Assigment #7, Part 2

Part 2
1) http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/04/23/23greenwire-industry-enviro-groups-spar-over-senate-climat-61576.html?scp=15&sq=sustainability&st=cse

2) Wood-biomass electricity has been known as a clean energy to all of us. To use forests for generating biomass fuel coincides with the policy goal of sustainable development if the sustainability standard is abided by. However, the article shows the political conflict and opinions of forest industry and environmental groups about Senate Climate Bill’s biomass provisions of forest to protect climate and improve sustainability of nation level.

Congress and environmental groups request stronger sustainability than the previous standard. Clearing forests to generate biomass fuel would quickly outpace environmental gains in the change from fossil fuels to biomass. On the other hand, forest industry argues that market realities without government intervention would prevent deforestation as landowners keep trees to protect long-term productions. The imposition of new biomass regulations on the industry to ban biomass extraction on federally designated wilderness tracts would add costs and discourage the harvest of forest, so that it won’t be profitable. Nearly 100 forestry organizations such as the American Forest Resource Council, the National Alliance of Forest Owners, Duke Energy Corp., and Xcel Energy Inc. urged the law-makers to place no limits on the harvest of biomass from private property whose 57 percent is private.

Sustainability standard of climate and energy law to put a price on carbon, create a renewable energy and fuel standard can be a big new pressure as well as incentives to use biomass to create energy. Therefore, desirable definition and conceptual coverage of sustainability is required to induce forest industry’s support.

3) States with particularly serious deforestation problem may at times go much further than a national government in development policy as California had led the United States in developing automobile emissions regulations by offering a smaller and more manageable political arena (Wheeler, p.125).

However, above problem should be addressed at the national level in that state governments may not have own pure independent resources and jurisdiction. Forests can be overlapped across states and provision, so that the authority of the forest can be not obvious and authority adjustment among states may be required. To deal with equity-oriented concerns at the national level is very important, while state and local governments tend to vary widely in their ability or willingness to develop their own sustainability plan (Wheeler, p.123).

I think that if policy makers try to implement the issue at the state level, the environmental quality’s improvement is very small and is difficult to measure because environmental problems such as climate protection and renewable resource are also global issues need a national commitment rather than state and local effort. Particularly, climate change by air movement and deforestation happen beyond the boundary between states. Therefore, the performance estimate within state level is ambiguous. State governments alone are able to undertake only piecemeal action on such widespread issues although such small-scale contributions can not be ignored (Wheeler, p.123).