I just returned to Seattle from Netroots Nation, the yearly gathering of progressive bloggers, journalists, and activists. Last year, in Austin, the atmosphere was absolutely electric, with the election approaching and a clear sense of battle lines drawn, victory within reach. Also, lots of great parties.

This year, at least from my limited perspective, the atmosphere was more muted, the panels less exciting, and the parties both fewer and less fun. Some of this could just be me getting to be an old fart, but others I spoke to had similar experiences.

The tone of the conference was, in part, related to a general frustration among progressives.

I wouldn't say the "netroots" (I hate that damn word) have turned on Obama, this sensationalistic HuffPo story notwithstanding. New pieces from Robert Kuttner and Jane Smiley represent a growing frustration with Obama's pursuit of bipartisanship, but overall, Obama's personal popularity is still plenty in evidence. The sense, rather, is that we are witnessing a tsunami of progressive enthusiasm, organizing, and, um, Hope crash on the shoals of the status quo ... and the status quo isn't budging. Bit by bit, the giddy high of those days following Obama's election is dissipating. It's dispiriting.

The dynamic is most obvious around health care, and in my panel Thursday morning, one of the things I discussed was what that battle portends for the battle over climate legislation when it resumes in the Senate this fall.

Depending on who you believe, heath care is going to come to a vote anywhere between the end of September and Thanksgiving. I'd say there's around a 30-40% chance that enough conservative Democratic senators defect that the whole project crashes and burns in a cloture vote (60 votes are needed to overcome the threat of a Republican filibuster). There's around a 60-70% chance that the Senate produces a watered-down, incrementalist bill that doesn't come anywhere close to the fundamental changes needed in U.S. health care insurance and delivery. (It looks like the public option is the latest thing to be compromised away.) And there's about a 1% chance of a genuinely good bill passing.

How did this craptastic state of affairs come to be? Without dragging this post out forever, here's a short list:

Two notable features of these lamentable facts.

First, they are structural. It's really hard to see what Obama or progressives can do to change them except at the margins. Too frequently people talk as though Obama or House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) just aren't trying hard enough -- the Green Lantern theory of domestic politics. They aren't powerless, of course, and it would be nice if the progressive caucus learned to throw its weight around more. But the fact that the U.S. system of government is riddled with procedural chokepoints is not something one can will away. The filibuster could theoretically be fought, but we seem to be a long way from that being a live possibility. And finally, it's hard to see what leverage Obama has over conservative Dem senators whose states didn't vote for him.

Secondly, on virtually every score, climate change is worse off than health care. The right wing is just as motivated and organized on climate as they are on health, but the progressive coalition is fragmented. The policy options aren't as well understood; there isn't single rallying point equivalent to the public option. On climate/energy there are far more "centrists" in positions of power to appease in order to get to 60 votes. (And it's important to understand that "centrist" is a situational description. When Dems are in power, it means "a little weaker than whatever the Dems come up with" -- see: stimulus bill. When Republicans are in power, it means "a little closer to the Republicans than the other Dems" -- see: Bush tax cuts.) There's even less credible leverage over Dem senators; voting against Obama's climate agenda will not threaten the reelection of a single Southern or Midwestern Dem.

I'm afraid this is a depressing post, but it's just become clear that structural features of American politics make it so change averse that virtually no progressive electoral sweep is enough to do the job. And however difficult those features may be for health care, they're worse for climate. At this point, chances seem to be split pretty evenly between total failure and the passage of an utterly defanged bill.

Or as Jon Stewart put it: "And now, cap-and-trade -- naked, bruised, and humiliated -- is off to the Senate to get skull-f*cked."

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Will the proposed clean energy agency become a slush fund for nuclear power?U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation that would create a new independent federal agency to promote government investment in clean energy.

But watchdogs are raising questions about whether the way the proposed agency is structured is unfair to taxpayers and bad for the environment. Among their concerns are its bias toward nuclear power -- a critical issue given the industry's planned revival.

"We support the financing of clean energy technologies to promote the domestic development and deployment of technologies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the most efficient, environmentally sound manner possible," stated a recent letter to lawmakers signed by 17 environmental groups. "However, the proposed Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) will not achieve these important goals and will in fact, as drafted, pose unnecessary and potentially enormous risks to our environment and to the U.S. taxpayer."

CEDA would be established within the Department of Energy, through legislation titled the "21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act," introduced by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and would be set to be combined with the Senate version of the climate bill. CEDA would provide billions of dollars in taxpayer-financed credit, including loans and loan guarantees, to the private sector to invest in energy technologies.

Similar legislation was also introduced in the House by U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), and added via amendment to the recently approved House climate bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) that passed June 26 by a vote of 219-212.

There are significant differences between the House and Senate CEDA proposals, with the version now being considered in the Senate drawing strong criticism from sustainable energy advocates. Some of the key concerns:

* The Senate version allows unlimited loan guarantees without congressional oversight. It provides an exemption from Section 504(b) of the Federal Credit Reform Act, circumventing the congressional appropriations process and relying instead on the White House Office of Management and Budget's model, calculating default risk and how much of the cost of that risk should be borne by the company. The House version of the legislation doesn't include this exemption, meaning CEDA would have to get congressional approval for requested loan guarantees. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office have warned that the default risk cost is hard to calculate and is likely to be underestimated, leaving taxpayers to bail out private companies that can't make their loan payments.

