Marathon Oil and Speedway SuperAmerica gas stations have gotten together to create a website trying to argue against the benefits of the Waxman-Markey bill in general and a cap & trade, market-based solution for carbon emissions in particular.
The website is a particularly transparent attempt at astroturfing to try and convince Congress that Americans aren’t looking for a solution to the threats of climate change. But I wanted to highlight one way they try inaccurately frame the way we can face the challenge of climate change head-on. In the letter the website generates for you to send to you Representative or Senator, they characterize cap and trade solutions to emissions problems as “attempts to choose winners and losers.” The whole point behind a cap-and-trade model is that it doesn’t pick winners and losers – it uses market signals to incentivise carbon emitters to minimize their pollution when it is cost-effective.
More generally, the site tries to paint emissions trading as a speculative idea that hasn’t been tried and will cost the American people jobs & money. But this ignores the fact that we’ve had almost twenty years of cap and trade in emissions of sulfur dioxide – the main ingredient in acid rain. In the twenty years since the Clean Air Act, the threat of forests in the United States denuded by acid rain has been met by a cap-and-trade program that has succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations. The reductions in sulfur dioxide reached the 2010 levels three years ahead of schedule. This decline in acid rain – 35% here in the Northeast, 33% in the Midwest – didn’t cost us jobs, and in fact was part of the unprecedented economic growth of the Clinton years.
Far from being a threat to our economy, the Waxman-Markey bill allows us to face the threat of climate change in a way that will allow our economy to get back on its feet.
I was startled to see pamphlets lambasting climate change legislation hanging all over at Speedway. While I am very disappointed they would force their agenda on their customers, they have made it an easy choice for me to take my money elsewhere.