Action in Congress!

The Washington Post reports that on Thursday, Senator Lieberman (I-Conn) and Warner (R-Va) introduced the outline of a bill that would attempt to curb global warming which includes:

• "a Federal Reserve-style board to help contain carbon costs, a 70 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from current levels by 2050."
• "creation of a federal Climate Change Credit Corp. that would auction a large share of emission allowances and use the proceeds to promote new technologies."
• "idea for forcing importers to buy allowances if goods arrive from countries that are not part of a system for limiting greenhouse gases."
• "free allocation of emissions to cover 30 percent of utility needs in 2012 based on historical use and phases in full auctioning of allowances. Transportation emission allowances would be imposed at refinery levels. By 2035, 52 percent of all allowances would be auctioned."
• "The auction revenue, starting at $69.5 billion, would be used to promote clean renewable energy sources, carbon capture and storage, and new vehicle technologies, while easing climate change impacts on coal-mining communities, wildlife, waterways and poor countries."
• "If carbon dioxide prices spiked and threatened specific companies or industries, the board would be able to loosen rules for companies borrowing from their quotas for future years."

Interestingly, Warner voted against two previous attempts to address global warming. He has come around:

At that point in time, I had not sufficiently focused on this, and it was prior to a lot of scientific data that has come out," Warner said yesterday. Now, he added, "I feel an obligation to put something before the Senate.

I forgive Warner for being ignorant in the past about global warming since he has come around. I don't need to rub it in that the science has been conclusive for years. In fact, if he has come around, it is a good indicator that a lot of other people have or soon will.

Another interesting note about the Lieberman/Warner bill- it basically puts tariffs on trades from nations that do not have greenhouse gas caps. This would have the obvious additional benefit of making US-produced goods more competitive within the US than those from developing nations (that would otherwise sell us cheaper goods)- it's an implicit subsidy of American products and a forced internalization of the costs of greenhouse gas pollution for the economies of other countries. If other countries in the UN adopt this measure it could end up being an extremely powerful tool that could make US goods more competitive internationally. It would also be hard for the world marketplace to argue against this tariff as being noncompetitive because it corrects a market imperfection. Smart.