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Climate Policy

Ener­gy Jus­tice Mate­ri­als on False Solu­tions to Cli­mate Change:

“Off­sets are an imag­i­nary com­mod­i­ty cre­at­ed by deduct­ing what you hope hap­pens from what you guess would have hap­pened.” ‑Dan Welch, Eth­i­cal Corporation

Resources on the prob­lems with mar­ket-based cli­mate solu­tions such as off­sets and car­bon trading

Some his­to­ry on the first major cli­mate leg­is­la­tion to almost pass in the U.S.

In 2009, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed the Amer­i­can Clean Ener­gy and Secu­ri­ty Act, a filthy ener­gy bill sold as a cli­mate solu­tion and pro­mot­ed by the largest (and most com­pro­mised) envi­ron­men­tal groups. The bill used a flawed and unjust “cap and trade” pol­i­cy to allow the trad­ing of the right to pol­lute, which has not only been a failed pol­i­cy for many rea­sons, but is unjust because of the way in which emis­sions reduc­tions in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties cre­ate “hot spots” (usu­al­ly in low-income com­mu­ni­ties and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or) where pol­lu­tion would con­tin­ue while com­pa­nies buy cred­its to allow their con­tin­ued pol­lu­tion. While CO2 is a “glob­al pol­lu­tant” — mean­ing that the impacts aren’t felt local­ly — all of the oth­er pol­lu­tants released from the same smoke­stacks have neg­a­tive health con­se­quences for communities.

Many envi­ron­men­tal­ists opposed the bill, and even cli­mate sci­en­tist James Hansen called the bill “worse than noth­ing.” Why? Because the bill failed to rise to the chal­lenge, offered absurd­ly weak tar­gets, pro­vid­ed ludi­crous quan­ti­ties of cor­po­rate hand­outs to pol­luters, fund­ed a slew of dirty false solu­tions (car­bon cap­ture and seques­tra­tion, bio­mass burn­ing, nuclear, etc). Over­all, it sought to main­tain busi­ness as usu­al, rather than putting the nation on the path to avoid cat­a­stroph­ic warming.

Despite this and many oth­er prob­lems with the pol­i­cy, oth­er filthy bills in the Sen­ate were intro­duced by Ker­ry, Gra­ham, Lieber­man and oth­ers — get­ting dirt­i­er as they made fur­ther com­pro­mis­es in order to attract votes.

Many con­cerned cit­i­zens sup­port­ed the pas­sage of these bills, call­ing stri­dent­ly for “strong action on cli­mate change,” unaware of the dev­il in the details. The dev­il dwells in the fact that many pow­er­ful indus­try and gov­ern­ment inter­ests view cli­mate change not as a seri­ous prob­lem to be resolved by all means pos­si­ble, but rather as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to main­tain and enhance prof­its. They would seek to build more pol­lut­ing incin­er­a­tors, con­tin­ue moun­tain­top removal and coal burn­ing, expand indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture, drill our coast­lines, mine ura­ni­um and build more nuclear reac­tors, leav­ing us to cope with more can­cer, asth­ma and oth­er health prob­lems, and an alto­geth­er ques­tion­able future for our children.

When Ker­ry-Box­er intro­duced a com­pan­ion bill large­ly mir­ror­ing “worse than noth­ing,” it was entire­ly reject­ed by some Sen­a­tors, who, unbe­liev­ably, fail to rec­og­nize cli­mate change as a prob­lem wor­thy of address­ing, and are entire­ly behold­en to their fos­sil fuel and oth­er indus­try sup­port­ers. Ker­ry went back to the draw­ing board, this time invit­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of indus­try and the deniers who have made it clear that in order to win the need­ed 60 votes, they would require ful­fill­ment of their “wish­list.” We were then faced with a bill writ­ten to ful­fill the wish­es of the worst pol­luters and denial­ists and guar­an­teed to be FAR worse than nothing.

The Ker­ry-Gra­ham-Lieber­man bill even aimed to take away EPA’s author­i­ty to reg­u­late green­house gas­es under the Clean Air Act — our one proven tool for reg­u­lat­ing air pol­lu­tion, which indus­try fears because it will be more effec­tive than the car­bon trad­ing schemes in this leg­is­la­tion. The Ker­ry-Gra­ham-Lieber­man bill even would have inval­i­dat­ed any state and local-lev­el laws that are stronger than the weak poli­cies in their bill!

Now that Oba­ma, in his sec­ond term, made a speech in favor of a new effort at a cli­mate bill, some are get­ting excit­ed again about pass­ing nation­al cli­mate leg­is­la­tion. We need to look no fur­ther than the text of Oba­ma’s speech, and his accom­pa­ny­ing poli­cies, to see how dirty it would be. He pro­mot­ed his “all of the above” strat­e­gy of more nuclear pow­er, more oil drilling and frack­ing for nat­ur­al gas, trash and bio­mass incin­er­a­tion, unjust cap-and-trade pol­i­cy, and trade agree­ments that under­mine democ­ra­cy and enshrine cor­po­rate pow­er globally.

We need to be savvy and rec­og­nize that, until we get cor­po­rate mon­ey out of pol­i­tics, real cli­mate solu­tions will not be com­ing from the fed­er­al lev­el of the U.S. government.

Why we (and lots of other groups) opposed the 2009 federal climate legislation

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