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https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/

science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, authors of the classic 2010 book :{Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, have released a new book placing that doubt machine into a longer arc of U.S. business and political history.

:{The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: explores an even more ambitious history dating from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day.

The book documents how today’s prevailing anti-regulatory and anti-government postures that deride Big Government and cheer for Big Business did not arise simply from grassroots demands. Instead, they arose from well-funded industry campaigns creating what Oreskes and Conway have called a manufactured consensus “quasi-religious belief” in deregulated markets and an accompanying diehard opposition to governmental solutions to public policy problems.

Fighting Public Utilities, Child Labor Laws

One of the first campaigns in that spirit occurred within the electricity utility industry via an organization which eventually became known as the Edison Electric Institute.

What is now colloquially calledEEI, was launched in 1885 as the National Electric Light Association, or NELA. At the time, it “represented more than five hundred of the largest privately owned electrical utilities, accounting for more than 90 percent of U.S. kilowatt output,” according to the book.

In the 1920s, according to Oreskes and Conway, “electricity industry leaders organized one of the largest propaganda campaigns in the history of the United States.” The campaign aimed to persuade the public thatmunicipal-owned electricity was a bad thing, advocating instead for investor-owned utilities. In the end, though, it resulted in higher rates for homeowners and small businesses and bigger profits for company owners and their bankrollers.

The initially unpopular campaign framed its activities under the guise of freedom and market efficiency. NELA’s influence operation — involving rewriting K-12 and university textbooks, courting and funding industry-friendly professors, utilizing astroturf campaigns, deploying sophisticated lobbying techniques to facilitate regulatory and legislative capture, and other deceptive practices — resembles much of the fossil fuel industry’s political pressure that DeSmog has covered and uncovered week-in and week-out for over a decade and a half.

At the time, it was the first of its kind industrial-scale full-court press, and it provided a roadmap for other corporate hegemons in subsequent decades. And NELA’s goal went far beyond merely winning a PR campaign, Oreskes and Conway conclude; it had much deeper ideological underpinnings.

“[U]nlike conventional PR, the aim was not simply to create a positive impression of a particular business or even of the whole industry,” they write. “Rather, the goal—expressed outright in numerous documents—was to change the way Americans thought about private property, capitalism, and regulation” altogether.

Core to NELA’s campaign, Oreskes and Conway wrote, was the idea “that free-market capitalism was the embodiment of freedom, writ large, and that any restriction on the freedom of any business would put us on a slippery slope to tyranny.”

Private ownership of the electricity industry was, up until then, relatively rare in the United States and even more so throughout the industrializing world. But as of 2017, 72 percentof U.S. electricity customers got their power from investor-owned utilities. NELA’s campaign, in other words, changed history as we know it.

Today, its successor EEI and its member companies continue to wage deceptive PR campaigns to fight renewable energy and bolster the continued consumption of fossil fuels.

The NELA campaign’s legacy, however, goes far beyond its sector alone, according to Oreskes and Conway. “Perhaps most importantly, NELA pioneered a strategy of insisting that these claims were true, regardless of the facts,” they wrote.

Broadening their view beyond the fossil fuel industry, Oreskes and Conway also detail how the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) propelled similar efforts across other industries during the same era. Like EEI, fast-forwarding to the present-day, NAM has served as a key node of climate denialism. 

But in its earliest days,NAM maintained a different sinister focus, according to The Big Myth: advocating against child labor laws amid what the authors described as a “pandemic” of workplace deaths both among young workers and the adult workforce.The sheer volume of such deaths served as one of the first major wakeup calls in the need for a more active regulatory state, the book maps out.

In making its case for child labor and against regulations protecting children, NAM espoused “that the federal government had no business interfering in business” and called such a notion “socialistic in its origin, philosophy and associations.”

Libertarian Fringe to (Neo)Liberal Mainstream

While both NELA and NAM laid the groundwork for a paradigm that’s alive and well today, their ideas were not adopted globally until the formation of theMont Pelerin Society,a group created in 1947 that like EEI and NAM has received close scrutiny from DeSmog for years. Oreskes and Conway devote a whole chapter of The Big Myth to Mont Pelerin.

Like NELA and NAM, Mont Pelerin’s roots lay in anti-regulatory and business-funded ideology. But unlike them, Mont Pelerin came out of academia and via professors committed to the now globally pervasive neoliberal ideology they created. Mont Pelerin inspired similar groups that are, like it, still active today, such as the Koch Industries-funded Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and the University of Chicago’s free market-oriented Economics Department.

