In Climate Change Debate, It's All About Jobs
Many in Congress worry about the economic impact of curbing emissions
Rep. Betty Sutton, a Democrat, wants Congress to tackle climate change, but she has some concerns. She represents Ohio's 13th District, which includes Akron, where the unemployment rate is 10.3 percent. "I certainly want jobs," Sutton said last week, responding to Republicans' claims that proposed climate change legislation will cause further job losses. "I want to find ways—and I believe it can be done—to get these jobs of the future without sacrificing the livelihood of people in the process."
As House leaders launched an aggressive push on global warming legislation last week with four days of intensive hearings, the focus was squarely on jobs and the economic impact of trying to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the deepening recession has emerged as arguably the most formidable hurdle to congressional action.
In a show of the administration's priorities, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood appeared side by side, reaffirming the president's desire to act on climate change and lending support to the broad direction of a draft global warming bill introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Ed Markey.
But getting climate change legislation through the parochial-minded Congress will largely depend on where moderate Democrats end up, particularly those in the Senate. Some key senators hail from manufacturing- and industry-heavy states that get most of their electricity from coal—for Ohio, it's 86 percent—and they will be watching their delegations in the House, which is taking the lead on crafting a bill.
The legislation's cornerstone is a program that would cap emissions but allow companies to purchase credits if they need to exceed those limits. Lawmakers are asking whether a cap-and-trade program would create jobs to power a "green energy economy," as the Obama administration argues, or send jobs overseas as companies seek cheaper places to pollute.
Last Wednesday, Jackson cited new EPA models showing that a cap-and-trade program will most likely have only a modest impact on American families—increasing annual spending by less than $150. Officials arrived at this estimate, she said, by assuming that 40 percent of the money raised by selling emissions credits would be passed back to Americans. Congress, however, has yet to decide what it will do with that money.
Republicans, for their part, insist the costs would be much higher, perhaps as much as several thousand dollars per family. In most of their estimates, they assume that consumers will get no rebates or support at all, which congressional aides say is unlikely.
On the jobs front, Republicans cite estimates from the National Association of Manufacturers, an influential trade association, of between 3 million and 4 million lost jobs. Jackson dismisses the "large doomsday scenarios," saying the White House expects cap-and-trade legislation to create "millions" of jobs, in part by stimulating clean energy manufacturing.
Despite some signs that support for the climate change bill is eroding, not all moderate Democrats are giving up. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown recently argued: "Inaction is not an option."
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Reader Comments
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Now is the time to create new jobs!
The conversation around climate change focuses on jobs for good reason: The United States—particularly the Midwest—stands to gain millions of new jobs if we take action and increase investments in renewable “made in America” energy sources like wind and solar.
The bottom line is we can advance a new clean energy platform that grows the economy and confronts climate change. So says a coalition of Fortune 500 companies, including Caterpillar, G.E., and Dow Chemical.
Check it out: http://www.us-cap.org/
With the right policies and investments, millions of additional jobs can be protected and grown as we create world-leading highly efficient transportation and manufacturing industries and products. These economic opportunities include research positions to develop new technologies and millions of skilled-labor jobs to broadly deploy them. The vast majority of jobs created by clean energy technologies are standard jobs for accountants, engineers, computer analysts, clerks, factory workers, truck drivers, and mechanics.
On the other hand, delaying action on clean energy will only further our dependence on foreign oil. It plays into the hands of the foreign oil countries and oil, gas and coal companies that have too much control over our energy choices. America needs a new energy plan right now to build a clean energy future that revives our economy, reduces our dependency on foreign oil, and protects our planet from global warming.
Humans are part of nature
Like it or not (and apparently environmental extremists along with right wing conservatives do not), humans are classified as animals, are here and since we exist, we have an impact on the environment everywhere we are - good, bad or indifferent. Along with the religious view of global warming, people should consider the historical perspective of human hubris when it comes to "nature". It is now a religion by the way, because it requires utter faith in the IPCC and not any scientific principle, like say, a proven theory ("Case closed, debate is over" is not how science is supposed to work). The name itself implies it: "anthropogenic global warming". It's all about us. We must be at the center of the solar system, and we must be the cause of everything we see around us, it can' possibly be a natural cycle. WORSE yet, we think we can "fix" it. What percentage of those much heralded computer models on the global climate have been validated? Is every single factor that can have an effect on the closed system of global climate accounted for? NO? What percent probability of accuracy are the models? Is the percentage of accuracy less than the temperatures deemed needed to get us to the tipping point? Do they take into account, say CLOUDS, or wildfires? The SUN (cycles)? No. And yet we we think we know what to do? The point is, throughout history humans have decided they know just enough to be able to tweak nature to our liking. The historical record is filled with examples of how these attempts failed. Of course the obvious rebuttal to this is that now we know so much more. Really? In my experience, most things, once peeled open, reveal more about how little we actually know than provide answers to the original question. It's always a matter of guessing when we know just enough to get it right instead of making things worse. I'm sure if you could travel back and ask each one of the experts of their day if they were absolutely certain that introducing one unnatural element into an environment wouldn't have even worse consequences, they would each say yes. Good intentions, and all that. Besides the cost in dollars, doesn't anybody worry that an unintentional side effect of an active attempt to slow or reverse CO2, methane, water vapor, etc., will trigger something more immediate and worse? I've read plenty of reports of plans that were almost tried by groups with such narrow focus, and it took other experts to call them on the catastrophic impact they would cause. Already, evidence is showing that by reducing some particulate emissions, we're increasing the "green house" effect. So we concentrate on the little things we think we can control, which is less than 1% of the total "green house" gases. We could be spending the money on better agricultural methods, feeding the poorer nations, or helping them leap-frog the need to clear cut forests or jungles (oh yeah - to make room to grow "bio-fuels" more cheaply). And on….
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