Senate Hearing Wrap-Up: Halloween is Over
This post is by Justin Guay, apprentice for the Sierra Club Global Warming and Energy Team
Halloween is over, but someone forgot to tell the obstructionist Republican party that. Their tired litany of scaremongering tactics employed continued in today's Senate Finance hearing covering climate change legislation and future jobs. Not surprisingly, Republican senators didn’t see many jobs. In fact, surprise, surprise, they only saw scary China stealing our jobs if we decide to act. Oh and energy prices will skyrocket and we will all be sent straight to the poor house. Oh and then the President will pull the plug on Grandma. Oh wait, wrong issue to obstruct…
So if climate legislation is so scary, what is their alternative? Well, they would prefer it if you didn't ask, because it consists of quite a bit of looking backwards to technologies of the past while other nations continue to outpace us in the new clean energy economy. You can see how this position is very difficult to sell – apparently it's just not sexy.
Their official "we are frightened by the future" motto has become so ridiculous that it visibly frustrated even Senate veteran John Kerry (D-CA) who thankfully came to the hearing’s rescue. He pushed back on all the endless supply of scare tactics, questioning the assumptions of faulty economic analyses and calling them "out of whack." The most glaring of these faults being the absence of costs associated with inaction. Abraham Breehey of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers strongly backed Kerry on this point, going on to say that climate action is vital to securing America's economic future and that American jobs were worth protecting.
Senator Kerry and Senator Stabenow (D-MI) then teamed up to show that inaction is so costly that it is simply not an option. Senator Kerry set Kenneth Green from the American Enterprise Institute straight by demonstrating that China is indeed acting and that they are moving faster and more boldly than we are. Stabenow followed up by pointing out that we are in a clean energy race with China. She pointed out that we can not afford to repeat the errors of the computer age when American ingenuity drove technology development only to see it manufactured overseas.
As U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern often repeats in his testimony, our real problem with competitiveness is not whether we can get the Chinese to act, but whether we will be chasing them in five years when we ourselves have failed to do so. Towards the end of the hearing John Kerry put his mark on the hearing by saying that the costs of inaction will come back to haunt us. Considering the severe economic hardship we are currently facing, that is the truly scary thought.
Halloween is over, but someone forgot to tell the obstructionist Republican party that. Their tired litany of scaremongering tactics employed continued in today's Senate Finance hearing covering climate change legislation and future jobs. Not surprisingly, Republican senators didn’t see many jobs. In fact, surprise, surprise, they only saw scary China stealing our jobs if we decide to act. Oh and energy prices will skyrocket and we will all be sent straight to the poor house. Oh and then the President will pull the plug on Grandma. Oh wait, wrong issue to obstruct…
So if climate legislation is so scary, what is their alternative? Well, they would prefer it if you didn't ask, because it consists of quite a bit of looking backwards to technologies of the past while other nations continue to outpace us in the new clean energy economy. You can see how this position is very difficult to sell – apparently it's just not sexy.
Their official "we are frightened by the future" motto has become so ridiculous that it visibly frustrated even Senate veteran John Kerry (D-CA) who thankfully came to the hearing’s rescue. He pushed back on all the endless supply of scare tactics, questioning the assumptions of faulty economic analyses and calling them "out of whack." The most glaring of these faults being the absence of costs associated with inaction. Abraham Breehey of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers strongly backed Kerry on this point, going on to say that climate action is vital to securing America's economic future and that American jobs were worth protecting.
Senator Kerry and Senator Stabenow (D-MI) then teamed up to show that inaction is so costly that it is simply not an option. Senator Kerry set Kenneth Green from the American Enterprise Institute straight by demonstrating that China is indeed acting and that they are moving faster and more boldly than we are. Stabenow followed up by pointing out that we are in a clean energy race with China. She pointed out that we can not afford to repeat the errors of the computer age when American ingenuity drove technology development only to see it manufactured overseas.
As U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern often repeats in his testimony, our real problem with competitiveness is not whether we can get the Chinese to act, but whether we will be chasing them in five years when we ourselves have failed to do so. Towards the end of the hearing John Kerry put his mark on the hearing by saying that the costs of inaction will come back to haunt us. Considering the severe economic hardship we are currently facing, that is the truly scary thought.
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