Ecominds-a Mailing List: EcoMinds: Letter to Waxman & Markey on Climate Bill

[Ralph Wyman (rwmuusja]

Over the weekend I was in Boston, meeting with other UU State Networks and
the UUSC and UUA.  One of the topics was coordinated Climate Change work.
Much more on that in the future (lots to digest from the weekend, waiting
for notes to be e-mailed, etc).  

But Myrna Greenfield, Outreach and Mobilization Director for the UUSC, let
us know that the UUSC had signed on to a letter to Waxman and Markey, key
authors of an expected 2009 climate bill.  Below is that letter for our
consideration of MUUSJA EcoMinds federal legislative policy position!

-Ralph 

 

350.org, 1 Sky, Action PA, California Communities Against Toxics, Church
World Service, Energy Justice Network, Essential Action, Friends Committee
on National Legislation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Indigenous
Environmental Network, Institute for Energy & Environmental Research,
International Rivers, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Public Citizen,
Rainforest Action Network, Safe & Green Campaign, Sustainable Energy &
Economy Network, UU Service Committee

April 22, 2009

The Honorable Henry Waxman 
Chair, Committee on Energy and Commerce
The Honorable Edward Markey
Chair, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment 

Dear Chairmen Waxman and Markey,

We commend you on the effort you have undertaken in crafting your draft
"American Clean Energy & Security Act of 2009." While there is much to
applaud in this bill, there are also areas for substantial improvement.
While we will be communicating to you separately with respect to other
issues, our organizations are concerned in particular about one key element
that threatens to undermine its integrity and effectiveness in addressing
climate change: the large carbon offsets provisions of the draft bill. As
pointed out in recent testimony before your Energy and Environment
Subcommittee by the Government Accountability Office, quality assurance for
carbon offsets is all but impossible to verify. To craft a bill that allows
for 2 billion tons of offsets per year - roughly equivalent to 27% of 2007
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions - is to allow for continued and dangerous
delay in real action by our country at a time when the world is looking to
the U.S. for leadership on climate change.

Initial calculations suggest that allowing for 2 billion tons of offsets per
year would mean that covered entities in the U.S. could use offsets to avoid
curtailing their own significant greenhouse gas emissions until 2026. Given
current climate science , such a delay in investing directly in new
low-carbon energy infrastructure is unacceptable.

Increasing evidence is revealing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the
world's biggest carbon offset market, is failing to deliver real climate or
sustainable development benefits. Most fundamentally, the CDM has actually
facilitated an increase in overall greenhouse gas emissions -undermining the
most fundamental and critical goal of all - stemming the growth of
greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth's atmosphere. 

The draft bill intends to reduce emissions from tropical deforestation via
two contrasting approaches. The first, called Supplemental Emissions
Reductions from Reduced Deforestation, is a fund-based approach with the aim
of slowing tropical deforestation emissions by at least 720 million tons per
year by 2020. The fund approach as written into the draft bill could enable
effective policies, activities and measures to slow tropical deforestation,
which unfortunately would be undone through the second approach based on
bringing hundreds of millions of tons of international forestry offsets into
the U.S. carbon market each year. 

Forest offsets as proposed in the draft bill fail to acknowledge forest
governance problems, as well as the customary land and forest rights of
Indigenous peoples including the rights of free, prior and informed consent
of Indigenous peoples in forest regions to participate, or choose not to
participate, in the new carbon commodity market. Forest credits have a
well-recognized potential to destabilize carbon markets by introducing large
volumes of cheap offsets, huge variations in estimates of carbon stocks and
fluxes over time, and uncertainties over how to monitor emissions and the
impacts of policies upon rates of deforestation and emissions. 

Domestically, environmental justice organizations and activists are equally
concerned that all offsets - whether in criteria pollutants or in carbon -
will add to the pollution burden of already overburdened communities of
color while increasing incentives for corruption. 

As the United States moves forward on domestic climate legislation, we urge
you to ensure that your basic reduction targets for greenhouse gases and
other agents, such as black soot are bold enough and achieved quickly enough
to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius. We urge you
to:

1) Take the lead on strong action on climate change at home by opposing any
international carbon offsets, including forest offsets, as part of any
compliance regime on climate change; and
2) Ensure that the domestic offset market does not become part of a
compliance system to regulate emissions.

Signed,