Update on federal Climate Change legislation
It's been awhile since my last post on climate change legislation and despite Copenhagen there's not really a lot to update you on. Which is, of course, disappointing. Here's the round up in brief:
• The Senate Clean Energy Jobs and American Security Act went through the Committee on Environment and Public Works and is now on the sidelines as the Senate focuses on health care. Through my internship at the Minnesota Budget Project we have been tracking the bill to try to protect consumer relief provisions. Unfortunately, the amount of allowances designated for consumer relief was reduced. While it still says 15%, it is 15% of a smaller pool of money, making it actually closer to 12.6% according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This is not enough to hold the lowest income households harmless from increasing energy prices that will result from a cap and trade system.
• Just before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) presented President Obama with a "Framework for Climate Action and Energy Independence." In the framework the Senators mention investing in clean energy and green jobs, protecting low-income consumers, cap and trade, and the need to act quickly. There is little detail in the five pages, and while they manage to reserve paragraphs for the need for investing in nuclear power and clean coal, there is no talk of energy efficiency or conservation.
• It's hard to know what to say about the COP15 talks that took place in Copenhagen between December 7-18. The final result was the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding agreement that does not set clear targets for emission reductions. It is certainly seen as a positive step forward that China, and other developing nations with high emissions, were part of the negotiations and the final agreement. But what will they do from here?
• On December 11, 2009, Senator Maria Cantwell (WA) introduced another climate change bill called the CLEAR Act. This bill proposes a "cap-and-rebate" or "cap-and-dividend" approach where 75 percent of the money raised from auctioning off carbon shares would be rebated directly to every American. The other 25 percent of revenue would be used for clean-energy research and development, energy efficiency, and green jobs assistance. While this is certainly an interesting and seemingly simple approach (it is laid out in only 40 pages), there has been virtually no news about it since it was first introduced.
• I think the EPA's role in all this needs to be understood as well. In December the EPA formally declared that an additional six greenhouse gases are known to endanger human health. This finding gives the EPA the power to regulate these gases under the Clean Air Act. Essentially the EPA could act without Congress, but their actually ability to do this is limited and the benefits of doing this are questionable. However, some Senators are worried about the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases on their own. At the end of January Senator Lisa Murkowski (D-AK) offered an amendment to strip the EPA of their power to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
All of this action, just in the months of December and January, and what are we left with in the new year? In my recent search for the latest news on climate change all I found were articles telling us that some Democratic senators are now asking the senate to wait to address climate change. Wait until next session, wait until the economy is figured out, wait until there's a binding international agreement.
Apparently there is now worldwide consensus that climate change is a threat to life on earth as we know it and that human actions are the primary cause. There is consensus that we need to act swiftly and boldly if we are going to have any chance of addressing it, which at this point seems to mean lessening the negative impacts rather than preventing it. Yet, it all comes down to politics, to re-election and protecting the interests of the industries in your home state. It's disappointing. Despite all the talk, all the research, all the evidence, we still think we can put climate change on hold while we address health care or the economy. There is still the belief that we are separate from nature, that health care isn't directly impacted by climate change or that the economy isn't influenced by it. Maybe in a world of short attention spans and short political terms we are incapable of thinking on such a grand scale as climate change.
I recently participated in a national conference call about the cap and dividend system. The speakers on the call, all in favor of the system, seem to think that cap and trade has lost its traction and that cap and dividend is the best alternative. The most interesting part of the call to me was the assertion that while the caps laid out in the CLEAR Act do not come even close to meeting the worldwide scientific consensus of 350 ppm that they can be improved upon later. There is an underlying problem there. The alternatives we are offered are limited. Our choices are a flawed bill or a less flawed bill. Doesn't a problem like climate change require bold, sweeping action? It makes me wonder how our political system, lobbyists, and others can limit the alternatives that are offered up as solutions. How do these alternatives, or lack of alternatives, limit the ways that people choose to get involved? Are we all willing to mobilize behind a bill that falls short of actually addressing the problem?
