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Obama Insists on Cap and Trade Legislation
Cap and trade won’t cut it
The ReaL News Network, May 25, 2009
by James Handley:
Obama admin’s plan offers too much to Big Coal and Wall St to meaningfully cut emissions
Under pressure from the Obama administration, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has put forward its proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US. The plan calls for the creation of a cap and trade market, as the mechanism to begin reduing the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions. The US currently produces roughly 20% of the world’s annual emissions. But James Handley from the Carbon Tax Center believes that cap and trade is the wrong way to go in general. Furthermore, the current plan has been made particularly worse by making so many concessions to the energy companies, coal in particular. The result is a bill, according to Handley, that is left unlikely to achieve needed emission cuts and incapable of protecting the most vulnerable from its economic effects.
Bio
James Handley is the Washington, DC representative for the Carbon Tax Center. A trained chemical engineer and lawyer, Handley worked for years as an enforcement attorney with the Environmental Protection Agency. A lifelong member of the Sierra Club, Handley has published in the Environmental Law Reporter, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker
