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Waxman-Markey Will Not Do: A 'Fell-Swoop' Moment Missed
"We have been too kind to those people who are destroying the planet ~ inexcusably, unforgivably, insanely kind."-- Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame
As the bell rang in the U.S. House of Representatives, announcing the 219-212 vote for passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill, also known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the skies over Washington, DC ripped loose with a mighty storm.
Visibility was cut to a couple of feet as a torrential down pour was accompanied by hail that raised a ruckus so loud inside the car that conversation was impossible. Tourists with inadequate umbrellas were left with skin stinging from the pelting. There were small waves cresting on the Potomac River and flash flooding. Local areas got several inches of rain in less than an hour. Large trees bowed, split and littered the streets.
At least 2 people in the Washington, DC region died from the storm. Forty-year-old, supermom Kelly Murray of Chevy Chase, Maryland and her 7-year-old daughter Sloane, died when a fallen tree branch crushed them in their mini-van on Connecticut Avenue. Murray leaves a husband and 4 daughters: Maeve, Jillian, Quinn and Meghan.
With the evidence of catastrophic climate change coming more clearly into daily focus, President Obama dared to say, "We're not going to get there in one fell swoop." Mother Nature seemed to declare, "I beg to differ, Waxman-Markey, simply will not do."
"Vital authority for the EPA is stripped, but 2 billion additional tons of pollution are authorized every year, forever. Residential consumer protection incredibly is entrusted to the mercy of utility companies. Exempting a hundred new coal plants and paying billions to Old King Coal leaves him, indeed, a very merry old soul. This bill is 85% different from what President Obama proposed months ago," said Brent Blackwelter, President of Friends of the Earth, one of the groups opposed to the House version of the bill.
Even The Washington Post, which has grown increasingly conservative, said in an editorial, "Congress should deliver a bill to Mr. Obama this year. But given that congressional action could set a template for years or decades, we think it's too soon to settle for something that falls so far short of ideal," as the House version of the bill does.
Environmental and energy advocate, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) was in the minority voting against the bill. He said, "It won't address the problem. In fact, it might make the problem worse.
It certainly seems as if the lights may be on, powered by dirty coal, but there is nobody home in the U.S. House of Representatives. Did they miss the report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990 when they said we must cut greenhouse gas emissions 60-80% immediately? Were they unconscious when in 2001, the IPCC said that the problem was 50% worse than originally predicted?
Has Congress missed the rapidly receding Arctic ice? Did it not register with them when Katie Walters reported in Science Magazine that methane, the greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, was bubbling out of the arctic, taking humanity into the dreaded phase, where climate change may be beyond human control?
Were U.S. House members on recess when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently said, "The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that."
By the time that we should have atmospheric greenhouse gases under control, The Breakthrough Initiative said of the ACES bill: "If fully utilized, the emissions ‘offset' provisions in the [bill] would allow continued business as usual, growth in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions until 2030, leading one to wonder: where's the cap in the ‘cap' and trade?"
Let's take a lesson from the failed experiment with cap and trade in Europe. They started with a commendable goal: to cut greenhouse gases by making companies pay for each ton of CO2 they emitted. But that plan, let loose lobbying pandemonium that led politicians to give favors to industries, blunting the environmental mission, just as Waxman-Markey will do, in its current form.
Four years later, the European system has so far produced no benefit to the climate - but has generated a multibillion-dollar bonanza for some of Europe's biggest polluters. The New York Times reports that a German power company received $6.4 billion in the first 3 years of the system and that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by plants and factories, has not fallen in Europe - instead it has risen an average of about half a percent in 2006 and '07.
Hope is fleeting that the U.S. Senate will bring better sense to bear on climate legislation than the U.S. House, but if they do not, humanity may be screwed. With a filibuster-proof, Democratic majority including the recently affirmed, Al Franken (D-MN), fixing Waxman-Markey ultimately rests with one person -- Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) of Connecticut - who was the lead sponsor of an even weaker bill in 2003.
