By Marianne Lavelle, Climate Change News
The nation’s first comprehensive climate law, sealed with a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday, will not look anything like the program imagined by either climate economists or those in Washington and the environmental movement who had faith in bipartisan action.
From the time that the world first agreed to act on climate change 30 years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, environmentalists talked about putting a “price” on carbon as a core element of any strategy for reducing fossil fuel pollution that was heating the planet.
Whether imposed by tax, fee, or cap-and-trade system—such a price would discourage carbon-based fuel pollution and encourage investment in and deployment of clean alternatives, said advocates of the idea. And because such a scheme would rely on the market, rather than government mandates, to decide the best approach to decarbonize, proponents argued it was an idea both Democrats and Republicans could get behind.
Instead, Democrats are advancing their climate bill with no Republican support, and their program is one of carrots, not sticks. The idea is that an unprecedented $370 billion federal investment in clean energy—largely in the form of tax credits to encourage its development, as opposed to taxes on carbon to discourage the use of fossil fuels—will be the push that transforms not only the economy but the politics of climate change.
Related environmental and energy news:
What’s in the Democrats’ Climate and Health Bill (NY Times)
Political shifts that produced the climate bill’s passage (Washington Post)
“I’ve always thought that this gives us a chance to get the greatest possible emission reductions and the largest savings possible and still get the votes,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who shepherded through the tax credits at the heart of the Democrats’ climate plan.
The decision that the United States would spend rather than tax its way to a more sustainable future was in large part driven by political reality—Democrats had to win over the vote of a staunch fossil fuel industry supporter in their own party, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who opposed carbon taxes. But the plan also was influenced by a new generation of climate policy thinkers who argued that lawmakers had spent too much time listening to the economists, and as a result, had played into the hands of the powerful foes of climate action.
Previous climate proposals in Washington focused first on costs, not benefits. That made it easy for the fossil fuel industry and its allies to defeat the Clinton administration’s BTU tax proposal and the cap-and-trade plan that died in Congress under President Barack Obama, whereby carbon emissions would have been capped and polluting industries could have purchased credits from non-polluters.
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