Supporters of clean energy bill conflicted over passage

A bill bolstering clean energy efforts passed narrowly in the U.S. House last Friday and could alter plans President Barack Obama articulated in his campaign.

Known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, or H.R. 2454, the bill is designed to create clean-energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean-energy economy.

Obama called for all of these things in his campaign and spoke about pollution permits in a cap-and-trade system aimed to protect households from increasing energy prices. But the bill gives the majority of the pollution allowances to the electricity sector.

“The real cap is on the public interest and the trade is the billions from the public to polluters,” said Congressman Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.

Doggett agreed that further changes are needed to make the bill more acceptable, but lawmakers decided to back the American Clean Energy and Security Act with a vote of 219 to 212.

“I struggled deeply about whether to support this flawed bill,” Doggett said in a statement. “I finally determined that voting for it was my best hope for making it better.”

Supporters of the bill are most concerned about what will happen if no action is taken at all.

“Right now, America is hooked on dirty fossil fuel energy sources that threaten the health of our children, cause global warming and drag down our economy,” said Luke Metzger, director of the group Environment Texas.

Metzger said by using the right methods and materials, it is possible to make homes and businesses so efficient that they use zero net energy.

“It is time to unleash the power of clean energy to transform our economy, protect our environment, put people back to work and build a sustainable future,” Metzger said.

After the bill’s success in the House, it moves to the Senate to meet the next level of lawmakers. Senators await their chances to discuss the bill because the public’s concern of this problem is apparent.

Comments

2 comments

Your name

Tue Jun 30 2009 23:19

Global warming is a scam!

Your name

Tue Jun 30 2009 01:19

Doggett and Metzger are economic, energy and climate nitwits. First, if either had a rudimentary understanding of atmospheric physics, and either had bothered to read the data that comprises the UN's IPCC reports (as opposed to the reports' nonsensical summaries), they would have noted that the global weather satellite data contained in the IPCC's reports, and that satellite is the only and best data available on the climate of the globe) show that the globe, in aggregate and as a whole, has actually been experiencing a slight cooling since 1979). They don't bother with things like scientific climate data, of course. That would prove problematic for their agenda to create 12 horse and buggy making, er, windmill making jobs.

Would it be wise for the United States to get off it's dependence upon fossil fuels, for environmental and geopolitical reasons? Absolutely. Is it sane, however, to make the energy that farmers need to run their farm equipment, for one example, more expensive, thereby making the food people eat more expensive, and for the purpose of deploying windmills and other energy technologies that will never be more than marginal providers of energy? No.

If Doggett and Metzger were advocating that the United States fast track the building of hundreds of small scale, 4th generation nuclear reactors (reactors which leave no radioactive waste at the end of their energy production cycles), then they might actually be making some environmental, energy and economic sense. They aren't advocating that we do that, though.

They're advocating that we increase taxes (and consequently the price of everything people use and consume) in order to produce energy devices of no 21st century utility. If they feel a need to tax things and do some real good, how about taxing things to fund basic research in cold fusion, vacuum energy (re. Tesla Coils), boron fuel cells, and things that actually hold the potential to make a meaningful difference to the planet and human beings?

I guess that makes too much sense, and members of Congress and Environmental lobbyists aren't often in the business of doing things that make much sense, common or otherwise.

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