Summer Update: We have a Climate Bill! This is whats wrong with it?

Hey everyone – I hope you’re all well and enjoying what looks like the beginning of summer…at least here in Chicago.

Sorry I haven’t posted anything for so long. I’ve been busy helping the (recently formed) Chicago Environmental Justice Coalition prepare for the Energy Elections we are holding all over the city. I’ll write more about this later today.

I want to bring you an update on the status of the movement to pass comprehensive Climate legislation here in the U.S.

I’m excited to say that around May 21st 2009 the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill. This is an exciting moment in our history, the first time a “serious” climate bill has made it this far in the House.

The bill would cut greenhouse-gas emissions about 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and about 80 percent by 2050, while promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency.

However, the bill holds many concessions to the powerful coal, oil, bio fuel and nuclear lobbies who hired high-profile lobbyists in order to weaken the bill…and it shows.

Again, the passage of this bill through the committee is historic but there are many divisions among environmentalists on its current form. Should we move to get this legislation passed? Or should we get a different, stronger bill and offer less concessions to dirty energy? Read this piece about Al Gore and Greg Hansen debating the bill.

One of the better takes on the bill that I’ve seen is a piece by Daphne Wysham of In These Times (below).

1) It won’t protect the poor from price-hikes as the price of carbon is slowly internalized into our energy bills, but will protect polluting industries by allowing them free pollution permits; 2) It opens the door to fraud and shell games instead of real climate action by setting up a huge carbon derivatives market; 3) It makes a mockery of our common understanding of “renewable energy,” favoring dirty smokestacks over truly clean, renewable energy.

Right out of the starting gate, the bill provides a ridiculous number of giveaways to industry — something President Barack Obama campaigned against as unfair to consumers: Upwards of 85 percent of pollution allowances are being given away for free to the electricity sector, with many of these free permits not phasing out until 2030. This means little to none of the revenues coming into the public coffers from this “cap and trade” scheme will be used to protect low and moderate households from energy price increases, as envisioned by Obama.

Read her analysis on how the direction of the renewable energy movement is moving towards a new promise land…one that leads to a utopia imagined by the likes of Big Coal and Big Oil and all their friends.

Do you think “renewable energy” means windmills or solar panels? Think again. The windmills and solar panels of our renewable energy dreams are being supplanted by the smokestacks of our nightmares. All it takes is a little imagination — and a high-paid lobbyist — to claim that just about anything is “renewable energy.”

Take biomass burners: There are plans afoot to cut down 100-year-old trees, throw them into a burner, and call this “renewable energy.” …

Or consider the municipal solid waste incinerator recast as “waste to energy” projects. This waste could otherwise be recycled (generating 10 times as many green jobs as an incinerator, by the way) or composted, providing rich fertilizer. But, in the twisted logic of the Waxman-Markey universe, incinerators are “renewable” because there is an endless supply of waste going to landfills; if one burns that waste and turns the heat into energy — presto, change-o — this, too, becomes a “renewable” form of energy. This in spite of the fact that burning garbage produces more CO2 per unit of electricity generated than the dirtiest coal power plants.

Here’s the link to the full piece.

And what about those pollution permits? Is a market-based Cap and Trade system going to be effective in reducing pollution and providing money for green tech projects? Greenpeace (which is unofficially listed as being against the bill in current form with its concessions to the dirty energy industry) offers there view of those aspects of the bill. From the Greenpeace site.

The draft bill has always failed to explain how it would allocate the money made from the sale of pollution permits within the emissions cap and trade scheme proposed by the bill. This money should be used to build clean energy solutions – like a smart grid. Instead, the discussion draft contains giveaways and loopholes for the dirty coal industry and false solutions such as Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Even worse, we are hearing reports that the bill has become significantly worse in this area over the past week. Bloomberg recently reported that Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is offering as much as US $40 billion in free pollution permits to “utilities, refiners and manufacturers.”

President Obama initially called for 100 percent of pollution permits to be auctioned off and to use up to 83 percent of the revenues to help taxpayers to pay for higher energy costs. According to reports, the bill might actually end up giving as much as 55 percent of the permits away for free. The EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme originally gave away so many permits that pollution permits were trading for as little as 1 euro cent, providing no incentive for polluting industries to clean up their act. Now the fossil fuels industries – who have spent some $45 million lobbying against the bill – are succeeding in convincing House Democrats to make the same mistake.

The bill originally called for roughly what scientists say is necessary to avert the worst effects of climate change: 25 to 40 percent below 1990 emissions levels by 2020. However, now the bill looks like offering a cut of 4 percent on 1990 emission levels. To make this look good the baseline has been shifted to 2005, allowing the politicians to present it as a much bigger cut.

Tags: al gore, carbon offsets, green jobs, greenpeace, greg hansen, in these times, nasa, trading scheme, Waxman-Markey