Center Supports Obama/Jackson Cap & Trade Agenda

The Center supports President Obama's Cap and Trade solution to climate change mitigation. In the absence of Congressional legisaltion to address climate change mitigation, we also support EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson's 'Endangerment Finding' and subsequent regulations to mitigate climate change. Lawsuits are flying at Administrator like bats in the night. Congress is retreating on climate change legislation mostly because it is an election year. Senator Lindsey Graham is prematurely decrying the end of Cap and Trade as a component of pending energy/climate legislation. Others might blink, but the Center is staunchly behind the president and the EPA administrator in supporting Cap and Trade as a central tool in fighting abnormal climate change. We also want 'anyone' to be eligible to hold and trade allowances and offsets.

We were as disappointed when then Senator Barack Obama opposed the Cap and Trade Clear Skies Initiative as we are now with Republicans who supported Cap and Trade for that clean air and climate change mitigation legislation. We lobbied then Senator Barack Obama to include an Environmental Justice Allowance Reserve (EJAR) amendment to the Clear Skies Initiative legislation in a futile attempt to get him to support the legislation . He deferred in favor of subsequently cosponsoring environmental justice legislation with Senator Hillary Clinton.

McDonald in Red Room with President Bush
We are now disappointed that Republicans are opposing Cap and Trade for climate change mitigation when they supported it under the Clear Skies Initiative. We tried our best to get Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee to support the Clear Skies Initiative. We worked with then Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee James Inhofe to get the Cap and Trade Clear Skies Initiative passed (it failed). The Center worked with then Chairman of the President's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chairman James Connaughton and then CEQ communications director Dana Perino to get the Cap and Trade Clear Skies Initiative passed. Yet Republicans are turning their backs on Cap and Trade now and we are deeply disappointed that they reject a concept they once aggressively embraced. The Center maintains its steadfast support for Cap and Trade because it worked superbly in a successful Clean Air Act Acid Rain Program.