* The Senate version allows one technology to hog all the money. The House caps at 30 percent the amount of total dollars available that can be given to any one technology. However, the Senate version has no caps, which means one technology could enjoy the lion's share of the available subsidies.

* The Senate version does not include a greenhouse gas metric. That is, the bill does nothing to ensure that priority is given to those technologies that cut the most greenhouse gas emissions per dollar invested in the shortest amount of time. The House version, on the other hand, requires that priority be given to projects that cut greenhouse gases the quickest and cheapest.

Given those provisions -- coupled with the Senate climate legislation's general friendliness toward nuclear power, which it calls a "clean and secure domestic energy" whose use should be expanded -- energy policy expert Michele Boyd of Physicians for Social Responsibility said during a recent discussion of the bill that CEDA could essentially act as a "slush fund" for nuclear power. That would be a bad deal for taxpayers, given how costly nuclear power is compared to other more environmentally sustainable energy sources.

How much more expensive? A recent study [pdf] by Mark Cooper of Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment estimated that new nuclear plants will cost between 12 and 20 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to an average of 6 cents for efficiency and renewables. Cooper calculated that the plan being promoted by Senate Energy Committee member Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to build 100 new reactors across the United States would result in up to $4 trillion in costs over and above what it would cost to generate the same equivalent power from efficiency and renewables.

How did the Senate's CEDA proposal end up so biased toward nuclear power -- even though the technology is not only expensive but also a poor solution to the global warming problem due to its long construction time, the nuclear fuel chain's sizable carbon footprint, and nuclear plants' considerable heat emissions? It might be helpful to consider the relationship between the measure's primary sponsors and the nuclear power industry.

When he was last up for re-election in 2006, Sen. Bingaman was the top Democratic recipient of campaign cash from the Nuclear Energy Institute PAC, which represents the interests of the nuclear industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database. He received $6,000 from NEI's PAC that year, tied with Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and surpassed only by three Republicans -- Mike DeWine of Ohio, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and James Talent of Missouri -- who received $7,000 each. When co-sponsor Lisa Murkowski was up for re-election in 2004, NEI contributed $6,000 to her campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. Altogether since 2000, Bingaman has received a total of $7,999 from NEI and Murkowski $9,500.

And Bingaman has gotten more from NEI than just money: In 2006, he also won NEI's William S. Lee Award for Leadership, asking the lobbying group in his acceptance speech to "do your part to use those tools that Congress has put in place to ensure that nuclear power achieves its potential as part of our future energy mix." It now appears the industry is doing just that -- with Bingaman's help.

But watchdogs are fighting back against the legislation's proposed nuclear giveaways. They are calling on concerned citizens to write to their Senators and President Obama and ask them to oppose any additional taxpayer subsidies for the nuclear power industry in the climate legislation. As PSR notes, the industry's own estimates say it already stands to profit by $1 billion a year from a carbon cap.

"We can have nuclear power or we can address the climate crisis," the Nuclear Information & Resource Service says in its call for action on the legislation. "We can't do both."

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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“You should have a tremendous celebration tonight for your effort on this bill.” House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking minority member Joe Barton (R-TX) said that to Jay Inslee (D-WA) at a little after 7 PM EST.

Barton also said to Inslee, “you have been an indefatigable proponent of the bill.”

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EPA chief will decide whether to regulate greenhouse gases ... next year

Climatic evidence notwithstanding, U.S. EPA chief Stephen Johnson would like to assure you that snoozers are not losers. On Friday, Johnson told a House special committee on global warming that he's going to put off making up his mind about whether vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions should be regulated by his agency until late 2008. It's all a matter of whether the emissions "endanger public health or welfare" -- and endangerment is a "legal term of art" that needs more study, Johnson said. The Undecider also refused to inform the House when he might determine whether California is allowed to enforce vehicle-emissions standards stricter than those outlined by the feds. "We're moving forward in a thoughtful, deliberative manner, looking at every appropriate option," Johnson explained. Color the committee members unimpressed: "This is grossly unsatisfactory," said Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) "This is like saying we're going to have a meeting next year about getting Osama bin Laden."

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Rep. Jay Inslee's two central passions, clean energy and global warming, received scant attention during his last eight years in Congress. Now, after a power shift on Capitol Hill, he's at the center of high-profile efforts to attack climate change and promote a new energy economy -- not to mention get his colleagues up to speed on the issues.

The Democrat from Washington state's first district, which encompasses suburbs north and west of Seattle, holds spots on two House committees that will play key roles in debates over how to tackle the climate crisis: the Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), and the new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, created this year by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Happily, he's prepared. Inslee has focused on energy issues since the early 1970s and amassed a wonk's expertise. This fall, he will release a book called Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy, about the challenges and opportunities facing America as it navigates the twin crises of global warming and peak oil.

