Climate SOS, a coalition of scientists and activists who support science- and environmental justice-based climate legislation, today characterized the draft Senate bill, called the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” which was introduced on Wednesday by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) as an “irresponsible non-solution.”

They maintain that any bill that embraces cap and trade, offsets, outrageously inadequate emission reduction targets, and counter-solutions such as biomass burning, nuclear power and more coal fired power plants (under the guise of partial carbon capture technology that is as yet unavailable) will fail to meet its stated goal of forestalling catastrophic climate change.

Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Citizens Climate Lobby, Center for Biological Diversity and others have also rejected the Senate bill for its lack of grounding in science and its failure to consider global environmental justice concerns.

Maggie Zhou, a Climate SOS organizer, and project coordinator with the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, said “Cap and trade is the worst choice for pricing carbon. It is proven ineffective even in its best incarnations, is influence-prone, creates a huge, risky, game-able carbon market that is extremely complex, subject to manipulations, whose likely bubble-bust will overshadow the mortgage or the dot com bubble.  While cap and trade is the scheme of choice for polluters and Wall Street executives, a revenue-neutral carbon tax-and-dividend program would be much more straightforward, equitable, less prone to fraud and gaming, and would compensate people, not corporations, for the costs of pricing carbon.” She added “The US forced cap and trade into the Kyoto protocol, which we didn’t even ratify.  It’s time to correct that mistake, and lead the world in implementing a much more sensible system that could simplify global efforts on fighting climate change, that has a real chance of success.”

“It is no consolation that the Senate sets superficially more ambitious goals for emission reductions than the House,” said BiofuelWatch co-director and Climate SOS spokesperson Rachel Smolker. “While the House bill required landfill gas to be captured, the Senate bill allows those projects to be used as offsets to allow additional emissions from smokestacks.  This slight of hand allows politicians to claim ‘stronger targets’ when in fact it’s all number-smithing.  Dire predictions from climate scientists make it clear that even if all the offset provisions are stripped away, the stated targets in both the Senate and the House bills (which are at most a few percentage point cuts below 1990 emissions by 2020) are still pathetically trivial, unable to even approach a greenhouse gas stabilization at 450 parts-per-million (ppm), while it is becoming clear that the safe level is no more than 350 ppm, way below what’s already in the air today (387 ppm).  In introducing an ineffective legislation, the senators send a poor message to Copenhagen and condemn us to climate chaos.”

The Senate bill is modeled upon the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), passed by the House of Representatives late June. In the past month, members of climate SOS, lead by Duff Badgley, founder of One Earth Climate Action Group, met with senate staffers in North Dakota, Indiana, Ohio, and Arkansas in an effort to rally opposition to the false climate bill on environmental grounds.  “Voting against such a poor bill would in fact be the environmentally responsible choice”, said Badgley.  Last week, the coalition also joined forces with activists from Rising Tide North America and many climate justice groups in actions from east to west coast, exposing the polluter-protection nature of the “landmark climate legislation”. Their voices were heard inside and outside the police blockade of the UN climate summit in NYC, at the Danish environment minister’s lecture that urged US to pass this false climate bill, and outside offices of big corporate green groups such as NRDC, Environmental Defense, and Nature Conservancy.

Contacts:

-Rachel Smolker, PhD. Co-Director: Biofuel Watch biofuelwatch.org 802.482.2848(o), 802.735.7794(m), rsmolker@riseup.net,

-Maggie Zhou, PhD.  Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities securegreenfuture.org 781.316.8283 maggie@securegreenfuture.org

-Duff Badgley, Founder, One Earth Climate Action Group, 206.283.0621 duff@climatesos.org

Groups endorsing Climate SOS include the Energy Justice Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, Institute for Social Ecology, Massachusetts Powershift, Mobilization for Climate Justice network, Progressive Democrats of America, Rising Tide North America, Ruckus Society and many others. http://www.climatesos.org/about-us/members/

Climate SOS platform: http://www.climatesos.org/our-platform/platform/

Environmental activists, some dressed as “Trillionaires for Bad Math” today delivered a “climate bill” to Copenhagen, ahead of schedule. The mock “bill” was delivered at a 3 pm lecture at Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs hosted by Danish Climate and Energy minister Connie Hedegaard. Hedegaard is the chairperson of the UN climate summit to be held in Copenhagen this December, where many hope that a strong global climate agreement will be signed.

Representatives of groups including Climate SOS and Rising Tide North America presented a 14-foot banner representing the climate bill currently being debated in the US Congress, which many consider essential for strong US participation in Copenhagen. The banner depicts a two trillion dollar note, representing the size of the new market in carbon dioxide emissions allowances that would be established by the Waxman-Markey climate bill that passed the House of Representatives in late June.

