Lieberman-Warner almost on calendar

CQ is reporting today that Senator Boxer (Chair of Environment and Public Works, the  Senate committee of jurisdiction on climate change) has gotten Majority Leader Reid to agree to call up S.2191 in early June.  The article also notes that Boxer is vowing to kill the bill if any amendments significantly weakening it pass during floor debate.

It will be fairly difficult for this bill to pass a 60-vote threshold once the floor process is done, but even before it gets to that point some observers have wondered whether the Senate can get 60 votes to prevent a filibuster blocking the bill’s consideration.  With Boxer vowing to wait until the 111th Session in January 2009 if anything less than a solid bill makes it through the floor process, we doubt this bill is going anywhere this year.  Although there are many fence-sitters up for reelection in November who might consider moving on this bill, few are going to see a climate change package as make-or-break on their reelections.

If S.2191 does survive the floor process and is passed by the full Senate, the chances are nil that the House will pass a similar bill and a Conference Committee will be set before the end of this year.

Bingaman tells Schwab what’s what

Our previous post gave a bit of news about yesterday’s House hearing on, among other things, climate policy and international trade. U.S. Trade Representative (thus employed by the Administration) Susan Schwab did an encore today in front of Senate Finance. We haven’t seen how the full hearing went, but we were emailed Senator Bingaman’s quotes. (Sen. Bingaman chairs Energy and Natural Resources.) The press release from Bingaman’s office:

Sen. Bingaman today told U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab that Senate legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by establishing a cap-and-trade system must not disadvantage American businesses — and that, contrary to Schwab’s allegations, legitimate environmental regulations are in no way saber-rattling or a backdoor imposition of trade restrictions.

Schwab testified before the Finance Committee today. In her testimony, she said: “Attempting to force others to act on climate change through trade saber-rattling carries enormous risks. These threats to the global trading system cannot be ignored or glossed over.”

Bingaman pointed out, however, that a provision in both the Bingaman-Specter and Lieberman-Warner climate change bills would subject imported goods to the same cap-and-trade standards as domestically-produced goods.

“This is certainly not saber-rattling. This legislation addresses legitimate concerns on the part of U.S. industry, that they would be at a competitive disadvantage if the United States put a cap-and-trade system in place and did nothing to encourage others to follow suit,” Bingaman said.

Bingaman pointed out to Schwab that the Senate has worked for some time in crafting legislation and that it is a little late in the process to be raising such issues.

“I am frustrated that after we’ve gotten this far down the road, the only thing we hear from the administration is that we should stop saber-rattling,” Bingaman said. “That is not a constructive way to engage Congress.”

More evidence that the tipping point was reached

We have argued elsewhere that a public opinion tipping point on climate action was reached sometime in Fall 2006. A real tipping point in public opinion — the kind that will drive major policy changes — is impossible to pin down, visible only in hindsight, and perhaps only to be determined by a future academic historian. But strong evidence that we are on the other side of that we’re-going-to-do-something-about-climate tipping point came as the confluence of two events over the past two days. The events draw a startling contrast with each other.

The first event was really a non-event. The last vestiges of a climate denier camp tried to play up doubt on climate and was greeted by one huge, collective yawn. (See this post for intelligent insight on climate tit-for-tat.) Such an event would have meant something two years ago. It means nothing now. Climate skeptics were once viewed with something between appreciation and respect by interested bystanders genuinely curious about this global warming thing they’d been hearing about. Climate skeptics are now increasingly viewed as crackpots, curmudgeons, or agenda-wielding cause advocates who are clothing their political interests in the name of climate science.

The Heartland Institute denier meeting came together on Monday. By Wednesday we saw just exactly why skeptic influence is over. The Energy and Air Quality subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee met to discuss climate policy in a four hour hearing. Gone from the agenda was the question that occupied previous sessions: is this really happening? On the agenda was a single question: what are we going to do about it? And deeper than just questions about the nature of a climate plan (cap and trade or carbon tax?), the hearing went into fine detail about trade considerations, tax incentives, how WTO mechanisms might interact with U.S. climate policy, and how to force China and India to play with us on climate.

Is this what a skeptic-influenced policy regime looks like? Or is this what it looks like when the collective decision has been made to do something about our climate risk, and the only question remaining is how we’re going to herd the cats and fight our way out of this paper bag?

What’s Congress up to on FutureGen?

As we wrote previously, FutureGen’s demise has been greatly exaggerated. We expected that Congress would not allow FutureGen to be effectively killed or otherwise radically altered without a skirmish, and today the skirmish went border war during a Senate Energy and Water Approps hearing. A highish-level DoE staffer (deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Fossil Energy – OFE) was raked over the coals by Senators Dorgan, Bond and Domenici.What was curious about today’s hearing was trying to decipher what Congress is actually thinking about FutureGen. Sen. Bond went as far as to say

that DOE’s decision to restructure because of the escalating costs of the program “ring hollow” and calls into question the veracity and judgment of the department.

DOE “left FutureGen at the altar choosing three younger, cheaper women,” Bond said.

Parliamentary moves toward a new energy tax regime

Senate and House Dems have made it a centerpiece of their energy policy since regaining both chambers in 2006: remove/reduce tax incentives and subsidies for oil and gas and create new tax credits and incentives for renewable energy. Their problem thus far has been finding filibuster-proof margins in the Senate to get their packages passed. Now they’re turning to the budget resolution reconciliation process as a filibuster-proof vehicle.

This is potentially good news for renewable energy, but even if this package ($18B at last check) makes it through reconciliation and passes Conference Committee, the Bush White House has repeatedly said they will veto any bill that raises taxes on oil and gas.