Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Kerry-Lieberman Climate Proposal a Disaster for Climate
WASHINGTON - In the midst of what appears to be the worst offshore oil disaster in American history, U.S. Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) will today put forth a draft climate bill that will not solve the problems of global warming and continues pandering to the fossil fuel industry -- including expanded offshore oil drilling -- that created the problems in the first place.
"A successful climate bill must build upon, and not roll back, our existing foundation of environmental protections, and it must achieve the greenhouse pollution reductions necessary to avert dangerous climate disruption," said Center for Biological Diversity Executive Director Kierán Suckling. (photo by Flickr user azrainman) The proposal, leaked one day before its official release, reflects months of back-room negotiations between the senators, major polluters, and other Washington insiders, and would:
- provide only a fraction of the greenhouse gas pollution reductions scientists have said are necessary to avoid catastrophic climate disruption;
- ban successful Clean Air Act programs from reducing greenhouse pollution;
- ban existing state and local efforts to tackle climate change;
- catalyze increased oil and gas drilling -- including offshore drilling; and
- subsidize dangerous and costly nuclear energy.
In response, Center for Biological Diversity Executive Director Kierán Suckling urged rejection of the proposal unless these problems are addressed. He issued the following statement:
"The climate proposal put forth today by Senators Kerry and Lieberman represents a disaster for our climate and planet. This proposal moves us one baby step forward and at least three giant steps back in any rational effort to address the climate crisis.
"The senators' proposal would entrench our addiction to fossil fuels by offering incentives for increased oil and gas drilling just days after what appears to be the worst offshore oil disaster in American history. Large domes, small domes, golf balls, garbage, chemical dispersants, fire -- none have succeeded in stopping the enormous flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Clearly, there are no 'safeguards' Senators Lieberman and Kerry could put into this bill to make offshore oil safe.
"This proposal echoes greenhouse pollution reduction targets that scientists recently called ‘paltry' and inadequate to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. Scientists have determined that reducing carbon pollution to 350 parts per million is necessary to preserve life as we know it. 350 ppm must be the bottom line for all climate and energy policies. The senators' weak targets will not reduce carbon pollution to below 350 ppm from its current level of 391 ppm.
"In his recent Earth Day proclamation, President Barack Obama specifically celebrated the gains of the Clean Air Act; nonetheless, this proposal appeases polluters by gutting the Act, which has protected the air we breathe for 40 years, reaping economic benefits more than 40 times its cost. The Clean Air Act already provides a mechanism to establish science-based pollution caps for greenhouse pollutants, yet the Kerry-Lieberman proposal would ban proven successful Clean Air Act programs from cutting greenhouse emissions.
"The Kerry-Lieberman proposal is not the answer because it asks the wrong questions. A successful climate bill must build upon, and not roll back, our existing foundation of environmental protections, and it must achieve the greenhouse pollution reductions necessary to avert dangerous climate disruption."
- Posted in
95 Comments so far
Show AllCicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Maybe by coming out so strongly in favor of more offshore oil drilling while the Gulf spill is still going strong fresh and vomitous in everyone's mind Kerry is trying to remorsefully bring down the DLC infested Democratic Party from within. I doubt it, but his move here is politically stupid enough to make one wonder. If so, I wish he'd try a little harder.
I think true American progressives should all emigrate en masse into Canada, seize and shut down the tar sands oil extractors and create an agricultural communal society like a democratic socialist version of the Norwegian farmers that settled around Lake Woebegone.
Re: going to Canada--we don't have the right to stay. You can go there on a tourist visa.
Kerry and Lieberman are the same coin.
Look at it this way: They continue to challenge ordinary people to rise up and overthrow them, to get into the streets and shut down traffic in major cities, to bang pots and pans outside the Whitehouse. The idea of 'reforming' a completely corrupt system is pathetic and ineffective. We are long past that.
