Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement
Well, I was thinking over what Global Warming legislation, if any, would get my support. Evan steered me to this chart, which I thought gives a pretty good rundown of the legislation. So, setting aside any debate of cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax or safety valves for a bit, I thought I might see what everybody else thinks about the bills on the table.
Click on the chart to see it full size.
[poll=2]
Tell me what you think about the various bills!
Richard Graves is the blogmaster for It's Getting Hot in Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement and served as the New Media Fellow for the Energy Action Coalition. He helps over a hundred youth leaders from around the world tell their stories in the fight against global warming and for a more just and sustainable world. Richard graduated from Macalester College after winning campaigns for green building, green roofing, renewable energy investment, and energy conservation. When he isn't organizing against global warming, he likes to make Italian, Mexican, and Japanese food, read books, and to sculpt.
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Interesting poll, but it feeds into the perception some have that cap-and-trade is the only way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. For all the reasons stated on the Carbon Tax Center web site, http://www.carbontax.org, carbon taxes are far more effective and equitable and, perhaps most important, would produce reductions much more quickly than a cap-and-trade program.
The Boxer-Sanders bill (global warming reduction act) is for the Senate basically the same as the Waxman bill (safe climate act) in the House. They’re basically parallel and supporting each other – and the only ones that actually get us there – as you may know …
Of course, regulation/ mitigation style policy doesn’t cut it in the global warming world. Policy has to empower community transformation to a new energy society – not just mitigate our industrial global warming pollution.
Timothy is correct that H.R. 1590, the Safe Climate Act (introduced by Henry Waxman) and S.309, the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (introduced by Bernard Sanders and co-sponsored by Barbara Boxer, among others) are essentially the same bill. They are the House and Senate analogues of each other. The same is true of the McCain-Lieberman and Oliver-Gilchrest Climate Stewardship Acts.
You can look up details on both bills here (just search by bill number).
Like Timothy said, the Boxer-Sanders and Waxman bills are the only ones that actually get us to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050. All the rest just don’t cut it. If you check out the graph above, you’ll clearly see that if we hope to stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels at 450 parts per million – what scientists say we need to do to have a shot at stabilizing the climate and avoiding dangerous and irreversible climate change – we need to achieve at least an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions (below 1990 levels) by mid-century (~2050). Of all the proposed bills, only the Safe Climate Act and the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act get there.
When looking at that chart, it’s important to look at the area under each reduction line. That’s the cumulative CO2 emissions, and cumulative emissions are what’s important, since CO2 lasts in the atmosphere for a hundred years or more. For example, the ’stair-step’ reduction targets of the McCain-Lieberman and Oliver-Gilchrest Climate Stewardship Acts (House and Senate versions) mean more cumulative emissions than a steady reduction line.
What we need is comprehensive, science-based legislation, and that means legislation aimed at an 80% reduction by 2050 and including three things:
(1) a mandatory, economy-wide cap and trade program or carbon tax to start putting a price on carbon and encouraging private sector reductions in emissions and innovation in low carbon technologies.
(2) codes and incentives to encourage the rapid deployment of available low carbon technologies including renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.), alternative low-carbon fuels, and particularly energy efficiency, including natural gas, electricity and transportation use (i.e. building codes and incentives to encourage high-efficiency building, energy efficient lighting and appliance codes and incentives, increased fuel economy standards and incentives to purchase fuel efficient vehicles). Increased energy efficiency can help lower consumers’ energy bills, alleviating the increased cost of energy resulting from a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program.
(3) increased research and development into new low-carbon technologies. We need to invest billions of dollars now in developing the clean energy technologies of the future that will help us ultimately de-carbonize the whole planet.
Parts 2 and 3 can be funded partly or entirely by funds generated by part 1. That is, the revenues generated by carbon taxes or auctioned carbon allowances for a cap-and-trade program can fund the incentives and R&D investments in parts 2 and 3, making these programs revenue neutral.
Alternatively, Natural Resources Defense Council suggests an interesting option, which I tend to like: in a cap and trade program, instead of allocating emissions allowances for free to polluters (a major wind fall for polluters), the government can allocate them to the kinds of industries they want to incentivize – renewable energy generators, automakers who produce efficient vehicles or alternative fuel vehicles, producers of energy efficient technologies, etc. That way, those industries that we want to encourage will be able to sell their allowances to polluters, giving them a new revenue stream and source of income to incentivize these industries. This is similar to having the government auction emissions allowances and then allocate the funds generated by the auction to the low-carbon industries, but removes the auction step and simply allocates the emissions allowances to the low-carbon industries. These industries can then decide directly how best to use this new valuable commodity to their best advantage, reducing bureaucracy and transaction costs.
Anyway (sorry for the small tangent into wonk-land), the Safe Climate Act and the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act are the best we’ve got right now, and they’re pretty good. The reality is, they’re the only proposals that come close enough to what scientists tell us we need to accomplish. These two bills are going to be our horse in this race to enact legislation, and we’ve got to ensure that these are the bills that pass.
We need to demand that these strong bills (or something stronger) are passed. We can’t afford to pass a weak bill and then have Congress declare the problem solved. We’ll lose all of our momentum, and this outcome would be even worse than trying and failing to pass a strong bill, at least for the next year or two. This is something we need to keep in the front of our minds as we call for action on climate change.
