Yes, Boxer-Lieberman-Warner's now a mere "trial balloon." (Or is that a "hot-air" balloon?)

Cap-and-trade carries intrinsic flaws: price volatility, manipulation, long implementation delays, nearly impossible enforcement, regressivity, potential for tradeable permits to fund arms deals and terrorism...  

Beyond cap-and-trade's intrinsic flaws, Romm shows that B-L-W's "cost containment" measures would gobble up emissions reductions.  

To add insult to injury, B-L-W would GIVE most permits to polluters, rather than auction them.  (See FoE's "Fix or Ditch Lieberman-Warner" campaign.)      

In B-L-W, revenue from auctioned permits winds up "kick starting" a list of political favorites, including Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS).  

The idea: capture (condense) CO2 from hot exhaust gases of coal-fired power plants.  How?  Giant refrigeration systems.  Where's THAT energy come from?  MORE COAL.  Still more energy to pump the CO2 into depleted underground gas formations.  (Possibly offset by methane (natural gas) displaced by CO2.)    

PEPCO Energy charges ~25% extra for 100% wind-generated electricity in DC.  Could CO2 be captured and sequestered for less than 25% of the net energy from coal?  If not, wind energy is ALREADY cheaper than coal + CCS and should become more economical as we improve designs and build capacity.  Conversely, CCS will become more costly as the easier sequestration sites are used up and pumping costs (for longer distances and deeper formations) rise.  It's a dead-end.  

So, can we PLEASE cut out the subsidies already?  Government trying to pick technological winners got us corn-produced ethanol, a net energy loser surviving on government largess.  

Better yet, skip cap-and-trade AND the subsidies! Let the markets work. Tilt the playing field away from fossil fuels with a gradually-increasing revenue-neutral carbon tax and distribute the reveneue as a per person dividend.  The Congressional Budget Office reported that a carbon tax would work FIVE times as effectively as a fixed cap. Economists ranging from Rob Shapiro (former Clinton Admin), Bill Nordhaus (Yale) to Ken Green (AEI) agree that a revenue-neutral carbon tax works much better for both the economy and the environment than clumsy cap-and-trade.  

With gimmicks like "cost containment" and CCS, B-L-W looks worse than doing nothing, at least for now.  

Not a moment too soon to start building support for a gradually-increasing revenue-neutral carbon tax like the one British Columbia is impementing.  The election's less than half a year away.  

For more on a gradually-increasing carbon tax with dividend, see http://www.CarbonTax.org.