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Cap and Dividend: Undo the Cap Tax
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Cap and Trade Is a Tax
Cap and trade sells carbon permits to polluters. To them it's exactly like paying a tax on carbon. They pass that tax on to whoever they sell to, and then that company passes it on, and so on till it reaches ... you! Of course that makes you buy cars that use less gas, and lights that use less electricity, which is part of the idea. But it costs you a lot of money, and the government now has your money. So it's a tax.
But Here's the Amazing Part
Since the point of this tax is to help the climate, and not to raise money, why not give the money back? Yes! But will that work? Most people don't think so. But the truth is that it's an old, well-know economic trick (invented in 1920 by an Englishman named Pigou). It works! As long as we don't give back more to those who use the most carbon, it works perfectly. You can read all about this in Carbonomics.
How is the Money Given Back
Representative Van Hollen (Nancy Pelosi's assistant) says give it to everyone with at social security number. James Hansen (Al Gore's science adviser) says give it out equal per person, except kids get half. I say for kids, put the other half in a "child account" like they have in England, so they get it when they turn 21.
Is It Fair?
The cap-tax is actually quite unfair. The poor pay the highest percentage and the rich the lowest. But with an equal-per-person dividend, 60% get more back than they pay (because the very rich have such huge carbon foot prints, and pay a lot (but a very low percentage)). Everyone gets enough back to pay all their cap-tax on average carbon usage. So, in effect, you only pay any tax at all on your above-average use. That's fair.
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5/23/06 Speech continued
Context
High energy costs burden business and diminish our competitiveness, and they're also a strain on families. When energy prices are rising faster than incomes, every family feels the consequences, but our most vulnerable families feel them the worst.
Almost one in three low-income families have skipped medical or dental care, and almost one in four have missed a rent or mortgage payment because of energy expenses.
And finally, our values demand that we be good stewards of the planet for our children and our children's children. We are failing that simple moral test if we continue to stand by as the Earth warms faster than at any time in the past 200,000 years. ....
In fact, the present crisis offers us a great opportunity to improve the lives of all Americans with more predictable energy prices, in a cleaner environment, with technology-driven job growth and new economic dynamism.
Here at home, energy guru Amery Lovins estimates that taking steps to eliminate our oil dependence will actually save the U.S. economy tens of billions of unproductive dollars per year by 2025. And that doesn't even count the benefits for our security and the environment. ....
Second, we need to discard the myth that conservation can't play a large role in our transformation. The easiest way to reduce our dependence on oil immediately is to use less.
We worked our way out of the last big energy crisis in the '70s and early '80s almost entirely through conservation. From 1977 to 1985, our economy grew by 3 percent a year while oil use dropped 2 percent each year, driven by the increasing efficiency of our vehicles, our appliances, our businesses.
CLINTON: Think about this: If we got back on that pace today, it would take less than three years to reduce oil consumption by an amount equal to what we import from the Persian Gulf.
Today, I want to suggest a concrete goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil by at least 50 percent by 2025. That would be a reduction in oil consumption of just under 8 million barrels a day.
Now, I believe a 50 by '25 initiative will energize our economy, not undermine it.
And how will we get there? Two words: innovation and efficiency. They encompass the three major tasks that I want to discuss today.
First, we need to convert our liquid fuel base from oil to biomass. That can reduce our consumption by 4 million barrels a day by 2025.
Second, we need to change our reliance on high-carbon electricity sources to low-carbon electricity sources through innovations in renewables such as solar and wind, as well as carbon dioxide sequestration.
The third task is efficiency: getting much more from the cars, buildings, power plants, manufacturing processes we have. Just by major efficiencies in cars, expanding hybrids, getting more fuel- efficiency from trucks, industrial and residential sources, we can reduce consumption by another 4 million barrels a day. ....
For example, scientists estimate that the wind potential of just three states -- Texas, Kansas and North Dakota -- is equal to more than half of the electricity we consume today. California could meet half of its power needs from solar alone.
Both solar and wind costs drop by one-third every time capacity doubles, and that's now happening about every two years. Last year, power generated from solar cells increased by 57 percent.
