Senate Committee Starts Carbon Cap-and-Trade Hearings

Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Barbara Boxer of California, said, "Today’s hearing is the kickoff of a historic Senate effort to pass legislation that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create millions of clean energy jobs, and protect our children from pollution."

There is a variety of proposals pending in the Senate, but no one bill has emerged as the leading piece of legislation. That is a problem for the Republican members of the committee.

Senator James Inhofe (Photo courtesy EPW)

Led by Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the committee's Ranking Republican and a long-time climate skeptic, and the other EPW Republican members today sent a letter to Chairman Boxer requesting that the majority hold hearings on actual climate legislation, so that the American people know which global warming bill will be considered by the Senate.

"In the House, critical components of their bill were not made public and transparent for review until hours before the final vote on the floor, and only a few days before final vote in the Committee," the Republicans wrote. "Certainly you would agree with us that the American people and their elected representatives deserve a public, transparent, and thorough review of this legislation."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada says he intends to couple a package of bipartisan energy provisions passed in June by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with the cap-and-trade bill that will be drafted by the Environment and Public Works Committee. Reid plans to move the two bills together through the Senate after Labor Day.

Boxer says global warming is already a serious problem in the United States, and the Senate must act now.

"A few weeks ago," said Boxer today, "the Obama administration released a sobering report on the impacts global warming is already having across the United States, and the devastating effects that will come in the future if we do not take action to cut global warming pollution. Droughts, floods, fires, loss of species, damage to agriculture, worsening air pollution and more."

Senator Barbara Boxer (Photo courtesy EPW)

Testifying today before the committee, four members of the Obama cabinet confirmed that assessment of the dangers posed by the increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide, CO2, and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who holds the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, told the committee, "Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that carbon dioxide from human activity has increased the atmospheric level of CO2 by roughly 40 percent, a level one-third higher than any time in the last 800,000 years."

"There is also a consensus that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions have caused our planet to change," said Chu. "Already, we have seen the loss of about half of the summer arctic polar ice cap since the 1950s, a dramatically accelerating rise in sea level, and the loss of over two thousand cubic miles of glacial ice, not on geological time scales but over a mere hundred years."

"Denial of the climate change problem will not change our destiny; a comprehensive energy and climate bill that caps and then reduces carbon emissions will," said Chu, who praised the House for passing the Waxman-Markey bill with its provisions for a cap-and-trade carbon market.

"America has the opportunity to lead a new industrial revolution of creating sustainable, clean energy," Chu said. "We can sit on the sidelines and deny the scientific facts, or we can get in the game and play to win."

"We must pursue truly transformative solutions," said Chu. "Climate experts, such as the IPCC, tell us we must reduce our carbon emissions by 80 percent by mid-century to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that may avoid the worst consequences of climate change."

U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson (Photo courtesy EPW)

U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told the committee that many sectors of society already support carbon dioxide cap-and-trade legislation.

"Labor unions support this kind of legislation because they know it will indeed create millions of high-paying American jobs that cannot be exported," she said. "Manufacturing companies support it because they know it will provide needed investment in research and development while creating markets for the American clean-energy technologies born from that investment."

"Electric utilities support it because they know it will expand our use of reliable, domestic sources of energy like wind, solar, geothermal – and, yes, safer nuclear power – and, yes, cleaner coal. Consumer advocates support it because they know it will strengthen the long-term economic foundation for all Americans without imposing short-term economic hardship on any Americans," Jackson said. "And environmental groups support it because they know it is our best chance of preventing catastrophic harm to public health and our natural environment."

During the question period, Senator Inhofe presented a chart to Jackson depicting an EPA finding that unilateral U.S. action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have no effect on climate.

Created with relation to S. 2191, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007, which never became law, the chart shows that meaningful emissions reductions cannot occur without aggressive action by China, India, and other developing countries.

"I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart are that U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels," said Jackson, who was not the EPA administrator when the chart was produced.

"I am encouraged that Administrator Jackson agrees that unilateral action by the U.S. will be all cost for no climate gain," Inhofe said. "...acting alone through the job-killing Waxman-Markey bill would impose severe economic burdens on American consumers, businesses, and families, all without any impact on climate."

When presented with the chart, Chu said he does not agree that the earlier EPA analysis applies to the current situation.

Both Jackson and Chu testified that the cost of cap-and-trade legislation would cost the average household between $.48 and $1 per day and would create many jobs.

Secretary Chu said, "History suggests that the actual costs could be even lower. The costs to save our ozone layer, to reduce smog with catalytic converters, and to scrub the sulfur dioxide from power plants were all far less than estimated."

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the committee, "Under climate change legislation, the farm sector will experience both costs and benefits. Energy price increases can impact row crop production and other agricultural activities."

But, said Vilsack, "Rural landowners can benefit from incentives in climate and energy legislation that reward production of renewable energy such as wind and bioenergy. A number of renewable energy technologies such as anaerobic digesters, geothermal, and wind power can reduce farmers’ reliance on fossil fuels."

Because many of these technologies will be utilized in rural areas, he said, many jobs could be created in rural America.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reminded the committee that his department is America's largest landowner with jurisdiction over 20 percent of the land mass of the United States and 1.75 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf.

"As America’s largest water provider and land and wildlife manager, Interior is already faced with the impacts of climate change on land, water and wildlife," Salazar said.

"Our land managers are confronting longer and hotter fire seasons, new incursions of invasive species, and the early impacts of sea rise; our wildlife managers are dealing with climate change-induced impacts on wildlife mating and migration habits and species interactions; and our water managers are factoring new precipitation patterns into their planning decisions, as snow packs diminish and more extreme wet and dry periods challenge long-standing water management practices," he told the committee.

Salazar said he is convinced that the emerging clean energy economy based on wind farms, solar facilities and geothermal energy will not reach its full potential "unless this committee, and the Senate, put an upper limit on the emissions of heat-trapping gases that are damaging our environment."

Copyright Environment News Service, ENS, 2009. All rights reserved.