Cross-posted from Daily Kos.
The past few months the political debate inside and outside the beltway has largely been centered on health care reform, but I wanted to take a moment and turn the discussion to the big battle looming on the horizon.
Congress is gearing up to take on another critical challenge we’re facing; transforming our energy economy and addressing the grave threat of climate change. As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I’ve been working with my Senate colleagues to craft a bill that will create clean energy jobs, reduce air pollution and liberate our country from depending on dirty coal and foreign oil.
The House passed an energy bill earlier this year and we in the Senate are building on those efforts. The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, introduced by Sens. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Boxer (D-Calif.), will significantly invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies such as wind, solar, and biomass as well as invest in public transportation. These investments are critical if we want to strengthen America’s energy independence, reduce harmful air pollution and create clean energy jobs in local communities.
Specifically, the Kerry-Boxer bill will stimulate even more investment in clean energy by creating a pollution reduction and investment program that would go beyond what the House proposed, to cut pollution 20 percent by 2020. And the bill will go even further to strengthen national security and reduce oil dependence with a plan to help cities and states plan for cleaner and more efficient transportation infrastructure, like public transit systems.
In Sen. Boxer’s chairman’s mark of the bill, we continue this approach, by increasing direct investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency and creating new direct investment in public transportation and other transportation infrastructure that reduces oil dependence and global warming pollution. We also create an incentive program for forest and agriculture land-owners to undertake projects that reduce emissions beyond that achieved by the pollution reduction program and offsets under the bill.
I should add that after this bill passes out of the Environment and Public Works committee, it will be joined with provisions to create a national Renewable Electricity Standard. I am determined to make that provision better than what has been proposed to date.
All of the things I mentioned in the bill add up to a major change in our nation’s energy policy. They put us on a path to building industries and creating clean energy job, weaning our nation from foreign oil, and reducing pollution in order to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming.
As we continue on a path forward to fight climate change and invest in innovative technologies, we will constantly be challenged by the influential fossil fuel interests. Just like we’re witnessing with efforts to reform health care—there are powerful lobbyists doing everything in their power to water down and block effective climate change legislation.
We cannot let them control the message in the media and we cannot let them control our future. I will do everything in my power to speak out and explain to my colleagues that as much as the special interests try to portray this issue as complicated and confusing, we face a clear and simple choice.
It’s a choice between clean air or dirty air.
It’s a choice between creating jobs here in America or shipping those jobs overseas.
It’s a choice between strengthening our national security or remaining addicted to foreign oil.
I know you all have lives to lead—children and parents to care for—deadlines to meet—and I can’t thank you enough for speaking out, organizing together and pressuring your Sens. and Representatives. I know many of you have spent countless hours fighting for health care reform, but I hope you’ll find the energy to join me and shine a light on the choice Congress has when it comes to passing climate change legislation. Your activism and passion is truly appreciated and I know we’ll need you once again to tackle this enormous challenge.
Obama administration officials grateful for early spring
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sunflower Posted 6:54 am
27 Oct 2009
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foodprovider Posted 9:17 am
27 Oct 2009
* New fuels seen emitting more CO2 than gasoline to 2030
* Advanced fuels to lead to deforestation to create farms
By Gerard Wynn and Timothy Gardner
LONDON/WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - A new generation of
biofuels, meant to be a low-carbon alternative, will on average
emit more carbon dioxide than burning gasoline over the next
few decades, a study published in Science found on Thursday.
Governments and companies are pouring billions of research
dollars into advanced fuels made from wood and grass, meant to
cut carbon emissions compared with gasoline, and not compete
with food as corn-based biofuels do now.
But such advanced, "cellulosic" biofuels will actually lead
to higher carbon emissions than gasoline per unit of energy,
averaged over the 2000-2030 time period, the study found.
That is because the land required to plant fast-growing
poplar trees and tropical grasses would displace food crops,
and so drive deforestation to create more farmland, a powerful
source of carbon emissions.
Biofuel crops also require nitrogen fertilizers, a source
of two greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2) and the more
powerful nitrous oxide.
"In the near-term I think, irrespective of how you go about
the cellulosic biofuels program, you're going to have
greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating the climate change
problem," said lead author, Jerry Melillo, from the U.S. Marine
Biological Laboratory.
U.S. ethanol industry group the Renewable Fuels Association
said biofuels are by definition emissions neutral because their
tailpipe carbon output is absorbed by growing plants.
Without steps to protect forests and cut fertilizer use,
gasoline out-performs biofuels from 2000-2050 as well.
The paper did not mean cellulosic biofuels had no place.
"It is not an obvious and easy win without thinking very
carefully about the problem," said Melillo. "We have to think
very carefully about both short and long-term consequences."
A related study, also published in the journal Science on
Thursday, said the United Nations had exaggerated carbon
savings from biofuels and biomass, in a mistake copied by the
European Union in its cap and trade law, by ignoring
deforestation and other land use changes.
The mistake was carried into U.S. climate legislation as
well, and would worsen as governments put a price on carbon,
driving more biofuel use, it said.
FOOD
"There will be increasing pressure to convert the biomass
of the world into an energy source," said Steve Hamburg, chief
scientist at green group the Environmental Defense Fund and
co-author of the second Science paper.
"Then it competes with agriculture, water protection,
biodiversity, a whole host of things, and that doesn't provide
benefits to the atmosphere," he told Reuters.
It was also important to take account of how the land had
been managed before it was grown with biofuels, said Hamburg. A
previous farming practice may have been better for the planet,
he said, underlining the complexity of calculating benefits.
Advocates hope that forthcoming talks to agree a new global
climate deal in Copenhagen in December will protect forests, by
rewarding land owners to store carbon in their trees.
The first paper did not explicitly consider the food
production impact of ramping up advanced biofuels. The U.N.'s
food agency says that global food output will have to increase
70 percent by 2050 to feed a growing, more affluent
population.
The world's forests, rather than farmland, would have to
make way for biofuels which would consume by 2100 more land
than all food crops now, the first study found.
"We think there is space on earth for both food crops and
the biofuels but there are consequences of using that space,"
in lost forest, Melillo said. "You've got to lose something."
(Writing by Gerard Wynn; Editing by Anthony Barker)
(For Reuters latest environment blogs click on:
http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/)
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katakanadian Posted 11:53 pm
28 Oct 2009
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