I’ve been thinking about the language people use to describe their ideas about climate change. Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones had a post about the efforts of 3 congressmen to defund NASA’s monitoring of changing climatic conditions, which brought to the front of my mind all the efforts of GOP congressmen to end monitoring a changing climate, stop measuring it, and/or stop doing anything about it.

I think the PR people for this movie were trying to get in touch with us at the public radio station where I work:

The tagline for Climate Nation is “a climate change solutions movie that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change.” Is this brilliant? I’m pretty sure they’re talking about a belief in human-influenced climate change…so, yeah, those people who don’t accept certain scientific findings, they can fork over money to see this and not regret it! Everybody can go! A win-win. Etc.

But it made me wonder about the efficacy of potential solutions to something that may or may not exist. Giving up that second part…isn’t that losing ground, if you accept scientific findings that support the notion that people contribute to a warming planet?

Then this weekend I was watching Meet the Press, and John Boehner was talking about birthers.

David, it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people. Having said that, the state of Hawaii has said that he was born there. That’s good enough for me. The president says he’s a Christian. I accept him at his word.

William Saletan in Slate goes ahead and points out all the ways that Boehner has responded to the questions birthers raise about Barack Obama being Muslim and having a faked birth certificate. Another one I like, this one a response to Brian Williams:

The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That’s good enough for me.

[The revelation I'm having - I use that term advisedly - is on par with the time I figured out in season 6 apropos of nothing that the kids on Friends hung out in Central Perk, which was a play on Central PARK. Nevertheless.]

To use the language “believing in” something – citizenship, climate change – is to bring along with it the baggage, the connotations of “belief.” Which is that you can, and often do, do it when there’s no evidence for something. (The existence of God, for example.) Which is that you do it independently, alone, a deal between you and the object of your belief. (A personal relationship with Jesus Christ, for example.)

If you believe Plato, knowledge is a justified true belief. A well-intentioned belief that is not supported by evidence, well, that ain’t knowledge. A truth that nobody believes is not knowledge either – because it’s not known.

So are public dialogues about climate change and about Obama’s birth certificate undermining knowledge? is that bad? And if we were to undermine other pieces of knowledge similar to these two subjects – in the same way as they’re being undermined – do we know anything?

Oops! Forgot about this over the weekend: which magazines, you ask? The Atlantic and The New Republic, actually. (Preaching to the converted?)

Bradford Plumer makes the point that state-level climate policy matters in The New Republic:

Renewable standards, efficiency laws, a utility-only carbon-trade system that’s currently operating in the Northeast… And looking ahead, a number of Western states are watching California closely and mulling the possibility of linking up with its cap-and-trade system down the road. Assuming that Congress doesn’t pass its own climate bill, then these states are going to shoulder a good deal of the burden in cutting carbon emissions.

Nicole Allan in The Atlantic repeats the economic-apocalypse claims of Proposition 23 proponents:

Anita Mangels, the campaign’s communications director, stressed that there’s more to Schwarzenegger’s prized AB 32 than just cap-and-trade. “It has a low carbon fuel standard, which would increase gas diesel costs by $4 billion a year,” she said. “Its renewable electricity standard would cause electricity rates to rise. It has green building standards that would add $50,000 to the cost of a home.”

I’m looking forward to getting cites for the first and third assertions by Mangels – particularly curious about the 50Gs for the cost of a home. Seems, for lack of a better word, random. I’ll present it when I have it.

Opponents to AB32 – supporters of Proposition 23 – I write both so that I beat it into my own head that 23 opposes 32 – say they’re concerned that cutting greenhouse gas emissions even on an oft-delayed schedule will wreck the state’s economy. A bunch of pointy-headed intellectuals beg to differ.

And within that group of intellectuals, some of ‘em are complaining about it. The Union of Concerned Scientists has a new letter out from a group of 118 economists they roped together. It’s presented with a cover page: “The most expensive thing California can do is nothing.”

