SUNDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2010 DANA MILBANK
Plan B on climate change
“I’ll take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill, be- cause it’s bad for West Virginia,” Gov. Joe Manchin, the Democratic candidate for Senate, says in an ad put out last week. To demonstrate, he pops what ap- pears to be a .270 cartridge in his Remington 700, then shoots a bull’s-eye through a piece of paper read- ing “Senate of the United States” and “Cap and Trade Bill.”
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If you look closely, you can see that the bullet tears through the word “jobs” in the sentence “to create clean energy jobs.” This was unsporting of Manchin. The bill was dead
before he shot it. If it couldn’t pass with 60 Demo- crats in the Senate, it surely isn’t going to pass in the next two years. But Manchin’s shot should ring in his fellow Demo-
crats’ ears, warning them that it is time to come up with an alternative to regulating carbon, a Plan B for climate change. I suggest they try smoke and mirrors —literally.
Scientists are already pondering the use of smoke (sulfur dioxide injected into the stratosphere) and mirrors (installing reflectors made of metal or lunar glass a million miles from Earth) to cool the planet. It’s time for policymakers to get serious about these and other “geoengineering” proposals to cool the Earth and remove excess carbon. None of this means giving up on carbon reduction, which remains the only sure way to prevent man- made climate change. But as the failure in Congress to reach consensus slows progress toward an interna- tional agreement, the wasted time could be used to create a fallback plan. This would prevent other nations from gaining a lead in geoengineering technologies (while perhaps providing some focus to our aimless space program) and at the same time put some cap-and-trade foes on the spot. Those who profess to care about global warming but balk at putting a price on carbon would have no justification for opposing geoengineering. Makings of a cross-ideological coalition have
emerged. At the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Samuel Thernstrom wrote this year that “ignoring geoengineering is potentially dangerous and irresponsible.”At the liberal Center for American Progress, Andrew Light tells me that because “research is already starting in some parts of the world, we would be foolhardy not to be looking into it.”
Retiring Rep. Bart Gordon, chairman of the House science committee, wrote in Slate a couple of weeks ago that the United States should begin spending on geoengineering research. The British government has already begun. The ideas range from simple to sci-fi. To remove carbon from the atmosphere, we could bury wood and agricultural waste, or burn them into biochar. We could “weather” soil by mixing in carbon-devour- ing minerals, or make oceans more alkaline by add- ing lime. Chemical solutions could capture carbon di- oxide from the air; “fertilizing” the ocean with nitro- gen or iron could promote carbon-consuming algae; or high-carbon water from the ocean surface could be pumped to the depths. To keep the Earth from absorbing warmth, we could paint roofs, roads and pavement white. We could plant lighter, more reflective grasses, or cover the deserts with reflective aluminum. Boats or planes could spray ocean clouds with sea salt to make them whiter; pumping tiny particles into the atmosphere could mimic the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions. Then come the gee-whiz ideas. Sun reflectors could be put into orbit, or a ring of dust, like Saturn’s, could be built around the equator using satellites. Metallic “sunshades” could be placed between the Earth and sun, or, as Britain’s Royal Society described it, 10 tril- lion refracting disks could be “launched into space in stacks of a million, one stack every minute for about 30 years.”
Some of these ideas could bring unwanted side ef-
fects, including catastrophic droughts, famine and the destruction of ocean life — all the more reason to spend time and money on researching the alterna- tives before we reach a tipping point that requires us to try one. Some environmentalists think geoengineering will give opponents an excuse not to pursue carbon reg- ulations, but since when has the opposition been in need of an excuse? The strategy also sidesteps conser- vatives’ paranoia about international climate talks. There should eventually be multilateral cooperation on geoengineering, but even a unilateralist can’t ob- ject to some all-American research. Geoengineering isn’t a magic bullet. But at a time when a Democratic Senate candidate is firing live ammo at the cap-and-trade bill, it’s worth a shot.
danamilbank@washpost.com
KATHLEEN PARKER
The parties achieve parody W
itches vs. bearded Marxists. Ac- tors vs. hicks. Toon Town vs. Paro- dyville.
The world isn’t too much with us. We
have left the planet. As we race toward the midterm elec- tions, our political conversation has de- volved beyond the silly to the absurd — and the sharks are jumping sharks. Is it even possible to have a serious conversa- tion anymore? In a debate Wednesday night, Repub-
lican Christine O’Donnell looked at her opponent for the U.S. Senate, Chris Coons — a clean-shaven, shiny-pated Rhodes scholar/attorney/Yale Divinity grad — and said that his 1985 op-ed titled “Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist” should send shivers up the spines of all voters.