Here is the word we need to revive: REVOLUTION. We need to define it, set our goals, and aim high. A political revolution that follows the principles laid out in the Green Party Platform might be one possible goal.
But I realize the Green Party does not consider itself a revolutionary party...
The problems have gotten so big, that we simply have to stop the 'suicide train' and throw out (lock up) the conductor.
Aggressive actions to shut down BAU, strikes, work slowdowns--these ideas must be revived. Remember the action in Seattle that shut down the WTO.
Thanks for the offer to shut down the oil sands operations. Canadians hate it too & are working on shutting it down. Stephen Harper is no gift to the environment, either. Stephen Harper is an Alberta Oil Thug. Two-thirds of Canadians don't want him in office - at all.
GIve 'em Hell, Kierán.
This is just demoralizing. How can a bill like this be produced in the midst of an environmental disaster as epic as the one occurring right now in the Gulf of Mexico. Can our leaders be any more transparent as to who they really work for? Even worse is that Kerry, one of the more "liberal" senators is the co-author?!?!
There need to be some drastic changes in this country regarding the influence of corporate power in government or we are doomed as a nation, and in this case as a species. How do you combat people who possess virtually unlimited finances and who are more than willing to destroy our planet just to line their pockets?
"There need to be some drastic changes in this country regarding the influence of corporate power ..."
Well said. But it's clearly not going to come from our elected officials who are at the beck and call of the industries doing the damage. People who give a damn need to join the movement to build a new society from the ground up, one that refuses to be coerced into dependence on these destructive industries and the politicians who enable them.
And in the meantime, we need to show these sold out politicians that we will no longer play the role of hostage when it comes to voting.
How can we complain when we vote for these sell outs? When we do that, what kind of message are we sending? I'll never forget the words of environmentalist Bill McKibben a while back. He wrote for all to see and take notice: "I will always knock on doors for Obama" - even though Obama is "making excuses" and using rhetoric rather than acting in defense of the environment.
To me, that says it all. It doesn't matter what his policies are? You'll always knock on doors for him?
What kind of citizen says that?
Lieberman is essential antithetical to anything that is good for the Earth, everything living upon it, the world population in general, the US and its population in particular, and he is for only wealth and power. I don't know what motivates Kerry, but he definately lives in a bubble. These Senators and most members of Congress infuriate and disgust me, and I deem those who vote for them fools.
Ditto, richsmith!
richsmith2,
You wrote: "I don't know what motivates Kerry, but he definately lives in a bubble."
Here's a data point for you. In the year 2003 before his unsuccessful run for the Presidency, John Kerry listed his net worth at around $7 Million on his Senate disclosure forms.
In the year 2007 after he took a dive, er, lost the election and moved on his net worth was listed at about $35 million on the same disclosure form.
You do the math. Apparently being well-informed about which military-industrial complex stocks to invest in was very, very good for Mr. Kerry.
yes...I was awakened by Kerry's hypocrisy, his personal holdings vs. his professional positioning...until that election, I held out hope for process...
then, the true nature of governing was revealed...
by the way, dubet, what event in 2012 are you cryptically referring to? Inquiring minds want to know.
i don't mean to be cryptic regarding September 22, 2012...
it's not occult, or mayan, or crack-induced...maybe hookah-induced...
it's just my best guess at a date that would allow us time to prepare to switch to a new, non-industrial way of life, and yet not be so far away as to let everything get beyond help in the meantime...
I don't know what else to suggest but a global, unanimous withdrawal from the modern system we call a world, a system based on the privatization of the public planet and the industrial destruction of everything, using energy to enable...
the alternative I endorse is non-electric, agrarian...the individual would reclaim the primary role in their own survival...
I don't see individuals being successful at challenging the system, but I do see a chance for large numbers of individuals united...what seems to be missing is a starting gun...
that is really the crux of my proposal...simply a time to engage...together...
please comment, and suggest...
mostly, let's get those gardens growing...we're gonna need food!