Oreskes and Conway point to a legion of like-minded groups arising by the 1970s, riding the momentum of an academic community devoted to neoliberal ideology, and reacting to the gains made in environmental protection and other areas. Formation of these groups accelerated after the metaphorical call-to-arms made in a memo written to theU.S. Chamber of Commerce by the then-tobacco industry attorney and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

Known today as the Powell Memo, the 1972 letter called for Big Business to undergo “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”

The Powell Memo, Oreskes and Conway concluded, spearheaded free market fundamentalist groups such as the Cato Institute, Koch Family Foundations, Scaife Family Foundations, Olin Foundation, Heritage Foundation, and the Federalist Society, among others. All of these entities, and the groups they fund or work alongside in coalitions, remain powerful forces within U.S. and global politics.

The Big Myth further highlights how those think tanks and companies also played a key role in defeating the 2009 and 2010 congressional push, led by then-President Barack Obama, to pass a federal, market-oriented climate bill known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act.[waxman markey]  Critics would charge that the policy approach taken in the bill, emblematically, embodies the very “market fundamentalist” ethos reigning over U.S. politics for the past 100-plus years.

During the congressional debate over a bill that would haveenshrined the policy lever of cap-and-trade, the Koch-funded Tea Party network also ascended[vid]

previous congressional pushes in the 2000s for what was ultimately a business-friendly climate policy, had enjoyed bipartisan support. But The Big Myth explains how as the Tea Party network took flight, Republican Party support for the climate bill — and broader climate action — eroded to a near-zero level. It has mostly remained there since.

At the same time, the reality of climate change had and has continued to become all the more clear. That reality though, Oreskes and Conway wrote, clashes with the religion of market fundamentalism.

“[H]ad the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market-place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale?” the authors asked of the legion of climate-change deniers who helped to kill the bill. “To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but now.”

Although this “quasi-religious belief” in the power of the market holds the greatest sway with conservatives, Oreskes and Conway argue that belief in the “magic of the marketplace” has become an intoxicating ideology withinliberal circles too, including within climate policy debates.

“Even in supposedly liberal enclaves like Cambridge, Massachusetts,” where Oreskes teaches at Harvard, “many people think climate change will be best addressed by technological innovation in the marketplace,” the co-authors surmise, perhaps in alluding to the prototypical industry-friendly policies pushed by former Obama Administration U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz — a professor at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The rise of right-wing think tanks helped spread the pro-market, antigovernment gospel across the country and insert what had been decidedly niche views into the mainstream,” the authors explained of the ideology’s spread. Other scholars have referred to this as the “force field” effect, moving the gravitational pull of what’s possible within U.S. politics further and further toward right-wing, corporate-created policy solutions.

The ideological roots of anti-democracy, anti-environmental, and anti-regulatory campaigning explored in The Big Myth also serve as the heart and soul of the book :{Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, written by DeSmog co-founders James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore.

If you have learned from DeSmog’s reporting shedding light on the climate change denial machine, you’ll love The Big Myth, an excerpt from which follows below. The book is a must-read for all students of the sordid history of public relations and governmental capture.

Go grab a copy and checkout some recent interviews on the book, as well, for further background. A video of Professor Oreskes discussing the book can also be seen below.

Excerpt from The Big Myth

In the 1990s, as capitalism was being declared triumphant in many quarters, scientists had proved that man-made climate change was under way.1 Climate change was textbook market failure. It arose from everyday economic activity— using fossil fuels—but was about to impose a huge external cost, inundating major coastal cities around the globe, making hurricanes and cyclones even more deadly than they already were, and dislocating tens or even hundreds of millions of people. It was also textbook environmental injustice, as poor people would almost certainly bear the brunt of a problem created by the rich.

But it also had a textbook answer: putting a price on carbon. Economists called this solution a “Pigouvian tax”—after the Cambridge economist Arthur Pigou, who in the early twentieth century had helped develop the concept of negative externalities. (Pigou also suggested it would be reasonable for governments to subsidize activities that had “positive externalities,” such as education.) The idea of pricing social and environmental costs of carbon was hardly radical; Pigou was firmly mainstream, a respected scholar at Cambridge University, a leading figure in what came to be known as the Cambridge school of economics.2 The obvious benefit of the Pigouvian approach was that it remedied the market failure directly by embedding information—in this case scientific information—into the price of fossil fuels. Then consumers could decide for themselves whether or not to buy more expensive fossil fuels, and producers of alternatives could compete on a level playing field.

