Warner-Lieberman Climate Bill Annouced Today! Thanks but no thanks Senator Warner.
Posted by Diana on 18 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Federal Action, Washington, DC
Today is the big day. Senators Warner and Lieberman announced their climate bill (The Climate Security Act of 2007) which may be the only “passable” climate bill to come out Congress this year or next year for that matter. CCAN, as a key climate organization in Virginia, would like to thank Senator Warner for his efforts on drafting climate legislation and doing a 180 on this issue in Congress. HOWEVER, after assessing the meat of the bill, it is clear that there is no true LEADER in Congress pushing an AGGRESSIVE climate pollution reduction bill. We are staring in the face of a true climate crisis, and there is no movement on the only piece of climate legislation that will really make a difference (Sanders-Boxer Bill or the Safe Climate Act in the House). Here are our concerns and critiques of the Warner-Lieberman bill in a nutshell (with help from our friends at USPIRG and Friends of the Earth):
- The bill’s climate pollution reduction targets are NOT in line with current global warming scientific projections. The pollution caps in the bill aim to reduce total U.S. global warming emissions by about 11% by 2020 and by just over 50% by 2050. According to the current science, the United States must reduce its total global warming emissions by at least 15% by 2020 and by at least 80% by 2050. Period.
- The bill also allows many polluters to opt out of REAL climate pollution reduction techologies at their facilities by buying “offsets”. The bill currently allows companies to exceed their pollution limits by paying sources not covered by the program to reduce emissions. nsuring that a ton of pollution from such “offsets” equals a ton of real reductions is a major challenge. In addition, offsets delay the transition to cleaner technology that will be needed to achieve deep future cuts in emissions. Under the bill, a company could theoretically meet its entire 2020 pollution-reduction requirement through offsets. The number of offset reductions allowed under the bill must be significantly lowered.
- The bill gives hundreds of billions of dollars to polluters for free, including the COAL industry, which will create windfall profits, and take vital resources away from America’s transition to a clean energy future. A Friends of the Earth analysis found that the coal industry in particular stands to benefit from this legislation, precisely because it is currently the industry most responsible for global warming pollution. Depending on market conditions, the coal industry could receive permits worth up to $231 billion in the first year alone, 48 percent of the total permit allocation. It could then sell or “trade” its permits to others for their cash value, or it could emit at no cost carbon that less fortunate industries would have to pay to emit.
For more analysis please read the Friends of the Earth press release and USPIRG’s press release
Like what you've read? Check out these related posts:
9 Comments »
on 19 Oct 2007 at 1:53 pm 1.anne said …
The Baltimore Sun’s blog quotes CCAN as praising Lieberman and John Warner, but faulting the bill as “falling short of what is demanded by the science and the public to meet the challenge of global warming.” You can read the rest here: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/blog/2007/10/global_warming_battle.html
on 19 Oct 2007 at 2:50 pm 2.shannon said …
See the World Resources Institute study that compares the effectiveness of various bills currently in Congress
at reducing greenhouse gas emissions: http://www.wri.org/climate/pubs_description.cfm?pid=4343#pdf_files
Check out Barack Obama’s climate/energy policy because it addresses a number of the problems with the Lieberman/Warner Bill: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/energy/
on 28 Oct 2007 at 5:31 pm 3.TheGreenMiles said …
Debating this bill is sort of superfluous because President Bush will veto it and there aren’t enough votes to override that veto. That being said … wouldn’t you rather start us on the path towards cutting emissions now rather than wait at least 15 months for the new president and Congress to take action? Obviously Lieberman-Warner isn’t perfect, but I’d rather do something now and toughen the targets in ‘09.
on 07 Dec 2007 at 8:21 pm 4.David said …
Senator Boxer has just declared: “Yesterday, by an 11-8 vote, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed America’s Climate Security Act, the world’s most far-reaching global warming program”…
Let’s not kid ourselves here… let’s look inside the numbers of “the world’s most far-reaching global warming program” (perhaps “climate action” would have been a better phrase to use as the U.S. is indeed on a “global warming” program and not a “global warming reduction” program!)… and also let’s bear in mind the usual U.S. tendency to hyperbole when the domestic Superbowl or NBA champions are declared “World Champions” without ever having played an international match…
The Lieberman-Warner CSA calls for a 20% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020- this is actually only attaining 1990 levels (the Kyoto yardstick) by 2020 and Sen. Boxer’s claim that it will “slash emissions by nearly 70% by 2050” is also an exaggeration because the CSA itself provides figures closer to 63% of 2005 levels by 2050 and not 70%- the California 80% by 2050 sounds better already, but when one contends “the world’s most far reaching” initiative, looking around the world one could easily find examples such as London, where Ken Livingstone, the Mayor, has already put into effect his Climate Action Plan that effectively reduces emissions by 4% per year and would facilitate a reduction in U.K. emissions at 60% below 1990 levels by 2025
So which is more “far reaching”, 63% by 2050 or 60% by 2025- you do the math…
As it happens the London plan meets my own expectations: if we look at the 80/2050 plan, to achieve 80% reduction by 2050, we have to reduce emissions by almost 2% per year so in four years (Kyoto 2012) we would have exceeded the 7% Kyoto target but by only 1% and so the two, USMCPA and 80/2050 are more similar than at first assumed (also remember that ICLEI’s Cities for Climate Protection is supporting the 80/2050 plan)
The IPCC report predicted that temperature rise would be somewhere between 3° and 6° C by 2100 with increasingly bad consequences for ice melt, loss of habitat, loss of biodiversity, sea level rise, etc. Speaking with NOAA reps last month, the first 1° has already been registered in the oceans, and we have about 0.7° pending in the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses that have already been released, so we are already halfway to that first increase which will trigger a series of extinction tipping points. To avoid that last degree of increase, something like a 30% decrease in emissions will be needed by the end of 10 years which now changes the annual expectation to 3% decrease per year- at 2012 Kyoto calls for 7%, US Mayors for 8%, but the actual requirement needs to be 12% by 2012; the 15/2015 plan is just that, 15% by 2015, the 80/2050 plan would result in 13% by 2015, but the actual requirement would have to be 21% by 2015, so even the 20/2020 target falls short- London is calling for 4%, a lot closer to the mark…
I could move on to Scandinavia and find even better examples with language that includes carbon-neutrality and carbon-negative action, but just looking at Lieberman-Warner again there are in fact some serious concerns: the biggest concerns the pollution permit giveaways that are valued in the $100s of billions which will simply result in profits to existing serial polluters- there should be zero giveaways… also the “decoupling incentives” without mandatory switching to smart grid really equates to guaranteed energy producer subsidies, when in fact a smart grid option would open up energy grids to competition… and finally, the Carbon Market Board can only “loosen” restrictions and not “tighten” them, so when we need to build upon a climate action initiative and strengthen it’s effectiveness, there is no tool other than the hope that executive decision-makers in 43 years’ time (2050) have more common sense and actually completed academically rigorous science curricula while at elementary school- oh, wait, am I talking about the current school population, the high-school measurements of which still rate the U.S. as 16 out of 17 nations studied in Advanced Math and Science?
