Following the disastrous House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, the Senate proposed Boxer-Kerry bill, (both are cap and trade bills that would do more harm to the environment than doing nothing at all, in the words of prominent climate scientist Dr. James Hansen), and now the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill still being concocted but already promising to be even worse, many people are understandably thrilled to hear about the Cantwell-Collins bill (acronym CLEAR) that purportedly removes many of the key problems in the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill.

This article was written as a response to Senator John Kerry's Aug31 Op-ed on the Huffington Post, which I submitted to the same outlet but was not published.  Here it is a few months later, when we have seen how far the Senator bill (co-sponsored by Kerry, Boxer and Kirk) comes to answer the urgency that Kerry himself seemed to stress in his Op-ed.

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In his Aug31 article in the Huffington Post, Senator John Kerry pressed the case of climate change presenting a grave threat to America’s national security.  He was right on point.

However, ultimately he missed the point on several accounts:

by Lim Li Lin, Third World Network, Briefing paper 1 on UN Climate Change Talks, Nov2, 2009. originally posted on http://www.twnside.org.sg/

The plot

Some developed countries are plotting the death of the Kyoto Protocol. The stage has been set. Misinformation has been circulated to the media and public that the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. The December 2009 UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, so the story goes, is to agree or lay the foundations of a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol – the so-called “post-Kyoto” agreement.

The truth

Dear Friends,

On Sat Nov 7th, Al Gore will be in Cambridge, MA to promote his new book: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Global Climate Crisis.  Details here: http://www.harvard.com/events/press_release.php?id=2398

Unfortunately, tickets are already sold out.  If any of you have gotten a ticket, please consider asking the following questions of him.  Since each person could ask only one question, it will help if you could let me know so we could coordinate.

We need to be outside holding signs and banners too!  We'll meet there at 12:15 pm, Saturday Nov 7th.

Suggested signs/banners are at the bottom of this page.

Al Gore has played a crucial role in pushing climate change onto people's consciousness.  Yet, he has embraced cap and trade and the current polluter-protecting, climate damaging US federal climate legislation.  Let's use this opportunity to ask some tough questions and hopefully shed light on some critical issues, and to show some visible opposition to false and dangerous "solutions" that only make matters worse.  Below are questions similar to some of the ones we prepared last week to ask Obama at his MIT speech (but from which he escaped with his swiftly escorted motorcade).  Mr. Gore will have a harder time running away, since he will be signing his books too! :-)

Many have heard that science shows that in order to avert the worst of climate catastrophe, we not only must reduce our emissions dramatically, but also ensure that the total accumulated greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere is reduced swiftly from the present 387 parts-per-million (ppm), to below 350 ppm (pre-industrial level was around 275 ppm).

But how does that translate into emission reduction targets and a time line?

PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR MIT CONTACTS

Dear friends,

If any of you could get into President Obama's clean energy speech at MIT's Kresge Auditorium this Friday Oct 23rd (starts at noon), please consider asking him the following questions.  If there will be any Q & A time at all, each person could only ask one (if you rush to the microphone fast).  Here I'll also list some expected non-answers, in the hopes that more of you could follow up with suggested questions and press harder.

A hyperlinked version of this message is available here: http://securegreenfuture.org/content/mit-alert

Thank you!

Maggie Zhou, PhD
Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities-
Secure Green Future project
www.securegreenfuture.org
www.climateSOS.org
781-316-8283

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This is a more concise and somewhat dry version of the analysis of greenhouse gas stabilization targets, that was first put out in this original post.  Take your pick!

Greenhouse gas concentration stabilization targets, and consequently their emission reduction targets, should be guided by what science says is necessary, not what politics of the day deems feasible. Three converging lines of compelling scientific evidence now argue strongly for the need to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to below 350 parts-per-million carbon dioxide equivalent (ppm CO2-eq):

I posted an additional critique, focused on the fatal cap-and-trade scheme of ACESA, here.