At a time when serious leadership is needed to cut greenhouse gases 80% below 1990 levels by 2025, the inadequate greenhouse gas cap in Waxman-Markey cuts greenhouse gas emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050.
A plan for achieving meaningful cuts in greenhouse gases is easily stated: Get off the fossil fuel economy and transition to a 100% clean, renewable, non-nuclear energy economy within 10 years. Stop all logging, mining, grazing and drilling.
America, this is your climate bill.
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25 Comments so far
Show AllObama, start living up to "change we can believe in" or resign...simple as that. YOU have become a great disappointment and an impediment to human progress. Take a stand as the leader you presented during the campaign...not the corporate gumby you are now. We the People are getting VERY restless.
It is not cynical to state that Obama is not living up to the progressive's expectations. It is just a statement of fact. Nor did he ever indicate that he would. He doesn't speak Orwellian as well as Bush or Cheney, but when Obama said that he would remove 'combat troops' by a certain date, he never said 'troop.' It wasn't accidental. And his promotion of coal is not an accident either.
It is cynical, in a twisted way, for many of the 'progressices' who tried to convince the voting public that Obama would be much different on many of the major issues like the middle east war/occupation, health care, and global warming.
Hope is the opiate of the masses.
www.NotOneMore.US
www.NotOneMore.US July 8th, 2009 4:03 am...UMMMM.......er........OK
Cap and trade does nothing but transfer the source of CO2 from one place to another while increasing the price of energy to customers of the carbon credit purchasers. It's a total scam. The upside is that it will tremendously increase profits for the carbon credit sellers (you don't think they will lower their rates just because they sold a few billion dollars worth of carbon credits do you?), and the big banks like Goldman Sachs stand to make a killing brokering these credits. So look on the bright side -- the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
At least someone here understands exactly what Waxman Markety really is. Thank you.
EKATON, exactly right. and Matt Taibbi predicts Cap and Trade will be the next bubble, which will burst, as bubbles do. Goldman Sachs wins with bubbles and wins when they burst. Truly this is the United States of Goldman Sachs.
What we need, and will not get is a carbon tax. The polluters will not permit that, just as the health noncare industry will not permit single payer or even a public option.
I'm thinking Obama is the right president at this time. He is proving that we will be screwed by any Democrat or Republican. We wouldn't have found that out if we had gotten McCain/Palin. Some here already knew that. Others, like me, needed to be convinced. I watched his speech to the AFL/CIO and I believed him. I actually thought he was just keeping low until he got into office. But when he starts telling progressives to just SHUT UP, there is no misunderstanding him. And he's keeping all Shrub's martial law directives in place.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Cap n Trade, in theory, would have worked by creating a market for GW solutions. But, as Taibbi relates, its too subject to the 'closed-doors' agreements whose purpose is the inflate the value of certain items, rope in the public, and then split with the profits. It would be horrible if this happened in the battle against AGW, since the public might then never support another solution. Therefore, I now support a straight carbon tax, with money spent on alternative energy/transportation research.
If people can't see that the climate is acting "funny", then they aren't paying attention. There has been excessive rain in some parts and other areas are in drought. Rivers have jumped their banks in the dry summer months. Wisconsin's northern highlands have withered from five years of low precipitation. The south east is parched.
Bugs are expanding their usual ranges and threatening millions of acres forests. Birds and mammals have also expanded ranges to the north. Climate change is happening right before your eyes. The signs are everywhere, not just the receding glaciers.
Don't expect anything from the moneyed interests and their spokespeople, ie, congress. Until the american people change their habits(consume less, drive less, start electing new party candidates) this pattern will not only continue, but accelerate through feedback loops.
Shutting down the military would be a great start.
