Pans for Voinovitch Plan

Environmental Defense has panned the Voinovitch plan at its blog, Climate 411. Senator Voinovitch has proposed legislation that would be an alternative to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191).

In the words of Steve Cochran of Environmental Defense, “This proposal can be summed up in one word: bankrupt. It’s a detailed prescription for doing nothing. If you think climate change is a hoax, this is your bill."

Why is this bill so bad? Cochran explains:

• The plan outlined by Senator Voinovich postpones meaningful action on greenhouse gas emissions for at least twenty years, calling for weak, non-binding emissions reduction goals, and taxpayer-funded subsidies for favored technologies.
• If the subsidies failed to achieve their goal, the Environmental Protection Agency could establish a cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions, but it could be suspended at the whim of the federal government, and it would come with an absurdly low $5 per ton "safety valve" (an artificial price control on emissions reductions).
• Not only that, the proposal would take away state authority - confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA - to control global warming pollution. This would negate the efforts of dozens of states across the country that have set ambitious emissions reduction targets to address climate change now.

The blogs are hating this bill.