I caught up with Inslee at a Seattle café, where he enthusiastically dove into the weeds of energy and climate policy, all the while cautioning the environmental community to be realistic and understand that Congress is at the beginning of a long journey on these issues.

Anticipation was that the politics of climate and energy were going to change once Democrats took over Congress. Did they change as much as you expected?

They changed by a factor of four. The expectations I had of what was in the realm of the possible, even the day after election, are four times as optimistic now, because the country has changed so dramatically in the last three months. It's amazing. The debate about global warming is over. The last nail has been driven in the coffin of the Flat Earth Society. We're talking seriously about a cap-and-trade system.

It wasn't just the election. It was the change in the country in the last few months, the change in the science, the fact that people are now seeing it with their own eyes. It's kindled a lot of optimism in many of us.

This is the best of times and the worst of times. The worst of times because the challenge is great, but the best of times because we have these [energy] technologies coming to fruition.

Dingell doesn't seem quite as energized about global warming as some of the other caucus members. What's your take on his position?

John has represented the area where the auto industry is, and has been protective of that industry, strongly committed to its welfare. I certainly disagree with him on CAFE standards. But I think it would a big mistake to assume he is not going to act as an effective leader on global warming. He has said very clearly that he wants action. Under John's leadership, we had the first hearing in House of Representatives history on a cap-and-trade system. I have confidence John's going to come up with a consensus product to move forward.

Conventional wisdom says it's increasingly likely that a Democrat will be elected president in 2008, and even possible that Democratic majorities will grow in both houses. Why lock into weak policies when there's the possibility of a much stronger position over the horizon?

That's something we've got to think seriously about. I led a discussion with the environmental community about this very issue. People were somewhat reluctant to believe we could actually make meaningful progress this year.

That was three months ago. The center of gravity has shifted dramatically, and what is in the realm of the achievable is 100 percent more than it was, in my estimation, a lot of people's estimation. I can't believe how much the emotional, scientific, and political ground has shifted on this. So it's a lot less of a concern than it was three months ago.

The other thing I would say is: this business is so difficult. On September 10, 2001, we could have predicted the demise of the Bush administration. It didn't turn out that way. So hoping on a Democratic president ... the world is too mercurial. I'm thinking we should take action this year rather than having a debate society for two years.

Carpe diem?

Carpe the majority.

There seems to be a growing grassroots consensus that corn ethanol, if it's preferable over gasoline at all, is so by a fairly narrow margin. Why has ethanol become virtually coextensive with energy policy in Washington?

We have to design a policy that uses corn ethanol for a positive purpose, but does not lock us into the technology. You don't want the Wright brothers' flyer locked in as the only technology in aerospace.

But the Wright brothers' flyer did have a meaningful purpose: It set us up for growth in aerospace. That's how I look at corn ethanol. It is a first generation. It will create an infrastructure of distribution that can be used for cellulosic ethanol. It will create political pressure to require flex-fuel vehicles, so the auto industry will give us cars that burn ethanol or gasoline. It will give us the critical strength to require that the oil and gasoline industry put in E85 pumps at its stations. It helps build a constituency that can help develop the second generation of ethanol, the one that will have meaningful environmental benefits.

One of my goals right now is making sure my colleagues understand that all ethanol is not created equal. I'm very optimistic about this. Vinod Khosla's opening up the first wood-fiber-based cellulosic-ethanol plant in Georgia. Iogen's ready to go with wheat straw in Idaho if we can get the loan guarantee through. I'm bullish.

Corn ethanol does have a virtue -- there are security benefits that are not environmental.

The alternative to this quest for alternative liquid fuels is to push for fully electric vehicles. It's easier to find green electricity sources than it is to find green liquid fuels. Why not go straight to electric, perhaps by supporting plug-in hybrids?

I'm going to give you Umbrella Principle No. 1: there's no silver bullet. The wisest policy on energy is to spread your bets among multiple technologies. You simply cannot project winners and losers among these multiple technologies. I believe biofuels have a potential and an economic benefit. If we get to cellulosic ethanol, it has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions and will be a good partner with plug-in hybrids. Plug-in hybrids are going to take you the first 30 to 40 miles. That's 60 percent of our trips, under 40 miles, but there's another 35 to 40 percent that aren't. What are you going to burn? Even with optimistic battery projections, you're going to need some fuel.

I'm hugely bullish on plug-in hybrids; I feel good about their prospects in the next four or five years.

My belief is, if you've got 10 doors, you've got to open all 10 of them.

There are opportunity costs, though. There isn't an unlimited pot of money or attention.

There should be. There will be. We're just getting started.

I was confronting [Energy] Secretary [Samuel] Bodman on this issue the other day. I had charts of energy R&D, health R&D, and defense R&D. Energy R&D has gone down by two-thirds since the 1970s. Health R&D's gone up five to eight times. Defense R&D has gone up 10 to 20 times. We spend less on energy R&D [in a year] than [we spend in] a month in Iraq, probably two weeks.

We're not at the first inch on this journey of global warming. In the Everest expedition, we've just started to pack our mitts. We should plan on having five times the energy R&D in this country in the next 10 years. It would be idiotic not to, given the nature of this challenge. I believe it's reasonable, politically, to get to that level.

