Lance Christie - A UK view of Waxman-Markey

Published Tuesday, July 21, 2009 by Dan Gainsford | E-mail this post

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From my friend Lance in Moab, Utah.
peace,
d

In the United Kingdom, George Monbiot editorialized in the Guardian on July 2: "Why do we allow the US to act like a failed state on climate change? The Waxman-Markey climate bill is the best we will get from America until the corruption of public life is addressed." Monbiot points out that Waxman-Markey proposes much lower cuts than those being pursued in the UK or most other developed nations, because it uses 2005 as the base from with 80% cuts by 2050 are measured. Other countries use 1990 as the base year. From 1990 to 2005, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose from 5.8 to 7 billion tonnes per annum. The U.S. cut in cumulative emissions by 2020 over a business-as-usual scenario of emissions increases is only 17%, which means far greater cumulative emissions from the U.S. into the atmosphere than cuts based on a 1990 emissions base would achieve. “Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill’s measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it’s printed on. You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when lobbyists have been at work.”

“There are mind-boggling concessions to the biofuels industry, including a promise not to investigate its wider environmental impacts. There’s a provision to allow industry to use 2bn tonnes of carbon offsets a year, which include highly unstable carbon sinks like crop residues left in the soil (another concession won by the powerful farm lobby). These offsets are so generous that if all of them are used, US industry will have to make no carbon cuts at all until 2026.”

In addition, Waxman-Markey would oblige companies to buy only a small proportion of their carbon permits (15%), the rest being given away. Thus, the more pollution companies have produced, the greater their free allocation of carbon credits, thus rewarding the worst emitters. Waxman-Markey also waters down current US legislation by removing the EPA's power to regulate coal-burning power stations.

What Monbiot does not mention is that the American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454, sponsored by Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA), would establish a new scientific panel to consider how to enhance the ability of natural resources to adapt to climate change and would require federal agencies to develop natural resource adaptation plans for dealing with climate change impacts.

As an example of the corruption to which he refers, Monbiot points to the ranking Republican on the House energy and commerce committee, Joe Barton, "the man who in 2005 launched a congressional investigation of three US scientists whose work reveals the historical pattern of climate change. Like those of many of his peers, his political career is kept on life support by the fossil fuel and electricity companies. He returns the favor by vociferously denying that manmade climate change exists."

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