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Business Groups Target Climate Bill

Thursday 27 August 2009

by: Jim Snyder  |  The Hill

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John M. Engler, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers. (Photo: Getty Images)

    Advocates for manufacturers and small businesses are launching a multimillion-dollar ad campaign against climate change legislation in states represented by senators likely to determine the bill's fate.

    The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), groups that have historically leaned Republican, are targeting the House Waxman-Markey bill as a threat to the economy because it would raise energy costs.

    "Our message to senators is that the Waxman-Markey bill is an 'anti-jobs, anti-energy' piece of legislation," said Jay Timmons, NAM executive vice president.

    The groups plan to pay for TV, radio and Internet advertising in states like Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio and Virginia.

    It is one of several campaigns this recess intended to advance or block the climate change bill. The League of Conservation Voters (LCV), for example, announced earlier this week that it would pay for advertisements criticizing members from congressional districts in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Arizona and Montana for voting against the House climate bill.

    The American Petroleum Institute, meanwhile, is funding rallies to build up opposition to the climate legislation. The Natural Resources Defense Council is one of a number of environmental and labor groups working to gin up grassroots support for the measure.

    The climate bill sponsored by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Energy and Environment subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) squeaked through the House on a close vote in late June. The bill would cut carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 and more than 80 percent by 2050.

    The bill is expected to serve as the template for the Senate action. Senate committees with jurisdiction have been instructed to have bills ready by the end of September.

    The NAM-NFIB effort comes after a study paid for by NAM and the American Council for Capital Formation that reported the Waxman-Markey bill could cost 2.4 million jobs by 2030 in lost economic growth.

    Supporters like the LCV contend the bill will create new green jobs and help push the country out of a recession.

  

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The main purpose of this

 Fri, 08/28/2009 - 19:06 — Midwest Tom (not verified)
The main purpose of this bill is to reward Wall Street with a whole new thing to trade. They are already designing derivative trades using cay and trade.

These dingbats must be

 Sat, 08/29/2009 - 07:33 — Regina (not verified)
These dingbats must be singing their theme song: "Wishing will make it so." They're stupid and spiteful enough (a deadly combination!) to believe that if they claim something loudly and often it will perforce be true, in this case it's the insistence that we can keep on burning coal and oil till Kingdom Come with no atmospheric deterioration and no planetary crisis. In that case, Kingdom will Come in just a few years, like 2050. Unfortunately the people will pay the price, not the billionaire bozos.

The present world population

 Sat, 08/29/2009 - 10:42 — Garrett Connelly (not verified)
The present world population and socioeconomic structure are straining the Earth's resource base and environment to a degree that suggests the possibility of a tipping point when sudden climatic change will be sufficient to cause an accompanying evolutionary shift of specie variety which may or may not include humanity. The problem with cap and trade type thinking is it does not address the magnitude of change required for our specie to survive. Kofi Annan points to a modern economic realization that holds justice central to any possible sustainable culture: "We live in a global village and we each have a responsibility to protect our planet. Isn’t it logical and equitable, therefore, to insist that those who pollute have a duty to clean up? Pollution by some affects us all. Every one of us needs to understand that pollution has a cost, and this cost must be borne by the Polluter. Least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions are the world’s poorest communities who suffer most from climate change. This is fundamentally unjust. If efforts to build a global framework to address climate change are to succeed and endure they must be based on the principles of fairness and equity. People everywhere deserve climate justice. And everywhere people must stand up and demand exactly that from their representatives. A fair and just approach would facilitate agreement at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen later this year. We cannot afford to fail." (Human Impact Report - Climate Change - Global Humanitarian Forum - Geneva, page 6)

A conservative news story on

 Sun, 08/30/2009 - 14:02 — Anonymous (not verified)
A conservative news story on the same subject, you realize, would be headlined: Liberal Groups Whip up Anger Against Business, or something to that effect. As the body of the story makes clear, both "pro-business" and environmental groups are organizing, advertising, using whatever clout they have to promote their agendas. I can only hope that the environmental message is better understood than the old, tried and often untrue saw about "losing jobs." Problem is: coalminers or oilrig workers probably will lose jobs, and many are too short-sighted to understand that green industry could actually provide more jobs, even for people like them. So they have a specific fear, not balanced by any tangible hope. That's the political dilemma of reform generally: the present may be evil, but it's the evil you know; the future may promise better, but it's not tangible; it hasn't happened yet.