Climate SOS and 10:10

Climate and environmental groups are putting an end to the notion that everyone agrees with the “climate change bill”  (ACESA) and that it’s better than nothing.  In fact, it’s worse than nothing.   With 100% allowances forecast, and all the provisions in it for coal, oil, gas and ag, the bill needs to be completely overhauled.   A letter to that effect signed by 320+ groups put huge pressure on Senators Boxer and Kerry so that they put off a vote and discussion in the Senate until the end of September (see post below this).  The pressure they feel to change the ACESA bill substantially is no doubt coming from groups like Climate SOS and RAN and Friends of the Earth, who are not willing to settle for something that won’t work.  An even stronger position, rejecting ACESA completely as too flawed, has been put forward and is printed below in this entry.

But first, because too much of this is depressing, let me mention something that is going on in the UK and let’s see if we can get something going like this in the United States.  It’s a positive thing.

Environmental activist and award-winning documentarian Franny Armstrong and the Age of Stupid (movie) team have come up with a 10:10 campaign for the UK.  Briefly, their plan means  a 10% reduction in emissions country-wide by 2010.  That’s a lot!  But it’s the steep trajectory of emissions reductions that people like George Monbiot feel we need to be on for this to work, in time.  The lazy, round-about method of carbon trading and low emissions on a very slow timeline, and even worse, planning for a “low-carbon future” which means including anything under the sun, (even liquid coal, somehow) is a far worse prospect for solving climate change.

So now that the political aspect of the “climate bill” has been postponed, we have time to work on our Senators. Let’s ask for a 10:10 solution in America too.   Here is the Guardian’s 10:10 page.   And please, sign the pledge, HERE, in solidarity with the UK and in hopes that it will spread here and all over the world. Seriously, it might. It’s the best idea so far because it sets a big target fast!    And giant mirrors in space are just too expensive.  The following is the press release about the No to ACESA position.  (that position is slightly different from the “Let’s strengthen ACESA).  After that you will see handy talking points for when you call your Senators in September. 

Climate SOS Sets Out to Defeat U.S. “False” Climate Bill, Claiming “Worse Than Nothing Is Not Good Enough”

August 2009 — A grassroots network of environmentalists, scientists, human rights and social justice activists and faith-based organizations concerned about climate change launched a nationwide campaign today to either dramatically improve or defeat climate change legislation being considered in Congress. They say that the Senate bill, expected in September, will very likely take its cue from the American Clean Energy and  Security Act (ACESA) passed by the House in June, and be even further watered down.  While others are calling for passage of the bill, saying it will be “the best we can get under the political climate”, the network, calling themselves Climate SOS, states that, like Dr. James Hansen, they believe such a  bill will be “worse for the environment than doing nothing”. They want lawmakers to start over and get serious about crafting a real and effective climate bill based on the mandates of science, not special interests.

“ACESA was designed to enrich Wall Street, the fossil fuel, utilities and big agribusiness industries at the expense of the climate and our collective peace and survival”, said the network’s spokesperson Rachel Smolker, Co-director of BioFuel Watch . “The bill’s cap-and-trade mechanism for regulating emissions has been repeatedly proven ineffective, risky and prone to speculation and manipulations, and will lock us into a framework that prevents any effective climate legislation from being adopted. This is one of many provisions in ACESA that make it worse than nothing.  It’s virtually impossible the Senate will be able to improve on ACESA enough to get us where we must go in order to avoid catastrophic warming.”

“ACESA does not even aim to provide a 50/50 chance of averting the worst of climate catastrophe, based on the figures of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”, said Dr. Maggie Zhou of Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities .  “Politicians either do not understand or are not telling the American people about the true magnitude of climate change consequences. The costs of insufficient action will be so much greater than the costs of taking bold action now, and will include lost lives, extinctions and the threatened survival of civilization itself.  If politicians and their constituents understood this, there would be far less compromising on the basis of ‘political and economic feasibility’.”

“The American people are being scammed,” added Robert Jereski, co-founder of New York Climate Action Group .  “This bill was crafted by a team that included Shell, Duke Energy, BP, DuPont and other major polluters/climate offenders of the so-called US Climate Action Partnership, [USCAP]  that stand to profit greatly from a self-dealing, self-serving bill.”

“It is time that people who care about the environment, social justice and national/global security  come together and take a stand.” Smolker said. “We are fast losing polar ice cover, while methane is spewing out.  If we miss the short window when we can still avert the worst, we are condemning our children to a very dicey future indeed.  The bill must be very dramatically improved or it should be filibustered before it gets to a floor vote.”

