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April 17, 2008

We Had Better Move Ahead Without Bush

It's a good thing no one in Oregon is waiting for President George W. Bush to save us from global warming. President Bush spoke Wednesday about his plan to reduce greenhouse gases which cause global warming, starting in 2025, allowing a peak in usage 17 years from now. This statement contrasts with leading scientists' estimate that by 2025, we need to have already made emissions reductions in the 20-30% range if we are to avoid the direst consequences of our fossil fuel usage. Some of those consequences are expected to include increased severe weather events (drought, fires, hurricanes, flooding, etc.), as well as decreased snowpack and water supply, disruption of food supply, and rise in sea levels.

The Climate Institute offers the following explanation of a rise in sea levels: "The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects an increase of temperature ranging between 1.1 and 6.40 C over the next century, necessarily entailing a reduction of the amount of ice. As a result, sea levels could rise 10 to 23 inches by 2100... In addition, the IPCC suggests that by 2080, sea level rise could convert as much as 33 percent of the world's coastal wetlands to open water (IPCC 2007)." Because many of the world's largest cities, including American cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Seattle, Boston, and even Portland, are either directly on the coastline or connected via river channel, a significant sea level change would indicate large population dislocation.

Whether such impacts and dislocations occur depends greatly on what we do in the next 2 decades, the very years the Bush Administration would like to allow business as usual, with climbing emissions: "Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt... Early mitigation actions would avoid further locking in carbon intensive infrastructure and reduce climate change and associated adaptation needs... Many impacts can be reduced, delayed or avoided by mitigation. Mitigation efforts and investments over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels. Delayed emission reductions significantly constrain the opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels and increase the risk of more severe climate change impacts." ( IPCC 2007, p. 19.)

Offering no specific policies or regulatory regimes leading to greenhouse gas emissions, and instead speaking of "accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies," Bush's speech comes just weeks before Congress expects to debate climate change legislation which would introduce real mandatory emissions reductions. While we found Bush's lack of action regarding global warming extremely disappointing, we find this charade meant to resemble genuine action even more so. Perhaps we are supposed to take heart that the President finally sees climate change as a problem; however, it is discouraging that having recognized the problem, the President doesn't actually want to do anything about it.

Meanwhile, back in Oregon, utilities are working hard to incorporate carbon-neutral power sources such as wind and solar so that they can meet the Renewable Energy Standard passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2007. Under the RES, 25% of Oregon's electricity will come from new renewable sources by the year 2025, the same year Bush would only begin to make a reduction in emissions. In addition, Oregon has the highest percentage nationwide of voluntary participants in the renewable energy programs offered to residential customers by Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp. Not to mention the fact that Oregon's Public Utility Commission has rejected the last several utility requests to build new coal plants (the highest-emissions electrical power source), rejections for which CUB led the charge.

CUB continues to advocate for actions and policies which would mitigate the worst effects of climate change in Oregon. We are working with the Western Climate Initiative to craft a realistic and meaningful limit on carbon emissions, a so-called "cap-and-trade regime." (Another member of the WCI, British Columbia, has already instituted a carbon tax to reduce its own emissions.) It is clear to us, as it does not seem to be clear to the Bush Administration, that an earlier start on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not only helpful, it is essential.

Posted by Oregon CUB at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2008

Qwest Proposes to Deregulate and Raise Phone Rates

Oregon's largest phone company, Qwest, has proposed a radical plan to immediately raise rates and deregulate phone services over the next three years. Once rates are fully deregulated the phone company would be able to add additional rate hikes. Of course, the company pretends that their proposal does not deregulate rates, but that is nonsense. Under Qwest's plan, the Public Utility Commission of Oregon would no longer have the power to establish rates that are "just and reasonable," which has been the basis for establishing regulated utility rates for decades.

Under Qwest's proposal, rates for basic local phone service would be allowed to increase immediately by $2/month or 15.6%. Rates for Extended Area Service would remain where they are and all other retail services would be deregulated, allowing unlimited rate increases.

While Qwest does not specify what it would do with these prices after deregulation, we know that they intend to raise rates. In Washington, Qwest got a similar plan passed and immediately raised rates significantly. Based on the Washington experience, these are the increases that CUB expects would happen were the Qwest proposal to be approved.

Service & Increase
* Residential Telephone Line: 15.63%
* Residential Measured Telephone Line: 11.17%
* Call Forwarding Variable: 22.45%
* Call Waiting:100.00%
* Call Waiting ID: 20.00%
* Caller ID - Name and Number: 26.05%
* Caller ID - Number: 36.36%
* Last Call Return: 33.90%
* Selective Call Waiting: 20.00%
* Three-Way Calling: 18.64%
* Message Toll - Res: 25.00%

Qwest claims that this is not deregulation and that the PUC would have the ability to reregulate rates in the future. But such a claim is deceptive. Their plan would give the PUC the ability to investigate Qwest's rates, but the Commission would be limited in its ability to require rate reductions, as long as Qwest could find a single provider with rates for a similar service that was within 10% of its price. This means that Qwest could raise your phone bill to $70/month as long as it could identify some other provider that was offering a similar set of services for $63/month. If they could identify someone selling phone service for $100/month, they could charge you $110/month.

So, CUB projects that Qwest's plan would raise residential phone bills by more than $20 million per year initially and a much greater amount over time. In exchange for these increases, they are promising to invest an extra $2 million into expansion of DSL service. This does not even come close to being a proposal that is reasonable.

Posted by Oregon CUB at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)