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Year in Review: The Little Climate Bill That Couldn’t

Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Renewables, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 8, 2010 |

EDITOR’S NOTE: At this rate, we may actually finish reviewing the year in blog 2009 by the end of January 2010– just how we wanted to start the year!!  But… stuff keeps happening…. and we can’t blog! Or we have to blog about the important, breaking news stuff!  So, sorry for dragging this out, but we hope you’re having fun reminiscing as much as we are blogging about it.

5. The Little Climate Bill That Couldn’t

We had high hopes coming into 2009.  Congressmen Waxman and Markey were hard at work on draft legislation that they promised would meet scientific standards on climate change.  They had even collected signatures from the majority of their caucus on principles that they would build off of. And those principles were pretty good.  So was Obama’s proposed budget, which showed they had revenue plans starting in 2012 of a 100% auction of CO2 credits- a 100% auction being the method that most agree brings quicker pollution reductions and is also, according to the EPA, the least regressive method of implementation.  Hey, anything that hurts poor people the least is what we want to do, right?

WRONG. Clearly, you think differently than the majority of the US Congress.

Then Waxman and Markey released their draft legislation – our reaction was not pretty. Texas Congressmen had been complicit in weakening the bill away from the standards of the original principles.

Good Points:

  • AMAZING building code and appliance standards for energy efficiency
  • Good long term (2050) and short term (2020) goal for carbon reduction (still needed to be improved to what science calls for- but a good start)
  • Had a renewable energy mandate and an efficiency mandate: we’d get 20% of our power from renewables by 2020 and increase energy efficiency by an additional 10%.

Bad points

  • Well… all of those goals could be bigger.
  • No language on how the carbon credits would be auctioned or allocated.  Nada. Left to be decided later. Like a “scene missing” slide in a Nine Inch Nails video that gets crazier and scarier as time goes on….

And then the hearings on the bill started.  In typical fashion, climate denier troglodytes like Texas’ own Joe Barton tried to slow down the proceedings– by insisting that the entire bill and its amendments be read aloud before the committee.  Because of this unprecedented demand, the House Energy and Commerce Committee simply hired a speedreader.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_SB7g_Yb-0]

If only that had been the extent of the funny business with the bill… but both behind closed doors and by amendment in the committee, the climate bill got gutted.  First, special giveaways to the nuclear industry. Then to the coal industry. Then decreasing the renewables and efficiency goals by almost half.  Then offsets language that guaranteed that polluters would be able to continue to pollute above the cap– meaning in a bill whose primary purpose is to make sure we curb pollution so we don’t fry the planet, our emissions might actually GO UP, not down. And the bill passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, its largest hurdle, but by then it had been incredibly compromised.  Our immediate reaction was:  follow the money (ad this remains the single best explanation of what happened to the climate bill to date, imho– it also helps that I wrote it).

But they weren’t done with the gutting of the bill yet…

Then special giveaways to the agribusiness industry. And finally, the coup de grace, they stripped the EPA of their authority to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act.

During all of this, we were trying our best to stand up for ordinary Texans against these corporate interests– you may have seen us at the King William Parade in San Antonio, telling San Antonio’s Congressman Gonzalez, “Sorry Charlie, Bailouts Aren’t Green.”  I think aside from crashing the Energy Citizens Rally this was the most fun I had all year.

We were, to say the least, conflicted.  We REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted a climate bill.  But what we got was a climate disaster.  The Waxman-Markey Bill, co-authored by your special interest friends, passed on June 28.  Ugh.  It’s like sending out a birth announcement of a really, really ugly baby.  Or opening a beautifully wrapped present you thought was the perfect gift but finding instead the world’s ugliest Christmas sweater.  Disappointment? That’s not strong enough.  To use the parlance of our day: #EPIC FAIL.

The Senate side hasn’t fared much better.  Despite a decent framework from Senators Kerry and Boxer (it really needs to be improved, but it could be worse) passing through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (partisan knuckledraggers, led by Denier-in-Chief James Inhofe, actually boycotted the hearings and the vote), it has yet to be worked on by the Senate Finance Committee (who, you may have heard, was REALLY busy working on some bill having to do with health care.  It didn’t get much media coverage, so you may have missed it. </sarcasm>)

Meanwhile, others felt that both the Boxer bill and the Waxman-Markey bill were DOA in the Senate, so a tri-partisan group of Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kerry (D-MA- look! I got my name on TWO climate bills this Congress!), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have said they would develop their own climate bill.  No word yet on their framework (a draft could come any day now), but, unfortunately signs are pointing to “not good”.  It seems the only thing the three of them can really agree on is more pork for nuclear.

