In May of 2010, the U.S. Senate unveiled a new climate bill. It aims to lower planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Science journalist Andrew Revkin who writes the Dot Earth blog for the New York Times told EarthSky his thoughts about the U.S. climate bill.
Andrew Revkin: What I try to do is to look at a piece of legislation or any other initiative from the standpoint of the atmosphere. Is there a way to look with confidence and see if these mechanisms that are proposed, which ones would actually, really, concretely give you the best chance at making changes in emissions trajectories?
The U.S. climate bill, called the American Power Act, has a long way to go and will most likely change as it works its way through the Senate in the remaining months of 2010. One of the main parts of the bill so far is to establish a system of cap and trade. In theory it restricts the amount of greenhouse gases generated by utilities and allows them to trade on the market credits for carbon emissions.
Andrew Revkin: So one of the criticisms of this kind of system is that it can be pretty opaque, kind of like other financial trading that went on. And that got a lot of people suspicious of the whole enterprise. For the moment, it looks like if it’s in the bill, it will be restricted to the power generation sector, the utilities, initially, which greatly weakens the environmental potential of it.
The climate bill’s initial goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions of the U.S. 17 percent below the levels of 2005 by 2020.
Andrew Revkin: As I wrote on Dot Earth recently, right now we’ve got declining emissions, although so far it’s been significantly because of the economy going into the tank. The question is now, how do you sustain reductions in emissions, while you try to grow an economy? That’s more challenging.
The Gulf oil spill of May 2010 could influence the decisions made by U.S. in support of renewable energy, said Revkin.
Andrew Revkin: I think there’s a teachable moment here, right now, an actionable moment, for President Obama. I think Americans basically want to have a clean environment. They know what excess is when they see it. And I think we’re at a moment when a leader could say, now is our time to engage this country in an energy quest. An effort, right from the gas tank in your car to the socket in your home to the laboratory in your classroom, to find ways to keep ourselves prosperous and build a sustainable world, without overloading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and without the complexities and conflicts that can come with reliance on fossil fuels. Just look at the Gulf. Here you can see the issues we get into when we have unabated appetite for oil. We have to get it deeper and farther, and that comes with risks that can create things like the nightmare that we’re seeing.
The world is moving slowly on action to reduce its emission of planet-warning greenhouse gases, said Revkin.
Andrew Revkin: I think it’s taken ages for the world to even integrate, meaningfully, the reality that scientists have shown clearly – that humans are a building influence on the climate system. There’s a lot of variability along the way. And there will remain variability – unusually hot periods, wicked storms, more droughts, and some of that can confuse and confound the issue. There are plenty of people who I call ‘stasists,’ who are dead set on not having a shift from today’s energy policies. And that’s not going to change. Overall, I think we’re on the slow path toward integrating into our consciousness that humans are, and will remain for generations, a rising influence on the global environment and the climate system. And that comes with risks. We need to be invested, in a sustained and aggressive way, in priming the innovation pipeline, so we have new energy technologies and great improvements coming, that can make them cheaper, and finding ways to disseminate those where they’re needed, mainly in China and India. If we don’t get more engaged on putting this awareness to work, we’ll see a period of potential turmoil. It’s not just because of the climate influence. We’re also ‘peaking’ everything. In the next two generations, we’re heading toward adding the equivalent of two more China’s to the human population by 2050 or so. All nine billion people will be seeking a decent life. How we make that work out is the great challenge of our time.
It will make the rich “RICHER” and the poor “POORER”. Ex Al gore
I vote NO on the American Power Act. I pray it will fail and flop out. I Protest the American Power Act and I Oppose it. It will hurt us poor people and I am a Republican. We are on low fixed incomes and we can not afford hightaxes and high energy and high utility bills. You are ripping us off . You are hurting us.This CapN Trade and Climate Change Needs to Stop.We will do all we can to stop it. we are against Climate Change, We are against CapN Tax and CapN Trade and American Power Act. We want it stopped and stopped Now. to save our necks from high expensive energy bills . It will hurt our future and we will starve to death. You are hurting the poor and the farmers and the ranchers and small business. I pray it all fails.
Thanks
Kathy, I completely sympathize with what you’re saying and I don’t think we should support any bills that place the financial burden on the poor. But the fact is, as long as we don’t have a clean energy bill, that’s where the burden will be. Poor people often have higher health bills and a lower quality of life because of pollution from power plants, coal mines, and other fossil fuel infrastructure near their homes. Right now many communities along the Gulf Coast are about to have their livelihoods wiped out because of the BP spill. Wealthy energy corporations have a stranglehold on our energy market; they convince us that coal and oil are “cheap,” but we end up paying the cost of damages done and lives lost when a spill or a mining disaster happen.