She was referring to Coons’s own long-
ago admission that he became a Demo- crat after discovering economic disparity during a college-era visit to Kenya. What is it about Kenya? Coons’s insistence that he wrote the op-ed as a joke simply isn’t credible, if you read it. It was sincere and thoughtful. He clearly was transformed by his experience, which included living with a poor Kenyan family and studying under a Marxist professor, but this
doesn’t have much bearing on who he is today.
I can’t speak for an entire generation, but I had plenty of Marxist professors and was deeply moved by the economic dis- parities in the world, which is why I was a Democrat back in the day. But I grew up to be a happy capitalist. And never mind that we’re meanwhile supposed to have equal patience with O’Donnell’s youthful declaration that she had dabbled in witchcraft. It seems to me that the young Marxist and the young witch cancel each other out. But what about now? Can we hold each responsible for who and what they are and say today? If so, then we have ample cause for shivers. O’Donnell, when pressed about whether she believed in evolution, dodged the question and said that the de- cision about whether to teach evolution or creationism should be left to local school districts and that what she be- lieves isn’t relevant. But of course it is. Coons’s palpable uneasiness doubtless was owing equally to his contempt for her shallow knowledge and to his inability to challenge her without seeming like a bul- ly. Instead, he seemed merely conde- scending and snarky. If the witch and the
here is a hole in the Democrats’ plan to fight global warming. A .270-caliber hole, to be spe- cific.
DAVID S. BRODER Mitch Daniels’s welcome mind W
hile much of Washington was preoccupied Thursday evening by the contrast between the unacceptable and the profoundly un- comfortable — the first televised debate be-
tween Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the challenger for his Nevada seat, Sharron Angle — a different scene was unfolding in a hotel ballroom here. The Hudson Insti-
tute gave a dinner hon- oring its former presi- dent, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, with the award named for its founding intellect, Her- man Kahn. Several hundred conservative men and women, many of them fellow intellec- tuals, listened as a pa- rade of thinkers praised Daniels, a Republican who used the evening as an informal launch of what may be his presidential candidacy in 2012. It was in every re-
spect the opposite of the spectacle that came out of Nevada. There, Democrats and Repub- licans alike cringed as they watched their sup- posed champions man- gle policy questions and personal exchanges in a fashion that would have been embarrassing for high school debaters. How did Nevada end up with two such inept candidates? Back in Washington, the luxury of having a thought- ful presidential contender was striking for everyone hearing Daniels. The onetime Reagan White House po- litical director and Bush White House budget chief is
DAVID IGNATIUS
Obama turns to a blank page B
efore the 2008 election, two for- mer national security advisers recommended that the next
president craft a foreign policy strat- egy to align the United States with a “global political awakening” that was transforming the world. Two years later, as Tom Donilon prepares to take the national security adviser post, these illustrious pred- ecessors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, are making essen- tially the same recommendation. They argue that U.S. foreign policy needs a clearer strategic framework that can take advantage of President Obama’s ability to speak to the world — a dialogue that has unfortunately been handicapped in Obama’s first 21 months.
Brzezinski, who served under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, urged Donilon to stretch beyond his past experience as a manager of the foreign policy process: “I don’t be- lieve the central role of the national security adviser is to make the trains run on time. It’s much more a matter of deciding what the schedule ought to be, and where the trains should be heading.” The adviser’s job is to “flesh out” ideas into a strategy, argued Brzezinski, and then “supervise, coor- dinate and enforce” its implementa- tion.
Both Scowcroft and Brzezinski credited Gen. Jim Jones, who recent- ly announced his departure, for try- ing to create an effective policy struc- ture. Brzezinski said that Jones’s au- thority had been limited by the “intrusion of top domestic political advisers,” which had reduced his ef- fectiveness.
“Obama has suffered in foreign policy by having to focus so much on
the economic crisis,” said Scowcroft, who served as national security ad- viser for Republican presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford. I asked Scowcroft and Brzezinski to sit down for a brief reprise of the discussions we had in 2008 that re- sulted in a book called “America and the World: Conversations on the Fu- ture of American Foreign Policy.” What struck me this time was that the bipartisan agenda they framed two years ago was still mostly valid. Although Obama nominally support- ed most elements of this strategy, he hasn’t been able to advance it very far.
