Environmental Justice

On June 26, 2009, while many of us Unitarian Universalists were gathered at General Assembly, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) came up for a vote in the House of Representatives. The projected vote was so close that we felt compelled to interrupt the scheduled business of GA and ask participants to use their cell phones to call their Representatives. ACES (or the Waxman-Markey bill, as it is more commonly called) passed that day, 219 to 212. When news of its passage came there was joy, relief, and regret. Joy for what was a historic achievement, a comprehensive overhaul of our energy policies, and an important first step to addressing the pressing issues of climate change. Relief because the victory had been hard fought. And regret because the bill that passed was in the end much less than we had hoped for.

Shortly before ACES was voted on, I wrote a rather long blog post reflecting on how it had gotten to be that we were supporting a bill that has some admittedly serious flaws, and why it was important to still act. At the time, I already knew that the fossil fuel industries had been spending tens of millions of dollars to weaken and/or derail the bill. I knew that some of the claims (such as skyrocketing energy costs for families) were outright lies preying on fear. But what I didn’t know was that one of their lobbying firms had resorted to even greater levels of deception. Using the names and letterhead of organizations of color, Bonner & Associates sent fraudulent letters to at least three Representatives, urging them to oppose ACES. One of the organizations that they impersonated and misrepresented was a local chapter of the NAACP; the NAACP supports ACES because of the green jobs it will create.

We are up against opponents who will lie and commit fraud in order to maintain their lucrative stranglehold on our nation’s energy sources. But we are also up against our own apathy. The most painful thing that we had to admit on the eve of the historic vote was that, honest or not, our opponents had been out there making their views known to the people who were going to cast the votes and we had not been. I don’t mean to say that our side did nothing. Organizations like 1Sky and others worked hard to not only get the bill passed but to insert key strengthening amendments that made it more just. And UU groups from the UUA to the State Advocacy Networks joined them. But most of our efforts came in the final push. When talking to staffers of various Representatives, what we heard over and over again was that they had not been hearing from us during the process – during the deliberations in committees, while measures were being put in and taken out. They had not heard from people who wanted the bill to be stronger. They had heard from people who wanted it to be weaker or didn’t want it at all. So what we got was a weaker climate-energy bill, and we almost didn’t get one at all.

So why am I reliving these past mistakes now? Because the conversation isn’t over. ACES passed in the House on June 26th. The conversation now moves to the Senate, which has said that it will use ACES as the starting point to draft its own version. And once again the fossil fuel industries are spending tens of millions of dollars to further weaken and/or derail the process (and using dirty tricks). We need to be out there telling our Senators that we want climate change legislation, and we want it to be even stronger and more just than the version that passed in the House. What’s more, we need to be out there explicitly as Unitarian Universalists. Rightly or wrongly, our elected representatives listen more attentively to constituents who identify themselves as people of faith. And for the most part right now, they are hearing from self-identified religious people who oppose climate change legislation. They must hear from us too.

Act Now:

August 10th begins the Senate summer recess – a time when your Senators come home to listen to you (so that you don’t have to go all the way to DC). Get some members of your congregation (and/or team up with neighboring congregations) and welcome your senators home to your beautiful state. Remind them that you are their constituent, and then tell them that it’s crucial that they pass strong and just climate change legislation as soon as they get back to DC. The simplest (and possibly most fun) way to do that is to attend a 1Sky beach party. 1Sky is holding “welcome back” parties for senators across the country on August 10th. If you can’t make that date, you and fellow UUs can schedule an in-district visit later in the month.

Let your senators know that as a Unitarian Universalist, someone who believes that we are part of an interdependent web of creation, it is our moral imperative to pass effective and just climate change-energy legislation now.

Reassure them that a comprehensive climate-energy bill will preserve the environment, free us from dependence on fossil fuels that compromise our national security, and create millions of jobs in a new clean energy economy. It’s win-win.

Tell them that Unitarian Universalists respect science, and the science tells us that we need to cut carbon emissions, at least 20 percent by 2020.

Tell them that the bill must limit offsets to no more than 10 percent of the emissions cap. Anything greater would compromise the effectiveness of the cap and put undue burden on communities of color.

Tell them that UUs stand on the side of economic justice and therefore, they need to maximize the number of allowances used to create clean energy jobs and train workers to fill them. The Senate bill must also maintain (or improve) the transition assistance that the House version has.

Tell them you want stronger a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) and Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS). Urge them to:

• Co-sponsor S. 433, Senator Tom Udall’s “25 by 25” RES
• Support Senator Schumer’s stand-alone EERS Amendment (based on S. 548

If you simply cannot make it to your Senators offices, we understand. Use 1Sky’s online tool to fax your senators. Do what you can and please do it soon.

Resource:

Grist magazine is tracking where your senators stand on climate change.

