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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > July > 05
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Editorial: Ohio can’t be against capping carbon
When the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a historic anti-global warming bill at the end of June, Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester, made a splash.
He took to the House floor for an hour — almost unheard of in a body that limits floor time because it has so many members — to read portions of the bill, highlighting their length and complexity. He said he didn’t understand some portions, and he suggested that maybe legislators should know what they are voting for. He complained that much had been added at the last minute.
When asked later why he had read from the bill for so long, he said he thought that the people should know what’s in “this pile of … ” — let’s say, garbage.
To be sure, he had a legitimate complaint.
But much of the bill’s complexity resulted from efforts to get support from lawmakers in places like Ohio.
When the Obama administration’s proposal to reduce greenhouse gases came out, a justified cry went up that it would be too hard on Ohioans.
Under that proposal, the government would have auctioned permits to release certain amounts of the carbon dioxide associated with coal, which Ohio utilities are particularly dependent on. The auction process — the proceeds of which would have been used to reduce taxes elsewhere — died.
Now the House bill would have the government give away most of the permits. Beyond that, coal companies would get billions in incentives to pursue “clean coal,” which some environmentalists say isn’t realistic. And they’d get incentives to “capture” their carbon-dioxide emissions.
Added, too, were ways to protect the poorest consumers of electricity from price hikes. According to the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, the poorest 20 percent of the population would not be harmed by the bill, but would actually come out a little better.
The average family, meanwhile, would pay about $175 more a year by 2020.
Farming interests also won concessions. (The Ohio Farm Bureau, which has 234,000 members, still opposes the bill.) So did a legislator from Chicago, who wanted green jobs for inner-city residents. And Florida got a $50 million hurricane research center.
The process of adding things to buy votes wasn’t pretty. It angered a lot of people. Some liberal Democrats, including Cleveland’s Dennis Kucinich, voted against the bill, seeing it as not nearly strong enough. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth also decided to oppose the supposedly environmentalist bill.
But the main result of all the politics-as-usual activity was legislation that’s historic. It is projected to reduce greenhouse emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and 85 percent by 2020. It would do this primarily by setting a national limit on emissions and allowing emitters to trade “credits” that allow them to emit a certain amount. If you emit less than your targets, you can make money. If you fail, you aren’t shut down, but you have to pay.
The hard core of opposition is the Republican Party, which rejects the official projections about the bill’s cost.
The hyperpartisan nature of the times is at work. A vocal part of the Republican base still listens to political warriors who are convinced that man-made global warning is not a problem, no matter what the vast majority of scientific opinion says.
The virtually solid Republican opposition — even after the auction (decried as a tax) was eliminated — required the sponsors to scratch for all the Democrats they could get. Some Democrats were leery. U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, from an Ohio swing district on the West Virginia border, in coal country, voted no.
Rep. Zack Space, from just west of the Wilson district, voted for the bill because of the late changes. Freshman Rep. John Boccieri, representing Canton, also voted yes. Both Democrats hold districts that were long held by Republicans. They have now been targeted by Republican ad campaigns because of their votes.
And yet something must be done about global warming. Democrats, being in control of the government, must take responsibility for designing the basic approach. House Democrats have done that.
Now the Senate needs to take a close look, especially at those provisions added in a hurry. But its focus, too, has to be on making historic change.
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