KERRY-LIEBERMAN-GRAHAM BILL: NOT A SOLUTION
Posted by Rose Braz
December 12, 2009, 7:24 p.m.

RT @CBD_Climate:  Kerry, Lieberman, Graham "Framework"=Waxman-Markey+an oil spill #climate, #Copenhagen

That was one of our CBD_Climate tweets regarding how Senators Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham are proposing “solving” our climate crisis. The unlikely trio had an historic opportunity to inject reality into the Senate deliberations by requiring the deep, swift pollution reductions necessary to avert catastrophic global warming. Instead, they appear intent on weakening an already too-weak approach to climate change while sacrificing our public lands and waters to further fossil fuel development.

Their “framework” for this Coal and Oil Recovery Act: 

• “Near term pollution reduction targets in the range of 17 percent below 2005 emissions levels” — far, far short of the 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 we need to reach 350 ppm. In fact, this translates to just 3 percent below 1990 levels.
• “Increasing our supply of domestically produced oil and natural gas on land and offshore.” More oil? I thought oil was largely the problem. And one of the targets for drilling: our public lands.
• Encouraging nuclear power. But hey, the bill promises to “fully respect safety and environmental concerns.”
• “Ensuring a future for coal” — and thereby not ensuring a future for polar bears, penguins, pikas, and an awful lot of people, including residents of many low-lying island nations.
• Rejecting any regulatory approach to solving the carbon pollution problem (this means the Clean Air Act and other environmental legislation) and prohibiting all states from acting on their own.

I could go on, but let’s stop there. If a Senate bill is to have any chance of heading off the looming climate disaster, it must guarantee that the planet’s carbon dioxide level is set on a track to be reduced to 350 parts per million by cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. It must preserve all of the Clean Air Act’s proven mechanisms for reducing air pollution. And it must break free from the love of offsets, offsets, and more offsets. Instead, the Kerry, Lieberman, Graham framework takes us even further from effective solutions in favor of pointless and environmentally destructive compromises.

That the United States is the odd man out among developed countries at the Copenhagen negotiations is a strong indication of how far from scientific reality both the House and Senate have been so far in crafting global warming policy.

Next entry – 350 or Bust!