Would you support a revenue-neutral carbon tax, one that's refunded back to taxpayers either on a per-capita basis or some other way?

Hot under the collar.

Photo: House.gov

Would I support it? Well, I'm in support of the cap-and-trade system right now, and the reason is several-fold. I think a cap-and-trade is more efficient, across all sectors and across all countries, than a pure price-per-gallon [tax] set arbitrarily by the government. It has the potential to inspire more change than even a revenue-neutral tax, even on an abstract basis.

But I don't live in a world of abstraction. I live in a world of getting things done. And there is 1,000 times more likelihood that we can get a cap-and-trade system through. I'm not shy about voting for these things -- I voted for a gas tax in 1993, in my first term in Congress. But I'll tell you what happened: We voted for it in the House, it went over to the Senate, and in 24 hours they had killed it. My job is to save the planet, not to talk about it.

You'd say flatly that a carbon tax is politically impossible for the foreseeable future?

Yes. In the next two years, it is inconceivable that we could get 66 votes in the United States Senate to pass a carbon tax. It's a very interesting intellectual, academic discussion, one that should be had, but as far as my ability in the next two years ...

How about in 2009?

I can't predict the future. The world may change. The Greenland ice may break up in six months, and the North Atlantic current shut down, and then OK, public sentiment may change.

You've got to understand, the U.S. Congress is just starting to have a glimmer of understanding of this challenge. To hit them in the face with a flounder called a gas tax is just not going to be very successful. As a person in public life, anyone who believes you can vote for a tax without difficulty has never voted for one. We lost the entire United States Congress, including 60 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1994 -- which eliminated our ability to do anything about this project for another eight years. If we eliminated our ability to do anything else for the environment for another 10 years ... anyway, that's what you've got to think about.

If we get a cap-and-trade system, and the United States has a binding commitment to a CO2 cap, that is a significant change in the world.

Is there a consensus around a particular cap-and-trade proposal?

There's no consensus. People are just now beginning to think about this. Now, if you're a betting person, the most likely thing to pass in the real world is the weakest thing, OK? But we're not going to settle for that. We're going to push and get the toughest, most meaningful, enforceable, no-escape-clause, no-safety-valve, no-off-ramp bill we can possibly get. And this is where the environmental community needs to think like venture capitalists. The more long-term certainty there is, the more success there will be getting investment in new technologies. That's critical. It's more important to have certainty and confidence, even at a lower bar.

We've got a reasonable chance of passing a cap-and-trade bill without a so-called safety valve.

There's a great deal of suspicion in the green community that "clean coal" is a political sop to coal states, to keep the coal industry alive when it ought to be allowed to die a natural death.

You shouldn't diminish the importance of that, if that is true. If the price of getting a cap-and-trade system in this country is doing clean-coal research, that is the cheapest investment in the future of our planet we could possibly make. I guess I would encourage people not to think of this in the sense of purity.

You've got to maximize research on anything that has a realistic potential environmental benefit. It may be possible to gasify coal and to sequester it at some coal locations that have a saline dome or a limestone geology, and good transmission available, and a permitting process that prevents raping the land in the coal-mining process, and a transportation system. I'm limiting the places it would work, but I do believe there are some places where this technology potentially could work.

This is what I told President Bush [recently] on a retreat in Virginia: "Mr. President, with all due respect, the investment of a billion dollars of taxpayer money in clean-coal research is an absolute, guaranteed failure, a billion dollars down a rat hole, unless it is accompanied by a strong cap-and-trade system. Why would we invest a billion dollars into clean coal when there is no economic incentive for anybody to build it?"

He seems somewhat obsessed with it.

Nuclear too. That was the first thing out of his mouth: do nuclear and everything's solved. It's regrettable.

I will say this: this whole issue around global warming and energy has taken a partisan, ideological tone that really closes minds. If Denis Hayes, Jimmy Carter, or Ted Turner ever had an idea, Dick Cheney would be opposed to it, no matter how much it would benefit the U.S. economy. It works a little bit the other way, too. It's important for us in the environmental community to break our customary way of thinking. The magnitude of the global-warming challenge demands that all of us be able to think not only outside our box, but in somebody else's box.

If you had no political constraints, what would you like to get done?

A lot of things in my New Apollo energy bill are not going to get passed in the next two years. It's important to provide a forward-looking vision even if you can't get it through. But you don't allow the vision of a 10-year goal to prevent you from taking a modest step forward.

There's a thousand things. I'd start with the cap-and-trade system, and the goal would be more aggressive than I'm going to get my colleagues to accept in the next year. Maybe they will six years from now.

The R&D budget I would set would be five to 10 times higher. We should have a response like World War II. The threat to America is equivalent, in the long-term, to a major existential war, so our national response has to be of that scope and scale.

I would do things much more aggressive on efficiency, and I suspect we are capable of doing them in short order. I would do things that might be a little more mandatory in the auto-insurance industry. I would have 70, 80 percent of our cars be flex-fuel cars in the next three years. I would mandate 10 percent of our service stations have an E85 pump in short order. I may get some of that in the next year.