The former advisers agreed that Obama’s biggest strategic success had been his engagement of Russia. “The ‘Russia reset’ worked well,” said Scowcroft. “It caught the essence of what the problem was.” The two men cited the Israel-Pales- tinian peace process as Obama’s most important unfinished business. Both have argued often that the president should have started by outlining the basic parameters for a Palestinian state, as they have emerged in negoti- ations over the past 40 years. Brzezinski contended that it was
“pathetic” to see the United States making big concessions to Israel this month — ones that should be re- served for a final “grand bargain” — simply to add another 60 days to a temporary freeze on Israeli settle- ments. If the peace process should collapse, Scowcroft argued that it still would make sense for Obama to specify the terms of a U.S. peace plan. What perplexed both men was the disconnect between Obama’s stra- tegic vision and what he has been able to achieve. “He makes dramatic
not your run-of-the-mill intellectual. His style is to be down-home, but his record of accomplishment is dazzling. The turnout was a reminder that during the Reagan and Bush years the Republican Party mustered battal- ions of policy wonks who were at least the equal of their Democratic coun- terparts. Most of them have retired to think tanks and law firms now, but they are plainly eager to get back into the battle if Daniels summons them to the 2012 campaign. The notables who turned out to honor the Indiana governor suggest that politically, all of these associations may be problematic. Former vice president Dan Quayle, now removed from Indi- ana to Arizona, intro- duced his former col- league with warm words of praise. A spotlight caught former defense secretary Donald Rums- feld offering his con- gratulations to Daniels as well.
Gov. Mitch Daniels after winning reelection in 2008. DARRON CUMMINGS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
One could not help but think that if the Demo- crats were filming this session, they would dwell on Daniels’s links to those two figures from the Republican past, rather than the policy gu- rus who filled the room.
Still, in a party where a candidate such as Angle can be the nominee against the majority leader, brains are clearly a precious commodity. What we saw in Wash- ington on Thursday night was a reminder that despite the occasional appearance, Republicans do not lack in that regard.
davidbroder@washpost.com
KLMNO
R
A21 GEORGE F. WILL
Return of the scold war
put there by Jimmy Carter — will Car- ter’s cardigan sweater be reprised? The panels — environmentalism as a didactic gesture — are evidence of a ’70s revival. “Energy we have to deal with today,” said Obama during a debate with John McCain. “Health care is priority No. 2.” Instead, Obama decided that having priorities — doing this but not that — is for people less Promethean than he. The cap-and-trade centerpiece of his agenda for turning down the planet’s thermostat (as Carter turned down the White House’s) has foundered. But at least when Democrats got control of Congress in 2007 they acted to save the planet from the incan- descent light bulb, banning it come 2014. For sheer annoyingness, that matches Congress’s 1973 imposition of a 55 mph speed limit, which was abol- ished in 1995. Nothing did more to energize con-
W
servatism in the 1970s than judges and legislators collaborating in the forced busing of (other people’s) children to achieve racial balance in (other peo- ple’s) schools. This policy expressed liberalism’s principled refusal to be deterred by the public’s misunder- standing of what is good for it. Oba- macare is today’s expression of liberal- ism’s kamikaze devotion to unwanted help for Americans, the ingrates. Another ’70s project, in the wake of
presidential speeches,” said Brzezin- ski, “but it’s never translated into a process in which good ideas become strategies.” One complication, both noted, was a process of “subcontract- ing,” in which major policy areas such as Middle East negotiations and Af- ghanistan-Pakistan have been hand- ed over to special representatives. On Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, the toughest issue facing Obama, both men favor a continuation of cur- rent strategy — with the goal of gradually negotiating a political set- tlement with the Taliban under a broad umbrella of regional support. As was the case two years ago on Iraq, Brzezinski favored a quicker move for the exit, while Scowcroft warned of “leaving an open, bleeding wound” with too hasty a departure. Obama’s challenge is that he raised
expectations. Recall the absurdly pre- mature award of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. When he boldly called for a new course in the Middle East in his Cairo speech, or convened a sum- mit of 40 world leaders to discuss nu- clear nonproliferation, people around the world expected he would deliver something big. So far, they have been disappointed. To sum up what I took away from these bipartisan gurus: Obama’s achievement is that he has reconnect- ed America to the world. The United States was much too isolated and un- popular when he came into office. That isn’t so true now. But even though the United States is less hat- ed, it may also be taken less seriously by other nations. Obama has turned the page in American foreign policy, but he hasn’t written enough yet on that fresh, blank space.
