Congressman Markey Defends Climate Change Bill

By Sacha Pfeiffer
Aug 6, 2009, 5:00 PM
3 Comments

Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey is defending the sweeping climate change legislation he co-sponsored against critics who say it doesn’t go far enough.

Markey spoke Thursday at a public forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Both men later took unscripted questions from the audience.

Markey agreed with several questioners who said the bill’s energy efficiency and carbon reduction efforts should be more aggressive. But he said his work isn’t yet done.

“Yes, you can find deficiencies in the bill,” Markey conceded. “But this won’t be the last time we visit this. And we’ll be able to return to this in five or six years, and then in 10 years, and then in 15 years, to accelerate this revolution so that we’re the global leader.”

The so-called Waxman-Markey bill passed the U.S. House in June and is now pending in the Senate. Markey said he expects the legislation to become law by the end of the year.

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John Deans

Glad to see there was some public criticism of the energy bill. It doesn’t go far enough to protect the world and this country from catastrophic global warming, and I hope Rep. Markey and Sec. Chu take that message to congress and to the Whitehouse. If we’re going to be the global leader we need to go to the UN summit in Copenhagen with a much stronger position than what Congress has established.
http://theClean.org Pam Solo

The Waxman Markey bill not only falls short, if passed, will transfer significant public resources to the coal and nuclear industries. Some $50 billion alone will go toward the coal industry and research on so-called clean coal technology, Carbon Capture and Sequestration. CCS is highly speculative and, if possible, decades away. And meanwhile, this assumes that the coal can be mined without destroying the environment through Mountain Top Removal or strip mining the scarce water resources of the West. Congressman Markey suggests that legislators will revisit the issues in “5, 10 and 15 years.” We need science based policy and if this bill represented that, the carbon emissions targets would align with the goals outlined by the IPCC. This bill is not quite a small step in that direction. The clock is ticking on global warming. The Senate has a chance to get it right. Let’s hope they withstand the industry lobby better than the House of Representatives.
the man

ed markey sucks at whatever he does in congress which is proboly nothing he can sit on it

yours truley
Joe the hard man