I believe the bill would empower states to ban off shore drilling. Hopefully there are a few other things of some value.
Yes, Kerry is still an accident waiting to happen. He has always been anti environmental his entire career and why I voted for Nader in 2000. No surprise he is still trashing the Earth to insure his corporate handlers get carte blanche via Cap and Trade along with windfall give away to Nuclear, Oil drilling and a fantasy called Clean Coal. The CST investment is nothing more than throwing good money down a rat hole to obfuscate the egregious nature of coal fired plants.
If you had enough of this shit, start working to vote and build third parties.
Piss on Kerry.
You all need to read more in to modern nuclear power. A 3rd generation plant has NEVER had an accident that leaked radiation. Today's plants art 4th generation, they produce ZERO waste (by recycling the material over and over). Your complaints regarding Chernoble and 3-Mile Island are 1st and 2nd generation plants, and modern plants are MUCH safer. You are missing the forest for the trees. Nuclear energy is green energy.
I hear the gold rattling in the coffers of Israel and US thieves. This place is getting really screwed up and you want to continue any form of power to keep that gold a rattling. I never used to believe in doomsday, but I smell it.
Actually it is you who is misinformed. The issue with nuclear is the SPENT Nuclear waste. Radioactive waste outlives the containers they are stored in by hundreds of years. Spent fuel remains radioactive for over 500 years. Washington state is now fighting contamination of its ground water due to leaking nuclear waste. The other issues are public financing for the 'For Profit' Nuclear companies who will run the plants. (Why should the public finance a corporation who will run the company for profit and shareholders?) Moreover, the plants are exempt by law if a nuclear accident happens, thus those affected are without legal mandates to collect for their injuries. There is also the issue of targeting marginal populations and poor neighberhoods, where the plants are often built. Poor populations cannot mount legal challenge to the extent that wealthy people can to challenge the construction of the plants. Rest assured, any nuclear plant won't be built in Obama's Chicago neighboorhood.
With regard nuclear accidents, may I suggest you abandon your pollyanna world view.
This is what Obama had to say about oil spills three weeks before the most egregious spill since Exxon Valdez.
"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills," President Obama said in support of offshore oil drilling, less than three weeks before the April 20 blowout in the Gulf. "They are technologically very advanced."
In other words, don't believe the best case scenarios that the patriarchy tells you is so. A accident can destroy a bio region for a thousand years or more to all life.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
As someone who has worked in both industries, the almost completely unregulated and dangerous oil field and the very heavily regulated US nuclear power industry cannot be compared to each other. Nuclear power generation has a safety record that cannot be compared to any other industry.
Of course safety records can be compared. Do you mean to say that 'nuclear power generation has a superior safety record to any other industry'? Someone would probably be happy to take on the challenge of refuting that assertion!
Nuclear power plants are built by, operated by, and maintained by corporations and human beings, as are the back-up systems for those plants. Human beings are not perfect and make mistakes. Corporations cut corners to save costs in the short run, and fight regulation every step of the way.
Perhaps an "accident" has not yet occurred in the most recent version of nuclear plants. But add in human fallibility, corporate greed, buying off of government regulators, possible terrorist strikes, plus a few years, and an accident is entirely possible.
Even if the probability of an accident is low, the effect of an accident would be catastrophic, killing an poisoning hundreds of thousands of people and making a portion of the earth uninhabitable for all life forms indefinitely. This is an unacceptable risk.
Nuclear power plants are also incredibly expensive, requiring huge amounts of government support.
Every generation and half-generation and sub-generation of nuclear reactors, coal and oil burners and mines and methods have been safer than the last, according to those who make enormous amounts of money fooling people with that crap, generation after generation. We're always about to achieve meterless power or fusion or nuclear/fossil-dependent hydrogen or completely not-dangerous nukes or non-dirty coal... and then there's a leak, or a blowout, or a slide or a flood or a near-meltdown and they say whoops, it's Halliburton's fault! It's the rig owner's fault! It's the regulators' fault! It's no one's fault and it's necessary anyway and it's not really so bad, just a few birds and fish...* It's a back and forth issue until the regulators and the lawyers for the defense of the people and the Earth, overwhelmed by the billions of dollars we've given the energy companies, give up, and corporate-owned media distract the public with yet another celebrity breakup or reasonless, history-less futureless disaster, and then it's back to business as usual until the next time, when it happens all over again.
