What Should the Climate and Clean Energy Jobs Bill Include?

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In just a few days, the long-awaited climate and clean energy jobs bill from Senators Graham (R-SC), Kerry (D-MA), and Lieberman (I-CT) will be unveiled and all over the news.

There has been a lot of speculation on what the bill will or won’t include, as well as a wide range of suggestions from every corner of society on what the bill should or shouldn’t include.

Of course, anyone who wants the bill to ensure that we do not increase the global temperature by more than 2°C (which scientists say is a must) are more than likely to be disappointed. However, setting things up so that future lawmakers can steer us towards a more livable climate (when it becomes painfully obvious that we need to do more), is a possibility.

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Perhaps no other climate and clean energy policy blogger is more respected (and for good reason) than Joe Romm over at Climate Progress.

(By the way, he has a new book out, Straight Up, that is considered to be the “most scientifically well-informed book on the scope of and solutions to the problem of climate change there is.” If you want to be educated on climate change and solutions to it, or just want to have some good evidence to show to any climate change denier, buy this book.)

Anyway, back to the topic of the upcoming climate and clean energy jobs bill. Rather than creating my own list of what this bill must include, I here are Dr. Joe Romm’s excellent criteria:

• substantially reduce emissions from the business-as-usual emissions path

• start every major business planning for much deeper reductions

• goose the cleantech venture and financing community

• put in place the entire framework for U.S. climate regulations

• accelerate many tens of gigawatts of different types of low-carbon energy into the marketplace

• put billions into developing advanced low-carbon technology

• start building out the smart, green grid of the 21st century

• train and created millions of clean energy jobs

• negotiate a working international climate regime

• bring China into the process

• start shutting down old coal plants (i.e. the dirtiest of the dirty) that were grandfathered into the Clean Air Act Ammendments of 1990

Excellent criteria there. We’ll soon see of the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill meets them.

Image Credit: laszko-photo via flickr/CC license