From Sierra Club:
For Immediate Release
June 9, 2010
Contact: David Willett, 202-675-6698
Lugar Bill Fails to Deliver Clean Energy Future
Sierra Club Urges Lugar to Join Bi-Partisan Energy Effort
WASHINGTON, DC- As the Senate considers several energy provisions this week, the Sierra Club issued the following statement.
Statement of Michael Brune, Sierra Club Executive Director:
We welcome Senator Lugar's efforts to join the discussion over U.S. energy policy in the Senate but unfortunately there are several elements of this bill that fall short of the mark, particularly when it comes to ending our dependence on dirty energy like oil and coal. We have serious concerns about the bill's failure to reduce our oil dependence, adequately address global warming, and its potential to weaken clean air standards. This bill is simply not the right path to a clean energy economy.
As President Obama has said, it's time to end the cozy relationship Big Oil has with government. The public is learning more about how the oil industry got around environmental and safety regulations in the Gulf. Congress must now set ambitious goals, hold polluters accountable, and craft comprehensive climate and energy legislation that works for America's middle class.
The West Virginia coal mine tragedy and the oil disaster currently unfolding highlight the desperate need for a new clean energy economy that ends our self-destructive addiction to dirty energy. We need to move away from dangerous and deadly energy sources towards greater efficiency and cleaner energy. Every day the Senate fails to pass clean energy and climate policy, we put our economy, our national security and our environment at risk. Now is the time to put America back in control of our energy future with comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.
Given his dedication to energy issues, we hope that Senator Lugar will become actively involved in Majority Leader Reid's and President Obama’s effort to craft a bipartisan, comprehensive climate and energy bill that moves our country beyond our dependence on dirty energy sources such as oil and coal, and into a clean energy economy.
In addition, the Sierra Club urges the Senate to quickly reject Senator Murkowski's resolution to bail out Big Oil and Coal by blocking EPA's ability to enforce the Clean Air Act when it comes up for a vote tomorrow. The Senate should be spending time responding to the Gulf disaster and moving us towards a clean energy future rather than finding ways to let polluters like Big Oil off the hook.
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Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Friday, June 26, 2009
House passes historic climate legislation
by Joel Wendland
After a contentious debate, during which the main Republican position seemed to be that global warming isn't real and that freedom equals the right to pollute unhindered, the House tonight passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).
The bill would create a cap and trade system in which polluters will buy pollution credits. The goal is to create an incentive for them to change their ways and find cleaner methods of production. In addition, the bill mandates a gradual increase of electricity production from clean resources, like wind and solar power instead of coal-fired energy plants. The ultimate goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and limit its worst effects.
The funds raised by the cap and trade system will be in the hundreds of billions over the next ten years and will fund investments in clean energy production, and along with it millions of so-called green jobs. Put simply, if a similar bill passes in the Senate and becomes law, we are quite possibly looking at the end of the monopoly Big Oil and Big Coal have on energy production. The transition will be gradual, but it will be ongoing.
Some of the resources will be used to offset higher energy costs for working families.
Barack Obama had originally planned that some of the funds raised would also finance making his working families tax cuts permanent after 2010. It passed as part of the economic recovery act, but they expire after 2010. That tax offset hasn't shown up yet.
ACES has the support of labor and environmental coalitions like the Blue-Green Alliance and the Apollo Alliance. Some on the left in the Democratic Party opposed the bill because it didn't go far enough, and others like Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, wanted stronger guarantees in the bill itself for new investments in revitalizing the manufacturing sector with subsidies that will offset the impacts of the cap and trade system in ACES. A Senate bill, known as IMPACT, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, would take those steps.
The most drama came from Republican Minority Leader John Boehner, a well-known drama queen, who filibustered with an hour-long speech after he realized his side didn't have enough votes to block it. That's what it feels like to be on the wrong side of history, I guess.
Now the fight turns to the Senate. A Democratic majority of 59 or 60 doesn't guarantee easy passage, however. Time to step up the fight.
