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Billy Parish | The first step is the hardest
July 2, 2009 by afp
The House recently passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act , an important step toward protecting our environment and building a clean energy economy.
ACES has generated a lot of strong opinions, for and against, especially in the environmental community. Now, I’m not a scientist or a policy wonk, but I did help start and run the Energy Action Coalition, the largest youth clean energy organization in the country, and following the debate over the 1,200-page proposal has been confusing, even for me.
Al Gore calls the proposal, “one of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in Congress.” Yet, NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, says “I hope cap and trade doesn’t pass, because we need a much more effective approach.”
In an open letter to the president and members of Congress, 20 of the top climate scientists in the country wrote “at its best it will be only a first step” and “call attention to the large difference between what U.S. politics now seems capable of enacting and what scientists understand is necessary to prevent climatic disruption and protect the human future.”
I deeply respect individuals on both sides of the debate and in the end, I believe both sides are right.
The science, at least, is pretty clear. The safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million (ppm). Right now, we’re at 389 ppm and climbing. In its current form, ACES will not take us below 350. Most agree with that. On the other hand, the latest study by the Congressional Budget Office reports that ACES will create 1.7 million new jobs and save consumers over $22 billion in 2020 alone. According to the Center for American Progress, by 2020 it will have the same effect on global warming as removing 500 million cars from the road. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
So I’m looking forward, not back. Ultimately our goals should be to avert a climate crisis and build a vibrant clean energy economy. Does ACES bring us closer to reaching that goal? Yes. Will it bring us there on its own? Most certainly not. So, with those goals in mind, let’s look at three keys to moving forward.
First, we need to strengthen ACES as much as possible before it becomes law. The oil and coal industries have spent big to weaken the proposal. In just the first three months of 2009, these companies spent $79 million lobbying Congress. They’ve bought access and worked against the interests of the American people.
We need to strengthen ACES to ensure that it truly delivers the clean energy job creation promised by strengthening the Renewable Electricity Standard in the proposal. A better bill will also preserve the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate carbon emissions through the Clean Air Act, a critical tool for the president to ensure the necessary emissions reductions.
Second, we need to see ACES as the foundation of good national and international climate policy, not the final product. To truly jumpstart a clean energy economy, we need a range of complementary policies. President Obama has already had some success in this area, most notably with the increase in fuel-economy standards.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to create a spirit of national purpose to face this challenge. If anyone in this country has proven able to inspire us to fully engage with our civic and moral responsibilities, it’s President Obama. I hope it’s his leadership - rather than another devastating storm or an oil shock - that helps the nation re-focus on the urgency for action.
Billy Parish is the founder of the Energy Action Coalition, a national youth clean energy coalition.
The first part of the first sentence started out fine, and then did a triple-header into “Never-Neverland” re the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACESA).
Al Gore never read the “proposal”, ie. “one of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced to Congress.” Damned few people alive in the whole world read the over 13,00-1,600 pages. Having worked for Congress when bills were shorter, I know that after the first ten pages of garbarge, your head hits the desk and stays there. Most bills are unreadable, period.
If James Hansen can criticize the bill, then Hell has frozen over. Get out the ice-skates and hot toddies.
“Cap N Trade” is another Al Gore scam, like his movie and global-warming fearmongering. He has already made millions in these smoke and mirror schemes of selling carbon credits to idiots who don’t realize that what they are doing will only make Gore richer, and does nothing for air quality.
I’ve worked on “clean air/power plants” cases and it is a much more complicated issue than you know. Under Obama’s regime, and with the help of his cronies in various govt offices, the coal industry and related energy industry will be crippled, miners will be thrown out of work in regions where there are no other jobs, and energy prices will shoot thru the roof, hurting the very people this “new” policy was supposed to help.
Truckers are going to be put out of business if they have to retrofit diesel trucks with very expensive CARB-based equipment. The trucking industry is already challenging California’s “in-use engine emission standards for diesel-fuel transport refrigeration units and transportation refrigeration unit generator sets operating in California (American Trucking Association v. EPA (D.C. Cir).
If truckers get hit with very expensive emissions standards for their already very expensive trucks, they might just boycott California’s vegetable and fruit industry, thus throwing more people out of work. But hey, the Governator and the Legislature has just done that with about 40,000 people by cutting off water supplies to one of the most productive growing regions in the state. Just ask comedian Paul Rodriquez, who is also a farmer, what the “human cost” of California’s environmental water policies, is.
We need for nuclear energy, more oil refineries (with the newest clean-air equipment), and tax-breaks for the coal-energy industry for their research in producing clearner emissions from caol-fired power plants.
Wind power isn’t going to do a damned thing for 99% of America. Hell, Ted Kennedy and his bunch of elite snobs in Massachusetts won’t let them put up windmills miles out to sea. It’s NIMBY - let the peasants have them where they live. We are rich, powerful, and white bread. None of this “practice what you preach” for us. Kennedys tell others how to live. The people don’t tell us how to live. We have enough money to avoid this crassness on behalf of the masses.
If you want to stop spewing CO2 into the atmosphere, die!. Yeah, just drop dead. That will cut your carbon footprint down to zero.
You can also put ass-gas bags on cows and gas-collecting masks on them, and sheep, and reindeer, etc., if you can catch them.
Obama has already cost many of his union supporters their jobs, so I’m sure that they are not happy that ACES will create 1.7 million new jobs and “save consurmers over $22 billion in 2020 alone.”
I’m worried about living thru 2010, 2011, 2012, when Obama will have given us debts in the TRILLIONS. $22 billion is a spit in the ocean, and with falling tax revenues, you will be an old man on Social Security, if it is still around, when 2020 comes around.
Get a real job. Build a car that people can afford. Build a house that people can afford. Build a bridge, a road, a power plant. Your Energy Action Coalition will have a lot of unemployed “youths” if today’s working people don’t have jobs, and soon. Government handouts and payoffs are not going to around forever.