Energy Thoughts Update

The energy legislation which has been in committee, has now been approved and will be coming up for discussion on the house floor. The committee was so conservative that Henry Waxman and Ed Markey who are chairman and cochairman of the committee had to make compromises just to get the bill out of committee. The compromises according to FCNL are severe enough to “critically undermine the primary goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions”

Here are the problems:

1. This bill, which is called the American Clean Energy & Security Act, (HR 2454) is a cap and trade system which is good. However, they’ve set the cap at 1% below the 1990 levels for CO2 emissions and are setting a deadline of 2020 to reach that level. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is recommending a 25 -40% cut. The IPCC is a panel of scientists from any country that is either in the World Meteorological Organization or the United Nations Environmental Program. Their objective is to present objective information on climate change for governments making environmental decisions.  We need quick, deep and real cuts in greenhouse gas emissions before 2020.

2. Another short coming is that there are provisions that allow polluters to continue polluting at current levels for over a decade. This is because the bill allows industries to purchase unlimited offsets (2 billion tons/year) instead of making changes to reduce their emissions.

3. Instead of charging for pollution permits which is one of the six key elements that FCNL says is important for this legislation, this bill is giving 2/3 of them away. Only 15% of them will be auctioned off. This money is needed to go into a program to help families offset energy costs and to help investors in clean energy technology.

We need to target Dave Loebsack to provide some leadership to improve this bill. There is an easy letter on the FCNL website where you can click on little arrows and then you can edit the paragraphs that are moved over to your letter. That only takes a few minutes and you’ve sent your letter. Perhaps we’d also like to do something else. Would a group letter by snail mail make a bigger impression?   Would some one like to call his office or pay him a visit?

- Marcia

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