Earth Equity News

The Senate and House Climate Bills are Like Rube Goldberg Devices. Commentary by Marshall Saunders, Sacramento Bee, October 26, 2009. "Now that Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry have introduced their climate change bill, the real debate about the best policy to address global warming can get started. But the more I look at legislation for a cap-and-trade program, the more it looks like a Rube Goldberg device -- one of those amusing contraptions that employ all manner of moving parts in a complicated, convoluted process that performs a simple task. The task we're talking about -- reducing carbon emissions by making fossil fuels more expensive than clean energy -- is pretty straightforward. And yet to accomplish it, Boxer and Kerry have come up with an 840-page bill that gives War and Peace a run for its money. To raise the cost of carbon-based energy and make clean energy technologies, such as wind and solar, more competitive, cap-and-trade creates a market in which thousands of companies are required to purchase permits to emit carbon dioxide. But wait -- the Senate hasn't revealed how it will allocate permits, but if it follows the House, most of the permits will initially be given away rather than auctioned off. And there's also this messy contrivance called carbon offsets, which allows polluters to invest in projects that reduce carbon emissions. Good luck verifying the efficacy of those offsets.

"And that's the beauty of the carbon tax and dividend, which would impose a steadily increasing fee on carbon at the source, whether it be a well, a mine or a port of entry. Most of the revenue from the tax would be returned to consumers, preferably in the form of a monthly payment. In addition to being more efficient, the carbon tax and dividend approach is also more effective. An analysis by the Carbon Tax Center predicts that by 2020, a steadily increasing tax could reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 28% below 2005 levels. Even if it delivers as promised, the Boxer-Kerry bill would effect a reduction of only 20% by 2020... The policy we choose for climate change has to be a match for the science. Scientists like James Hansen tell us that our atmosphere cannot sustain a carbon-dioxide concentration greater than 350 parts per million. To go higher for any length of time -- we're at 389 ppm already -- is to invite disaster. Why, then, are policy-makers operating under the assumption that 450 ppm of CO2 is an acceptable level?" Marshall Saunders is founder of the Citizens Climate Lobby.