is only willing to provide funding for programs that make its members’ lives easier.

Guess how many of the 535 members of Congress are commercial fishermen? Zero. So, while advocates such as Sen. Warren and other members of the New England delegation continue to fight for relief dollars, NOAA must step up and make some changes of its own. The agency has already taken a first step by announcing it will pick up the tab for the cost of the observers who fishermen must bring along on a certain percentage of their trips to ensure rules are followed and fishery data is collected.

NOAA has already spent millions on the New England fishery since the council voted to implement a new management system in 2010. But with money running dry, it will need to reach deeper into its bag of tricks and find creative ways to cut through red tape, allow fishermen greater flexibility to create efficiencies with new gear types and fishing practices, and find more opportunities for them to cooperate with scientists and help bring greater clarity and accuracy to the stock assessments that will define the future of this fishery.

Today is a day of reckoning for America’s first fishery. For too long, managers—including the industry members who sit on the fishery-management council—put off doing the right thing and set catch limits that made it difficult for fish populations to rebuild. While the latest cuts will inflict substantial pain on fishermen and their communities, they represent the best chance for this fishery’s future. If we want our most historic fishery to survive its latest challenge and avoid the fate that has befallen fishermen in Newfoundland, we had all better hope it’s not already too late.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/Paul Sakuma

A customer pumps gas at a gas station in Menlo Park, California. Even though many middle-class programs are facing cuts, the big five oil companies continue to enjoy huge profits and tax breaks.

View data on Big Oil’s first-quarter profits (.xls)

Middle-class families have gotten some relief at the pump this spring due to declining gasoline prices. AAA reported that U.S. drivers paid an average of $3.55 per gallon of gasoline in April, the least expensive average for this month since 2010. Gasoline prices are now almost 35 cents lower than they were one year ago, when gasoline cost an average of $3.89 per gallon.

Despite lower prices at the pump, the biggest publicly traded oil companies in the world have raked in billions of dollars in profit over the past three months. According to their earnings reports released today, the big five oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—earned a combined $30.2 billion during the first quarter of 2013, or $331 million per day. Cumulatively, Big Oil profits were 6 percent lower than the first quarter of 2012 due to lower gasoline and oil prices, but these companies still earned a combined $229,832  every minute from January through March. This is more than what 95 percent of American households earn in an entire year.

Nearly one-third of these profits were used to repurchase companies’ stock, which only serves to pad the pockets of senior executives and the largest shareholders. The big five oil companies are also sitting on $82 billion in cash reserves, according to reports from the Securities and Exchange Commission for each company. While making these huge profits, BP and Exxon are the culprits in ongoing major oil disasters that are affecting the Gulf Coast and Arkansas.

Big Oil behaving badly again

April 20, 2013, was the third anniversary of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 oil-rig workers and gushed 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over the course of 87 days. Three years later hundreds of Gulf Coast residents are still experiencing serious health effects from this spilled oil, along with the nearly 2 million gallons of toxic chemicals dumped into the Gulf of Mexico to disperse oil during the haphazard cleanup process. There is growing evidence that the oil and dispersants are also harming sea life.

Congress has yet to pass a single law to strengthen federal oversight of offshore oil and gas production. A year ago a Center for American Progress column, “The Lasting Impact of Deepwater Horizon,” highlighted the need for Congress to raise the preposterously low $75 million limit on liability that oil companies currently face for future oil blowouts. The cleanup costs for the 2010 BP disaster rang in at more than $14 billion at the end of 2012, according to the Congressional Research Service. This demonstrates the huge financial and environmental risks that face Americans if these liability limits remain so artificially low and the companies responsible for future disasters refuse to pay for cleaning up their messes.

On land, meanwhile, fellow oil giant ExxonMobil’s most recent spill dumped 500,000 gallons of tar sands crude oil near Mayflower, Arkansas, in late March 2013. The spill forced the evacuation of two dozen homes, and a massive cleanup is currently underway. Because this tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, is classified under the Superfund law as “diluted bitumen,” this and similar kinds of oil are exempt from the 8-cents-per-barrel fee that conventional oil must pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. This fund, created under Superfund in 1980 and paid for by levying this tax on oil companies, pays for the oil-spill cleanup should a mishap occur. Exxon gets to avoid it.

This terrible oil-pipeline spill spewed tar sands oil similar to the oil that could be transported through the Keystone XL pipeline if it is approved by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. Pipeline discharges are a common event. NPR reported that, “Federal data show that on average over the past decade, nearly 3.5 million gallons of oil spilled from pipelines each year.” If Keystone XL moves forward, not only will Big Oil profit from its operation, it could eventually add to this spill tally.

Big Oil skimps on corporate taxes and receives billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies

The biggest three publicly owned U.S. oil companies—ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips—also paid relatively low federal effective tax rates in 2011. Reuters reported that their tax payments were “a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.” It estimated that ExxonMobil’s effective federal tax rate in 2011 was 13 percent, Chevron’s was 19 percent, and ConocoPhillips’s was 18 percent.

The oil and gas industry gave more than $70 million in federal campaign contributions during the 2012 cycle, with a whopping 90 percent going to Republican candidates. The big five oil companies spent nearly $50 million on lobbying Congress in 2012, or more than one-third of the entire oil and gas industry’s expenditures. A major goal of these political activities is to retain special tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, which add up to $40 billion over a decade. Despite ranking as some of the most profitable companies in the world, the big five oil companies receive $2.4 billion in tax breaks from Congress each year, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. U.S. taxpayers should no longer foot the bill for antiquated, 100-year-old fossil-fuel subsidies that, upon conception, were meant to help a then-fledgling industry grow.

Big Oil argues that it needs these tax breaks for oil exploration and development. Yet the big five oil companies produced 2 percent less oil in the first quarter of 2013, according to their recent financial statements, compared to the same time last year. These companies each have several hundred idle offshore leases that could produce oil if they were to be developed, according to an analysis for Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA). Instead, these companies leave the leases undeveloped while sitting on billions of dollars of cash reserves.

Big Oil benefits from low federal royalty rates on public lands

In addition to special tax breaks, Big Oil companies drill for oil and gas on public lands owned by all Americans while paying relatively little for what they produce from these areas. Oil companies pay a royalty for the oil and natural gas that they extract from these federal places: A law from the 1920s requires the oil and gas industry to pay “not less than” a 12.5 percent royalty on oil and gas produced from onshore public lands. This rate has not been permanently increased in nearly 100 years, despite the fact that there is nothing preventing Congress or the Obama administration from doing so.

The federal royalty for oil and gas production on public lands is much lower than what is paid to some states and private landowners for oil taken from their lands. The state of Texas, for example, assesses up to a 25 percent royalty for oil produced from its lands. North Dakota has a royalty of 18.8 percent, while Wyoming’s rate is at least 16.6 percent. Royalties for oil taken from private landowners nationwide are estimated to average 18.8 percent.

Higher royalty rates on federal public lands would ensure that Americans receive more compensation for oil companies’ use of their lands and minerals, which is all the more important in this time of fiscal uncertainty. The Department of the Interior should finalize plans to significantly raise the royalty rate for oil and gas produced on public lands.

Conclusion

The five biggest oil companies are making tens of billions of dollars in profits, while paying artificially low effective federal tax rates and low royalties for taking and producing oil and gas owned by all Americans. In addition, companies can evade payments into the oil-spill cleanup fund based on specific categorizations of different kinds of petroleum. Meanwhile, the five largest public oil companies continue to make billions of dollars in profits every quarter while receiving special tax breaks from Congress.