davidignatius@washpost.com
Watergate, was campaign finance re- form — government regulating the quantity, timing and content of speech about government. But political purity has been elusive, and today, as usual, there is, from the usual people, high anxiety about “too much” money be- ing spent on politics. That is, what the improvers consider too much political speech, the dissemination of which is what most campaign contributions finance. Total spending, by all parties, cam- paigns and issue-advocacy groups, concerning every office from county clerks to U.S. senators, may reach a record $4.2 billion in this two-year cy- cle. That is about what Americans spend in one year on yogurt but less than they spend on candy in two Hal- loween seasons. Procter & Gamble spent $8.6 billion on advertising in its most recent fiscal year. Those who are determined to re- duce the quantity of political speech to what they consider the proper amount are the sort of people who know exact- ly how much water should come through our shower heads (no more than 2.5 gallons per minute, as stip- ulated by a 1992 law). Is it, however, really worrisome that Americans spend on political advocacy — on de- termining who should make and ad- minister the laws — much less than they spend on potato chips ($7.1 bil- lion a year)? Desperation drives politicians to talk about process rather than policy. Obama, who is understandably reluc- tant to talk about what people are con- cerned about, the economy, is instead talking about the political process. He is in a terrific lather of insinuation, suggesting that torrents of foreign money are pouring into U.S. cam- paigns. He recently said: “Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations. So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections.” It takes a per- verse craftsmanship to write some- thing that slippery. Consider: “Just this week, we learned. . . .”
Marxist were a wash, the Everyday Amer- ican triumphed over the elite. Ditto the scene in Las Vegas Thursday night, where Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle managed to hold her own against Harry Reid. Of course, to be fair, all Angle and O’Donnell had to do was not be weird — hardly a high bar for public office. Political parties, meanwhile, have dis- tilled themselves so completely to their essences that they have caricatured them- selves into cartoonish self-parody. Wit- ness the recent town hall wherein Presi- dent Obama’s audience was culled from a casting call, and the Republican ad cam- paign in West Virginia that sought “hicky” people. Oy, as we say down South. Republicans and Democrats are so busy pointing fingers, they fail to see what is plainly obvious. They are mirror images of each other, and each is equally cynical and corrupt. “A Conversation with President Oba-
ma,” the town hall meeting co-sponsored by MTV/BET/CMT, featured an hour-long chat with young people, i.e., the presi- dent’s base of last resort. Prior to the event, the casting Web site
Backstage.com put out a call for “males and females 18- plus” to fill out a questionnaire to include “your name, phone number, hometown,
school attending, your job and what is- sues, if any, you are interested in, or pas- sionate about.” Well, it beats risking another encounter
with Velma Hart, the middle-aged African American woman who, at another recent, less scripted town hall meeting told Oba- ma that she was “exhausted” defending him. Lest the GOP lose itself in mirth, let’s turn to the Republican casting call for people who are “hicky,” presumably an endearing adjective referring to the be- havioral attributes of “hicks” — aka igno- rant, poor whites. After days of denials, the National Re- publican Senatorial Committee had to ac- knowledge that a media consultant it hired, Jamestown Associates, had in fact put out the call for hicks to flesh out ads for the Senate race. The political divide between Elites and Ordinary Americans has never been starker or more comical, or more resplen- dent with self-loathing. When even Re- publicans view their base as ignorant red- necks — and Democrats no longer try to conceal their reliance on artifice and propaganda — farce has become the new reality.
kathleenparker@washpost.com
That is a fib. The fact that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — this is what he is talking about but for some rea- son is reluctant to say so — receives membership dues from multinational corporations, some of them foreign- owned, is not something Obama sud- denly “learned.” It is about as secret as the location of the chamber’s head- quarters, a leisurely three-minute walk from the White House. “Regularly takes in money from for- eign corporations.” Obama cites no evidence to refute the chamber’s con- tention that it sequesters such funds — less than one-twentieth of 1 percent of its budget — from the money it de- votes to political advocacy. The AFL- CIO, which spends heavily in support of Democratic candidates, also re- ceives money from associated labor entities abroad, but Obama has not ex- pressed angst about this. “So groups that receive foreign
money are spending huge sums to in- fluence American elections.” The “so” is a Nixonian touch. It dishonestly im- plies what Obama prudently flinches from charging — that the “huge sums” are foreign money. In the ’70s, Richard Nixon begat the supposed corrective of the high-mind- ed Carter. His failure begat Ronald Reagan. American politics often is a dialectic of disappointments. Nov. 2 may remind the apostle of change that (as a 2008 Republican bumper sticker warned) “Every Disaster is a Change.”
georgewill@washpost.com
ith Barack Obama restoring solar panels to the White House roof — the first were
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