Reining in Global Warming? Not Without a New Approach to Transportation

The House of Representatives is preparing to take one of its biggest environmental steps in 20 years as we move forward on legislation that will reduce global warming pollution and hold polluters accountable.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is coming to the House floor, and not a moment too soon. Although I constantly marvel at Congress's collective ability to dodge, weave, and stall, the discussion of how to save the planet is becoming increasingly difficult to kick down the road. We have clearly run out of time. We no longer have the luxury of avoiding the hard decisions.

For several years, I have been open to different approaches when it comes to reducing our nation's carbon emissions. I have cosponsored legislation that taxes carbon and legislation that institutes a carbon cap-and-trade system. I have talked repeatedly with supporters of all numerous approaches, trying to play a constructive role that advances the debate.

Now we need results, and I have concluded that putting a cap on carbon emissions and creating a market that will spur clean energy innovation is far superior to any other option. Most importantly, this is a bill we can actually pass now, which means taking immediate action to finally address global warming.

Chairman Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Markey have worked tirelessly on climate legislation that will invest in clean, renewable energy, put a cap on dangerous carbon emissions, and create millions of new jobs. The negotiating process has required a lot of work and late nights, and it lays out how we as a country will tackle the major challenges of reducing our carbon output and fighting global warming. I have worked closely with them to advance this bill and strengthen it along the way.

I worked to get more funding in ACES for low-carbon transportation options. While there was not funding in the original bill, it became clear that to truly rein in global warming, we would need to consider how we get around on a day-to-day basis. This idea originated from a bill I introduced earlier this year called CLEAN-TEA (or the Clean Low-Emissions Affordable New Transportation Equity Act). While my bill would have allocated more money to transportation, ACES is a great start. As much as $537 million in the first few years - and then later up to $1 billion (as allowances become worth more) - will go toward projects that make it easier for people to walk, ride bicycles or take public transportation. Paying for these projects will also create jobs in local construction and transportation sectors.

The energy and climate bill is not only a victory for environmentalists; it is a victory for all who are concerned about our crumbling infrastructure system. Revenue from the cap and trade system will allow states to invest in more carbon-neutral transportation alternatives like high-speed rail, walking, and bicycling. The energy and climate bill takes off where the recovery package left off. In fact, in combination these two bills will create millions of jobs around the nation in the energy, new technology, electrical and construction sectors. They will help to bring down my state's unemployment rate, which is at an all-time high. The bottom line is that the energy and climate bill will help us grow our economy and finally address some of the major issues we face with our nation's transportation infrastructure.

Comments

[Merrimack]

I fully expect this abomination of a bill to be killed in the senate where cooler and more rational minds reign. I sent my letter and am pushing my family in Florida to call Nelson to let him know we don't want any part of this bill. No one argues that cleaner air shouldn't be a goal but not to the complete exclusion of the economic costs. This is especially true when considered alongside the FACT that Man made global warming is unproven.

From an Article written by Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers..... Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled.

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

[ScottontheSpot]

(From my petition at
http://globalwarming.change.org/actions/view/a_new_form_of_capitalism_geonomics)

Let's make a deal with all the fossil fuel companies, CAFOs, mining companies, and all other resource-intensive industries. We'll untax their profits IF they agree to pay true costs for resources (which, rightfully, really belong to all of us; Exxon didn't make the oil in the ground, did it?), as well as pollution, land use and whatever else they don't actually produce, but merely take from nature.
This Geonomic idea would discourage the waste of resources, end land and commodity speculation on the markets by taking away the "fuel" for it in the form of taxes which would be returned to the community, free up innovation by untaxing true productive operations, and vastly reduce pollution by finally taxing these "externalities." It would also end most poverty and wealth inequity by ending monopoly rights on income from non-manmade resources via a Single Tax on these, while rewarding true innovation and productivity by untaxing wages and capital. In Al Gore's vernacular, "Tax what you burn, not what you earn."