None of this makes sense, especially when sequestration is forcing steep automatic across-the-board cuts in college assistance, cancer research, and other middle-class programs. It’s time to ask the huge profit-making big five oil companies to pay their fair share.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress. Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant to the Energy team at the Center.

Thanks to Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Program at the Center for American Progress.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress. Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant on the Energy team at the Center.

SOURCE: AP/Greg Baker

A man cycles past cooling towers of the coal powered Fuxin Electricity Plant in Fuxin, China.

SOURCE: AP/Mark Lennihan

A front-end loader carries scraps of timber as it dismantles the storm-damaged boardwalk in Long Beach, New York, Friday, February 1, 2013. Three months after Superstorm Sandy devastated the coastal areas of New Jersey and New York, Congress finally passed a $50.5 billion bill to rebuild homes, businesses, utilities, mass transit, and other critical infrastructure.

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief.

America has begun the hard work of rebuilding our infrastructure. … We need to repair our existing infrastructure, and invest in the infrastructure of tomorrow including high-speed rail, high-tech schools, and power grids that are resilient to future extreme conditions.” — President Barack Obama, in his proposed fiscal year 2014 budget

SOURCE: AP/Mike Derer

A large tractor moves trash and garbage around on top of 1-E landfill in Kearny, New Jersey. The Kearny site is among 21 landfills in New Jersey that convert methane gas produced by decomposing trash into electricity.

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief.

The United States currently generates 390 million tons of trash per year, or 7 pounds per person per day. Municipal solid waste, or MSW, commonly known as garbage, gets picked up from homes and businesses on a weekly basis and is usually sent straight to a landfill. At the landfill, a hole is dug in the ground and then lined with a man-made liner. As trash begins to fill the hole, methane is emitted as a result of waste being broken down by anaerobic bacteria. Once the landfill is full, it is capped to limit water from seeping into it.

Although many states have the physical space for trash, it is environmentally unsustainable to take garbage and bury it in the ground at landfills, where it decomposes and releases potent greenhouse-gas pollution. What’s more, some trash has to be transported by diesel trucks or trains to landfills several hundred miles away, further exacerbating its pollution footprint. Though garbage is not something we tend to actively think about on a daily basis, specifically as it relates to climate change, the United States must begin developing policies to limit the environmental consequences that result from our generation of garbage.

There are already some efforts in place to help manage trash creation. Though America’s MSW generation has significantly increased over the past decades as a result of population growth, the country has also seen tremendous improvements in recycling and composting efforts, for example. In 1960 the United States recycled only 5 million tons of garbage, but today America is recycling and composting more than 90 million tons. This increase is largely a result of many state and local governments introducing recycling requirements as well as recycling incentives.

But there is another alternative waste management option that America has not significantly utilized but that could help stem the flow of waste, and thus pollution emissions, in our country: energy-from-waste, or EfW, facilities. These facilities provide a means for waste disposal while also generating clean electricity. EfW plants burn garbage in a controlled environment that generates electricity, which in turn is sold to utilities and then distributed to residential, commercial, and industrial consumers.

SOURCE: AP/ Charles Dharapak

President Barack Obama, accompanied by acting budget director Jeff Zients, speaks about his proposed fiscal 2014 proposed budget, April 10, 2013, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington.

President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2014 would eliminate $39 billion of special tax breaks for Big Oil companies over the next decade as part of comprehensive business tax reform. These companies earned billions of dollars in recent years due to high oil and gasoline prices and do not need additional support from taxpayers. These tax breaks emerged over the past 100 years to help the then-nascent industry develop, and they relieved the oil and gas industry of $466 billion in tax payments to the federal treasury between 1918 through 2009, according to DBL Investors. Now that the oil and gas industry is fully developed and mature, President Obama’s budget would end this century of largesse.

The five largest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—earned a combined total of $255 billion in 2011 and 2012, largely a result of higher oil prices. Meanwhile, these companies are producing less oil, have $72 billion in cash reserves, and are using one-quarter of their profits to buy back their own stock to enrich their largest shareholders. (see Table 1) Reuters reported last year that Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil—the three largest American oil companies—paid half or less of the standard corporate tax rate. President Obama’s budget recognizes that oil companies no longer need tax relief.

In contrast, the House of Representatives would continue to provide tax subsidies for one of the richest industries in the world. It passed an FY 2014 budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) that retains these existing special tax preferences and provides yet another tax break on top of them. What’s more, the House budget cuts the corporate tax rate by nearly one-third, which would provide more than $2 billion annually in additional tax relief to the five largest oil companies.

The American Petroleum Institute, or API, serves as Big Oil’s lobbying arm and is spending tens of millions of dollars on ads and lobbying to pressure Congress to retain these special tax breaks. API equates eliminating special tax breaks with tax increases, when in actuality such legislation would simply make Big Oil pay its fair share of taxes. Economists recognize that tax breaks are simply federal government spending through the tax code, which also contributes to the budget deficit.

Donald Marron, the director of the independent nonpartisan Washington research group Tax Policy Center, explains that “a great deal of government spending is hidden in the federal tax code in the form of deductions, credits, and other preferences—preferences that seem like they let taxpayers keep their own money, but are actually spending in disguise.”

Many influential conservatives also understand that tax expenditures have the same budgetary impact as direct government expenditures. Martin Feldstein, for instance, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, notes that tax expenditures are “those features of the tax code that are a substitute for direct government spending.” And in 2010 Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the current chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, observed that:

… we must admit that not all of that spending has been through increased appropriations or expanded entitlements; much of it has been through the back-door proliferation of “tax expenditures”—provisions that technically reduce someone’s tax liability, but that in reality amount to spending through the tax code.

The House-passed Ryan budget would keep existing special tax breaks and give Big Oil additional tax cuts, while also slicing vital middle-class programs, including education, science, and infrastructure. Meanwhile, President Obama’s proposal to eliminate $40 billion of special tax breaks for Big Oil as part of comprehensive business tax reform would make the tax code more fair.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress.

“A Boom With No Boundaries” explores how one of America’s 59 national parks is already being affected by the pollution, traffic, and noise associated with oil and gas drilling. And this is only the beginning of the problems, as drilling continues to ramp up on the public lands managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management around the park. This video recommends that the oil and gas industry and the Obama administration slow down and take measures to protect the national park’s resources. If they don’t, this special treasure—once the home to our greatest conservation president, Theodore Roosevelt—will be irrevocably damaged.

The story of the assault on Theodore Roosevelt National Park is only one example of how energy development and land conservation are out of balance on our public lands. Over the past four years, the Obama administration has leased two-and-a-half times more acres of public lands to oil and gas companies than it has permanently protected. It’s time for the administration to put policies that protect and conserve our public lands and national parks for future generations on equal ground with policies that promote more oil and gas drilling.

CREDITS

Produced by Andrew Satter and Jessica Goad

Director of Photography: Andrew Satter

Executive Producer: Christy Goldfuss

Narration: Winthrop Roosevelt

Additional videographry: David Swenson, Makoché Studios (www.makochevision.com)

Audio sweetening: David Swenson, Makoché Studios (www.makochevision.com)

Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University (http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/collections/roosevelt.cfm)

Graphics: Jan Diehm

Animation: Andrew Bouvé

SOURCE: AP/ Susan Walsh

Then-Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), delivers his opening remarks on Capitol Hill before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Secretary Kerry held four hearings to push for the approval of the U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea.