*(except when we're talking about windmills, and then those few birds affected (1/96,000th of those killed/yr by buildings and such, not even counting agriculture, deforestation and pollution like radiation, heat, and mercury, e.g.) are valued above all else by hypocritical lying conservative denialists and delayers.)
When are people going to figure out it's all lies? It's a way to relieve corporations of the irksome burden of regulation, a way to keep people from moving sensibly toward a solarwind economy and abandoning those forms of energy-of-the-past which will always be dirty, always be unsafe, always concentrate money and power in antidemocratic ways. Fuel for old reactors is running out, (in 60 years or so at present rates of use, obviously faster if we try to use more). "New" reactors either don't exist yet and maybe never will, are horrendously expensive, risky to build (we're about to assume that risk ourselves if this new travesty of a "climate" bill passes), depend on shipping dangerous, terrorist-vulnerable fuel back and forth, are capital-intensive problems when we need job-intensive solutions, and are just generally bad, unnecessary ways of the past. The reason people are missing the forests is that they've almost all been clearcut for mines and money and to feed the sick system that demands and is demanded by those fossilized ways of thinking and supplying energy. Get over them.
Solar, wind, efficiency, ecological living, some geothermal, some tidal, rail, sail, bike, some EVs used as storage batteries in a fiberoptic smart grid, reforestation, relocalization, local organic permaculture. Those are the solutions to the twin crises of Climate Catastrophe and Peak Everything.
Yah sure, and were all sitting down to a dinner of poisonous mushrooms with you as host and your reassuring us there will be an antidote by meals end.
The gut-rot mushrooms will sit in our decaying corpses for 250,000 years before anyone will be brave enough to touch us for burial.
Please do not try and sucker punch us with that "nuclear is green crap." Just go back in your cave and count the smoky $$$$ signs that appear on the walls of your greedy mind.
Kerry received from the League of Conservation Voters a lifetime rating of around 95%. That score shows that he has not been "anti-environment his entire career." Not many politicians have scores that high. That isn't to say he is right on this one. He clearly isn't!
In comparison, Al Gore received a lifetime score of 64%, a "D" grade in my book.
Kerry has never been other than an opportunist and empty suit.
Everything he's ever done, from his "military service" on, has been staged in aid of his intended Kennedy-esque political career. He did just enough in VN to say he served there, was wounded just enough to get a Purple Heart, was anti-war when it was obvious that folk were fed up, was briefly a prosecutor "tough on crime", and when he got himself elected senator, he sat back and voted "me too" on all the liberal positions til liberalism started to fall out of favor.
He's nothing like a leader -he's barely even a follower. His natural role is as an inconsequential, well-greased weathervane, makeweight, and chair-warmer.
To recycle a bit of poetry made about Charlie Stuart II: All hail our Senator JFK, whom no one e'er relies on. He's never said a cowardly thing, nor ever done a brave one.
League of Conservation Voters has a symbiotic relationship with political parties and hardly the definitive word on the subject. The fact is that Kerry's current Bill has drawn the fire of the environmental community condeming it for what it is: corporate capitulation on all fronts. This bill heavily favors Nuclear, Coal, and Oil while throwing nothing more than a few crumbs off the table to sustainable energy. CST technology is too expensive to make coal a cheap source of fuel (refer to the best science on the subject which appears in Jeff Goddel's book, Big Coal.) Furthermore, when Kerry refers to 'clean coal' he is characterizing a fantasy that any legitimate climate scientist will tell you is a lie there is no such thing as clean coal!
