I had previously blogged on the anti-mature (ante-mature?) antics of the Senator from Oklahoma (see Sen. Inhofe explains he’s going to Copenhagen so that when Sen. Kerry says “Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill” then “I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won!’ ”).  Now this video has been posted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c93Fp_kmrz4&feature=player_embedded

Seemed like a fitting tribute to Friday’s big story, from the man who, just coincidentally, said on Wednesday in a lengthy speech on the Senate Floor, “I proudly declare 2009 as the ‘Year of the Skeptic,’ the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard.”

While I hardly ever agree with Inhofe, there’s no denying that many scientists who question the consensus are finally being heard … thank goodness!

You can find some of those scientists in my category “Uncharacteristically Blunt Scientists.”  See also my 2008 post, “Disputing the ‘consensus’ on global warming.”  Certainly the majority of the scientific observations and studies since the 2007 IPCC report — which is typically labeled the “consensus” since every single member government must approve the summaries word for word, a process that inevitably waters down the language — makes clear global warming is coming faster and harder than the consensus had suggested.  You can find a variety of those studies here and below.

And, for clarity’s sake, yes, I draw a distinction between what I’d call the “basic scientific consensus” that the climate is changing and humans are the main cause and so on  — which is acknowledged by every major scientific body (click here for links) — and the “future impacts consensus” on what the world faces if we stay on our current emissions path, which recent analysis suggests has been underestimated and underanalyzed by the IPCC.   See, for instance, the presentations delivered at the recent “Four degrees and beyond” conference, one of which I blogged on here — UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”

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Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Science historian Weart on global warming

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today confirmed that floor debate on a sweeping energy and global warming bill that will be sold to the American public in part as an economic stimulus measure will be held early next year.

“We’re going to try to do that sometime in the spring,” Reid told reporters when asked about the window for moving a climate bill onto the Senate floor.

So E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reports.   Ideally the debate would start by the end of February, so the Senate vote could be finished by early spring, as I recently wrote.   The bipartisan team of Senators crafting a bill with the White House plan on a blueprint by Copenhagen:

Kerry and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are taking the lead in writing the climate and energy bill with a goal of releasing a blueprint before U.N. global warming negotiations start Dec. 7 in Copenhagen.

The good news is that Reid sees this bill as part of the economic stimulus and jobs package the administration is putting together, which should increase the motivation to pass it:

“I think if we do it right, the energy bill, the climate bill can be very, very job productive,” Reid said.

Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) met with Reid and four other Democratic committee leaders yesterday to map out the legislative agenda for the rest of this year and early 2010….

“This is a jobs bill,” Kerry said. “This is without question a jobs bill. I’d say this is the biggest jobs bill staring us in the face, without any question, and we’ll prove that as we go down the road in the next days. So if you want to do a jobs bill, this is the bill to do. And I’d argue that with the president very, very forcefully.”

The bill certainly can drive early investment in clean energy through pollution reduction incentives, tax breaks, efficiency standards — and even through the carbon caps, as Nobelist Paul Krugman explained back in May:

Right now, the biggest problem facing our economy is plunging business investment. Businesses see no reason to invest, since they’re awash in excess capacity, thanks to the housing bust and weak consumer demand.

But suppose that Congress were to mandate gradually tightening emission limits, starting two or three years from now. This would have no immediate effect on prices. It would, however, create major incentives for new investment — investment in low-emission power plants, in energy-efficient factories and more.

To put it another way, a commitment to greenhouse gas reduction would, in the short-to-medium run, have the same economic effects as a major technological innovation: It would give businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities even in the face of excess capacity. And given the current state of the economy, that’s just what the doctor ordered.

This short-run economic boost isn’t the main reason to move on climate-change policy. The important thing is that the planet is in danger, and the longer we wait the worse it gets. But it is an extra reason to move quickly.

So can we afford to save the planet? Yes, we can. And now would be a very good time to get started.

Precisely.

The bill should be written so that the cap-and-trade doesn’t start until 2013, well after the recession is over, but ideally with funding to accelerate clean technology into the marketplace frontloaded to start immediately, funding that can be deficit-neutral because it is offset by allowances that will be auctioned later.

Note:  I am proposing the cap start one year later than the current bills.  That’s because the bill is going to become law later than people thought, giving less time to set up all the rules for 2012 trading, and because of the recession, which has knocked CO2 levels down sharply (see “EIA stunner: By year’s end, we’ll be 8.5% below 2005 levels of CO2 — halfway to climate bill’s 2020 target“).  That means 2012 was probably going to have an over-allocation of allowances anyway.  Putting the start of the cap off one year therefore won’t actually reduce the amount of emissions reductions the bill achieves — quite the reverse, it’ll probably reduce the early surplus of allowances distributed.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

Senator Kerry:  Has your study been peer reviewed?
Kenneth Green:  No, I don’t work in the peer review literature, Senator. I don’t work for a university.

Steven Hayward, the F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently said, “The brain waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining.”  He may have had in mind his AEI colleague Kenneth Green, whose lack of knowledge on climate was laid bare for all to see by Sen. John Kerry in today’s Finance Committee hearing.

I don’t know what is more revealing and embarrassing for Green and AEI — that Green couldn’t actually name a single peer-reviewed study in his defense or that when Kerry calls him on it, his only defense is an appeal to authority — his own “opinion” (!):

Green:  All I can say, Senator, is that I read the IPCC reports, the science of climate change report in its totality cover to cover, I follow the latest journals, my doctoral degree is in environmental science and engineering.  I daresay I’m capable of understanding the literature and forming my own opinion. I –

Kerry (interrupting):  Has your study been peer reviewed?

Green: Pardon me?

Kerry: Has your study been peer reviewed?

Green: No, I don’t work in the peer review literature, Senator. I don’t work for a university.

That is uber-weird.  Green seems to be suggesting (falsely) that you have to work for a university to write peer reviewed research.  Play the video.  It sure sounds that way — otherwise the second sentence is a pure non sequitur.

Kerry: So, you don’t submit your studies for any peer review?

Green: Ah, no.

Kerry: You realize that there are something like two or three thousand studies all of which concur which have been peer reviewed, and not one of the studies dissenting has been peer reviewed?

Green: That’s not correct, Senator.

Kerry: Show me a peer reviewed study.

