Word: bille
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...years into the future is ironclad, but there are enough safety valves and offsets in Waxman-Markey to ensure the cost will be manageable. But that's the problem. To keep conservative Democrats on board - especially those in the coal-heavy Midwest and Southeast - Waxman and Markey allowed the bill to be watered down considerably, loosening the overall carbon cap and scaling back the renewable-energy standard. When the powerful farm lobby balked at the bill, it was changed to allow farmers to sell offsets from agriculture, such as no-till farming, which leaves carbon in the soil. Worse, oversight...
...result, the bill will achieve most of its stated carbon cuts through offsets and through improving energy efficiency, rather than encouraging the growth of low-carbon renewable electricity. Energy efficiency is an important low-hanging fruit, and the bill will significantly slow the growth of U.S. electricity consumption over time. But carbon offsets are dicey, and may not actually provide the emissions reductions they claim to. (Studies have called into question the quality of the offsets run under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol system.) And a new EPA analysis of the bill forecast that the total amount of renewable energy...
...bill's defenders, which include almost all mainstream environmental groups, say that it doesn't matter where the emissions cuts come from, as long as they're legitimate and the carbon goes down. "This bill will give us lots of ways to get to where we need to go on emissions reductions," says Keohane. But over the long run, we need to cut carbon out of our energy supply - and that means vastly increasing the role of renewables like solar and wind, along with low-carbon sources like nuclear and even coal with carbon capture. That will require plenty...
...very least the bill's passage will help American negotiators at the upcoming U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, where the world will try to put together a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol. Speaking with Obama at the White House today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the bill represented a "sea change" for the U.S., so long a world pariah on climate change. "I would not have thought it possible a year ago," she added. But the bill's emissions cuts still fall far short of what the European Union has proposed, and are even further away from...
...this is the most that is politically possible in America, we're in trouble, because climate change demands far more. "We are at an extraordinary moment, with a historic opportunity to confront one of the world's most serious challenges," said former Vice President Al Gore after the bill passed. "Our actions now will be remembered by this generation and all those to follow." He's right - which is why the battle has just begun...