When President Barack Obama convenes his cabinet in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, one might be left with the impression that defenders of our oceans are rather pointedly underrepresented. The Department of Commerce, which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has lacked a secretary since John Bryson resigned last summer. Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta probably pulled double duty as Aquaman in the president’s Hall of Justice; prior to his service in the Obama administration, Secretary Panetta served as a congressman from Monterrey, California, and as head of the Pew Oceans Commission. But now he, too, has left the building, with a shout-out to his trusty sidekick, his dog Bravo.

President Obama is seeking to fill the open seat at Commerce, and to replace Jane Lubchenco, who stepped down last month as NOAA’s administrator. During this transition period, ocean advocates wondered whether domestic ocean issues would struggle even more than usual to find prominence in the West Wing. The problems facing our marine ecosystems and oceans are in serious need of solutions, and each day that passes without mention of these answers means another day of devastating blows to our waters. But a speech last week by Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that he might become the new standard bearer for ocean issues in the White House.

In his remarks, Secretary Kerry discussed a broad range of ocean issues, and the link between ocean health and greenhouse gas emissions was foremost among them. He said:

[I]t is clear that we have an enormous challenge ahead of us … energy policy that results in acidification, the bleaching of coral, the destruction of species, the change in the Arctic because of the ice melt … The entire system is interdependent, and we toy with that at our peril.

With a new blue warrior bringing ocean issues to arguably the most influential group of advisors on planet earth—or, as Kerry put it in his speech, “planet ocean”—let’s take a look at the top five ocean issues the secretary of state can use his position to influence.

Climate change

Secretary Kerry, who was a strong climate hawk as a senator, used pointed words to hammer home the critical need to take proactive steps to address the looming climate crisis. “The science is screaming at us … demanding that people in positions of public responsibility … at least understand what is happening and take steps to prevent potential disaster,” he said last week. These words echoed those that Secretary Kerry delivered in his first major foreign policy speech last month, in which he challenged Americans to “have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”

His remarks also represent one of the most prominent mentions of ocean acidification—an issue already taking a toll on Northwest fishermen and oyster farmers, and one that is slated to get much worse in the coming years. He also commented on the rapid, global-warming-induced transformation of the Arctic Ocean that is now underway.

Secretary Kerry’s awareness of and sensitivity to these issues will be vital contributions to an Obama cabinet in dire need of hawkish leadership on both climate change and ocean conservation.

Ocean and climate’s role in national security

On the same day as Secretary Kerry’s speech, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a new report predicting a link in the rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration with a marked rise in the frequency of Hurricane Katrina-magnitude storms, underscoring a point the secretary made in his remarks: Climate change and our oceans represent an issue of “both national security and economic security.”

In referencing the national security implications of climate change, Secretary Kerry is picking up where Secretary Panetta left off. In a 2012 speech hosted by the Environmental Defense Fund, the former Secretary of Defense said, “rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.” Sustained shifts in weather patterns have already been linked to global instability, as noted in multiple articles that explore the connection between drought-driven increases in food prices and the unrest that led to the Arab Spring rebellions.

A wide variety of researchers have detailed the looming security threats of climate change, including the Quadrennial Defense Review, which called it an “accelerant of instability or conflict”; a 2012 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reflecting looming crises as a result of water issues, including shortages, water quality, or floods; and the work of our colleagues at the Center for American Progress, whose report “Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict in North Africa” probes potential water- and climate-related tensions in an already precarious region.

Cultivating a deeper understanding of the link between climate change and political instability will bolster the case for domestic and international policymakers to get serious about taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and start dealing with global climate change.

Arctic management

In 2011 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped lead the Arctic Council to a landmark agreement on search-and-rescue efforts in the international waters of the rapidly thawing north. The Arctic has proven particularly vulnerable to climate change, and its sea ice is receding at unprecedented rates in the summer months: The summer of 2012 holds the dubious honor of seeing the lowest amount of sea ice in recorded history.

As ice retreats further and further from its historic range, we will see an increase in industrial activity in the region, including oil and gas exploration, shipping, tourism, and fishing. As one of only eight nations with claims to the outer continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean, the United States stands to play a leadership role in shaping the future of Arctic activities. As a new issue brief from CAP’s Kiley Kroh and Howard Marano points out, however, we are still a long way from forming an adequate understanding of the complexities of this remote region. Secretary Kerry can play a leadership role in ensuring that we safeguard the Arctic’s natural resources.

The U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea

Ratification of the U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea would help America continue to play a leadership role in the Arctic and assert its rightful jurisdiction over the emerging resources on our extended outer continental shelf. Joining the treaty would also give the United States a seat at the table in global environmental policymaking decisions, as well as in discussions that will have international-security implications such as the ongoing tensions between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Secretary Kerry held four hearings in the previous Congress and advocated tirelessly for the Senate’s approval of the treaty. Despite his efforts  Republicans stonewalled him, disregarding their usual allies such as the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other big industry and defense interests that aggressively supported the treaty’s ratification.

Former Secretaries Clinton and Panetta also advocated for America to join the 164 other countries and the European Union in ratifying the treaty and to leave behind the handful of hold-outs such as North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Secretary Kerry should continue his advocacy for ratification in his new role and should keep pressing his former colleagues in the Senate to do the same.

Pirate fishing

As a former senator from Massachusetts—one of the highest-value fishing states and home to arguably the most historic fishing ports in the nation—Secretary Kerry understands the value of healthy, sustainable fisheries to our coastal economies. While we have made great strides domestically in fishery management, pirate fishing—illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing—is a massive international problem estimated to cost honest fishermen between $10 billion and $23 billion annually. It also reduces the sustainability of fisheries at home and abroad by undermining international conservation agreements and by damaging the marine ecosystems we depend on for seafood.

In 2011 then-NOAA Administrator Lubchenco and her European counterpart Maria Damanaki announced a joint effort to combat pirate fishing, committing the two governments to “work together to adopt the most effective tools to combat illegal fishing.” Secretary Kerry touted the agreement when it was signed, calling it a “gut punch to those who break the rules.” His efforts to continue the work done by Administrator Lubchenco and Damanaki will pay dividends for America’s fishermen and seafood consumers alike.

Conclusion

Secretary Kerry’s striking remarks last week certainly raised expectations for additional pro-oceans leadership from the State Department and the rest of the Obama administration. The litany of challenges facing the world’s oceans, however, affords us very little time to wait. These issues require immediate, decisive, and politically courageous decisions, and ocean stakeholders are desperate for a champion willing to back up words with action. Here’s to hoping Secretary Kerry is up for the job.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy and Shiva Polefka is an Ocean Research Associate at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, June 18, 2012. Rep. Markey recently spoke on the importance of adequate science funding.

In September 2013 the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which regulates America’s fisheries, will be up for reauthorization for the first time since it was previously amended in 2006. The process that led to the most recent reauthorization took a contentious and laborious seven years of debate in Congress and led to dramatic changes in the law. Perhaps the most ambitious amendment was the addition of a requirement for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to set annual catch limits—caps on how much fishermen can catch of each of the fish stocks that NOAA manages.

Earlier this month the House Committee on Natural Resources formally kicked off the Magnuson reauthorization festivities with a hearing that, according to Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA), was “intended to highlight issues that could provide the basis for future hearings.” A hearing about future hearings: government efficiency at its finest.

