Water Agencies Seek Inclusion in Climate Legislation
For some time we have been hearing about changing precipitation patterns, rising sea levels, and other various ways that climate change will severely impact our nation’s hydrologic systems. In the debate over climate legislation water groups are advocating for congressional funds to assist with mitigating the effects on water supplies of a changing climate. Although water groups are pleased to have been included in funding proposed in the most recent version of Lieberman-Warner, the amendment offered up by Senator Boxer is not specific about what portion of the $136 billion in funding that drinking, waste, storm-water utilities would be eligible for under the energy block grant program. In the last few weeks, water groups have stepped up their efforts and sent letters to Senator Boxer and Congress pushing for assistance and inclusion in a cap and trade program.
The May 16th letter sent by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) seeks “clearly designated federal funding” to assist wastewater treatment agencies with:
- adaptation and public health risk;
- proactive climate change mitigation projects; and
- furthering efforts to establish wastewater industry GHG offsets.
On May 20th eight water groups followed-up NACWA’s effort with a letter outlining three broad objectives they are calling on Congress to implement:
- develop an applied research program focusing on climate change and water resources;
- increase federal funding and support for both water infrastructure and climate change impacts; and
- provide support and incentives for water utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In an earlier post, we blogged about obtaining GHG credits through managed water supply systems and concluded that water utilities should be proactive in developing strategies for dealing with nitrogen oxide and methane emissions that are almost certain to be regulated under federal climate legislation. Now industry groups, such as NACWA, are actively pursuing inclusion in whatever allocation or cap and trade program our future holds.
International Adaptation Assistance - the Dark Side of the Climate Debate
We have shared views in an earlier blog on climate adaptation, but recent discussion of responsibility for the overall global impacts of climate change leads us to return to the subject. For some time it has been clear that great care needs to be taken in how greenhouse gas reduction responsibilities are assigned to developing nations. They do not want to be denied the blessings of development in order to counter global warming created by the economies of the developed world over the past decades.
Now, a second major issue has surfaced. The developing world is going to need adaptation assistance – upwards of an initial $100 billion – as it experiences actual injuries from the changing climate. The issue is kicking up a lot of sand recently.
The impacts of an altered climate – coastal erosion and inundation, health effects, drought, and extreme weather events – are expected to be more severe in developing countries. The choice of means to provide climate adaptation assistance to developing countries is fraught with the greatest policy ramifications. Should aid be provided through technical expertise, direct grants, loans, or combinations of these?
As members of the community of nations, wealthier countries historically have had no problem stepping forward to help correct global disparities in economic development, public health, and human rights protection. But to be told that their greenhouse emissions have caused massive harms for which billions in reparations are now due causes many developed nations to question how to proceed. Yet, the debate over direct aid grants vs. adaptation loans has now taken on precisely this dimension. International reparations payments for aggression and injustice have a long and tangled history.
If adaptation assistance is provided to right past wrongs, then some may argue that a developed nation's generous adaptation assistance can be taken as an admission of wrongdoing, a basis for civil liability. The same facts, the same analyses, stand behind both the climate-justice rationale for legislative aid to counter climate impacts (S. 3036 SEC. 4801-4804) as underpin the several suits now making their way through the courts seeking damages for “climate torts.”
If loans are provided instead of direct grants, does this evade the difficulty? Perhaps, but the concept of loans to be paid off with interest does not sit well with advocates for adaptation and “climate resiliency” aid to the developing world. The UK has offered $1.56 billion to be incorporated in a World Bank adaptation fund, but the UK has indicated that the fund is for loans, not grants. Advocates say debt-stressed developing nations should not be loaned, but given, the aid that is owed for the damage greenhouse emissions have caused over time.
Also, advocates are questioning the pivotal role the World Bank group is angling to play in deciding where and how any funds are to be invested. They want a role in deciding how the pie will be sliced, not unlike stakeholders in the US debate over the revenues from cap-and-trade want a say in any federal revenues will be distributed.
Where does this issue stand in the US today? Because the US is not a Kyoto signatory and has not offered funds, the adaptation debate in the US is just beginning. Each of the concerns addressed above will figure into the US's legislative debate in the coming months. What is almost certain is that some of the huge revenues of the Lieberman-Warner bill's cap-and-trade provisions will be earmarked for adaptation assistance. Other legislative proposals are also in the wings. Watch this space.
