Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I greatly admire, will (in the next few days) push the Waxman and Markey clean air bill (better known as the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act through the House of Representatives. Of course, amendments to appease the Blue Dog Democrats and (some) environmentalists (e.g., The Sierra Club) will also pass.
The environmental amendments to this act (which I applaud) are:
Ø Hold polluters accountable: restore EPA authority to regulate coal plants
Ø Increase investment in green jobs and in protecting vulnerable communities against the impacts of global warming.
Ø Improve the renewable energy standard
(I thank my good friend, Carl Bowman, for providing me with this information.)
I do not believe that adding these environmental sweeteners would serve any useful purpose, as I have strong reservations about the ACES Act’s viability.
These strong reservations are not because of any doubts concerning global warming. I have drunk the global warming Kool-Aid.
These strong reservations are due to my doubts about the ACES Act’s underlying approach, capping and trading C02 emissions (which are the root cause of global warming). This approach is commonly referred to as the cap-and-trade approach.
Dr James Hansen’s (a noted NASA scientist and Al Gore’s science advisor) has testified before Congress that the empirical evidence for the cap and trade program is spurious, at best. He also recently said that:
“Trading of rights to pollute introduces speculation and makes millionaires on Wall Street…I hope cap and trade doesn’t pass because we need a much more effective approach.”
Under the cap-and-trade program, pollution becomes a commodity like oil, grain, or the dollar. Those who have been polluting for years and years to come can make money by trading it on a commodity board. I have ethical problems with that concept.
Dr. Hansen, Ralph Nader, and others have proposed a carbon tax approach. The IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated that a $50 fee/tax levied on every metric ton of GHGs, or carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e to use their terminology) would stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by 2020, at the latest.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger, two prominent environmental scientists, believe that the carbon tax and cap-and-trade approaches are bound to fail. This inevitable failure is because governments around the world have been (and will continue to be) unwilling to establish and sustain a high price on carbon.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger delineate a third solution to the global warming threat. Their approach focuses on funding very large public investments in innovative clean energy technologies. This project, which would be akin to the NASA project in the 1960s, would involve establishing very modest and politically sustainable carbon prices in developed economies.
Sounds like the plan to me.
However, I do not know if this plan is feasible.
Let us then make haste slowly on this very important issue of global warming.
I suggest that formation of a blue-ribbon panel of prominent environmental scientists (from around the globe) and public officials (from the political left, middle, and right) to evaluate the potential effectiveness of the three discussed approaches to climate control. This panel would have a year to report their findings to Congress.
We owe it to the Earth(and all future generations of its inhabitants)to develop the best possible approach (which could be a hybrid of several approaches) for controlling the gashouse effects of CO2 emissions