Obama pushes Kerry's climate bill

[ProSense]

Obama pushes Kerry's climate bill

By Matt Viser, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON – In an indication that Democrats could renew their push for climate change legislation this year, President Obama this afternoon said he would attempt to round up votes for legislation filed by Senator John Kerry.

Obama, speaking at Carnegie Mellon University, urged the US Senate to take action on a bill that aims to reduce reliance on foreign oil while putting a price on carbon emissions. It was the fourth time in 12 days that Obama urged the Senate to act, comments that come in the wake of a massive oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

“Pittsburgh, I want you to know, the votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months,” Obama said. “I will make the case for a clean energy future wherever I can, and I will work with anyone to get this done, and we will get it done. The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century. We are not going to move backwards, we are going to move forward.”

The comments immediately won plaudits from Kerry and Senator Joe Lieberman, who together filed energy and climate change legislation last month. The legislation has faced several hurdles, including no Republican support and a busy calendar ahead over the next two months before Congress leaves. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is planning to decide soon on whether to bring the climate change legislation to the floor this year, or if he will push for a smaller package. He has also pledged to take up an immigration overhaul this year.

more

[AtomicKitten]

1. Excellent. I hope they get this done by November. nt

[gateley]

2. Is it a good bill you guys? nt

[ProSense]

3. Obama is pushing it

so that may mean it sucks in some people's eyes.

You can find out more here and here.

[gateley]

4. Thanks for the links! nt

[amborin]

7. the climate bill is a huge giveaway to Wall St and Big Oil & Coal:

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/05/12-18


CONTACT: Public Citizen
Phone: [phone]


Climate Bill Is a Misnomer: It’s a Nuclear Energy-Promoting, Oil Drilling-Championing, Coal Mining-Boosting Gift to Polluters

Statement of Tyson Slocum, Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program

WASHINGTON - May 12 - After half a year of delay, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are set to release their nuclear energy/cap-and-trade bill today. Until we see legislative text, we can comment only on the broad outline made available yesterday and an additional summary being circulated among legislative staff.

It's not accurate to call this a climate bill. This is nuclear energy-promoting, oil drilling-championing, coal mining-boosting legislation with a weak carbon-pricing mechanism thrown in. What's worse, it guts the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) current authority to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Here's our take on what we know is in the new bill:

Nuclear Power Incentives

At its core, this legislation is all about promoting nuclear power and handing taxpayers the bill. Consider: - Sections 1101 and 1105 would prioritize the needs of nuclear power corporations over the rights of citizens to have full, public hearings about the risks and dangers of locating nuclear power plants in their communities. - Section 1102 increases loan guarantees primarily for nuclear power to a jaw-dropping $54 billion. These loans are a terrible deal for the taxpayer, especially considering the high risk of default that even the government acknowledges. - Section 1103 provides $6 billion in taxpayer-subsidized risk insurance for 12 new nuclear reactors. - Section 1121 allows nuclear power plant owners to write off their depreciation much faster. Section 1121 provides a 10 percent investment tax credit for new reactors. - Section 1123 extends the Advanced Energy Project credit to nuclear reactors. - Section 1124-6 allows municipal power agencies to derive certain tax, bond and grant benefits from investing in nuclear power.

Oil

Apparently oblivious to the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the legislation expands offshore drilling. In fact, all new offshore drilling, leasing and permitting should be halted.

Section 1202 allows states to keep 37.5 percent of oil and gas royalty money. That's like saying because more rich people live in California and New York compared to Mississippi and New Mexico, those higher-income states should be able to keep more federal dollars raised from income taxes. Royalty revenue sharing is patently unfair - especially because the disaster in Gulf shows that an oil spill does not respect state boundaries.

Coal

Section 1412 establishes a carbon tax paid by ratepayers and collected by utilities to fund carbon capture and storage (CCS) - with no money allocated to rooftop solar or energy efficiency investments. Section 1431 will provide valuable emissions allowances for free to coal utilities pursuing CCS - an untested, risky strategy that benefits the coal industry and is gobbling up a lion's share of subsidies that otherwise could go to renewable energy development.

Merchant coal power plants (whose rates are not regulated) will get roughly 5 percent of the free allowances, which will provide opportunities for them to gouge consumers.

And while the nuclear and coal industries will receive a lot of taxpayer money and loan guarantees, Section 1604 states that "voluntary" renewable energy markets are "efficient and effective programs" and states that "the policy of the United States is to continue to support the growth of these markets." This is backward: Renewable energy should be getting the guarantees, rather than the coal and nuclear industries.

Offsets

The legislation allows entities to "reduce" their domestic greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing offsets from projects located in the U.S. and around the world. The recent offset crisis in Europe, where the offset market collapsed due to fraud, underscores the lack of accountability and transparency with offsets.

Consumer Protections Rather than follow President Barack Obama's cap-and-dividend plan, which would have required polluters to pay and would have distributed 80 percent of the money directly to families through the Making Work Pay tax credit, or the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act, which calls for distributing monthly checks to households, the Kerry-Lieberman approach relies on distributing valuable free allowances to utilities from 2013-2029, then requiring that utilities use the money "exclusively for the benefit of the ratepayers." But Congress won't be defining "benefit"; rather, 50 different state utility commissions will. Some will do a great job, but most will allow utilities to structure expensive energy efficiency programs that benefit shareholders more than ratepayers.

Wall Street

It appears that Wall Street may not have gotten everything it wanted - yet. The legislation appears to incorporate elements of S.1399, sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), which creates an Office of Carbon Market Oversight at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), giving the agency authority to regulate spot and futures emission markets. It requires all entities seeking to trade emissions derivatives to register and be approved by the CFTC, and all transactions must be cleared through a CFTC-regulated Carbon Clearing Organization. This is a good start to ensure that Wall Street plays no role in gambling on climate policy.

Danger remains, however, in creating carbon trading markets open to non-energy producers. Strong regulations in place today may be easily subverted tomorrow, leaving Wall Street positioned to control our climate future.

Conclusion

The Kerry-Lieberman bill represents a missed opportunity. By meeting behind closed doors, the lawmakers empowered corporate polluters to play an oversized role in influencing the legislation to the detriment of the climate and consumers. President Obama had it right when he successfully campaigned on a theme of making polluters pay and delivering benefits directly to households.

We need a bill that does not incentivize failed and dangerous technologies like nuclear power and does not enrich utilities at the expense of consumers.

[Teaser]

25. nah.

I support the nuke portions of the bill.

[karynnj]

27. Have you emailed Senators Franken, Feingold, Harkin, Sherrod Brown,

and the 10 others who wrote a letter demanding the coal power plants not bear the cost of this? Did you email Warner and Webb who wanted more nuclear and more offshore drilling. Did you even notice in 2009 when Feingold and about 80 Senators voted to prohibit this being done through reconciliation.

The fact is the environmental community is split on this - with most of the strongest, oldest environmental groups agreed that it is a good step and very likely all that could be done.

[politicasista]

32. *crickets* n/t

[Mass]

10. Not a great bill, but it is about dealing with possibilities. The Waxman-Markey bill would

not have made more than 15 votes in the Senate (Kerry and Boxer would have supported it, but it is not clear who else: probably Lautenberg and Menendez, Feinstein(?), Bill Nelson, ). 12 Democratic Senators including people like Feingold wanted more coal subsidies, others wanted other things...). The choice was between hoping we would always have an EPA led by Democrats, and pass a bill that is not that great, but a first step in the right direction, what a large part of environmentalists including Al Gore understand.

[Cha]

5. But, it's Kerry's Bill and we all know what

an environmentalist he is!

[flamingdem]

11. We have to start somewhere. Yea, yea, but Obama needs to do this NOW

I support him and Kerry.

[bananas]

20. It's a horrible bill, but might be the best we can get right now

This DemocracyNow debate covers a lot of the pros and cons:
"Greenpeace v. Center for American Progress: A Debate on the Kerry-Lieberman Climate Bill"

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/13/greenpeace_v_center_for_american_progress

After many months of debate and delay, on Wednesday Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman unveiled a 987-page draft of a climate and energy bill that aims to cut emissions, reduce oil imports, and create energy-related jobs. President Obama welcomed the bill in a statement noting that the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico provided another reason to "redouble our efforts to reform our nation’s energy policies." But several environmental groups have criticized the legislation. We speak with Phil Radford of Greenpeace USA and Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress’s blog ClimateProgress.org. (includes rush transcript)

[politicasista]

35. Yep. Not perfect but you have to start somewhere n/t

[Teaser]

23. it'll do

Grist likes it. Most environmental orgs that I care about like it. So it'll do.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. Obama likes it. Al Gore likes it. Republicans hate it.

