Position: Act should be passed
This position addresses the topic American Clean Energy and Security Act.
For this position
|
"It's unlikely that this very complicated bill will be ready for the full House to consider by Memorial Day, as Waxman and Markey had hoped, but however long it takes, Congress needs to press forward with a plan to wean the nation from dirty energy. The time for talk is over, and Congress owes it to our future to pass a better-balanced energy bill this year."
|
|
|
"More important, my gut tells me that if the U.S. government puts a price on carbon, even a weak one, it will usher in a new mind-set among consumers, investors, farmers, innovators and entrepreneurs that in time will make a big difference — much like the first warnings that cigarettes could cause cancer. The morning after that warning no one ever looked at smoking the same again."
|
|
|
"As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events. In other words, we’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?"
|
|
|
"The C.B.O. did not factor in the potential cost savings to consumers from other parts of the bill — the energy efficiency provisions, for instance. Nor was it asked to quantify the costs of doing nothing. But we know the answer to that. By any measure — drought, famine, coastal devastation — the costs of inaction, of clinging to a broken energy policy, will dwarf the costs of acting now."
|
|
|
"If the United States is going to be the world leader in fighting global warming, it needs to walk the walk. This nation generates a disproportionate amount of the polluting greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. China, India, and other major polluting countries will never come to the table over carbon emissions unless the United States leads by example."
|
|
|
"If the bill is far from perfect, that doesn't mean it isn't good. It's the first significant attempt by the United States to join other responsible nations that are trying to wean themselves off fossil fuels and build a better future for their children. Its provisions are weak and will be almost unnoticeable at first, but they will strengthen over time, and the framework it creates can be improved on later if it's not producing the intended cuts."
|
|
|
"Opponents claim that this bill will result in higher energy costs. They are confusing price with cost. Although this legislation will lead to modestly higher energy prices, this, in turn, will lead to greater energy efficiency and new, cleaner energy technologies. This will, in all likelihood, result in lower overall energy costs. A true win, win, win — lower energy costs, greater energy security and fewer carbon emissions!"
|
|
|
"Still, the price of carbon-based fuels will have to be higher and stay higher for the nation’s energy mix to undergo a fundamental shift. The best way to accomplish that is by putting a price on the carbon and other greenhouse emissions, externalities long freely disposed of in the environment. And the most efficient way of doing that is through a cap-and-trade system, which would tap market forces to reduce those emissions."
|
|
|
"This is a major reason I favor the climate/energy bill passed by the House. If we do not impose on ourselves the necessity to drive innovation in clean-technology — by imposing the right prices on carbon emissions and the right regulations to promote energy efficiency — we will be laggards in the next great global industry."
|
|
|
"You’ve probably heard about the accusations leveled against climate researchers — allegations of fabricated data, the supposedly damning e-mail messages of “Climategate,” and so on. What you may not have heard, because it has received much less publicity, is that every one of these supposed scandals was eventually unmasked as a fraud concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into by many in the news media."
|
|
|
"We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign — even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts."
|
|
|
"Critics argue that carbon restrictions, even if fully implemented, would reduce global temperatures only by minor amounts, which is true. We are not going to regulate our way out of global climate disruption. The only eventual solution is technological -- the ability to produce affordable, clean power on a large scale. But conservatives seem strangely intent on ignoring the power of markets to encourage such innovation."
|
|
Against this position
|
"Three things can now be predicted with certainty about any "cap-and-trade" scheme to emerge from Congress: 1) It will cost a lot more than anyone estimates; 2) It will have countless unintended consequences, many of them bad; and 3) It will have about as much impact on "global climate change" as a bill requiring that 100 virgins per month be thrown into the Kilauea volcano to propitiate the goddess Pele."
|
|
|
"It allows for a huge increase in “offsets”—where a polluter pays someone else to stop polluting instead of curbing his own emissions. These are open to abuse, as Europe’s experience shows. There is little to stop foreign factories from starting to pollute just so that someone will pay them to stop."
|
|
|
"Even the premise for curbing greenhouse gases is flawed. There has been no cause-and-effect relationship convincingly established between rising carbon emissions and higher temperatures. Indeed, temperatures have leveled off or declined since 1998 while CO2 emissions have skyrocketed, the opposite of the global warming theory."
|
|
|
"Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program.""