The things I'm talking about are going to happen. I believe everything I proposed in the New Apollo Energy Project is going to become American policy. It's common sense -- the nature of the challenge will demand it.

Conservative pundits say making these changes would be too costly.

This is the distinction between us and them: They're the pessimists. We're the optimists. We're the people who believe in our future, they're the people who believe we're too stupid to figure out a way to solve this. Their argument is, the people who invented the steamboat, the light bulb, the internet, the jet airplane, mapped the human genome, and went to the moon cannot figure out a way to save energy. Why bet on stupidity?

How much can we rely on individual changes in behavior? Don't we need to get the bigger message across too?

People don't understand how powerful they are as leaders in their communities. People change cultures daily by their own individual behavior. It changes the culture in their neighborhood, their church, their family. It's amazing to me what people can achieve by their individual contributions.

The single most important thing is our confidence in being able to beat it. If people have confidence they can achieve this, they will do the individual things, they will do the business things, they will do the government things. The one thing I can do -- and frankly, I would entreat you to do -- is give people a reason to be confident. We can niggle ourselves into failure here. Developing that can-do spirit is intrinsic to winning this battle.

One benefit of age is to see how plastic society is, and human behavior is. In 1972, the year you were born, in this country there was zero recycling, everybody smoked, nobody wore a seatbelt. I'm confident stuff can change. I've seen it in my lifetime.

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Caterwauling over the Iraq War last week brought Congress to a rancorous new low, drowning out calls from both sides of the aisle for a clean and sane energy future.

A handful of senators and reps unveiled proposals pressing for the Bush administration and automakers to shrink America's outsized energy demands and tackle the climate crisis. They got little to no attention at the time, but their innovative thinking could help set U.S. energy policy on a new, more progressive course.

Last Thursday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) introduced a "Health Care for Hybrids" bill outlining a new approach for boosting fuel efficiency in Detroit. It would offer struggling U.S. automakers a voluntary but potentially enticing deal: relief from some of the high health-care costs they pay for retired employees (expected to total more than $5 billion in 2005) in exchange for a commitment to reinvest at least half of those savings into the development and manufacture of fuel-efficient vehicles.

The U.S. auto industry has long complained about these health-care costs, portraying them as an undue financial burden that their competitors in countries with nationalized health-care systems don't have to bear. Health-care expenses currently account for about $1,500 of the cost of every GM car.

Many D.C. enviros support the proposed trade-off, but they wish the bill obligated the companies to comply with substantially more aggressive fuel-economy standards.

When Obama first publicly discussed this proposal in September during a speech at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan D.C.-based think tank, he proposed a 3-percent-per-year increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards over the next 15 years. But there's no mention of CAFE in his current bill. Rather, there's a stipulation that automakers can't undermine their investments in efficiency by simultaneously manufacturing other, more wasteful vehicles.

Despite the disappointing loss of the CAFE component, Obama's proposal "is nevertheless a gain for vehicle efficiency," said Deron Lovaas, vehicles campaign director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "and will improve the average fuel-economy performance of American cars."

Enviros are even more enthusiastic about a bill proposed last Wednesday by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), the Vehicle and Fuel Choices for American Security Act. Despite its obfuscatory title, the legislation has clear goals: It would require the White House and federal agencies to develop an action plan to reduce America's oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels of oil a day within a decade, and 10 million barrels a day by 2031. Current U.S. consumption stands at 20 million barrels a day.

The bill has an uncommonly broad and regionally diverse bipartisan coalition behind it, thanks in part to efforts to corral support by Set America Free, a coalition of hawks and environmentalists who believe America is funding terrorism with its petro-dollars. Half of the measure's 10 Senate cosponsors are Republicans -- Sens. Sam Brownback (Kan.), Norm Coleman (Minn.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Dick Lugar (Ind.), and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) -- while its Democratic cosponsors hail from around the country -- Joe Lieberman (Conn.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Barack Obama (Ill.), and Ken Salazar (Colo.). The House version, introduced by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), has an even higher proportion of Republican backers -- 22 of 26 cosponsors.

The act wouldn't stipulate specific regulatory programs or require tightening of CAFE standards, but would let the executive branch figure out the best way to meet the targets. "This bill specifies the ends but leaves flexible the means," says NRDC's Lovaas. "Still, it's a very ambitious mandate, somewhat like the Clean Air Act in its breadth and the flexibility of its interpretation."

The bill also calls for fuel-economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles, loan guarantees for manufacturers of hybrids, and incentives for alternative-fuels development and mass-transit systems.

Even though senators rejected a similar call for curbing domestic oil consumption during debate over the energy bill this summer, cosponsors of this new act are optimistic about their chances of success. "There was a mental sea change in America when gas hit $3 a gallon," Brownback told the Associated Press last week, and there's now greater support for reining in oil use.

Also last week, Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Joseph Biden (Del.), the committee's ranking Democrat, introduced a Sense of the Senate resolution that would enjoin the U.S. to participate in negotiations toward a post-Kyoto international agreement to tackle climate change -- something the Bush administration is loath to do. The move came just two weeks before reps from around the world will convene in Montreal to start discussions on what kind of climate deal should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012.