[randypeterson]

The growth of the solar industry has stopped due to a lack of customer financing. The need for low interest/no interest loans is enormous for homes and businesses. Once the solar industry is growing again in the US, the push needs to be on electric cars. Google is a good example where employees can recharge their cars from the company's solar panels while the employee is at work. The first step is getting the domestic solar industry rapidly growing. Oregon needs the jobs as does every state. Solar is already very close to grid parity and rapidly improving. Keep up the good work!

[Overtone]

Future cars will need no fuel and can become power plants when parked.

Breakthroughs include the MagGen. These magnetic generators will initially make it possible to cut the cord on a plug-in hybrid so it no longer needs to plug-in. Later, they can replace the batteries in an electric car. Then, the MagGen can run when the car is parked and sell power to the utility. Prototypes are under development.

Next is a Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine - SPICE, which can power a hybrid. It will need no fuel and is another path to ending the need to plug-in. The engine can run when parked. Both systems can wirelessly transmit and sell power to the local utility.

The SPICE will be powered by hydrinos which let a barrel of water equal hundreds of barrels of oil.

Scientists and engineers will doubt these technologies are possible until they have been validated by Independent Laboratories. That is an important step on the agenda.

Until now, car ownership has been an expense. Payments to car owners driving a hybrid with a SPICE, or powered by MagGen, are likely to be substantial.

The cost of many vehicles might be paid for by utilities, as they purchase power. Parked cars each become decentralized power plants - a rapid, cost-effective path to a rebirth of the automobile industry and the world economy.

[MGhamma]

Frank Herbert called, he wants his fantasy back.

[KillTheMessenger]

Cap and trade? Nonsense. Unless you slap an honest tax on it, nothing will happen. And we all know that the words "gas tax" and "energy tax" can not be spoken in Washington without the wrath of the voters descending on the poor fellow who uttered them.

So keel pretending that you are doing "something". But please stop assuming that we are going to believe that it will do much else than to serve the interest groups who paid for the bill.

[whocan]

Earl , will you and every legislator voting on this be REQUIRED TO READ IT FIRST?

[jsarets]

Transportation? Why are we ignoring the elephant in the room?...

AGRICULTURE!!!

[BannedNBoston]

Earl if hemp isnt legalized the economy will not recover.
Growing hemp would require a large investment in processing equipment to extract the oil.
We also need textiles returned to this country hemp is the way to do it.

[Javani]

"Now we need results, and I have concluded that putting a cap on carbon emissions and creating a market that will spur clean energy innovation is far superior to any other option."

If the "market" is that in trading carbon credits, it is an already proven failure in Europe, failure from the viewpoint that one expects it to spur clean energy innovation. It did not. It made traders rich, carbon derivative/exotic paper creators rich, and sellers of carbon credits from China rich.

To spur clean energy innovation it is an inefficient approach from any viewpoint. Why make Goldman Sachs and its kind rich? Direct subsidies to clean energy innovators and tax breaks is way more efficient, actually and logically.

Cap and trade will do nothing to decrease world-wide carbon emissions. That's the point of the "trade", to make available the buying of carbon offsets.

This actually deters innovation because the polluters are given a less expensive avenue than rebuilding, restructuring.

A flat out regulation on emissions, like those on the books on a variety of pollutants, has in the past and will in the future work. Why spend all that much more money and planning and time when one merely needs to by carbon offsets?

In corporate decision making, the leaders would be breaching their fiduciary duties pursuing the more expensive avenue when given the choice.

AGW Cap and Trade is Wall Street Finance's parasitism on environmentalism. Invented by
Enron, naturally.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

Anyone who talks 'green' and isn't talking about less cars on the road is just fantasizing.

[katocat]

A lot more people would ride their bikes if it was safer for them... most I know are scared of the traffic.

It's good to know that you are thinking about ways to make it easier and safer.