Today’s Calamity: Understanding Climate Change
Nicolas Loris /
If cap and trade is meant to solve our climate crisis, why does the bill include funding to understand climate change?
Section 451 of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation includes funding to research the effects of “human-induced or natural changes in the global environment (including alterations in climate, land productivity, oceans or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, biodiversity, and ecological systems) that may alter the capacity of the Earth to sustain life.” The government will pay for five-year reports on scientific knowledge regarding climate change and how various resource capacities are affected by it (Sec. 451).
The bill also establishes a National Climate Service to “advance understanding of climate variability and change at the global, national, regional and local levels,” among other climate change-related functions (Sec. 452, b1). Provisions for a report that will identify “specific needs for new climate products to be delivered by each Federal agency and its partner organizations,” as well as “potential user groups and stakeholders that may be served by expanding climate products and services” (Sec. 452, d2B(iii-iv)). It also creates a “Natural Resource Climate Change Adaptation Panel,” composed of the heads of various related government agencies, to serve as a forum for interagency consultation on the national resource climate change adaptation strategy.