However, the EPA in December issued an endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, the next step in actually regulating them, as they were ordered to do in 2007’s Massachusetts v EPA Supreme Court case.  So a year that began on a hopeful note went bad, then worse…. but ended with a little ray of sunshine.  Here’s to a New Year’s Resolution of ACTUALLY passing a climate and clean energy bill that can ACTUALLY fight climate change and create more clean energy. And just like that New Year’s Res to lose 10 pounds, this year we REALLY mean it!

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, cleaner cars, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Take Action to Fix Climate Change Bill

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 22, 2009 |

As expected, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved climate change legislation last night and sent it along in the legislative process. We strongly urge lawmakers to make major overhauls to this bill or go back to the drawing board.

The problem? Oil, coal and nuclear industries had far too much say in its shaping, and it shows.

Now more than ever, Public Citizen needs you to tell your representatives that climate change legislation should not be weakened by the corrupting influence of big money.

Those who say this bill is the best the legislative process can produce are wrong: The American people demanded strong climate legislation, and polluters are subverting these goals.

Public Citizen supports strong, effective climate legislation, but this bill won’t achieve it. We can talk about hoping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, but this bill won’t do it.

It creates a legal right to pollute for industries and gives away credits for free to allow companies to meet those targets without having to pay for them. That is not going to spur the kind of investments we need.

We must act fast to influence lawmakers to fix this piece of legislation. Please take action so that our voices can be heard loud and clear over those of the oil, coal and nuclear industries.

For more information about the climate change bill and how it needs to be fixed, visit our Web site and watch Tyson Slocum explain Public Citizen’s position in an interview on Democracy Now!

Take action today, and let your representatives know you want them to put interests of consumers above those of the energy industries.

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House Committee Passes Landmark Clean Energy Legislation

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 22, 2009 |

Public Citizen disappointed by process as Big Money works to weaken, kill bill

Statement by Andy Wilson, Global Warming Program Director, Texas Office

This evening, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed HR 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES or ACESA), sponsored by Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), by a margin of 33 – 25.

We would like to thank Gene Green (D-Houston) and Charlie Gonzalez (D-San Antonio) for their support of this step towards clean energy and saving the climate from runaway global warming. It is unfortunate, however, that they chose to weaken the energy efficiency and renewable energy sections of the bill, as stronger mandates would mean more local jobs and more savings for Texans.

They also supported giving away billions of dollars worth of carbon credits to polluters for free, despite knowing that these giveaways hurt low income households the most.

Big money was the deciding factor in this process, with the energy industry donating a total of $3.1 million on all members of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the 2008 campaign cycle, with nearly $2.3 million of that going to committee Republicans, who presented nearly monolithic opposition to the bill and attempted to weaken it at every turn. Ranking member Joe Barton (R-TX) received $406,887 in campaign contributions from the energy industry, the largest amount of any member on the panel, and orchestrated the GOP opposition. Notable opposition to the bill came from Jim Matheson (D-UT), who received $103,097, Charlie Melancon (D-LA), who received $125,100, John Barrow (D-GA) who received $88,743, and Mike Ross (D-AR) who received $59,800. The first three of these received more money from the energy industry than any other Democrats on the panel, while Ross was the fifth largest recipient among Democrats.

The architects of the compromises which weakened the bill also received large contributions from the energy industry, including Rick Boucher (D-VA) who received $67,300 and was the architect of the plan to give coal-fired electric utilities nearly all of their pollution credits for free. A similar deal was struck with oil refineries, whose donations to Gene Green (D-TX) and Charlie Gonzalez (D-TX) along with other energy industries was equal to $84,500 and $51,250, respectively.

Unfortunately, the bill leaves the committee weaker than it came in. It has moved to a short term reduction of CO2 emissions of only 17%, even though the research by the Nobel Prize winning IPCC shows that target needs to be closer to 30%. This bill is also potentially a budget buster, as it has moved away from President Obama’s original position of auctioning all of the pollution credits to giving away credits worth billions in revenue to industry for free. By giving away 85% of all carbon credits to industry, the Congress has also limited their ability to help low-income consumers and invest in efficiency, renewable energy, and international programs to aid lesser developed countries. Furthermore, they have added unlimited loan guarantees to the nuclear industry, even though the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has stated that it is likely that more than 50 percent of all nuclear loans will fail. The loan guarantees would be used to

Even worse, by giving away too many credits to special interests, we will repeat the mistakes of the European carbon market, where too many credits were given away at the outset and actual carbon reductions did not occur. Utilities still passed on “compliance costs” to their customers and prices increased, which led to the EPA’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey draft that any giveaways to industries are “highly regressive.”

A well designed cap and invest program with strong efficiency and renewable energy standards would save the average Texas household $900 per year according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. We fear that by weakening the bill, as the Energy and Commerce Committee has, this savings could evaporate.

Now that the committee process has ended, it is now the responsibility of every Texas Representative to strengthen HR 2454. The bill needs to move back to scientifically and economically based goals in order to protect consumers and create a green jobs future for every family in the country.

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