Green: I’ll send you a list.

Kerry: Please, because nobody else has.

Green: I’ll be glad to.

With the help of AEI’s staff, Green will probably be able to find a handful of now-debunked peer-reviewed studies that “support” his position, but it remains telling that he couldn’t name a single one when asked in a public forum.  Kerry called his bluff, and Green folded.

Here’s the early part of the exchange:

Green:  Canada, for instance, can agree to a target and if they don’t do anything they can’t be sued into government compliance.  The U.S. is unique in the status it gives treaties, when we sign a treaty, we live up to it.  Other countries can sign treaties and not live up to them.  That is a fundamental difference that makes the U.S. hesitant to embrace treaties as a general role, and I think wisely because treaties have a very high status in American law that is not necessarily reflected in the other countries.

Kerry:  Well, actually Dr. Green, that’s not entirely true. (Laughs a little)  I’m sorry.

(Republican senator demurs in the background)

Well, let me tell you why it’s not, Senator:  I was at the treaty signing which we ratified unanimously in the U.S. Senate — the 1992 framework convention, which George Herbert Walker Bush negotiated, and it’s been 18 years since, and we haven’t done a thing to meet it.   In last 8 years emission in U.S. in green house gasses went up 4 times faster than in the 1990s.  So that’s the reason we’re talking about the need to move to a mandatory reduction — because we didn’t, and nobody else did, either.  A few people tried, here and there.  So you just can’t just throw that stuff out there and say we do it, they don’t, blah blah blah.

You don’t accept that you have to hold it at 2 degrees.  You may know something that thousands of other scientists don’t.  You know, they won a Nobel Prize; you and I didn’t.   And they won it for their work that said you got to hold it at 2 degrees Centigrade.

The G 20 … said we have to hold it at 2 degrees Centigrade.  Maybe you know something we don’t about where the tipping point is.  But I got a lot of scientists that I respect, who’s life work — from John Holdren who’s now the science advisor to the president, to Jim Hansen over at NASA and a bunch of others — who tell us that we have a ten year window to meet the standard of keeping the temperature from rising over 2 degrees Centigrade, or you reach a tipping point….

All of the evidence is coming back faster and to a greater degree than they predicted underscoring the predictions they made.  At some point you have to step back and say these guys are making sense because what they said is going to happen is happening and it’s happening faster and at a greater risk.

If this had been a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it.  Here’s more:

Kerry: Every most recent scientific update, and I get them periodically.  I ask them to come in and say what’s happening; is it less than, what’s the rate?  And without exception they look at me and say “Senator, I can’t even talk about some of the things that are happening today publicly because people won’t believe it.”  Like columns of methane rising out of the ocean floor that you can light a match to and it will explode and burst into the open air because the permafrost is melting.

We just voted $400 million to move Newstalk, Alaska, to move it inland because of what’s happening in terms of the ice melt.  There’s some 400 villages threatened.  Ask Lisa Murkowski, or Mark Biggouch about what’s happening in Alaska.

All I can say to you is that we have to employ the Precautionary Principle here.  If I’ve got a few thousand scientists over here and you and a few others over here, the weight is pretty heavy to say to me that as a public person I ought to implement the precautionary principle.  And if I have chief executives like Jeff Immelt, Lou Hay, and Chad Holliday of Dupont and a bunch of other people who run Fortune 500 companies telling me, “Senator, we have to price carbon.  And we want certainty in the market place,” I’m going to listen.

Unless you can give me an overpowering reason why those guys are all wrong, and I don’t think you have….

Green:  All I can say, Senator, is that I read the IPCC reports….

He may have read them, but he didn’t get anything out of them.

Green’s lame defense of himself is no surprise since he regularly spouts stuff like, “No matter what you’ve been told, the technology to significantly reduce emissions is decades away and extremely costly” — from a 2008 speech AEI later removed from their website (excerpts here).  And last month, he weirdly compared EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to Clint Eastwood and carbon polluters to criminals.

Kudos to Senator Kerry for exposing this American Enterprise Institute “expert.”

CAP’s Russell Sterten helped with this post.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Science historian Weart on global warming

Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science

In a mid-day press conference with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) that followed a meeting with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said:

We think we have a good team here to help create a dual track which we want to emphasize is done with the full consent and support of Sen. Boxer and of other senators involved in this process including the Majority Leader, Harry Reid.  We will be working very, very closely with the administration and fully respectful of all of the efforts made by each individual committee with jurisdiction in this area. And there are six of them. I happen to be chair of one. But there are five others. And they’re all equally important in their contributions to this.

Our effort is to try to reach out to broaden the base of support beyond the six committees of jurisdiction. And we’re going to do that working very closely with the chairs of those committees as well as with members across the Senate. The key here is to really negotiate once in a sense, not negotiate with ourselves and not negotiate just in the Senate and then not have the White House also at the table.

So we just completed a meeting with Secretary Chu, talking about his department’s parameters that might and might not be acceptable with respect to this legislation. We’re meeting this afternoon, the three of us, with Secretary Salazar and with Carol Browner who, as we all know, is the point person for the White House on this topic. We will be working closely with the White House over the course of the next weeks with a few to trying to pull together what ultimately could be presented to Sen. Reid and the leadership as a piece of legislation that we hope could get the 60 votes necessary to pass or more, and we would hope it would be more.

Brad Johnson at Wonk Room has Graham’s remarkable remarks and this video:

While other Senate Republicans led by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) boycott action on the climate crisis, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has chosen a leadership role. In a press conference today with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the author of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Graham rebuked Republicans unwilling to address carbon pollution, asking, “If you can’t participate in solving a hard problem, why are you up here?” Saying that he has “seen the effects of a warming planet,” Graham called for the United States to “lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution”:

The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money.

Graham’s words recall the testimony of former Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and White House official Van Jones, who told Congress in January, “We can build a green economy Dr. King would be proud of.” Van Jones, the founder of Green for All, left the White House after talk show host Glenn Beck targeted him as an “avowed communist and radical activist.” Beck has warned that efforts to build a green economy are “socialism,” “black nationalism,” and “fascism.”

Sen. Kerry announced that the three senators would work in a “dual track” to the committee process now underway to craft clean energy legislation in concert with the White House, which they hope to present directly to the Senate leadership. The senators conducted the press conference in between meetings with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and White House climate advisor Carol Browner.