Almost one year ago at the Ft. Lauderdale General Assembly, Van Jones challenged us in his prophetic Ware Lecture, “Prepare to Govern.” The presidential elections had not yet happened, but Van predicted that change was in the air, and that we who have been outside protesters would suddenly find ourselves as inside leaders. Prepare to govern, instead of protest. What adjustments would we have to make, not just procedurally but also mentally, in order to take up the task of creating a more perfect union, rather than just critiquing what was wrong with the current one?

A case in point could easily be climate change legislation. Last year, when the Lieberman-Warner “America’s Climate Security Act” was coming to the Senate floor, a few in the environmental community were tempted to support the bill. It’s hard to stand against a climate change bill when one is so desperately needed. But the bill did not cut emissions of greenhouse gases sufficiently (according to the recommendations of the scientific community) AND it gave billions of dollars worth of pollution credits to industries while providing very little assistance to low to middle income families. With a president in the White House that, up until recently, had denied that global climate change was an issue and the bill having been introduced by senators with no credentials in economic and racial justice, it was easy to be the “protester” and say that we likely could have a better, more just bill after the elections. Instead of supporting the bill, the UUA, along with the UU State Advocacy Networks, decided to put our energy behind a “climate change principles” letter being circulated by Representatives Waxman (CA), Markey (MA), and Inslee (WA). We encouraged representatives to sign on, thereby setting the groundwork for strong and just climate change legislation in the near future.

The Lieberman-Warner bill died in the Senate, victim of a filibuster. In November, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. In December, Representative Waxman staged a “coup” of sorts, replacing Dingle (MI) as chair of committee on energy and commerce. Because Dingle’s constituency is heavily dependent upon the fossil fuel industries, he has historically been hostile to climate change legislation, whereas Waxman has been a proven advocate for both environmental and economic issues. In February, the new president’s stimulus package was passed with billions of dollars going into green jobs. Obama picked Van Jones to be the person in charge of overseeing the funding. Suddenly, we had several government officials who seemed to know that environmentalism must go hand in hand with racial and economic justice. It seemed like a tide had changed and the right people were in key positions in order to make effective and just climate change legislation a reality.

In March, Waxman and Markey introduced their own bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA). It had many good things about it. But there were also things that were less than perfect. At coalition meetings we were told that even though Waxman was now chair of energy and commerce, the committee itself still leaned to the right of the House of Representatives in general in the matter of climate change. So, we were told, the strategy would be to make concessions now in order to get the bill out of committee and then improve the bill later with amendments to strengthen it. The outside protester would have been… protesting, but we were part of the “in” crowd now. It was our allies who were in power and they were sharing their reasoning with us, reasoning that made sense. So.. we praised representatives Waxman and Markey (rightfully so) for an ambitious bill, spread the word that a good comprehensive climate change bill was coming, and waited.

In the mean time, the fossil fuel industries spent tens of millions of dollars to make changes in their favor. When the bill did leave the committee last week, it was even weaker than originally written.

This week, we’ve been told that complex negotiations were made in order to get a version of the bill that had the votes to pass in the House, and the bill’s sponsors (Waxman and Markey) and Speaker of the House (Pelosi) were afraid that any substantive efforts to improve the bill would cause the compromise to collapse. Therefore, no substantive amendments will be allowed on the floor of the House. Moreover, as it stands no representative is willing to attach their name to a substantive amendment AND no members of the progressive caucus are willing to vote against the bill. No one wants to be the person to derail the only climate change bill on the table, so there is no bargaining power to renegotiate. As I met with an interfaith “envirojustice” working group yesterday, almost everyone around the table was stunned. “So…,” I said, “last year I asked UUs to refrain from supporting Lieberman-Warner because it wasn’t effective enough and it wasn’t just. Am I supposed to one year later ask them to support a bill that is not much better (and even worse in some respects)? Just because Waxman and Markey are the sponsors?”

Many around the table were wrestling with similar questions. The facts were that Waxman and Markey said that this was the best bill that they could deliver, and we have no reason to believe otherwise. Last year, we had many reasons to believe that we might be able to get a stronger bill this year. This year, we have no reason to believe that conditions will be more favorable next year. If anything, with midterm elections coming up, there is the danger of the reverse. And every moment of delay means more greenhouse gas pollution being released into the atmosphere. As we continued to discuss, different voices kept coming back to one thing – that representatives had not heard from many constituents telling them they needed to strengthen the bill as it was being considered, so they thought that the bill was ok. (Whereas they were getting plenty of pressure to weaken it.) The conclusion was inevitable: we had failed to mobilize our grass roots.

When Barack Obama won the presidential election last November, we at the Washington Office had told ourselves that while things would definitely be different with someone in the White House whose socio-political views are more closely aligned with ours, there would still be a lot of work to do. Just because we elect a leader whose vision we like doesn’t make it a given that the vision will be realized. But when it came to climate change legislation, many colleagues and I in the environmental justice community – both religious and secular – had made this mistake. Because we had allies in charge of the legislation, we had trusted them to come through for us with strong legislation. But they could not give us strong legislation if we did not have people telling the other representatives that they need to agree. In the absence of that collaborative effort, the bill we have now is the best that they could give us.

