John Kerry gave a speech this past week in which he said that he is “on a short track” to introducing climate and energy legislation that can be passed. Kerry said he’d been working with key administration officials and Senators to create a package. In a Reuters article on this, Carol Browner is quoted as saying “…the work that is going on up on the Hill is moving at a nice speed.” Reuters also noted the obvious: “Washington’s ability to produce a domestic law mandating carbon reductions on industry will have a significant impact on whether negotiations on the international track will succeed.”
Kerry is articulate and passionate about climate change. “Why do you need to price carbon? Because you need to create a signal in the marketplace where businesses have a certainty about where the marketplace is going over 20, 30, 50 years so they begin to invest accordingly and you begin to move your market in wholesale fashion towards the kind of new investments, new jobs and the adjustments we can make.” That’s why most of the Fortune 500 companies that have a stake in this – either because they’re GHG-emitters or they’re poised to increase their value by investing in clean tech, or both – have been hammering on Congress to get this done.
Will it be cap-and-trade? Maybe not, according to the “Washington Post” yesterday: Senators to propose abandoning cap-and-trade. “Power plants would face an overall cap on emissions that would become more stringent over time; motor fuel may be subject to a carbon tax whose proceeds could help electrify the U.S. transportation sector; and industrial facilities would be exempted from a cap on emissions for several years before it is phased in. The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and would provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.” The nuclear power component is a sop to the GOP. (It’s also, in my opinion, hugely bad policy. But then some smart analysts, like Dave Roberts at Grist, think nukes are an acceptable price to pay for climate legislation – as they won’t get built at the end of the day.)
Like John Kerry, Al Gore lost a presidential election to George W. Bush. (What a distinction.) But also like Kerry, Gore is articulate, passionate and steeped in the science, economics and politics of climate and energy. He has an op-ed in today’s “NY Times” in which he notes Kerry’s effort and that a draft bill is forthcoming – as soon as next week perhaps. The op-ed covers a lot of important ground, including addressing the brouhaha over the science. (Gore’s latest book, Our Choice, does a phenomenal job of looking at and explaining the complexities of climate change and our energy future. I’ve been using it this semester in both of my climate change classes at NYU.)
Gore says in his op-ed that the “pathway to success is still open” and “begins with a choice by the United States to pass a law establishing a cost for global warming pollution.” A “price on carbon.” That’s what industry and finance have been calling for, along with the President of the United States, the US House of Representatives, top economists, the European Union, the UNFCCC, the IPCC, top science academies – pretty much the entirety of the community of key policymakers on climate and energy. Earth to the US Senate: Let’s get on it.