The Clinton administration proposed to address climate change through a Pigouvian tax, the so-called “BTU” tax (referring to the heat content of fuels as measured in British Thermal Units).3 But it was opposed—indeed, ridiculed—by a broad coalition of conservatives, including, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and virtually every right-wing think tank in America.4 

The notorious Global Climate Coalition, a network of fossil fuel producers and users that in the 1990s successfully prevented the U.S. Congress from ratifying the Kyoto protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, was originally established as a committee of the National Association of Manufacturers. Even though the idea of putting a price on carbon was a mainstream economic approach to market failure, Republicans framed it as just another example of Democrats’ penchant to “tax and spend.” The Wall Street Journal mocked it as Al Gore’s “favorite tax.”5

In his 1979 paper on nonmarket failure, economist Charles Wolf had slipped into his conclusion the idea that one cause of nonmarket failure was “premature but politically effective demands for government action.”6 In the 1990s, many Republicans picked up on this theme, arguing that it was premature to act on climate change. Even at the time, that was wrong: scientists already had a consensus that man-made climate change was under way and likely to be very costly.7 To act in the 1990s would have been appropriate. It would have been timely. But Clinton was unable to generate congressional support for action; Republican opposition made it clear that any proposal to put a price on carbon would be dead on arrival. In 1999, when Vice President Al Gore ran for president on a platform prioritizing climate change, journalist Gregg Easterbrook (brother of Judge Frank Easterbrook) embarrassed him on the campaign trail with a false story that his mentor—climate champion Roger Revelle—had experienced a deathbed conversion and died thinking climate change was not a serious problem.8 (He had not.)

As the 1990s became the 2000s—and scientists declared the evidence “unequivocal”—market fundamentalist did not adjust their views. To the contrary, their opposition hardened.9

In 2006, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, concluded on behalf of the UK government that, yes, fixing climate change would be expensive—perhaps as much as 1 percent of global GDP per annum—but not fixing it would cost much more: at least 5 percent and perhaps as much as 20 percent.10 Here was a solid argument from a man who could scarcely be accused of being any kind of -ist other than an economist. In response, conservatives dug in deeper. Senator Ted Cruz promoted the canard that global warming had stopped; Senator James Inhofe called it a liberal conspiracy to bring down capitalism.11 No matter what solutions were proposed—market-friendly or not—the right wing found reasons to oppose them. The science wasn’t settled (they claimed). It would be too expensive to fix. We could just adapt. It was all a hoax. Often these claims were couched in libertarian terms, as when in 2011 former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deemed the push to address climate change “the newest excuse to take control of lives.”12

The singular exception to climate denial in Republican Party leadership was Senator John McCain. He and conservative Democrat Joe Lieberman introduced Climate Stewardship acts in 2003, 2005, and 2007 to address the carbon dioxide emissionsthat drive climate change by creating an emissions trading system—a proven mechanism, albeit more complicated than a Pigouvian tax. But when given the chance to use it to address climate change, Republicans refused.13 The 2003 bill failed on mostly party lines, with a few Democrats and nearly all Republicans in opposition. But it was a closer call than many expected, and soon Congress faced intense lobbying pressure against climate legislation, particularly from NAM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The 2005 version came to a vote and failed 60–38, with only a handful of Republicans voting yea.14 Two years after that, McCain could not even persuade Republican leaders to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor.15

In 2009, Congress tried once more, with the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as Waxman-Markey, for its primary sponsors, Massachusetts representative Ed Markey and California representative Henry Waxman). For the fourth time in a decade, Congress had the opportunity to address climate change using a market mechanism, and for the fourth time rejected it.The bill barely passed the Democratic-led House; nearly all Republicans voted against, as did Democrats from fossil-fuel-producing states (and a few Democrats who found the bill too weak). The Senate never brought it to a vote. Democrats concluded they could not overcome the “wall of opposition” they faced from their Republican colleagues, opposition fortified by fierce lobbying.16 One analysis concluded that, in the eighteen months between January 2009 and June 2010, electric utilities, oil and gas companies, trade associations, and think tanks spent at least $500 million against climate change legislation.17 Another study tracinganti-climate lobbying back to 2003 places the figure at closer to $1 billion.18

The fossil fuel industry’s economic interests in preventing climate action have always been obvious; less understood is how it has camouflaged those interests. No one ever said, “I am denying climate change to protect corporate profits.” They said they were protecting jobs, protecting the economy, and protecting free markets from government “encroachment.” They said they were fighting for capitalism and freedom.