That's why today I'll be introducing legislation for a strategic energy fund. We need a serious commitment from government to prioritize advanced energy and a commitment from our oil companies to reinvest their unanticipated profits into our shared energy future.
Now, ExxonMobil had, you know, the highest profits in corporate history. Yet when CEO Lee Raymond was asked about how much his company had invested in alternative energy over the last decade, his reply was, and I quote, "a negligible amount."
Well, that's inexcusable. You know, the oil industry is making $300 million a day, not because they planned on it, not because of great managerial expertise, but because of escalating world demand and therefore increasing prices for this commodity that they didn't create in the first place.
I think it's time that we made sure they put a fair share of their profits toward a sound energy future. Basically, if you take an average of their profits from 2000 to 2004, you add a 10 percent figure on top of that, then you can get to a point where those profits for just two years would be invested in the strategic energy fund.
Now, the oil companies would have the option: They wouldn't have to invest if they did this themselves, if they began making investments in biofuels, in other forms of renewable energy, in new, cleaner refining capacity, solar, wind. If they did it themselves, then they wouldn't have to pay into the fund.
Now, some of that money should go to reforming our tax code into an incentive not a disincentive to invest in clean fuels and diversify our energy sources.
Right now, our tax policies are totally upside down. We give large tax breaks for oil exploration far from our shores and limited tax breaks for installing biofuel pumps at America's gas stations.
We give consumers better tax breaks for buying Humvees than for purchasing hybrids and using clean energy.
So I support comprehensive legislation that would overhaul our energy taxes; signal the market we're in this for the long run by extending for 10 years the production tax credit; spur demand by doubling consumer tax breaks for hybrids, clean diesel and other advanced vehicles; and create a new tax incentive for fleet owners to purchase more efficient vehicles; speed the development of cellulosic ethanol by providing loan guarantees for the first billion gallons of commercial production capacity; ramp up the availability of ethanol by providing gas station owners with a 50 percent tax credit for the cost of installing ethanol pumps; and then extend and increase tax incentives for homeowners and businesses who will make their homes and businesses more energy-efficient -- there's a lot of good information out there abut how to do it, but unfortunately not much incentive to do it.
The strategic energy fund would allow government and business to work together to help solve some of the toughest scientific challenges that we have to deal with when it comes to energy and climate.
You know, we have the National Institutes of Health that promote partnerships for innovation. We ought to have something like a national institute of energy.
That's why last September I proposed a research agency modeled on the DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. And I was delighted that later that fall the National Academy of Science report endorsed the concept.
Now, DARPA was created what Sputnik went up. And the entire country just reacted as one -- "How could this happen?" It was a very unwelcome surprise.
Well, it was created with the idea we would bring our best minds together -- our universities, our business research labs, as well as government -- to try to figure out how to jumpstart and get ahead of the Soviet Union when it came to space technology.
Well, this succeeded, with stealth technology and global positioning satellites that empower our military, as well as a few surprises that today we all live with, namely the Internet and even the computer mouse.
Now, we'll never find the equivalent of stealth technology for energy if we don't look for it. Since 1978, federal and private spending on energy-related research and development has fallen more than 60 percent.
I propose that over the next five years we devote from the strategic energy fund $9 billion into this advanced research project agency for energy;
Federal buildings should be designed whenever possible and then retrofitted as well to meet the highest green building standards.
By 2010, we should require that the federal government purchase the most efficient cars made. That would create an annual market of more than 60,000 vehicles to spur continual improvements in technology.
By 2013, we should require that 10 percent of federal electricity purchases come only from renewable sources.
And by 2020 we should reduce federal oil consumption by 40 percent.
We need a renewable portfolio standard to require 20 percent of electricity produced from wind, solar and other renewables by 2020.
That supports jobs in four states, including my own. Investing in renewable energy creates more jobs than other energy investments; 40 percent more than a comparable investment in coal, for example.
We have an underused resource, American farmland, and rural communities across our country eager to try something new and do their part to help solve our energy problems.
