Peter Barnes

At Gristmill, economist Peter Barnes hails the demise of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill as an opportunity to propose his favored alternative:

A revenue-neutral cap would cover all carbon entering the economy, auction all permits, and return the proceeds to every American equally, ideally as monthly dividends.

I agree wholeheartedly that all greenhouse emissions permits should be auctioned, but Barnes is wrong when he advocates that all proceeds should then be cut as rebates (or “dividends”) to American taxpayers. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has found, reserving just 14 percent of all proceeds for direct rebates can fully protect low-income Americans from potential costs. By contrast, Barnes’s cap-and-rebate proposal — which he’s variously sold as “cap-and-recycle,” “cap-and-dividend,” and “Sky Trust” — is founded on the libertarian belief that government shouldn’t be trusted with any money. As he’s written:

If you assume the atmosphere belongs to government, then cap-and-auction is your choice. If you assume the atmosphere is a gift to everyone, then cap-and-recycle follows.

Implicit is the assertion that our government is not representative of the American people — a corrosive, anti-American philosophy. In a slideshow supporting cap-and-rebate, the eminent climate scientist and “middle-of-the-road conservative” James Hansen admitted this anti-government philosophy more bluntly: “keep hands off money!”

Creating the green economy that breaks our addiction to fossil fuels and solves global warming requires investment at all levels of community — local, state, federal, and global. Barnes’s proposal is bad politics and bad policy. Read the Center for American Progress report, Investing in a Green Economy, for a better way.

Another continuation of the “It’s Easy Being Green” series from the Center for American Progress:

Good news: Anyone looking for more environmentally responsible options now has choices. Green alternatives are turning up all over these days–from children’s toys to weddings.

Families concerned with all the reports in the last year of toys tainted with lead paint will be happy to hear there’s a new market for toys that bypass lead and other potentially harmful chemicals completely.

Branch, a San Francisco-based sustainable design company, makes children’s toys out of natural wool and bamboo. Nest and ChildTrek are similar companies offering natural toys made out of wood and other sustainable materials. Sensing the growing consumer demand, even Toys ‘R’ Us has “gone green,” launching a new line of natural wood toys and dolls.

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The Brookings Institution and Google have started a two-day conference on plug-in hybrids elective vehicles you can listen to here. Needless to say for Climate Progress readers, PHEVs are a core climate solution and probably the best way of significantly reducing US oil consumption (see “Plug-in hybrids and electric cars — a core climate solution“).

Lots of great speakers — here is the agenda.

The ten Democratic signatories: Debbie Stabenow & Carl Levin (MI), Mark Pryor & Blanche Lincoln (AR), Evan Bayh (IN), Sherrod Brown (OH), Jay Rockefeller (WV), Jim Webb (VA), Claire McCaskill (MO), and Ben Nelson (NE). Download the letter.

As the New York Times noted today, ten Democratic senators echoed polluters in a letter sent to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) about her filibustered climate change legislation last Friday. The senators, nine of whom supported cloture to end debate and vote on amendments, wrote, “We commend your leadership in attempting to address one of the most significant threats to this and future generations; however, we cannot support final passage of the Boxer Substitute in its final form.” Their letter continues:

To that point we have laid out the following principles and concerns that must be considered and fully addressed in any final legislation.

The senators’ letter uses practically the same talking points and specific policy demands as the industry polluters who fought to kill the legislation, in particular the industry lobbying groups American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). A review of the letter reveals the Boxer substitute (S. Amdt. 4825 to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, S. 3036) already made concessions to these parochial and fossil-industry demands:

Polluter Talking Point #1: “Contain Costs and Prevent Harm to the U.S. Economy.” Read more

If you answered, “Fox News, anchor Shep Smith,” you win!

The context is even better. Smith was reporting on the story of “31-year-old Shannon P. Hunter of Lebanon. He was drunk, naked and wedged up to his waist in the hole of the toilet.”

Smith compared “people who get stuck in toilets” to “People who deny the whole global warming thing. They’re just a little crazy.”

When even Fox News compares you to drunk people who get stuck in toilets, it may be time to re-examine your belief system.

The debate over the Climate Security Act bill has made that clear trillions are at stake in global warming legislation. No surprise, then, that the Senate powerbrokers don’t want Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) Environment and Public Works committee to have the only say on who gets what.

E&E Daily (subs. req’d) has the story of how the climate bill is likely to have a much longer and far more tangled journey next year:

Next year’s Senate climate debate is shaping up to be much different than the one that played out over the last 18 months as powerful committee chairmen express interest in vetting critical pieces of the controversial legislation.

Consider Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who said he will not close the door next year on writing the new climate bill section that deals with the distribution of trillions of dollars in auction and allowance revenue.

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