6-10-08, 9:19 am

After the failure of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act in the Senate last week, climate change activists are calling for a stronger 'science-based' bill that will meet minimum standards needed to maintain a livable climate. Though Senate Republicans killed the bill with 'poison pill' amendments and procedural votes, advocates of swift and comprehensive action on reducing carbon emissions shed few tears and are already looking to the next congressional debates on the issue.

The Lieberman-Warner bill would have created a 'cap-and-trade' system* of controlling greenhouse emissions, but, according to some estimates, would have only succeeded in reducing carbon emissions by half of what is necessary to halt the worst effects of climate change and would have taken decades to have much impact.

Opponents of the weak measures in the Lieberman-Warner bill, who otherwise support 'cap-and-trade,' say that due to the current climate situation, emissions should be restricted much more quickly.

According to top experts on climate change, including James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who pioneered climate change science, the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere must be at or below a level of 350 parts per million in order to reduce global warming and halt climate change. Studies indicate that the carbon dioxide levels are already higher than that.

Environmental writer, David Roberts of Grist.org, said, 'We've already passed 350. We're somewhere around 380. Being passed 350 is already highly perilous. We've got to get back down below 350 as fast as humanly possible.'

'We have to cut back greenhouse emissions much more than anyone thought ... if we want to avoid the kind of catastrophic climate change of the worst scenarios,' said Mark Hertsgaard in a recent interview on Radio Nation with Laura Flanders, citing a study Hansen had authored in April. 'The policy implications are literally staggering,' said Hertsgaard.

In response to the failure of the Lieberman-Warner bill to pass, Hansen expressed disappointment that a stronger bill has not yet been introduced or debated in the Senate. 'We need a much stronger bill that is more strategic and puts a halt to coal plants,' he told reporters. Hansen has called for a complete phase out of coal within two years in North America and Europe, and globally by 2030.

Likewise, Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, recently emphasized the urgent need to cut emissions 25-40 percent by 2020, while the results of Lieberman-Warner would have fallen far short of that, perhaps as little as half.

The Lieberman-Warner bill, though it had the backing of some major environmental organizations like Sierra Club (with principled criticisms) and many Democrats, simply failed to meet these basic, but urgent requirements, according to a coalition of environmental justice and advocacy groups called 1Sky.

“This bill failed on two fundamental measures,” said Betsy Taylor, president of the 1Sky campaign’s board of directors, in a recent press statement. “It would not have reduced carbon emissions as deeply or as quickly as the world scientific community says is necessary to address global warming.'

In addition, 'it would have given more money to the bloated fossil fuel industry, and left ordinary Americans paying too much for rising energy bills,' she asserted.

Gillian Caldwell, 1Sky’s Campaign Director, would have liked a bill without a lot of pork for fossil fuel industries. “It is unconscionable that so many Senators pandered to the oil companies and did nothing to tackle the greatest threat to our children's future,” she noted.

“Lieberman-Warner was the first round,” said Caldwell, “We are preparing for the real fight now, to actually do what it will take.”

1Sky is favorably disposed toward what it calls a 'a more comprehensive bill': the Investing in Climate Action and Protection Act, introduced in the House of Representatives in late May by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). This bill, iCAP for short, calls for reducing emissions by 85 percent by 2050 for greenhouse gases covered by the bill, starting in 2012. The iCap also calls for a moratorium on traditional coal plants.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) also backed the Lieberman-Warner bill but worked to strengthen it. UCS spokesperson Alden Meyer expressed support for iCAP, saying, “It builds on the best practices of cap-and-invest programs and sets a strong framework to dramatically cut global warming pollution. It would auction 100 percent of carbon allowances by 2020, making polluters fully accountable for their emissions.”

The Sierra Club also supports the Markey bill, noting in a recent press statement that “this legislation gets the science right while protecting working-class Americans. We strongly support the bill’s emphasis on energy efficiency and renewable energy.'

After the failure of Lieberman-Warner, the Sierra Club noted that though the bill had bi-partisan support, it was essentially killed by a coordinated effort on the part of Senate Republicans who added amendments to the measure to weaken it or to ensure that it would fail. Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, accused the Republicans of 'feigning' support for the bill but actually deploying 'theatrics' in order to kill it.

For example, Republican presidential nominee John McCain insisted that he could only support the measure if it included massive pork for the nuclear industry. But when a compromise version of his demand was added, McCain failed to show up in the Senate to vote on it or to show leadership by urging other Senate Republicans to back it. So much for breaking with the Bush administration's policies.

Notes

* A cap and trade system, basically put, is one that assigns 'caps' on carbon emissions by certain industries over a certain time frame (caps that are lower than current emissions by those industries). Permits a divvied up and sold to corporations, individuals or other groups who want to participate in that industry. If one corporations wants to pollute more than is allowed by its permits it can 'trade' for more pollution permits from other groups or corporations who may not use theirs. The main criticism of Lieberman-Warner by environmental advocates is that the caps were to slow and too small. Caps in iCAP are larger and imposed more quickly.

--Reach Joel Wendland at