Today we have 97 biorefineries located in 19 different states with the capacity to make nearly 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol.
So we need to take immediate steps to make sure that the rapid expansion in biofuels continues and that we not only have the vehicles that can run on ethanol, but we have places where you can get them filled.
We should put a $1 billion from the strategic energy fund into research aimed at unlocking the full potential of cellulosic ethanol. We can expand loan guarantees to help the first 1 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol capacity come on-line. I propose that we have ethanol pumps at 50 percent of gas stations nationwide by 2015 and 100 percent by 2025. We should start by requiring the big oil companies to install ethanol pumps at all the stations they own.
At Cummins engine plant in Jamestown, they're building the engines that run on low-sulfur diesel. And we have to get the low-sulfur diesel rule fully implemented by 2007, which is the deadline.
The oil companies already got one delay, and we can't let that happen again, because companies like Cummins are investing billions of dollars in making sure that we have low-sulfur engines on the road.
Even if the United States never burned another lump of coal, China is bringing on-line a 1,000 megawatt coal-fired power plant every 10 days. So if we're going to reassert our leadership on climate change -- which I think we should -- we've got to deal with coal. And the first step is to take a mandatory cap-and-trade system, like that developed in the McCain Lieberman legislation.
I propose we do two things to scale up the potential of clean coal.
First, undertake five large-scale tests of geologic sequestration in a variety of settings to really investigate the viability of this technology.
Second, provide tax credits for carbon sequestration to encourage domestic oil production. Oil companies already inject carbon dioxide into mature fields like the ones we have here in the United States to recover oil. The Department of Energy estimates that with oil priced at $40 or higher per barrel, it is economical, with ample CO2 supply, to use CO2 to recover 47 billion barrels of oil from existing U.S. fields.
Nuclear is now very much in the news as a potential power source because of its lack of contribution to global warming. If you look at nuclear energy, which currently provides 20 percent of our energy with virtually no emission of greenhouse gases, we do have to take a serious look, but there remain very serious questions about nuclear power and our ability to manage it in a world with suicidal terrorists.
So I have real concerns, specifically about a plant in my state near where I live, Indian Point, which has had a number of problems, and more generally with the capacity and quality of the oversight provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
So I just would make a plea that we do more to set the standards for energy efficiency and let businesses and homes and others know more about what each of us can do and provide some technical assistance and support.
That's especially important with low-income people because we haven't done anywhere near what we should on weatherization of homes, which again helps cut bills for the persons living in the home but also saves energy for the rest of us.
Let's now talk about transportation, which is the hardest issue of all.
First, we do need to do more on mass transit. We need to look at places in our country where mass transit makes sense and make the investment.
Some states are doing that.
Now, we are missing a tremendous opportunity to save money and save energy because we haven't done enough on mass transit.
But we have to look at how we make more efficiency in transportation. We have to change the engines and fuels in the cars that Americans drive.
Hybrids is an example of what we need to do. You know, most foreign oil is used in automobiles: about 70 percent. And the surest way to reduce oil consumption is through hybrid technology that increases fuel-efficiency by 30 percent to 40 percent.
I also recommend what's called a fee-bate. That means for the least efficient old cars we need to provide a tax incentive so that people trade them in for more efficient cars.
And, finally, I do believe it's vital we make progress on fuel- efficiency standards. We can't separate, however, the challenge of making auto manufacturing more energy-efficient and the challenge of making U.S. manufacturing more competitive.
I believe we could do both. We need to be sure that our high standards don't provide an easy excuse for more auto jobs to leave the U.S., but I don't think that's the reason not to do it. We just need to be more creative about it.
We've been in a stalemate on CAFE standards for quite some time. I've worked with Senator Obama on legislation to offer auto companies assistance with retiree health care costs in exchange for them investing more in fuel-efficient cars.
That's a start. But we need the carmakers, the unions and the Bush administration to hammer this out. This is one of those moments that cries out for presidential leadership.
