CLEAR Path to Carbon Cuts

On Sunday, people from all over the country will rally on the Mall in Washington for substantial carbon reductions to prevent catastrophic climate change.

But the cap-and-trade bills being considered in Congress are not just far too weak to accomplish what's needed, the primary Senate bill will actually make the situation worse.

Your first clue that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman Senate bill is a make-it-worse mess - besides the names of two of the Senate's biggest douchebag liars in Graham and Lieberman - is that the corporate criminals most responsible for climate changes are racing to endorse the bill.

Kevin Drum applauds the development that should instead trigger widespread opposition:

The KGL team — that's senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman for those of you not up to speed with current Beltway lingo — anounced yesterday that they've gotten key business support for their climate bill:

The Edison Electric Institute — whose members generate the bulk of the nation's electricity — and two of its influential CEOs, Exelon's John Rowe and Duke Energy's Jim Rogers, will declare their support Monday, sources said. While Kerry did not name the three oil companies, a source familiar with the negotiations said Shell, BP and ConocoPhillips would back the climate measure.

And why did these folks decide to support the bill? Here's the big payoff:

The bill will preempt both the states' and EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, as long as emitters comply with the standards outlined in the measure. The EPA will monitor and enforce compliance with the law.

That's pretty much been the plan all along: use the threat of EPA action to gain support from Republicans and the business community.

AH-OOOOOOOGA! AH-OOOOOOGA! AH-OOOOOOGA!

There it is. If a massive forest fire is bearing down on your community, the last thing you want to do is take away the fire department's ability to fight fires.

Eliminating the EPA's power to regulate greenhouse gases now, when the time we have left to stave off catastrophe can be measured in months, not decades, is suicidal, as The Nation explains:

Congress urgently needs to pass a comprehensive climate bill, but the current Senate proposal, spearheaded by senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham, threatens to do more harm than good. It is not only inadequate to the task of curbing climate change; it could curtail the power of the EPA and state governments to regulate greenhouse gases--the best avenues for action in the face of Congress's failures.

SNIP

The outlook in the Senate is, if anything, worse. At this writing, its final details have not been released, but from early reports it appears that the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham bill would keep and extend the worst aspects of Waxman-Markey: inadequate emissions-reduction targets (only 3 percent below 1990 levels by 2020), too many free permits and too many allowances for carbon offsets, which are of dubious value in fighting climate change (see Heather Rogers, "Offset Buyers Beware," in this issue).

Kerry-Lieberman-Graham would by-pass an economywide cap-and-trade system, opting instead for a bundle of separate energy bills that would slowly phase in emissions reductions sector by sector. Some of these pieces of legislation may pass; others may fail; all are ripe for gaming by corporate lobbies. Kerry-Lieberman-Graham would also skew subsidies in the wrong direction, throwing billions at "clean coal" technologies, nuclear power plants and offshore drilling, a questionable gambit favored by the Obama administration to garner support from Republicans and representatives from oil-, gas- and coal-producing states.

Perhaps most troubling, Kerry-Lieberman-Graham would not only gut the EPA of its regulatory power but could also pre-empt regulations on greenhouse gases from states and municipalities. This would undo the considerable progress made by states like California--which have pioneered emissions reductions for automobiles, and regional cap-and-trade systems--and thwart the efforts of cities and towns to require developers and businesses to adopt clean energy technologies.

In the face of such maneuvers, some green groups, like Bill McKibben's 350.org, are pushing instead for the CLEAR Act, written by senators Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins. The CLEAR Act's cap-and-dividend system, which works by capping CO2-producing fossil fuels at the source or point of import, is an elegant idea; but its mandatory emissions targets are weaker than what's needed. It covers only CO2 (not all greenhouse gases), and one of its prime virtues--that it's just forty pages long!--means that it leaves a lot of vital details out of the picture. Still, it doesn't pre-empt the EPA or state regulations, and its leanness means that it's not laden with pork and industrial giveaways.

Read the whole thing.

Then call or email your members of Congress to demand they support real climate change, starting with the CLEAR Act.