Time to Take a Decisive Step: Climate Vote Scheduled for Friday
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/fbeinecke/time_to_take_the_first_step_cl.htmlThis Friday the House of Representatives will consider one of the most important pieces of legislation of our time: a bill that would simultaneously jumpstart our economy, create millions of jobs, lay the groundwork for a clean energy future, and confront global warming.
In the nearly two decades I have been advocating for climate solutions, I have never witnessed a more urgent moment or stronger leadership.
The scientific evidence is clear: to prevent severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts of global warming from dominating our future, we must act now -- not in a year or two.
The economic analysis is equally clear: according to the EPA, and even some of the scenarios peddled by opponents of climate action -- the economy, personal income and job creation grow robustly under a climate bill. Our economy -- and the planet -- needs this bill.
Fortunately, both the White House and members of Congress have responded to these findings. Representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey have drafted the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) and shepherded it to the floor for a vote on Friday. President Obama has pledged his support for the bill; you can watch him on it at Tuesday's press conference here.
ACES Is a Good Start
Keep in mind: the ACES bill isn't the last word on climate action. But it is a decisive one.
Transitioning our entire energy structure to cleaner, more sustainable sources is an enormous undertaking, one that cannot be completed with one policy, one fiat, or one declaration. But it can start here, with the ACES bill.
Not only will we work to make the bill stronger as it heads to the White House, but the bill reflects the unfolding nature of climate change. ACES includes something called science look-backs: if, after the bill has passed, new scientific data calls for stronger action, our lawmakers have room to strengthen regulations and clean energy opportunities.
In the meantime, ACES gets us headed in the right direction. The legislation:
• Sets a declining cap on emissions, reaching 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by 2050.
• Launches an energy efficiency plan, which the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy estimates could save approximately $750 per household by 2020.
• Creates new incentives for clean energy. The Center for American Progress estimates that, combined with the stimulus package, ACES can create 1.7 million clean energy jobs.
• Reduces our oil dependence by investing in the next generation of vehicles and supporting the development of smarter transportation plans.
I personally hope the bill gets strengthened as it moves through the legislative process, but I am happy that it already includes these critical elements.
We Mustn't Squander this Brief MomentStill, the window of opportunity for this bill could close quickly. We face two looming deadlines.
First, the international climate negotiations are scheduled in Copenhagen this December. If we don't arrive with a strong commitment to cut global warming pollution at home, the global consensus could be deeply undermined.
Second, pressure for health care reform is mounting here at home. President Obama has said repeatedly hat he wants Congress to send him clean energy and climate legislation, but the media and the public are beginning to get caught up in the health care debate. If Congress acts swiftly to pass ACES, it can devote its attention more fully to health care.
I urge everyone who cares about the health of the planet and the prospect of sustainable prosperity to tell their representatives to support the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Click here to do so.
This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.
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Both proponents and opponents of the cap & trade legislation would profit from reading this Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rg/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
I agree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
The list you cited represents the handful on the fringe, most taking money from fossil fuel interests and/or associated with right-wing organizations.
I find it funny that you both reference Wikipedia, which anyone can edit, as a credible source.
Can you actually prove that most of these scientists are being paid off or are right-wingers? Saying so doesn't make it so.
You appear to have reached your conclusion by ASSUMING that any scientist who disputes global warming could ONLY be taking money from fossil fuel interests or associated with right-wing organizations. This is the ploy of your side, refusing to engage in serious scientific debate in favor of denouncing your opponents. It's also unscientific.
A case in point: ice melt in the Arctic. Your side has asserted that the unusual melting of Arctic ice in 2007 proves that global warming is real and the world will continue to get warmer. Please refer to the SEA-ICE MONITOR http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi published daily by the Japanese Aero Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) relying on NASA satellites with Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) technology.
If you click on "Data of Sea Ice Extent" you can compare today's (6/24/09) Arctic sea ice extent with the extent on the same date in 2008 and 2007. You will find on this date in 2008 the Arctic showed 84,843 square kilometers MORE ice than 6/24/07, and, today, 144,531 square kilometers MORE ice than 6/24/2007.
How do these figures affect the argument of your scientists that the earth is progressively getting warmer?
Slander as a debate tool. You accuse the credentialed opponents of your position of conflict of interest and a lack of scientific and ethical integrity.