|
|
|
"Perversities abound. The Los Angeles Times reported that, under the bill, America "would use more carbon-dioxide heavy coal in 2020 than it did in 2005." Time magazine writes that "the total amount of renewable energy generation . . . would actually be less than the renewable energy that would have been produced without the bill." Isn't saving the planet grand?"
|
|
|
"Canada has run the numbers on how much its smaller reduction in carbon dioxide will raise prices. The costs are startling. The Canadian government's National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy estimates that a tax of 73 U.S. cents per gallon of gas will be required to reach its 20 percent reduction relative to GDP. With U.S. gas prices at $2.61, a 73 cent tax would amount to a 28 percent tax. A much higher tax would be necessary to meet the Democrats' 2020 goal."
|
|
|
"To curb climate change, the world needs to cut carbon emissions. It needs US leadership on the issue too. But this bill is not the way. A bewildering combination of cap-and-trade, mandates, new regulation, and every kind of open and disguised subsidy, it is too complicated, too prone to subversion and in many ways downright self-defeating."
|
|
|
"Fashioned to avoid appearing like a new tax, the measure nevertheless would work like one, as the higher costs of meeting the caps get passed on to consumers. The measure risks hurting our competitiveness globally without effectively lowering global greenhouse gases. Congress should instead consider a simpler carbon tax, creating a "nuclear-arms race" to harness atomic power to replace fossil fuels and provide incentives to speed new-energy innovation."
|
|
|
"Gasoline and diesel fuel prices could go up nearly an estimated $1 per gallon just from the effects of this bill, driving up the cost of any good that is delivered by truck or train -- meaning just about every consumer product, particularly food. But Markey and Waxman aren't talking about the cost of their bill as they twist the arms of their more cautious colleagues."
|
|
|
"There wasn't enough support for a pure cap-and-trade bill, so they decided to give away credits to some groups represented by reluctant Congress members. So rural electric cooperatives, states that want to increase mass transit, algae-based biofuel producers, farmers, ethanol producers and others were granted free credits – with a market value. That process attracted a number of big businesses, like Duke Energy, Shell Oil, DuPont, Alcoa, Applied Materials and others to trade support (and the ability to advertise themselves as "green") for freebies at the expense of taxpayers."
|
|
|
"You can't blame the Democrats for hurrying to enact their hot-air legislation. The public is finally paying attention, recognizing the global warming crisis for what it is, a giant scam that will cost every American plenty. The globe isn't warming - it's actually cooling, in fact - and there's no crisis."
|
|
|
"When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035."
|
|
|
"As we've said before, capping emissions is capping economic growth. An analysis of Waxman-Markey by the Heritage Foundation projects that by 2035 it would reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million."
|
|
|
"Moreover, since it is the wealthiest nations that have the cleanest environments -- consider the dirty China and India, for example -- Waxman-Markey is more likely to damage the environment as it retards U.S. economic growth and wealth creation, and saps funding for environmental protection on an individual and societal basis."
|
|
|
"In eight years, China's annual totals will be equal to what they emit now plus everything we emit. So if we stopped emitting completely, China completely counters our effort. Add to that a simple fact which no cap-and-trade bill admits: That legislation would push even more of our industry into migrating to China, India and other nations that have no intention of reducing emissions by making energy more expensive."
|
|
|
"As The New York Times reported in 2008, a comparable system in Europe "unleashed a lobbying free-for-all that led politicians to dole out favors to various industries, undermining the environmental goals. Four years later, it is becoming clear that system has so far produced little noticeable benefit to the climate — but generated a multibillion-dollar windfall for some of the Continent's biggest polluters." Oh, and from 2000 to 2006, European emissions rates under the cap-and-trade policy increased by 3.5 percent. During that same time, U.S. emissions increased by 0.7 percent."
|
|
|
"Alas, such deception is central to virtually all mainstream proposals on how to deal with global warming. Whether it's Obama or Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, we are endlessly told that a forced transition to much costlier energy will somehow help the economy. You don't have to dig deep to realize what a myth this is. Burgeoning economic giants China and India do little more than pay lip service to the U.S. and European interest in a basic shift to more costly power. Goodbye, U.S. manufacturing jobs."
|
|
|
"Notice that Obama no longer talks about Spain, which until recently he repeatedly cited for its visionary subsidies of a blossoming new clean energy industry. That's because Spain, now on the verge of bankruptcy, is pledged to reverse its disastrously bloated public spending, including radical cuts in subsidies to its uneconomical photovoltaic industry."
