Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/26/2007 at 09:01PM
As he announced he would last
month,
Rep. John Dingell (D-Detroit), chair of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee, unveiled draft legislation for a carbon emission fee and
related elements.
Dingell is soliciting
comment online.
The elements:
- A $50 tax per ton of carbon (approximately equivalent to a $14 price
on CO2, not the $100/ton
CO2
reported by CNSNews) to be phased in over five years and then indexed
to inflation
- Revenues will be apportioned to Medicare and Social Security,
universal healthcare,
SCHIP,
conservation, renewable energy research and development, and
LIHEAP
- A $0.50/gallon gasoline tax to be phased in over five years and then
indexed to inflation
- Diesel would be excluded from this tax because “the fuel economy
benefits of diesel surpass even its emissions benefits; it provides
about a thirty percent increase in fuel economy and a twenty percent
emissions reduction,” figures basically in line with the Union of
Concerned Scientists report, The Diesel
Dilemma
“on an energy-equivalent basis, each gallon of diesel fuel results
in about three percent more heat-trapping gas emissions than
gasoline.”)
- Biofuel blends would only be taxed on their petroleum content
- Revenues go to the highway trust fund, with 40% going to the mass
transit and 60% going to roads
- A $0.50/gallon jet fuel tax, with revenues going into the airport and
airway trust fund
- McMansion provision: Phases out the mortgage interest deduction on
primary mortgages on houses over 3000 square feet, going to zero for
homes 4200 square feet and up
- Exemptions for historical homes (prior to 1900) and farm houses
- Exemptions for home owners who purchase carbon offsets to make home
carbon neutral or own LEED certified homes
- Budget savings will go to pay for an increase in the Earned Income
Tax Credit
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/25/2007 at 12:17PM
At last week’s American Meteorological Society Hurricanes and Climate
Change
panel, Greg Holland highlighted the importance of the National Hurricane
Research Initiative Act of 2007 (HR
2407,
S
931).
The bill, introduced by the Florida delegation in the spring, would
establish a multi-agency board to set strategy and make grants for
hurricane research. From CRS:
Requires the Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere of the
Department of Commerce and the Director of the National Science
Foundation (NSF) to establish a National Hurricane Research Initiative
and to cooperate with other specified federal agencies to carry it
out. Requires such Initiative to set research objectives (based on a
National Science Board report on the need for such Initiative) to: (1)
make recommendations to the Board; (2) assemble the expertise of U.S.
science and engineering capabilities through a multi-agency effort
focused on infrastructure, the natural environment, and improving
understanding of hurricane prediction, intensity, and mitigation on
coastal populations; and (3) make grants for hurricane research,
including regarding hurricane dynamics, modification, and observation,
air-sea interaction, relationships between hurricanes and climate,
predicting flooding and storm surge, coastal infrastructure, building
construction, emergency communication networks, information
utilization by public officials, and sharing computational capability.
Directs the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
through the National Science and Technology Council, to coordinate
U.S. activities related to the Initiative as a formal program with a
well-defined organizational structure and execution plan. Directs the
Under Secretary and the Director to: (1) establish a National
Infrastructure Database to catalog infrastructure, provide information
to improve information public policy related to hurricanes, and
provide data to improve researchers’ abilities to measure hurricane
impacts in order to improve building codes and urban planning; and (2)
develop a National Hurricane Research Model to conduct integrative
research and facilitate the transfer of research knowledge to
operational applications
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/25/2007 at 09:19AM
The Carbon Disclosure Project, a non-profit
that advocates corporate climate change disclosure on behalf of a large
pool of institutional investors (funded by
WWF, government environmental agencies, and
various foundations), released its fifth annual report with great
fanfare yesterday. In proceedings moderated by Harold E. Ford Jr. (DLC,
Merrill Lynch) and keynoted by Bill Clinton (with a video message from
Rupert Murdoch), the CDP’s Paul Dickinson
announced the results from their questionnaire, sent to 2400 companies
around the world. 1300 responded, including 77% of the Financial Times
500, compared to 72% in CDP4, 71% in
CDP3, 59% in CDP2,
and 47% in CDP1. 76% of responding
FT500 companies reported implementing a
GHG emissions reduction initiative compared to
48% in CDP4. Europe-based firms had the
highest response rate with 83%. However, North America-based firms
demonstrated significant improvement with a
CDP5 response rate of 74%, compared to 66% in
CDP4. South America-based firms also increased
their response rate to 60% in CDP5 from 50% in
CDP4. The website allows users to search
responses by company
name (some responses
are not publicly available). The executive
report
is also available.
It’s interesting, for example, to contrast
BP with
ExxonMobil,
both of whom offer detailed disclosures. BP has active wind, solar,
biofuels, and CCS divisions, and is concerned
by melting permafrost; ExxonMobil sees climate change as an opportunity
for growth in the natural gas sector and is looking to reduce flaring in
its natural gas wells in Nigeria.
In coverage, the New York Times notes that Gas Emissions Rarely Figure
in Investor
Decisions
and the Washington
Post
and Business
Week
cover the Wal-Mart press
release
about setting up a program to measure its supply chain footprint.
Agence-France Presse emphasizes the finding that World companies show
big interest in climate, US firms
lag,
whereas Reuters sees the positive message that Climate change spurs
industry
restructuring.
Forbes discusses Sun Microsystems’
launch
of OpenEco, a corporate social-networking website
for tracking GHG emissions.
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/24/2007 at 05:21PM
The UN brought a group of twelve bloggers to the event, most of whom are
professional staffers; the UN
Dispatch blog offers a
jump-off point for the coverage.
The dozen bloggers include three from the Center for American Progress:
Kate Sheppard and Ezra Klein from
TAPPED and Kay
Steiger from Campus Progress, as
well as Gristmill’s Brian Beutler, the
Atlantic.com’s Matthew
Yglesias, Treehugger’s Jasmin Chua, Boing
Boing Gadgets’ Joel Johnson, the
Washington Note’s Sameer Lalwani,
Global Voices
Online’s Juliana
“Tweets” Rotich, and Foreign Policy
Passport’s Blake Hounshell.
Links to their posts are after the jump.
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/24/2007 at 11:28AM
The UN climate change “high-level event”, “The Future In Our
Hands,
is ongoing, webcast online.
The New York
Times
has coverage, as does the
BBC.
NYT quotes Gov. Schwarzenegger (R-Cal.):
California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to
action. The time has come to stop looking back in blame or suspicion.
The consequences of global climate change are so pressing that it
doesn’t matter who was responsible for the past, what matters is who
is answerable for the future.
Of course, Schwarzenegger isn’t above partisan
politics
when it comes to climate change either:
He sliced millions from Attorney General Jerry Brown’s budget,
including $1 million to pursue climate change litigation on behalf of
the state. Brown, a Democrat, enraged Republicans for challenging city
and county land-use plans if they did not adequately address the
effects of local growth on global warming.
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/20/2007 at 01:41PM
U.S. PIRG today
announced the
release
of “Cleaner, Cheaper,
Smarter”,
a report which makes the case that any greenhouse gas emissions
cap-and-trade program have a full auction of emissions credits.
In a supporting statement, numerous environmental and progressive
organizations and individuals
state:
It is critical that any cap-and-trade program require the auctioning
of pollution allowances, rather than giving those allowances away for
free to polluters.
By auctioning pollution allowances, we affirm that no one has a
“right” to pollute. Instead, we claim the atmosphere as a common
resource, to be managed for the benefit of the public, which no
polluter may foul without due compensation.
By auctioning pollution allowances, we reduce the societal cost of
achieving emission reductions, enabling America to achieve its climate
protection goals with less disruption to our economy and the lives of
individual Americans.
And by auctioning pollution allowances, we prevent the accumulation of
billions of dollars in windfall profits by polluters, and instead put
those revenues to work on behalf of the public. Allowance revenues can
support efforts to transform America into a clean energy economy and
to provide a regular dividend or rebate to American consumers.
We call on state and federal lawmakers to limit global warming
emissions to the levels demanded by the science and to auction all
pollution allowances in any cap-and-trade program.
The list of signatories is after the jump.
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/19/2007 at 06:15PM
From the
Politico,
at today’s PPI
forum
Joe Lieberman said he and John Warner are open to changing their bill
from a proposed 76% give-away of pollution
credits
to 100% auction, following the polluter pays principle:
We’ve heard [calls for a 100 percent auction] from some stakeholders
and heard that from some of our members. We’re thinking about it.
Warner and I haven’t closed our minds to that. It’s on the table.
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/19/2007 at 01:46PM
From E&E News
(subscription required), at an event in Washington hosted by the Council
on Foreign Relations, Rep. Rick Boucher (Va.), chair of the Energy and
Air Quality Subcommittee of John Dingell’s Energy and Commerce
Committee,
said he planned to draft a cap-and-trade bill that distributes tens of
billions in pollution credits to U.S. industries for free:
I’m disinclined at the moment to do auctioning, at least in the early
years to give it very much prominence, if any at all. The best we can
do is give the allowances to the emitters according to their needs.