Why don't you try to refute their arguments? Perhaps you can't do it on your own?
Would you like me to attack James Hansen's integrity? He is wide open to charges of conflict of interest and agenda driven science. He is a "progressive" activist. he has a political axe to grind and does so frequently and in the press.
Many of those scientists you disparage actually agree with you that global warming is happening, they just don't believe in the crazy over the top predictions of New York under water. That's a large part of my problem, NY: even if I grant you that global warming exists, what then? The predictions are all over the place, with absolutely no consensus. So how can you convince me to be scared when only the radicals like Al Gore believe that bad things are going to happen?
While it is easy to say it is too expensive to take action or this is the wrong action; we are facing a deciding moment. If we wait and the tip of Florida goes underwater, will those of you urging no action be there bailing? I don't think so. Any expense you can calculate about how much this will cost is trivial compared with what horrors await no action or staying the course. It is funny to hear you moaning about subsidizing this new economy when we have HUGE subsidies supporting nuclear, coal and oil. No nukes would have been built without Price Anderson act releasing utilities from insuring loses of a nuclear disaster that goes further than Three Mile Island. Why are you all so afraid of change? People interested in saving the health of the planet are not nuts, we could actually save your investment in coastal real estate. Hansen is aware of what is going on based on scientific study. He is only seeking solutions that produce the best results given the limited time frame for action. Better get on the bus.
Ok. Did you know that your hero Hansen says this bill is a piece of crap? Does that change your opinion any?
Hansen pointed out that the bill explicitly allows for the construction of new coal plants and predicted that it would, if passed, prove close to meaningless. He said that he thought it would probably be best if the bill failed, so that Congress could "come back and do it more sensibly." I said that if the bill failed I thought it was more likely Congress would let the issue drop, and that was one reason most of the country's major environmental groups were backing it.
"This is just stupidity on the part of environmental organizations in Washington," Hansen said. "The fact that some of these organizations have become part of the Washington 'go along, get along' establishment is very unfortunate." Hansen argues that politicians willfully misunderstand climate science; it could be argued that Hansen just as willfully misunderstands politics. In order to stabilize carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere, annual global emissions would have to be cut by something on the order of three-quarters. In order to draw them down, agricultural and forestry practices would have to change dramatically as well.
This bill is the worst idea ever. I do not support this.
By invasively manipulating an already over-regulated energy industry, this legislation seeks to fix an alleged problem that has recently been discredited by over 31,478 scientists -- including over 3,803 with specific expertise in atmospheric, earth, and environmental sciences.
All 31,478 of these scientists are trained to understand and evaluate the scientific data relevant to the human-caused global warming hypothesis -- and are speaking out against government “remedies.”
With this bill, Congress is once again just doing what it does best -- fleecing taxpayers to further an alarmist agenda.
Yes, I definitely believe that we should ram through this massive tax increase based on faulty reasoning as soon as possible.
And let's let the EPA continue to suppress any contrary science, just to keep the peasants quiet.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/24/the-climate-change-e-mails-epa-doesnt-want-you-to-see/
The know-it-all tone of this essay irks me almost as much as its eggregious claims.
There is no "clear" scientific evidence that anthropogenic forcings will lead to devastating climate change in the 21st century, just a lot of predictions rife with false bravado. Observation should always trump theory or the output of a computer model, and all observation to date points to an insensitive climate system, dominated by negative feedbacks - not the sensitive climate system where trivial greenhouse forcings are amplified through positive feedbacks.
The economic benefit you trumpet is even worse. The proposed legislation is merely a reallocation of resources to your preferred "green" industries that can't compete with conventional energy companies. Any time resources are diverted from their most efficient deployment, the economy loses. Congress could mandate the erection of 10 pyramids in DC - that would create jobs! But in the same way, it simply funnels resources to unproductive endeavors, destroying wealth.
Hopefully this will trifling bill will die in the Senate, and setting back the eco-nuts long enough for the planet to continue the current11 year cooling trend.
"and setting back the eco-nuts"
Given the dearth of common people's comments in Huff Post stories lately,
I doubt these "nuts," people concerned about the environment,
have dropped their support for environmentalism. Likely, they have caught onto cap and trade scam.
I am not a believer in significant AGW, however I must hand it to James Hansen when he said flat out cap and trade is a scam and will do nothing to reduce CO2.