Graham also discussed how Americans of any party “really feel uncomfortable with the fact that our nation sends a billion dollars a day overseas to buy foreign oil from some countries who don’t like us very much,” saying that part of “this initiative is to create a vision for energy independence and marry it up with a responsible climate control carbon pollution controls and create a new economy.”

Graham emphasized that his vision is to “help this planet” that “is in peril, create millions of new jobs for Americans that need them, and to become energy independent to make us safer,” because he believes that “controlling carbon pollution is good business.” Although he hoped for participation from his fellow Republicans, he said, “If you believe carbon pollution is not a problem, then you wouldn’t want to work with me, because I do.”

Transcript:

GRAHAM: The reason I’ve gotten involved in this issue is I see kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity politically to solve two real problems that I think the country and the world faces. One, carbon pollution. I am no scientist, but I’ve traveled throughout the world with Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) and others and seen the effects of a warming planet. And I do believe all of the cars we have on the roads, and the trucks, and all the energy we use that produces carbon daily is not a good thing for the planet.

But if environmental policy is not good business policy, you’ll never get 60 votes. So my goal is to try to make sure that we fashion environmental policy that will create millions of new jobs for Americans who are desiring to have new jobs. Virginia and New Jersey are going to benefit from what we do. South Carolina, Connecticut, and Massachusetts will benefit.

The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money. The business community senses an opportunity they’ve not had before. That’s why they’re at least exploring the possibility of a new pathway forward.

I’ve been told by a lot of business leaders in South Carolina, “Senator Graham, once you price carbon in a reasonable way, this green economy that we’re hoping for really will begin to flourish.”

The other aspect of why I’m involved is energy independence. Remember “Drill here, drill now”? Where did that go? Four dollar a gallon gas is not in our face but it could be soon. I think most Americans -- Republicans, independents, or Democrats -- really feel uncomfortable with the fact that our nation sends a billion dollars a day overseas to buy foreign oil from some countries who don’t like us very much. Part of this initiative is to create a vision for energy independence and marry it up with a responsible climate control carbon pollution controls and create a new economy.

Finally, our country doesn’t have a vision on carbon. We need one. And we need to lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution. Our country doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to build a green economy and never will until we price carbon.

And our country doesn’t have a vision for energy independence. We need one. Our goal is to create that vision that not only will help this planet -- that I think is in peril -- but create millions of new jobs for Americans that need them, and to become energy independent to make us safer.

. . .

What I’ve got to do is convince people in South Carolina and our colleagues up here as a whole that environmental policy will be good business policy. And if Congress doesn’t act, the EPA will.

Every member of Congress, Republicans included, has to answer to themselves and their constituents. Is carbon pollution a problem? If it is, what are you going to do about it? Some Republicans want a carbon tax. In many ways, that is a fairer system but I don’t think there are the votes for it. If you believe carbon pollution is not a problem, then you wouldn’t want to work with me, because I do. Now, if you … a cap-and-trade bill has to be well-crafted not to put us at competitive disadvantage to China and India.

I am convinced with my colleagues that controlling carbon pollution is good business. If you do it right, people can make money and you’ll have a cleaner planet and the world will follow. So I hope my Republican colleagues will at least listen, come to the table as the Chamber has, see where we’re going, give us input and if at the end of the day, you can’t support it, that’s okay.

But last thought. Doing nothing has a consequence. The EPA will do something. Doing nothing has a consequence to our business opportunity in leading the green economy revolution that’s coming and controlling carbon emissions.

So I think most people are upset with the Congress because we’re not doing anything that matters. And the things that we do do we’re overdoing. So we’re trying to get that sweet spot of a bill that will be good for the environment, good for business, and make us energy independent.

So my hope is that participation is seen as a positive, not a negative. If you can’t participate in solving a hard problem, why are you up here?

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”

Contrary to reports from many in the media, the prospects for a climate bill are as good as ever now that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has finished its work.  E&E News makes that clear in a series of interviews with key Senate swing votes,"Senate moderates see an opening now that EPW gridlock is history" (subs. req’d):

Baucus insisted that the bill would cross the finish line, which would require both Senate passage and a successful conference with the House. “There’s no doubt that this Congress is going to pass climate change legislation,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be this year. Probably next year.”

As I had noted last week, while the media was quick to jump over some seemingly negative statements from the Montana Senator, in fact it was clear from his words that Baucus will be voting for the final bill.

While many key moderates made clear they would not vote for the Boxer-Kerry bill that EPW voted out of Committee yesterday, everyone realizes that the process is going to start anew with Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman, who “will be working closely with the White House” to develop a separate bipartisan climate bill that can get 60 votes.

And contrary to some reporting, the EPW process has not undermined prospects for the new bipartisan bill:

Other moderate senators also said they would not reject voting for a climate and energy bill now that it is freed of the EPW Committee’s partisan gridlock.

“I presume that a lot is going to happen before then,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the ranking member of the Budget Committee.

“It’s not the end of the process,” added Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “That’s just the beginning of the process. So there’s lots of time and lots of opportunity for everybody to engage.”

So Boxer delivered on her promise back in early February, as Greenwire reported (see “Breaking: Sen. Boxer makes clear U.S. won’t pass a climate bill this year“):

“Copenhagen is December,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told reporters. “That’s why I said we’ll have a bill out of this committee by then.”

Ideally, Kerry and Graham and Leiberman and the White House will flesh out the key details of the new bill by Copenhagen, ultimately leading to a successful Senate floor vote in February, and a bill on the president’s desk sometime in April.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats on Thursday pushed through a sweeping climate change bill, maneuvering an end-run around opposition Republicans who continued their boycott of deliberations.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the Kerry-Boxer bill by a vote of 11 to 1, with the seven Republicans on the committee absent from the discussion and vote.

The panel is among five other Senate committees which also will weigh in with their draft bills on slowing the pace of climate change before a bill receives a vote in the full chamber, possibly next year.

"We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott we have been able to move this bill forward," said committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) after the vote.

Republicans, who boycotted the deliberations for three consecutive days, said they would oppose the bill until they had a "comprehensive analysis" of the economic impact of the legislation from the Environmental Protection Agency.

