Green Options

As the Senate version of pending climate legislations, Kerry-Boxer’s CEJAPA, heads for mark-up on Tuesday, voices calling for $15 billion annually for clean energy research and development are starting to gain traction. Earlier this week, Google’s Director of Climate Change and Energy, Dan Reicher joined the ranks of think tanks such as, Brookings Institution, Third Way, and the Breakthrough Institute, not to mention President Barack Obama, when he called on the Senate EPW committee to include this funding in the bill.

According to Reicher’s testimony (emphasis in original):

“Chairman Boxer, it is essential that Congress address this serious energy R&D short-fall by incorporating President Obama’s goal of $15 billion per year in federal energy R&D spending in final climate legislation.”

This testimony followed on the heals of a letter and discussion paper from the nation’s leading universities to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, emphasizing the need for a bottom line investment of $5 billion dollars annually in R&D, significantly more than would be allocated under both House and Senate version of climate and energy legislation.

Here’s a revolutionary plan from Sandbag that enables you and me to end carbon emissions by simply buying up and destroying European pollution permits by retiring them off the market, at $40 per permit or ton of CO2.

Sandbag buys up carbon credits from those who have already made energy efficiency  investments and as a result have cut their pollution to below their previous level. We buy these clean companies’ credits through Sandbag, and then destroy them so dirty companies can’t buy them.