In the House jurisdiction over cap-and-trade legislation is under Energy and Commerce chairman John Dingell and Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee chair Rick Boucher.
In the Senate, Harry Reid and EPW chair Barbara Boxer are letting Joe Lieberman and John Warner write the default global warming bill.
Dingell literally represents Detroit. His wife works for General Motors.
Boucher is a coal-district representative who supports coal-to-liquids and tried to make California's greenhouse gas emissions law illegal.
Lieberman used to be a Democrat.
Warner has a 14% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters.
Unless they're stopped, these people will write polluter-protection legislation.
Update! Joe Lieberman has announced he's open to replacing the polluter-protection provisions of his draft bill with a full auction of carbon credits, a very good thing.
We've heard [calls for a 100 percent auction] from some stakeholders and heard that from some of our members. We're thinking about it. Warner and I haven't closed our minds to that. It’s on the table.
Carbon cap-and-trade legislation cannot be progressive if the greenhouse gas emissions credits (the pollution credits) are given to polluters. That protects polluting industries with a subsidizing give-away of a common resource, the atmosphere's capacity for GHG pollution.
If the credits are auctioned, however, polluters have to pay. Furthermore, this means that the taxpayers of the United States receive the fair market value of privatizing this resource (as long as the government properly allocates the auction revenues).
But as Lieberman said, they're just considering it.
People to contact:
Senators on the EPW Committee
- Barbara Boxer (Chairman)
- Max Baucus
- Joseph I. Lieberman
- Thomas R. Carper
- Hillary Rodham Clinton
- Frank R. Lautenberg
- Benjamin L. Cardin
- Bernard Sanders
- Amy Klobuchar
- Sheldon Whitehouse
Environmental Lobbying Groups (most haven't taken a public position)
- Environmental Defense
- League of Conservation Voters
- U.S. PIRG
- Sierra Club
- NRDC
- Union of Concerned Scientists