From the letter:

The current recession and the very high unemployment rate in California present daunting challenges. Some have argued that these economic conditions warrant suspending the imple- mentation of emission reduction policies. We disagree. Delaying action now and waiting for the future before initiating accelerated action to reduce global warming gases will be more costly than initiating action now. Acting now is more likely to limit further environmental degradation, lower the cost of mitigation, and spur innovation in renewable energy and conservation technologies. Furthermore, policies that reduce global warming pollution are likely to provide immediate benefits to the health and welfare of residents by reducing local pollutants.

Now, of course, they’re assuming that governments are going to get around to it sooner or later, and California will be forced in that instance to mitigate its impacts. Is that an unfair assumption?

Oh, and, from UCSB’s Charles Kolstad:

The risk of significant negative consequences of our current emissions path should be sufficient for us to take meaningful action to cost-effectively moderate our appetite for emitting carbon and to spur innovation into carbon-lean technologies. Starting with automobile pollution control in the 1960s, California has been a leader in managing environmental problems. We are better off for it.

It was written a few days ago, but nevertheless: from the Bay Area Bureau* comes an article about the connection between high-speed rail positions and the governor’s race.

…which is apparently a litmus test for how the governor’s race will go. Which again makes climate a litmus test for how the governor’s race will go.

Choice excerpt:

Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate and former eBay CEO, said through a spokeswoman on Friday she “believes the state cannot afford the costs associated with high-speed rail due to our current fiscal crisis.”

She lives in the wealthy town of Atherton, which is ground zero for the anti-bullet train movement because of concerns about the tracks that would run through the tony community.

Nowhere in the article is mention of climate change, or climate policy. But advocates for integrated planning for carbon and GHG reduction argue high speed rail is a big way to mitigate global warming.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology has a pretty good backgrounder on high speed rail as a climate issue – you can even download a report that does a corridor-by-corridor analysis of greenhouse gas emissions savings as a result of high-speed rail.

*Note that the BAB is fictional. Love the reference to Atherton, though, where, yes, Frank Stoltze, I DID go to high school.

I couldn’t agree more, Phil Trounstine & Jerry Roberts.

The whole thing’s well worth a read. Do that here.

Trounstine & Roberts point out that Prop 23 is starting from a weak position, with a little more than a third of those polled in favor.

But a separate crosstab that the Field Poll ran at our request showed that voters who favor Proposition 23 are supporting Whitman over Brown by 55 percent to 34 percent while those who oppose the measure are supporting Brown by 54 percent to 34 percent – virtual mirror images.

At the same time, and even more impressive: Whitman voters are supporting Proposition 23 by 45 percent to 36 percent, but Brown supporters are opposing the measure by an even stronger 60 percent to 28 percent. These are differences you can call statistically significant.

They also give Barbara Boxer a tip:

The undecideds in the Senate race are opposed to the measure 47 percent to 28 percent – giving Boxer an opening to make inroads among voters who haven’t made up their mind about the Senate race but who know for sure they don’t want to roll back California’s climate change law.

Boxer v. Fiorina, Brown v. Whitman, proposition 23: reading about November’s races, it’s clear that climate figures into key decisions the state’s going to make in a matter of months. It’s not clear the substance of climate policy will have anything to do with those decisions, but it’s worth taking a look.

I’m going to start doing a regular roundup of the week’s developments in climate politics. It seems like a good way to keep my head in the game.

This week’s pretty easy – two main developments:

The Field Poll released numbers on the propositions. Looks like voters are skeptical about Proposition 23, which would put AB 32 on hold until the state’s unemployment drops to 5.5% for 4 consecutive quarters (or, you know, until hell freezes over; keep in mind we’re around 12% right now, facing the prospect of a double dip).

PG&E – you know, the guys who wanted Prop 16 to win recently – has decided to oppose Proposition 23 – so, continues to support AB 32 moving forward as it has been.

In 2007, Barbara Boxer said “One of the very most important issues we face is climate change.” In an ad release just before the June primary, Republican nominee for that senate seat, Carly Fiorina, released this ad:

Terrorism kills. And Barbara Boxer is worried about the weather?

Now that the November Senate race is set, get ready for California-rules football. In the sense that the football is, you know, the world’s climate. Boxer v. Fiorina. The Suspend AB 32 ballot initiative we’ll see this fall. And let’s not forget Whitman v. Brown. Meg Whitman would definitely suspend the executive orders helping implement that.