Most remarkable about this particular bit of political theater was that peeling back the veneer of partisanship that rules House proceedings these days revealed an almost unanimous agreement that, again in the words of Rep. Hastings, “many of the current challenges may not be due to the Act itself, but rather with its implementation.”

This realization tracks well with a Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, report issued earlier this month. The NRDC found that since the Magnuson-Stevens Act was amended in 1996 to require overfished stocks to be rebuilt within 10 years, nearly two-thirds of all once-overfished stocks have met their target numbers. As a result, revenues from U.S. commercial fishing have increased by 54 percent since 1996 when adjusted for inflation, with fishermen receiving more than half a billion dollars in additional revenue annually.

While this accomplishment is remarkable, it doesn’t extend to all fisheries or all regions of the country. The rising tide of improved fishery management in the United States has not lifted all boats. New England, for example, is still home to 11 overfished stocks—more than twice as many as any other region, according to NOAA’s 2011 “Status of Stocks” report to Congress. And each region of the country has at least one stock of fish on the overfished list.

So if you’re a charter-boat captain trying to get red snapper for your customers in the Gulf of Mexico—where the recreational season lasted just 40 days in 2012—or if you’re a groundfisherman in New England facing 77 percent cuts to your quota of Gulf of Maine cod, NRDC’s big-picture statistics don’t do a whole lot for your bottom line.

While virtually everyone who spoke at this month’s House hearing agreed that the Magnuson-Stevens Act should remain in place and that the lingering difficulties were due to implementation and not the legislation itself, the question of how to resolve these problems raised a far more contentious debate.

There was general consensus that NOAA simply hasn’t been spending enough money on stock assessments to do the job that is required. In normal times, such an obvious point of agreement would lead to a clear solution. But in today’s poisonous partisan atmosphere, the debate over this point became predictably divisive. Most Republicans trumpeted government inefficiency, suggesting that NOAA is misusing its funds, while most Democrats felt that more money is necessary to get the job done right.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) was particularly vociferous in taking the former side. He charged NOAA with using its funding “inefficiently” to research climate change and at one point pontificated that the cost of one “climate satellite” was $750 million. Presumably, he was referring to NOAA’s environmental-monitoring satellites that—in addition to collecting climate data—also happen to be fundamental weather-forecasting tools. Without them, hurricane tracking, for example, could lose as much as 50 percent of its accuracy—a degradation with which Rep. Fleming’s downstate neighbors might have more than a passing concern.

Perhaps the broader point that Rep. Fleming missed in pointing his finger at the agency is that Congress prohibits NOAA from dipping into its satellite funding to cover the cost of fisheries research. That’s called “misuse of funds,” and Congress gets very angry when agencies tamper with its carefully crafted spending plans. In fact, NOAA found itself in hot water last year when Congress found that the agency “reprogrammed” $36 million from one National Weather Service account to pay employees in another part of the Weather Service. So shifting funding from the satellite program to the fisheries account seems as if it would be a shady solution at best.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) nailed the problem during the hearing. “Inadequate funding for science,” he opined, “makes poor management a self-fulfilling prophecy.” His point is that ill-funded science produces uncertain data. The less certain the data, the higher the buffer needs to be between what scientists think the right number of fish to catch should be and how much regulators can allow fishermen to catch. Simply put, more certainty means a better chance at more fish.

The trouble is, stock assessments are a complicated business, and the most complex assessments are expensive. Each year the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires NOAA to set annual catch limits on 203 fish stocks. To set an accurate catch limit, the agency relies on its most recent stock assessment, but the agency’s FY 2012 budget for fishery-stock assessments was $64 million—far short of what would be required to carry out new assessments on every stock or even the most commercially important stocks. Until Congress allocates additional funding for stock assessments, fishermen will suffer.

Sound management requires sound science, and sound science costs money. But as the NRDC report found, sound management based on sound science also makes money—a lot of it, too, and it ends up in the hands of fishermen.

So when it comes to fisheries management, House Republicans have a choice. They can recognize the reality that federal dollars spent for the good of hard-working Americans are a real investment in our society, or they can stop insisting that their fishermen are being harmed by inadequate science. When you’re the guys controlling the bag of money, you don’t get to complain that there isn’t enough being spent.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/U.S. Coast Guard

This image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard shows the Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig Kulluk aground off a small island near Kodiak Island, Wednesday, January 2, 2013.

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief.

2012 was supposed to be a banner year for Royal Dutch Shell, as the company planned to embark on the first Arctic offshore exploratory drilling activity in decades and set itself up to make billions of dollars prospecting for oil in the far-flung region off Alaska’s North Slope. But that’s not how things turned out.

Instead, beginning with efforts to prepare for operations, the company experienced one setback after another. Shell struggled to meet the government’s safety requirements for its oil spill response equipment, experiencing multiple technical failures and permit violations. Mother Nature weighed in and kept the drilling sites choked with sea ice. Yet despite these setbacks and others, Shell received permits from the federal government in August to begin preparatory drilling, albeit not deep enough to actually strike oil in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

The coup de grace came on New Year’s Eve when Shell’s Kulluk rig ran aground near Kodiak, Alaska—a fiasco that required a 500-plus person response effort, led by the Coast Guard, working for more than a week in dangerous conditions to secure the rig. This final calamity prompted the Obama administration to launch a high-level 60-day review of Shell’s entire Arctic drilling program, and after assessing its equipment and determining that both Arctic drilling rigs were too damaged to operate in 2012, caused Shell to announce on February 27 that it would not seek to drill in the remote and challenging region in 2013.

In presenting the results of the Department of the Interior’s review on March 14, outgoing Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar admitted, “The government still has a lot to learn. The Arctic is a very difficult environment to operate in. … Shell is one of the most resource-capable companies in the world (and) they encountered a whole host of problems in trying to operate up there.” The review concluded that Shell would have to develop a “comprehensive plan” for its operations before it would be allowed to move forward. This begs the question: What exactly did the permit process consist of before all these mishaps?

Shell spent seven years and an estimated $5 billion getting ready for its chance to tap the reserves of fossil fuels thought to be stashed beneath the Arctic seabed, and the result was irrefutably a failure. Neither the oil and gas industry nor its regulators are adequately prepared for Arctic offshore drilling operations.

Furthermore, climate change is already wreaking havoc in the region, melting it at an alarming rate and setting off a domino effect that will ripple through the entire global system. The trends so plainly on display in the Arctic are merely a preview of what awaits the rest of the planet if serious action isn’t taken soon to aggressively curb our carbon emissions. If we allow corporate interests to tap the reserves of additional fossil fuels that have been exposed by the rapid onset of global climate change, we’re missing the clear message about the future of our environment on a planetary scale. Slowing the devastating steamroll of climate change requires slashing the amount of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, not opening up vast new sources of carbon.

In President Barack Obama’s most recent State of the Union address, he reiterated his commitment to addressing the urgency of climate change for the sake of future generations. The president’s will, however, is matched by the utter intransigence of Congress and what has been called the most antienvironmental House of Representatives in history. Looking forward, the Obama administration will face some big decisions early on in the second term: the fate of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, regulating pollution from existing coal-fired power plants, and whether or not to move forward with offshore drilling in the fragile Arctic.

America’s Arctic outer continental shelf will be undisturbed by drilling rigs in 2013, but the battle over oil and gas exploration in its frigid waters is far from over. Shell made clear that it sees this latest announcement to pause operations as a hiatus, not a cancellation of its plans to tap the Arctic Ocean’s reserves. Marvin Odum, Shell’s director of Upstream Americas, said, “Our decision to pause in 2013 will give us time to ensure the readiness of all our equipment and people following the drilling season in 2012.”