|
|
|
"His own Treasury Department -- in a private analysis last fall that was made public only thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request -- concluded that cap-and-trade would cost US taxpayers at least $200 billion a year. That would cost the average household an extra $1,761 a year -- equivalent to a 15 percent hike in personal income taxes. And that's just for starters."
|
|
|
"Firms participating in a worldwide carbon scheme already abuse it by artificially inflating their greenhouse gas emissions, which allows rich nations to boost emissions, Reuters reports. For example, chemical plants maximize production of a potent gas because of a financial incentive – getting paid via the offset scheme to destroy the same gas. The U.S. needs cap and trade like it needs another oil spill."
|
|
|
"Spanish taxpayers spent $754,000 for each new wind energy job, mostly installing towering turbines, Dr. Gabriel Calzada calculated. But switching to wind destroyed 2.2 regular jobs for each "green" job, largely because pricey "renewable" electricity forced companies to lay off workers, to stay in business."
|
|
|
"Americans should ask themselves whether this annual tax of $1,600-plus per family is justified by the very small resulting decline in global CO2. Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its impact on global warming would be virtually unnoticeable."
|
|
|
""Global temperatures have declined -- extending the current downtrend to 11 years with a particularly rapid decline in 2007-2008," said a draft report written in March by an expert at the Environmental Protection Agency. You haven't heard much about this report because the Obama administration is blocking its disclosure."
|
|
|
"A last-minute amendment, inserted in the early morning hours on the day of the vote, would tax goods that we import from countries that are unwilling to adopt carbon-reducing measures. So, the question becomes: Should our nation really levy trade penalties on countries that don't agree to limit their carbon emissions? The provision is fraught with potential negative consequences."
|
|
|
"As Lieberman observes, “To the limited extent European nations have reduced emissions below business-as-usual levels it has hurt their economies. . . . Far from seeing evidence of the bright new green economy some are now promising, we are seeing that cap and trade has contributed to the harm.” Waxman-Markey would operate much the same way with many of the same results in America, and that means central government planning would pull America down to European levels."
|
|
|
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says her advocacy for cap-and-trade is all about "jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs." But there's no evidence that employment has grown anywhere in the world because of energy mandates such as cap-and-trade. A study released in March by four professors hosted by the University of Illinois casts a great deal of doubt about green job creation. The academics found claims of green jobs to be unsubstantiated or overstated, and that energy mandates will likely kill more jobs in other industries than they create."
|
|
|
"We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter. For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices. "
|
|
|
"Here's why cap and trade failed: because of legitimate fears about its costs to consumers, inevitable damage to energy-intensive businesses, and a growing recognition that it wouldn't even spur the technological innovation needed to sharply reduce the use of fossil fuels. Groundbreaking advances in clean energy aren't exactly cascading out of Europe, after all, where energy is far more expensive and a cap-and-trade policy has been in place since 2005."
|
|
|
"Whatever one thinks of the science of climate change, cap and tax is the wrong policy response. At enormous economic cost, it would do little to reduce global carbon emissions. To the extent that it reduces growth, it would make the world less able to cope with the consequences if temperatures do rise. The richer the world, the more resources the world will have to adapt and ameliorate bad effects."
|
|
Mixed on this position
|
"First, the bill establishes a strong long-term goal -- an 80 percent reduction in carbon pollution by 2050. It contains the strongest energy-efficiency language ever to emerge from a Congressional committee. It makes a huge commitment to protect tropical forests. And it puts the down payment on a number of other critically important initiatives: financing energy efficiency, protecting low-income consumers from energy-price spikes, helping developing countries and U.S. communities protect themselves from natural disasters resulting from climate change, and helping buffer America's wild heritage from the impacts of climate change."
|
|
|
"Even if it passes today, Waxman-Markey is just a first step. With a flood of amendments to the House bill expected today and fierce battles to come in the Senate, the debate over how to design this fundamental shift in the American economy remains wide open. It's not too late to hope for a cleaner cap-and-trade bill -- such proposals are circulating on Capitol Hill -- or a properly designed carbon tax that would send the right market signal to spur green-energy innovation while also leading to vital changes in behavior."
|
|
|
"Uncertainties abound: What if the costs of clean coal don't come down enough to make it economical relative to other measures? If clean coal turns out to be less than its advocates envision, can Congress ever work up the political will to kill the subsidy program? Subsidies are set to phase out after 10 years of paying for operating costs, but won't powerful coal-state lawmakers fight to keep them going?"
|
|