Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Barbara Boxer is leading a call for the Lieberman-Warner Climate InSecurity Act.  This bill has many challenges, but most serious — the one that would lead me to vote NO! — is the huge amount of permits to pollute given away for free. Can we say $Trillion+ with a Capital T? 

Senator Clinton (to be differentiated with Presidential candidate Hillary) has introduced a number of amendments to the CISA that might actually make it truly a Climate Security Act.  Most importantly is the first that would

eliminate the free allocation of carbon permits to fossil fuel fired electric generators, rural cooperatives, energy intensive manufacturing, petroleum producers or importers, and HFC producers forcing this industries to buy all of these permits in an open auction.  In addition, the amendment eliminates bonus allowances for carbon capture and sequestration.

This would make the Cap and Trade what it should be: a Cap-Auction-Trade. (CAT … or the CAT’s meow, an answer to our Global Warming challenges.)

A massive giveaway of pollution permits would undercut our ability to achieve GHG emissions and would represent a massive additional revenue shift from all Americans to those invested in serial pollution.  Senator Hillary Clinton stands against this and I commend her for it.