Fmr. VP Al Gore Testifies in Hearings Related to Landmark Emissions Legislation
Related subjects: Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Economy, Energy Supply, Environment & Ecology, J.E. Robertson, Legislation, Obama administration, Renewable Resources, Sustainable Development, U.S. Environment, U.S. Law, U.S. Politics Comments (4)
Former US vice president Al Gore testified Friday in Congressional hearings on the subject of global climate destabilization. The hearings were linked to new legislation being considered that would establish regulatory measures that seek to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Gore said the legislation would serve to protect the environment, as well as national security, and urged unity in the interests of the country and the world.
The anti-emissions legislation is part of a recent flurry of efforts to move the US toward a sustainable energy economy based on combustion-free renewable resources. The Obama administration, as promised during the campaign, has taken up the position that views the gravity of accelerating global climate destabilization as a “wartime-speed” phenomenon, requiring massive reforms to prevent major economic and public health fallout.
Al Gore echoed that sentiment, increasingly common among climate scientists, saying that 2009 amounts to the Gettysburg for efforts to protect the natural environment. The last two years have seen top climate scientists at NASA, the UN and various US agencies, reporting that evidence of severe climate destabilization is not only surfacing everywhere on the planet, but at far faster rates than expected just a few years ago.
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The Republican party chose to offer former House speaker Newt Gingrich as their pointman for debate with Gore on the climate issue, but Gingrich who admits to not studying climate science closely and proudly announced he only read 200 pages of the 648 page bill being discussed, was relegated to an epilogue comment. Gore and Republican senator John Warner, who agrees that action needs to be taken to avert the security impact of climate destabilization, debated the legislation during the hearings.
Astonishingly, Gingrich sought to paint the climate bill as “an energy tax” and proposed that a new round of business-oriented tax cuts was all that was needed to fix the environmental problem. His presence essentially hardened the Republican party’s position that protecting the environment is a partisan issue, which they intend to use to paint the Democrats as “socialists”. Gore pleaded “I wish I could find the words to get past the partisan divide”, saying that responsible climate legislation “should be something we do together in our national interest”.
The Republican party, long diametrically opposed to action to protect the natural environment, due to its funding ties to businesses that pollute heavily or emit large amounts of carbon dioxide, risks its political future ignoring the position of over 90% of the American people, who support legislation and regulations to protect the environment and public health. Conservative Democrats are clearly showing signs of intimidation on the tax or antibusiness charge.
Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are negotiating among themselves on whether to scale back legislation that would impose a mandatory limit on greenhouse gases, with some conservatives and moderates calling for electric utilities to be given free pollution allowances and for more modest cuts in the targets for reducing emissions.
Some Democrats whose districts depend heavily on polluting enterprises, like coal-fired power plants, are proposing less strict limits on emissions. The Post reports the specifics of the competing emissions targets:
The Waxman-Markey bill calls for cutting U.S. emissions to 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and to 83 percent below by 2050; the Boucher proposal would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent by 2020 while leaving the 2050 goal in place.
20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is, in light of the climate science now available, extremely slow progress. Efforts to reduce emissions cuts still further (especially considering the coal industry’s claims of revolutionary new “clean coal” technology — as yet unproven) are grossly irresponsible by any scientific examination of the evidence. The Repower America movement, backed by Gore, is calling for a complete shift to renewables within 10 years, a reachable goal if investment moves toward renewables and carbon-based fuels are no longer subsidized.
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