Compromise is usually the name of the game in D.C., but this is too big an issue and the consequences are to severe to compromise on climate change.
It’s time to stop simply asking Congress to do something to address Climate Change! It’s time to call on Congress with a clear and united voice to do something in particular: pass comprehensive, science-based climate change legislation ensuring an 80% reduction in global warming pollution by 2050 – or more specifically, it’s time to pass the Safe Climate Act and Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act.
It’s time to start lobbying your representatives to co-sponsor and champion these two bills. You can find lists of co-sponsors by using the Libary of Congress here (again, search by bill number). Check if your senators and representative have co-sponsored the right bills. If so, write a letter to thank them and encourage them to be champions for these bills. If not, start thinking about how you can help convince them to co-sponsor the bill – write letters, make calls, organize a meeting with their staff, collect post cards from students at your college, etc.
I’d love to talk to any of you about ideas for how to do this if you’re interested (just drop me an email – OregonYouCAN[at]gmail.com). We’ve been active out here in Oregon gathering hundreds of post cards and dozens of letters from young Oregonians across the state which we are delivering to our legislators during meetings at which we can voice our support for these bills and let our representatives know that today’s youth are counting on them to help protect their future by enacting these bills.
Cheers,
Jesse Jenkins
p.s. by the way, the Safe Climate Act/Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act have been supported by the Public Interest Research Groups (US PIRGs), the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and I believe the Sierra Club and the World Resources Institute as well.
Dan, you are right that a carbon tax is another option (and possible a better one). The Carbon Tax Center needs to get someone to sponsor a bill proposing a carbon tax so that we can add that to the discussion. Currently, the only legislation on the table all propose carbon cap-and-trade programs. While a carbon tax may ultimately be better, if a cap and trade can get the job done, and that’s what’s got momentum right now, we might have to just go with it.
Anyway, the ship is soon sailing on the cap-and-trade vs carbon tax debate, and we’ll need to see a legislative proposal that includes a carbon tax soon if we want to see it considered by Congress.
Where can we get summaries of these bills. It would be good if you had links to them or provided them yourself. I can’t vote until I get the facts and I confess that I haven’t been keeping up with this issue as well as I would like. What do most activists recommend?
Thanks,
Marcia
OK, I see the explanations and links above. You can delete both my mails.
Marcia
At what point does the Bush compound at Kennebunkport go under the rising oceans?
Hello. I am a thirteen year old girl who would like to state my opinion on global warming. I have recently seen the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. For a couple of weeks after I viewed this documentary, the truth was finally dug up. But it was not done by me, it was done by my father. He gave me another side of this subject, just like he always says, “There is always three sides to a story. Your side, there side, and the truth.” So far I have heard my fathers side, Al Gore’s side, and have yet not found the truth. Man believe’s that we are the cause of all of the weather change, the ocean’s behavior, and the amount of ice that is melting away right under the feet of so many polar bears. I have seen in Al Gore’s documentary, a picture of a polar bear and her babies. They are floating on a thine piece of ice that is in the middle of the Atlantic. Al Gore petrays this as something that never happens, and that the cause of this is global warming. I have heard that a man from Canada shot this photo, and says that he see’s this all the time. Polar bears can swim for 50-60 kilometers out into the ocean, and be able to get back. I was just considering this piece of information when I was presented with another answer for all that goes on in the world. Scientists have said that every couple of thousands of years, the world goes threw this simular event, such as the one that we are going through right now. I ask you now, why didn’t Al Gore mention any of this to us in his documentary? Did he forget, did he not know any of this information, or did he not want us to know? I ask you this not to cause an uproar of emotions, or to get in an arguement, but just to find some more answer’s so I can finally piece together the truth. Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, and opinions, and that I appreciate it very much.
Meaghan,
I understand that Al Gore’s documentary may have a lot of information in it and it certainly contains a lot of opinion on the solutions he prefers that can be legitimately disagreed with. However, I believe that Al Gore did mention in his documentary that the issue was not that polar bears can’t swim significant distances, but rather that more and more are drowning due to ice melting beyond their ability to swim. Also, in the movie, he showed a chart with the fluctuations that do occur every couple thousand years, what are called Milankovitch cycles, and proved that current global warming is vastly larger. The basic issue is that if you do trust the scientists, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and 16 other nations have agreed that Global Warming is real, profoundly dangerous, and caused primarily by human activity. Your father and myself would probably disagree over the best way to solve the problem, but neither of us are qualified to dispute the findings of the world’s leading scientific bodies. If you just want some more answers, take a look at the National Academy of Sciences’s online museum exhibit on climate change, here. It’s not as exciting as actually visiting the Natural History museum, but I think it will help.
Please update your website to include the new Stark Bill, which relies on a carbon tax (rather than cap and trade). (Also your search blog archives is covering some link, I can’t read.)
I agree with Dan and do not believe that a cap and trade scheme is likely to produce results in a reasonable timeframe. There are too many opportunities for people to game the system, which they always do. A tax is a simpler more transparent alternative and should be adopted to address this catastrophic threat. This still leaves many questions on the best way to approach the international situation. But we must have an effective approach her before we can succeed with partners abroad.
I also believe that the chart above from the World Resources Institute is highly speculative (as to the results that would be achieved from each bill.
Thanks for working on this.
Also, please indicate what other actions you are taking.