Climate 411

Wrap-up: A Busy Earth Week on Capitol Hill

By Keith Gaby / Published: April 24, 2009

As Tony wrote earlier, the House subcommittee working on climate legislation celebrated Earth Week with a packed schedule of testimony.

One of the more interesting participants was Mayor John Fetterman, from tiny Braddock, Pa., who has become a national champion in the fight to cap carbon pollution. He did a great job explaining that for communities like his, a cap on carbon will be an economic lifeline (see the video). He was joined on the panel by Nat Keohane, EDF’s chief economist.

Here are some wrap-ups:

We’ll hear more testimony today, including appearances by former GOP Senator John Warner and Al Gore, and next week the subcommittee starts the tough work of marking up the bill.

Posted in Climate Change Legislation / Comments are closed

Live Waxman-Markey Hearing Updates on Twitter

By Keith Gaby / Published: April 22, 2009

We have some folks from EDF down at the carbon cap bill hearing today.  Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/EnvDefenseFund to keep up with the good, the bad, and the ugly!

Also posted in News, Policy / Comments are closed

Man of Steel Comes to Washington

By Tony Kreindler / Published: April 22, 2009

Today, I am heading to Capitol Hill with John Fetterman, mayor of Braddock, Pa.  Mayor Fetterman recently lent his voice to Environmental Defense Action Fund’s “Carbon Caps=Hard Hats” ad campaign, which calls on Congress to pass climate change legislation.

On this Earth Day, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding hearings centered around the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), and they asked the mayor to come talk about jobs.

Braddock used to be a booming steel town. When the steel manufacturing sector left in the 1970s, Braddock gradually slumped, falling from a population of 20,000 to 2,000.

When John Fetterman first came to Braddock, he saw potential, thinking not as an environmentalist, but as a citizen wanting to revitalize a community. He sees Braddock, and other cities that depend on steel (like Akron, Ohio, and Detroit, Mich.,), ready for economic growth. He has a vision of restoring jobs that left with the steel industry. And what can trigger that growth is a cap on carbon.

So today, the mayor is on Capitol Hill to tell Congress that there are jobs in renewable energy and steel, and if they pass a carbon cap, there will be jobs in Braddock, Pa.

Also posted in News, Partners for Change / Read 2 Responses

Green Jobs: Not Just Economic Projections

By David Yarnold / Published: April 17, 2009

Marc Gunther was kind enough to write a post on his blog about our latest campaign for a carbon cap.  Unfortunately, he also called the green jobs debate “intellectually dishonest.”  Below, Environmental Defense Fund’s Executive Director, David Yarnold, replies.

Marc,

Glad to see more attention to this issue as Congress gears up for its historic effort to pass a cap on carbon emissions. Opponents are hard at work to limit public debate to one side of the ledger; we’re shining the light on the other.

What we’re not doing is predicting the number of jobs a cap will create. Better yet, we’re showing the jobs that are here right now. We’re showing the people that want them, and businesses that are ready to create more of them when Congress caps carbon. You can see them for yourself at www.lesscarbonmorejobs.com

One of the thousands of companies you will find there is Dowding Machining, which is putting hundreds of laid-off autoworkers back to work building wind turbines in Michigan — the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Mayor John Fetterman, featured in our ads, wants to do the same thing for steelworkers in Braddock, Pa.

How many jobs will we create? It’s up to us as a nation. Will we take the lead, revitalizing existing manufacturing industries and creating new ones? Or will we settle for the status quo, see our factories shuttered, and end up importing the low-carbon technologies of the future from China and Europe?

For years, the U.S. was the worlds leading producer of solar cells, but now we rank fourth in production behind Japan, China, and Germany. They’re not the sunniest of places; they’ve just made renewable energy a priority.

What will the costs be? The transition to clean energy will not be free – but every credible economic analysis shows that our economy will enjoy robust growth under a carbon cap. And contrary to opponents who spent a decade trying to muddy the science on climate change (and having failed that are now trying to muddy the economics), household costs will be small – about a dime a day for household utility bills, based on Department of Energy estimates. That dime buys a lot: cleaner air, good jobs, less foreign oil, and a safe climate.

Also posted in Economics, Energy, Jobs, News, Policy / Read 11 Responses

Links: Cool Graphics and Magic Tax

By Keith Gaby / Published: March 6, 2009

In case you missed it, washingtonpost.com featured a set of graphics about a carbon cap on its home page all last weekend. A couple of them looked very familiar to us. Take a look.

We’ve been using a graph that tracks the price of emitting acid rain (sulfur dioxide) pollution for years now — like on this page, on how a cap works. Which of these illustrations do you think are most useful?

I was also intrigued by a post by Eric de Place over on Grist. He describes a cap on carbon pollution as a “magic self-adjusting carbon tax.” It’s a nice explanation of a cap’s price flexibility, which is one of its key advantages.

Posted in Climate Change Legislation / Read 2 Responses

Obama Asks Congress for Cap on Carbon Pollution

By Keith Gaby / Published: February 25, 2009

The president said:

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy.

So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.

Also posted in News, Policy / Comments are closed