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Stop Senate Bills S2191 & S3036 - climate security shams
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
By Rosalind Peterson
Two climate security act shams, U.S. Senate Bills S2191 and S3036, were debated on the floor of the U.S. Senate between June 2-6, 2008. Senators Boxer and Lieberman will be bringing this legislation forward, in the near future, once they have the sixty votes needed pass either one of them.
These bills are designed to sell out the health and welfare of the people of the United States in order to establish a national and international Cap & Trade Money Market Scheme, and under Section 6E, “…initiate programs to “mitigate” the impacts of any unavoidable global climate change…” These bills have nothing to do with “Climate Security”. They are designed to fleece the American people out of $Billions of their tax dollars to support a questionable “market scheme of carbon trading” by selling “emission allowances” to polluters to allow them to pollute more in the future.
This year a so-called environmental group, the Environmental Defense Fund, is promoting the passage of these bills which would move the United States EPA into becoming, a market based “Climate Change Credit Corporation”, instead of an agency that works to reduce air pollution at it source, in order to protect human health and our air, water, soil, and trees from the detrimental effects of ever-increasing air and water pollution.
Another new board will be established if #3036 is passed: The “Carbon Market Efficiency Board.” The term of a board member has been changed to where an appointed board member could serve for up to 14 years. This private corporation and board will be made up of presidential political appointees with little or no Congressional oversight or regulations.
The buying and selling of bogus pollution credits will not be regulated under this bill. It is like having the American taxpayers fund a worldwide gambling casino made up of American assets. And it appears that nothing will happen until 2012; doing nothing to implement the reduction of air pollution for four years.
Taxpayers will fund this new, private, and mostly unregulated private corporation, which will negate the purpose and goals of the EPA as stated: “The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and the environment.”
Senators Boxer, Feinstein, Lieberman, and Warner, staunch supporters of these bills, did not write into the 500+/- pages of legislation that the EPA libraries, closed by the Bush Administration, should be reopened and funded. These bills do not stress that polluters should be fined for polluting our environment, rivers, lakes or streams. Instead they reward polluters by allowing them to purchase bogus emission credits which allow them to continue to pollute unabated for years. Instead of structuring higher EPA fines for polluters to pay if they exceed pollution laws…these bills provide an escape hatch for polluters and negate EPA rules and regulations at the same time.
We know that many financial markets, like the oil futures markets, are unregulated and have cost Americans $Billions of dollars in ever increasing fuel prices. These bills set up a system that will operate under a similar structure.
In the end the taxpayers will pay because corporations will transfer their costs to consumers through higher prices. Goods arriving from other countries will have higher prices due to emissions charges, and we will fund this private corporation through higher gasoline and income taxes, a double and triple tax on all citizens. This will add to speculation in the emissions credit markets and will enrich those industries that are not polluting, giving them bogus emission credits that they can then sell to polluters.
The American taxpayer fleecing will be complete if either of these bills pass. The self-reinforcing bubble market created by the buying and selling of emissions credits will eventually collapse and then the taxpayer will fund that collapse. If our elected officials want to reduce pollutants all they need to do is set standards for polluting industries to meet, under EPA rules and regulations, and have them enforced. Polluters who continue to pollute each year would pay heavier and heavier fines to the EPA who can then redirect the money to technologies that will reduce air pollution.
The majority of the 500 pages in the two bills set up the parameters for this money market scheme while gutting the EPA Clean Water Act’s water protections to allow commercial-scale injections of toxic chemicals underground (geosequestration). If these schemes were safe and worked these bills would not need to lower our Clean Water Act standards. We can’t protect our water supplies from being contaminated by toxic waste sites or waste disposal sites in general, at this time. And we don’t know if these toxic sequestration schemes will work.
There is evidence that a few sequestration schemes have failed. Geosequestration is designed to help the coal companies pollute more and would clearly benefit the coal industry and their drive to expand this highly polluting industry. And clearly there are few places where geosequestration could be used safely at this time.
Last September 2007, the United Nations held its 60 Annual Conference on Climate Change. And the drumbeat for climate change “mitigation” was almost a motto of the conference. However, the word “mitigation” was never defined and these bills fail to define the word “mitigate” or what types of programs would be used to initiate climate change “mitigation”. Thus, open-ended funding will be provided for massive mitigation experimentation at the expense of public health, crop production, and the protection of our environment from the assaults of unregulated pollutants.
California Senator Boxer’s Bill S3036 was used last week, in a “bait and switch” tactic, to replace Senator Lieberman’s Bill S2191…S3036 was defeated in the Senate by a narrow margin on June 6, 2008. When contacted after this vote, her Washington, D.C., office stated that this bill would be introduced again as soon as they had enough votes to pass it. (Note: Both S2191 and S3036 have almost the same wording and goals.)