The Obama administration will also need to decide on ConocoPhillips’ applications to begin exploratory drilling in 2014. The company said its plans remain on track and it will submit remaining information to the Department of the Interior this spring, despite Shell’s problem-filled year.

As CAP’s John Podesta and Carol Browner articulated in a recent Bloomberg op-ed, Shell’s string of mishaps and failures provide overwhelming evidence that the oil and gas industry is not prepared for the enormous challenge and incalculable risk that accompanies any operations in the Arctic. In light of that reality, they wrote, “The Obama administration shouldn’t issue any new permits to Shell this year and should suspend all action on other companies’ applications to drill in this remote and unpredictable region.”

Below we examine in further detail the risks and potential consequences of offshore drilling in the Arctic region.

The multiple risks of Arctic offshore drilling

Regardless of the company and its individual preparations, there are multiple risks inherent in industrializing one of the few remaining unspoiled corners of the planet.

Infrastructure

The area around planned drilling sites in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas lacks even the basic infrastructure necessary to mount a large-scale response to an oil spill or other major incident—such as roads, major airports, ports, hospitals, and adequate facilities to house and feed responders. The nearest permanent Coast Guard facility is more than 1,000 miles away in Kodiak, Alaska, and the United States currently operates just one functional icebreaking vessel, used mainly for scientific missions.

Not only does the Arctic have inadequate infrastructure to deal with an oil spill, but also response technologies in such extreme environmental conditions remain untested and unproven. A 2012 independent report by the Government Accountability Office identified a slew of environmental, logistical, and technical challenges associated with Arctic offshore drilling and concluded that Shell’s “dedicated capabilities do not completely mitigate some of the environmental and logistical risks associated with the remoteness and environment of the region.”

Weather

Extreme and unpredictable weather conditions complicate transportation, preparedness, operations, and cleanup of spilled oil to an even greater degree. As the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling stated in its January 2011 final report:

The Alaskan Arctic is characterized by extreme cold, extended seasons of darkness, hurricane-strength storms, and pervasive fog—all affecting access and working conditions. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are covered by varying forms of ice for eight to nine months a year. These conditions limit exploratory drilling and many other activities to the summer months. The icy conditions during the rest of the year pose severe challenges for oil and gas operations and scientific research. And oil spill response efforts are complicated year-round by the remote location and the presence of ice, at all phases of exploration and possible production.

Scientific knowledge

Largely untouched by industrial activity, much of the Arctic region remains a mystery. The area is home to numerous indigenous communities that have subsisted for centuries in the harshest surroundings our planet has to offer. It also serves as a habitat for some of the most rare and fragile species on the planet. Any drilling activity in the region would be operating without sufficient scientific knowledge to determine the potential effects of operations on the already fragile ecosystem. A 2010 report released by the U.S. Geological Survey identified major gaps in Arctic science and research, emphasizing that “significant questions” remain regarding the scientific and technical information needed to adequately prepare for drilling in the challenging Arctic environment. An independent review commissioned by the Pew Environment Group and Ocean Conservancy in 2011 took the Geological Survey analysis a step further, recommending concrete next steps—such as developing a comprehensive research and monitoring plan and setting aside significant areas for protection—that should be taken before moving forward with potentially damaging industrial activity in the region.

Responding to these risks

The inaccessibility and incomparably harsh weather conditions add a major liability to potential operations, and the private sector has taken notice. Insurance giant Lloyd’s of London issued a report warning companies that responding to an oil spill in a region “highly sensitive to damage” would present “multiple obstacles, which together constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk.” German bank WestLB also announced last year that it would refuse financing to any offshore oil and gas drilling in the region because “the risks and cost are simply too high.” And Total S.A., the fifth-largest oil and gas company in the world, announced that it wouldn’t seek to drill in the Arctic because an accident there would be a “disaster.”

Despite these concerns, and after multiple delays due to the erratic weather and failure to receive Coast Guard certification of its oil spill response barge, Shell received approval from the Department of the Interior to drill two preparatory wells in the Arctic Ocean last summer. Though the two “top holes” were completed without incident, the operations surrounding Shell’s Arctic program were nothing short of a disaster. The company twice lost control of its Arctic drilling rigs, had its oil spill response equipment “crushed like a beer can” in tests in Puget Sound, and was cited for multiple safety and environmental violations—now the subject of an investigation that the Coast Guard handed over to the Department of Justice to assess potential civil or criminal charges.

After watching Shell’s string of mishaps from the sidelines, Norway-based oil and gas company Statoil said two weeks ago that it would consider walking away from its Arctic offshore leases if exploration proves too risky and expensive. Tim Dodson, Statoil’s executive vice president of global exploration, acknowledged the numerous challenges associated with Arctic offshore drilling and reiterated his company’s cautious approach to exploration in the region, saying, “We’ve [said] we wouldn’t drill before 2015. Whether that means we drill in 2015, or maybe not until 2016 or whether we’d drill at all, I think maybe the jury’s still a little bit out on that.”

Shell’s multiple failures and the concern expressed by fellow corporations illustrate how the current level of risk in Arctic offshore drilling outweighs the potential reward. The amount of time and money Shell has invested so far is just a down payment on the massive investment that would be required to build the infrastructure necessary to get the oil to market and turn a profit on estimated reserves. This has led analysts to wonder whether the current boom in production of natural gas and its subsequent effect on energy prices will render Arctic offshore prospects uneconomic in the near future. Nick Butler, former group vice president of strategy and policy development at BP, wrote in the Financial Times last September that regardless of Shell’s investment, “No amount of technical excellence can transform the economics of a project which is at the outer limit of commercial viability.” If Shell were to abandon its Arctic project, Butler continues, it “would not be an admission of technical failure, nor an act of submission to the environmentalists. It would be a statement of commercial common sense.”

The climate factor

The prospect of industrializing the fragile Arctic becomes even riskier when examined in the context of climate change. The Arctic region is feeling the devastating effects of climate change more than anywhere else on the planet, undergoing an alarming transformation as it warms at about twice the rate of the rest of the globe. The rapid rate of change means our baseline of scientific knowledge about the region is constantly shifting, further complicating the ability to make informed decisions regarding industrial activity in the region, including oil and gas development, fishing, shipping, and tourism.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2012 Arctic Report Card documented a very grim year for the region and found “strong evidence of widespread, sustained change driving Arctic environmental system into new state,” including record-low sea ice extent, record ice sheet surface melting in Greenland, record-high permafrost temperature, and record-low snow extent.

Moreover, the region’s rapid loss of snow and ice has a snowball effect that speeds melting: The decrease in sea ice cover, snow cover, glaciers, and Greenland ice sheet means that the bright, white surfaces that reflect summer sunlight are being replaced by darker surfaces—ocean and land—that absorb sunlight. These conditions increase the capacity to store heat within the Arctic system, which induces more melting—a positive feedback.

Another feedback response exists in the thawing tundra—melting permafrost also accelerates warming by releasing a frozen cache of carbon into the atmosphere that will likely add 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit to 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit to total global warming by 2100.34 According to a November 2012 United Nations Environment Programme report, the frozen organic matter that exists in permafrost contains almost twice as much carbon than is currently present in the atmosphere. If that organic material were to thaw, then it would subsequently decay, releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere and amplifying the warming already underway.

