My Op-Ed below, which previews the Copenhagen climate talks, first ran in the Baltimore Sun and on Grist. As many of you know, I will be attending the climate talks next month from December 13-18 on behalf of CCAN and Earthbeat Radio. I will personally be there to record the voices of passionate, inspiring leaders and to add my own voice to the global chorus demanding faster, better results from our world leaders. Starting December 13th, check out the daily video and audio feeds I’ll be posting to this blog.
Climate change reset needed
Let the EPA crack down on carbon emissions, and switch from ‘cap and trade’ to ‘cap and rebate’By Mike Tidwell
Baltimore Sun
November 27, 2009Tomorrow is not an option.
Those ought to be the words coming from the White House right now on global warming. Never again can we tolerate a year like 2009, when attempts to cap carbon pollution go nowhere. Already this month, President Barack Obama has confirmed two painful truths. First: Congress will not complete work on a global warming bill in 2009. And second, the corollary blow: There will be no international climate deal in Denmark next month, dashing years of international hopes.
So Mr. Obama should move quickly from explaining failure to achieving real success. He should travel to the Copenhagen climate conference in December and guarantee drastic action from the U.S. in 2010, even if it means blowing everything up in Congress and starting over. If a “cap and trade” bill won’t fly in the Senate in 2010, then let the Environmental Protection Agency explore maximum-strength carbon regulations while, legislatively, we switch back to Mr. Obama’s original presidential campaign plan: “cap and rebate.”
Apologists, of course, are rushing to defend the president, explaining away the now-official climate failures of 2009. There was never enough time, they say, to fix in a few months all the global warming harm George W. Bush created in eight long years.
Maybe so. But we can’t blame Mr. Bush forever. What’s the plan for 2010? The only strategy the Democrats seem to have is borrowed from 2009: Get the Senate to finally pass the cap and trade bill. That would be the 1,400-page bill narrowly approved by the House in June and loaded with subsidies for “clean coal” and likely big profits for Wall Street traders. It’s been stagnating in the Senate for most of the autumn.
Centrist Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia – a vitally important vote – all but condemned the cap and trade bill last week in a news conference. What if the bill simply never passes? What will Mr. Obama take to the international treaty talks in Germany in June 2010 or in Mexico next December? Continue reading