Biden described the resolution as "a chance to clear the air and get back on the right side of history. [It] gives the Senate, with its constitutional power to ratify treaties, a chance to go on record in favor of a global solution to a global problem."

Lugar and Biden also endorsed forward-looking proposals for global climate strategy outlined in a new report by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change -- "International Climate Efforts Beyond 2012". Biden praised the report's "flexible roadmap," which he says offers "more than just a 'one-size-fits-all' approach" by calling for countries to implement customized climate strategies to suit their developing or industrialized economies.

Other recent energy-related proposals include the Energy for Our Future Act, introduced last Thursday by Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), which calls for an increase in CAFE standards and a repeal of tax breaks for the oil industry. There's also the Fuel Security and Consumer Choice Act, introduced on Nov. 10 by farm-state senators Obama, Lugar, and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), which would require that within 10 years all vehicles sold in the U.S. be able to run on ethanol-based fuels in addition to pure gasoline (though there's considerable disagreement over the environmental benefits of ethanol).

None of these measures are expected to make much advancement before the end of the year, but the flurry of activity bodes well for a far more visible and productive debate on America's energy policy in 2006.

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Rep. Richard Pombo meets the press in April.

Photo: U.S. House of Representatives.

You have to want to get to Nacogdoches, a Texas town that's not on the way to anywhere. This eastern outpost, nearly 150 miles from Houston, is the oldest town in the state, with enough lore to fill volumes. It's the site where, in the 1700s, the legendary Father Margil struck a rock twice during a drought and water flowed. In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated overhead. And in late July, the town served as the perfect out-of-the-way location to host a congressional hearing on the National Environmental Policy Act.

That landmark legislation, signed by President Nixon in 1970, requires federal agencies to study and disclose the environmental effects of major projects on public land. It also stipulates that the decision-making process for such projects must include the opportunity for public comment. The three-page law enshrines caution.

But lately, NEPA has come under fire. In April, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), chair of the House Committee on Resources, created a congressional "task force on improving" the act. Through a series of six regional hearings, the task force is reaching across America to hear comments before issuing a report in the fall.

But while NEPA strives to bring every concerned party to the table, observers say these hearings do not. They are being held in obscure locations, at odd times, and with little advance warning. Witnesses are handpicked, with the lineup revealed on the task force's website only days before each event, a move some critics see as an attempt to stifle debate.

"They have decided to have a birthday party where they invite the guests they want," says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. "They want to hear what they want to hear."

Participants say the first session, held in Spokane, Wash., in April, yielded support for the act. The Earth Day-weekend event, publicized locally by community groups, drew 175 people, many wearing stickers that read, "I Support NEPA: Democracy in Action." Task-force member Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who led the hearing with task-force chair Rep. Cathy McMorris (R-Wash.), says he thinks some of his colleagues were shocked by the results. "I think what I observed in Spokane, much to [Pombo's] surprise, was an overwhelming support by the American public that their government fairly looks at their actions," says Inslee.

Rep. Cathy McMorris is listening.

Photo: U.S. House of Representatives.

According to Inslee, Pope, and others, the strategy shifted after Spokane. The next hearing's venue was changed several times before it was held in Lakeside, Ariz., on June 18. The Nacogdoches hearing was also moved, from Houston; and an early-August hearing, the most recent, was moved from Albuquerque to Rio Rancho, N.M. -- and held at 10 a.m. on a Monday.

Representatives from the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity were invited to testify in Arizona, but only a few days prior to the hearing; they were given one day to prepare and submit their comments. The event also conflicted with a long-planned dam-decommissioning celebration deemed a NEPA victory. "Given the impossible deadline ... both groups had to decline, but offered written testimony a few days later for the record," says Neha Bhatt, a Sierra Club representative in Washington, D.C.

As a result, no environmentalists testified in Arizona. Who did speak? Representatives of the forestry, cattle, construction, mining, and energy industries. Now, says Bhatt, "The task-force website makes a point to say we were invited to testify, but didn't. They don't give the public access to [our written testimony]. It's frustrating." She adds that the Sierra Club asked to testify at the hearing in Nacogdoches, but was not invited.

Rep. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), the task force's ranking member, didn't attend the Texas hearing either. He said he received only two weeks' notice. Like most politicians in Washington, his schedule is planned months in advance, and he had commitments in his home state. "It's helpful to have [the hearings] in communities out in the country," Udall says, "but the task force needs to be better at publicizing where they will be and including all people who have a stake in this issue."

The Nacogdoches hearing was hosted by McMorris and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) in a concert hall at Stephen F. Austin State University. After an invocation asking God for protection for Gohmert and his family, and the singing of the national anthem, the invited witnesses got down to business in front of an audience of about 70 people. (Members of the public, while welcome to attend the hearings, can submit only written comments.)

The panel of witnesses consisted of seven industry representatives and two environmentalists: Larry Shelton, a trustee from the Texas Committee on Natural Resources, and Sandra Nichols, a staff attorney with WildLaw in Montgomery, Ala. Shelton said NEPA did not need to be changed. But Nichols said "real solutions" were needed to make the law more effective. She added that environmental groups were urged by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) "to come out of the trenches" and meet halfway. That's what she hoped to accomplish at the hearing, she said.