But Boxer said further analysis by the agency was not necessary, and maintained that the EPA's environmental impact assessment of a similar bill approved in June by the House of Representatives was sufficient. "We found that, after questioning the EPA extensively, that the Republicans' demand for another EPA analysis now would be duplicative and a waste of taxpayer dollars," she said.

Committee rules require the presence of at least two members of the minority party, but Boxer sidestepped the boycott using parliamentary procedures that allowed her to pass the bill by a simple majority of members present, a tactic Republicans decried as a "nuclear option."

At a press conference earlier this week, she signaled the tactical maneuver ahead.

"What they're doing is highly unusual. And what we're doing in response is highly unusual," she said, adding that her actions were completely "by the Senate rules."

Meanwhile, the lone Republican at Thursday's vote, ranking committee member James Inhofe (Okla.), in a two-minute declaration said his party's position had not changed.  "We still are asking for the same thing," he said.

Republicans also criticized the Democrats' bill as doing too little to promote nuclear energy and said it's likely to lead to a spike in energy prices.

One Democrat, centrist senator Max Baucus (Mont.), who serves as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, broke with his party as the lone Democrat to vote against the bill, saying that its goals for reducing greenhouse emission levels were too ambitious.

The Senate legislation faces a long and contentious process ahead, and must be reconciled with a House bill that calls for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and by 83 percent by 2050.  The Senate's bill calls for a 20 percent cut by 2020.

Both bills would create a cap-and-trade regime, aimed at setting the total level of domestic emissions allowable and then allocating quotas to companies.  Firms that emit less than their quota would be allowed to sell their surplus allocation to others that exceed theirs. Those in excess could also face fines.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

The GOP's approach to climate and clean energy policy has remained the same for decades - obstruction and obfuscation (see "Senate GOP propose 25% ‘Do-Nothing' energy tax on Americans").  Now, led by James "the last flat-earther" Inhofe, they are trying to stall climate legislation as long as possible, on the flimsiest of excuses, presumably because they want to make sure that there is no Senate vote on the bill before Copenhagen.

The excuse this time is that EPA supposedly hasn't issued a full analysis of the bill - even though EPA has issued an analysis of the bill (see "EPA releases economic analysis finding cost to U.S. households of under $10 a month, bill consistent with global effort to stabilize at 2°C warming") pointing out that it has only moderate differences from the heavily-analyzed House bill (Waxman-Markey), none of which would significantly affect the economic conclusions.

The best evidence this excuse is just a pretense is that the GOP never accepted the conclusions of the EPA's detailed analysis of the House bill (see "New EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency").

TP reports on the GOP delaying tactics:

Senate Republicans have endorsed Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-OK) plan to boycott the legislative markup of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), scheduled to begin tomorrow. Inhofe's GOP compatriots on the environment committee hope to block action by refusing to participate in the markup on the pretext that the Enviromental Protection Agency's economic analysis of the bill is not "complete." In a letter sent to committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), ranking member Inhofe and his counterparts on five other committees said any attempt to begin the markup before acceding to his demands "would severely damage" its chances for passage:

"We understand that there may be an attempt to report S. 1733 from the Committee not only without a satisfactory analysis, but also without sufficient opportunity to address the bipartisan concerns raised over the course of legislative hearings on the measure. As we are sure you will understand, from our viewpoint, such an approach would severely damage, rather than help, the chances of enacting changes to our nation's climate and energy policies

The signatories are the top Republicans on the six Senate committees that will consider this legislation - environment, energy, agriculture, commerce, foreign relations, and finance. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX, ), like Inhofe, flatly deny the reality of climate change. However, several of the signatories have claimed concern about the threat of global warming - Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Dick Lugar (R-IN), who in 2006 warned of the "significant long-term risks to the economy and the environment of the United States from the temperature increases and climatic disruptions that are projected to result from increased greenhouse gas concentrations." Evidently their commitment to partisan obstruction is greater than their concern for the future of the nation.

Download the letter here.

The Sierra Club has posted the "Top Ten Excuses for not showing up for work on the Clean Energy Jobs bill." Boxer has extended the amendment deadline to Tuesday night, according to a Washington Times newsletter, and will hold off on the markup of the legislation, saying:

We're going to be very patient. We're going to wait for them to come. We're going to sit there every day and ask them to please come back to the table. We're not going to rush this through because we don't think that would be the right thing to do.

E&E News (subs. req'd) reports this morning that Boxer is going the extra mile to accommodate the GOP obstructionist delayers:

Hoping to avert a partisan meltdown, Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) yesterday offered an olive branch to Republicans who are planning to boycott today's markup of a sweeping global warming bill.

Boxer still plans to begin the markup at 9 a.m. with opening statements. But she agreed to suspend the markup at 2 p.m. for an open-door meeting with U.S. EPA officials to answer committee members' questions about the economic modeling of the legislation, she noted in a letter late yesterday.

EPW Republicans, who ignored yesterday deadline for filing amendments, also now have until 5 p.m. today to submit any suggested changes to the bill.

"We think this is going the extra mile for our friends on the other side, and we really hope they'll return to the table," Boxer told reporters. "They have every reason to do that."

Boxer added that she still retained the right to advance the 959-page bill without Republicans, though she would not say how long she would wait before ending the markup. "I never put a finishing date on any markup," Boxer said. "I never have."

She added, "I will tell you this, we're going to be very, very patient."

But the GOP delayers don't want answers to questions - they want delay:

Committee Republicans huddled last night to discuss Boxer's offer on the question-and-answer session with EPA. Matthew Dempsey, the panel's GOP spokesman, said he expected Republicans to respond shortly before the start of today's markup.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) first made the information request to EPA in July on the economic implications on the climate bill, placing a "hold" on Robert Perciasepe's confirmation to be EPA deputy administrator until he got answers. Voinovich declined to say whether he would attend the question-and-answer session, which he had heard about only moments earlier when Boxer approached him on the Senate floor.

But Voinovich did say he had no plans to back down on the boycott until he gets a more complete assessment of the climate bill from EPA.

"I think we've made it pretty clear that we want a complete analysis of the bill," he said. "It's been made clear to her that's what we want. I think it's a sensible approach because of the fact this is probably the most important piece of legislation this committee has undertaken since the Clean Air Act itself, maybe even more important."

