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It may seem like it, but the health care bill is not the only major piece of legislation Congress is trying to pass this year. The House has already approved climate and energy legislation, and now the Senate is actually ramping up their version of the bill, with hearings later this month and a markup in one Committee expected soon thereafter.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, announced at a press conference this week (you can hear it here) that she has sent the draft version of the bill (known as “Kerry-Boxer”) to the EPA for analysis, and she expects to get that analysis back before hearings begin on October 27. The first of three days of hearings that week will feature Obama Administration cabinet secretaries like Energy Sec. Chu, Interior Sec. Salazar, Transportation Sec. LaHood and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Though not on the committee, Sen. Kerry will participate in those hearings in some fashion. The full committee markup would happen “as soon as possible” after the hearings. That looks to be sometime in early November, within 1-2 weeks after the hearings. Much like the health care hearings, the EPW bill would then have to be merged with bills from other committees with jurisdiction over parts of it, like the Energy and Natural Resources Committee (chaired by Jeff Bingaman, and they’ve actually finished their work), the Agriculture Committee (Blanche Lincoln) and even Max Baucus’ dreaded Finance Committee.
The possibility for a bill to actually make it out of the Senate, seen as remote initially, has been improved by a New York Times op-ed where Lindsey Graham expressed his support for getting some legislation passed. Yesterday Lisa Murkowski joined Graham in expressing her support. Boxer announced she was pleased by the expanding support for the bill.
The question, of course, becomes: at what price are these votes from Republicans extracted? The deal discussed in the Kerry-Graham op-ed includes a variety of concessions:
tax incentives for CCS (carbon capture and sequestration – this is basically what the coal industry calls “clean coal technology”)
domestic oil and gas production, including offshore drilling
using nuclear power in electricity generation
a “carbon collar” (with a floor and ceiling for carbon credits sold at auction)
border adjustments for goods from countries which do not have similar emissions caps
Some of these are OK, but needless to say, Sen. Boxer has not been a champion for all of these initiatives, particularly offshore drilling, which she has fought consistently in California. Many of these issues, which relate to electricity generation, fall outside of her committee’s jurisdiction, but she has said her bill will reflect the viewpoints of her committee, and “we’ll see what happens from there.”
With Arctic sea ice thought to be gone within 10 years, clearly there is a real urgency to at least get started on real climate change legislation. But getting urgency in Congress may collide with counter-productive measures that could actually make things worse than the status quo. So there’s a need to be vigilant in getting the best end product out of the Senate. I’ll be following this in the coming weeks.
(consider this my Blog Action Day post)
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If you think legisaltion is the answer to climate change, I have brige in Brooklin I’d like to sell you.
If you want to fix climate change. Quit burning dirty coal to make electricity. Quit burning gasoline and deisel in our vehicles. These are what’s causing it, and both are being fed not by there express need, but to continue the power of their high priced lobby.
Legislation and taxes are a joke to climate change, but a continuation of a Government that doesn’t work, know what to do, and has no real answers, while taxing as a excuse to seem like they had common sense to act.
Precisely how is this to be done without legislation? Do you think that people will magically change? That automobile manufacturers will just stop producing internal combustion engines and those executives that run power plants will have a religious epiphany and stop burning sulphur laden coal?
Taxation is one force that causes shifts in behavior because people, even those who are addicted, make efforts to end dependence when the costs go up. Look at the rate of smoking in this country when taxes increased on cigarettes.