We’re going to have enough problems as it is with coal-fired
utilities, for example, and other carbon-intensive industries meeting
our production schedules. I think perhaps, at least for the early
years, it’s better not to compound these problems by imposing a cost
on these emitters of having to go out and pay for these allowances. It
will be the least painful, most politically attractive way to do it.
In other comments, Boucher asked Pelosi to delay the conference
committee negotiations on the energy bill until he produced his draft
cap-and-trade bill, but he said she probably won’t. He agrees with the
80% by 2050 target but is unsure of the path to there: “The schedule
that takes us to that very aggressive target will be perhaps the most
difficult thing we have to negotiate.” He will be releasing a series of
position papers over the coming weeks.
In contrast, Nat Keohane, Ph.D., the Director of Economic Policy and
Analysis at Environmental Defense offers support for full auctions in a
blog
post
countering Greg Mankiw’s recent NYT
op-ed
favoring a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade system (in line with Robert
Shapiro’s argument):
Mankiw assumes that allowances in a cap-and-trade system would be
handed out for free rather than auctioned, thus generating no federal
revenue. Now, I admit that this has been the modus operandi in the
past. Virtually all allowances were handed out for free under the
wildly successful sulfur dioxide trading program in the U.S., set up
by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. But that doesn’t mean it has to
be that way.
The alternative, full auctioning, would raise exactly the same amount
of money as a carbon tax, and there are signs that it’s gaining
ground. Earlier this year, several states participating in the
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, including New York and New Jersey,
announced plans to auction off 100 percent of their allowances. Plus
there are calls to phase in auctioning in the European Union’s
Emissions Trading System.
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/18/2007 at 07:22PM
Next week the United
Nations General Assembly meets. There are several related international
summits, starting Monday the 24th with The Future in Our
Hands,
the UN High-Level Event on Climate Change, followed Wednesday by the
Clinton Global Initiative Annual
Meeting,
with representatives from NRDC and Pew, major
corporate leaders, and luminaries such as Ted Turner and Jane Goodall.
The next, Thursday, September 27, Bush convenes the Major Economies
Meeting on Energy Security and Climate
Change,
organized by the White House to promote its agenda.
Not surprisingly, this week sees a flurry of policy and science
briefings in Washington DC.
Tomorrow, Sens. Lieberman and Carper present a cap-and-trade
discussion
with the Progressive Policy Institute.
Friday, September 21: Yvo de Boer (UN) and David Sandalow
(Brookings/CGI) discuss the upcoming “Climate
Week”
with the Brookings Institution, Dr. Kerry Emanuel and other top climate
scientists talk hurricanes and climate
change
on the Hill, and Sir Nicholas Stern weighs in on
Bali.
In addition the next two weeks sees hearings on renewable electricity
standards
and
wildfire,
and briefings on urban
development,
ecosystems,
and global
policy.
As always, you can subscribe to the Hill Heat Events
Feed. I’m working on
building Google Calendar functionality as well.
Posted by Brad Johnson on 09/18/2007 at 10:17AM
Senate
According to CQ.com, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chair
Barbara Boxer asked Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., and John W. Warner,
R-Va., “to write a bill that would cap nationwide greenhouse gas
emissions.” They released the skeleton of the
legislation
in August and plan to introduce a final draft by the end of September.
However, “Because the climate-change issue is so complex, marking up the
bill will be no small task.” There are several other climate
bills,
including S. 309 (Sanders-Boxer) and S.1766
(Bingaman-Specter).
CQ.com reports that Harry Reid “plans to allow floor time for the
Lieberman-Warner bill this fall if it wins approval in Boxer’s
committee. No matter what the bill looks like, it will face procedural
objections that can be overcome only with a 60-vote majority. It is
unclear whether Reid would have enough votes to move beyond that
obstacle.”
House
According to CQ, Energy and Commerce Committee chair John D. Dingell,
D-Mich., also intends to introduce climate legislation to reduce U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent to 80 percent by 2050, although
he has not announced any specific plans for the bill.
A first hurdle is the reconciliation process for the energy
legislation
that passed each chamber (HR 3221, and the Senate version of
HR 6), which Dingell will be heavily involved
in.
Dingell also announced his intentions to introduce global warming
legislation
for a carbon tax, a hike in the gas tax, and ending the McMansion
mortgage deduction (homes larger than 3,000 square feet) while
increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Low Income Home Energy
Assistance Program.