Again, from an economic perspective, the bill isn't much different from the House bill, which has been analyzed to death, not just by EPA, but CBO and EIA:

And as Boxer herself wrote yesterday:

I want to make sure you are aware that EPA has confirmed that the extensive analysis and supporting materials provided to the Committee are totally sufficient and appropriate for our legislative process. In fact, EPA reports that the analysis provided on the Kerry-Boxer bill and Chairman's Mark exceeds the analysis typically conducted prior to a markup. EPA has also indicated that this economic analysis reflects hundreds of thousands of pages of backup documentation. It is far more analysis than the 10,000 pages of documentation on the Clear Skies bill that this Committee received in a prior Congress before markup of that legislation.

Even so, one key swing GOP Senator is siding with this delay:

Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) later said that his signature should be seen as a warning signal to Democrats should they expect to get his help in winning over other GOP moderates.

"It would not be constructive as far as progress on the bill is concerned," Lugar said. "I suspect that there'd be no particular reason for many members to support it."

My recommendation is to give in to GOP delaying tactics, while continuing to point out how absurd they are.

I see no upside in offending Senate moderates, since this bill will have to be bipartisan to succeed, and we need time over the next couple of weeks for Graham and Kerry and the White House "to discuss a possible compromise."

Boxer should have the EPA do a "complete analysis" before the mark up - and then watch as the GOP hypocritically denounce the conclusions of it anyway.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

The big climate bill story of the last few weeks is the breakthrough Senate climate partnership between Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.). The result -- E&E News’s latest analysis shows, “At least 67 senators are in play” on climate bill.

This isn’t to say Senate passage will be easy, but I think it is now likely, and, it is certainly far more likely than it was two months ago. That’s what makes the lead story in today’s Washington Post so flawed.  It opens:

With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

Uhh, yeah, well, it now looks like quite a few GOP lawmakers are willing to risk that backlash. Equally lame, the article’s subhead is “Democrats Deeply Split,” and the print edition continuation headline is

With Senate Democrats still divided, climate bill’s prospects cool

Now what’s particularly amazing about that headline -- other than it gets the direction of recent political movement exactly backwards -- is that the WashPost quotes precisely one Democrat dissing the bill’s prospects, Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).  Yet no serious vote counter had ever considered Nelson a serious prospect.  For E&E, Nelson was always a “probable no.”  For Nate Silver, Nelson is a whopping 10.29 percent “probability of yes” -- the lowest of any Democrat (see “Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?”

The real news, and it’s pretty big, is actually buried at the end:

Graham and Kerry are set to meet Wednesday with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, as well as with Obama’s top climate adviser, Carol M. Browner, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to discuss a possible compromise. They are also setting up meetings with colleagues on the issue.

Wow!  Graham and Kerry are now directly engaged with the White House.  That is what should have been the headline and lead.

“There is nowhere near 60 votes for a nuclear power bill on its own. There’s not 60 votes for a cap-and-trade bill as it’s currently constructed,” Graham said in an interview. He said combining the two measures is “the only way you’ll get to 60 votes.”

It is what Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope calls “the old formula for bipartisanship.”

“They would agree on a goal, they would not agree exactly on the means to a goal, and they’d come up with a legislative solution that takes elements from both sides,” he said.

Wow again!  Even the Sierra club is warm to the deal, even knowing it will include a strong title on nuclear energy and another on drilling for oil and gas.

And Graham, for his part, has become a lightning rod for controversy back home. On Oct. 22, the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group funded in part by energy companies, launched a radio, TV and online advertising campaign in South Carolina that has cost “close to $300,000″ so far, according to the group’s spokesman, Patrick Creighton.

Featuring a Halloween theme, the TV commercial warns of “some scary stories coming out of Washington” and says, “The latest is Senator Lindsey Graham’s support for a national energy tax called cap-and-trade.”

Creighton said the group questions why Graham says a deal will help offshore drilling, which Congress has already allowed.

Groups backing the climate bill came to Graham’s defense last week. They aired radio and television ads that featured state Sen. John Courson, a conservative Republican who became concerned about global warming after witnessing the decline of polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba.

“Out-of-state interests are attacking our Senator Lindsey Graham,” Courson says in an ad underwritten by Republicans for Environmental Protection, “because he’s backing an energy plan that produces more power in America.”

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said he is optimistic that the parties can reach an accord because Americans are not divided along party lines on global warming. “Is there bipartisanship in the country? I think clearly there is,” he said.

So the real headline is that with the prospect for serious bipartisanship, climate bill’s prospects warm.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

E&E News (subs. req’d) reports this morning:

International attention on the Senate’s progress on the issue is heightened given the major U.N. climate summit to be held this December in Copenhagen, Denmark. Underscoring that point, Reid yesterday took a call from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

“The secretary general emphasized the urgency of trying to have some movement in the Senate” before the Copenhagen meeting, Kerry said. “I think we’re going to deliver some movement because we’re working in the EPW Committee to try to get the Kerry-Boxer bill and the chairman’s mark out.”

Meanwhile, Kerry also downplayed the prospect of floor debate on the climate bill this year, signaling instead that committee action is about as far as he expects the Senate can go before the two-week Copenhagen negotiations begin on Dec. 7.

“Bottom line, we’re going to keep working this as hard as we can,” Kerry said. “We’re going to keep moving forward. I’m confident we’ll have some kind of effort, whether it’s out of committee, or out of all the committees, or the working group or whatever, before we go to Copenhagen. We’re going to try to do as much as we can.”

Not a big surprise, given how slow the overall legislative process has been moving in EPW and the molasses pace of health care reform.  Indeed, it bears repeating that back in early February, Greenwire reported (see “Breaking: Sen. Boxer makes clear U.S. won’t pass a climate bill this year“):

“Copenhagen is December,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told reporters. “That’s why I said we’ll have a bill out of this committee by then.”

I’ve blogged many times I don’t think that the White House needs to have a signed climate bill — or even Senate passage — for Copenhagen to be successful in the sense of moving international negotiations forward.

I think it would be useful for Kerry and Graham to have fleshed out their breakthrough Senate climate partnership and their “framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution.”

On July 7, Lamar Alexander (R-TN) called nuclear “the cheap clean energy solution,” renews GOP call for 100 new nukes, which would cost some $1 trillion.

