Why we need a climate-change bill now

The recent oil-spill disaster, while heart-rending, has had one positive effect. It has focused the nation's attention on the danger of offshore oil drilling and the importance of getting rid of our dependence on oil by changing the way we get energy. It has also convinced President Obama to take a firmer stand in favor of a climate change bill getting passed this year.

There are multiple reasons why a climate change bill needs to be passed. But the most important, by far, is that global warming is happening right now and will ruin our ecosystem (and by extension, our economy) if we don't do something soon. There is no disputing the reality of global warming. Even Sarah Palin, tea-party extraoardinare, agrees that global warming is occurring, although she has been vague about whether it's caused by humans or not. If you don't believe in global warming, I'm not even going to argue with you because, for one, I'm not a big science buff, and two, there's no point arguing with people who just won't accept facts.

The only way to stop global warming is to convince people to stop polluting. What is the best way to do this? By making it more expensive to pollute, of course. That is the core of what the Senate's American Power Act (APA) and the House of Representative's American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) would do. It would charge the 7,500 biggest power plants and factories between $12 and $25 per ton of carbon emitted. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and by 80% by 2050, something an Environmental Protection Agency analysis says this bill will do.

Now energy producers will probably pass the extra money they have to pay in taxes on to consumers in the form of higher energy bills. Luckily, the climate change bill under consideration in the Senate sends 75% of the profits received from the carbon tax back to consumers. As a result, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the APA would only cost consumers $146 a year. That's only $12 a month, or one Starbucks coffee a week. And with the increase in energy efficiency mandated and incentivized by the two climate change bills under consideration, this bill would actually significantly lower energy prices in the long run. In addition, because of the progressive element of the energy rebates, those who could least afford higher energy prices, the poor, actually will have to pay less on energy bills (by about $40 annually) than they normall would.

All of this runs contrary to Republican claims that a climate change bill will result in massive price shocks running through our economy. This myth has been perpetuated most significantly by the Heritage Foundation, which issued a report last year saying that the House of Representatives-passed climate change bill would cost the average household $1,500 a year. The CBO, which is much more trustworthy than the very conservative Heritage Foundation, tells a much different story, and due to its nonpartisanship should be trusted much more than the flawed Heritage Foundation report. Most likely, when you hear an opponent of the climate change bills quoting a study showing the damaging effects of this climate change bill, they will be talking about the thoroughly untrue Heritage Foundation study and any comments they make should be viewed through this filter.

Another major goal of the two climate change bills under discussion is to greatly increase the amount of energy Americans get from renewable energy sources. The APA would do this by taking 25% of the profits received from the carbon tax and using that to subsidize renewable energy and encourage renewable energy research. No one can say that increasing renewable energy production is a bad thing, and this bill does a good, although not great, job of achieving this goal.

All of these clean energy power sources would need to be built and managed by someone, and as a result both the House and the Senate climate change bill would create a significant number of jobs. According to a report by the nonpartisan Peterson Institute, the American Power Act would create 203,000 new jobs per year between 2012 and 2020. The slightly-more-partisan Climate Works estimates that the bill will create 440,000 more jobs per year in the same time period. That's a lot of jobs, and completely disproves doomsday scenarios predicting that this bill would cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs per year.

The final, and in my mind, least important, reason we need a climate change bill passed is to protect our national security. Currently we spend billions of dollars on oil coming from unstable Middle Eastern countries. A lot of this money is funneled into terrorist organizations that are actively engaged in trying to kill Americans. If we could stop this indirect funding, why wouldn't we? Now there is a caveat. Renewable-energy sources such as solar cells and wind turbines also need natural resources to function, and some of these resources are found mostly or only in unfriendly countries. For example, the mineral lanthanum, which is necessary for solar cells and wind turbines, is only available in China. However, the amount of lanthanum and other minerals we'd need to import for renewable energy sources pales in comparison to the amount of oil we import right now, so on balance a switch to clean energy would still significantly improve our national security.

All of this, by the way, doesn't take into account the huge benefits of stopping global warming. None of the studies conducted can quantify how much money or how many jobs climate change would destroy (even in just the next 10-20 years), and thus how much money would be saved by a climate change bill. But isn't that the main point of the bill, to stop climate change? Almost this entire blog post has been trying to disprove the perceived problems a climate change bill would cause, without touching on the benefits. Speculation says that we'd be saving hundreds of billions of dollars if we were able to stop climate change. We'd be averting mass casualties, the loss of entire cities and industries, and who knows what else. My point is, both the House of Representatives and the Senate bill would still accomplish all the goals that a strong climate-change bill should, while also turning the perceived drawbacks of such a bill into benefits. So what's with all the outrage?

So did I misrepresent something in this post? Am I completely off the mark in my analysis? Comments would be appreciated.