TOUR DAY SEVEN

We met with Richard Lugar’s State Director and Deputy State Director. “Mark,” a senior Lugar staffer from D.C., joined us on speaker phone. Mark told us that Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas has said publicly that “there will be no climate bill in 2009.” Mark said the health care bill had jammed the senate schedule leaving little time for climate legislation.

We talked coal power and wind power and local opposition to biomass in southern Indiana. Lugar’s staff emphasized their “Lugar Energy Initiative” that pushed biofuels and biomass, among other forms of energy. We presented the details of how non-sustainable biomass is. I let biofuels–my specialty–slide as too hard a sell.

We stressed 300-350ppm of atmospheric CO2 as the target science has established as the level beyond which climate disaster looms. We told them SOS would oppose any climate bill that kept 450ppm as its target.

We also stressed our opposition to cap-and-trade as a mechanism for addressing carbon emissions. I quoted Jim Hansen’s opposition to cap-and-trade.

We presented Jim Hansen’s CAP-AND-DIVIDEND carbon tax proposal.