But historically, capitalism has never been just one thing: Adam Smith’s eighteenth-century vision of a democratic, distributed marketplace populated by small bankers and businessmen was a far cry from the industrial capitalism that developed in early nineteenth-century England and Germany—with its cruel “Satanic mills”—or the monopolies and managerial capitalism that came to dominate America in the late nineteenth century, much less the globally financed capitalism that emerged at the end of the twentieth century. China has liberalized its markets while continuing to oppress and even murder its ethnic and religious minorities. There are many capitalisms. American market fundamentalists fight for a form of capitalism that is both brutal and ignorant: that brushes aside market failure, anticompetitive practices, and external costs, in part by denying the facts of science, the facts of history, and the necessary role of government in making capitalism work.19

The question is not whether government should set limits that prevent individual autonomy from producing collective harm, the question is where we draw the lines. That is not an economic question, it is a political one. Market fundamentalists have managed to distract from the political aspects of these decisions and frame them as questions of “economic freedom.” Thus, a reasonable response to climate change is rejected as unreasonable “government encroachment.”

All this may make one wonder: was this ever reallyabout capitalism? Or freedom? Or was it all just one long, semi-continuous, shape-shifting defense of the prerogatives of big business? Of freedom for capital and capitalists? Or had the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market- place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale? To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, butnow.

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SOURCEWATCH:

The Waxman-Markey Climate bill is the common name for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), sponsored by Henry Waxman (Democrat of California) and Ed Markey (Democrat of Massachusetts). The wide-ranging energy and climate bill aims to create clean energy jobs, save consumer energy costs, increase America’s energy independence, and cut global warming pollution. On June 26, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 219-212 to pass the bill. Eight Republicans voted for the legislation, and 44 Democrats voted against it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the bill would be considered in the Fall.[1]

The legislation has four titles: Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency, Reducing Global Warming Pollution, and Transitioning to a Clean Energy Economy. Major elements of the bill include a requirement for 20 percent of electricity to come from renewable fuels by 2025; Carbon Capture and Storage incentives; smart grid and electrical car provisions; higher energy efficiency standards for buildings, lighting, and appliances; a Cap and Trade program; reduction of global warming gases by 83 percent by 2050; programs to compensate energy intensive industries for costs incurred under the bill, and green job creation.

On May 12, 2010, Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman produced S. 1733, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act .[2] Another Senate climate bill, the Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal Act (CLEAR Act) S. 2877 by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), was introduced on December 11, 2009. In promoting a cap and dividend policy and stronger carbon limits, the CLEAR Act differs from the financial market carbon trading plan promoted by Waxman-Markey and the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.[3]

Overview of bill provisions

11/10

Following the Tea Party wave of the midterm elections, half of the Republican caucus in the U.S. Congress now questions the scientific consensus that greenhouse pollution is a civilizational threat. Analysis by the Wonk Room, with research by Daily Kos’s RL Miller, finds that 45 of 97 Republican freshmen and 85 of 166 re-elected Republicans are confirmed climate zombies. There are no Republican freshmen, in the House or Senate, who admit the science is real. New members include William Marcy (Miss.-02) — who warns of “:{Global Warming Environmental :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{Terrorists:(style="background-color:#ff9966;"):}:” — and Kristi Noem (S.D.) — who voted for a resolution that “astrological” and “thermological” dynamics “effect” the weather.

The U.S. Senate, as the Wonk Room has previously described, has a monolithic Republican bloc against climate action, with incoming Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) repudiating their past support for cap-and-trade legislation. The U.S. House of Representatives now only has four Republicans who publicly admit that global warming pollution is real:

However, none of these four voted in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act to combat climate pollution and support a clean energy economy. All five Republicans who did support the legislation and ran for re-election won: Reps. Mary Bono Mack (Calif.-45), Dave Reichert (Wash.-08), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.-02), Chris Smith (N.J.-04), and Leonard Lance (N.J.-07). None of them have spoken publicly about the science of climate change.