After a contentious debate, during which the main Republican position seemed to be that global warming isn't real and that freedom equals the right to pollute unhindered, the House tonight passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).
The bill would create a cap and trade system in which polluters will buy pollution credits. The goal is to create an incentive for them to change their ways and find cleaner methods of production. In addition, the bill mandates a gradual increase of electricity production from clean resources, like wind and solar power instead of coal-fired energy plants. The ultimate goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and limit its worst effects.
The funds raised by the cap and trade system will be in the hundreds of billions over the next ten years and will fund investments in clean energy production, and along with it millions of so-called green jobs. Put simply, if a similar bill passes in the Senate and becomes law, we are quite possibly looking at the end of the monopoly Big Oil and Big Coal have on energy production. The transition will be gradual, but it will be ongoing.
Some of the resources will be used to offset higher energy costs for working families.
Barack Obama had originally planned that some of the funds raised would also finance making his working families tax cuts permanent after 2010. It passed as part of the economic recovery act, but they expire after 2010. That tax offset hasn't shown up yet.
ACES has the support of labor and environmental coalitions like the Blue-Green Alliance and the Apollo Alliance. Some on the left in the Democratic Party opposed the bill because it didn't go far enough, and others like Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, wanted stronger guarantees in the bill itself for new investments in revitalizing the manufacturing sector with subsidies that will offset the impacts of the cap and trade system in ACES. A Senate bill, known as IMPACT, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, would take those steps.
The most drama came from Republican Minority Leader John Boehner, a well-known drama queen, who filibustered with an hour-long speech after he realized his side didn't have enough votes to block it. That's what it feels like to be on the wrong side of history, I guess.
Now the fight turns to the Senate. A Democratic majority of 59 or 60 doesn't guarantee easy passage, however. Time to step up the fight.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Video: Obama on climate change policy
Did you catch that? The economic stimulus package is going to invest in renewable energy and double it in 3 years.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
CPUSA, Nat'l Cmte., March 30th – Report on the Environment
Marc Brodine, a member of the national board of the CPUSA and the chair of the Communist Party in Washington State, delivered a report on the impact of global warming, its causes and consequences.
"Global warming," he said, "is not just an inconvenient truth." Global warming has to be examined within a larger context of capitalism and other environmental problems.
"We can't have a healthy humanity without a healthy natural world," he said.
He tied environmental degradation to capitalism. Increased capitalist exploitation of nature will result in serious crisis, he said. "We can either work with nature or nature will work against us," he argued. "Capitalism is playing with the survival of humanity for short-term profit," he noted.
Climate crisis is not the only severe environmental problem facing us. Depletion of fishing, soil, and fresh water supplies, animal extinctions, the spread of disease-causing pollutants, desertification, and growing air and water pollution are among the most severe.
"Even in the best case scenario, global warming requires immediate and dramatic action," Brodine said.
Brodine insisted that political changes are required, including democratization of the political process, public policy, and economic decision-making. These changes need to happen in order to move in the right direction and to mitigate the destructive policies of the Bush administration and the worst actions off the big transnational polluters.
Immediate action is needed because global warming threatens to transform the earth's climate systems in a very short period of time and create environments that are hostile to human survival never before experienced by developed humanity.
The earth is getting hotter, but global climate change has other features: in some places more rain and more flooding; in others less rain and more drought; in some places more snowfall next to glacier melt; flooding; and so on.
It is caused by the accumulation of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere trapping the sun's heat, warming the air and the land.
This is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is caused by human activity and can be slowed by human activity," Brodine said.
Social consequences include food and fresh water shortages leading to political competition for these dwindling resources.
"We can't profit our way to a solution," Brodine said. "But neither can we wait for socialism. Economic development that doesn't destroy the environment is required."
Some basic solutions are readily available but need political struggle to implement: green construction, production of hybrid vehicles, mass transit, alternative energy products like solar and wind, reduce mechanized industrial food production and increase labor-intense small agriculture, and major conservation efforts.
Brodine addressed current environmental action. "The biggest problem is not caused by individuals but by a system that privileges profit over people and nature," he said.