Since then, new nukes have gotten even more expensive — Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid. And more frought with legal danger — see The Nukes of (legal) Hazard, Episode 5: Areva threatens work stoppage at Finnish nuke.

But Lamar is still rerunning the same story.  Here is what “GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said during a conference call” yesterday:

Alexander urged Democrats to move on what he said was a lower cost alternative that promotes the expansion of nuclear power, offshore oil and gas drilling, carbon capture and storage, and the electrification of the nation’s transportation fleet.“If my house was about to burn down, I wouldn’t buy the most expensive insurance,” Alexander said.

Huh?  Well, I’m glad he acknowledges the imminent climate danger in that final quote.

But in any case the House and Senate bill aggressively pursues CCS and transportation electrification, and the Senate bill will have a nuclear title and drilling title.  But CCS is staggeringly expensive Harvard stunner: “Realistic” first-generation CCS costs a whopping $150 per ton of CO2 — 20 cents per kWh!

And E&E News itself notes nuclear is too:

“I think the biggest impediment of aggressive nuclear technology is its cost,” said Ralph Izzo, chairman, president and CEO of the New Jersey-based utility Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. PSEG is waiting for the first new reactors to be licensed and built before making any decision about new nuclear plants, he said. “The cost is not within my comfort level right now,” he said.

A June report by Moody’s Investor Services maintained that the credit agency “is considering taking a more negative view for those issuers seeking to build new nuclear power plants,” as most utilities are not adjusting their balance sheets to commence on such an endeavor and as a reflection of the high risk involved in a possible $6 billion to $8 billion investment.

The report notes federal loan guarantees will “only modestly mitigate increasing business and operating risk profile.”

Nuclear power is the most expensive climate “insurance” you could possibly buy right now.

Related Posts:

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

That’s from the EPW news release from late Friday night.  The full text of the Chairman’s Mark is here [big PDF].  The main difference between this text and the draft of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act released late last month is that it “specifies distribution of emissions allowances” (details here).  The allowance allocations are similar to the house bill but not identical, but the bottom line is the same -- “Ensures that the majority of investments in the bill are for consumer protection” (see also Harvard economist Stavins here).

Equally important for moving the bill forward in an expeditious manner, the EPA released its analysis of the Chairman’s Mark (click here).  EPW described that analysis and the process going forward:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also released a detailed economic analysis of The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act that found no significant change in the estimated cost to American families, compared with H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey legislation passed this summer by the House of Representatives. EPA’s analysis of the House bill found that “average household consumption would be reduced by less than 1 percent in all years” compared with a business-as-usual scenario, and estimated the overall impact on the average household would be 22 to 30 cents per day ($80 to $111 per year).

On Tuesday, Oct. 27, the Environment and Public Works Committee will start comprehensive legislative hearings on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. Senators will hear testimony from nine panels totaling 54 witnesses over the course of three days. Senator Boxer has indicated that the EPW Committee will mark up the legislation as soon as possible following the completion of legislative hearings.

These results are comparable to the major analyses of the House bill:

The Senate EPW bill, of course, doesn’t include all of the efficiency provisions in the House bill, since that is the domain of the Senate energy committee which has already passed out its legislation (which is considerably wimpier on efficiency than the House).  The result (page 14 of EPA):

In total, because there is no provision comparable to the CERES in H.R. 2454, the building codes provision does not specify target energy use reduction levels or provide federal authorities to ensure compliance, and the energy efficiency-related allowance allocations are lower, EPA expects the impacts (e.g., changes in energy demand and prices) of energy efficiency provisions in S. 1733 to be approximately half those estimated in our  analysis of H.R. 2454.

This suggests an important strategy for progressives when the bill reaches the Senate floor or when the bill gets to a House Senate conference:  If moderates and conservatives are going to insist on major expansions of policies and incentives for nuclear power, coal with carbon capture and storage, drilling, and natural gas, then progressives need to fight to keep the House efficiency provisions in the final bill.

One final point, in its analysis, EPA also looks at the climate bill in the context of international action, to see what the full impact might be in various scenarios:

The result:

In the reference scenario, CO2e concentrations in 2100 would rise to approximately 936 ppm [aka "Hell and High Water "].  If the U.S. and other developing countries took action to reduce emissions to 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, and developing countries took no action until 2050, then CO2e concentrations in 2100 would rise to approximately 647 ppm. If the G8 goals are met, then CO2e concentrations would rise to approximately 485 ppm in 2100. It should be noted that CO2e concentrations are not stabilized in these scenarios. To prevent concentrations from continuing to rise after 2100, post-2100 GHG emissions would need to be further reduced. For example, stabilization of CO2e concentrations at 485 ppm would require net CO2e emissions to go to zero in the very long run after 2100.

Given the CO2e concentrations for the various scenarios, we can also calculate the observed change in global mean temperature (from pre-industrial time) in 2100 under different climate sensitivities. Assuming the G8 goals (reducing global emissions to 50 percent below 2005 by 2050) are met, warming in 2100 would be limited to no more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels under a climate sensitivity of 3.0 or lower.

So the Senate climate bill is consistent with a set of international policies that keep warming at levels that greatly reduce the risk of catastrophic impacts.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

Here is the letter from 18 top U.S. scientific organizations:

Dear Senator:

As you consider climate change legislation, we, as leaders of scientific organizations, write to state the consensus scientific view.

Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.

These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and on the environment. For the United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades. [See Footnote #1 below]

If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced. In addition, adaptation will be necessary to address those impacts that are already unavoidable. Adaptation efforts include improved infrastructure design, more sustainable management of water and other natural resources, modified agricultural practices, and improved emergency responses to storms, floods, fires and heat waves.

We in the scientific community offer our assistance to inform your deliberations as you seek to address the impacts of climate change.

Well it’s a start (see “Publicize or perish: The scientific community is failing miserably in communicating the potential catastrophe of climate change“).  But I still prefer the Bali declaration by more than 200 of the world’s leading climate scientists, which embraces the 2°C target and specific emissions reductions targets.

The footnote reads:

The conclusions in this paragraph reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and U.S. Global Change Research Program. Many scientific societies have endorsed these findings in their own statements, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, and American Statistical Association.

You go, statisticians — now if you would only clue in your Danish counterpart (see “The Bjorn Irrelevancy: Duke dean disses Danish delayer“).

