Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish — Doing Better on Climate Change

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The Boxer-Lieberman-Warner (S 2191) cap-and-trade bill died a death Friday when it couldn’t get past a Republican filibuster.The bill would have created a carbon cap and trade emissions market that would have required power plants, refineries and factories to pay for the privileges of polluting the environment and contributing to global warming. This bill aims to cap and reduce emissions roughly 19 percent below today’s levels by 2020 and 70 percent by 2050.

But this bill has many fatal flaws including:

  • Pollution reduction goals that don’t go far enough. The current best science (as detailed in the IPCC) would require a reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by covered sectors by 85 percent by 2050. (This reduction is to keep temperatures from rising another 3.5 degrees) The Senate legislation does not achieve all the reductions that will likely be needed, and certainly as fast as climate change science is evolving, it seems reasonable to expect the ability to accommodate quicker or greater reductions in the future.