And President Bush will be meeting with the CEOs of the big three auto makers on June 2nd. And I think we should challenge all sides to take that opportunity to come back to Congress with a real proposal that will reform and raise our car fuel-efficiency standards and provide Detroit with the help it needs to ensure that the cars are designed and built here in the United States.
I also fully endorse an idea that Senator Lugar has been promoting.
We need a new commitment to a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Specifically, we should increase it to hold 90 days of supply. We should use mandates and incentives to ensure that distributors hold similar stocks of gasoline, heating oil, jet fuel and other refined products. We should update the process of releasing oil from the reserve to make it transparent and responsive to short- term market swings.
You know, I remember sitting in my office about a year and a half ago. And we were debating the McCain-Lieberman bill on the floor, which I have continually supported.
And one of my colleagues came to the floor in opposition. And he just basically said, "We can't do this. It'll ruin our economy. We'll go backwards. It'll destroy the American standard of living."
And I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. And I got up and I went to the floor and I said, "Since when have Americans become so fatalistic that we go around saying 'We can't do it, we can't do it'?"
That is not the tradition of our country. We can do it. We just need a commitment to do it. And we need the leadership in both the public and the private sectors to get it done.
And I believe that we definitely can get it done. So from my position today, I hope we make the right choice.
Thank you all very much.
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From HilaryClinton.com
In addition, she supports the McCain-Lieberman legislation to control carbon-dioxide emissions and reduce the effects of global warming.
Senator Clinton has called for a balanced energy policy that improves energy efficiency, encourages development of new energy supplies, and invests in advanced energy technologies. New energy technologies will reduce our dependence on oil from the Middle East, and improve our environment. To help develop these energy technologies, Hillary introduced the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Act of 2003, which would invest $6.5 billion in fuel cells over 10 years, to put 100,000 fuel cell vehicles on the road, develop stationary fuel cells, and build the necessary infrastructure to enable both to be widely used.
Senator Clinton supports legislation that would require 20 percent of the nation’s electricity to be produced from renewable sources by 2020, and she has backed increased efficiency standards for appliances. Senator Clinton has also worked to improve the reliability of electricity distribution systems by sponsoring legislation that would create a mandatory and enforceable set of reliability standards to avoid blackouts.
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Energy (From Clinton.Senate.gov)
I firmly believe that a strong, balanced national energy policy is a key to strong economic and environmental policies as well. We need a policy that promotes the use of energy efficient technologies and alternative and renewable sources and increases energy production without disturbing precious natural resources, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Our energy policy must also improve the reliability of our electricity transmission grid, protect the public's health from harmful air emissions, and create jobs.
In the summer and fall of 2003, the Senate debated an energy bill. After reviewing the legislation in its entirety, I voted against it because it contained provisions that were not only bad energy policy, but were bad for New York. For example, the bill included a liability exemption for producers of the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether known as “MTBE,” which has polluted groundwater throughout Long Island and other parts of New York.
Although I did not support the energy bill that the Senate considered in 2003, we may reconsider the bill in 2005. I hope that if we do, it is a more balanced policy that does not include provisions that are harmful to New York . In addition, I will continue to work for a forward looking energy policy that will help us achieve our energy, economic and environmental goals, including efforts to increase the use of hydrogen fuel cells and other alternative fuel technologies for clean, efficient automobiles.
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Statement on Announcement of Record Profits for Exxon Mobil (from HilaryClinton.com)
7/27/2006
Washington, DC -- "This week has brought record gas prices for New Yorkers and record earnings for the oil companies. Today's announcement makes it clearer than ever that we need a new direction in energy policy, one that puts us on a path to a clean energy future instead of lining the pockets of big oil executives. That is why I have introduced legislation to eliminate oil company tax breaks and use that money to create a Strategic Energy Fund that would speed development of biofuels, help people buy hybrid cars, and fund research into cutting-edge energy technologies. It is time for the Republican leadership to get serious about addressing our energy crisis and stop putting the interests of oil companies over the needs of families struggling with skyrocketing gas prices."
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http://zfacts.com/p/660.html | 01/18/12 07:18 GMT
Modified: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:14:00 GMT
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