Here's a key excerpt from the Alternet piece:
In fact, President Barack Obama has publicly described the bill as his and the Democrats' preferred alternative to regulation. Without the bill, he has threatened, the EPA will directly regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, a power it was given by the Supreme Court in 2007 and which it announced it would exercise in April 2009. Indeed, the bill specifically prohibits Obama's EPA from regulating these emissions.
The bill's carbon-cap-and-trade provisions are by all reports its heart and soul. They exemplify a Republican approach: Don't tell polluters what to do, bribe them and hope they do what you want. Democrats have faked left and gone right.
The bill looks to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by about 1 billion tons by 2020 and then gives away over 1 billion tons of carbon allowance to polluters free of charge. And then, adding insult to injury, it allows polluters to purchase 2 billion tons of carbon offsets, three-quarters of which could come from overseas. In other words, companies could satisfy the Act's provisions without reducing greenhouse-gas emissions within the United States at all, by buying offsets from other countries that will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to monitor!
What I'm getting from this is:
1. We're better off without the bill than with it because the EPA has more authority to regulate pollution if this bill does NOT pass.
2. Polluters are getting free credits, which, in essence, privatizes our air.
If nobody owns the sky, then it's not fair for the government to give polluters the rights to pollute it for profit - and we all suffer the consequences of that together. I'm not OK with that. I think, if anything, we should have a carbon tax. Polluting the air should cost money which should be paid to the government so it can go for the common good. As for the offsets? I'm a skeptic. Trading pollution credits is one thing (it guarantees an equal amount of total pollution), but offsetting pollution needs to be carefully monitored so that it is TRULY offsetting pollution.
I'm quite fed up and I'm not sure at this point if our best message to our representatives is "Don't water it down more, and then vote for it" or "Vote against it." I asked expert A Siegel of Get Energy Smart Now and he told me he was conflicted about whether or not to support the bill. Earlier in the week I heard that Greenpeace no longer supports the bill, and I think I might have to side with them. |