It remains to be seen whether these nine Republican climate realists will do anything to stop the impending witch hunt against climate scientists by their conspiracy-minded caucus.

https://grist.org/article/2009-06-03-waxman-markey-bill-breakdown/

NO LNX

Everything you always wanted to know about the Waxman-Markey energy/climate bill — in bullet points

You keep hearing about the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill — aka the American Clean Energy and Security Act, ACES, H.R. 2454 — but what’s actually in it? We combed through the 946-page beast so you don’t have to. Here are the highlights of the bill, which is sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and […]

Kate Sheppard

Published

Jun 04, 2009

"Climate change" written on chalkboard

You keep hearing about the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill — aka the American Clean Energy and Security Act, ACES, H.R. 2454 — but what’s actually in it? We combed through the 946-page beast so you don’t have to.

Here are the highlights of the bill, which is sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and was passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21.

Renewable electricity standard

The bill creates a renewable electricity standard (RES) that would require large utilities in each state to produce an increasing percentage of their electricity from renewable sources. Qualifying renewable sources are wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, marine and hydrokinetic energy, biogas and biofuels derived exclusively from eligible biomass, landfill gas, wastewater-treatment gas, coal-mine methane, hydropower projects built after 1992, and some waste-to-energy projects.

The RES:

Requires 6 percent of electricity to come from renewables by 2012

Requires 20 percent of electricity to come from renewables by 2020

Up to 5 percent can actually come from efficiency improvements

If a state determines that its utilities cannot meet the target, the efficiency component can be increased to 8 percent and the renewable component decreased to 12 percent

Emission cuts

The bill would put a cap on emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, and would require high-emitting industries to reduce their output to specific targets between now and the middle of the century. (This is the “cap” part of the “cap-and-trade” program.) The bill covers 85 percent of the overall economy, including electricity producers, oil refineries, natural gas suppliers, and energy-intensive industries like iron, steel, cement, and paper manufacturers.

Emission cuts would start in 2012

The cap-and-trade program would be completely phased in by 2016

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The goals for U.S. emission reductions, below 2005 levels:

3 percent cut by 2012

17 percent cut by 2020

42 percent cut by 2030

more than 80 percent cut by 2050

Emission permits

Regulated industries would need to acquire permits for their emissions. (Emission permits are also referred to as “carbon credits,” “pollution allowances,” and various combinations of these words.)

If a company cuts its emissions so much that it has more permits than it needs, it can sell excess permits to other companies or bank them for future use. If a company doesn’t have enough permits, it can buy more or borrow its future credits and pay interest on them. Non-regulated entities (banks, nonprofits, people like you) can also buy and sell permits. (This is the “trade” part of the “cap-and-trade” program.) If a company’s emissions exceed its permits, it would be fined two times the fair market value of the permits it should have purchased.

About 85 percent of emission permits would be given away free at the start of the program, with the percentage decreasing over time

About 15 percent of emission permits would be auctioned off at the start of the program, with the percentage increasing over time

A permit to emit one ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent would be worth about $11 to $15 (in 2005 dollars) in 2012, according to preliminary EPA estimates

A permit would be worth about $22 to $28 (in 2005 dollars) in 2025, the EPA estimates

The value of all permits would be about $60 billion in 2012

The value of all permits would be roughly $113 billion in 2025

Some of the permits would be given away to industries regulated under this bill:

15 percent would be given to energy-intensive industries like iron, steel, cement, and paper until 2025

5 percent would be given to merchant coal generators (companies that sell coal-generated electricity to other companies at market prices) and to electricity producers obligated to supply electricity under long-term contracts; the giveaways would be phased out from 2026 through 2030

2 percent would be given to oil refineries starting in 2014 and ending in 2026

2 percent would be given to electric utilities between 2014 and 2017, and 5 percent thereafter, to cover the costs of deploying carbon capture and sequestration technology

Some of the permits would be given to entities that are not covered under the bill, which would sell them and use the proceeds for specific purposes:

30 percent would be given to local electricity distribution companies, with giveaways phased out from 2026 through 2030; the companies, which are generally regulated by states, would be required to use the proceeds to help keep consumer electricity prices low

10 percent would be given to state governments, which would be required to use the value to support renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation planning, and transmission projects

9 percent would be given to local natural-gas distribution companies, with giveaways phased out from 2026 through 2030; the companies would be required to use the proceeds for energy-efficiency projects and to help keep consumer prices low

3 percent would be given to the automobile industry from 2012 and 2017, scaling back to 1 percent through 2025; the value would be used for the development of clean car technologies.

