Environmental Non-Profits Respond to Lieberman-Warner 7
In summary, US-CAP members Environmental Defense, Pew Center on Climate Change, and Nature Conservancy offer unequivocal praise of Lieberman-Warner.
NRDC (US-CAP) and Union of Concerned Scientists say it’s a starting point that needs fixing.
Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club say it has major problems; the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters say that focus should stay on the Sanders-Boxer bill.
A number of organizations have not yet weighed in. Full quotations and links to the statements are below the fold.
Joe Lieberman and John Warner are providing remarkable leadership. By developing an approach that has environmental integrity and support from both sides of the aisle they are doing what is necessary to actually make law.
We welcome new ideas when it comes to fighting global warming, and are pleased that Senators Lieberman and Warner are providing leadership on this issue. But their proposal must be strengthened tobe effective.
UCS calls for a stronger cap and criticizes the industry giveaways and the level of carbon offset allowances.
NRDC (part of US-CAP)Friends of the EarthWe look forward to working with Senators Lieberman and Warner to further improve this proposal’s targets and timetables and to ensure that the bill’s valuable pollution allowances are invested in energy efficiency and other measures to reduce consumers’ costs, not create windfall profits for polluters.
The Lieberman-Warner legislation is just one more proposal that won’t get the job done on global warming.
FOE calls for a stronger cap with faster reductions and criticizes the industry giveaways (“The legislation also violates the ‘polluter pays’ principle”).
Sierra ClubThe Warner-Lieberman proposal and others are oriented toward meeting the needs of the coal, utility and auto industries. Congress should instead focus on proposals like Boxer-Sanders and Waxman that better meet the needs of communities, families, and the environment.
Sierra Club calls for a stronger cap and a more progressive focus.
Pew Center for Climate Change (part of US-CAP)
Joe Romm, Climate ProgressThe Lieberman-Warner proposal represents a critical step toward a workable climate solution, combining many of the best elements of earlier cap-and-trade bills. It proposes ambitious greenhouse gas targets and innovative mechanisms to ensure that the costs of meeting them are reasonable. Importantly, this proposal avoids the use of price caps or other mechanisms that would undermine the program’s environmental objectives and the economic efficiency of a market-based approach. With their bipartisan proposal, Senators Lieberman and Warner are leading the way toward strong Senate action to curb U.S. emissions and avoid the worst potential consequences of climate change.
It looks pretty good to me.
Nature Conservancy (part of US-CAP)
League of Conservation VotersWe commend Senators Warner and Lieberman for their commitment to enacting strong climate legislation. The thoughtful outline released today indicates that the senators are on track to write a bill that would help to address climate change and would be beneficial for conservation.
While we applaud Senators Lieberman and Warner for producing a global warming bill, we believe we can and we must do better than a 10 percent cut in global warming emissions by 2020. We look forward to working to ensure they ultimately produce a bill that accomplishes what the world’s best scientists say is necessary – reducing global warming pollution by at least 15-20 percent by 2020 to reach the goal of at least 80 percent reductions by 2050. We urge other members of the Senate to cosponsor the Sanders-Boxer bill (S. 309) – a bill that will help our country meet the global warming pollution reductions required to help our country secure a brighter future.
I couldn’t find any public statements from organizations such as Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, World Wildlife Federation or the World Resources Institute.
“On the right track”, “the right idea”, and “it’s a start” is not really unequivocal. I’d say that all the groups except Joe Romm did in fact state that while it was in the right direction, it wasn’t sufficient. Since they tended to not say just what sufficient would be, they equivocated.
Am I misunderstanding?
Where does “on the right track”, “the right idea”, and “it’s a start” appear? I can’t find what you’re talking about.
Sorry—I wasn’t clear. By quotes I really didn’t mean quotations, I meant to suggest that the support voiced by most of the organizations you referenced was soft… evidence is in the UCS’ “but” or the NRDC’s “we look forward to working with L and W to improve this proposal” or the Sierra Club’s “should instead” or the NC’s “on track to” or the LCV’s “While” or most strong, the FotE’s “won’t get the job done.”
With the exception of Joe Romm, all groups supported the progress and quickly pointed out that the progress was insufficient. That means their support is not really unequivocal, right?
Please reread the post: “In summary, US-CAP members Environmental Defense, Pew Center on Climate Change, and Nature Conservancy offer unequivocal praise of Lieberman-Warner.
NRDC (US-CAP) and Union of Concerned Scientists say it’s a starting point that needs fixing.
Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club say it has major problems; the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters say that focus should stay on the Sanders-Boxer bill.”
Got it. I just piled all the acronyms into one acronym’d group [US-CAP] when they’re not all in that group.
Mea culpa.
FYI, one major topic that (deliberately, it would appear) was left out of this draft, and not commented on in the initial reaction, was the subject of how to handle state emissions regulations. Given that this has been a hot topic before (i.e. the Dingell-Boucher draft), and that Senator Boxer has been pressing California’s case with the EPA quite vigorously, its worth watching to see how Lieberman and Warner handle it.
Stomv, I think you’re letting some of them off a little light:
Nature Conservency writes: “We commend Senators Warner and Lieberman for their commitment to enacting strong climate legislation.”
Pew Center writes, “It proposes ambitious greenhouse gas targets.”
ED writes, “By developing an approach that has environmental integrity...”
[emphasis added on each of the above]
Except it’s NOT “strong climate change legislation,” it DOESN’T propose “amibtious greenhouse gas targets” and the proposal SELLS OUT “environmental integrity” in the interest of preserving corporate interests.
The proposal is weak and insufficient and won’t get the job done, and that should be the unequivocal message from the environmental and progressive front.
Instead, ED, NC, Pew and others equivocate, calling it a great step forward, “ambitious,” “strong,” etc. giving supposed environmental credibility to a proposal that we all know won’t get the job done.
I know it’s important not to get entirely marginalized, but if we all spoke together in a unified voice – progressives and environmentalists – that massive corporate giveaways are a non-starter, targets must be science-based and sufficient to get the job done, and revenues from auctioning the right to pollute our commonly-owned air must be used to help low-income energy users and lower the costs of clean energy technologies, we’d avoid being marginalized and instead articulate a strong and progressive alternative to the pro-corporate proposals ED, NC and Pew have instead supported.