ACTION ALERT
Congress is gearing up to act on legislation aimed at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading cause of climate change, and our elected officials . Through committee assignments, Senator George Voinovich is in position to lead the way towards legislation that will reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to safe levels, promote technological innovation, and create jobs for Ohioans in the emerging low carbon economy.
While evaluating proposals to address the climate change, it is important to keep in mind that their is a right way and a wrong way to solve the problem. Good climate legislation will include the following features;
- It has a mandatory cap on carbon emissions including targets for reducing future emissions. Carbon emissions must be reduced as part of any program to address climate change. Enacting a mandatory cap and setting future targets ensures that emitters have to reduce emissions to safe levels.
- It sets up a cap and trade system for carbon emissions. Cap and trade creates a market based system to reduce emissions and reward innovation in the economy. Under this system, emission credits are allocated to emitters and then each emitter can decide the best way to reduce emissions. Each emitter can choose to reduce emissions and sell the remaining credits or buy unused credits from another emitter. The program will result in economy wide emission reductions.
- It does not contain any artificial price on emissions. Some proposals contain a "safety valve", which sets a maximum price for carbon emissions. This places an artificial and arbitrary price on carbon emissions and weakens a key feature of any strong climate legislation; market based prices on carbon emissions.