Capitalists are to blame for the crisis, but tend to try to shift the blame to ordinary folk, workers and the poor. They seek solutions that put the burden on us rather than on the policies and actions they take that cause the problem.
Some solutions that are being put forward by big industry are either partial solutions or untested or are very problematic steps. Biofuels, for example, drive up the cost of food or cause food shortages. "It means solving an energy problem by creating a food problem," Brodine stated.
Cap and trade schemes aren't enough.
Promotion of nuclear and "clean coal" are untested and present their own significant problems.
Brodine urged the formation of multi-issue broad-based coalitions that link environmental issues to public policy and other political struggles.
The working class, nationally and internationally, is the only force that can win and implement the changes needed.
Globally, people who contribute least global warming are paying the highest price as a result of climate change.
International reforms should include transforming international financial institutions and ending exploitative debt policies imposed on developing countries; transfer of green technology to developing countries; and implementing binding global agreements that enforce reduction of greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel usage.
Brodine pointed out that the Communist Party has a special role in winning the international communist movement to this agenda.
He urged that the environmental question be injected into all of the struggles people are involved in. The labor, youth, peace and equality movements have a significant contribution to make on the issue.
Individual actions are necessary but not sufficient to bring the change needed, he said.
Brodine proposed the expansion of the party's education on the question and the reconstitution of the party's environmental commission.
"Global warming," he said, "is not just an inconvenient truth." Global warming has to be examined within a larger context of capitalism and other environmental problems.
"We can't have a healthy humanity without a healthy natural world," he said.
He tied environmental degradation to capitalism. Increased capitalist exploitation of nature will result in serious crisis, he said. "We can either work with nature or nature will work against us," he argued. "Capitalism is playing with the survival of humanity for short-term profit," he noted.
Climate crisis is not the only severe environmental problem facing us. Depletion of fishing, soil, and fresh water supplies, animal extinctions, the spread of disease-causing pollutants, desertification, and growing air and water pollution are among the most severe.
"Even in the best case scenario, global warming requires immediate and dramatic action," Brodine said.
Brodine insisted that political changes are required, including democratization of the political process, public policy, and economic decision-making. These changes need to happen in order to move in the right direction and to mitigate the destructive policies of the Bush administration and the worst actions off the big transnational polluters.
Immediate action is needed because global warming threatens to transform the earth's climate systems in a very short period of time and create environments that are hostile to human survival never before experienced by developed humanity.
The earth is getting hotter, but global climate change has other features: in some places more rain and more flooding; in others less rain and more drought; in some places more snowfall next to glacier melt; flooding; and so on.
It is caused by the accumulation of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere trapping the sun's heat, warming the air and the land.
This is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is caused by human activity and can be slowed by human activity," Brodine said.
Social consequences include food and fresh water shortages leading to political competition for these dwindling resources.
"We can't profit our way to a solution," Brodine said. "But neither can we wait for socialism. Economic development that doesn't destroy the environment is required."
Some basic solutions are readily available but need political struggle to implement: green construction, production of hybrid vehicles, mass transit, alternative energy products like solar and wind, reduce mechanized industrial food production and increase labor-intense small agriculture, and major conservation efforts.
Brodine addressed current environmental action. "The biggest problem is not caused by individuals but by a system that privileges profit over people and nature," he said.
Capitalists are to blame for the crisis, but tend to try to shift the blame to ordinary folk, workers and the poor. They seek solutions that put the burden on us rather than on the policies and actions they take that cause the problem.
Some solutions that are being put forward by big industry are either partial solutions or untested or are very problematic steps. Biofuels, for example, drive up the cost of food or cause food shortages. "It means solving an energy problem by creating a food problem," Brodine stated.
Cap and trade schemes aren't enough.
Promotion of nuclear and "clean coal" are untested and present their own significant problems.
Brodine urged the formation of multi-issue broad-based coalitions that link environmental issues to public policy and other political struggles.
The working class, nationally and internationally, is the only force that can win and implement the changes needed.
