Comments on CAzBike Blog: 2009 LAB/IMBA Bike Summit in Washington DC

My wife Carol who calls herself a "Recovering Cath...

2009-04-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

My wife Carol who calls herself a "Recovering Catholic", read an explanation of "Cap and Trade" (so much an issue in this thread). She says it sounds a lot like the Indulgences that were sold by the Church. Real money makers in Luther's time, but with a legacy to today. After recovering from ROFLing, I'm adding that here.

Last night I emailed the staffs of the Congress me...

2009-04-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

Last night I emailed the staffs of the Congress members that we visited just over a month ago:
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One of the topics we discussed was HR 1329, a transportation bill that would designate 10% of any future Carbon Cap & Trade bill revenues to promoting transportation alternatives. The Bike league's fact sheet may be seen at (http://tinyurl.com/cf4n2d). Upon reading more about it, I see that little progress has been made on this, but that Carbon Cap & Trade has become a hot topic.

I am deeply troubled by one aspect. Family costs of more than $3000 per year have been voiced. At the same time, the author of the 2007 study done for the Congress by MIT (http://tinyurl.com/2k3ffb) felt he needed to counter that with the calculations actually made. Roughly $300 is the projection.

Currently we are paying mining, transportation and profits for our energy. That's OK. My concern is that does not include costs to human health, some of which will be paid by Medicare. I talk a lot about health benefits of cycling and ask for encouragement thereto, but without the actual costs of carbon burning being visible at the time of purchase, alternatives will continue to be, just alternatives.

Please urge Representative [name] to support this bill.
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My 50c worth:

Actually the $3000+ number that has been bantered about in the media is an outrageous exaggeration with only a fraudulently flimsy link to the actual MIT study results. This is not what I look for in deliberative government.

Wednesday I talked with George Fleeson of Sen, Kyl...

2009-04-02T04:34:00.000-07:00

Wednesday I talked with George Fleeson of Sen, Kyl's office. Again, he was appreciative of our group as was I for more of his time. He wanted to talk about the Senator's views on Cap & Trade (C&T) and it was my turn to listen.

Indeed, C&T is an issue. CLEAN-TEA itself is not a C&T bill, but it does specify that for a "future" C&T bill, 10% of the proceeds would be spent on alternative means of transportation (just about everything except automobiles).

Previous sessions of Congress have investigated C&T for the electric utility industry (#1 CO2 source) and that included meetings of just about all the stakeholders of the issue. The bureaucracy that C&T would involve is not favored by Sen. Kyl.

Currently a yearly cost of $3,100 per family is being claimed as the cost of C&T. Two years ago, MIT produced a report for Congress (all 71 pages of are at http://tinyurl.com/2k3ffb) and reported a cost more like $31 per person (OK, about $150/family or less).

I just received a followup email regarding the "ca...

2009-04-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

I just received a followup email regarding the "cap and trade" aspects of CLEAN-TEA from Eve Young of Rep. Pastor's office. She said to be patient and that the best chance of this bill getting to the House Floor is that it get rolled up into a larger bill.