PROMINENT CLIMATE SCIENTIST JAMES HANSEN ENDORSES CLIMATE SOS CAMPAIGN

Prominent climate scientist James Hansen, who has called cap-and-trade schemes a “Temple of Doom”, has personally endorsed our Climate SOS campaign to kill a cap-and-trade bill in the United States Senate.

Occupying offices of key senators and Nonviolent Civil Disobedience will be among peaceful tactics used by our group.

Climate SOS will kick off our national “Green Bill or No Bill” tour on September 8 in Bismarck, North Dakota. “Days of Occupation” on the West Coast and the East Coast will be triggered by other Midwest tour stops in Indianapolis (September 11), Little Rock, Arkansas (September 15 and Lincoln, Nebraska (September 18).

“People of conscience simply can no longer stand by and allow U.S. policy makers to engage in endless delay and compromise”, said Rachel Smolker of Biofuelwatch and a Climate SOS leader. “If we do not do what is needed to drastically slow the global warming process, we will be faced with millions of deaths (and) mass extinctions.”

Hansen has said cap-and-trade would “do more harm to the environment than doing nothing at all.”

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a cap-and-trade bill in June. President Obama has pledged to sign into law cap-and-trade legislation approved by the Senate and the House.

The Climate SOS tour will target states where US Senators are “on the fence,” in North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas, Nebraska, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The Climate SOS tour will also touch down in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Oregon, and Washington.

Climate SOS supports the filibuster strategy adopted by Democratic opponents of the cap-and-trade bill. The filibuster seeks to prevent the cap-and-trade bill from coming to a vote on the floor of the Senate. Killing the bill in committee or stopping it before a full Senate vote are tactics endorsed by Climate SOS. Occupying offices of fence-sitting senators and Nonviolent Civil Disobedience support these strategies.

Climate SOS aggressively opposes any of these provisions in the Senate bill that were included in the recently passed House cap-and-trade bill:

• The bill’s atmospheric carbon target of 450 ppm is too high. Hansen’s 2008 study established 300-350ppm as necessary targets to avoid climate “cataclysm”.

• Cap and trade, as a scheme for reducing emissions, will be ineffective and rife with problems.

• Carbon offsets are not an acceptable substitute for the direct reduction of pollution.

• The EPA must be authorized to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the bill.

• Incineration technologies should not be categorized as “renewable”.

• Carbon-accounting loopholes specific to wood and trash biomass burning must be closed.

• Forest protection provisions must include protection of water, resource and human rights for forest-dwellers and local populations plus habitat preservation for all species.

• Power from coal-burning plants must be quickly phased out instead of expanded.

• All biofuels regulation must remain with the EPA.
• Indirect land use change must be restored as a determinant in Renewable Fuel Standard calculations.

One Response to “PROMINENT CLIMATE SCIENTIST JAMES HANSEN ENDORSES CLIMATE SOS CAMPAIGN”

1. “Extremists” at SOS shake things up on GRIST | Climate SOS says:

   October 4, 2009 at 12:01 pm

   [...] endorsed Climate SOS’s recent tour against a climate bill. The $2 trillion bill includes his statement that a cap-and-trade program “would be worse for the environment than doing [...]

   Reply