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The Oil Age Poster
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What a Bleeping Joke
Posted Jun 5, 2009 by Asher Miller
I'll admit that I never had much hope for the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade climate bill, but now it's just a bad, bad joke.
During the final days of the drafting of a 946-page climate bill, Rep. Gene Green (D-Tex.) won support for an amendment that deleted a single word and inserted two others. The words could be worth millions of dollars to U.S. oil refiners.
The Green amendment deleted the word "sources" and inserted "emission points." In the arcane world of climate legislation, that tiny bit of editing might one day give petroleum refiners valuable rights to emit carbon dioxide when it otherwise might not have been allowed. Refiners could get the extra allowances in return for cutting carbon emissions by 50 percent at a single point of a vast refinery complex instead of slashing emissions by 50 percent for the entire facility.
That's like a building inspector giving a safety permit for a new hospital because there's a smoke detector at the front door, while the rest of the building has loose electrical wires, faulty construction, and a cracked foundation. Only this is much, much more dangerous.
And that's just one of the many compromises (read, foolish allowances) that have been added to the bill in its journey through the House of Representatives.
Point Carbon, a market analysis firm, estimates that the current House draft earmarks $254 billion in allowances -- one sixth of the estimated total value of allowances from 2012 through 2030 -- and gives them to industries most sensitive to carbon pricing, including coal-based electric power generators, energy-intensive manufacturers vulnerable to foreign competition, oil refineries and the automobile industry.
And the bill hasn't even made its way to the Senate yet, where it's likely to get watered down much more.
From what I can tell, the environmental and climate groups have gone through a painful process of disillusionment, with the exception of big fish like Environmental Defense, which had a major role to play--working with industry groups--in crafting the bill.
Supporters of the bill say its key component is an iron-clad cap on the nation's emissions that drops over time. They said it doesn't matter how allowances are distributed.
"The environmental goals depend on having a strong cap and a time horizon to encourage innovation," said Nathanial Keohane, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund. "That's what we see in the bill."
A time horizon, huh? After 2030? That's brilliant, especially when climate scientists like NASA's Dr. James Hansen, tell us that we need to get down to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to avoid the risk of disastrous threshold events like the shut down of the gulf stream. We're at 388 ppm and rising, and evidence is mounting that the effects of global climate change are happening much more quickly and severely than even the worst of predictions. So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense to give away permits.
Factor in energy scarcity, and the picture is even worse. We need to be on a crash course to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, both because of global climate change and peak energy. The Waxman-Markey bill is a pathetic continuation of the dance-around-the-edges approach our lawmakers have, no matter how much more dire the situation gets. What's doubly disturbing is the fact that a shift in political power towards the Democrats hasn't lead to any meaningful shift in policy. And its passage could give lawmakers and the general public a false, false assumption that we've actually done something to address our energy and climate crises.
History will judge us harshly indeed.
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8 comments
Obviously
From: Mmorpg, Aug 7, 2009 08:59 PM
The cap and Trade bill will hurt all Americans, as it'll indirectly affect them by making everyday goods more expensive.
well
From: Modern Technologies, Jul 29, 2009 07:00 AM
as someone else pointed out before here, they are window dressing. how much do you think they care?
dont get me wrong, they do care, but just not about what they should really care about, hope i am making sense here
Federal Government bills
From: KD Brown, Jun 24, 2009 09:38 AM
The problem is the same here in Canada, only we are ever more dependent on primary resource industries for our living. The US soaks up much of the output of these primary industries; the Harper government in Ottawa is full of Alberta oil men - much as Dubya's White House was full of Texas oil men. We have voter turn-out rates that are abysmally low. Much of the cynicism that is found in the above posts is alive and well.
A couple of things: the first is that the ostrich-in-the-sand-I-act-locally-don't-bug-me-with-the-Feds reaction to glacial change in federal politics was precisely what allowed the right to hijack the government and public action from the early '80's until Obama's election. There has been a great deal of progress locally as a result - if you look for positive signs they mostly can be found in communities on the ground - but at the cost of handing the keys to the kingdom to people who most decidedly do not have the long-term sustainability of our civilization in mind.
Obama's election was a victory - but it will come to naught if people everywhere do not hold his feet to the fire, and require him to provide more than hope. For hope that is not followed by a real reason to continue to hope is cheap sentiment, easily doled out during an election campaign, in the end useless.
There are simply going to be flaws in proposed legislation until our representatives hear from more of us: they must hear that we need the changes that will allow us to survive in a post-peak world with a changed climate. The answer to flawed legislation is more civic involvement, not less.
"Ask not what your country can do for you..."
economics - energy
From: steve from virginia, Jun 9, 2009 08:25 PM
Events and cirucumstances are driving events not direction from government. At some point the establishment will catch up ... provided there is time left.
The current government is a caretaker regime. The government four years from now will have the task of picking up the pieces.
It's difficult for the government to act when there is no claar and present danger. Just as a hurricane will strke the day after a beautiful sun-shining summer afternoon, the problems are abstract. The costs are real.
Nothing will happen until there are bodies in the streets. That is how it alwasys works.
Cap and Trade Bill
From: Jynx, Jun 6, 2009 10:46 AM
About what I expected from Congress -- window dressing.
Republican-lite...
From: Paul K., Jun 5, 2009 03:32 PM
Anyone who voted Democratic this past election and expecting real change (myself included) were fools! Obama and his cronies are nothing more than Republican-lite, same old crap with just more lip service!! Too bad for the rest of the world who WILL SUFFER along with us because americans are, by far, the most stupid people on the face of the planet! It would be too easy to say I'll be voting NO major party in the next coming elections, but it is already too late for that because nature will be making some long overdue "adjustments" to humanity and our future in a HUGE way in the coming decade. How sad that we have screwed up our own and ONLY nest so bad and not even care. Our short future's history won't even know the worst of it...
I think that looking to a
From: Anonymous, Jun 5, 2009 02:57 PM
I think that looking to a bought and paid for federal government for solutions that are in the best interests of the average citizen is an exercise in futility. I would suggest going the grassroots relocalization/transition route. These influencers of policy are dinosaurs of a expodential debt based economy that do not see their own exinction occuring. It's easy to be frustrated looking at the federal level so don't waste your physical, intellectual and emotional energy chasing after them. Take care of your own community, the ongoing circumstances of peak oil and climate change will take care of the dinosaurs.