Black carbon, a component of fine particle pollution that is emitted through a variety of combustion processes, has also been identified as a significant factor contributing to observed and projected rates of Arctic climate change. As an aerosol, black carbon absorbs incoming solar radiation, heating the atmosphere and contributing to overall global and Arctic warming. When deposited onto Arctic ice and snow, it darkens the surface, increasing the absorption of radiation. While countries in close proximity to the Arctic have used better controls on air pollution to reduce black carbon emissions, increased industrial activity in the Arctic could reverse this trend.

Lastly, the current rate of carbon dioxide emissions from human activity promises—in addition to its effect on climate—to drastically change the biological and chemical processes that occur in our oceans. Confirming this trend, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report concluded that if carbon dioxide emissions are not constrained, we can expect the average acidity of our oceans to increase by 100 percent to 150 percent by 2100.

The Arctic is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification due to its cooler water and low salinity. Cooler water allows for carbon dioxide to be dissolved more quickly into the Arctic Ocean, while lower salinity reduces the ability of the ocean to buffer against acidification. Because of these factors, if current rates of carbon dioxide emissions are left unconstrained, the acidity of the Arctic Ocean will rise sharply.

Accelerating the feedback loop

Ironically, the dramatic changes experienced throughout the Arctic—many of which are the result of man-made climate change—are unlocking massive fossil-fuel reserves which, when burned, would only accelerate the destructive cycle of unchecked emissions and warming.

The 2009 Copenhagen Accord, supported by the United States and more than 100 other nations, formally recognized that global warming must be held below 2 degrees Celsius, requiring “deep cuts in carbon emissions” in order to do so. Recent studies, however, show that the current global rate of emissions has us on a trajectory to blow past that threshold, exposing humanity to the most calamitous consequences of climate change. A World Bank report released late last year, for example, carried the dire warning that we’re on track for a 4 degrees Celsius warmer world by as soon as 2060—a catastrophic scenario “marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.”

As climate activist Bill McKibben wrote in a must-read Rolling Stone piece last year, to put this level of warming in context:

So far, we’ve raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.)

The November iteration of the International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Outlook report made headlines for projecting that the United States could become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020. The much bigger story, however, was their warning that more than two-thirds of the world’s proven fossil-fuel reserves need to still be in the ground in 2050 in order to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and prevent catastrophic climate change.

The Arctic region is believed to contain 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its natural gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Developing these reserves—and unlocking the massive “carbon bomb” they represent—is an irrational and dangerous response to the reality of global climate change. Not only does it put the remote and undeveloped region at risk for a potentially devastating oil spill, but it feeds the positive feedback loop of carbon emissions and climate destruction.

In a recent Ecofys report ranking the planned fossil fuel projects that would be most dangerous for the climate, oil and gas drilling in the broader Arctic region came in at number three, with the potential to add more than 31 billion metric tons of additional CO2 into the atmosphere by 2050. In the Alaskan Arctic alone, U.S. Geological Survey estimates of the oil and gas recoverable there equate to nearly 16 billion metric tons of CO2 when burned—approximately double China’s entire 2009 greenhouse gas emissions.

And the potential climate impacts aren’t limited to just oil and gas consumption. A recent report from the Clean Air Task Force found that substantial climate impacts could come from the production stage as well, unless companies take meaningful steps to minimize them. Otherwise, methane and black carbon will likely be emitted in significant amounts if drilling in the Arctic proves as lucrative as many oil companies hope it will be.

In order to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change, enormous fossil-fuel reserves will need to remain in the ground untouched. Quite simply, serious climate action is incompatible with expanding fossil-fuel production.

Why the melting Arctic matters

The ramifications of the melting Arctic aren’t contained in that faraway part of the world. Instead, the devastating impact of climate change in the Arctic has tremendous ripple effects throughout the entire global system. As Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in President Obama’s first term, succinctly put it, “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.”

The unprecedented melting of the Greenland ice sheet, for example, has extremely serious implications for global sea-level rise. The summer melt from Greenland in 2012 alone added a millimeter to global sea level. As journalist Chris Mooney explains, “Not only is that millimeter felt around the globe, but it is felt in specific places. For instance, it rode atop the wall of water that Superstorm Sandy pushed inland at New York and New Jersey.” If Greenland continues its rapid melting, it could wreak havoc on coastal communities around the globe in the form of coastal flooding and storm surges.

What’s more, the “Arctic amplification” explained above not only accelerates warming within the region, but it may also be increasing the frequency of extreme weather events in the United States. A recent report led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that enhanced warming of the Arctic alters the jet stream, and these shifts in winds not only affect weather patterns throughout the Arctic, but are also thought to influence weather in Greenland, the United States, and Western Europe. The researchers stated that “With more solar energy going into the Arctic Ocean because of lost ice, there is reason to expect more extreme weather events, such as heavy snowfall, heat waves, and flooding in North America and Europe.”

New analysis by researchers from Cornell University and Rutgers University confirms this theory, finding the confluence of events that created the unprecedented superstorm Sandy may not have been a freak occurrence, but one fueled by the record-breaking Arctic sea ice melt. According to a summary of the research:

… the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice—attributed to greenhouse warming—appears to enhance Northern Hemisphere jet stream meandering, intensify Arctic air mass invasions toward middle latitudes, and increase the frequency of atmospheric blocking events like the one that steered Hurricane Sandy west into the densely populated New York City area.

The combination of increased sea levels and altered weather patterns as a result of the rapid melting of the Arctic carries severe consequences for densely populated areas, including our own backyard. As top NASA climatologist James Hansen bluntly explained, “If the world allows a substantial fraction of the Greenland ice sheet to disintegrate, all hell breaks loose for eastern North America and Europe.”

Conclusion

Climate change is permanently altering the Arctic region, and the results are startling. As ecosystems unravel, fragile species such as polar bears are struggling to survive, shorelines are eroding, waters are becoming increasingly acidic, snow and ice are vanishing at an alarming rate, and storms are more severe and unpredictable than ever before.

At the heart of the problem, however, lies human activity—our addiction to fossil fuels. As Jason Box, Greenland expert at the Byrd Polar Research Center, explains, “Those who claim it’s all cycles just don’t understand that humans are driving the cycle right now, and for the foreseeable future.”

Rather than respond to this crisis with serious policies to significantly and swiftly reduce our carbon emissions, governments with jurisdiction over the Arctic have taken the reckless approach of moving forward with plans to exploit the newly accessible fossil fuels and accelerate the destruction. Decisions regarding whether to allow potentially destructive industrial activity, such as oil and gas development, in this fragile environment cannot be examined independently from the climate crisis they will perpetuate.

Taking serious action to curb the devastating effects of climate change means we must aggressively deploy clean technologies, internalize the actual price of pollution by putting a price on carbon, and make major investments in climate resiliency. The time for piecemeal solutions has passed and there is no room in the equation for major expansions in fossil-fuel production.

Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director for Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress. Howard Marano is an intern with the Energy and Environment team at the Center. Thanks to Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy, and Shiva Polefka, Research Associate, for their contributions.

SOURCE: AP/Mary Ann Chastain

Richard Hucks, winterization project manager for South Carolina Electric & Gas Company, gets help from Demetrius Rumph, left, as they install energy-efficient windows in the home of Melba Jeffcoat in West Columbia, South Carolina.

