Message to Senate: Energy Bill Must Be Tougher on Global Warming
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By Dan Shapley
The following is the text of a letter sent to Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the U.S. Senate Environmental Health and Public Works Committee, by more than 300 environmental and public interest groups.
August 26, 2009
The Honorable Barbara Boxer
Chairman, U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Hart Building 112
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Boxer,
Thank you for your continued leadership on the climate crisis. The environmental, economic, and public health
threats of global warming – both in the United States and around the world – require a strong climate bill. We are profoundly concerned that as currently written, H.R. 2454 (American Clean Energy and Security Act or
“ACES”) falls far short. We are writing on behalf of the millions of members our organizations represent to
urge you to draft a companion bill that provides the transformational change and greenhouse emissions
reductions required to avert catastrophic climate impacts.
The Senate bill must set an economy wide cap on greenhouse emissions that is consistent with the best
available science and that can be ratcheted down as necessary. Findings from the U.S. Global Change
Research Center, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and many other institutions and scientists
indicate that the atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization target of 450 parts per million CO2eq is far too high to avoid the risk of catastrophic climate change. Leading scientists currently warn that CO2 must be reduced to no more than 350 parts per million. Yet the cap set by H.R. 2454 is insufficient even to achieve 450 parts per million CO2eq. The Senate bill must contain reduction targets consistent with the best available science, representing the U.S. fair global share of reductions within the world’s remaining carbon budget, and must include immediate action on short-lived global warming pollutants including black carbon and methane to slow warming in the near term.
The Clean Air Act already provides many of the necessary tools to reduce greenhouse pollutants. Therefore, the Clean Air Act rollbacks in H.R. 2454, which would actually reduce existing pollution control requirements, facilitate the construction of additional coal fired power plants, and grandfather in unnecessary pollution from existing plants, must be removed. The critical safety net of the Clean Air Act must be retained, not discarded in favor of a new, untested system, placing all of our eggs in one precarious basket. Existing Clean Air Act authority should be strengthened by adding deadlines for the oldest and dirtiest coal fired power plants to meet pollution reduction requirements or shut down.
The Senate bill should eliminate the many loopholes in HR2454 and ensure the integrity of the pollution
reduction system. A top priority must be to eliminate or greatly limit and restrict offsets, which allow actual pollution from capped sources to increase, creating localized toxic hotspots in people of color and vulnerable communities, delay a shift to low carbon technologies in the United States, and increase the risks in carbon markets. In addition, the House provision prohibiting a full life-cycle analysis of bio-fuels must be reversed.
The Senate bill should protect low- and middle- income families. Regardless of the chosen mechanism, the setting of carbon prices must be transparent, stable, and predictable, while minimizing the ability of private entities to manipulate the carbon price. We do not believe the market mechanisms contained in the current cap and trade proposal achieve this. The Senate bill should ensure there are adequate protections from climate change for low-income families, vulnerable communities domestically and globally, Native American and Indigenous peoples including protections and idends for low-income consumers and adequate international finance for adaptation.
The Senate bill should provide for abundant clean energy. The Senate bill should provide mandates and incentives for abundant clean energy sources such as low-impact solar, wind, and non-dam hydro, which do not add toxic burdens to communities and workers, and do not require incineration technologies.
The Senate bill should eliminate polluter giveaways, including massive subsidies to coal and oil. Scarce government funding should not go to dangerous fossil fuel or nuclear industries or allow damaging practices such as mountaintop removal mining. Instead, public money should go to investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy and the creation of green jobs.
The Senate bill should live up to the United States’ international obligations. For a fair global deal with meaningful global emissions reductions, the United States must both deeply reduce emissions domestically and provide adequate international climate finance for clean technology, adaptation, …
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