And despite some of the inflated numbers that have come out from agencies with ties to the oil or coal industries, all the estimates from nonpartisan, public-serving and publicly-funded sources–like the U.S. Department of Energy and the Congressional Budget Office–found that cap and trade would cost the average American only $4 a month. Specific provisions protect the poorest Americans from experiencing any higher energy costs at all. And for that small number, we’ll see the growth of millions of new jobs across our country, protect our men and women in uniform from fighting wars to feed our oil addiction, and make ourselves less vulnerable to the BP and Massey disasters we saw this spring.
I don’t want to see any new costs forced on the American people, and I support the American Power Act because it will achieve so many things for our economy and environment without imposing enormous costs on people who can’t afford them. I hope the Senate succeeds in passing the bill this year.
I am casting my vote with Andy Revkin.
There appears to be a conscious unwillingness among many too many experts, thought leaders and opinion makers to acknowledge in open discussion the utter seriousness of humanity’s global predicament, the consequences of which could be profound, and world-shattering in ways we cannot even imagine.
That corporations keep growing toward the ‘Wall’ of unsustainability and governments continue to conspicuously ignore humanity’s predicament by failing to prepare the human family for the recognizable, human-driven effects of the human overpopulation of Earth in our time is the most unfortunate of human determinations.
Somehow the “will” has to be summoned to begin coming to grips with the human-induced global challenges that loom so ominously before us.
Sincerely,
Steve
There’s nothing in cap and trade for the climate and nothing in it for economic development because there is no alternative energy other than natural gas and nuclear power to switch to in the foreseeable future. Until there is, we’re just paying to pollute and feel good about it whilst the carbon brokers (think Al Gore’s London firm poised to earn billions when this bill passes) get rich playing upon our good but ineffective intentions. Until the the GHG emission models can be decoupled from economic key indicators, cap and trade is an economy killer.
I read the entire original Cap and Trade bill. It was a total climate saving and green job creating farce. I have no reason to believe anything conceived by the same players is any different – just the same horse under a different blanket. I believe most Americans are very pro clean energy and understand there are costs involved. But most Americans like me want the dollars I pay to go directly to technology development and not to paying for Al Gore’s recently acquired beach front property (I thought he said the seas were rising???).
Show me an energy policy that provides positive incentives for industry to improve efficiency, a rational path to alternative energy development, and all without a bunch of money launderers hands reaching into my pockets, and I’ll vote for it. Otherwise, I won’t support yet another bureaucratic ponzi scheme like cap and trade.
Kathy, I share your concerns about the poorest being hurt hardest because they cannot afford to pay more for energy. However, refusing to heighen the price of fossil fuels is simply trying to run on the beach towards inland when a tsunami is coming. It will save you some time but the outcome is certain.
The problem is society has been built on the assumption that fuels always will be cheap: suburbs spreading over kilometers, workplaces extremely far from homes, endless roads, not to talk about the aesthetics and design of the transportation network, which makes it both impossible and unpleasant to walk or bike.
But this assumption is not true anymore. We will all pay more for energy soon, whether we like it or not. Fossil fuels are fossil in essence, and even according to DoE peak oil, that is when oil extraction only can go down while demand still increases, is coming within the next 5 years (DoE projects as soon as next year). From this moment prices will only increase in the medium to long term. This is a fact nobody can refute. This is basic physics. China, India and the other developing countries all aim at reaching a high living standard, ie aim at consuming more energy. This conjunction of decreasing resource base and increasing demand can only lead to socioeconomic unstability and serious disruptions if nothing is done to prevent its occurence. That means reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.
So forget about climate change if you want to -you will always hear free market dogmatics or friends of Big Oil and Big Coal who will tell you this is a hoax despite the astonishing weight of evidence. Forget Al Gore as well -he is doing his business as much as everybody here, and I prefer to see him earning money communicating science and working for a better society than spreading lies and disinformation as oil and coal companies have been doing for a couple of decades now. Remember that globally, subsidies to fossil fuels amount up to $500 billions. Remember that oil companies make yearly benefits of the order of tens of billions of dollars. They have anything to loose from a transition to a low-carbon economy and will fight until the end to avoid it, no matter the fate of our civilization. I don’t mind Al Gore earning money honestly.
Forget all of this and think about the looming energy crisis. It will not come overnight: it will come progressively, exponentially and if nothing has been done to prevent it beforehand then it is too late to answer it once it is upon us.
There are two choices. Either you tax fossil fuels and the income is redistributed to the US economy. You can even redistribute the incomes of such a tax according to each one’s income, giving back more to the poorest who suffer the most from increased energy costs. This is the idea of a “green check”: the poorest consume less energy in absolute terms than the richest, so in the end of the day the poorest will earn more from such a redistributed tax than the richest. And taxing fossil fuels will give incentives to the system to develop alternative, low carbon technologies that will cost less to the consumers.