Prepare to govern. It was relatively easy to understand that governing meant that we were no longer outside protesters. But in retrospect, it was not so easy to identify what to do in its place. It was not so easy to understand that there was still just as much a need for activism, for grassroots mobilizing, for vigilance in holding our elected leaders accountable. But as Van Jones has said, there needs to be “holding” in holding our leaders accountable. Instead of just telling them what we think is wrong, we need to put forth the vision of what would be right and to make space for it to happen.

In that light, we’re not giving up just yet on the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Please contact your representative; acknowledge that a climate change bill is desperately needed this year, but it also needs to be a strong, just bill. Urge them to:

1. Ensure more clean energy by increasing the renewable electricity standard (RES) to 30 percent by 2020.

2. Hold polluters accountable by giving the EPA authority to regulate carbon emmisions.

3. Reduce free pollution permits to fossil fuel industries (worth billions of dollars) and use the revenue gained to create more domestic green jobs in America and help both domestic and international communities adapt to the global climate changes.

The House of Representatives switchboard number is: 202-224-3121. OR you can fax your representative through 1Sky’s website.

The following is an update on the status of the Waxman-Markey bill, written by Pam Sparr. Pam is a member of All Souls Church, Unitarian, and consultant to several religious organizations on matters of climate change and environmental justice.

Representatives Waxman and Markey formally introduced H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, on May 15, 2009. This is the long awaited official introduction of comprehensive climate change legislation in this session of Congress. The House Energy & Commerce Committee is in the middle of marking-up the bill and the committee chair (Waxman) is hoping to get a vote before they adjourn for Memorial Day.

Many concessions have been made based on what was initially proposed in the bill’s discussion draft in order to cobble together the support needed among Democrats. While the religious community as a whole is eager for the bill to make it out to the floor and be passed, there are calls to strengthen the language in various provisions. Some are concerned that too strong a press to improve the language could tank the bill entirely.

SOME HIGHLIGHTS

Greenhouse gas emissions targets:
2020 – 17% below 2005; 2050 – 83% below 2005
These targets are not as ambitious as many would like. They are even weaker than what they appear as they use 2005 as a baseline rather than 1990, which is the baseline for international negotiations.

Cap and trade system:
The vast majority of allowances will not be auctioned; freebies phase out over time.
Giving a large % of allowances away in early years diminishes the amount of money available for distributing, including for international adaptation spending. Problems with insufficient regulation of carbon markets can create international financial problems down the road – which can be a justice issue in and of itself. Drafters of the bill have crafted language in a way that they expect free allowances to the utility sector will shield consumers from higher prices.

Ability to buy off-sets:
The draft bill enabled corporations to avoid major emissions reductions through purchasing a sizeable amount of off-sets. This problem does not appear to have been fixed in the actual legislation. The way forest off-sets are handled is a particular concern for human rights activists and environmental groups because of the history of indigenous people and forest communities. Developing countries do not want developed nations such as the U.S. to avoid making their own sizeable emissions cuts by buying their way out of things through overseas off-sets.

International adaptation funding:
2012-2021, 2% of allowances goes to international adaptation and clean tech (1% each); 4% for 2022-2026; 8% from 2027.
These proposed amounts are extremely low in the early years compared to estimates of the U.S. fair-share of adaptation spending, which would be about $7 billion annually (or more than 7% of total allowance value as the bill is currently constructed). The U. S. is legally obligated to provide this funding under international law and the faith community and other groups are arguing that the U.S. has a strong moral obligation to provide compensation for damages developing countries have already incurred as a result of climate change. Crafters of the bill have formulated a system for providing adaptation fund that end-runs the appropriation process. Writers of the bill seem to have found a way to make the stream of international adaptation funding regular and reliable over time rather than subject to the annual vagaries of the appropriations process – which had been a big concern.

Domestic adaptation & worker transition assistance:
The bill provides 2% of allowance values for domestic adaptation needs with half going to address natural resource concerns and half to adaptation purposes, for humans, including public health. Another 0.5% will go to help workers in affected industries.
It will be important to assure that low-income and other vulnerable communities receive priority attention in the use of domestic adaptation funding. The inclusion of worker transition assistance is a big win.

ACTION REQUIRED
If your Representative sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, contact her/him immediately. The House switchboard is: 202.224.3121. Both Democrats and Republicans need to hear that their constituents support strong climate change legislation. Congratulate them on getting this far on the bill and urge them to:

• Improve the short-term emissions targets. These are below what the international community expects and what scientists feel is necessary.
• Increase international adaptation spending. Begin with at least $3.5 billion annually.
• Assure that low-income and other types of communities that are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the U.S. are prioritized for adaptation funds.