The Daily Background

You can watch Al Gore’s opening statements from the Joint Hearing on climate change before the House Energy and Science Committees today over at Nancy Pelosi’s YouTube account. Part one here, part two here, and part three here. Gore also testifies before the Senate today, but there’s no video available for that yet. Evidently a (Democratic) Representative referred to Gore as “Mr President” at one point.

Gore also delivered 12 boxes full of more than 500,000 signatures asking Congress to address the problem of global climate change in a more meaningful way. He outlined a ten point program which consisted of the following:

1. C02 freeze & reduction: immediately cap the amount of C02 being emitted in the United States, and then begin a process of sharp reductions to lower the level by 90% by 2050.

2. Carbon tax: base the amount of money that people pay in taxes on how much they pollute, rather than their income.

3. Revenue use: A portion of the carbon tax revenues goes to people in lower income groups to help them make the transition to polluting less.

4. International cooperation: The United States needs to be a part of a strong international treaty which would replace Kyoto.

5. Carbon sequestration: Congress should enact a moratorium on the construction of any new coal power plant that isn’t compatible with carbon capture and sequestration in order to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted in the process of creating electricity.

6. Electranet: Congress should develop an “electranet”– a smart grid of ordinary people and entrepreneurs to capture electricity in alternative ways (wind, solar, etc) and sell that green electricity to anyone, anywhere in a way that would be similar to the internet.

7. Strengthen CAFE: Raise the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards in order to make vehicles (not just cars and trucks) more fuel efficient.

8. Lightbulbs: Congress should set a date in the future to ban inefficient incandescent light-bulbs.

9. New Mortages: Carbon Neutral Mortgage Association- set up a government program to help homeowners and homebuilders to pay for ways to make buildings more energy-efficient in the long-term.

10. Corporations: SEC should require disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions in corporate reporting to hold corporations more accountable and let stockholders know what they’re investing in.

Filed under: Environment Related, Z-TDB Blog