Putting a price on carbon

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our or .

| Sourced From |

A MAJOR STEP in slowing global warming could occur today if the US House of Representatives approves the climate change bill before it. Although the bill limits greenhouse gas emissions far more loosely than Barack Obama called for in his presidential campaign, it would at least set the United States on a course to join other nations in curbing global warming. Defeat of the bill would leave US negotiators with empty hands in December talks for a new international treaty on climate change.

Just to get the measure this far has required substantial giveaways to such polluters as coal-burning utilities and oil refineries. In the campaign, Obama called for capping greenhouse emissions and then auctioning off all the allowances for continued pollution within the cap. In his budget in January, Obama repeated this stance and called for the proceeds from auction sales to be cycled back to a middle-class tax cut.

But to win support from congressmen representing districts most affected by the cap, bill sponsors such as Representative Edward Markey had to hand out allowances to polluting industries for free in the early years of the cap-and-trade system.

Still, the bill has strong provisions requiring electric utilities to develop renewable resources and reduce their customers’ wasteful use of power. It would establish standards requiring new buildings to be 30 percent more efficient by 2012 and 50 percent more efficient by 2016. To reduce the emissions from coal-burning utilities, which account for 50 percent of all US electricity, the bill sets aside $1 billion for development of methods for capturing and storing power plants’ carbon dioxide.

Even with the shortcomings of the bill’s cap and trade system, it would result by 2020 in a 17 percent reduction of greenhouse gases from 2005 levels. The reduction would be 83 percent by 2050.

Big Oil and other industries, dissatisfied with compromises made in their favor, have lobbied against the bill, saying it would greatly increase costs for consumers. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, if all of the provisions of the bill envisioned for 2020 were in place next year, it would cost the average household just $175 a year. The CBO estimates that low-income households would suffer no loss at all.

If the House does approve the bill today, Senate leaders have said they would use it as the basis for their own climate-change legislation. Senators should seek ways to strengthen its provisions by limiting pollution-allowance giveaways and requiring utilities to rely even more on renewables and efficiency gains. Newly industrialized nations such as China and India will not limit their own greenhouse emissions if the United States does so half-heartedly.