Yesterday, we reported on the unveiling of new House climate change legislation co-authored by Henry Waxman, and Ed Markey. Since then, a bit more info’s trickled in, particularly from the Senate.
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) told the Washington Post “we don’t have 60 votes”–that’s no surprise, but it’s also an important statement by the Democratic whip, at a time when the party is grappling with the question of budget reconciliation.
And Sen. Joe Lieberman, an early leader in the Senate on climate change who authored a compromise (and ultimately failed) bill with now-retired Sen. John Warner a couple years ago, said “I don’t think what [Waxman] is proposing will get 60 votes in the Senate…. [The targets are] higher than the Senate will accept and higher than what we can do because they impose too much of a burden, particularly on people in states that burn a lot of coal or produce a lot of electricity.”
On a conference call with reporters yesterday, Markey addressed one major point of concern among environmentalists–the issue of emissions permits. Environmentalists are fairly adamant that all permits be auctioned to polluters and that the revenues be rebated to low-income consumers and, perhaps, used to fund clean energy projects. Markey suggested, in a concession to political reality, that the final bill will ultimately hand some of those allowances out for free.
Indeed, the discussion draft summary is intentionally vague on this question. It “does not address…how to allocate the tradable emission allowances that restrict the amount of global warming pollution emitted by electric utilities, oil companies, and other sources.”
The New York Times reports, though, that Rep. Jay Inslee extracted a concession from the committee leaders that would “set aside about 15 percent of the cap-and-trade program’s allowances for industries considered most vulnerable to international competition, including iron and steel, aluminum, cement, glass, ceramics, chemicals and paper.” So the issue may be more decided than committee leaders are willing to let on.
There are other points of contention as well. The bill would allow companies to exceed their emissions limits provided they offset the difference in other ways–including potentially very dubious ones. As Greenpeace says, “[i]f all the offsets in the bill were used, the bill’s emissions reductions could be met without any reduction in fossil fuel emissions for more than 20 years.” That’s an issue that needs to be monitored very closely.