Here are all the organizations that signed on:

No American Physical Society?  They’ve got some explaining to do.

Kudos to all those scientific organizations who did sign on!

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Science historian Weart on global warming

Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science

Photo courtesy KouK's via FlickrOkay, it may not exactly be an elephant stampede, but there is real movement on the climate bill by key swing Senators, as E&E Daily makes clear in an excellent new analysis, “On road to 60, Senate swells with fence sitters.” They count 31 “yes” votes, 11 “probably yes,” and

24 senators now belong in the “fence sitter” category that leaves them up for grabs headed into the winter push for 60 votes that sponsors will need to overcome an expected Republican filibuster.

That should read “expected (and immoral) conservative filibuster” -- since it now seems clear, the bill will get a number of GOP votes (see “Murkowski praises Kerry-Graham climate plan. The Washington Times writes, “Her remarks signal the potential for a major turn in the climate change debate in Congress”).

I’ll list the Senators in each category below, but first it is worth noting continued movement by one key swing Senator, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). As Reuters and the NY Times reported over the weekend:

A senior Republican in the United States Senate, conservative Senator Lisa Murkowski, said she would consider voting for a “cap and trade” climate change bill Democrats are pushing if it also contains a vigorous expansion of nuclear energy and domestic oil drilling.

“Count me as one of those who will keep my mind open as we move forward,” she said in a C-SPAN interview that aired Sunday. In the interview she said she recently talked with Sen. Graham about its bipartisan proposals and “It was a good conversation.”  She acknowledged the state has been ravaged by climate change:

“When you see changes to the land coming about … what is causing the loss of the sea ice that adds to the erosion issues, yes, in Alaska we are seeing change,” she said. “That’s why I have been one of those Republicans who has stepped out front a little bit more on the issue of climate change.”

So I think the final bill has a very realistic chance of getting her vote.  For more, see her updated Grist profile.

Here are some specifics from E&E:

For starters, the bill’s lead sponsors, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), can safely rely on 31 “yes” votes as they work on building their coalition. That list includes Ben Cardin of Maryland, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Tom Udall of New Mexico. All appeared at a Capitol Hill campaign-style rally last month during the public unveiling of the legislation, S. 1733.

Here is that list:

Then we have the 12 probables:

Another 12 senators fall into the “probably yes” camp, from Michael Bennet of Colorado to Al Franken of Minnesota and Mark Warner of Virginia. Bennet and Warner are not slam dunks given the fossil fuel interests in their home states, while Franken dropped off the “yes” list when he signed a letter with nine other Democrats in August that raised concerns about President Obama’s stance against trade sanctions on carbon-intensive goods from developing countries that do not have strong enough climate policies.

Finally we have the 24 fence sitters:

As for the fence sitters, the list continues to swell from both directions as key senators hedge their bets.

For example, Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) no longer reside in the “probably yes” camp given their recent statements on allocations and oversight of the carbon markets, respectively. Baucus may drive the hardest bargain as chairman of the Finance Committee, where he is sure to negotiate on behalf of coal-state Democrats who think the House-passed bill unfairly favors electric utilities that service the East and West coasts.

Two senators have recently been upgraded to the fence from the “probably no” camp are Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio). Byrd has long questioned action to curb emissions but has taken a lead role on carbon sequestration language that Kerry and Boxer are trying to wrap into their proposal. Voinovich has a reputation for bipartisan consensus building, and recent signals supporting the nuclear power industry are raising hopes in some sectors that the retiring senator should still be considered in play.

“If you engage in a very proactive way to get a bill done, he will negotiate and compromise,” said a former Senate Republican aide.

E&E’s analysis is based on interviews with senators, plus dozens of Democratic and Republican sources, industry and environmental groups …

GOP interest is significant for the climate bill’s overall prospects given that Democrats are unlikely to carry all 60 of their own votes on the floor.

In all, E&E now lists eight Republicans as “fence sitters” on the climate bill, with the two from Maine -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe -- holding firm as “probably yes” votes given their past efforts on the issue. Collins and Snowe are likely to compensate for the loss of Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, the only Democrats listed among 11 “probably no” votes given their many comments questioning the environmental agenda of the Obama administration and Senate leaders.

Elsewhere, sponsors got their biggest boost when Kerry went public with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on a partnership that they had been quietly working on since the summer. The senators pledged in an Oct. 11 New York Times op-ed that they would try to find compromise on several key areas, including nuclear power, offshore drilling and a border tax on items produced in countries that avoid high environmental standards.

“I can see a way to get to 60 votes, and so can he, if we pull the right folks to the table and do this in the right way,” Kerry said last week. “And that’s what we’re going to do.”

There are also a lot of fence-sitting Dems:

Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, for example, is crafting language to help manufacturers.

From July:  Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) says he won’t filibuster climate bill.

Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow hopes to release long-awaited agriculture ideas. And Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania will be forced to take a stand as early as next month when Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee holds a markup on its bill.

Other influential Democratic fence sitters include Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, who said last week that he expects to push at least four issues once the bill nears the floor.

Levin said he will be seeking a national greenhouse gas emission standard and repeal of state-specific standards. Like Franken, he said a border tax adjustment needs to be part of the bill. And Levin said he wants a “fail-safe provision in case the technologies don’t advance as quickly as some people think they will.”

“And you’ve got to fairly proportion the burden,” Levin added.

Agriculture Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) also remains on the fence. The two-term senator said last week that she wants to get a better grip on the effect that a climate bill would have on farmers and in the cost of food to consumers.

“I don’t disagree with the objective, and I hope we’ll stay focused on the objective, which is to lower our greenhouse gases and emissions and our carbon output,” Lincoln said.

Lincoln in past years has cosponsored efforts to address the cost fluctuations in climate legislation. Environmental groups are banking on her and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) as key votes that get them to across the 60-vote threshold.

But an industry source tracking the climate debate doubts that Lincoln can sign off on climate legislation as she heads into a heated re-election battle next November. “No amount of National Wildlife Federation polling is going to help her in the delta,” the source said. “She has an issue.”

Election-year politics also may influence several other Democrats. Specter faces a primary challenge from his left in Rep. Joe Sestak, a campaign that has put an even larger spotlight on his vote.