"Bugs are expanding their usual ranges and threatening millions of acres forests"
The mountain pine beetle has decimated British Columbia forests (as well as Wyoming and Colorado) and now the infestation has jumped the Rockies and is likely to decimate much of Canada's boreal forest. We've seen this effect of climate change for the past 15 years, every year seemingly of increasing severity.
This is yet another positive feedback since the decaying trees release more carbon to the atmosphere than normal forest. Such effects are never accounted for in the models and possibly the sum of such unexpected and unknown effects accounts for the fact that climate change seems to be outpacing the most severe predictions.
Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on clean energy and efficiency means nothing in an economy that spends hundreds of billions on fossil fuels.
We are at the cusp of self destruction or a new beginning. The young can now inherit a political fatal flaw or create a trillion dollar clean energy economy.
Senators, will it be your ethics or your money? We are watching you very very carefully! Greenwash will not protect your political careers.
Coal is the enemy of the human race.
I don’t think our elected officals know what moral ethics are anymore. They had them before they were elected to serve in government, but somehow once they came to Washington they checked their moral character at the door.
The problem is that I just don’t think people care that our government lies to us. Honesty doesn't seem to be valued by the American people anymore and that is why year after year, administration after administration, and congress after congress nothing really changes. They know they will never have to pay for their crimes and so they continue on the same path of lies, greed, and corruption.
chrisy58 July 7th, 2009 1:40 pm...Nothing will change until enough people (critical mass....usually just 5%) decide they have had enough. This may be in the form of passive (hopefully) or agressive revolution. Since the powers that be control the media, WE the People have little choice but to take our argument to the street. Now, that does not necessarily mean violence. BUT, it does mean massive participation. When the people will have had enough is anyone's guess. If it did not happen during the last and most corrupt and deceptive administration of all time, I honestly do not know when it will be. BUT, it MUST happen to bring dignity, morality, integrity and economic stability back to the average American family. When the TRUTH of 9/11 surfaces....and it WILL....this may be what tips the scales of justice to the advantage of We the People. The chickens will come home to roost and the fox will be looking for those caves in which to secret their corrupt, GREEDY selves.
Waxman/Markey is a lie, a disgusting attempt to fool the people that believe we can unilaterally have any effect on Climate Change into believing this is anything but an energy tax. And it will cost more than two million jobs, far more.
Yes, just another lie being told to the American people. Americans are going to continue to loose faith and trust in our government because of all the lies told them. I know I am not the only one who doesn't know if what I hear from any elected offical from President on down is the truth. I don't believe anything coming from their mouths anymore. It is quite sad, but when the people of a nation do not trust their own government, that government at some point will fail.
chrisy58-I would caution you not to believe trolls like Henry8 either. Trying to find truth is not an easy task. With some intense, serious study, one can find some important voices who have sincerely and intelligently pointed the way to a better future.
From article: "Hope is fleeting that the U.S. Senate will bring better sense to bear on climate legislation than the U.S. House, but if they do not, humanity may be screwed"
If humanity is depending on the US Senate (what I consider to be the most institutionally corrupt legislative body in the developed world), we are screwed indeed.
But hey, many of the sycophantic punditry are lauding this as an historic huge step, wow.
Waxman-Markey in it's current form is a joke. Unfortunately I don't expect it to be improved much in the Senate. Indeed, if our law makers were really serious they'd pass a carbon tax rather than an unworkable cap-n-trade system.
The effects of climate change are occurring quicker than most had predicted. I suspect that a catastrophic event -- as in significant glacial melt in Greenland & Antartica leading to loss of our current coastal lands -- could occur in the not too distant future, perhaps within 20 years. When this does happen, there will be the typical congressional hearings (although at a new location of course) led by many of the same folks who are currently failing us. They'll adopt a sanctimonious tone and project moral outrage -- "WE KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN, YET NOTHING WAS DONE TO PREVENT IT". Blah, blah, blah....
We are indeed screwed.
I wonder if the left ever ponders its role in helping to bring about catastrophic climate change by irrationally fighting nuclear power and thus making it necessary to rely on dirty coal to generate electricity?