Representatives for the oil, mining, and timber industries spoke about economic interests and the interference caused by too many regulations. As Victor Carrillo, the state's railroad commissioner, put it, "When the federal government does pass a law or regulation, it should be simple, clear, understandable, limited in scope, reasonable, practical, and pass the commonsense test."

Common sense -- and the notion that NEPA lacks it -- was the theme here, along with the general agreement that too much environmental assessment and too many stakeholders result in lawsuits and red tape. "NEPA doesn't sit on a pedestal that can't be touched," Gohmert said.

When asked about the selection of witnesses, McMorris said the NEPA hearings are intended to offer a better understanding of the 35-year-old law and its economic impacts. "We don't need to have 10 people say nothing needs to be improved," she said. "We want to hear from the people who have problems with NEPA." That kind of comment disturbs Inslee. "Right before [Pombo] created this task force, right out of the gate, the chairman tried to strip NEPA and reduce it in the energy bill," he says. "That diminishes the effectiveness of this task force. It has not been very effective at getting a broad perspective of Americans. It's a dud in that regard."

Many people believe NEPA is sound legislation. Oliver Houck, who directs the environmental-law program at Tulane University's law school, cannot imagine what the task force's fuss is about. "NEPA [instituted] one very simple, modest device," says Houck. "It didn't shut down anything, didn't set up a review board. It just required an environmental impact statement. A more modest requirement would be hard to imagine."

Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), a well-known conservationist who has received accolades from several environmental groups, sits on the Resources Committee with Pombo but is not a task-force member. While he believes NEPA's application may need to be more logical -- a conclusion also reached by a NEPA "modernization" task force created in 2002 by the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- he says the law allows for innovation, a crucial component as the world faces global warming. With innovation comes ingenuity and intellect, he adds: "NEPA expands those characteristics. If you shut down NEPA, you lose that."

Some environmental advocates predict the real battle will begin next year, when NEPA-weakening legislation will almost certainly be introduced. If the act is gutted, they say, it might mean the very result Pombo seeks to avoid: more lawsuits. "When we aren't listened to by the government, we have the right to legally challenge," says Bianca Encinias of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. "Our communities have a right to know, and a right to participate."

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On April 21, Congress stepped back in geologic time when the House of Representatives passed an energy policy of the dinosaurs, by the dinosaurs, and for the dinosaurs. This energy bill is truly a "Jurassic" piece of legislation that relies on a limited energy source derived from creatures and plants that died millions of years ago. In fact, 93 percent of the $8 billion in tax incentives in the bill go to oil, gas, and other traditional energy industries.

A patriotic sight.

Photo: Tennessee Valley Infrastructure Group Inc. c/o NREL.

Shortly before the House debate, one national leader said, "I will tell you with $55 oil we don't need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. ... What we need is to put a strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent." Incredibly, that leader was President George W. Bush. Even the president with the worst environmental record since Warren G. Harding cannot conceal that this energy bill is more technologically suited for the 19th century than the 21st century.

Instead of this petroleum-soaked energy policy, some of my colleagues and I have been promoting a new vision for our energy future, one that would avoid drilling in our pristine areas, while creating jobs, enhancing our national security, and protecting the environment. This clean-energy vision, called the New Apollo Energy Act, is based on optimism rather than self-doubt, on new technologies rather than archaic methods, and on faith in Americans' innovative talent rather than capitulation to narrow special interests. New Apollo will commit our nation to clean energy to increase domestic high-tech employment, reduce the effects of climate change, and advance our country toward independence from foreign oil. Though the Republican leadership refused to allow us to offer a version of New Apollo as an amendment to the energy bill, I will soon be introducing it as a separate bill in Congress.

New Apollo draws its inspiration from President Kennedy's original "Apollo" plan, which in 1961 challenged the nation to put a man on the moon within the decade and return him safely to Earth. Kennedy recognized that Americans love a good challenge and are the most creative people in human history. In a similar way, New Apollo challenges Americans to harness their legendary ingenuity and technological prowess to build a clean, economically beneficial energy system on our own planet -- a planet we want to keep comfortably fit for human habitation and free from global warming and conflicts arising over the control of petroleum.

Our New Apollo Energy Act will provide $49 billion in government loan guarantees for the construction of clean-energy generation facilities that will produce power from wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, oceans, coal with carbon-sequestration technology, and other sources. The legislation will also commit $10.5 billion to research-and-development investment tax credits for clean energy-producing operations. In addition, it includes a 10-year extension of the current credit for electricity generated from clean sources. Making these clean energy sources cost-effective for citizens will require this type of bold infrastructure investment by the federal government.

There is no one silver bullet that will solve the nation's energy crisis, so New Apollo pursues a number of other strategies as well. It creates national net-metering and interconnection standards that allow homeowners who generate clean energy to reduce their energy bills by feeding surplus electricity back into the grid. It also contains a renewable portfolio standard that will require all utilities to produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2021.