These two bills do not speak to alternative means of transportation, bullet trains, or funding any other alternatives which could be immediately implemented. This bill is a regressive tax on all of us without funding the alternatives that are needed to reduce our carbon imprint. When you raise the taxes on gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating fuels, etc., you increase the price of basics like food and clothes.
And where does this wealth go...to set up a private Climate Change Corporation that will use our tax dollars to allow polluters to pollute more by purchasing bogus emissions credits in an unregulated money market scheme. This bill is not helping reducing our use of oil…there are few if any realistic alternatives at this point…it is about the redistribution of our tax dollars to foreign markets, speculators, banks (a section in this bill), and corporations.
California Senator Boxer Senator Lieberman are the driving forces behind these Climate Security Act shams and California Senate Feinstein is supporting this legislation along with Senators McCain and Clinton.
If we don't take action today this bill will pass and our tax dollars will go to fund a private corporation, the Climate Credit Corporation, while air pollution that degrades the quality of our air, water, and environment will continue unabated.
According to the Congressional Research Service Summary the Act:1) “…Requires the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to…Provide(s) for the selling, exchanging, transferring, submitting, retiring, or borrowing emissions allowances…” and
2) “Provides for the distribution of emission allowances…”
3) This bill “…Establishes in the Treasury and provides for allocations…” and
4) Establishes the Climate Change Credit Corporation to auction emission allowances…”
5) “Amends the Safe Water Drinking Act to require the Administrator to permit commercial-scale underground injection of carbon dioxide for purposes of geological sequestration…”
Information on Carbon Trading: “Cap & Trade Money Market Schemes”
1, Communities for a Better Environment Fall 2006 Newsletter: Richard Drury’s article: “Pollution Trading: We Don’t Buy it” Excellent Article on the “Pollution Shell Game.”
2, Los Angeles Times April 1, 2007 “Carbon Trading Won’t Work”
4, Cap & Trade Article Part II
5, According to Source Watch this group has “…evolved into George Bush's favorite environmental group…”
Information on Experimental Weather Modification Bills:
9, Contact your elected officials and defeat these two bills experimental weather modification bills from passage in 2008. U.S. Senate Bill 1807 & U.S. House Bill 3445 brought to you with compliments from Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
10, In a speech (June 5, 2008),on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Senator Salazar of Colorado, spoke of the drought which has decimated his state in the last two years. The Senator blamed global warming as the cause of these problems without realizing that the Colorado drought started at the same time a massive experimental weather modification scheme was initiated in Wyoming. It is easy to blame global warming for all of our problems rather than look at the experiments we are conducting on ourselves with more than 50 experimental weather modification programs ongoing in the United States (according to NOAA records).
NOAA - Current Weather Modification Programs – How are they linked to current weather problems and agriculture declines due to the disruption of local micro-climates?
11, NOAA 2005 Listing of Experimental Weather Modification Programs.
12, NOAA 2006 Listing of Experimental Weather Modification Programs
13, NOAA 2007 Listing of Experimental Weather Modification Programs
14, Honey Bee Decline Articles & Documents
15, U.S. House of Representatives Passed U.S. House Bill 6304 – FISA Amendment Act of 2008 on June 20, 2008. When the U.S. Senate Returns from their 4th of July vacation they will discuss passage of this bill which will allow continued Spying on United States citizens. This bill also gives amnesty to all of the telecom companies that allegedly colluded with the Bush Administration in spying on American citizens without obtaining a Court Order from the FISA court…among other abuses. It is time to object to the loss of our 4th Amendment Rights under the U.S. Constitution.
16, Ex-TVA Head Denouces Plans for Nuclear Plants. By David Flesser, Chattanooga Times, June 13, 2008. "Former TVA Chairman S. David Freeman returned to his native Chattanooga Thursday to denounce proposals by the Tennessee Valley Authority to build more nuclear reactors. 'Unfortunately, the concern over global warming has provided an opening where the nuclear industry has risen up from the dead,' Mr. Freeman told reporters during a news conference organized by citizen groups opposed to building more nuclear reactors. 'There's a whole new generation that didn't live through the first nuclear era and frankly the industry is touting much more success than their record would support. The only thing new is the history we've forgotten'... Mr. Freeman, an 82-year-old lawyer and engineer who has headed four U.S. utilities, accused TVA officials of being 'nucleoholics' addicted to atomic power despite the agency's costly mistakes from overbuilding nuclear plants a generation ago."
In 1995, Rosalind, now retired, became a certified California United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency Agriculture Crop Loss Adjustor working in more than ten counties throughout California. Rosalind has a BA degree from Sonoma State University in Environmental Studies & Planning (ENSP), with emphasis on using solar power, photosynthesis, agriculture, and crop production.
Between 1989 and 1993 Rosalind worked as an Agricultural Technologist for the Mendocino County Department of Agriculture. After leaving Mendocino County she took a position with the USDA Farm Service Agency as a Program Assistant in Mendocino, Sonoma, and the Salinas County Offices, where she worked until becoming certified as a crop loss adjustor for the State.
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