Clinton on Cap on Emissions

Clinton supports an 80 percent pollution reduction in greenhouses from 1990 levels by 2050. She endorses a cap-and-trade approach to help us get there that would auction off 100 percent of the greenhouse gas permits (not give them away for free) and invest the proceeds in tax benefits for working and middle class families and in incentives for energy efficiency and renewable technologies.

To date, she’s cosponsored the aggressive Boxer-Sanders Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, but she came on board late in the game, some three months after it was introduced. And she tells Grist that she’s going to push for whatever’s politically viable. She also cosponsored the less aggressive McCain-Lieberman climate bill of 2007, which would would cut carbon emissions so that by 2050, we're at one third of 2000 levels. She has yet to take a position on the Lieberman-Warner bill, which proposes a cap-and-trade plan that would auction off about 25 percent of pollution credits from the outstart and give the rest away for free, though the auction would grow over time.