Or you can wait for the price of oil to grow by itself, following the rules of the market. Then the incomes will go to big oil (again) and especially to oil producing countries, the very same unstable and unreliable ones whose population have a strong anti US feeling and pose a threat to the US and its allies.
Who do you prefer to give money to? Yourself or those who hate you?
The unfortunate truth is that the party’s over. The era of cheap energy is about to end and we must act now to make the transition lighter to bear. Even without the climate crisis looming, continuing on our current path is pure fooly, a societal suicide. On the other hand, these combined crisis offer a unique opportunity for our leaders from both sides to unite us around a powerful project that would bring us onto a more sustainable path. Rise or fall, so simple is it.
Individuals are called upon the reduce their ecological footprints and the family of humanity is implored to humanely limit the number of human feet on Earth.
Whatsoever the odds, and no matter how daunting are the human-driven global challenges which loom so ominously before the family of humanity in our time, each one of us has undeniable responsibilities to assume and solemn duties to perform as best we can with the steadfast hope of making the world we inhabit a better place for the children to live in.
I vote no on the climate bill and yes for Hank if he decides to run for congress. Good form Hank!
Julien, I read your comments wondering how you come to your utopia conclusions. Cap and trade (C&T) establishes a European based world bank that we all directly or indirectly pay into for the privilege of manufacturing and purchasing products that take energy to produce. The truth is those who hate us will be the benefactors of the money we pour into this world banking scheme and they will continue to hate us after they get our money. It is not money in your or my pocket no matter how much you want to idealize it.
If you read the language of C&T, you will find no mention of jobs being created, no mention of any direction with regards to investment in developing alternative energy – no real mention of the proposed technologies either, no discussion whatsoever as to a path or bridge between current energy technologies and the future, and most disappointingly much discussion on how to deal with displaced workers expected to be impacted by C&T. You will find pages after pages of discretionary spending on discretionary, yet to be identified, UN programs with no guidelines as to any objectives to be served. C&T is a huge blank check. Seriously, you need to read these bills yourself as I do so you can understand that the C&T scheme you so support is nothing like what you embrace as a green future. You accept what you are told as truth.
I own a technologies company that is green and employs families across five states. Offer me one dollar to invest in green technology and I’ll spend it for that purpose. But take away from me the money to make the investment and guess what? The last C&T proposal (much the same as the present one) would cost my company at least $48K extra per year. Now add in the cost of Obama care – another roughly $20K – $25K (assuming the numbers are accurate – which they’re not), chuck in tax increases and new taxes and soon to be soaring interest rates to pay for out of control government spending, penalties for offering my employees so-called cadillac private health care, all on a current 6% profit margin that continues to fall in this bad economy. So, explain to this already green business owner how C&T is going to help me invest in more green technology and create green jobs? Seriously, you’ve got the answers I’ve been looking for. Until I and the rest of my peers in small business have your answers, the choices we have are two:
1. Raise our prices to pay for all these feel good schemes, pushing the cost to the poor man.
2. Lay off employees, lower wages, and cut benefits to “pay our dues” and make their families the poor displaced people the C&T bill talks about dealing with.
Either way, it is indeed the poor man or woman that suffer whether or not you’re able to rationalize the problem. Yes, meanwhile people like Al Gore will make billions through leveraging their connections as insiders. I suppose the success of fat cats like him is the silver lining in an otherwise very dark cloud.
Least it be confusing, the first paragraph was supposed to be quoted but the quotes got stripped – they were Julien’s words, not mine.
Pure socialism/corporatism. This will have no effect on the environment, but, will increase both cost and price of everything you buy. Nothing good about it.
They keep changing the name (the OZONE depletion, then GLOBAL WARMING, now CLIMATE CHANGE) –but the motive remains the same. Not only is it a criminal profit scheme, it also the inception of global mandates, which by definition override the sovereignty of every nation… paving the way for global governance.
In a time when most currencies are in the toilet due to government largesse, the very illusion of the validity of money is being questioned. This is a TRUST issue among nations, and right now, it is the developed nations that have the most massive debts, making it an ideal time to introduce CAP & TRADE. It will replace FAITH in government as the new ‘backing’ for many currencies– or maybe a single world reserve currency. It’s the biggest CON in history perpetrated by the power elite to de-industrialize the developed world and control the dissemination of world resources.
Six billion years of massive super-volcanos spewing toxic gasses into the atmosphere orders of magnitude greater than the entire accumulation of human emissions AND our CO2 is what we have to be worried about? It makes up a mere 0.038% of the atmosphere, yet it will wipe our entire civilization? I’ve never heard more extreme quackery and fear mongering. They finally figured out a way to tax the air we breathe.
For anyone willing to question this BS that has been drilled into our collective brains about carbon dioxide creating a greenhouse effect on the planet, just look up how many thousands of scientists have come forward to disprove the ‘theory’ and read up a bit on the science and math involved. Oh, and common sense will also come in handy.