It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
President Obama’s$3.5 trillion budget retains his plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions by selling 100 % of emission permits.
That is at odds with Congress, pushing for most of those “credits” to be given away to ease the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Opponents fear that charging companies would put unnecessary pressure on a struggling economy.
Selling the permits is projected to bring in $646 billion, and Obama budget director Peter Orszag said that would not change when details about his budget are released next week.
"The price increase will have to occur," Elmendorf said. "You can move around where it happens, but you can't get away from it altogether."
Prices for carbon permits under the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme fell to a low of 8 euros in February, from nearly 31 euros last July.
The world's first rules for generating tradeable carbon credits from protecting forests were a good start but Indonesia needed to clear up doubts over the government's share of the revenues, analysts and industry said Friday.
Indonesia's forestry minister signed the rules last Friday, making Indonesia the first nation to formally enact regulations governing a U.N.-backed scheme called reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).
The scheme aims to generate billions of dollars in carbon credit revenue for developing nations in return for long-term protection of forests or rehabilitation of forest land.
Forests soak up vast amounts of carbon dioxide and reversing the rate of deforestation is seen as crucial to braking the pace of climate change.
About 20 percent of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions come from clearing and burning forests and Indonesia has been a large contributor of that pollution through logging and clearing for palm oil plantations.
A decision involving the iconic polar bear could determine whether protecting endangered species might also help save the earth from global warming.
The Obama administration is approaching a weekend deadline to decide whether it should allow government agencies to cite the federal Endangered Species Act, which protects the bear, for imposing limits on greenhouse gases from power plants, factories and automobiles even if the pollution occurs thousands of miles from where the polar bear lives.
Fearful that putting the bear under the federal species law might be used to force regulation of carbon dioxide, the Bush administration issued a special rule: No action outside of the bear's Arctic habitat could be considered as endangering its survival.
The limitation, hailed by business groups, prompted lawsuits from environmentalists and action by Congress.
In March, the Democrat-controlled Congress authorized Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to rescind the Bush administration's special rule, thus avoiding complicated and time-consuming regulatory procedures. The deadline for such action is Saturday, 60 days after Congress acted.
Salazar, who was said to be weighing the issue, scheduled a news conference for 11:30 a.m. EDT Friday to discuss it.
Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, urged Salazar to keep the Bush rule in place.
Along with the recent ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency that carbon dioxide is a health hazard, [i/]"withdrawing this rule would give the federal government vast new climate change power to regulate any federal or federally permitted activity in our country that emits greenhouse gases,[i/]" said Hastings. "This reaches far beyond the scope of polar bears in the Arctic and could put jobs and economic activity across the entire nation at risk."
Similar cap and trade measures are already law in Europe. Even the more socialist-minded citizens on that continent are trying to reform current law because carbon emission output has only increased, along with already high prices.