U.S. Climate Action Partnership: Give Polluters Money To Continue Polluting
U.S. Climate Action Partnership: Give Polluters Money To Continue Polluting
Today, in the first hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee under the leadership of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), a coalition of corporations and environmental organizations renewed their call for an industry-friendly cap and trade system. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership made a tremendous splash two years ago by coming out in favor of a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gases. Though their recommendations overly benefited polluting industries, USCAP’s call for mandatory action changed the political tide in Washington. They deserve credit for moving past conservative rhetoric that denies the need to act, and for stating that “action by the U.S. should not be contingent on simultaneous action by other countries,” a common excuse for delay.
But climate change science and politics have moved on in the past two years, and USCAP has lost its mantle of leadership. Their proposal fails to satisfy the scientific, economic, and societal principles that must underlie any “framework for legislation to address climate change”:
EMISSIONS TARGETS. USCAP’s recommended emissions limits are insufficient to prevent catastrophic climate change. They call for U.S. emissions to be reduced by at most 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. However, as Center for American Progress fellow Joseph Romm indicated in a recent report, “A U.S. climate bill should set a target of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 20 to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.” Furthermore, USCAP calls for “generous limits on the use of offsets” of two to three billion tons of CO2 a year, which means actual emissions wouldn’t have to begin reducing until 2030.
MONEY. USCAP calls for provisions to prevent emissions permits from exceeding a “threshold price” and for “a significant portion of free allowances should be initially distributed to capped entities and economic sectors.” In other words, polluters should be protected from paying the cost of compliance with the already fatally weakened cap. This will lead to windfall profits for polluters at the expense of consumers. President-elect Barack Obama and other progressive leaders have joined the Center for American Progress in calling for full auction of emissions permits to fund public investments and protect low-income consumers from economic hardship.
USCAP members include major global warming polluters in multiple industries — chemical (Dow, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson), oil and gas (Rio Tinto, Shell, BP America), manufacturing (Alcoa, Caterpillar, Siemens, GE, Boston Scientific), automotive (Ford Motor, GM, Chrysler, Deere), and utilities (Duke, PG&E, Exelon, FPL, PNM), as well as the financial services industry that would administer a cap-and-trade system (AIG, Marsh, Xerox).
The environmental organizations in the partnership are the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Resources Institute, the Pew Center for Climate Change, and the Nature Conservancy. However, the National Wildlife Federation has left the partnership, saying that it instead will work to “enact a cap-and-invest bill that measures up to what scientists say is needed and makes bold investments in a clean energy economy.”
Put simply, the proposal would reward corporate polluters with hundreds of billions of dollars of giveaways, and its near-term pollution reduction targets are far weaker than what scientists have called for. The proposal is further weakened by its massive carbon offset loopholes. Were such a proposal to be enacted into law, it would fail to achieve the emission reductions we need in the U.S. and would undermine our ability to meaningfully and credibly engage in international climate negotiations. This is a dead-end approach that policymakers should reject.
1Sky's Gillian Caldwell:
In order to create a 21st century green economy we need bold action, not loopholes. Under this proposal, 40% of the dirtiest polluters would be allowed to keep polluting. 1Sky and its allies urge the members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to draft effective energy policy that closes loopholes, and auctions 100% of pollution allowances.
ClimateProgress's Joe Romm:
This proposal is a dead end — and an even deader starting point. Shame on NRDC, EDF, and WRI for backing it. With this proposal, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership has officially made itself obsolete and irrelevant.
The U.S. government's chief climate scientist, James Hansen, once said that the CEOs of big fossil fuel industries should be tried for crimes against humanity. USCAP is their initial bid for a plea bargain.
6 Responses to “U.S. Climate Action Partnership: Give Polluters Money To Continue Polluting”
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Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor
January 15th, 2009 at 4:30 pmI had thought better of my favorite environmental groups, NRDC, EDF, and The Nature Conservancy. When, now, finally everything is alligned to make huge progress, these are the three groups I would have least expected to “cop out.” If this watered-down emmisions scenario comes to pass, I will need to follow in the footsteps of NWF and withdraw my support of these groups..
January 15th, 2009 at 9:14 pmWhat has happened to the more straightforward, less easy to game CARBON TAX?!? It can and should be instituted directly at the point where the relevant fuel/carbon-containing product enters our economy, with the money collected available both to fund R&D for renewables, retrofitting, and energy efficiency and to subsidize/reimburse the poorest for their energy needs.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:42 pmI have never been gung-ho cap and trade, but saw it as a first step. Now, after markets in derivatives and credit swaps, it seems the last thing we need as a planet is another market. I would support a carbon tax, or simply a mandate with severe fines for violations.
January 17th, 2009 at 1:22 pmThank you for getting this info to me. We need to get the word out. It is confusing to hear names of groups that imply one thing and, as you say, have been passed by in the progress toward achieving reductions in actions that contribute to global warming. Also. TNC and NWF are among my favorite groups. I hadn’t heard of the split on this issue. As an economist, I am not in favor of cap and trade schemes because the polluting corporattions and financial markets use them to delay instead of advance pollution reduction, and skim undeserved profits with unethical, if not illegal, practices. Tax and regulate polluters.
January 18th, 2009 at 2:51 pmWhile the carbon tax is more straightforward, I think the cap and trade system might still be useful if some changes are made. First, free allowances should only be given to those that would need them based on their past use, should initially be some fraction such as .5 of past use and phased out over a short time such as 5 years. Second, in figuring the cap, offsets should be subtracted from the available allowances. This would permit a fuel user to obtain a honest offset rather than purchasing an allowance but the offset would reduce the number of allowances available so that offsetting activities are encouraged but actual emissions cannot be increased by using ofsets.
January 31st, 2009 at 3:07 pm