ENERGY/CLIMATE BILL NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR ENVIRONMENTALISTS

Bill puts polluters before climate
Erich Pica (Friends of the Earth) & Phil Radford (Greenpeace) & Robert Weissman (Public Citizen), May 21, 2010 (Politico)

"In light of the growing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) abandoned the idea of introducing their new climate legislation with BP’s CEO at their side…But the public relations decision to consign BP to the sidelines cannot hide the fact that the senators had crafted a bill that Big Oil — along with King Coal and the nuclear lobby — could endorse.

"There is no doubting Kerry and Lieberman’s commitment to addressing climate change…[but] in an attempt to address inside-the-Beltway political realities, this bill neglects climate realities…[It] would do more for corporations that pollute than the environment…[T]he climate would probably be better without it. Unacceptable levels of global warming pollution would continue if this bill were to pass in anything like its current form…[It seems] to bolster polluting industries and might make winning majority support in the Senate more difficult, not easier…"

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"Ultimately, the problem of deal making with polluters…has led to policy proposals that undermine the effort to achieve effective pollution reductions…Kerry-Lieberman establishes a pollution reduction target for 2020 that fails to deliver on what scientists tell us is required…[Scientists now say] rapidly reducing pollution in the next five to 10 years [is necessary]. Strong goals for 30 years out will be moot if global warming pollution does not peak by 2015.

"Kerry-Lieberman also envisions a continuing dominance of dirty technologies. It even offers subsidies and gifts to coal (for carbon capture and storage), oil (expanded offshore drilling) and nuclear power (expanded taxpayer bailout guarantees for new reactors)…Each of these wastes scarce resources that could be invested in clean energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal power."

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"Kerry-Lieberman could also significantly undermine the Clean Air Act’s protections against climate pollution…[It] relies on pollution trading schemes that could be fodder for Wall Street manipulation…[Its trading scheme] gives away pollution allowances rather than auctioning them. As a result, consumers could foot the bill while electric utilities reap potential windfall profits…[and it] relies on offset loopholes…These are the sort of promises that have led, in other cases, to international fraud and abuse…

"We do not expect that climate legislation can ever be perfect. But, at a minimum, it does need to take us in the right direction…Any climate bill that moves forward must retain strong consumer protections, reflect the polluter-pays principle and respect existing federal and state tools…Averting devastating climate change will come not from an accommodation with the corporate purveyors of the dirty energy past but from embracing the challenge of becoming more efficient — and recalibrating the world economy to rely on clean, renewable energy."