We at Greenpeace very much enjoyed listening to Chairman Dingell’s opening comments yesterday.  We agree that an emissions cap of 80 percent (with auctioned credits) AND a carbon tax would be a very good start.  And we strongly support both ideas. The suggestion that CAFÉ is unimportant is laughable and irresponsible.  

Reductions in transportation related emissions are essential and failure to get on a path toward major reductions from tailpipes will make it impossible to reduce total emissions by 80 percent by mid-century.  Our analysis shows that even if we cut transportation related emissions in half, the sectors share of total emissions will double from one to two-thirds of the problem by mid-century.    

Our concern with the Mr. Dingell’s position do not come from his rhetoric on climate change, but rather the initial legislation that he and Mr. Boucher submitted to the Committee. The draft legislation was not only inadequate because it did not include a renewable portfolio standard or increases to mandatory fuel economy standards. The larger problem with the draft was that it included several extremely harmful provisions.  Although these provisions have been removed from consideration today and yesterday they have not been taken off the table by Mr. Dingell yet.    

The draft legislation would:

• Repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act authority to regulate global warming pollution from vehicles and substantially limit its authority for cleaner fuels by legislatively overturning the Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA.  This authority could be a key administrative power in 2009.

•  Block California and a least 11 other states from going forward with adopted clean car standards that limit global warming emissions from vehicles. Under the Clean Air Act, California has always been authorized to go beyond federal minimum air pollution standards, and other states may adopt the California standards - in their entirety.

• Open the door to liquid coal fuels and other nonrenewable alternatives, while failing to ensure that these fuels produce substantially less global warming pollution than the fuels we use today. Together with the liquid coal incentives in the broader bill, which lack clear limits on emissions, the bill would propel the development of a liquid coal fuels industry, with only a plan in place, but no guarantee of global warming emissions reductions.

 

Some of you might have been left wondering after reading the post on Grist about Mr Dingell.

We cannot disagree that Mr. Dingell is one of the most powerful members of congress, and we will work with him and his staff to craft legislation that solves climate change. In the end, Mr. Dingell needs to lead or get out of the way of the leadership’s effort to advance strong global warming legislation.

 

As temperatures rise and the public continues to wait for an energy bill that addresses the growing crisis over global warming, Speaker Pelosi has found herself in a pitched battle, not with the party on the other side of the aisle, but, oddly enough, with the House’s most senior Democrat. As Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell is one of the most powerful members of the House, and also the man the Speaker has entrusted with her promise to pass strong global warming legislation. While Pelosi and Dingell may paper over their feud, the truth of the matter is that one has promised the American people a new energy future, and the other promised to let Detroit auto industry off the hook.

Having put global warming and energy at the top of the agenda and created the first committee focused solely on global warming, the Speaker now finds herself in the unenviable position of having her legislative agenda in the hands of two men whose ties to the fossil fuel industry run deep.

In addition to throwing billions of new taxpayers dollars at the coal industry, Reps. Dingell and Boucher’s proposal would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, granted by the Clean Air Act, to regulate emissions from vehicles. To make matters worse, their proposal would substantially limit the agency's authority to demand cleaner fuels by legislatively overturning the Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA and block at least 12 states from moving forward with adopted clean car standards that limit emissions from vehicles.

It has become clear that Reps. Dingell and Boucher are incapable of delivering on the Speaker's global warming promise. This sets up a battle between the old guard and the vanguard within the Democratic Party. Americans gave the Democrats control of Congress to put an end to business as usual in Washington, and create a new beginning. Now, Congressional approval levels are near all time lows, and Americans are clearly not happy with where the 110th Congress is heading.

The American people are desperate for leadership that can deliver on promises made, and can make progress on the important issues facing our country. In order to fulfill her promise and move her agenda and the Congress forward, Speaker Pelosi needs committee chairs that will work with her, not against her. The time has come for the Speaker to dismiss Reps. Dingell and Boucher from the Chairmanships. It is clear that they stand in the way of her promise to the American people and her vision for global warming solutions and energy independence.

-Chris

After hearing the news from the White House that President Bush was set to unveil his new strategy for combating global warming, I wondered if he had finally returned to where he began? Was he finally going to make good on his broken promise from the 2000 campaign to support the Kyoto Protocol, and lead the international effort to solve global warming? Well, it’s now clear the answer is no. Not only is the President's “plan” no more than “too little, too late”, but it is in fact, a dangerous distraction that puts at risk the serious attempt to agree upon timelines and targets for reducing global warming pollution that is on the table for the G8 meeting this week.

In unveiling his new plan, the President talked about the need to create a new process that will continue once the Kyoto Protocol “expires” in 2012. But the President knows that the Kyoto Protocol does not expire in 2012. What happens in 2012 is not the expiration of the Protocol, but the beginning of a second, even stronger commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. The Presidents “plan” is a clear attempt to derail this second set of commitments. If the President wants to act on climate change, the first thing he should do is to setting a cap on global warming pollution and supporting a national renewable energy standard. The President doesn’t have to start a new process to agree to targets with major emitters, he could simply agree to the targets proposed for the G8 meeting next week. If he does not do that, the other seven G8 members need to move forward without President Bush. The President talked about the need to engage the rapidly developing countries of China and India. However, the President forgot to mention the fact that both China and India have already ratified the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. has not. We are the single largest emitter of global warming pollution on the planet. The average citizen of the U.S. uses more than 6 times the amount of energy as the average Chinese citizen. If the President were serious about battling global warming he would have set a goal. The Europeans have set a goal based in solid science, keeping average global temperature change under 3.7 F degrees.

Scientists tell us that our planet will likely face profound changes with a temperature change of more than 3.7 degrees. A 50% cut in global emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels is what science demands and will require industrialized countries to cut their emissions by 30 percent by 2020 and 80-90 percent by 2050. The President, on the other hand, offered no targets or timelines. He proposed a meeting that would attempt to set “aspirational goals” by the end of 2008. This might have been appropriate 10 years ago, but it is wholly inadequate given all we have learned about the science of global warming over the last decade. The newly elected German government of Chancellor Merkel has proposed strong language on global warming for this week’s G8 meeting. To keep the United States from derailing progress at the international level, Ms. Merkel should lead the rest of the G8, and leave the United States behind. Allowing the U.S. to water down the G8 language by removing any meaningful target, timeline, or goal would be a slap in the face to many of the U.S.’s most important allies. Instead, the seven Kyoto Protocol members of the G8 should ignore the President’s “new plan”, and instead, commit next week to radical emission cuts and to concluding plans for the second binding commitment under the Kyoto Protocol by 2009 at the latest.

- Chris