The centerpiece of the banner is an image of a bewildered Al Gore, who introduced the concept of tradable emissions allowances into the UN process in Kyoto in 1997. Hundreds of environmental groups are critical of the current US climate bill. Many view the bill’s cap and trade provisions as a dangerous false solution, that is inherently unstable and ultimately incapable of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Leading Trillionaire, Cap’n Trade, dressed in pirate regalia, told the assembled crowd, “‘Tis a bloody shame for the climate that Congress has chosen me to clean up this mess for ‘em. But I don’t mind a bit,” he continued, “’cause rising seas and booty and plunder are just my thing and soon the land, air and water will be all mine.”

The “trillionaires for bad math” argue that the House bill “just doesn’t add up”, pointing out that it falls far short of scientifically valid targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; removes the EPA’s authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act; and incorporates massive corporate giveaways into its cap-and-trade program. Corporations would be able to defer needed emissions reductions for decades under the bill’s offset provisions. International groups widely condemn the lack of US leadership on climate issues and demand that wealthy countries pay their share of the accumulated “climate debt.”

“If these lily-livered politicians aren’t ready to do something about the climate, those scurvy activists on the streets of Copenhagen are going to make ‘em walk the plank,” said Cap’n Trade. “We’re all going to end up in Davy Jones’ Locker.”

As the Climate SOS crosscountry tour culminates, activists from Climate SOS, Rising Tide, and other groups of environmental activists in New York launched a series of direct action interventions to signal the widespread opposition to the Waxman-Markey climate bill and its inadequate targets and use of dubious financial mechanisms for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

For press materials, photos and video: contact mutualaid@earthlink.net More info at: climatesos.org, risingtidenorthamerica.org

Contacts (Mobile phones): Rachel Smolker, Ph.D.802-482 2848, Brian Tokar, 802-595-9677

MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TO DEFEAT “FALSE” CLIMATE BILL

·    Climate SOS Tours to “Kill The Bill” and push tougher laws

·    Nonviolent civil disobedience, office occupations, and protests on both coasts

·    “Worse Than Nothing is Not Good Enough”

(Sep8, 2009) Climate SOS, a grassroots network of environmentalists, scientists, and social justice activists, is launching a nationwide car-free tour to defeat the climate bill now being considered in the Senate—and to demand that any new legislation be grounded in science instead of politics.

Capping the tour on September 22, Climate SOS plans mass nonviolent civil disobedience, office occupations and protests in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and New York. Climate SOS will occupy California senator Barbara Boxer’s office in San Francisco and Senator John Kerry’s Boston office on that day.

The Climate SOS Heartland Tour will feature meetings with senate staffers in North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas, and Ohio. Climate SOS organizer Duff Badgley, traveling exclusively by bus and train, will touch down in Bismarck on September 8, in Indianapolis (September 10-11), Little Rock (September 14-15), and Cleveland (September 17-18). His message? “Kill the Bill—Worse Than Nothing is Not Good Enough!”

Leading Climate scientist- Dr. James Hansen has personally endorsed the Climate SOS campaign. According to Hansen, if the Senate climate bill is based upon the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), it will be “worse for the environment than doing nothing.”

Climate SOS maintains that cap-and-trade will be ineffective in forestalling climate change, while risking the next and biggest market crash, and that ACESA falls far short of the emission reduction targets required by science. The group supports safeguarding EPA authority over greenhouse gas emissions regulation, opposes the use of carbon offsets, and believes that polluting coal plants should be phased out rapidly. Climate SOS asserts that incineration technologies must not be categorized as “renewable,” and targets loopholes in the bill that allow unlimited carbon dioxide emissions from biomass and trash burners.

Climate SOS holds that social justice concerns must be central to any climate legislation, and maintains that the federal climate bill currently under consideration would:

• Prevent the U.S. from making its fair share of greenhouse gas reductions—reductions necessary to forge an effective global strategy on climate stabilization and to avert catastrophic climate change.

• Lock the United States into a complex cap-and-trade scheme that benefits fossil fuel industries, utilities, Wall Street, and agribusinesses. Cap and trade will be prone to Enron-style market manipulations, while doing nothing to save the climate.

• Use public money to subsidize the most polluting industries, drawing much needed financing away from real climate solutions.

• Add more polluting smokestacks, especially in backyards of the poor, people of color, and indigenous communities across the U.S., by grandfathering dirty old coal plants, permitting numerous new ones, and subsidizing incinerators as a form of renewable energy.

• Trigger forest destruction domestically and abroad, by ignoring carbon emissions from biomass incinerators, and through its failure to incorporate indirect land use change provisions in the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) for biofuels.

