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Midwest Energy
Security and Climate Summit
Midwest
U.S. states signed agreements on November 15, 2007 that are designed to
cut greenhouse gases, promote energy conservation and fight global
warming. The area involved in this agreement extends from Ohio west to
Kansas. The Washington
DC-based World Resources Institute estimates, that, if this area were a
separate country, it would be the globe's fifth-biggest producer of
greenhouse gas emissions behind the United States as a whole, Russia,
China and India.
Illinois, Iowa, Kansas,
Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin signed one agreement setting
greenhouse gas reduction goals which allows companies to buy and sell
pollution credits to meet the targets. Under this agreement, the region
would set up a
regional cap-and-trade system for trading emission credits over the next
year, with trading of those credits slated to start in 2010.
A broader agreement
was signed involving nearly all states in the region calling for greater
use of non-petroleum-based energy sources such as wind power and
grain-based ethanol. Under it, 15 percent of all gasoline stations in
the region would be selling ethanol mixes by 2015, and one-in-four by
2025. The governors also agreed that wind power, water and other
renewable sources should eventually provide up to 30 percent of the
region's electricity.
Read the Governors
Platform here.
Watch presentations
of the 2007 summit by clicking
here.
(Hint. . . Just click watch at the end of
the summary of each presentation).
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CJC Position
The Midwest Governor'
Climate Change Policy of energy efficiency/conservation and moving our
energy use to renewables that will create tens of thousands of jobs
while decreasing carbon dioxide at its source is quite positive.
However, we believe
that the policy of cap and trade:
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Makes it profitable
to prolong the extraction and burning of all fossil based fuels.
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Delays and diverts
public and private funds that would go to both
energy efficiency/conservation in all its forms and renewable
energy.
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Decreases and delays
the paradigm shift to a green economy and green collar jobs, because
it diverts billions of dollars in public and private funds into
fossil and
nuclear fuels.
The history of cap and
trade so far is very clear: it has NOT decreased
carbon dioxide emissions since its inception and implementation over a
decade ago. Also, all the other pollutants that come out of smoke
stacks and tailpipes will continue to grow, increasing year-round air
pollution everywhere - but particularly in cities and especially in
urban and rural areas of people of color
Cap and trade has
already meant the taking of millions of acres of viable, fertile land
from millions of poor people and farmers all over the world-particularly
in the global south. These acres no longer produce food, but
instead produce biofuels and tree farms
that are intended to offset carbon emissions. And, in so
doing, the atmosphere and the air we breathe
are privatized; millions are pushed into starvation; and public policy
is diverted from solutions that reduce carbon emissions, moving us
closer to the tipping point of 380-450 ppm of CO2 .
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