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New West Virginia Senator Carte Goodwin opposes any cap and trade legislation before the Senate, CQ reports. It’s behind a paywall, but here’s a brief piece:
Carte Goodwin, the former general counsel to Gov. Joe Manchin III, gave his position in response to a question at the news conference in Charleston, W. Va., announcing his appointment to the seat previously held by the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd (House, 1953-59; Senate, 1959-2010), who died June 28.
“With regard to cap and trade, I will say this: from what I’ve seen of the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House of Representatives and other proposals pending in the Senate, they simply are not right for West Virginia,” Goodwin said, referring to a bill (HR 2454) by Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., that the House passed June 26, 2009 to cap carbon emissions and create a market where polluters can buy and sell emissions credits and allowances. “I will not support any piece of legislation that threatens any West Virginia job, any West Virginia family or jeopardizes the long-term economic security of this state.”
Goodwin will support an extension of unemployment benefits, according to his colleague Jay Rockefeller at the same news conference. That means that the extension will become law on Tuesday, after an agonizing couple of months.
As for cap and trade, I think you can finally put a stake through its heart. Goodwin becomes the second Democratic Senator today to reject the carbon cap, even if it’s a utility-only piece (in fact, a coal-state Senator like Goodwin would like that even less).
Goodwin said he could support an energy-only bill, and that he supported a bill to basically give a bunch of taxpayer money to the coal industry to develop carbon capture and “clean coal” technology.
Again, water is wet.
Incidentally, this is also an indication of how Joe Manchin would vote. He’s the odds-on favorite to replace Goodwin in the Senate after a 2010 special election.
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I live in W.Va. and voted for Manchin. I’ve thought of him as pretty centrist, so I’m wondering if his appointee is speaking for Manchin. If so I have a problem supporting Manchin for the senate seat in the fall election.
Sure, it’s good to protect WV jobs, but a senator has to think about the nation too. In this instance his desire to hand over money for coal companies to develop “clean coal” technology is naive, stupid and dangerous. They won’t. They’ll take the money, stuff it in their pockets and continue to rape WV mountaintops. Meanwhile CO2 will continue to pollute all of America.
Carte Goodwin had better talk to some more people before he looks at the upcoming legislation. He needs a broader understanding of the nation’s policies and plans. Maybe he can then teach Manchin what’s what.
We need clean coal and the technology already largely exists. We don’t have to hand money to coal companies and cross their fingers. New technology may come along to capture carbon so we can use it and that won’t be developed by coal companies either. That will probably come from universities working with gov’t grants. We might also learn something from the Germans who are working along these lines too.
Where Goodwin can make a stronger claim to helping West Virginians is with the mine safety and whatever plans may be coming along to improve the electricity grid to make it smarter and better at handling electricity without loss (into the air). Simply holding the nation hostage to WV jobs isn’t the way forward.
Which neither exists, and will consume 30 to 50% of the electricity plants total output to process ALL the flue gas produced.
So exactly how does cap and trade affect any West Virginia job? Seems to me a carefully parsed statement.
And cap-and-trade (or carbon tax) is not the bottom line for this bill. The bottom line is ensuring that the EPA maintains the power to regulate greenhouse gases. Cap-and-trade and carbon tax have been offered as quasi-market alternatives to strong regulation.
To MarkH: Explain what you mean by “clean coal technology already exists”. And “clean coal” for that matter. I don’t understand because the point of the climate part of the bill is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions; I have a hard time imagining how you can burn coal without carbon dioxide emissions. And what have the Germans done?
btw, thanks for the explanation from a WV perspective.
I think we have to give this guy a pass on mining legislation as Byrd had and Rockefeller has. He and likely successor Joe Manchin have d’s by their names with the other advantages that gives the Dem.s in the Senate.
Nope. I have seen nothing to suggest this or even that it is possible.
Carte Goodwin then immediately announced he would sponsor legislation for a government takeover of dangerous slipshod mining companies like Massey Energy and would do everything he could to see that Don Blankenship spent the rest of his life behind bars for all of the damage he has done to West Virginians. Then I woke up…
Seriously, Goodwin is just showing himself to be a sockpuppet of Big Coal from the get go.
Cap and trade is a scam. It won’t reduce emissions anywhere near as much as it is supposed to and it will be gamed to death by Wall Street. I have no problem with Goodwin being against it. It is the why he is against it that I dislike. Cap and trade already looked dead so Goodwin’s chest beating is just to signal to Big Coal that he is their whore. I expect this is to win their backing down the road for any political aspirations in the state he may have after November or a cushy job working for them.
Do you suggest politics is going on? Shocking. :-)
Politics? Perhaps. Mostly this just looks like Carte Goodwin looking out for Carte Goodwin, and then Big Coal, and somewhere way down the pike from that those jobs and families of West Virginia he professed to be so concerned about.
West Virginia is another state just like Louisiana that has sold its soul to the company store.
No better examples of the neo-feudalism of corporate dominance. I think as in the south with civil rights is is up to the rest of the country to extricate the people from this economic slavery.
Carte??????? WTF kind of a name is that. We get this to replace Byrd?
Good Gods
“good jobs”?
WV isn’t like the South. WV has unions and they have been very strong here, including actual shooting wars with corporate goons. It’s not at all like the Gulf Coast where they beg for more oil drilling and apologize to the oil company for complaining that they’re destroying the environment and killing people. In WV the union workers are much more independent minded and fight for good working conditions, good compensation and a decent life with work.
One thing that might be surprising though is that most of WV is not about coal. It’s just that coal is the biggest thing and it’s a national resource too.