Should tell you all you need to know.

[politicasista]

6. Is the Senator against Cape Wind?

Don't know much about it, but there was a poster in the environment/energy group saying that Kerry/Lieberman was and not as strong as the Waxman/Markey bill, which "avoids more catastrophic climate change." They should combine them both.

[Mass]

9. Sure, when you will find 60 senators ready to vote for Waxman/Markey

At this point, there still are a lot of Democrats who dont even want to hear about a climate bill (ask Dorgan, Bingaman, or McCaskill, or Rockefeller. ...). Let's just say the list is long and Kerry is not the blocking factor. It is painful to see how many people dont care about this issue. Markey is my congressman and I like him a lot, but when the bill was voted upon, the same people who are ranting against the Kerry bill were ranting about how the Markey bill was a giveaway, ... These people cant take into account the reality of the people they send us to congress.

I am not sure what Cape Wind has to do with the bill, but you can go read Kerry's press release when the authorization was granted if you care about his position. Given he had always said he would wait all the impact studies before taking position, this is the only position he has ever taken on the project.

[politicasista]

16. Ok. Makes sense n/t

[karynnj]

26. No, Kerry is for it - Brown against it

Kerry has ALWAYS said that if it passed the siting tests he was for it - and spoke of having suggested alternaative sites with good wind nearer his home on Nantucket.

Here's his statement - http://kerry.senate.gov/cfm/record.cfm?id=324285

It is true that Waxman/Markey does more, but it only needed 50% of the House to pass it - and they barely got that. You need 60% of the Senate. This means that you almost always can pass a better House bill. Markey has praised Kerry's bill. As to combining them, you ALWAYS combine the House and Senate bill once both pass to get a combined bill that could pass both houses.

[politicasista]

33. Ok

There was just a poster in the Environment/Energy group that said he was against it and his only putting his name on the bill to look good (Paraphrasing).

[karynnj]

36. Thanks

[politicasista]

37. No problem n/t

[jeanpalmer]

8. While he opens up more offshore drilling

Do you see any inconsistency there? Do you see any coincidence between this "push" for a climate bill and the oil spill in the gulf that he wasn't prepared for?

[ProSense]

12. "Do you see any inconsistency there?"

I see chronic complaining.

[Jennicut]

13. Drilling won't stop unless you have the framework for renewables in place.

Which is what the push for this bill is partly for. People can stick their heads in the sand all day but we won't stop because we have nothing to take it's place. We are 30 years behind schedule on this. And sadly, this bill has even liberal Dems against it because of Big Coal.

[ProSense]

14. Some of the people supporting coal

include liberal Dems. People think the stars are going to magically align and change the dynamics. Oil supporting Senators like Landrieu haven't changed their minds because of the spill.

The bill does not expand drilling:

Live Q & A: Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune

Q: The bill expands potential areas for offshore drilling and appears to offer states incentives for opening their waters through enhanced profit-sharing. Though there are mechanisms for states to try and block drilling offshore in neighboring states, the mechanism appears to be very favorable to opening areas. Is this at all viable in the face of what we're currently seeing in the Gulf?

MB: We are calling for a reinstatement of the presidential moratorium and are working with the administration to secure protections for our oceans.

This bill does not achieve our goal of protecting our oceans, and the revenue sharing provision increases the risk of drilling. Thankfully, the bill does not expand offshore drilling, and does not call for leasing in areas previously protected by the Congressional drilling moratorium. The bill also provides a temporary moratorium on any new offshore drilling until the cause of the BP Oil Disaster is determined and the Secretary of the Interior certifies it is safe.

The bill outlines key protections, which need to be expanded: Liability Mechanism, Improved Safety Measures and Clean Up Technology. The bill calls for all three, but there are no details in the bill.

Impact Studies. Allows impacted states to veto drilling in nearby states eligible to receive revenue sharing. The bill requires the Secretary of the Interior to study the environmental and economic impact of a potential oil spill on neighboring states eligible for revenues sharing before drilling can occur. For example, if the DOI study documents that an oil spill from Virginia would pollute beaches in New Jersey, its legislature could pass a law vetoing drilling off the coast of Virginia.

