Political Quotes

“Madam President, as Americans want to buy more clean and green products, the market has been finding solutions to provide those products. The Growing Climate Solutions Act before us, however, will not. Though it seeks to aid the carbon credit market, it could ultimately serve only to quell it. Let's just take a look at how the carbon credit market currently works. Farmers, ranchers, and private foresters develop these credits to sell by taking actions to either limit their greenhouse gas emissions or to capture greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. They work with technical assistance providers to know how to do so and then with third-party verifiers who make sure that the proper standards are met. Companies can then purchase the credits to offset their carbon emissions, and they can also sell unused credits to other companies wanting to offset their carbon emissions. It is a voluntary exchange and an example of the market working as it ought to work. As the demand for these credits grows, more farmers, ranchers, and foresters would explore this revenue-generating market, more technical assistance providers and third-party verifiers would emerge, and potentially innovation would occur with new types of entities emerging to create and sell carbon credits beyond these initial three. So what would the bill do?…”