Of course, the best way to generate energy is to not waste it, so New Apollo includes incentives for American consumers to drive fuel-efficient vehicles, including tax credits for the purchase of hybrid, alternative-fuel, low-emission advanced diesel, and fuel-cell vehicles. It also provides an incentive program to encourage domestic automotive and aerospace manufacturers to develop new fuel-efficient automobiles and planes.

These boosts for clean energy and efficiency will make it possible to meet our bill's call for notable reductions in daily domestic oil consumption -- cuts of 600,000 barrels a day by 2010, 1,700,000 barrels by 2015, and 3,000,000 barrels by 2020. These numbers are approximate estimates of the amount of oil the United States would soon be importing daily from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the entire Middle East, respectively, without a change in current policy. Lessening our dependence on foreign oil will greatly strengthen our national security.

That is in sharp contrast to what we would see under the Republicans' Jurassic energy bill -- an 80 percent increase in petroleum imports between 2002 and 2025, according to the president's own Energy Department. That bill fails to recognize that the United States has only 3 percent of the world's petroleum reserves but consumes 25 percent of the world's oil -- simply put, we cannot drill our way to energy independence. Even with the most generous estimates, opening up the Arctic Refuge and other treasures for exploration would not have any significant impact on oil supply or prices.

A smart energy policy must also address the threats posed by global warming. Scientists have found overwhelming evidence that climate change is caused by rising greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels. The argument is over -- debating global warming is as sensible as debating gravity. New Apollo would enact a proposal similar to the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act by capping our emissions of greenhouse gases while allowing companies to purchase and trade credits amongst themselves to ensure the most cost-effective reductions, and funding research to help industries make the shift to cleaner operations. The bill targets one of the biggest greenhouse-gas offenders -- coal -- by providing $7 billion for the development of energy-efficient coal-fired power plants that sequester 90 percent of their carbon-dioxide emissions.

Allowing America's clean-energy industries to stagnate is economically dangerous. While the U.S. has remained fixated on oil and gas, Denmark, Germany, and Japan have surpassed our country in reaping the economic benefits of renewable-energy technologies. Non-U.S. companies now produce about 90 percent of solar photovoltaic panels, with Japanese firms alone controlling about 49 percent of the solar-technology market -- technology that Americans originally developed. European companies control 85 percent of wind-turbine manufacturing, and the U.S. currently imports fuel cells from Canada. New Apollo will close this technology gap with foreign competitors by investing billions of dollars in new federal research into advanced clean technologies, and creating a government-funded risk pool to help struggling start-up clean-energy companies commercialize their products.

America's high-tech hubs like the Puget Sound area, which includes my home district, will significantly benefit from investment in clean energy. One study by the Apollo Alliance has found that a substantial federal commitment to clean energy could yield up to 3.3 million jobs nationally.

There is a sad irony in the fact that humans are now relying on energy from fossilized dinosaurs and vegetation, which died most likely as a result of climate change, to such a great extent that we are altering the nature of our own atmosphere. But we can change our path through optimism and ingenuity -- our country has a history of taking on tough challenges and triumphing. It is now time to roll up our sleeves, get down to work, and lead the world in developing new energy technologies through a New Apollo Energy Act.

This piece reflects the opinion of its author and should not be taken to constitute an official endorsement by Grist Magazine, its staff, its board, their psychotherapists, or their aestheticians.

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Two House Democrats have accused the U.S. Forest Service of cooking its books in order to blame environmentalists for the fires that raged across much of the West this summer. Reps. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) spoke out yesterday against a recent USFS report in which the agency claimed that environmental appeals delayed 48 percent of projects designed to remove trees from forests to reduce fire danger. The report was used by House Republicans to blame enviros for the severity of this fire season, the worst in half a century. Udall and Inslee cited a different analysis by the environmental group Forest Trust, which found that the USFS report examined only a portion of forest projects -- those using chain saws or other mechanical means to remove trees, instead of prescribed burns and other thinning methods. Mechanical thinning projects represent just 15 percent of the total acreage of thinning projects on USFS lands, and are the ones most likely to be opposed by environmentalists. "I think they cooked the books, and they were trying to drive an agenda that I'm not so sure the public supports," Udall said.

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President Bush scored a victory yesterday when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved his plan to store highly radioactive nuclear waste beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain, but he was challenged by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on other environmental issues. Reps. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) introduced legislation supported by 172 other House members to bar logging and road construction on much of the country's national forest lands, backing the roadless rule that was drafted under Clinton but is opposed by the current administration. And today, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) will introduce legislation to reinstate an expired corporate tax that funneled more than $1 billion a year into the Superfund for environmental cleanups. Industry opposes the tax, and President Bush has so far declined to seek its reauthorization.

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Citizens who generate their own electricity by solar power or other means could get credits on their electric bills for feeding excess power to utilities, under a bill unveiled on Friday by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.). More than two dozen states already have laws that allow "net metering" of this sort, but Inslee says a uniform national standard is needed to encourage the mass development of new technologies for home power generation. Some 100,000 homes in the U.S. have major solar-electric systems, and about 10,000 are powered entirely by solar electricity, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

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