The recently released Senate and House budget resolutions for fiscal year 2014 reflect diametrically opposed visions of American’s energy and climate futures. The Senate budget invests in clean energy technologies that reduce carbon pollution responsible for climate change. The House budget, on the other hand, ignores climate change and defunds clean energy technologies.

The proposed Senate budget resolution—“Foundation for Growth: Restoring the Promise of American Opportunity,” authored by Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA)—would boost the United States into the 21st century by investing in the clean energy industry, which will be a $1.9 trillion market from 2012 through 2018. In addition, the Senate resolution would attack the carbon pollution that is responsible for climate change.

Michael Linden, Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress, noted that Sen. Murray’s overall budget “would promote immediate job creation, lay the foundations for future broad-based growth, and responsibly pursue deficit reduction.” The Murray budget’s funding proposals would also help address the fundamental challenges of clean energy development and slow climate change.

Meanwhile, the House budget resolution—“The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible, Balanced Budget,” written by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI)—would continue investment in the dirty fossil fuels of the past while disinvesting in clean energy. And it ignores the looming disruptive and expensive threat of climate change.

Reducing oil dependence and carbon pollution from transportation

Traffic congestion in the United States, partly due to damaged roads and inadequate access to public transit, wastes 2.9 billion gallons of gasoline annually, or nearly 196,000 barrels of oil per day, according to the latest Urban Mobility Report published by the Texas A&M University Transportation Institute. The study also estimated that “additional carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions attributed to traffic congestion: 56 billion pounds—about 380 pounds per auto commuter.”

Sen. Murray’s budget would eliminate some of this oil waste and carbon pollution by investing $50 billion in “repairing our nation’s highest priority deteriorating transportation infrastructure … [including] fixing crumbling roads, bridges … [and] updating our mass transit.” Her budget would also provide “$10 billion to create an infrastructure bank that will leverage investment from the private sector” for additional road and transit projects.

Conversely, the Ryan budget would increase oil use and carbon pollution by slashing investments in transportation below current levels.

Fighting climate change and investing in clean energy technology

The Congressional Progressive Caucus wrote its own pro-growth budget, which includes a tax on carbon pollution to generate revenue while cutting pollution. Although the Senate budget resolution does not include this bold but politically challenging proposal, the Senate budget would reduce some carbon pollution by investing heavily in the research, development, and deployment of no- and low-pollution clean energy technologies. The Senate resolution would also “fund programs that make homes and offices more energy efficient,” which would achieve some cost-effective pollution reductions.

The Ryan budget ignores the looming threat of climate change, however, attacks the Obama administration for enforcement of the Clean Air Act as mandated by the Supreme Court. Rep. Ryan’s budget could actually increase climate change pollution by eliminating investments in “applied and commercial research and development projects,” which could develop or nurture emerging clean energy technologies that could replace dirty, outdated high-carbon pollution technologies. This would in turn harm American competitiveness in the burgeoning worldwide clean energy market.

Rep. Ryan claims that his budget “will restore fairness” in energy investments after President Barack Obama boosted new, clean energy technologies. But this ignores the fact that the playing field has been heavily tilted in favor of investments in oil-and-gas production over the past 100 years. A DBL Investors analysis, “What Would Jefferson Do?”, determined that the oil-and-gas industry received $442 billion in tax breaks and subsidies over the past 90 years, while renewable energy received only $5.6 billion over the past 15 years. This amounts to $80 invested in oil and gas production for every $1 invested in renewable electricity.

In addition, the Ryan budget would increase carbon pollution by approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which would facilitate the production of millions of barrels of tar sands oil, which yields up to 80 percent more carbon pollution during its production—well to tank—than conventional oil. Keystone won’t relieve unemployment—it would create only 35 permanent jobs. And The New York Times notes that the Canadian tar sands oil would travel via pipeline “to refineries on the Gulf Coast. From there, most of the fuel would be sent abroad.”

Building community resilience to climate-related extreme weather

CAP’s recent analysis titled “Going to Extremes” measured the human and economic toll from climate-related extreme weather in 2011 and 2012. Based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, CAP calculated that the United States experienced 25 storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires over those two years that each caused at least $1 billion in damage, with a total price tag of up to $188 billion—and 1,107 fatalities.

The Murray budget addresses the growing threat from the effects of unchecked climate change by “robustly funding activities that will help us accurately predict weather patterns and extreme weather events,” and “investing in federal resiliency activities that will help communities across the country prepare for extreme weather events.”

In addition, the Murray budget would invest in safe drinking water and sewage treatment infrastructure, which would improve the resilience of facilities that perform these two vital functions to floods, storms, drought, and other severe weather events. The budget would also invest in our essential electricity infrastructure “to increase redundancy and resiliency in the system.”

The revenue to help communities become more resilient from extreme weather generally comes from the domestic discretionary budget. Yet the House Democratic Budget Committee reports that under the Ryan budget, “nondefense discretionary spending … is cut by more than twice as much as it would be cut if the sequester went into effect and stayed in effect for ten years.”

Such huge cuts would significantly reduce investments in infrastructure rehabilitation and repair, making communities vulnerable to more severe and/or frequent floods, storms, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires linked to climate change.

Ending corporate tax loopholes

The Murray budget does not explicitly require the elimination of billions of dollars in special tax breaks for Big Oil companies. But it does call for ending loopholes for “corporations who need them the least” and “companies reporting record-breaking profits.” This is an implicit recommendation to the Senate Finance Committee, because the five largest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—made a combined profit of $255 billion in 2011 and 2012. Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and BP were the second-, third-, fourth-, and seventh-most profitable corporations in the world in 2012, respectively, according to Fortune magazine.

As with his past budgets, however, Rep. Ryan’s FY 2014 budget appears to keep a decade’s worth of tax breaks worth $40 billion for the oil-and-gas industry. Even more astounding, the budget would give the five largest oil companies an additional multibillion-dollar tax cut by slashing the corporate income tax rate by one-third.

Protecting vital lands owned by all Americans

The Senate budget would continue critical investments to protect our national parks, monuments, and other special places. It increases funds for land-management agencies to fight wildfires, restore forests, and keep national parks open. Right now, sequester cuts have forced a number of national parks such as Yellowstone to open later and cut the number of staff due. The Senate budget also fully funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses receipts from offshore drilling to safeguard new public lands that deserve protection.

The Ryan budget, however, would slash funding for the protection of natural resources and “sell millions of acres of unneeded federal land.” This latter provision in the Ryan budget essentially assumes the passage of the Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act, H.R. 1126, sponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) in the previous Congress. This radical bill would force the federal government to sell 3.3 million acres of public lands to private companies in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. These places support multiple uses, including hunting, fishing, and recreation.

Conclusion

The Senate and House budget proposals have many differences—particularly in their energy plans. Sen. Murray’s budget would reduce our nation’s oil dependence while investing in the clean energy technologies of the future, all of which will create jobs. Rep. Ryan’s budget, however, would increase our nation’s oil dependence while ceding the world clean energy market to China, Germany, and other competitors. And his plan would cost American jobs, too. There is only one choice that enhances our future.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress. The author would like to thank Richard Caperton, Managing Director of Energy, and Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Public Lands Project, both at the Center.

CAP Senior Fellow Daniel J. Weiss testifies before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. Read the full testimony (CAP Action)

Chairman Lamborn, Ranking Member Holt, and members of the subcommittee, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today on “America’s Onshore Energy Resources: Creating Jobs, Securing America, and Lowering Prices.”

