House Democrats target an alternative initiative
WASHINGTON » An influential group of Democrats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday set an ambitious target for United States greenhousegas emissions, calling for a reduction to net-zero by 2050.
The goal, intended to slow the pace of global warming, does not include either a legislative or regulatory plan. It would very likely require rigorous new curbs on fossil fuels over the coming decades and steep increases in wind, solar and other renewable sources of power.
The initiative does not go as far as the Green New Deal. That Democratic plan calls for achieving carbon neutrality within a decade and supplying 100% of the country’s electricity from clean energy sources while also creating millions of high-wage jobs.
Analysts described the announcement Tuesday as an effort by centrist Democrats to reclaim the climate agenda while treating global warming with the urgency that scientists say it demands.
The 2050 target is expected to be adopted in the Energy and Commerce Committee, the primary legislative body for developing climate change legislation in the House.
“I think the main difference between this and the Green New Deal is the Green New Deal was the 2030 deadline and we have 2050,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee. “If we can meet an earlier deadline, great. But right now the scientific community is saying 2050 is the key year.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations’ foremost body on climate science, has found that the world needs to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
Like balancing a bank account, achieving carbon neutrality means balancing the emissions of planet-warming gases with measures that take emissions out of the atmosphere. California pledged under Gov. Jerry Brown to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045, though that measure has not yet been approved by the legislature. Last month, New York announced it intended to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Doing so will mean drastically limiting greenhouse-gas emissions and moving away from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. It could require measures that Republicans have forcefully rejected, like a tax on carbon or a renewable energy standard. It also could mean policies that some Democrats have opposed, like funding carbon capture and storage technologies and building more nuclear power plants.
Some Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have seized on the Green New Deal as a way to paint Democrats as extremists.
The last ambitious congressional action on climate change was a bill to establish a cap-and-trade system for greenhousegas emissions. That measure passed the House in 2009 but died without a vote in the Senate.