Articles by Tony Kreindler

Quick post-mortem on Lieberman-Warner

A quick post-mortem on this week's vote on the Climate Security Act, which was pulled from the Senate floor on Friday after its sponsors fell short of the 60 votes needed to proceed to final debate. I think I can safely sum it up in one word: progress.

Time to kick the oil habit

This is the latest in a series on why it is important to push hard for climate legislation this year.

Over the past few months, I've made the case for passing climate legislation in 2008: We don't want to squander the current momentum, we simply can't afford to wait, and while we do, we only prolong a dangerous catch-22.

Now we're finally on the doorstep of Senate action on a comprehensive climate change bill. Floor debate over the Climate Security Act (S. 3036) will begin Monday, June 2.

If opponents of meaningful action have their way, the debate will be nothing more than a short, partisan fight over gas prices. You can already hear the predictable scare tactics: "Why would we want to raise gas prices now, when working Americans are already suffering at the pump?"

That's a phony argument -- but it brings me to another reason for passing a climate bill in 2008: It's time to kick our oil habit, and the best way to do that is with a cap-and-trade policy that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels.

Gas prices are at a record high because of growing demand from China and other developing nations. That's not going to change. The only solution is to end our addiction to oil.

The world is waiting for us to lead the way

This is the third in a series on why we should push for climate legislation this year. See also Part I and Part II.

Why push for a climate bill in 2008? I've already offered some reasons in my previous posts: the politics will be much the same in 2009 (Okay, David offered that one), we don't want to squander the current momentum, and in any case, we simply can't afford to wait.

But if those aren't reason enough, here's another: The world is waiting for us to act. To solve the global warming problem, China and other developing countries also must cap their emissions, and they won't do this until our own cap is in place.

From a New York Times report:

"China is not going to act in any sort of mandatory-control way until the United States does first," said Joseph Kruger, policy director for the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group in Washington.

Along with India and other large developing countries, China has long maintained that the established industrial powers need to act first because they built their wealth largely by burning fossil fuels and adding to the atmosphere's blanket of greenhouse gases.

If the U.S. -- the wealthiest country on Earth -- won't establish a cap, how can we expect developing countries to do it?

Delay makes environmental catastrophe more likely

This is the second in a series; the first is here.

We've covered two reasons Environmental Defense is pushing for passage of climate legislation in 2008 -- the politics will be very much the same in 2009, and we don't want to gamble away a good bill on the chance of a perfect one someday.

Today I'll look at a third reason: The price of waiting, even a year or two, is simply too high. Carbon dioxide concentrations are higher today than they've been in 650,000 years, and our emissions rate is increasing. It's crucial that we start aggressively cutting emissions as soon as possible.

Here's the math.

Source: the national allowance account for the years 2012-2020 from the S.2191 as reported out of the EPW Committee. The emissions growth from 2005 to 2013 is assumed to be 1.1 percent (an average of the 2004 and 2005 rate reported by the EPA [PDF]).

Scenario one: The Climate Security Act is passed into law this year, and takes effect in 2012. To comply with the emissions cap, covered sources would have to cut annual emissions by roughly 2 percent per year. By 2020, they would be emitting at 15 percent below the starting point in 2012.

Scenario two: We delay enacting legislation by two years, holding everything else constant. We pass a cap-and-trade bill in 2010, and it takes effect in 2014. To meet the same cumulative emissions cuts, emissions would have to fall by 4.3 percent per year -- over twice as quickly -- and we'd have to do it year after year until 2020, just to get to the same place. By 2020, emissions from covered sources would have to be cut 23 percent below the starting point in 2014.