Yesterday, 13 U.S. Senators, including Al Franken from Minnesota, signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid, urging him to ensure that legislation does not weaken the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to protect human health by regulating coal-fired power plants and other global warming polluters.
Efforts are afoot in Washington, DC - particularly in the U.S. Senate - that would dramatically impair national work under the Clean Air Act to reduce global warming pollution from cars and trucks and industry. Here's what's at stake: on April 2, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. In December 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued findings that the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming constitute a danger to public health and welfare here in the United States. Some of those human health impacts include mortality from more frequent and intense heat waves and degraded air quality that negatively impacts people with respiratory diseases and asthma. The worst of the health impacts are likely to be felt by the very young and older Americans - children and senior citizens - particularly in urban areas and among low income populations. The EPA findings are a crucial step in work to require reductions in global warming pollution.
Despite recent rebuttals to the contrary, global warming is a real threat to Americans. Even the U.S. military agrees. In the new video "Climate Patriots: A Military Perspective on Energy, Climate Change and American National Security," recently released by the PEW Project, leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces weigh in on their experiences gearing up for and preventing climate change. The overall gist: climate change will increase terrorism, will require more military spending, and will create a need for a greater U.S. military presence abroad. So we need to be taking action now.
The U.S. Department of Transportation's TIGER grants have just been announced. These are the last bit of federal stimulus funding for transportation--$1.5 billion for which there were over 1,400 applications, totaling nearly $60 billion. What's truly great about Department of Transportation Secretary LaHood's decisions is that most of the funding is being directed toward truly innovative, multi-modal projects that typically aren't prioritized highly. There are few traditional highway projects in the mix. Each state received funding for one project. Many are for rail (both freight and passenger) or transit projects, port improvements, bike/pedestrian accommodations, and even a wind power project were selected. Minnesota's award is $35 million to help renovations for St. Paul's Union Depot which will be the transportation hub for the east end of the Central Corridor light rail project, a relocated destination for local Amtrak passenger rail service, and a station for intercity and local bus connections.
President Obama has voiced that "climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time." In his State of the Union, he expressed the importance of passing a comprehensive clean energy bill in order to meet this challenge and help recover the American economy. In the recently released 2010 Economic Report of the President, it was reported that "a clean energy transformation is essential."
In December, a bipartisan climate policy bill was quietly introduced in the U.S. Senate. Senators Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, introduced S. 2877, the Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act. The CLEAR bill has attracted increasing attention, including the lead editorial in today's Washington Post and a great commentary piece by Minnesota's own David Morris in the January 29 edition of the Star Tribune.
One of our nation's most valuable environmental laws is under attack by members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Their target: the Clean Air Act. In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined, based on an in-depth scientific evidence, that global warming pollutants endanger human health and welfare, including right here in the United States. Some of our federal elected officials are working to overturn that scientific finding and prevent policy that should help us protect public health into a toothless law on the crucial issue of lowering global warming pollution.
On Feb 4, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) introduced the Ten Million Solar Roofs and Ten Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act, which would create a national rebate program for small solar photo voltaic and hot water heating systems installed in the next ten years.
In a just-released study, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that "if Congress passed climate and energy legislation that strengthened the energy efficiency and renewable energy standards in [the ACES bill] the House of Representatives approved last June, consumer electric and natural gas costs would be $113 billion lower by 2030, and emitters would pay 4 percent less in compliance costs." Read the entire analysis here.
Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner came to Minnesota to check out our clean energy economy. He toured Honeywell's Golden Valley facility to see how manufacturing for energy efficiency and clean energy creates jobs and stimulates the economy. Later, he participated in a roundtable discussion where he highlighted the need for the federal government to develop policies that will spark increased clean energy jobs and economic development in the states, something we're already benefiting from in Minnesota. He also announced $5 billion in clean energy manufacturing tax credits in addition to the $100 billion clean energy stimulus dollars.
Read more about his visit in the Star Tribune.
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