Don’t get me wrong, 20/2020 is a good start but what will be the result of some 150 proposed amendments (including the perennial “healthy forests timber issues) to this Bill before it becomes CSA?
on 25 Feb 2008 at 2:53 am 5.Libertarian Girl » Blog Archive » The Death of HD-DVD– And Why We Should Not Subsidize Alternative Energy said …
[...] about the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. The problem is, the act in question is nothing but massive corporate welfare to coal companies, as any type of carbon trading or cap-and-trade system will be and has been in [...]
on 15 Apr 2008 at 1:29 pm 6.Sludge Diva said …
Climate control? Are you crazy? People are not destroying the planet, and they cannot control the climate. This is about government trying to control our lives, our freedom, our liberty, and our pocketbooks! Warner-Lieberman gives the unelected Fish and Wildlife department the power to control people and businesses.
This is wrong, Al Gore is no scientist, and this world-wide scam has got to stop. Talk to some real scientists for a change, and look at some real data. CONSENSUS? There is no scientific consensus. Besides, scientific conclusions are not determined by a vote, or a show of hands.
Spreading propaganda designed to influence the masses to feel guilt and fear is immoral and irresponsible. Remember that the scientific “consensus” used to be that the earth was flat!
on 29 May 2008 at 5:57 pm 7.Tom said …
Another profound reason for getting rid of careerist pols, and let’s start with my congressman, both senators, and that piece of trash that calls itself, Dick Durbin.
on 30 May 2008 at 6:43 pm 8.Dale said …
I find it hard to believe that the American people are so willing to follow the sheep herders in Washington. There is not one scientist among our Congress or Senate but they say we are causing global warming because some scientists with thier computer models tell them we are. The fact is there is just as many scientists that say we are not causing global warming, but the news media will not report on that aspect, or give those scientists the air time. I dont know about you, but I prefer to NOT let a computer model dictate my life.
Another fact is there are 5 different places around our globe we call earth that save weather imformation on a daily basis. Every one of those 5 places said during the last year the average temperature DECREASED by at least ONE degree. That ONE degree wiped out the last 10 years of global warmings increasing temperature. Our Washington Congress and Senate, led by Al Gore say our Polar Ice Caps are melting. They just might be, BUT…….there are more than 3,500 glaciers around the world and more than 70% of them are growing!!!
Because of the Polar Ice Caps melting, some Palientologists are finding dwellings where people have made homes in the distant past. Which means someone lived where there is now a glacier. What caused the global warming then? There were no factories, or cars, or lawnmowers, or weedeaters, or ect, ect, ect!!! Our Earth goes thru cycles and history proves we as humans adapt, otherwise we wouldnt be here listening to our government trying to scare us into paying more taxes so they can fund other branch’s of government to study how to get even more tax money out of the US citizen. All these groups that say they want to save the world, that feed the pockets of our elected officials and make money hand over fist are destroying our way of life as we knew it growing up in the greatest nation the world has ever seen.
Wake up America, if we put too many rules and regulations on our industries that grew this nation into what has become the greatest nation in the world, our industries will leave us…we are seeing that already. How many companies have left our borders for cheaper labor and less restrictions on how they opperate thier companies? If this Warner/Lieberman Bill passes……..you might as well give the government your wallet and bank account because they will get it in the long run anyway.
on 04 Jun 2008 at 8:19 am 9.Stan Carpenter said …
Where I live in Rhode Island was under a mile thick sheet of ice 11,000 years ago. It is 4 June and 59 degrees out. I fear the next ice age, which by the way is about a thousand years overdue historically give or take a few centuries, more than the normal natural climatological variations that have been ongoing since the earth formed.
Cap and Trade, Warner-Lieberman, man-made global warming, etc. are all the political left’s version of the old “bait and switch” and are nothing more than attacks on the free market economy and individual liberty couched in the comforting aura of “Save the Planet.”
Government and the Senate have far more critical issues to spend their time and energy on, notably, ensuring American energy independence, national security and so on. Let’s get off this global warming hoax and deal with real problems, not a political agenda and the left’s straw dog.