Sen. James Inhofe from Oklahoma, global warming denier, and his Republican colleague George Voinovich (Ohio) are touting a bill to slash 3 pollutants from power plants – if the climate bill fails, which they hope it does. Inhofe and Voinovich are the two ranking Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee.
On the face of it, who could be against cutting soot-producing sulfur dioxide 80%, smog-forming nitrogen dioxide 50% and mercury 90%. This 3-pollutant legislation was introduced last week by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Tom Carper (D-Dela.)
The problem is this bill does nothing about carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, and nothing for renewable energy. It allows coal to continue being the energy of choice for power plants. Fortunately, the measure is unlikely to get legs, because Chair Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) committee has a majority of Democrats.
Voinovich also has a proposal to stop the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, not only under the Clean Air Act, but also under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act. He's covering all his bases.
On climate bill is Graham in or out?
So far he's out. After cancellation of a news conference to unveil their comprehensive climate bill, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) huddled Monday but made no statement when emerging and headed off in different directions, reporters on the scene noted, as if that indicated discord.
At issue – in case you’ve been in a bunker the past few days – is Graham’s refusal to play ball on the climate bill if immigration reform is on agenda this year too. (See Saturday's post below)
Over the weekend and Monday it looked like Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was going to push immigration reform first. Graham, who is also a player on immigration, said he didn’t want to be part of a political ploy to get Hispanic votes for Democrats in November (including beleaguered Sen. Reid.)
But Tuesday Reid seemed to be saying climate change would, in fact, come first. Graham, however, is still sitting this one out. He wants assurance immigration won’t come up at all this year. He's moving the goalposts, as Kate Sheppard said in Mother Jones .
As Kerry tries to keep up the good fight and Lieberman tries to make peace, the two are sending their bill to the EPA for the necessary analysis that could take 4-6 weeks, keeping the bill off the floor.
Meanwhile two of the more moderate Republicans, Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) told E&E Daily Tuesday that they’d rather take up energy first, as did several other Senators on both sides of the aisle.
Immigration seems to be something the GOP has no taste for, at least not right now.
What if there’s no climate bill?
A couple of less comprehensive energy bills are waiting in the wings: the Collins-Cantwell CLEAR cap-and-dividend bill that would reduce emissions 20% by 2020. It has no support from labor, however, so its chances are not good.
There’s also the clean energy bill (S. 1462) that passed out of Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s (D-N.M.) Energy Committee many months ago, which includes a rather small renewable energy standard. At this point that has been merged with Kerry-Graham-Lieberman, but presumably it could stand on its own.
Not a very good bill, though.
And of course the fallback is to just go with EPA regulations for large-source power plants, as well as letting states continue passing their own bills and regional cap-and-trade plans. The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill’s most recent draft does not restrict the EPA and allows California and other states to regulate tailpipe emissions, something the House-passed Waxman-Markey (H.R. 2454) bill does not.
(Sources: Solveclimate.com, E&E Daily, govtrack, cantwellsenate.org, Mother Jones, Sierra Club)
1 comment:
Living downwind from Ohio's coal fired electricity plants, we have both acid deposition and mercury to contend with. The apparent willingness of coal companies to finally allow regulation of SO2, NO2, an Hg is potentially huge (though not so much relative to climate change). The sceptic in me wonders what the percentages relate to, since the pollution we have to deal with in the Northeast coming from Ohio is an unintended consequence resulting from a work-around of the restrictions of the Clean Air Act. While the technology is available to scrub the combustion gases of these pollutants, but avoiding the cost of doing so has been ongoing for thirty years, I wold bet the legislation either define the measurement such that it has no real meaning, OR, it include federal grants/guarantees/subsidies for the cost of the scrubbers.
Regardless, with 30% of the renewed increase in CH4 emissions identified as coming from the Arctic and high northern latitudes, isn't what the ACES/CEJAP political process is yielding (if anything) scientifically meaningless—relative to the hopes commonly associated with it among otherwise (and somewhat) more rational people than the climate change deniers/obfuscators? If so, what is the purpose of making the story be about this legislative initiative? What, beyond helping progressives feel moral, does this accomplish?
BTW, I stumbled on you via Twitter and a "#climate" search. I've scanned a few of your blog post and can't believe you aren't getting spammed by deniers/obfuscators. Since you are a journalism professor, a project that some of your students might find worth studying is documenting the time of day—relative to the tweet—that various posts are made using the #climate hashtag. It seems to me that the number of deniers/obfuscators using the hashtag has increased, and that the time f day that this is happing corresponds to working hours. If such is a statistical trend, that would be an interesting story,
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