Breakthrough On Climate Bill Announced
House Energy and Commerce chair, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), says he now has the votes necessary to move his climate change legislation out of committee next week. It has faced stiff opposition from--surprise!--industry, Republicans, and Blue Dog Democrats, and, after a momentous roll out, Waxman was ultimately forced to delay action on the bill for more than a week.
Now, thanks to a series of significant concessions, he says he's confident it will move forward after the committee holds a series of hearings starting this week. According to Roll Call, "Waxman had to compromise with Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) on one of his key goals --the overall level of carbon reductions by 2020."
Waxman had wanted a 20 percent cut; Boucher has worried such a steep cut would outpace the development of new technologies like carbon capture from coal-fired power plants. They settled on a 17 percent cut instead.Waxman also agreed to give utilities free initial allocations on nearly all of their emissions. Boucher had sought to give utilities the credits to avoid rate hikes for consumers.
The Energy Committee chairman added that details have not yet been worked out on all of the allocations, including those for refineries, but said he expected that they would be reached quickly.
Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Ugh, f'in bluedogs..
May 13, 2009 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Those sound like fairly reasonable concessions. And with Henry Waxman handling the negotations, I'm confident its the best bill that was political possible. There's no representative in Congress that I trust more than Mr. Waxman.
May 13, 2009 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Boucher represents the poorest district in Virginia and the economy there is driven almost entirely by the coal industry. He's representing his constituency. The fact he's agreeing a climate change bill must be written at all is tremendous progress.
I think the targets for reductions will actually be exceeded by industry in 10-20 years as technologies come on-line that make sequestration and alternatives cost competitive.
May 13, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, come on!
By that logic we will never reduce carbon pollution. Must we wait until that district rises from poverty? Could they stop making their living by polluting the rest of us?
That same argument could be used for cigarettes, asbestos, lead, etc, etc.
Q: Are they doing mountaintop mining in Boucher's district?
May 13, 2009 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
"That same argument could be used for cigarettes,"
And it is for Virginia and North Carolina politicians. That's what politicians do.
The point of my post is that IN SPITE OF Boucher's ties to coal in his district he's still supporting a Climate Bill, albiet one that provides a place at the table for carbon capture and sequestration technology.
If the final bill gets us to 80% + reductions by 2050 the 3% less reduction by 2020 should not matter.
As others have said a bill that reduces by 17% then escalates from there is better than no bill at all, which is what we've seen for the past decade.
May 13, 2009 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Considering that the carbon released by us has only gone up, a 17% reduction would be a huge achievement. We need to do so much more, but so far, we've done nothing (or, honestly, the opposite).
OT: Does anyone know if the world-wide recession has actually caused a reduction in carbon emissions or is it too early to tell? I guess one way of attacking it would to see what world-wide oil consumption's done in the last year or so.
May 13, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
My understanding is that it has caused a reduction, but I don't have a source handy.
May 13, 2009 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe we ought to call it something along the lines of "energy independence and climate bill". 'Cause, it does both.
May 13, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Boucher (D-Coal):
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-05-02-undecided-reps-on-house-panel/
If Boucher's district is poor, then maybe sticking with the coal industry that hasn't delivered them from poverty yet is the wrong way to go.
Dude's taking care of business, not the peeps.
May 13, 2009 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The concessions are disappointing, but hopefully it will be easier to pitch a switch to auction-all-permits once the overall cap system is in place.
May 13, 2009 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's the best we could get. But, make no mistake, it is a give-away to coal utilities and their consumers. For example, Duke Energy publicly takes a position in favor of addressing climate change, and lobbies aggressively for a transition to "clean coal" as a major part of the solution, but Duke invests no money on developing the technology to either process or burn coal more cleanly. They insist on free credits to emit coal-based carbon pollution. They are building an 800 mw coal burning plant, lacking current emissions technology to make it as clean as possible.
We did exactly the same thing when we let U.S. automakers have a pass on higher fuel efficiency standards. What did they do? Same old same old. Very little was done to use the time to prepare for the future. The coal industry and its consumers will do the same.
At least we got started.
May 13, 2009 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a real bad weakening of a bill that was flawed to begin with. TPM has missed more of the story here, but it's a bad deal.
May 13, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink