Sen. Cornyn, your climate change position is atrocious

(copy of an email I sent my senators this morning. unfortunately both Texas senators belong to the "I won’t change no matter what" camp.

The fate of climate change bill  is dangerously uncertain now. Democratic Senators have gutted the carbon pricing mechanism and watered the bill down only so it puts a lot of pressure on electric companies to start relying more on wind-power (which of course is already available to most Texans anyway). Even with that compromise, it seems uncertain that this bill would pass within the next 2 weeks (which is the time allotted for it before Senate takes its summer break to return in September). The fear is that by September, the November elections will make Senators unwilling to pass anything major. 

More shockingly this month, the Senate voted on a bill to remove tax subsidies for oil companies. At a time when the oil industry is most disliked by Americans,  nonetheless 67 senators voted AGAINST the bill to remove these tax subsidies for the oil industry. If at this point in time the oil industry can still find 67 allies in the Senate, chances are that these subsidies will never be removed during normal times.

I heard a quote from a green energy executive recently (I paraphrase)  "we will never be able to go head to head with fossil fuels if the fossil fuels industry continues to enjoy the level of subsidies it enjoys today."

Finally there is a UN report which says: every year we delay taking comprehensive action on  climate change will end up costing the world 500 billion extra dollars more to fix).

**************************************

Senator Cornyn,

Your positions and public statements about energy/climate change are atrocious.

The transitional costs are minimal and are likely to be recouped as economic benefits down the road.
http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2010/05/what-will-the-climate-change-bill-cost-texans-and-americans/

A solid study found last year:  "clean-energy investments generate roughly three times more jobs than an equivalent amount of money spent on carbon-based  fuels."http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/06/clean_energy.html

You need to do these things:

1. support bills that dismantle tax subsidies for oil and gas.
2. support any climate change legislation that is brought to the floor. The utilities-only compromise is not enough, but you have to start somewhere..
3. insist that an energy bill includes a carbon pricing mechanism so that consumers feel the "true cost of oil".

Climate change is my number 1 issue. Continuing to prop up the oil industry with subsidies shields consumers from the true cost of oil dependence. 

Texas needs more green energy industries, but your stubborn resistance is not only anti-scientific, it  ignores the long term economic viability of the state.

Finally, Texas is a coastal state and extremely vulnerable to rises in sea level. Estimates about sea rise vary. 1-2 feet by middle or end of the century is plausible, and it would have devastating consequences on our coastal cities (like Corpus Christi and Galveston).

Your refusal to take action is playing with fire. Please reconsider your positions here, and don’t suck up to the self-serving nonsense being fed to you by the oil industries. We don’t want Texas to depend on a dinosaur industry any more.