What's New
Global warming legislation passed the environment committee in the U.S. Senate last year and will be debated on the Senate floor this summer. The Lieberman-Warner bill should be improved in several key ways. Most important among those is to require polluters to pay for more of the pollution
they create. Economists agree that auctioning pollution credits, rather than giving them away for free, reduces costs and avoids windfall profits for energy companies.
How You Can Help
Send an e-mail to Senators Mikulski and Cardin urging them to fight to improve the Lieberman-Warner bill.
Brief Summary
Time is running out to stop the worst effects of
global warming, and only bold and decisive action will protect our environment,
our economy and future generations of Americans. While the Lieberman-Warner global warming
bill (S. 2191) serves as an important first step in the effort to tackle global
warming, the science and scope of the global warming problem demand that we go
farther. In order to ensure that the
Lieberman-Warner legislation is strong enough to help prevent global warming’s
worst impacts, Environment Maryland urges senators to push for the following
critical improvements to this legislation:
Require
polluters to pay for more of the pollution they create. S. 2191 currently
gives hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of emission allowances to
polluters for free, which will create windfall profits for the polluters, as
have occurred in Europe, while taking vital resources away from easing America’s transition to a clean energy future. The current legislation gives away just under
half (49%) of the pollution permits for free initially, and it will take until
2036 before global warming polluters stop getting windfalls from pollution
permits.
Strengthen the pollution reduction targets to reflect
what the science demands. Science
tells us that to prevent dangerous temperature increases and drastic climate
impacts, it is essential to reduce total U.S. global warming pollution by at least 15 percent from current levels by 2020
and 80 percent by 2050. A preliminary analysis
by the World Resources Institute found that the pollution caps in S. 2191 would
fall short of these science-based targets, reducing total U.S. global warming emissions by 13% below 2005 levels by
2020 and by 45% below 2005 levels by 2050.
Strengthen
the scientific review process. The bill’s authors wisely included a
provision through which the latest global warming science and the program’s
progress can be reviewed (Sections 7001 and 7002), but the current language
does not mandate that any action be taken if it is discovered that additional
pollution reductions are needed to prevent dangerous global warming.
Limit the potential for the bill’s flexibility
mechanisms to undermine the reduction targets. S. 2191 currently allows companies to exceed their
pollution limits by paying sources not covered by the program to reduce
emissions. In addition to the challenges
in verifying that such “offsets” equal real pollution reductions, having this
large a loophole delays the transition to cleaner technologies that will be
needed to achieve deep future cuts in emissions.
Use the auctioning of allowances to support the cleanest, cheapest and safest zero- and low-emission energy sources. S.
2191 instructs the newly-created Climate Change Credit Corporation to use a portion of the funds created
from the auctioning of pollution allowances to support the deployment of zero-
and low-emission energy sources, but gives no guidance as to which sources
should be prioritized. In order to get
the most out of these funds while protecting our environment, the Corporation
should prioritize the cleanest, cheapest and safest zero- and low-emission
energy sources.