Climate SOS is launching a national “Green Bill or No Bill” tour   during August and September, seeking to empower people to meet with their representatives, take action, and demand real climate legislation. “Senators need to know that they have our support in opposing this bill in the likely event that it fails to take adequate measures to protect the climate”. The tour will target states where US Senators are “on the fence,” such as North Dakota, Indiana, Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The Climate SOS tour will also touch down in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Oregon, and Washington.

Current Network Members:  (may not be totally accurate)

Biofuelwatch
Carbon Tax Center
Climate Crisis Coalition
Ecolaw Massachusetts
Energy Justice Network
Green Delaware
Indigenous Environmental Network
Institute for Social Ecology, Brian Tokar
Little Village Environmental Justice Organization
Massachussetts Coalition for Healthy Communities/SecureGreenFuture
Massachusetts Forest Watch
New York Climate Action Group
One Earth Climate Action Group
Progressive Democrats of America
Rising Tide North America
Ruckus Society

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

KEY TALKING POINTS TO BRING UP WITH YOUR SENATOR:

We need not just any climate bill, but one that will actually rise to the challenge

Tell your senator: “A vote against a climate bill that not only fails to go far enough, but would actually make things worse, is a green vote. You know that we can and must do better if we want to forestall climate change. Please scrap this bill and start over if need be. In its current form, it will do more harm than good – Here’s why:

1. The bill does not even aim for keeping atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration below 450 parts-per-million (ppm). Current science tells us that we must return to below 350 ppm. We are currently at 387 ppm and already experiencing serious consequences while the worst is still coming down the pipeline, due to delays in climate system amplifications of man-made warming. Let’s take serious action before it’s too late!

2. It relies upon a cap and trade scheme to reduce emissions. Cap and trade has been tried before—for example, in the European Union and elsewhere—and proven ineffective(1). Dr. James Hansen calls it “a subterfuge designed to allow business-as-usual to continue”. Effective options (revenue-neutral tax and dividend, for example) for regulating carbon emissions should be implemented.

3. It allows carbon polluters to keep polluting if they buy offsets. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has faulted the credibility of the lucrative* CO2 offsets market, yet the bill continues to rely upon this dubious scheme.(2) Offsets are not an effective substitute for straightforward pollution reduction at the smokestack. Over half of the approved offset credits under the Kyoto Protocol have turned out not to meet the required criteria of “verifiable, additional or permanent”

4. It preempts the EPA authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. This important public agency, which exists to protect Americans from environmental harm, should be allowed to do its job.

5. It categorizes a host of destructive technologies, such as the burning of biomass and garbage, as “renewable,” which makes them eligible for taxpayer- and ratepayer-funded green energy incentives. We should not be giving toxic smokestack and carbon-intensive incinerator technologies the same privileged status as wind, geothermal, and solar.

6. Industry-specific carbon accounting loopholes are written into the bill. For example, the CO2 from wood biomass burning, in a seemingly arbitrary move, does not get counted or capped at the smokestack, and when trees are harvested to feed biomass plants, the carbon emissions are not counted in the forestry sector either. Biomass burning should not get a free ride. Biomass burning results in carbon emissions that will take decades, potentially hundreds of years to resequester, if ever. We desperately need to be protecting, not burning, our forest and grassland ecosystems.

7. It grandfathers existing coal plants and will allow many new coal plants to come on line. Even though Carbon Capture and Sequestration technology is supposedly required years later, its existence can not be counted on, is much more expensive compared to solar and wind, and potential leakage makes underground storage of sequestered CO2 a serious threat to the integrity of climate mitigation and even public safety. We should be quickly phasing out coal plants starting now. We also need to invest in just transition pathways for utilities workers, coal miners and their families, so that the new energy economy is one that is rooted in community justice.

8. A letter to Congress, signed by over 200 organizations nationwide (initiated by the Center for Biological Diversity) points to many of the same concerns we identify, claiming …”we recognize the massive political effort that is necessary to pass climate legislation, but a bill with inadequate targets, loophole ridden mechanisms, rollbacks of our flagship environmental laws, and inadequate financing to help developing countries address climate change will move us in the wrong direction.”

In sum, this bill will entrench us in pathways into deeper pollution and poverty, and our last chance of averting the worst of climate catastrophe will be lost forever. Our most vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and around the world – predominantly working poor, people of color and Indigenous communities that have the lightest carbon footprints will be the first to suffer from the impacts of these failures.

More articles/resources:

1) http://www.grist.org/article/emissions-trading-a-mixed-record-with-plenty-of-failures/

2) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122244615963779185.html

(3) http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/policy/Market.html

*(Global CO2 offset transactions have been estimated at $7.2 billion in 2008, with transactions in the secondary market topping $25 billion. Under an ACESA type of bill this market will be greatly expanded

Climate SOS – www.climatesos.org – contact@climatesos.org