Congress in 2008
Federal climate change legislation may be on the way. The Senate has targeted a vote in June, and the House by the end of the year, although a bill both chambers can agree upon is unlikely until 2009, if then. It would be a great mistake, however, to view 2008 as a lost year on the climate front. The fundamental elements of Senate and House bills will be debated and accessible to all who probe beneath the surface. The fundamental regulatory structure and economic impact of climate legislation will have been thrashed over thoroughly by the end of the year. To interested stakeholders, the time to weigh in is now. [summary]
While the candidates count delegates, key Senators and Members count votes and try to predict how far toward climate legislation the Congress will progress this year. The short answer: final legislation is not likely this year, although both chambers may come very close. Because the Senate has targeted a vote in June, and the House by the end of the year, it would be a great mistake to view 2008 as a lost year on the climate front, however. To get to these votes, or even to try to get legislation in shape for a vote, means that the fundamental elements of the Senate and House bills will be debated and visible to all who probe beneath the surface. Passage is quite likely in 2009, but the fundamental regulatory structure and economic impact of climate legislation will have been thrashed over thoroughly. The Congress in 2009 will not by any means be writing on a clean slate. To interested stakeholders, the time to weigh in is now – if not already past.
In the Senate, Senator Lieberman optimistically reports that he believes a vote would be veto-proof at sixty votes if the June vote occurs after the Lieberman-Warner bill reaches the Senate floor soon after the Memorial Day recess. But approval may falter if the many amendments Senators are likely to seek come into play. To reach the 60-vote total, the co-sponsors may have to agree to amendments that, while attracting support from fence-sitting senators, may cause others thought safely on board to fall off the fence. Thus, for the US Senate to approve a strong bill this year, the managers will have to walk a fine line from here on out.
Does Senator John McCain support the bill? His support for decisive action on climate is well-documented. But his desire and determination for a role for nuclear power in addressing the climate challenge may place a serious obstacle in the path of approval, because many "climate senators," including the Chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works that has favorably reported out the Lieberman-Warner bill, Barbara Boxer of California, have expressed opposition to inclusion of incentives for nuclear power. When other ticklish issues are added to the long list of amendment-prone provisions, the prospects for passage this session look decidedly less optimistic.
In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and special climate committee chair Edward Markey (D-MA) were not joking when on April Fools Day they expressed their determination to have climate legislation pass the House by the end of the year. But they have complicated their own task by stressing the importance of including India and China in climate solutions. Strictly speaking, there is no role for addressing these two nations' large GHG emissions totals in domestic US climate legislation; Pelosi and Markey are hoping that India and China will be addressed either through the Kyoto agreement process or through the time-tried pathway of bilateral agreements. But bringing up India and China, the twin Achilles' Heels of climate action, the two members appeared to be drawing attention to their critics' strongest reason for avoiding unilateral US action until the largest global emitters are brought into some sort of accord on joint action.
The issues to be addressed in a domestic climate law are truly daunting, and suggest that next calendar year, after the presidential election, is a more likely time to expect climate legislation for the US. Even then, the challenge cannot be overstated. The issues include negotiating out provisions to cover caps and baselines fairly and effectively, with key decisions to be made about how each plant, company, sector, and state will be expected to comply, not to mention vital assumptions going into a domestic framework regarding the limits to be placed on GHG emissions for the nation and the planet. Baselines need to be set, and the effects of mergers, acquisitions, and corporate reorganizations taken fairly into account. These issues exist even before taking up the much-discussed topic of the role trading/banking/offsets will play, especially vis-a-vis Clean Air Act-California AB 32-style performance standards. One of the very largest and most contentious areas will cover congressional decisions – no doubt after fierce lobbying – of the impact of legislation on different economic sectors (transportation, chemicals, manufacturing, not to mention electrical utilities and fuels production and consumption). In this connection, legislation can be made (or derailed) by proposed provisions regarding phase-in, byes and safety valves, and cost-spreading.
Allocating emissions allowances is about as controversial as the new legislation can possibly become, with major debate about the grandfathering existing sources, whether to auction all or just some of the rights to emit, and allowance retirement. After both creating enormous value in the form of legislative permission to emit GHGs, and auctioning or allocating the newly-minted rights to emit, already it is clear that a large federal direct and indirect subsidy program will be launched, that may favor green technology and conservation and disfavor existing unaltered high-GHG emitting technologies. Early action credits will certainly receive attention, but to what extent and in what form? This has yet to be fully resolved, nor has the point at which allowance purchase may finally be set to occur: upstream/downstream, at the point of energy use or the point of carbon release.