I wonder if the political staffs know that and tell their employers. James Hansen, your ally, will become your enemy.
OK, but fair is fair. If we don't need to subsidize green industries that supposedly can't compete with conventional energy companies, we also need to cut all the subsidies we already give to those companies. Then we'll see who really can and can't compete when there is a level field.
CBO projects that firms regulated under Waxman-Markey's cap and trade program would utilize 230 million tons of domestic offsets and 190 million tons of international offsets in 2012. By 2020, CBO projects firms will be utilizing 300 million tons of domestic source offsets and 425 million tons from international sources, for a total of 725 million tons of offsets . That's enough to offset 61% of the emissions reductions required by ACES cap-and-trade program in 2020.
CBO also projects firms will purchase more offsets and emissions allowances than they need to cover their emissions in the early years of the program This is because emissions permits (allowances and offsets) can be banked indefinitely under the legislation, and CBO predicts firms will purchase relatively cheap permits at the outset of the program, banking them to allow greater emissions in future years. For this reason, only an examination of cumulative emissions permitted by the legislation tells the full story of emissions reductions actually driven by the Waxman-Markey bill.
After taking into account the banking of emissions permits, Breakthrough's calculations reveal that if offsets are utilized at the levels projected by the CBO, Waxman-Markey will cut cumulative emissions in supposedly capped sectors of the economy by just 0.5% through 2020. CBO projects cumulative 2012-2020 emissions in capped sectors would be 55.1 billion metric tons, compared to cumulative emissions of 55.4 billion metric tons under the U.S. Energy Information Administration's business-as-usual emissions projections.
That's the elegance of cap and TRADE.
It actually deters innovation and cleaner energy adaptation.
Why take the extra time and effort with complying with stricter regulations--straight "caps" or efficiency standards--when buying carbon offsets is cheaper? Corporate leaders would be breaking their fiduciary duties not taking the cheaper route.
It's Wall Street Finance elegance. Say cap and trade spurs clean energy when it does the opposite! Say derivatives, CDOs and exotic paper decreases risk when it does the opposite, increases risk!
Obama’s official budget claims that his proposed energy tax would add $646 billion to energy costs over 8 years. But that’s low-balling it.
As the Washington Times reported:
President Obama's climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House's initial estimate of the so-called "cap-and-trade" legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House. . . . At the meeting, Jason Furman, a top Obama staffer, estimated that the president's cap-and-trade program could cost up to three times as much as the administration's early estimate of $646 billion over eight years.
Put another way, Furman estimates the cap-and-trade scheme will cost, on average, $250 billion annually. That estimate must be taken seriously because Furman is deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council.
Page 21 of the Obama budget proposal highlights his cap-and-trade proposal:
After enactment of the Budget, the Administration will work expeditiously with key stakeholders and the Congress to develop an economy-wide emissions reduction program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions approximately 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and approximately 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.
The economic impact of such a policy would be devastating. Even using the Obama administration's own official numbers, it would amount to a tax hike of $645 billion over the first 8 years, about $80 billion per year--and the White House has since admitted the real tax hike could be two or three times as much. That's just the first 8 years of a program that runs through 2050. As the cap becomes more and more strict over time, those costs would skyrocket into many trillions of dollars.
This is nothing more than an energy tax, which will affect the poorest Americans the most. Only our Congress could come up with such a convoluted, misguided plan that will do virtually nothing to help the environment, but will give them even more tax dollars to waste. What an absurd piece of legislation.
The 2010 Obama budget reveals the major tax hike that Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are counting on to fund the outrageous bailout and stimulus spending that is propelling federal spending to record levels-27.7 percent of GDP in 2009, an all-time record other than the four peak years of World War II.
The tax hike is a broad-based energy tax that will wallop every American who fills a gas tank, pays an electric bill, or buys any product that has to be grown, shipped, or manufactured.
The mechanism is cap-and-trade, which is like a tax on coal, oil, and natural gas but instead of being set at a specific amount, the total level of use is capped and companies are forced to pay the government for emissions permits-which Wall Street wizards at companies like AIG and Goldman Sachs can in turn trade on sophisticated exchanges and derivative markets.
White House Budget Director Peter Orzcag admitted that decreasing carbon emissions imposes costs on the economy, and "much of those costs will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for energy and energy-intensive goods."
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