Contacts:

Duff Badgley, Founder, One Earth Climate Action Group, duff@climatesos.org 206.283.0621

Rachel Smolker, Co-director, Biofuelwatch, rsmolker@riseup.net 802.482.2848 (o), 802.735.7794 (m)

–

Climate SOS – www.ClimateSOS.org

No dirty climate bill, no false solutions!

email :  contact@climatesos.org

]]> http://www.climatesos.org/2009/09/mass-civil-disobedience-to-defeat-false-climate-bill/feed/ 0 http://www.climatesos.org/2009/09/afterdownings/ http://www.climatesos.org/2009/09/afterdownings/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:42:29 +0000 tanuki http://www.climatesos.org/?p=412 Press Release

posted on AfterDowningStreet.org –  http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/45728

A grassroots network of environmentalists, scientists, human rights and social justice activists and faith-based organizations concerned about climate change launched a nationwide campaign today to either dramatically improve or defeat climate change legislation being considered in Congress. They say that the Senate bill, expected in September, will very likely take its cue from the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) passed by the House in June, and be even further watered down. While others are calling for passage of the bill, saying it will be “the best we can get under the political climate”, the network, calling themselves Climate SOS, states that, like Dr. James Hansen, they believe such a bill will be “worse for the environment than doing nothing”. They want lawmakers to start over and get serious about crafting a real and effective climate bill based on the mandates of science, not special interests.

“ACESA was designed to enrich Wall Street, the fossil fuel, utilities and big agribusiness industries at the expense of the climate and our collective peace and survival”, said the network’s spokesperson Dr. Rachel Smolker, Co-director of BioFuel Watch. “The bill’s cap-and-trade mechanism for regulating emissions has been repeatedly proven ineffective, risky and prone to speculation and manipulations, and will lock us into a framework that prevents any effective climate legislation from being adopted. This is one of many provisions in ACESA that make it worse than nothing. It’s virtually impossible the Senate will be able to improve on ACESA enough to get us where we must go in order to avoid catastrophic warming.”

“ACESA does not even aim to provide a 50/50 chance of averting the worst of climate catastrophe, based on the figures of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”, said Dr. Maggie Zhou of Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities. “Politicians either do not understand or are not telling the American people about the true magnitude of climate change consequences. The costs of insufficient action will be so much greater than the costs of taking bold action now, and will include lost lives, extinctions and the threatened survival of civilization itself. If politicians and their constituents understood this, there would be far less compromising on the basis of ‘political and economic feasibility’.”

“The American people are being scammed,” added Robert Jereski, co-founder of New York Climate Action Group. “This bill was crafted by a team that included Shell, Duke Energy, BP, DuPont and other major polluters/climate offenders of the so-called US Climate Action Partnership, that stand to profit greatly from a self-dealing, self-serving bill.”

“It is time that people who care about the environment, social justice and national/global security come together and take a stand.” Smolker said. “We are fast losing polar ice cover, while methane is spewing out. If we miss the short window when we can still avert the worst, we are condemning our children to a very dicey future indeed. The bill must be very dramatically improved or it should be filibustered before it gets to a floor vote.”

Climate SOS is launching a national tour during September, seeking to empower people to meet with their representatives, take action, and demand real climate legislation. “Senators need to know that they have our support in opposing this bill in the likely event that it fails to take adequate measures to protect the climate”. The tour will target states where US Senators are “on the fence,” such as North Dakota, Indiana, Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The Climate SOS tour will also touch down in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Oregon, and Washington.

Current Network Members:

Beehive Design Collective
Biofuelwatch
Carbon Tax Center
Climate Crisis Coalition
Coalition For A Safe Environment
Eco-Justice Collaborative
Ecolaw Massachusetts
Energy Justice Network
Green Delaware
Global Justice Ecology Project
Indigenous Environmental Network
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Institute for Social Ecology
Jamaica Plain Green House
Little Village Environmental Justice Organization
Massachussetts Coalition for Healthy Communities/SecureGreenFuture
Massachusetts Forest Watch
New York Climate Action Group
One Earth Climate Action Group
Progressive Democrats of America
Rising Tide North America
Ruckus Society
UIC Ecocampus

Contacts:

• Rachel Smolker, Co-Director: Biofuel Watch biofuelwatch.org 802.482.2848(o), 802.735.7794(m), rsmolker@riseup.net,
• Maggie Zhou, Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities securegreenfuture.org 781.316.8283 maggie@securegreenfuture.org
• Robert Jereski, Co-founder, New York Climate Action Group nycag.org 212.973.1782 mutualaid@earthlink.net