Earth Equity News

Sen. Corker Calls for 100% Auction for Permits or Carbon Tax. By Kate Sheppard, Grist, July 31, 2009. "Sen. Bob Corker [R-TN] came out swinging against the climate bill that the House passed in June. 'I didn't think it was possible, but the Waxman-Markey climate bill appears to be even more problematic than the climate bill that tanked in the Senate last spring,' he said, referring to the Lieberman-Warner bill that he voted against in 2008. 'I don't know of many special interests that don't receive a pay-off in this [Waxman-Markey] legislation, and if it comes to the Senate floor in this form, I'll vote against it.' Yet Corker understands that climate change is a problem and has called for legislation to address it. In 2007, he traveled to Greenland with a bipartisan group of senators to observe the impacts of climate change, noting upon his return that the U.S. has 'a unique opportunity to marry concerns... like carbon dioxide emissions and energy security.' He said he was 'leaning in the direction' of supporting a carbon-trading program. Lately Corker has been insisting that he won't accept anything short of a climate plan that auctions 100% of pollution permits and returns the money directly to Americans, and his preferred approach would be a carbon tax. 'I want to tell you that I wish we would just talk about a carbon tax, 100% of which would be returned to the American people. So there's no net dollars that would come out of the American people's pockets,' Corker told Al Gore during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year."