Right now, we are the closest the United States has ever come to confronting the crisis of global warming. The House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, and now the Senate will consider similar legislation. It will be a tough fight, but this is our best chance to bring clean energy solutions to America before it is too late.
ACES is a good bill that needs to be strengthened. NRDC is working relentlessly to achieve that as the bill moves through the Senate. And we will continue to bolster it even after it has passed into law.
But here is what we will not do: we will not sit this bill out. We will not wait another year or another Congressional session in order to begin drafting a different climate bill that may have a few more provisions we like.
The Earth simply doesn't have that luxury. We have no more time to waste.
The last few months have brought an avalanche of climate data, culminating with the administration's analysis that the effects of global warming are already upon us and a recent MIT study that found the planet is warming twice as fast as previously thought.
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future."
He made this comment two years ago.
We have passed the point of waiting to tackle global warming until some indefinite, ideal time in the future. And we have passed the point of speculating about other mechanisms, such as the even-more politically charged proposal of a carbon tax.
In order to prevent the worst effects of global warming from becoming inevitable, we must start reducing carbon pollution right now.
The ACES bill gets us moving down that path. It will lower carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 (the latter figure is higher than the target Obama proposed on the campaign). The bill will also unleash billions of dollars of investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency measures, and clean-car technology.
And make no mistake: it is the strongest bill we can get through Congress. Indeed, it is too strong for many members, and getting it passed will require the efforts of all Americans concerned about clean energy and climate security, including well-intentioned fence-sitters.
Going forward, we can continue working together to fortify the bill if it becomes law. I am reassured by one critical element of the ACES draft: the science "look-backs." These dictate that if new scientific evidence comes in after the bill has pass that calls for stronger action, our lawmakers can tighten the pollution constraints.
This mechanism has already proven effective. Soon after the Montreal Protocol was ratified, scientists concluded that the treaty wasn't strict enough, and the international community rapidly agreed to strengthen it.
But this only works when there is a framework already in place. That is what ACES gives us, and building the framework is always the hardest part.
But the Democrats are working with a bad strategy. They are hoping that addressing climate change will be cheap (the "postage stamp"), and they gave away 80% of permits. Opponents say it will be expensive. Now Democrats are trapped.
Instead, they should level with voters. Say that we know it might be costly, that's why we are returning auction proceeds to people as a dividend. When the price goes up, your dividend goes up too. What would opponents say? No, don't give people money? Democrats can save the climate, and take the populist argument away from opponents.
NRDC has the clout to change the Senate's strategy. There's still time!
1) fund conversion of all cars, trucks and buses to compressed natural gas. Reduction of CO2 emissions by 20-25%, reduction of particulate emissions by 99%. This could be done TODAY, as we have the available technology. Jobs would be created to convert vehicles, build refueling stations, and develop transmission lines of domestic gas. This could almost immediately make us free of oil imports, as our domestic sources of oil would be sufficent to cover the reduced demand, and we are literally floating on oceans of natural gas.
2) Use the savings gained from not sending our billions to other countries for importing oil, and the taxes generated from the sale of domestic gas, exclusively for development of alternate fuels and wind/solar infrastructure.
I cannot for the life of me understand why we do not implement this TODAY. If global warming is indeed a problem, let's attack it the way we united in WWII, and do something. Cap and trade is absolute nonsense in the face of realistic, workable, effective and logical proposals. So why should it be passed?
And this HAS TO BE PASSED IMMEDIATELY, even if they don't read the bill, before people figure out what a scam this is.
The environment? Oh, yeah. Well, that's really not a problem anyway, or they would have proposed legislation that really did something about the environment.
But cap-and-trade is so complex , takes so long to implement, and has shown so little promise that it's like rushing down a long, windy dead-end in a panic. Want the direct route? British Columbia enacted and implemented a revenue-neutral carbon tax in six months. And Premier Campbell won re-election in a direct challenge to his carbon tax. That's the fast way to get reductions and encourage investment in conservation and renewable energy.. And if carbon revenue were used to reduce payroll taxes or simply distributed directly to households, the effect would be a badly-needed stimulus, especially in low- and middle-income households.
Let's get serious and stop hiding the price. "Hide the price" (cap/trade) leads to all sorts of outrageous claims about the cost that no one can effectively refute. ACESA's cap/trade is doomed by its own mendacity. RIP.
Time for Plan B, a revenue-neutral carbon tax. (Incidentially, a revenue-neutral carbon tax was part of Al Gore's "Plan A" in the 1992 'Earth in the Balance." See p 349.)
The mendacity of this program is exactly the attraction. Consumers will slowly feel the increased costs of everything, jobs will slowly be lost as the remainder of our manufacturing leaves for other countries, it will take years for utilities to slowly raise rates to the levels the bill will ultimately require. Just like boiling a live frog, they'll just raise the temperature a little bit at a time.
we are voluntarily destroying our way of life. The mind boggles.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/13/AR2009071302587.html