Wednesday, January 14, 2009 10:24
The Michigan Climate Dialogue gave businesses and residents a much-deserved chance to have their voices heard on climate policy. The Chamber and its partners will continue to bring the debate over the costs of climate change policy out of Washington to where it truly belongs: with American consumers who will have to pay the tab.
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On November 18, 2008, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Detroit Regional Chamber, in conjunction with the Alliance for Energy & Economic Growth and the National Association of Manufacturers, co-hosted the Michigan Climate Dialogue, an event designed to draw attention to the economic implications future climate change policy could have on Michigan's families, workers and businesses. This is the twelfth and final state climate change dialogue the Chamber and its partners have held in 2008.
The idea for a series of climate change dialogues focusing on economic policy took shape one year ago. At that time, the “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act,†an economy-wide cap-and-trade bill with major economic implications, began making its way through the Senate committee markup process. However, the rhetoric from both sides of the bill – its promoters and its opposition – had become so deafening that nobody bothered to actually sit down with the American public and ask them what they truly want in terms of climate policy. Because no matter which path is chosen, it will not be cheap.
For instance, the American Council of Capital Formation (ACCF) performed an economic analysis of the “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act,†which the Senate ultimately failed to pass in 2008. ACCF concluded that, if the bill had become law, Michigan would have lost up to 121,786 jobs and $20.9 billion dollars in gross state product by 2030, and would have had gasoline price increases of up to 141 percent and electricity price increases of up to 177 percent.
And so the climate dialogues were born. As expected, they drew large crowds, and had a meaningful impact on consideration of the Lieberman-Warner bill. Senators, congressmen and their staffers attended and participated, and business leaders, policy and economic experts, and other key stakeholders gathered to deal with issues ranging from the costs of greenhouse gas legislation and regulation to industry's voluntary efforts to reduce emissions and increase energy efficiency.
The dialogues will continue in 2009, as president-elect Obama and the 111th Congress aim to enact comprehensive climate change legislation, most likely in the form of a cap-and-trade bill. As the 2008 climate dialogues have shown, addressing greenhouse gas emissions means addressing economic policy, and the American public wants to talk dollars and cents—particularly as the federal government continues to rack up debt to prop up a faltering economy. The 2009 dialogues will be designed to do just that: to get government, industry and consumers talking about costs.
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