Their message was clear and compelling. In fact, this was the best panel I have ever attended on global warming, energy, and the economy. And I have attended a lot of panels. Friedman led off by focusing on five major challenges-energy and natural resources supply and demand, petrodictatorship, climate change, energy poverty, and biodiversity loss-arguing that the good news is that all of the problems can be solved with a clean and efficient Energy Technology (ET) revolution. Not a completely novel point, but the way Friedman delivers the message is unparalleled. One clever turn of phrase after another, yet he manages to do it without seeming too clever. Watch the video here.
John Doerr followed up with real world stories about green tech entrepreneurs who have the potential to transform ET over the next 15 years the same way Silicone Valley entrepreneurs (many with financial backing from Doerr himself) transformed IT over the last 15 years. He then offered a comprehensive set of six policies needed to support the ET revolution:
Read his prepared statement here.
Chairman Boxer and six members of the committee (including new members Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley) engaged in a lively discussion with the panel. The most important question was asked by Senator Tom Udall: Should we start now or should we wait for the economic crisis to abate? Both Friedman and Doerr argued for starting now, both through the economic stimulus bill and by putting a price on carbon to create the needed incentives to put people to work deploying ET at scale. This critical issue is addressed head on and in more detail in a policy brief NRDC released yesterday. The key point is that if a carbon cap is enacted in 2009 the actual emission limits and price on carbon would not kick in for several years. In the meantime the future value of emission allowances can be used as a kind of collateral to mobilize immediate ET investments, putting people back to work now.
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Legislation to cap and reduce global warming pollution didn’t get across the goal line after obstructionist tactics blocked serious consideration of the Climate Security Act, as Frances Beinecke described yesterday. Nonetheless, the process of bringing the Climate Security Act to the U.S. Senate floor advanced the prospects for enacting the federal legislation we need to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
This isn’t obvious from the press coverage or from tuning in on C-SPAN. Most of the week that the Climate Security Act was supposed to be considered by the Senate was chewed up by procedural shenanigans, such as opponents requiring the entire bill to be read into the record (which took nine hours), and by bickering over who is responsible for $4 per gallon gas.
Behind the scenes, however, preparations for Senate floor consideration of the bill caused Senators and their staff to focus on the details of global warming legislation, many for the first time. This not only increased understanding of the legislation, it surfaced the key issues that must be ironed out before a federal climate bill can become law.
A roadmap to these issues can be found in an interesting letter authored by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) and signed by nine other Democrats, mostly from Midwestern states. The letter says that these Senators would require changes to the bill before they could support final passage, and highlights eight issues that need to be addressed, including impacts on the economy, technology funding, and the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. All but one of the Senators signing the letter voted to end the filibuster against the bill so that these issues could be considered in a structured amendment process. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) voted no, citing announcements of plant closings in the last week that could cost Ohio 10,000 jobs.
The irony is that the Climate Security Act has provisions intended to address all of these issues, particularly as modified by the substitute amendment developed by Senators Boxer, Lieberman, and Warner after the original bill cleared the Environment Committee. The Stabenow letter, as well as amendments filed by these and other Senators, shows that the bill’s sponsors and supporters still have a lot of work to do to explain these provisions and address remaining concerns without undermining the legislation’s environmental integrity.Equally important, Patriots must rally to demand decisive action to curb global warming pollution and build a new energy economy that will free us from dependence on oil, so that political leaders are motivated to resolve any outstanding issues, rather than use them as excuses for inaction. We are going to need a great ground game to beat the Oilers and get effective legislation across the goal line.
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