How permit auction revenue would be spent

About 15 percent of the pollution permits would be sold by the federal government in the initial years of the program. Here’s how the revenue would be spent (shown as a percentage of the value of all permits):

15 percent would be used to offset increased energy costs for low- and moderate-income households

5 percent would be used to prevent international deforestation, scaling back to 3 percent from 2026 to 2030 and 2 percent from 2031 to 2050

2 percent would be used to help the U.S. adapt to the negative effects of climate change from 2012 through 2021, scaling up to 4 percent from 2022 through 2026 and 8 percent thereafter; half would be spent on wildlife and natural resources and the other half on other adaptation concerns, like public health

1.5 percent would be used to support research and development of advanced clean-energy and energy-efficiency technologies

1 percent would go to help other nations adapt to climate change from 2012 through 2021, scaling up to 4 percent from 2027 to 2050

1 percent would go to international clean-technology deployment from 2012 to 2021, scaling up to 4 percent from 2027 to 2050

0.5 percent would be used to help U.S. workers transition away from fossil fuel-dependent industries from 2012 through 2021, scaling up to 1 percent from 2022 to 2050

Investments in energy technology

By 2025, the bill would direct an estimated total of $190 billion to energy technologies and efficiency measures:

$90 billion to energy-efficiency and renewable-energy technologies

$60 billion to carbon-capture-and-sequestration technology

$20 billion to electric vehicles and other advanced automotive technologies

$20 billion for basic scientific research and development

The bill also creates a Clean Energy Deployment Administration within the federal government that would provide loans and loan guarantees to spur more private investment in energy technology.

Offsets

Regulated companies would be allowed to purchase carbon offsets to meet a portion of their required emission reductions — meaning they could fund clean-energy projects elsewhere instead of cutting their own emissions. This could lower the cost of complying with the new law.

Offsets could account for up to 2 billion tons of total emission reductions each year under the entire cap; According to some estimates, in 2012, that would mean that up to 15 percent of emissions cuts could be made with offsets, and by 2050 that figure would rise to 33 percent

The EPA would determine eligible offset projects based on recommendations from an Offsets Integrity Advisory Board

Half of permitted offsets would be domestic, half international

However, if there are not enough offsets available on the U.S. market, then up to three-quarters could come from international sources

Coal-fired power plants

New coal plants could be built between 2009 and 2020, though they would be expected to adopt carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) technologies when they become commercially available

By 2025, all coal plants built after 2009 would have to capture 50 percent of their CO2 emissions

Coal plants built after 2020 would have to capture 65 percent of CO2

Early movers on CCS would be rewarded — for every ton of CO2 it sequesters, an electric utility that gets at least half its power from coal would receive bonus emission permits for 10 years

$1 billion would go toward CCS demonstration and deployment each year, funded by a fee on consumers of fossil-based electricity

Energy-efficiency standards

The bill would set new energy-efficiency standards for lighting products, commercial furnaces, and other appliances

New energy-efficiency standards for buildings would require 30 percent improvement by 2010 and 50 percent improvement by 2016

New standards for industrial energy efficiency would be set

Households could receive $3,000 in financial support to make their residences at least 20 percent more energy efficient

Commercial buildings would also get financial support for weatherization

Worker transition

The bill would increase funding for the Energy Worker Training Program, which was created as part of the 2007 energy bill

Workers displaced due to new emission regulations would be entitled to 156 weeks of income supplement (70 percent of their average weekly wages), 80 percent of their monthly health-care premium, up to $1,500 for job-search assistance, and up to $1,500 for moving assistance

Grants could be awarded to colleges and universities to develop programs of study that prepare students for careers in renewable energy and energy efficiency

Smarter cars and smarter grids

The bill includes a “cash-for-clunkers” program that would provide roughly 1 million vouchers, ranging from $3,500 to $4,500 in value, to consumers who trade in older, less-fuel efficient vehicles for new vehicles that get better gas mileage

The bill has a number of provisions to support electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids

The bill has a number of provisions to help develop “smart grid” technologies and build better transmission infrastructure