Waxman-Markey

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) has been trying for the past year to get Congress to set up an independent corporation dedicated to clean coal development. He introduced the Carbon Capture and Storage Early Deployment Act (HR 6258), which provoked some hearings in 2008, but it went nowhere and died. So this spring he reintroduced the bill, virtually unchanged (HR 1689).

What happened next is further proof of the enormous leverage Boucher wields as a coal state Democrat in shaping national climate legislation.

His bill was incorporated wholesale as pages 52-75 into the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), the climate bill Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey are shepherding through the House.

It fills section 114 of the Clean Energy Title of the Waxman-Markey bill, and it is a giant gift to the utility industry. It would create the Carbon Storage Research Corporation and funnel $10 billion to support the corporation over the next 10 years, with up to $500 million designated simply for "administrative expenses" to be spent at the discretion of its officers.

The most curious part is where all that money is going to come from. The answer: from every ratepayer who uses electricity, in the form of an almost invisible tax that would average 50-cents-a-month, conveniently referred to as an "assessment."

The growing global demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration – humanity's need to cool things off – is ironically now emerging as one of the biggest potential contributors to future global warming.

A class of gases known as HFCs – hydrofluorocarbons – used by the refrigeration industry to cool people in their cars and homes and to keep food from spoiling, is turning out to be the primary culprit.

Developed to replace the gases responsible for depleting the ozone, HFCs have a powerful worsening effect on global warming and have created another challenge for lawmakers to confront, an emergency within an emergency.

Each molecule of these man-made gases, often called F-gases, has a global warming potential (GWP) many thousands of times more powerful than a molecule of CO2, thus earning them the nickname "super GHGs."

New projections indicate that unless these gases are rapidly phased out with available alternatives that are benign by comparison, they could negate the impact of all other emissions reductions efforts now being contemplated. By 2040, the international NGO Environmental Investigation Agency estimates HFCs will have added 180 gigatons CO2 equivalent to the atmosphere.

"If we control these gases internationally, we will prevent the release of the equivalent of 25 years of total U.S. emissions" said S.F. LaBudde, campaign director at the Environmental Investigation Agency. "It could hinge on getting the HFC provisions of the Waxman-Markey bill right."

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• David Sassoon's blog
• 1 comment

Two statements stood out in last week’s marathon hearings on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, one for addressing the long-running efforts to cover up the truth about climate change, and the other for speaking to the United States’ potential for innovation in times of crisis.

In the first, former Vice President Al Gore equates people who believe the misinformation campaigns put out by vested interests to the victims scammed by multi-billion-dollar ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff.

“I believe that it’s important to look at the sources of the science that we rely on,” Gore tells Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).

“With all due respect, I believe that you have relied on people you have trusted who have given you bad information. I don’t blame the investors who trusted Bernie Madoff. … But he gave them bad information and committed a massive fraud that ended up hurting most of all the people who trusted him. “

Gore cites the recent New York Times article revealing court documents that describe how major polluting industries were told by their own scientists in the 1990s that climate change was real and there was no basis for denial.

“These large polluters committed a massive fraud far larger than Bernie Madoff's fraud. They are the Bernie Madoffs of global warming,” Gore says. “Like Bernie Madoff, they lied to the people who trusted them in order to make money.”

In the second, former Sen. John Warner of Virginia, a man who lived through the Great Depression and served in World War II, talks about Congress' duty to be honest with the American people about both the necessity and the challenge of shifting to a low-carbon economy.

There is a deal on the table in Washington with the potential to create a truce between two sides that have been at war for many decades. The deal takes the form of the Waxman-Markey bill – the framework for federal climate law now moving through Congress.

While it is still uncertain whether climate legislation will pass this year, the draft bill contains a formula for compromise that could create an unprecedented handshake between the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists and unite them for the first time in the battle to control greenhouse gases.

Testimony on the Waxman-Markey bill kicks off today, Earth Day. This one should be recognized for the perplexing and difficult day that it has become: a bittersweet moment in which the contours of political compromise have become stark for all concerned; and a defining moment in which both sides in the historic war are weighing painful agreements.

For the fossil fuel industry, it's a mandated cap on carbon that will squeeze roughly 80% of current emissions from the economy by 2050; and for environmentalists, it's accepting the necessity of a still speculative technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS). Many greens have come around to the opinion that CCS is fundamental to solving global climate change, and the fossil fuel industry realizes it needs federal help developing the technology in order to stay in business.

So at this legislative crossroads, the nation is on the verge of deciding to store vast quantities of CO2 – not in the atmosphere any longer – but in the Earth instead.

President Obama's opponents have been vocal in their opposition to cap-and-trade, but they don't have much to offer when pressed for energy policy alternatives.

This morning, Rep. John Boehner, the GOP's chief arm-twister in the House, suggested only one possibility when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel raised the question on ABC’s “This Week." That alternative: Do nothing and continuing polluting as usual.

Boehner inexplicably referred to carbon dioxide as a carcinogen and called the idea that CO2 emissions were endangering the environment “almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, when they do what they do, you have more carbon dioxide," he said.

When he was asked point-blank – repeatedly – what the GOP’s alternative plan was for addressing climate change, the House minority leader avoided the question with canned talking points about the same energy policies that for the past eight years have supported the fossil fuel industries. 

“We believe that our ‘all of the above’ energy strategy from last year continues to be the right approach,” Boehner said.

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• Stacy Morford's blog
• 1 comment

The Waxman-Markey bill signals Washington’s intentions to pony up to fund deforestation prevention as part of overall climate legislation. But will climate scientists, C-15 negotiators, developing countries and environmental groups agree on an international forest protection program that everyone, including the trees, can live with?

Scientists and climate policy makers now agree that saving forests is one of the most important things we can do to fight climate change. But that has not always been the case. 

When the Kyoto Protocol was formulated, only reforestation and afforestation – not deforestation prevention – were deemed eligible carbon offsets. By stripping forest conservation of any functional value, a perverse incentive structure emerged: Cutting and replanting trees provided non-Annex 1 countries an optional revenue stream, but keeping living trees standing did not. 

As the next round of negotiations approaches, new scientific findings are challenging the beliefs and motivations that led to the earlier exclusion of forest conservation. 

First, a study released last September challenged the assumption that old growth forests cease sequestering carbon from the atmosphere once they reach a certain age.

Second, land use, land use change and the forestry sector now constitute one-fifth of the world’s emissions. Because trees emit carbon once they are felled, an increase in deforestation would mean even greater emissions.

Despite consensus on the importance of deforestation prevention, though, there is little accord on how to achieve it.