In June, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACESA), also known as Waxman-Markey. This bill, which started out as an extremely weak and compromised measure, was further watered down during its journey through the House—in fact, much of the bill was written directly by corporate lobbyists. The final result? A thoroughgoing “polluter protection bill” that, in the words of the nation’s top climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, will “do more harm to the environment than doing nothing at all.”

Among the problems with ACESA are:

• ACESA is built upon a so-called cap-and-trade mechanism that allows enormous numbers of questionable “offsets.” Experience has shown that this is one of the least effective and most fraud-prone schemes for controlling carbon emissions (more about this later).

• ACESA sets extremely weak emission targets. The scientifically sound target for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations is no more than 350 parts-per-million (ppm). ACESA will fail to meet that goal. In fact, ACESA does not even require that we target 450 ppm, the outdated target which many industrialized countries have been considering, And the 450ppm target itself offers less than 50% odds of averting catastrophic global warming.

• It pre-empts existing EPA power to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act.

• It grandfathers in dirty coal power plants and permits numerous new ones to be licensed for years to come without emission restrictions. Under ACESA, tens of billions of dollars would be invested in the illusive and unproven Carbon Capture & Storage technology. And ACESA would allow coal mining and coal waste to continue to destroy the environment.

• It subsidizes “renewable energy” generation from biomass and trash incineration - techniques that release more CO2 and other pollutants per megawatt-hour than does a coal plant. And biomass incineration threatens to decimate our forests as trees are cut to feed the power stations.

The cap-and-trade system that ACESA would set up was favored by polluting industries and financial interests mainly because it requires so little change in business as usual, while creating a whole new securities market for Wall Street to gamble with and profit from. Previous experiences with cap-and-trade in Europe and elsewhere has shown that it is not an effective way to reduce emissions. As embodied in ACESA, it is extremely complex and non-transparent. It requires oversight on tens of thousands of emitting entities, takes years to implement, and can be undermined by false reporting and the creation of bogus offsets. The massive carbon trading market it would create will almost certainly be financially unstable and subject to manipulation by security firms, discouraging needed long-term investments in emissions reduction.

Because free allowances are tradable, they represent immensely valuable securities that become part of the capital structure of the recipients. Often this results in rate increase approvals because utilities now have more capital invested in generating each watt of energy. Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, testified before a Congressional Hearing that ACESA’s free allowances “would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States.”

A superior alternative to cap-and-trade would be a revenue-neutral carbon tax (or “revenue neutral carbon dividend”) that charges for carbon at the source of extraction or importation. This would be simple, robust, transparent, cost effective, equitable and just, and would avoid the inherent risks of a highly volatile carbon market. It has proven to be economically viable and environmentally sound in places such as Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and British Colombia. Unlike cap-and-trade, such a measure would create incentives to reduce all emissions, not just those for which companies lacked permits. A carbon tax is considered the superior option by most economists, as well by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. But if ACESA goes forward, it would probably effectively block the implementation of any carbon tax scheme.

The Senate is expected to come up with its version of the bill in September. Current reports indicate that it will be even weaker than ACESA. Sadly, some environmental groups that signed on to pass a climate bill this year are still working to pass ACESA, turning a blind eye to its flaws. If ACESA passes, it will block real climate action for years. That’s why a group of 26 organizations in the environmental, social/justice, and peace communities have come together under the banner Climate SOS to sound the alarm on ACESA. While ACESA is just the kind of loophole-laden corporate welfare bill that Congress likes to pass, it is not what Planet Earth needs. It’s time to speak up for a real climate protection bill. Further information can be found at securegreenfuture.org. and climateSOS.org