(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Gary Ruskin | Green Change | 11.05.2009
It's easy to lie with statistics. Politicians do it every day. Climate change is the latest example.
Look at the leading climate change bills in Congress. The main Senate bill — approved today by the Environment and Public Works Committee — proposes a 20% target for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over 2005 levels by 2020. The bill passed by the House of Representatives sets a 17% target for greenhouse gas emissions cuts over 2005 levels by 2020.
Sounds good. Except it's not.
Here's the trick the Democrats are playing on you. They're moving the goalposts.
Most of the world — 184 nations — have ratified the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Those nations follow the Protocol's use of 1990 as a base year for calculating emissions reductions. The United States didn't ratify the treaty, so our politicians use whatever base year makes them look good. Let's see how this works in practice.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called for a 25-40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, over 1990 levels – not 2005 levels.
When you use the standard baseline — 1990, not 2005 — to evaluate congressional emissions reductions targets, suddenly they look very small. Which they are.
That's the key fact that President Obama and the Democrats are trying to hide.
The House bill would only cut 3.5%, and the Senate bill only 7%, over 1990 levels, by 2020.
That's not even close to the 25-40% that the world's leading climate scientists think we need to cut by 2020.
Last week, Europe offered a 30% cut.
It's time for the United States to lead by example on climate change.
Tell your Members of Congress to play it safe with our climate. Tell them to support a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.
1 comments
Congress would have to care.