Climate Policy Center

Archives of Climate Policy Center News and Statements

Clean Air-Cool Planet Applauds Introduction
of Clean-Energy Legislation in U.S. Senate

“Clean Air-Cool Planet congratulates Senators Boxer and Kerry on bringing to the floor of the U. S. Senate a bill designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote new jobs, new energy sources, and energy security for the nation,” said Adam Markham, CEO of Clean Air-Cool Planet. “It is our hope that this legislation will lead to a solid American commitment, and a positive outcome in the global negotiations in Copenhagen. We look forward to Senate consideration of the proposed legislation, which we hope will ensure that the emissions reduction program agreed upon will be as economically efficient as possible.”

For information and recommendations on climate change legislation, visit CA-CP’s Cap and Trade Resources page.

Climate Policy Center Offers Resources for Cap-and-Trade Legislation

The Climate Policy Center of Clean Air-Cool Planet offers resources that explain and recommend cap and trade policy that includes a price collar. For access to these documents, please visit the Cap and Trade page here.

CA-CP, EESI Urge Senate Chairs to Strengthen Climate Bill

Clean Air - Cool Planet and the Environment and Energy Study Institute (EESI) are urging senators Max Baucus, Jeff Bingaman and Barbara Boxer, chairs of Senate committees working on changes to the groundbreaking climate bill sent up from the House last month, to strengthen the legislation. Noting that threats from global warming that “were only possibilities” a few years ago “have become our reality,” the joint letter urges the senators take steps to ensure the legislation:

provides a price collar that limits volatility and moves upward on a predictable path to reach agreed emissions goals
regulates emissions most efficiently – at the well head for natural gas, the refinery for oil, and the point of combustion for coal
as much as is realistically possible, auctions permits and recycles revenues to taxpaying businesses and individuals and to low-income persons
Read the letter.

Clean Air - Cool Planet Releases Report on ARPA-E:
Offers a Roadmap to America's Energy Future
The report, ARPA-E: An Energy Future Transformed, was funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and authored by Dr. Jane A. Alexander, a former Deputy Director of DARPA and the first Deputy Director of the Homeland Security Advanced Projects Research Agency (HSARPA). The goal of the report is to help the Administration and Congress understand the specific structural needs, characteristics and skill sets that will be necessary in the leadership of the new agency. Read the press release.

Clean Air - Cool Planet Applauds Passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (Waxman-Markey)
Clean Air-Cool Planet – the leading science-based, bipartisan non-profit organization dedicated solely to finding and promoting solutions to global warming – applauds the members of the US House of Representatives on passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a monumental piece of legislation that promises to transform America’s energy future and help tackle the global climate crisis.

This historic legislation - the first energy and climate bill that would establish a cap-and-trade program to impose strong limits on greenhouse gases and powerful incentives to invest in clean technology – is good for America and good for the planet.

While we believe that practical and politically attractive improvements should be made during consideration of the legislation in the Senate, the Waxman-Markey bill shows that the United States is prepared to be a leader in the transition to an efficient and equitable global economy based on clean energy.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program releases 2009 report

The most comprehensive and authoritative report of its kind, the 2009 Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States summarizes the science and the impacts of climate change on the United States. It reveals that widespread climate-change impacts are being felt now and are expected to increase.

“In 2005, we issued Indicators of Climate Change in the Northeast, which looked at the already profound signs of a climate in transition because of the effects of global warming. It is hardly unexpected that this latest assessment should find even more alarming change underway, and a trajectory for ever greater calamity if we continue on our present carbon-rich path,” said Adam Markham, CEO at Clean Air - Cool Planet.

“It is our hope that a robust cap-and-trade program will come out of Congress and that, teamed with the exciting new transformational energy research to come from DOE’s new Advanced Research Projects Agency and active reduction of pollution in the Arctic, we can yet stave off the very worst our planet has to offer our species.”

Arctic Council Nations Agree: Control
Short-lived Pollutants to Stem Arctic Warming

Ministers of the Arctic Council nations (the US, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland) agreed at their meeting in Tromsø, Norway, to move aggressively to limit black carbon, methane, and tropospheric ozone. Clean Air - Cool Planet and the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) have worked together over the past five years to support the declaration that was approved by the Council ministers. Read the release here.

More about short term pollutants in the Arctic.

President Announces Creation of ARPA-E

President Barack Obama announced funding of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E, an initiative championed by Clean Air - Cool Planet. Based on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), created in the late ‘50s to do high-risk, high-reward research, “ARPA-E seeks to do this same kind of high-risk, high-reward research,” the President said. Find out more here.

Report from Economist Robert Repetto Advises Transition Team on Climate and the Economy

The paper, “Climate Change Policy and Economic Revitalization” by Yale Economist Robert Repetto, a senior fellow at Clean Air-Cool Planet, is part of the organization’s ongoing effort to advise the new Congress and President-elect Obama’s transition team on effective ways to tackle climate change in 2009. Read the paper.

CA-CP's Climate Policy Center Releases Recommendations
on Climate Change Action for the 44th President

Building a Foundation for Success: Recommendations for Early Action on Climate Change gives the next President a focused, strategic set of actions through which the incoming administration can start successfully addressing climate change from the transition through the President’s first 100 days in office. The report, which originated in the concerns and questions voiced by citizen participants in the New Hampshire Carbon Coalition, contains practical suggestions for picking the right team, linking climate and economic issues, and building a powerful consensus for action in the Congress and the public.

In making its recommendations, CA-CP drew on the experience of our own policy staff as well as on interviews with more than 40 professionals with expertise in Presidential transitions, senior White House and Executive Branch staff from Republican and Democratic administrations, economists and climate change experts. See the report.

Climate Change Legislation:
Revenue Recycling Could Ease Economic Impact Sept. 16 briefing

Briefing on Capitol Hill Draws SRO Crowd:
Rep. John Larson (CT) opened a standing-room only briefing on Capitol Hill on Sept. 16. The briefing, co-sponsored by Clean Air-Cool Planet and Environment and Energy Study Institute, attracted a diverse audience from inside and outside the Beltway. Presentations from representatives from Congress and the Congressional Budget
Office focused on options for easing the economic burden of climate change.

Click here to see video of the speakers presenting on these important policy options.

Capitol building

In a policy discussion held on Sept. 16, participants explored options for easing the economic burden of climate change legislation. The meeting, jointly hosted by Clean Air-Cool Planet's Climate Policy Center and the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, was attended by representatives from Congress and the Congressional Budget Office; leading academicians; and experts from two think tanks. Read the details.