Globally, people who contribute least global warming are paying the highest price as a result of climate change.
International reforms should include transforming international financial institutions and ending exploitative debt policies imposed on developing countries; transfer of green technology to developing countries; and implementing binding global agreements that enforce reduction of greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel usage.
Brodine pointed out that the Communist Party has a special role in winning the international communist movement to this agenda.
He urged that the environmental question be injected into all of the struggles people are involved in. The labor, youth, peace and equality movements have a significant contribution to make on the issue.
Individual actions are necessary but not sufficient to bring the change needed, he said.
Brodine proposed the expansion of the party's education on the question and the reconstitution of the party's environmental commission.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Ideology: Why Bush Won't Deal with Climate Change
By Joel Wendland
So the Bush administration has admitted that global warming is real and that something must be done to scale back human contributions to our certain destruction – to the chagrin of his supporters who for years have joined him to either block serious discussion of global warming or who vigorously denied its reality.
But now that the US has a chance to do something about the problem at the Bali conference, Bush blocked every measure being offered.
Media reports indicate that countries like China and India and others are prepared to agree to international standards on greenhouse emissions, so Bush can't use them as an excuse anymore.
Still he has refused to accept standards.
Up to this point Bush attempted to scuttle serious discussion on climate change and controlling carbon emissions by holding his own conference and attempting to create side agreements that allow countries to voluntarily control emissions. This of course was no serious plan.
Everyone has to do it or doesn't work.
So once again we're treated to a dismal Bush administration policy failure: no action for a serious global problem that threatens humanity (reminds one of Bush's response to Katrina, the health care crisis, economic problems, budget deficits, the sub-prime mortgage problem).
But the fact is that, in addition to the corporate interests that back Bush and that view international standards on carbon emissions as cap on their profit margins, a straight line can be drawn from Bush's right-wing ideology of free markets, anti-government sophistry, obsession with war, and refusal to cooperate with the international community – hallmarks of Republican Party politics (see also McCain, Huckabee, Tancredo, Thompson, Romney, Paul, etc.) – to his refusal to make a serious effort to address real problems.
He and his right-wing cronies in the FOX media echo chamber would rather invent crises with Iran and immigrants, or even with the "war on Christmas."
This serious inability to live in and deal with reality is probably a key reason why US voters have begun the process of dumping Republican one-party rule, and will finish the job in November 2008.
So the Bush administration has admitted that global warming is real and that something must be done to scale back human contributions to our certain destruction – to the chagrin of his supporters who for years have joined him to either block serious discussion of global warming or who vigorously denied its reality.
But now that the US has a chance to do something about the problem at the Bali conference, Bush blocked every measure being offered.
Media reports indicate that countries like China and India and others are prepared to agree to international standards on greenhouse emissions, so Bush can't use them as an excuse anymore.
Still he has refused to accept standards.
Up to this point Bush attempted to scuttle serious discussion on climate change and controlling carbon emissions by holding his own conference and attempting to create side agreements that allow countries to voluntarily control emissions. This of course was no serious plan.
Everyone has to do it or doesn't work.
So once again we're treated to a dismal Bush administration policy failure: no action for a serious global problem that threatens humanity (reminds one of Bush's response to Katrina, the health care crisis, economic problems, budget deficits, the sub-prime mortgage problem).
But the fact is that, in addition to the corporate interests that back Bush and that view international standards on carbon emissions as cap on their profit margins, a straight line can be drawn from Bush's right-wing ideology of free markets, anti-government sophistry, obsession with war, and refusal to cooperate with the international community – hallmarks of Republican Party politics (see also McCain, Huckabee, Tancredo, Thompson, Romney, Paul, etc.) – to his refusal to make a serious effort to address real problems.
He and his right-wing cronies in the FOX media echo chamber would rather invent crises with Iran and immigrants, or even with the "war on Christmas."
