Jul 14, 2010

Draft of hot air, pipe dreams that could yield more emissions and energy use.

GRIST - Senate Majority Harry ReidHarry ReidSen. Harry Reid. (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that he and other senior lawmakers had drawn up a "rough draft" of climate and energy legislation to be introduced in two weeks.

"I now have a rough draft of what we're going to do," he told reporters. "I hope to be able to have a bill introduced [the] week after next."

President Obama has pushed Congress to pass a comprehensive bill to battle climate change and foster alternative and renewable energy sources this year, as they consider their options on energy and climate legislation, it's important to be clear about what will move the country forward and what will move it backward. Will our leaders put us on the road towards the carbon pollution cuts desperately needed to take back control of our economic, environmental, and national security, or will they drive in the wrong direction and make matters even worse? - GRIST


Unless it includes a cap, an energy bill could make carbon emissions even worse
Unless the overall Senate bill includes a cap on stationary source emissions, some energy bill provisions would actually make carbon emissions worse.  Here are some examples at the GRIST

The American people have waited for long enough to curb the toll of death and illness from power plants' other pollutants. Now the big power companies are proposing, like the Devil to Dr. Faustus, that Americans trade off their health as the price of the companies reducing their global warming pollution. No deal.

Figure 42. World Coal Consumption by Country Grouping, 1980-2030 
(Quadrillion Btu).  Need help, contact the National Energy Information 
Center at 202-586-8800.When Obama and members of the Senate return from the Independence Day break, they will face a choice on what kind of future to deliver the American people. One path -- climate and energy legislation -- can make good on decades of unmet promises to break the nation's addiction to oil, clean up the air we breathe, and win the clean energy race.


The other path will deliver nothing more than another piecemeal, dirty energy bill that will set the country backwards, not forwards.

The choice should be obvious. Will it be?

Read more from GRIST

PLEASE remember NONE of this will make a 'dent' in lowering global CO2 levels due to insurmountable coal, oil and energy use projected by India and China.