Utility companies and their coal-state apologists in Congress are wrecking America’s last, best chance to solve global warming.
By insisting on free pollution permits, utilities are creating a climate bill that is complicated, unfair and destined to fail in future years. It’s now up to New York Congressman Charles Rangel (see video) and the House Ways and Means Committee to fix the problem.
The much-discussed Waxman-Markey bill on global warming now proposes to give 35 percent of all carbon pollution permits to utilities for free. Another 45 percent will go free-of-charge to other carbon-intensive industries, but utilities are least deserving by far.
Last year, America’s 48 largest utilities earned profits of $28 billion. And last month, in a study requested by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the EPA determined that allowing utilities to pollute for free under a global warming bill would drive up the overall cost of the program and would hurt poor people the most.
But this is about more than social justice and corporate welfare. Free permits weaken the most important tool within the Waxman-Markey bill: the carbon cap.