Fig leaf - artificial.
"Do you believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?
For the last several years, I've taken to asking people this question, at talks and rallies, in libraries, on buses, in airplanes, at the grocery store, the hardware store. Everywhere. The answers range from emphatic 'nos' to laughter. No one answers in the affirmative.
My next question: how will this understanding -- that this culture will not voluntarily stop destroying the natural world, eliminating indigenous cultures, exploiting the poor, and killing those who resist -- shift our strategy and tactics? The answer? Nobody knows, because we never talk about it: we're too busy pretending the culture will undergo a magical transformation.
This book is about that shift in strategy, and in tactics.
If the foundation for my morality consists -- not of commandments from a God whose home is not primarily of this Earth and whose adherents have committed uncountable atrocities, nor of laws created by those in political power to serve those in political power, nor even the perceived wisdom -- the common law -- of a culture that has led us to ecological apocalypse, but if instead, the foundation consists of the knowledge that I am an animal who requires habitat -- including but not limited to clean water, clean air, non-toxic food -- what does my consequent morality suggest about the rightness or wrongness of, say, pesticide production?"
From 'Endgame' by Derrick Jensen - 2006
For more excerpts from 'Endgame' see:
http://www.freewebs.com/thegorge/endgame.htm
This is far more then an issue of energy. We have to fundamentally rethink how we co-exist with our enviroment.
The Hunter Gatherers of New Guinea expend something like 1/10th of a calorie in energy for very calorie of food they "gather" and eat.
In North America we expend on the order of 20 calories to get ONE calorie of food. (This not counting all the other energy we expend . This is just to get one calorie of food)
This does not mean we must revert to hunter gatherers. It means our system is not as EFFICIENT as we believe it to be. Our system is in fact extremely wasteful of energy. The extra energy needed to achieve this number, is via the burning of hydrocarbons. Whether the source of energy was Nuclear it STILL inefficient.
Trucking resources to the West Coast, loading it on ships to send it to china to have them process it into some good and then ship it back to us wherein it then trucked across the continent again to be sold in some store is a tremendous WASTE of energy.
It is very PROFITABLE as far as making dollars is concerned but it is wasteful and inefficient.
Before we try and determine how we will generate our power we must rethink our econonies. We have to localize first.
This whole cap and trade plan will be a catastrophe that will take down whatever's left of the global economy that isn't war. Matt Taibbi's article in the new Rolling Stone explains why.
I feel compelled to periodically remind you that there has been no warming in the last four years. Each year since 2005 has been cooler than the one before. We're now back down to 2001 levels. All the weather "experts" are saying 2009 will be one of the warmest yet, but the actual "temperatures" on actual "thermometers," say temps are continuing to drop, as you would expect if the warming of the last 30 years was part of a natural cycle.
Because most of the things we could do to "stop global warming" - efficiency, renewables, conservation, fewer children, peace - would be good things for the world, I'm not trying to change your beliefs about global warming. But if your belief, which I held until recently, leads to thinking that the world is coming to an end, that it's hopeless, or that we should give even more power to the capitalists to get us out of the mess (as Waxman-Markey does), then I invite you to do some research. It's hard to explain where the last four years of cooling have come from, if AGW theory is true. It very much reminds me of the gov't theory about 9/11. They just repeat it; they don't debate or explain it. WTC 7? Doesn't prove anything. We could be being had again.
Troll/ignorant alert! Because we had a couple of incredibly hot years in the last 10 or 11 years, that means that we're now cooling. Stunningly idiotic! Over the last decade, on average, we've been far warmer than any time in history for which we have excellent records: well over a century.
"As the bell rang in the U.S. House of Representatives ..."
Love that nomenclature. Representatives of whom? It's like asking whether the U.S. corporate media represents public interests or paid sponsors. A purely rhetorical question, of course.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls ...