The politics of pollution

Can Blumenauer break the logjam over carbon trading?

By Chris Lydgate

Pamplin Media Group, Jul 17, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (4 Reader comments)

Alex Wong / GETTY IMAGES

U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer has sponsored House Resolution 6316, which would set up a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.

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More than 20 years after NASA scientist James Hansen first sounded the alarm on global warming, the federal government has failed to pass a single law cracking down on carbon emissions.

Some of the foot-dragging can be chalked up to the Bush administration’s skeptical position on climate change, but the White House is hardly alone. Powerful members of Congress also have blocked meaningful emissions proposals, such as the Warner-Lieberman-Boxer climate security bill, which died on the Senate floor last month after failing to muster the 60 votes needed to end debate and proceed to a vote.

Now U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Portland, is getting into the act by sponsoring a bill to set up a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.

The bow-tied Blumenauer is best known as a transportation wonk but says this issue is important to him because global warming will have a “huge impact” on the Pacific Northwest, which depends on abundant rain to build the snowpack that feeds the rivers that provide our water and our power.

“Nature is sending a wake-up call in no uncertain terms,” Blumenauer said. “The Midwest is having its second 500-year flood in 15 years. We’re in trouble if we don’t reduce our emissions. We need to do it, and we need to do it now.”

House Resolution 6316, also known as the Climate MATTERS Act (Climate Market Auction Trust and Trade Emissions Reduction System) sets out an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

To accomplish this, the bill targets so-called “upstream polluters” — coal-fired electricity plants, gas-fired electricity plants, oil refineries, and so on — and requires them to make sharp cuts in their emissions.

Individual polluters could buy and sell carbon permits at a government auction, which means, in theory, at least, that polluters would have a financial incentive to close old, inefficient plants and invest in cleaner technologies.

Money would be redirected

The proposed auctions would raise a gargantuan sum of money, approximately $1.1 trillion over six years. Not surprisingly, the bill spells out in considerable detail how this sum would be spent.

The lion’s share, $514 billion, would go toward low-to-moderate income families in the form of health care subsidies, tax credits and rebates; $66 billion to natural preservation; $71 billion for energy efficiency; $41 billion to fight deforestation overseas; $66 billion on renewable energy research; and lesser amounts going to deficit reduction, worker retraining, cleaner transportation and other programs.

The bill contains few big technical surprises — many of its proposals have been suggested before. Perhaps its biggest innovation is political.

Emissions bills in the House of Representatives usually are referred to the Energy and Commerce Committee, which traditionally has enjoyed primary jurisdiction over climate-change bills.

Unfortunately, this is where the problems begin. The top Republican on the committee, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, is a prominent climate-change skeptic. The chairman, Democrat Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, has shown little inclination to push for carbon trading.

As a result, the Energy and Commerce Committee has become a legislative tar pit where carbon-trading bills vanish, never to emerge.

Bill carefully steered

Thanks to a skillful bit of parliamentary sleight-of-hand, however, Blumenauer and his Democratic co-sponsors (Reps. Lloyd Doggett of Texas and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland) have managed to keep their bill out of the swamp.

They wrote the bill so that the Secretary of the Treasury will play a leading role in setting up the trading system.

This put the bill squarely in the jurisdiction of the House Ways and Means Committee, where it is far more likely to receive a hearing than in the Energy and Commerce Committee. In fact, Ways and Means leaders have promised a hearing on the bill by the end of the month.

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