House Democrats hold the line on climate bill

Source: NY Times

House Democrats defeated a series of Republican "benchmark" amendments aimed at halting a future U.S. global warming law during a 14-hour, politically charged Energy and Commerce Committee markup yesterday.

The GOP amendments took on a familiar theme by proposing the law's sunset should the measure lead to significant job losses, higher gas prices and electricity rates, or a lack of corresponding action from China and India.

While the Republicans lost each of their amendments, they did their best to gain political traction with each vote. Minutes after each roll call on amendments to H.R. 2454 (pdf), the House GOP's campaign operation blasted reporters' inboxes with press releases pinpointing Democrats who voted against their amendments.

"$5 gasoline apparently not too much for Energy and Commerce Dems," was the headline of one National Republican Congressional Committee press release that spotlighted the votes of nine House Democrats.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/05/20/20climatewire-14-hours-later-house-democrats-hold-the-line-12208.html

---

I wonder if the House Dems could loan the ones in the Senate their spine?

n/t

Thanks for the thread, SpartanDem.

Does your post update this?

Unfortunately, we simply can't support this bill in its current state. Here are a few of the reasons why:

The bill calls for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by less than 4-7 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Even with supplemental reductions elsewhere in the bill, that's way short of the 25-40 percent cuts that leading scientists call for.
The biggest polluters would receive hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies. This is unacceptable. Taxpayers should not foot the bill for dirty industries hoping to continue business as usual.
Given all of the carbon "offsets" that the bill offers to dirty industries, they could avoid reducing their greenhouse gas emissions for more than a decade. By that time, it could be too late to stop the worst impacts of global warming.
A new generation of dirty coal-fired power plants will be supported through some $10 billion in ratepayer subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration (or CCS) - an unproven technology that doesn't even exist yet.
The bill sets a renewable electricity standard that would achieve less than states are likely to accomplish on their own.
All together, this bill simply does not do what the science says is necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming and to rescue the climate. And for us here at Greenpeace, that has always been the bottom line.

And it sets up the real possibility of a new financial bubble for investment instruments based on carbon offsets.