Allows states to establish a 75-mile drilling buffer. There is currently no buffer zones in place for the Atlantic or Pacific coasts; the bill gives states the opportunity to petition the Department of the Interior for a 75-mile no leasing, no drilling, buffer zone.

[Jennicut]

15. Sounds good to me.

I just want people to wake up and realize we must pass bills like this to move forward with lessening drilling, even shallow water drilling. It may seem small to some, but it is a huge step forward from where we are now.

[jeanpalmer]

17. Come on, this bill isn't going anywhere

It's just another acting piece for show. So some people can come on DU and pretend that he's doing something. Obama himself says the votes aren't there. And he didn't explain what he plans to do to get the votes. Because he really doesn't care.

The people sticking their heads in the sand are the drill baby drill crowd, of which Obama is a member, who are taking us unprepared to the point where the last drop is drilled and we have nothing to take its place.

[ProSense]

18. "It's just another acting piece for show. "

The people who believe it can't be done need to get out of the way of the people trying to get it done.

[jeanpalmer]

19. There's no one standing in the way

of anyone trying to get it done. Eccept imaginary obstacles which provide an excuse for not giving an honest effort. Giving a speech does not = trying to get it done. Just like there's no one standing in the way of him trying to stop outsourcing of jobs, if he wants to. He can make the effort at any time.

This speech was more about deflecting attention from the Gulf. He's feeling the heat.

[karynnj]

31. In one article several months ago, a Kerry staffer spoke of Senator Kerry having had over 250

conversations/meetings on this issue. What is clear is that he - and now Lieberman - is working very hard to get the support needed to pass the bill. Kerry himself has said it will be a heavy lift to pass it. Why not be happy that Obama is lending a hand.

As to explaining "how he going to get the votes" - there are only a number of limited ways. Starting with convincing Senators of its merits and getting them to vote for it.

[karynnj]

29. How do you prepare for the worsse oil spill in our history?

The companies have said for years that the systems used have sufficient redundancies that something like this would not happen. They speak of how the blowout protector was not just one defense, but was itself a series of controls each of which should have prevented the flow of oil we see.

In fact, I would expect that going forward, they would look to increasing the controls that prevent it. It will always be the case that no matter how many devices there are that will stop it, there is some possibility that all will fail - even if each has a very low failure rate. The other thing likely to be required is that they simultaneously drill the relief well. Then if everything fails - it can be plugged pretty quickly. Other countries require that, but the rules on this have been in place for years.

In addition to having worked to make it not happen in the first place, They had contingency plans - like burning off the oil, dispersants, booms etc. This is simply bigger than anything they dealt with in the past.

I actually do NOT see a coincidence between the oil spill and Obama's push on this bill. His administration has been involved with John Kerry since very early in 2009, when the Kerrys hosted a dinner/meeting at their Georgetown home to kick start the action on a climate change bill. If you remember as the stimulus bill and the healthcare bill reached a stage where they were about to go to the floor of the Senate, Obama made a strong concerted effort to support them and to use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to shift opinion and get the facts out. Next week, Reid will be meeting with the Democrats on this this. Had there been no oil spill, I would have expected him to do this.

[denimgirly]

21. Pattern shows the bill probably sucks

If Obama is pushing a Bill revolving around Big Money then i'm Concerned. I have not read the bill yet but so far based on Healthcare reform and Finance reform, wars, etc i have noticed that when Obama comes out eager to support a bill which revolves around an industry that makes a ton of money due to less regulation then the bill has always been a giveaway to those polluters of society and just a tiny sliver of slight good for the people (under certain conditions)...I hope i am wrong. I will go read the bill now.

What i find odd is that with this Spill it should be pretty easy to push a VERY STRONG climate bill...like i said though i have not read the Kerry bill but history has shown it will most certainly be weak.

[ProSense]

22. "I have not read the bill yet but so far based on Healthcare reform and Finance reform..."

Yeah, see post #3.

[Teaser]

24. "i have not read the Kerry bill"

would you even understand it if you had?

[politicasista]

34. Good question n/t

[karynnj]

30. It would be pretty easy to push a very strong climate bill?

I doubt that the positions of many Senators have changed that much due to the oil spill. The fact is that Kerry/Boxer, which should have been a nice compromise bill, really had nowhere near the Senators needed. It still would not have them. Some of the roadblocks are progressive Democrats. They are not "evil" in their opposition. They are concerned with the cost of moving from cheap coal to cleaner sources/