legislation

Do higher MPG cars mean fewer jobs?

The Chicago Tribune has an article in today's paper entitled "MPG bill could cost UAW jobs; Workers fear SUV plant's fate sealed," although the article itself isn't as shrill as the title suggests.

At first glance, the article looks like the classic "those environmentalists are going to take away your jobs" piece, but the author presents data for the other side, that is, that the problems of the auto industry are the problems of the managers of the auto industry:

Higher fuel standards would affect all automakers but would hit the domestics harder because they sell a greater percentage of trucks than foreign rivals. Trucks account for 56 percent of GM's sales, two-thirds of Ford's and three-fourths of the Chrysler Group's.

Youch! Who's fault is it that they bet the farm on SUVs? The car companies could have analyzed the data on peaking oil, foreign imports of oil, even global warming. Because of their short-term outlook, made much worse by Wall Street's emphasis on the next quarter, not the next quarter of a century, they refused to go down a path that should have been obvious by the end of the 1970s.

Bill passes House; now on to conference committee

Hooray! This week Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis (CA-32) officially became the most important environmental heroine you've never heard of.

Solis, a Latina Congresswoman from Los Angeles, introduced the Green Jobs Act of 2007 (H.R. 2847). The Act represents a smart, far-sighted effort to fight pollution and poverty at the same time by creating federally-funded job training within the green economy.

Guess what? On Wednesday, the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee passed her bill by a bipartisan vote of 26 to 18. This is the first step in the House toward providing job training every year for about 35,000 U.S. workers (and would-be workers) in green and clean industries.

The Act would help to meet green industry's demand for a skilled "green-collar" workforce in areas like solar panel installation, building weatherization, wind farm construction, etc. And it will help create green pathways out of poverty for those seeking job opportunities in the booming green economy.

Similar legislation was offered as an amendment to H.R. 6 by Sens. Sanders and Clinton and passed by voice vote this month.

For decades, Congress has been bogged down in a stale debate: "Should we grow the economy or protect the environment?"

Solis is leading the Congress to embrace a new approach. She is saying: "Let's grow the economy by protecting the environment."

For more information about the Green Jobs Act, you can contact Megan J. Uzzell. She is Congresswoman Solis' awesome Legislative Director (megan.uzzell[at]mail.house.gov).

And to learn more about Congresswoman Solis's work, please visit her webpage or view clips of Congresswoman Solis at work.

We at the Ella Baker Center -- as well as the National Apollo Alliance, Center for American Progress, the Workforce Alliance, and many other organizations -- are proud to support Congresswoman Solis, Congressman John Tierney (D-MA), Congressman George Miller (D-CA), and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as they lead this important effort.

Here is the press release George Miller's office put out yesterday:

Lots of stuff going on in D.C.

Lordy, the developments are happening so fast I can barely keep up with them. Here are a few more of note. Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va) are teaming up to put together comprehensive climate legislation. You can bet that whatever they come up with is going to be way over on the […]

The House’s most indecipherable, um, cipher

I’ve been getting some interesting — and widely varied — reactions to this post on Dingell. So here’s a follow-up. First, MoveOn’s political action campaign director, Ilyse Hogue, sends me this: Rep. Dingell has been late to the game and is well behind other Democratic leaders whose vision can make our country competitive in the […]

Their reasons aren’t all that unreasonable

Yesterday, I spoke to a group of manufacturers in Arkansas. Throughout the conference there was a fair amount of pride in the successful squashing of Bingaman's RPS bill -- and for reasons that are not entirely unreasonable.

Among the speakers was the chair of the Arkansas Energy Commission, who said that he personally objected to the bill because it was unfair. Specifically, it would not allow Arkansas to count their existing hydro-electric capacity in the RPS targets, but would allow existing wind to count. From his perspective, this looked like a sop to Bingaman's wind-rich home district, and while we might personally dispute this interpretation, it is easy to see how it could happen.

It is further proof for my earlier point that a path-based RPS is bound to fail, for the simple reason that you will never get a majority of states to agree that a wind/solar dominated RPS is in their interests. Change the structure so that it provides incentives for the goal rather than the path and you could break the southern opposition. There are more low-zero carbon fuels out there than are dreamt of in current RPS philosophies. If your state is long on biomass, bagasse, waste heat or wind, those should all be eligible -- not because we redefine our eligibility targets, but because we define the goal in terms of carbon reduction and then open up the door to any path that can get there.

Until then, we're not going to get an RPS.  Note that the southern utilities are boasting about their success in killing this last one -- let's not give them more to crow about.

From Greenwire (sub. rqd.):

Southern utilities led effort to squash Senate RPS proposal

ATLANTA -- Southern utilities played key roles in the effort to undermine plans in the Senate last week to require power companies to generate at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy. The fingerprints of the Tennessee Valley Authority and those of the Tennessee Valley Power Providers Association, whose members distribute TVA power to nearly 9 million customers in the South, were all over the successful effort to keep the so-called renewable portfolio standard (RPS) out of the sweeping Senate energy bill.

Helping U.S. farmers transition to organic

Organic food has take criticism lately, because a portion is flowing from overseas. (All those food miles, all that lost support for American farmers.) Well, there's a reason that trend is underway: Not enough American farms are growing organic crops and fewer still are converting, so demand is exceeding supply. With the Farm Bill, attempts are underway to address that problem.

A nifty video

Quantum Shift TV has made a video about the coming farm bill called "Soil: The Secret Solution to Global Warming.” It opens with Canadian superstar farmer Percy Schmeiser, and segues into a smart discussion of farm bill politics. It’s about 9 min. long. Check it out:

Mixed news

Now that the energy bill has gotten through the Senate, the fight has moved to the House. Here’s an update, from my rapidly dwindling free-trial-period subscription to CongressNow: An expected push by House Democratic lawmakers to raise federal fuel economy standards and create new renewable electricity mandates will likely be deferred until the full House […]

Time to kick it old school on the farm bill.

The terms of debate around the 2007 farm bill’s controversial commodity title have gotten rather narrow. On the one hand, you’ve got the House subcommittee on ag commodities, which essentially cut and pasted commodity language from the subsidy-heavy 2002 farm bill into the 2007 version now being drafted. On the other hand, you’ve got a […]