The Bill also contains incentives to increase and promote bio fuel production. This means that as more land transitions from food crops to higher paying bio fuel crops, world wide food sources will diminish thus raising the cost of food exponentially and resulting in world wide hunger and suffering for Third World countries.
This Bill - much like the For Profit Model, Health Bill, is written by non sustainable energy companies. It cointains no carbon tax, nor does it provide oversite which, will, in the end, lead to more corruption and environmental accidents like we now have in the gulf.
Do some research on who funds the League of Conservation Voters and you will discover a quid pro quo between the Democratic Party and the Organization.
Any would-be politician that rises above the level of local politics is automatically vetted and groomed as a party pol and both parties are merely another tendril of corporate kudzu.
What do you expect from two Democrats? Okay, one of them isn't anymore but was most of his life.
Kerry the catchup coward who married a billionaire heiress just for that reason, the billions. Lieberman, the first three letter of his name will tell you all you need to know about the man. A Zionist and a war monger.
They both operate on corporate profit and corporate profit only, couldn't care less if the Earth burns, as long as the cash register keeps ringing.
Just another nail in the coffin for the Democant's.
This is certainly no surprise from Lie-berman, but I thought that Kerry would use his 2.4 GPA to at least think a little before screwing up.
I think it is time for all the incumbants to lose this election in November and every election from now on. I see no promise in the Senate, and except for Grayson, I have little hope in the House.
"Just another nail in the coffin for the Democant's."
Why does anyone think Democrats want to have the majority in the two houses? They hate it! There they stand, no excuses, (just as I predicted two years ago) stark naked in the light, with all or most members hanging out for all to see - it's not a pretty picture, is it? They much prefer pretending to oppose these brutal, nasty policies, an impossibility as a majority party.
What we're seeing now is the duopoly trading places ... again. Back and forth, two and fro, it's a shell game, don't cha know?
"Keep 'em befuddled!" surely is their motto.
It is not enough to talk about it. If we want change, we have to do something about it. Read Katrina vanden Heuvel article in today's CD and then click on the link and join "Fair Elections Now Act".
"change", "fair elections", & Katrina vanden Heuvel" --all in the same paragraph?
Yeah, lets inform and help our dear democratic leaders.
Hilarious.
I think the original poster is right. Every bill forwarded to Congress is influenced by corporate lawyers wielding campaign contributions. Until campaign finance reform is instituted (and, arguably, even then), we can't trust legislation proposed and forwarded to Congress. The problem is campaign financing. No solution, to any problem, is possible until congress is fixed first.
What the Kerry-Lieberman Climate Proposal fails to address is that any climate bill affects the entire planet, not just the US.
The US is NOT THE WORLD. The US thinks entirely too highly of itself. Proposals like this are totally irresponsible. Get rid of these criminals. They keep stuffing their pockets with oil money, while proposing legislation that will kill us all.
Are Kerry and Lieberman o.k.? This bill is ALL WRONG. Seriously, they act mentally challenged. Both need to see a doctor to determine if their old age is impacting them mentally. Perhaps old age has caught up with them. It's time for these old men--all of them-- to resign from the House and Senate. It's time for these old boomers to get out of the way to bring in generation X and the millennium generation! They have had their day in the sun and should now move on. Their ideas are stale and they don't have a clue as to what is happening in the real world. The problem is, medical advances have allowed these old timers to sit there for 20, 30 years when they should have quit long ago. The senate needs a limit on terms served--8 years like the president, and they're out.
I too am a boomer and I'm sick and tired of seeing these same senators year after year, decade after decade. They're embarrassing and it's time for the next generation, people in their 20's, 30's and 40's to serve. I bet Congress would not keep getting approval rating in the teens. We need youth and new ideas! Call in the stage cane and pull them off the floor!
