Climate Change Drafts By Congress

The Green New Deal proposed by Congress has gained a massive spotlight, excites climate change activists with the goals proposed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, create jobs, and promote justice and equity. However, Representative Don Beyer and other Democrats of Coalition’s Climate Change Task Force agree the more effective way, including market and business approach, in order to deal with climate change and the baseless resolution is highly elaborate. The Green New Deal “is incredibly ambitious,” Beyer said at a briefing for reporters on 14 March in Washington, D.C. “It really did change the conversation”—about climate change—“in a really important way. And it created space for us, I think, as New Dems, to talk about market-based innovation, investment, business approaches, defense approaches. So I think we have to be grateful for it even if we can’t sign on to every piece of it.” The affiliate of the union “are looking for practical, actionable solutions, and solutions that we can do in a bipartisan way,” Beyer said. “One of the challenges with the Green New Deal is it is so aspirational that the thought of it somehow passing the Senate and being signed by this president makes no sense at all.” Beyer refers to the fact that despite the fact the Democrats control the house, the Republicans have the Senate, and Donald Trump states that his intention is to withdraw the US from the 2016 Paris climate accord and is unlikely to accept the deal of the Green New Deal. Beyer speaks about climate change efforts with the task force co-chairs Reps. such as Sean Casten (D-I11), Elaine Lria (D-Va), and Susan Wild (D-Pa).The new Democratic coalition includes about 100 democratic house members who agree with pro-economic growth, pro-innovation, and fiscally responsible policies. The new Democratic Coalitions Climate Change Task Force currently consists of only 13 democratic house republicans. They announced that climate change is “ an existential threat”  down to health, national security, economic prosperity, and even to the future of our planet and mankind. The statement tells us that the best way to reach the targets of the Paris climate is to use a variety of different gadgets and solutions developing renewable and clean energy. “We will seek to eliminate barriers to growth for pro-climate businesses, support market-based mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, eliminate clean energy inequities in federal policy, boost resilience, energy innovation, and technologies that address climate change, and promote policies that advance energy efficiency as well as help foster business practices that eliminate energy waste,” the statement reads. “The Green New Deal is a political document,” Casten says at the briefing. Different house and Senate versions of the resolution were introduced in February by rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). “If we all passed it tomorrow, it wouldn’t make a lick of difference,” he said. “I think it’s terrific that it has galvanized the conversation and made this urgent because let’s be honest, we have done far too little relative to the scale of this problem. If the activism around the Green New Deal causes us to act, that is fantastic,” Casten said. “You still have to figure out how to actually get there.” Members of the task force tell us that they have ideas about how to get there and how to add to the growing conversations in Congress about climate change. That conversation includes the Green New Deal resolutions were introduced in February, as well as a number of congressional hearings and the formation by house speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of the select committee on the Climate Crisis. House members at the briefing stated that they supported a number of rational captions to act on climate change but that the task force itself has not yet out any statements justifying specific measures. “We want to be picking goals rather than specific technologies,” Beyer said, adding that he is supportive of these efforts “where we are using market forces to reduce the amount of carbon that we have.” Beyer says that he supports of carbon pricing and he is also “a big fan” of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) measures to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) from smokestacks and even from the air. Casten, further, spoke out for CCUS. “From a scientific perspective, what I find truly scary [is] we may well be out of time. And we haven’t quite dealt with that,” he said, adding, “If that is the case, we don’t have a choice but to also be more aggressive about taking [CO2] out of the atmosphere.” Yet, Casten said he also agrees with other ways to try and reduce CO₂, which includes a cap-and-trade system to cap emissions and set up a market to trade emission allowance. In addition, he supports removing little regulator barriers and improving incentives for companies to invest in environmental technologies. Some of these measures could be win-win solutions no matter where people are on the political spectrum, Casten said. “If you deny climate change is real if you think that we are actually better off on a hot planet, but you’re greedy, we’re going to work together,” Casten noted happily. He said that investing in some environmental technologies could be profitable, lower costs, and even help reverse greenhouse gas emissions. “Keep your tinfoil hat on. It’s fun. Let’s just focus on lowering the cost of energy and we’ll get to a good place.” He added, “If there are a few people who are still stuck in the Jurassic era, as long as there are less than 50 of them in the Senate, we can find a way forward.” Rep. Luria stated that nuclear power, which gives us about 20% of our total electrical output, is carbon friendly and should be considered as part of the energy mix future. She said, however, that there are economic difficulties with nuclear power, including the giant expense of building nuclear power plants and the current low cost of natural gas. Luria, who represents a part of coastal Virginia that has major military installations, also said she is worried about the effects of climate change on these facilities and on other national defense issues such as the climate-related displacement of people, which could possibly drive potential conflicts in the world. Rep. Wild said that she, like other task force co-chairs, favors the market proposal that deal with climate change and make good economic sense. However, she added that although the appeal to climate change may differ among Democrats, they all have common goals. “There is not a member of the Democratic Caucus who is not seriously, seriously concerned about climate change,” she said. “We have no interest in slowing the process down by any means. If anything, we want to expedite the solution process.”

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