Word: caps
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...America's Climate Security Act, a bill that would finally attempt to make carbon-emission reduction a federal objective. Co-sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Warner, the measure calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 18% below 2005 levels by 2020, and nearly 70% by 2050, using a cap-and-trade system that steadily reduces the amount of carbon that industry is allowed to emit on an annual basis. The bill has garnered solid support across the political spectrum - corporations like General Electric and environmental groups like Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) have both come out in favor...
Even some energy corporations that favor cap and trade in general, like North Carolina's Duke Energy, are lobbying against the act, claiming it would hit coal-dependent utilities too hard. Some green groups like Friends of the Earth (FoE) also oppose it, arguing the bill's emission-reduction goals are too timid. They want to wait to pass legislation until 2009, when a new President and Congress will presumably be more open to a stronger measure. "It is a wholly inadequate response to the greatest environmental crisis of our time," said FoE president Brent Blackwelder...
...page bill that has been stuffed with handouts to various interest groups, including the nuclear industry. Initially permits worth hundreds of billions of dollars will be given out, free, to industrial greenhouse gas emitters, rather than auctioned off. The act also allows companies to meet part of their carbon caps using offsets, even as scientists increasingly question the effectiveness of such carbon trading. Both measures are likely to depress the price of carbon over the life of the bill. (The lower the real price of carbon, the less effective any cap-and-trade system will be in stimulating investment...
...that last argument - that cap and trade may place a financial burden on ordinary Americans - that may be the biggest sticking point for Warner-Lieberman or whatever comes after it. Conservative groups like the National Association of Manufacturers have released studies that claim the bill will ruin the American economy by raising the price of energy through the roof. But in reality, that scenario is unlikely - the balance of economic studies, including one by the Environmental Protection Agency, say the bill's economic cost will be manageable, and a raft of studies claim that the economic cost of doing nothing...
...anger, as every member of Congress who went home for the Memorial Day break is no doubt aware. Support for lowering energy prices is something that has both broad and deep support in America; it will drive voters to the ballot box. And although Warner-Lieberman, or any future cap-and-trade bill, is unlikely to hike the price of gasoline, it will surely be used as a convenient political scapegoat...