WASHINGTON - May 12 -  

PETER BARNES
Co-author of Climate Solutions: A Citizen's Guide, Barnes said today: "For months essential climate legislation has been delayed while Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) cut deals with lobbyists. Now the results are out: a mind-boggling bonanza of giveaways for corporate polluters and every energy industry except renewables.

"Fortunately, there is an alternative: the bi-partisan CLEAR Act co-sponsored by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). This simple 39-page bill would set a declining economy-wide cap on carbon suppliers, auction 100 percent of permits, and return 75 percent of the revenue to the American people to offset higher energy prices. Polluters would get no giveaways, clean energy investment would be spurred, and a majority of American families -- those who burn the least fossil fuels -- would come out financially ahead.

"Senators should now compare these two approaches and choose the best. And President Obama should do the same. Indeed, Obama should do more than that: he should make passage of climate legislation similar to the CLEAR Act a top priority for his administration -- just as he promised to do in his campaign."


TYSON SLOCUM
Director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, Slocum said today: "It's not accurate to call this a climate bill. This is nuclear energy-promoting, oil drilling-championing, coal mining-boosting legislation with a weak carbon-pricing mechanism thrown in. What's worse, it guts the Environmental Protection Agency's current authority to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act." See full statement, which includes a breakdown of corporate subsidies.