Um, Kerry is 10 months younger than I. Let's not confuse ethical values and ability with age. There are arguments for term limits, indeed, and a long-time politico can become confused-acting, but a 20-/30-something has limited experience and even less wisdom. Age is not a reliable qualification one way or another. Jeez.
A compassion solution SandraJane. But it won't happen unless the American people REALLY awaken...
Could it be that Kerry and Lieberman don't really believe that humans are responsible for climate change?
This propoosed legislation shows quite well that very little difference would have occurred with Kerry and Lieberman's election in 2004. What better example could there be of the interchangability between Democrat and Republican policy and those the policy benefits.
I have been tracking the C02 curve since 1985
at one point in the 90s NOAA was even calling
me at my home to update me.
The C02 is well above 390ppm right now.
The truth on the ppm will no longer be the truth.
There are only a few outposts in the world that
is able to track this, NOAA has the control.
NOAA, under the direction of Hanson, distorted
the Climate models for several decades for
industries sake. We are more than likely
at 420+ right now.
The last time NOAA called me was in 2005,
we were at 386ppm at that time,
NOAA, under the direction of Hanson, distorted
the Climate models for several decades for
industries sake.
----------------------
When you make claims like that, you need to support them.
There will be no US Senate bill that will solve the problem. NONE !!!
If humans world wide stopped burning coal and oil entirely tomorrow and never burned another speck, it would not make any difference to a continuing global warming. The near 390 ppm of Co2 now in the upper atmosphere will be near 390 ppm for at least the next 100 years. In addition, any stupid carbon taxes will do nothing what-so-ever to reduce the amount of Co2 in the atmopshere.
As of now global warming has insured that the Arctic Ocean's perennial ice has reduced to the point where the billions of tons of methane hydrates once safely locked up in the sea bottom's permafrost is releasing by the millions of tons and that will continue,... unless some means are formulated to stop it.
What means???... None I am aware of by human activity, but there is a slim chance the current volcanic activity in Iceland will cloud the Arctic region enough to stop the Arctic ice from thawing further and the methane would then stop releasing as the ice recovers. Of course that is a double edged sword, for if there is a great deal more volcanic activity in Iceland, as occurred in the 1700s, we will have serious global cooling and an ice age.
As most are aware, methane is more than 20 times as potent as Co2 as a greenhouse gas and as the hundreds of scientists who have conducted on site, hands on research in tha Atrctic region during the past several years state, "If the Arctic's methane continues to release as it is currently doing, it will be catistrtophic for {all life} on Earth.
Google: 2010 ISSS methane report.
"The near 390 ppm of Co2 now in the upper atmosphere will be near 390 ppm for at least the next 100 years."
Actually, the CO2 amount will increase, not stay the same as you posit. And we both know CO2 emissions won't stop tomorrow. The reality is a CO2 concentration close to 500 by 2030, and people must make plans for what that entails.
I said if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow it would remain at (near) 390 ppm for at least 100 years. You are correct however, I was not as (specific) as I probably should have been for critics. It will continue to rise as more methane releases and we are not going to stop burning fossil fuels.
My point was, we have a very serious problem with the Arctic methane threat and no one in power is addressing it.
I agree; the whole situation is critical, which is why it's prudent for people to prepare for the worst.
How does anyone prepare for extinction, and what would be the point?
We can (and need to) sequester carbon by reforesting the world and switching agriculture to organic permaculture. Physicist Allan Yeoman (son of the inventor of the key line plow, a useful permaculture tool) has calculated that if we increase organic matter by 1.8% on all arable land we would sequester all the carbon released by the industrial age. Organicizing the world is a core solution to climate catastrophe. Maybe we won't have to put up with 390 or above for nearly as long as you think.
Of course, we have to get busy, since we're running as fast as we can in the opposite direction.
Two confirmed idiots, Kerry and Lieberman, will unveil their handicraft project tomorrow. I can hardly wait.
Kerry Lieberman, more insanity. You and I have to fix the climate and you don't seem to be doing your part!
These two have no redeeming social value whatsoever.