“The revised Waxman-Markey climate bill is too watered down to qualify as a positive step for avoiding catastrophic climate disruption,” said Dr. James Hansen, leading climate scientist and prominent advocate of a revenue-neutral carbon tax to curb climate change....

Clinton Administration Undersecretary of Commerce Robert Shapiro, who heads the U.S. Climate Task Force, recently wrote that after the Wall Street meltdown, carbon trading looks like a “dead policy walking.” Both Hansen and Shapiro have urged policymakers to support a simpler and more transparent alternative of setting prices through a carbon tax which would increase gradually and whose revenues would be recycled back to taxpayers. This would raise carbon prices in an orderly, predictable way without subjecting consumers to price volatility and without delivering windfall profits to companies receiving free allowances or fueling speculative trading on secondary markets.

“Predictably raising the price of carbon-based fuels is essential to promote investment in low-carbon renewable energy and efficiency,” said Charles Komanoff, economist and co-director of the Carbon Tax Center. Komanoff suggested that “We will need a range of policies to avert climate disaster, but without clear, orderly price signals, there simply is no hope of creating the economy-wide incentives we need to become a low-carbon economy.”

“There is a time to compromise -- to accept the best that you are likely to get. This is not one of those times,” said Tom Stokes, coordinator of the Climate Crisis Coalition. “We understand the need to get behind an effective climate bill.  Dr. Hansen's scientific findings are serious and compelling. Waxman-Markey doesn't comes close to addressing the dire challenge we all face.  As a model for effective and fair climate legislation, we urge the Energy and Commerce Committee to take a hard look at Rep. John Larson’s carbon tax bill, America's Energy Security Trust Fund Act of 2009 (H.R. 1337).  Larson's bill combines aggressive goals, quick implementation, predictable carbon fees and an equitable recycling of the revenues back to the people."

More at http://www.carbontax.org and http://www.pricecarbon.org

The battle is not on the playing field. It is in the parking lot.  We need to prepare to take what piece of shit we get from Washington, and then work to use and abuse it to make real change for climate justice.  You better believe that the forces of darkness have already cooked up a few dozen initiatives that they will launch, to bend things their way if the legislation passes. 

We really need to get a lot more sophisticated and devious in how we approach taking on issues like this. I think the generation of reactionary rule we have just emerged from made us stupid.  We have to learn to work on a lot of different levels, with a lot of different strategies, all operating at the same time.  A hell of a juggling act, but one we have to become adept at if we are to save the planet and our butts.

Randy Cunningham, Cleveland OH