I sure am not aware of a lot of blogospheric buzz about the Lieberman-Warner climate legislation which was just passed by a Senate subcommittee today. That's more than a little bit strange, considering this may well be the climate bill that we're dealing with for decades to come — and the time for decisive action is, well, 20 years ago.
VT Sen. Bernie Sanders correctly frames the issue: The climate doesn't care if our actions are bipartisan, if comity was maintained in the Senate, or if David Broder blows smoke-rings of satisfaction with the deliberative process. The facts are what they are; the danger is stark.
Anyway, Brian Beutler has been doing yeoman's work over at the Gristmill blog on this issue. The short story is that the bill would establish a cap-and-trade program for pollution, and give boatloads, bucketloads, downright shloads of cash to obsolete industries in exchange for becoming marginally less obsolete. And most critically, it would not meet the carbon reduction goals that would be necessary to head off environmental disaster: i.e. 80% reduction of CO2 by 2050.
Sanders has expressed disappointment. Indeed, the special interest giveaways are huge — and they go to the wrong special interest: Coal and Cars. Bleah.
Here's Sanders' press release:
The subcommittee turned down proposals to carve out resources for solar, wind and other renewable energy sources in the bill that guarantees whopping sums for coal ($324 billion) and car makers ($232 billion). It blocked a Sanders amendment to make utilities dramatically reduce emissions from new coal-fired power plants. It voted down an amendment to make polluters pay for carbon emissions starting in 2026 instead of 2036. The majority also failed to set a goal of reducing emissions of heat trapping gases by mid-century by 80 percent – the amount scientists say must be achieved to be effective. The bill calls for at most a 63 percent reduction by 2050, not enough to matter according to experts.
“I am proud that we pushed to improve the bill. It is stronger today than it was when it was unveiled two weeks ago. I appreciate the support for my amendment to improve fuel economy standards for cars. I look forward to making the bill better. The American people favor bolder action than this bill to prevent a catastrophe for our planet. I hope grass-roots activists will put pressure on senators to pass a stronger bill out of the full environment committee.”
In case you're from out of state, here's the list of Dem Senators in the full committee:
Senate Majority Committee Members
Barbara Boxer (CA) (Chairman)
Max Baucus (MT)
Joseph I. Lieberman (CT)
Thomas R. Carper (DE)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY)
Frank R. Lautenberg (NJ)
Benjamin L. Cardin (MD)
Bernard Sanders (VT)
Amy Klobuchar (MN)
Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)Senate Minority Committee Members
James M. Inhofe (OK)
John Warner (VA)
George V. Voinovich (OH)
Johnny Isakson (GA)
David Vitter (LA)
John Barrasso (WY)
Larry E. Craig (ID)
Lamar Alexander (TN)
Christopher S. Bond (MO)
I wonder about Hillary's view of this; pushing for a stronger bill would be most welcome from her.
More background from Marketwatch.
is worse than no bill at all, because if it were to be enacted it’ll be so much harder to make any improvements — and it’s so far from being necessarily strict that the downside is far greater than the upside.
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Dang I can’t stand Lieberman [who also advocated for approving the AG today].
There was a prior Energy/Environment bill that passed both Houses of Congress earlier this year. The Senate passed this bill by a vote of 65-27. (20 Republicans voted for this bill, while 4 Democrats voted against it.)
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2007 Energy Bill Senate Vote
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There were differences between the House and Senate version of the bill. Usually, when this happens, each House of Congress appoints conferees to resolve the differences between the bills and then the bill reported out of these Conference Committees is resubmitted to each Chamber for a final vote.
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Sen. McConnell (R-KY) refused to name conferees on this bill. This is not obstruction by filibuster, but it is just as effective a means of denying the results of a vote.
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There is more discussion of this on SolarNation and on the latest status of the conferee process at the Sierra Club website.
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More on this: NY Times Article on Energy bill
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There has been talk about getting bipartisan energy and renewables bills out of this Congress. So far, it remains just talk. BTW, the SCHIP bill is another instance where Sen. McConnell has refused to name conferees to discuss the differences between House and Senate bills that passed overwhelmingly.
These type of bills are exactly what we should strive to see avoided.
If we actualy hope to make some progress in our lifetimes then what we should want to see is what will be done NOW. When I see a bill that says that for now we will do nothing but in 30 or 40 years our goal will be this and that … Come on. Stop being children.
In 30 or 40 years this bill will be written over 30 or 40 times.
Everyone knows this so why even argue about the language. Lets do something NOW, roll back 1 PPB anything but do something NOW or all this is nothing but more flatulance.
Surely you don’t mean immediately now, right? The only way for power plants to reduce emissions immediately is to operate less often — which means brown outs. The only way for auto makers to create cars that reduce emissions immediately is to shut down assembly lines, and send their employees home — which means recession.
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By “now”, you do need some lead time. 20 years is way too much — I’d like to see them get the carbon trading going now and “turn the radio dial” on emissions a little bit every single year — let the market sort out which industries can roll back their carbon emissions quickly and which will take a number of years lead time to adjust their supply chain, retrofit filters, whatever.
Sure they could start the carbon trading NOW.
And they could produce better cars NOW and without the recession you fear. Imported cars are already built to meet higher standards when they are sold ELSEWHERE. Why not tell Toyota to start sending us those same cars here and also tell Detroit to meet the same specs that they currently meet in China … and do it NOW.
As far as power plants … there is technology out there that can scrub the effluent cleaner. They wont invest in it because they dont have to .. If it made financial sense to they would, NOW sounds like a good time … Not 2054.
You think Hillary’s going to push on this? As the annointed frontrunner, she’s tacking vigorously to the center.
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What are the enviro groups recommending folks do on this?
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There are some good pols on this committee (Sanders, Boxer) but the list of members doesn’t inspire confidence: Liebermann, Voinovich, Craig and Vitter aren’t names that say “bold leadership” to me.