{"id":944,"date":"2009-10-12T16:01:05","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T20:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/?p=944"},"modified":"2009-10-12T16:01:41","modified_gmt":"2009-10-12T20:01:41","slug":"the-american-clean-energy-and-secirity-act-and-our-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/2009\/10\/the-american-clean-energy-and-secirity-act-and-our-future\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Clean Energy and Security Act and OUR Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

In June of 2009 the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act<\/a>with a 219 to 212 vote (Leggett, Climate Change: Current Issues and Policy Tools<\/em>). This act is centralized around a cap and trade system and calls for a 17% reduction of CO2 at 2005 levels by 2020 and an 83% reduction by 2050. This would require 20% of US electricity to come from alternative resources by 2020.\u00a0Click Here <\/a>to see Obama’s address to the passage the ACESA (American Clean Energy and Security Act).<\/p>\n

\"wind-turbine-flag\"<\/a>

The Future of America?<\/p><\/div>\n

But does this bill meet the standards for stabilization called for by the scientific community?<\/p>\n

\u2022 The ACESA falls short of targets proposed by Luers et al<\/strong> in How to Avoid Dangerous Climate Change<\/em>. They call for a stabilization of greenhouse gasses at 450 ppm to avoid\u00a0temperatures rising\u00a02 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. At 450 ppm<\/strong>, there is a \u201cmedium chance,\u201d or a 50% chance of avoiding the dangerous increases in global temperature<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Other scientists have proposed an even more strict stabilization of greenhouse gasses at 350ppm<\/a><\/strong> in order insure that a dangerous rise in global temperatures is avoided.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, the ACESA falls short of what the European Union and many environmentalists have called for in greenhouse gas reduction policies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Although the US new climate change bill may not be as strict as might be necessary in the future, at least it is a starting point. There are hopes that this bill will continue to move the US towards a more green economy and to sign the new Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen 2009.<\/p>\n

According to Leggett in Climate Change: Current Issues and Policy Tools<\/em>, Bush\u2019s principal arguments for not being a party to the Kyoto protocol were as follows:<\/p>\n

1. Uncertainty of climate change science \"Bush-As-The-Globe-Warms7jun02\"<\/a><\/p>\n

2. Potentially high economic costs of cutting greenhouse gas emissions<\/p>\n

\u00a03. Lack of commitment for developing countries to cut emissions<\/p>\n

Times have changed since the Bush era, and we have already seen evidence of this with the American Clean Energy and Security Act<\/em>. Hopefully, the recognition of climate change in the House will help the US make wise decisions in Copenhagen this winter to sign onto a legally binding, international agreement to cut emissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In June of 2009 the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Actwith a 219 to 212 vote (Leggett, Climate Change: Current Issues and Policy Tools). This act is centralized around a cap and trade system and calls for a 17% reduction of CO2 at 2005 levels by 2020 and an 83% reduction by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[1399,1301,1429,1458,1568],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7-mitigating-climate-change","tag-cap-and-trade","tag-climate-change","tag-grace-lange","tag-kyoto-protocol","tag-us-energy-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}