Climate 411

Last week, we called out Bradford Plumer, Assistant Editor at The New Republic, for saying that he thought there is a “real case” for “waiting until later this year or early next year on cap and trade.”

We had two points:

1. Once you start saying, “Why rush this?” it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2. There’s been ample time to debate global warming legislation — after all, we’ve known for a generation that this is a problem we’ll have to solve, and the first cap and trade bill was introduced in the Senate in 2003.

So, we are pleased to read today that Mr Plumer has clarified his point and now says “cap on carbon emissions can still pass this year.”

Not only can a bill pass this year, it is absolutely critical that Congress seize this political opportunity to act. Here are three of many reasons why:

1. The longer we delay action, the more costly it will be to solve this crisis.
2. Scientists are warning that the worst case global warming scenarios are coming true.
3. Without U.S. action, it is unclear how successful international climate negotiations will be this December.

With strong leadership from the White House and key Congressional leaders, combined with constant grassroots pressure, we can pass a bill that will stop global warming and unleash a green energy revolution to put Americans back to work and get the U.S. economy back on track.

Not only can we, but we must.

Claim:

“Back door attempts in Congress to push through a global warming tax are heating up.

“It is our understanding that the Democrat Senate leadership is planning to move forward with a cap-and-trade bill, which would drastically limit levels of greenhouse gases that electrical, industrial, and transportation sectors can emit, tax them for what they do emit, and slap them with hefty fines if they exceed those emissions levels.

“Such a bill would put the brakes on our already slowed economy, forcing industries and businesses to slash jobs and to pass their taxes onto individuals and families in the form of price increases on commodities and energy. This would make it even more difficult for America to climb out of its current economic troubles. Making this worse, the whole basis for the policy — catastrophic human-induced global warming — is not even settled among scientists, who are growing increasingly skeptical, especially since we have been experiencing a decade-long cooling trend.”

— From email sent by Dr. Richard Land, President of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission Southern Baptist Convention, March 23, 2009.

Truth:

As we have written before, the proposal to set a market-based cap on America’s global warming pollution is not a tax. No matter how times they say it, it’s still not true.

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Claim:

“We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events. The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.”

— Draft text of newspaper ad by the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, DC. (Thanks to Real Climate for surfacing this ad)

Truth:

Cato is circulating this draft newspaper ad text to find scientists willing to sign on. It will be interesting to see how many they get and who they are.

In the meantime, let’s see if we can help Cato untangle the facts.

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Claim:

“If anything, there is a case to be made that Congress is kind of rushing on the whole cap and trade legislation. Henry Waxman has said that he wants a bill out by Memorial Day. Barbara Boxer says she wants a bill out of the Senate by a similar time…

“Not surprisingly, people are fixated on the economy. Obama is fixated on the economy. This seems like a low level thing, even though scientists are saying we really need to cut emissions quickly. I think there’s a real case to be made for splitting this up and waiting until later this year or early next year on cap and trade until Obama can really focus his full attention on it and do what’s possible in the meantime.”

— Bradford Plumer, Assistant Editor at The New Republic, March 19, 2009

Truth:

While Bradford Plummer isn’t an opponent of global warming action, the question “Why rush this?” is one we hear a lot from many of those who are.

But it’s a very thin reed to stand on. We’ve debated and debated and debated the need for global warming for more than a generation.

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