Capping Carbon Emissions: Obama’s Latest Intent
Posted June 30, 2010 at 3:31 pm 
Filed in: The debate over the transformation of America’s energy economy was further spiced up as a result of BP’s ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday afternoon President Obama hosted a meeting with a bipartisan group of Senators, urging them to agree on a comprehensive energy and climate bill to aggressively limit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. The President emphatically expressed that pricing pollution not only makes companies responsible for the costs they impose on the environment, but also sets a smoother transition towards a clean energy economy by making clean energy more profitable for America’s businesses.
Even though there was a consensus on the urgency to pass new energy legislation, not all the Senators agreed with this approach. Thus, while Obama remained ardent about the need to put a price on carbon, he encouraged legislators to find the best way to achieve it and welcomed any other ideas that would set us in the right direction to reduce our dependence on oil, strengthen our national security, create jobs, and diminish environmental damages.
In mid-May, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) proposed a draft bill to cap greenhouse gases across the entire economy, which did not have the votes to pass. However, at yesterday’s meeting they explained that they would be willing to compromise and scale it down, as this might be the only way forward.
Among the Republicans, only Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Susan Collins (Maine) support mandatory caps on carbon emissions – potentially proving pivotal in the event of a vote. Yesterday, Snowe expressed her support for a more limited bill aiming only to make electric utilities pay fees for releasing carbon dioxide.
Snowe’s proposal seems reasonable, as electric utilities account for about 40 percent of the emissions from U.S. energy use. Other individual sectors account for much less, and are more atomized, making the implementation of the wider cap far more complex. Additionally, while an economy-wide approach to carbon reduction would curtail an already weak economic growth outlook, a focused cap-and-trade program could diminish such effects by exempting businesses from more stringent greenhouse gas limits, though these could be imposed later in time by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). However, even if Sen. Snowe’s approach could build some bipartisan consensus, some remain skeptical about its possibilities of success, even among those who otherwise would be willing to support it.
On the one hand, some moderate Democrats, like the Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), note that in states like hers, with many low income consumers, this could be prejudicial as the final effects of utility caps system on electricity prices have not been properly studied. Also, environmental groups claim this will not produce great environmental improvements (if at all).
On the other hand, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) doubts the utility-only proposal can pass, given competing interests and the limited time before the November elections. “Somebody’s got to produce a proposal the utilities can agree to, a chance to look at it, and the environmental community would have to sign off on it,” Graham said, though this is unlikely to happen given such a limited time frame.
President Obama’s petitions aimed to: 1) reduce our dependence on oil, 2) strengthen our national security, 3) create jobs and economic growth, and 4) diminish environmental damages. Proposals like capping greenhouse gases solely from the utility sector might not in fact address concerns regarding any of the first three topics, and without promoting economic growth, environmental protection is simply not a politically feasible option.
Our experiences to date, and this year in particular have shown that an environment-only approach, while very important, is unlikely to find sufficient political momentum. A dose of realism is required. An approach like this ought to be combined with a strong commitment to investing the funds raised in more efficient, clean energy alternatives (helping us meet goals 1-3 listed above).
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