Our guest blogger is Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA).

During the markup of the Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation (H.R. 2454) on Wednesday, I offered an amendment to improve energy efficiency by encouraging the planting of shade trees to fight global warming, save electricity, and clean the air. My amendment was challenged by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who mentioned that her mother, a long-time garden club member, “received the Keep America Beautiful lifetime achievement award in 1997 for the work that she has done.” The gentlelady from Tennessee asked me whether my program would hurt not-for-profit organizations in the name of fighting global warming:

So, in addition to the U.S. Forest Service carrying out some of this good work, we have garden clubs all around the country. We have Boy Scout and Girl Scout clubs that work on Arbor Days, planting trees. So is it the gentlelady’s intent that all of these organizations will be able to draw down this one-dollar-for-dollar match? Would they use that to grow their programs or would this have the unintended consequence of doing away with the corporate contributions that they receive, the charitable contributions they receive in order to help carry out those programs?

Watch it:

In reality, my amendment establishes a competitive matching grant program for retail power providers to support new and existing tree-planting programs by non-profit organizations — like garden clubs, the Boy Scouts, and Keep America Beautiful. Matching grant programs, which require that federal monies be matched dollar-for-dollar by private donations, actually encourage charitable corporate contributions. I expressed to my colleagues that Congress should set standards for the utilities to ensure the money is well spent and energy efficiency is prioritized.

Rep. Blackburn further argued that this amendment would start “diminishing the work they have done while we say global warming and fighting global warming and paying umbrage to global warming is the objective of the legislation we’re bringing forward.” Fighting what the Garden Club of America calls the “serious reality of global warming” requires everyone to work together – from members of Congress to members of 4-H. Which is why the Garden Club supports “federal, state and local legislation as well as individual initiatives to control greenhouse gases,” and why I offered this amendment.

I believe my fellow California Democrat, committee chair Henry Waxman put it best when he explained to Rep. Blackburn:

I would be interested in whether you think that faith-based initiatives have harmed the religious and volunteer groups that were doing great things in the community, running drug abuse programs, and other things that — where they served a very worthwhile purpose and the government wanted them — to have them do the work and that set of government agencies to do it. So I show you a different aspect of it. I hear what you’re saying and I wouldn’t want those nonprofit groups to be pushed out of the way at all. But I think this would expand it. We would have more opportunities for people to do things together.

The legislation we passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday night is an achievement for the American people, our planet, and for future generations. Once this legislation is signed into law, our children and grandchildren will live in a country that is more sustainable, more economically viable, and more efficient than the country we live in today. And for my hometown of Sacramento, this bill is more than an achievement; it is a necessity.

I’m proud to support President Obama’s challenge to all Americans to work together to repower America and save our planet. Big problems require big solutions, but this one can start with the simple planting of additional trees in our communities.

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Last week House Energy and Commerce members approved by 51-6 an amendment to the Waxman-Markey bill offered by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) to create a clean energy bank .  As Greenwire explained, the amendment would “create an autonomous Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) within the Energy Department” that would “provide a suite of financing options, including direct loans, letters of credit, loan guarantees, insurance products and others” for “energy production, transmission, storage and other areas that could reduce greenhouse gases, diversify energy supplies and save energy.”  CEDA must adopt a “portfolio investment approach” and “ensure no particular technology receives more than 30 percent of the total funding available.”  John Podesta and Karen Kornbluh explain why we need a clean energy bank in a post first published here.  The picture is of a worker makes adjustings before a section of a wind turbine is put into place at Energy Northwest’s Nine Canyon Wind Project near Finley, WA, the kind of clean energy project the bank could help accelerate.

The United States is falling behind in the space race of our generation””building long-term economic prosperity powered by low-carbon energy. China’s stimulus package invests $12.6 million every hour in greening its economy, for a total of $220 billion, twice as much as similar U.S. investments. Meanwhile, during the most recent economic expansion the average American family paid more than $1,100 a year in rising energy bills for U.S. policies that favor fossil fuels.

The choice is clear: continue with more of the same energy policies or transition to a clean-energy economy that creates millions of good jobs here in the United States and moves us off our dependence on foreign oil.

The creation of a new Green Bank could lead to the steady and reliable creation of clean-energy jobs and would be a crucial element of the transition to a clean-energy economy.

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