U.S.: House Passes Controversial Climate Legislation

• by Jim Lobe (washington)
• Friday, June 26, 2009
• Inter Press Service

In a 219 to 212 vote, largely along party lines, legislators passed the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act creating a national cap-and-trade programme to ensure reductions in emissions throughout the economy and require electricity producers to obtain at least 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.

The legislation was strongly backed by President Barack Obama who Thursday described the importance of Friday's vote as 'historic' and promised that the bill's passage 'will open the door to a new clean-energy economy.'

The White House also argued that passage of the bill, which will still have to be taken up by the Senate, would permit Washington to go to December's global climate meeting in Copenhagen in a much stronger negotiating position that would help persuade key developing countries, particularly China and India, to cap their own emissions under any new treaty for emissions reduction that would replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Although Washington signed the Protocol under President Bill Clinton, which required industrialised countries to reduce their emissions an average of about seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012, it was never ratified by the Senate. Citing the alleged costs to the U.S. economy of compliance with the treaty, President George W. Bush withdrew from negotiations over its implementation in 2001.

The great majority of House Republicans voted against ACES Friday, describing it as a 'cap-and-tax' plan that will increase costs throughout the consumer economy.

'The reality is that the bill before the House today imposes what could be the largest tax increase in history on the American people,' warned former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

'And every single one of us who heats a home, drives a car, and manufactures or consumes products made in America will pay the price.' He said the average U.S. family's energy bill could increase by as much as USD 1,500 if ACES is approved.

'The (bill) promises to destroy our standard of living,' declared Oklahoma Republican Frank Lucas, the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture Committee.

Democratic backers of the legislation, however, cited an estimate released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week that the annual per-household cost of the bill would amount to only USD 175 in the year 2020.

The CBO's estimate, as well as an even lower estimate by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to the 'Congressional Quarterly', galvanized the Democratic leadership and played a decisive role in the push to pass the bill this week, before the July 4 Independence Day Congressional recess.

The bill, which is some 1,200 pages long, has nonetheless split the environmental-activist community, with several prominent grassroots groups, notably Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace, opposing it because of last-minute deals that, in their view, has fatally weakened its impact in order to bring along lawmakers from coal-producing and farm states.

They objected, in particular, to compromises that, instead of phasing out coal-fired power plants, would, in their view, likely result in the construction of a new generation of coal plants; provide emitters with billions of dollars worth of offsets under the bill's cap-and-trade scheme; and remove the president's authority, recently sustained by the Supreme Court, to use the Clean Air Act to order reductions in emissions in the interests of public health.

'There's a simple reason polluting and irresponsible corporations support the bill,' said FoE, noting that Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, Rio Tinto, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy, among other major energy and mining companies, had lined up behind the bill. 'It showers them with hundreds of billions of dollars, but doesn't require them to reduce pollution fast enough to avoid devastating climate change impacts.'

'The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and coal-fired power plants to the detriment of real energy solutions,' said Greenpeace. 'To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called for at this pivotal moment in history. We simply no longer have the time for legislation this weak.'

Several other prominent green groups, including the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, supported the bill, even as they called for it to be strengthened.

'Congress now has an historic opportunity to answer President Obama's call for a comprehensive clean energy jobs plan,' Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said. 'It's essential that Congress strengthen and pass this legislation without delay, so we can get America running on the clean energy that will slash our dependence on oil, renew our economy, and protect our planet.'

Twenty-nine environment groups, including the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the Audubon Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Resources Defence Council (NRDC), wrote a letter to the 435 House members earlier this week calling for them both to vote for ACES and to 'do everything possible to strengthen the bill between now and final passage, and along its journey to the president's desk.'

The attitude of many green groups was reflected in Friday's editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post. 'The bill has shortcomings,' the Times wrote. 'But we believe that it is an important beginning to the urgent task of averting the worst damage from climate change. Approval would show that the United States is ready to lead and would pressure other countries to follow.'

Similarly, the Post, which favoured a carbon tax on all emissions, called the bill 'just a first step' and noted that, while the emission reduction targets in t fall short of the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they were 'a lot better than nothing.'

Like the Post, many green groups supported a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme in which all emission permits would be sold at auction, as had been initially favoured by Obama himself.

In order to rally enough Democrats behind the bill, however, its sponsors, Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, agreed that 85 percent of emission permits would be given away to companies in the first few years of the programme

The bill could be further weakened in the Senate due to procedural rules that require a 60-vote super-majority to cut off debate in the 100-seat chambre. Democrats currently hold 59 seats.

Since the financial crisis erupted last September, the U.S. public has rated global warming as a less urgent priority, according to a number of surveys, and support for a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce emissions has also slipped, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week.

Still, three of every four respondents in the latter poll said they believed the federal government should regulate emissions and more than six of every ten (62 percent) said they would support such regulation even if it raised the prices of things they bought.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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