Wind, solar, geothermal, efficiency, and other forms of clean energy creates jobs—three times more per dollar of investment compared to oil and gas. These sources are secure—the wind and sun aren’t subject to human disruption. Energy efficiency saves families and businesses money. And renewable fuels are free and shielded from price spikes that occur when fossil-fuel prices rise.

Domestic oil and natural gas are valuable and important commodities. But their production creates fewer jobs compared to renewables. They heavily contribute to climate change, which Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III recently said will “cripple the security environment.” They are vulnerable to sudden price volatility, like the high oil and gasoline prices of this winter. And producing more oil won’t lower gasoline prices.

It is imperative that we continue to invest in energy efficiency and renewable power for jobs, security, and family budgets.

CAP Senior Fellow Daniel J. Weiss testifies before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. Read the full testimony (CAP Action)

SOURCE: AP/Carolyn Kaster

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) speaks about the 2014 budget resolution, Tuesday, March 12, 2013, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington.

What do you call a future of dangerous pollution, catastrophic extreme weather events, giveaways to Big Oil companies, and even greater reliance on fossil fuels? If you’re House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), you call it “The Path to Prosperity.”

Not coincidentally, that’s the name of the fiscal year 2014 budget plan Rep. Ryan released yesterday. It contains so many false or misleading attacks on clean energy that you could be forgiven for thinking that some of it just sounds, well—ridiculous. He decries support for so-called special interests; he claims that there have been billions of dollars in failed loans; and he asserts that energy prices are being raised arbitrarily.

His proposal makes clean energy sound terrible. Fortunately, however, none of it is true. The reality is that clean energy is the real “path to prosperity,” and the Ryan plan would take us down exactly the wrong road.

While we shouldn’t hold out much hope that Rep. Ryan will ever change his tune on clean energy, it’s important to know just how wrong he is. There are three key facts about clean energy that he chooses to simply ignore, which leads to the terrible policy recommendations in his budget.

Fact No. 1: Americans of all stripes support clean energy, not fossil fuels

The Ryan budget proposal makes it sound like no one in America besides the Obama administration supports clean energy. But that is simply not the case. In a poll of four swing states—Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, and Virginia—taken after the November 2012 election, more than 70 percent of voters supported continued government investments in clean energy.

Americans support these investments because they know that these are the clean, renewable energy sources of the future. That’s why the government needs to invest in these emerging technologies now as opposed to continuing to subsidize the fossil fuels of the past.

Rep. Ryan’s budget would spend more on dirty fossil fuels than on clean efficiency and renewable power. There’s no reason for the government to be spending anything at all on mature fossil-fuel technologies. How can Rep. Ryan ignore the century’s worth of tax breaks for fossil-fuel companies, which dwarf the recent investments in clean energy? In fact, according to a report by DBL Investors, the oil-and-gas industry received almost 100 times as much federal support as renewables between 1918 and 2009.

While Rep. Ryan writes that “[the Obama administration] pours money into its favored industries,” the fact is that the administration is doing exactly what the American public wants it to do: supporting a transition to a clean energy future by investing in emerging technologies.

Fact No. 2: Clean energy investments are sound investments

Fortunately, investments in clean energy are good sound investments for the government to make.

Much of the Ryan budget is dedicated to slandering companies that received loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. According to Rep. Ryan, “Many of the administration’s loan-guarantee projects have failed.” The fact, though, is that the overwhelming majority of loan-guarantee recipients are thriving and will pay back the government with interest. Just last week, for example, electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla reported that it will pay back its government loan a full five years ahead of schedule.

In fact, the entire loan-guarantee program for advanced energy technologies is healthy. Just last year, Herb Allison, the national finance chair of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) 2000 presidential campaign, conducted an analysis of the entire program’s portfolio and concluded that it will cost taxpayers $2 billion less than initially expected.

Far worse than misrepresenting the fiscal health of the clean energy loan-guarantee program, however, Rep. Ryan’s budget plan impugns the fitness of specific successful companies. As a case in point, Rep. Ryan claims, “Beyond Solyndra, the latest ill-fated ventures include a $737 million loan guarantee to Solar Reserve for a 110-megawatt solar tower on federal land in Nevada and a $337 million guarantee for Mesquite Solar 1 to develop a 150-megawatt solar plan in Arizona.”

The problem, of course, is that there’s nothing “ill-fated” about either of these projects. The Mesquite plant is almost completed and will sell power to a utility under a 20-year contract. Solar Reserve’s construction is proceeding as scheduled and is on track to pay back its loan.

Despite undisputable evidence of success, Rep. Ryan proposes to defund the loan-guarantee programs. Not only is this a bad idea, but the idea was already included in the “No More Solyndras Act,” which Congress failed to pass last year. I guess if Rep. Ryan thinks that proposing the same basic failed budget for three years in a row is okay, his reissuing of a recycled bad recommendation on the loan-guarantee program shouldn’t come as a surprise either.

Fact No. 3: We need to reduce pollution

The worst climate-related extreme-weather events have cost Americans $188 billion in the past two years alone. These devastating hurricanes and droughts were made worse by greenhouse gas pollution, which mostly comes from burning fossil fuels. One has to wonder: Does Rep. Ryan think we should do anything to reduce this pollution? It certainly doesn’t appear so. Instead, his budget wrongly assumes that any attempt to make Americans healthier and safer is an arbitrary effort to ration and tax certain sources of energy. The fact is that we need to reduce carbon pollution, and the Obama administration’s efforts to do so are welcomed by the public.

Frankly, Rep. Ryan’s pejorative descriptions of actions to fight climate change are more than tiresome. He says that a market-based system that would cost-effectively reduce carbon pollution is “an elaborate bureaucratic structure for taxing and rationing conventional energy sources.”  Actually, cap and trade—first employed by President Ronald Reagan—is a cost-effective system to cut pollution at a relatively low price, and includes plenty of support for conventional energy sources as long as they reduce their pollution. Not one to let facts get in the way, though, Rep. Ryan describes the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to reduce pollution as “unilateral,” even though such reductions are required under the Clean Air Act as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Clearly, the administration is simply enforcing existing law.

His attack on the EPA is yet another area where Rep. Ryan is out of touch with public sentiment.  Multiple polls have found that the public supports the EPA taking action to reduce carbon pollution. What’s more, the EPA received more than 3 million comments last year urging that it set carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants.

Rep. Ryan’s budget also takes the unprecedented step of approving the Keystone XL pipeline, even though its economic and environmental review is incomplete. He justifies this move by wildly inflating the number of jobs the project would create. In fact, the State Department’s Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement found that the Keystone project would create 35 (that’s right—thirty-five) permanent jobs and 3,500 temporary ones. Meanwhile, the pipeline would facilitate an explosion in tar sands oil production, which produces at least 17 percent more carbon pollution compared to conventional U.S. oil-and-gas production.

Conclusion

Rep. Ryan’s energy proposals in his budget are a mix of bad policy and false notions. For most Americans, his “path to prosperity” takes us backward to more pollution, more wasteful government spending on rich oil companies, and greater reliance on fossil fuels. Rep. Ryan’s budget is a “path to prosperity” only for the fossil-fuel companies that have benefited from a century of federal support and are the cause of devastating climate change. Rep. Ryan’s dated vision of America is out of step with the American individuals and families who want to move toward a truly prosperous future of clean energy and clean air.

Richard Caperton is the Director of the Clean Energy Investment program at the Center for American Progress.