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Health & Fitness

Time to Stop Climate Change

Time to Stop Climate Change


As a member of Congress, my top priority will be to help build a clean energy future — a prosperous economy powered by renewable energy.

The reasons to transition our economy away from fossil fuels are many.  Our addiction to fossil fuels has led us into war after war.  We have despoiled many beautiful landscapes in the extraction or mining of fossil fuels.  We have polluted the air we breathe.  And we have introduced uncertainty into the future of our children by raising the average temperature of the planet.

My actions, as an individual and as a legislator, demonstrate my long enduring commitment to building a clean energy future.  As an individual, I have worked hard to reduce my carbon footprint — selling the family’s second car, biking to work, minimizing air travel, and, notably, doing a model energy saving project that put my home on the cover of Home Energy magazine.

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As a legislator, in 2008, I persuaded 110 of my colleagues to sign a letter urging passage of the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act.  After helping to get the GWSA passed, I have continued to work to strengthen the state’s response, sponsoring legislation to tighten our emission reduction schedule, to make building energy consumption transparent, to reward drivers who choose smaller automobiles and most importantly fighting to better fund public transportation.

As a candidate for Congress, I have committed to supporting a national carbon tax — to create incentives to move the economy away from fossil fuel — and I’ve also committed to support a legion of other measures to reduce carbon emissions, in particular supporting power plant emission standards.

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Given my commitment to a clean energy future, the threshold question for me in reflecting on the controversial Keystone pipeline is whether it would have any impact on global carbon emissions.   State Department analysts have concluded that approval or denial of the project “is unlikely to have substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands or on the amount of heavy crude oil refined in the Gulf Coast area.”  They believe that the tar sands oil can also be transported by rail at only a small additional cost; so that the use of rail rather than a pipeline will not significantly affect the rate at which tar sands oil is brought to market.  Some have sharply criticized that finding.

The President is conducting a further review and has adopted the same threshold question:  He will approve the project only if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”   If the President denies approval to the pipeline, I will certainly support his decision.  If, on the other hand, he concludes that the project will not affect carbon pollution, he will then have to weigh other considerations — local environmental impacts, whether the pipeline creates jobs or otherwise benefits the economy, whether the pipeline has energy security implications, what his trade obligations are to the Canadians.  I believe that the President is in the best position to evaluate all of these considerations and I look forward to seeing his analysis and expect to support his conclusion.

Regardless of the President’s decision on Keystone, we need to keep our eyes focused on the longer-term goal — radical reduction in our consumption of fossil fuels.  So far, Americans have yet to take the necessary bold actions, but it won’t be long before nature’s signals become impossible to ignore.  The risks of unrestrained climate change will become clearer and clearer.

When Americans are ready to act, they are most likely to accept an approach that involves regionally-balanced, shared sacrifice.  I believe that a well-crafted national carbon tax can drive change in a regionally balanced way and also in a way that protects energy intensive manufacturing and people of lower income.

Additionally, I believe that we need to continue to invest in clean energy technology development.  As Bill McKibben has pointed out, the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.  The fossil fuel age will end, as the stone age ended, when we can show people around the world a path to prosperity using superior technology.


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