This serious inability to live in and deal with reality is probably a key reason why US voters have begun the process of dumping Republican one-party rule, and will finish the job in November 2008.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Guest Blog: UN Conference of NGOs Takes on Climate Change
By Marc Brodine
The 60th annual Conference of the UN's Non-Governmental Organizations is taking place in NYC. The theme this year is Climate Change. There are about 2,600 attendees, most representing an NGO, and coming from over 80 countries.
The first morning, there were welcoming speeches, mostly pretty good, about the general issue and the UN's approach. The speeches addressed the seriousness of the impacts on all the countries of the world from the climate change which is already occurring, forcefully noting that the countries which are already receiving the brunt of the impact are poor countries least able to mitigate the impacts and also the countries which have contributed the least to causing the problems.
I attended two afternoon workshops, the first on soil and agriculture. The panel explained how the increased reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides have distorted agricultural development, moving farmers away from sustainable farming practices and driving poor farmers into more debt, leading to larger agribusiness monoculture industrial farming. This is depleting the soil, driving poor farmers off their lands, forcing destructive increased urbanization, and leading to abandonment of land whose farming potential has been destroyed by speeded-up destruction of the soil.
The solutions are moving away from industrial farming towards more labor intensive natural agricultural practices, increased use of natural composting of grasses, leaves, manure, more crop rotation, use of locally-adapted natural plants and seeds, cooperative farming methods and teaching, and moving away from farming for the market to farming with long-term sustainability of the productive potential of the land taking precedence. Examples were given from Japan and Zambia of successful efforts to carry out such a program, resulting in yields both higher than industrial farming and more sustainable, for our long-term food security.
The second workshop focused on the latest scientific understanding. There is still a great deal not known about how our atmosphere, weather, and oceans are going to react to the increased temperature caused by greenhouse gases. but we are already seeing increased melting of ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic, and threatening rises in sea level. The science is more certain than ever that global warming is happening, that human activity is causing it, and that we are in for much more serious effects, such as increased incidence of extreme weather events.
While much valuable information and discussion are taking place, often the speakers explain the problems caused by the market, by private capital, but they don't take the next step of pointing out the need for socialism, for an alternative to the system that is causing the problems.
More later...
The 60th annual Conference of the UN's Non-Governmental Organizations is taking place in NYC. The theme this year is Climate Change. There are about 2,600 attendees, most representing an NGO, and coming from over 80 countries.
The first morning, there were welcoming speeches, mostly pretty good, about the general issue and the UN's approach. The speeches addressed the seriousness of the impacts on all the countries of the world from the climate change which is already occurring, forcefully noting that the countries which are already receiving the brunt of the impact are poor countries least able to mitigate the impacts and also the countries which have contributed the least to causing the problems.
I attended two afternoon workshops, the first on soil and agriculture. The panel explained how the increased reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides have distorted agricultural development, moving farmers away from sustainable farming practices and driving poor farmers into more debt, leading to larger agribusiness monoculture industrial farming. This is depleting the soil, driving poor farmers off their lands, forcing destructive increased urbanization, and leading to abandonment of land whose farming potential has been destroyed by speeded-up destruction of the soil.
The solutions are moving away from industrial farming towards more labor intensive natural agricultural practices, increased use of natural composting of grasses, leaves, manure, more crop rotation, use of locally-adapted natural plants and seeds, cooperative farming methods and teaching, and moving away from farming for the market to farming with long-term sustainability of the productive potential of the land taking precedence. Examples were given from Japan and Zambia of successful efforts to carry out such a program, resulting in yields both higher than industrial farming and more sustainable, for our long-term food security.
The second workshop focused on the latest scientific understanding. There is still a great deal not known about how our atmosphere, weather, and oceans are going to react to the increased temperature caused by greenhouse gases. but we are already seeing increased melting of ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic, and threatening rises in sea level. The science is more certain than ever that global warming is happening, that human activity is causing it, and that we are in for much more serious effects, such as increased incidence of extreme weather events.
While much valuable information and discussion are taking place, often the speakers explain the problems caused by the market, by private capital, but they don't take the next step of pointing out the need for socialism, for an alternative to the system that is causing the problems.
More later...
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