Climate Change Legislation Update

The Democrat-controlled Congress is focusing on creating legislation to combat climate change- perhaps the most far-reaching and influential shift in administrative and legislative policy in decades. The New York Times calls it a comprehensive energy and global warming bill- but how the bill will look once it satisfies everyone enough to pass both the House and the Senate is still anyone's guess.

In fact, the Democratic Party still doesn't agree with itself on everything, though the House Democrats say that they are close to an agreement and hope to be ready to move forward next week. Whether they have a bill that will satisfy rural and fiscal conservative Representatives is not apparent. 

Key players in internal Democrat negotiations are House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), and Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN).

Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) blew some smoke up everybody's ass with his magnificently vague assessment of the negotiations:

"I think we made some real progress. There's still black smoke going up. The white smoke, however, we might be able to send some up, but only after we have resolved these final issues. We made some real progress in that meeting. But it's not final yet."

Right.

He clarified by explaining that they are dealing with a "conceptual understanding that we're now looking at in more detail" with Agricultural Chairman Peterson. Thanks for clearing that up, Ed.

Peterson also sounded an optimistic note yesterday about the negotiations. "We got a couple things resolved," he told E&E. "They came up with a new idea that has good possibilities. We're going to take a look now and see if it works."

It seems that most of the Democrats involved in the negotiations are keeping quiet on the details, but from what they did say, it sounds like some of the sticking points are emissions allocation levels for rural electric cooperatives, the possibility of expanding payments from the Agriculture Department on offset projects to farmers who conduct environmentally friendly conservation practices, and EPA biofuel rules.

The EPA biofuel carbon emissions calculations as they relate to agricultural land use is a complicated, imprecise process of purportedly objective assessment, new science, and mathematics. Imagine trying to figure out how much carbon emissions from ethanol fuel was equal to the clearing of X number of tropical rainforest clearing- those are the kinds of numbers this House committee is trying to figure out. And everybody has regulations or agreements or constituents to satisfy. And this is where a simple idea like, "Let's battle climate change" becomes a lesson in mathematical negotiations.

The rub is that the Ethanol industry doesn't agree with the EPA's calculations. And many environmentalists don't want land-use calculations to exist at all or have any bearing on the use of biofuels. Legislators differ on sources of biomass, and what equals what, etcetera etcetera. 

House Speaker Nancy Peolosi appears to be saying, Look, guys- let's figure something out and move on here.

And while Obama and Pelosi are both vocally behind effective climate change legislation, the Democratic Party is far from unified. Rep. Bobby Bright (D-AL) has maintained what he calls a firm NO from Day 1, and Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) chimed in with this gem: “The chairman is not in any way holding us as a voting bloc. We’ll make our own decisions.”

As for when there wil be something on the floor, Pelosi is non-committal. More optimistic Democrats mention next week as a possibility. Republicans are throwing down legislative roadblocks on most major Democrat-sponsored legislation, so timing and vote assurance is crucial.

While climate change continues to have an effect on the globe, climate change legislation continues to sit dormant with no effect at all.