From August:  Arlen Specter: “No doubt about” voting for cloture on the climate bill

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) faces the same unemployment concerns as Lugar but with the added pressure of a 2010 re-election campaign. So far, Bayh has not drawn a significant challenger and political analyst Charlie Cook ranked the race earlier this month as “solid D” for the incumbent. But political observers still see Bayh as vulnerable to home-state concerns.

Other Democrats on the fence include a number of senators representing either coal-consuming or coal-producing states, including Claire McCaskill of Missouri, North Dakota Sens. Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, and Jim Webb of Virginia. Conrad and Dorgan may be among the most difficult fence sitters to win over. Both have insisted for months that Senate leaders should start with energy-only legislation and save the big climate change measure for later.

Beyond Nelson and Landrieu (who are listed correctly as probable no votes), Lincoln and Dorgan will be the hardest to get, I’m told.

We may get only 56 or 57 Democratic votes for cloture -- and thus may need at least four and preferably five or more GOP’ers, which I think is now in sight.  The bill is not a sure thing, but it is likely, especially since Obama is ramping up his push.  More on that later.

Here is the full list of 24 on the fence:

Those are the ones to focus attention on, especially Dorgan, Gregg, LeMieux, Lincoln, Lugar, McCain, Murkowski, and Voinovich.  Getting at least two of those and preferably three or more would probably give us the bill.

Related Links:

Annie Leonard misses the mark in her new video, “The Story of Cap-and-Trade”

December 19—the day after COP15

Never-give-up fighting spirit: lessons from a grandchild

The climate train is leaving the station.  It is becoming increasingly likely Congress will pass a comprehensive energy bill that includes a shrinking cap and a rising carbon price (with a price collar).   Key swing Senators are moving away from obstructionism toward a bipartisan deal.  Those who stand on the sidelines not only risk ending up on the wrong side of history for this momentous bill, but they risk the more tangible benefits of sitting at the negotiating table.

The Washington Times reported today:

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, praised the climate change legislation outlined Sunday by GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sen. John Kerry…..

Her remarks signal the potential for a major turn in the climate change debate in Congress. She has been a leading opponent of the type of legislation that has been moving forward so far…..

“I’m hopeful their column will mark a shift in the climate debate,” Murkowski said at a hearing by the energy committee. “Instead of cutting emissions at any cost, we should be working on a policy that incorporates the best ideas of both parties, a policy that accounts for our near-term energy needs, limits costs and is flexible enough to work under different economic circumstances,” she said.

In the op-ed, the two Senators asserted they have developed “a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution.” The framework includes, among other things, more offshore drilling and incentives for nuclear power, neither of which should be deal breakers for progressives as I have explained.

Murkowski’s office has now put out a press release reiterating her statements:

Murkowski also noted that she hoped the framework for climate policy laid out by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., would mark a turning point in the climate debate….

Murkowski, the top Republican on the committee, supports addressing climate change in an economically safe and environmentally meaningful way.

Yesterday, I pointed out that Nate Silver’s “Probability of Yes” vote for Murkowski is 2.37%, putting her in the “Republican Hail Mary’s & No-Shots,” writing:

But based on this op-ed, and her earlier statements, I’m going to put her at 50%.  Assuming Graham and Kerry come up with a compromise that, say, McCain can support, how exactly will Murkowski oppose it?  On grounds that it was not a “good faith” effort to address climate change?

Silver himself has a column today “Can Offshore Drilling Save the Climate Bill?” on the subject.  I actually think his analysis focuses too much on the wrong element of the deal — the proposed nuclear provisions are probably more important for securing the 60 votes than the drilling provisions.  Indeed, you have no chance whatsoever of getting either Liebermann or Graham, let alone McCain and many others, without a strong nuclear title.  Here is his bottom line:

…So what does this get the Democrats? It gets them Linsday Graham’s vote, and possibly Lisa Murkowski’s. It takes Mark Begich from a leaner to a likely yes. It might encourage Mary Landrieu, and possibly George LeMieux of Florida, to look more sympathetically at the bill. Then there are a whole host of more remote possibilities: Isakson of Georgia, and perhaps Cochran and Wicker of Mississippi or Burr of North Carolina; none of those votes are likely, but they become more plausible with offshore drilling in place. Overall, it seems to be worth something like 2-4 votes at the margin.

I don’t think it gets you any of the “more remote possibilities.”

That would give the Kerry-Graham bill a fighting chance, especially if an additional vote or two — possibly John McCain’s — can also be picked up as a result of the nuclear energy compromise. Of course, that’s assuming that no liberals would rebel against the new provisions, but the opposition to both offshore drilling and nuclear energy seems to be fairly soft in the liberal caucus. I would not place money on the climate bill passing this year, but the odds would seem to be a lot better with the drilling compromise in place.

Again, I think he misses the point.  The nuclear provisions are probably more important.  Here, for instance, is a statement last month from the office of Senator Voinovich (R-OH):

As both Chairman and Ranking Member on the Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee over the last eight years, Senator Voinovich has had oversight responsibility of the NRC, and has worked hard to ensure the NRC has the resources to fulfill their role in ensuring public safety.

Sen. Voinovich continues to believe that nuclear power is the only real alternative we have today to produce enough low-cost, reliable, and clean energy to remove harmful pollutants from the air, prevent the harmful effects of global climate change and keep good jobs from going overseas. At a time when we are struggling to regain our economic footing, Ohio’s manufacturing industry has an incredible opportunity when it comes to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy offers thousands of well-paying jobs in all stages of development and production.

The Kerry-Graham deal certainly puts his vote for the bill in the “gettable” column.  And as the bill becomes more genuinely bipartisan, then Senators like Lugar (R-IN) become gettable too.  I think the final bill will 5 or more Rs and 62 or more total votes.

Silver’s finally sentence “I would not place money on the climate bill passing this year” is a tad too coy.  I myself would not place money on the climate bill passing the Senate this year.  But I would place money on it passing by next year, and I’d be interested to know whether Silver would, too.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”

With respect to offsets, the Kerry-Boxer bill is a distinct improvement over the ACES [Waxman-Markey]. It allows a relatively strong approach to offset integrity, avoiding negative social or environmental effects, and facilitating possible integration with other systems. It also addresses some issues that will be important to the functioning of a trading market, but still leaves some uncertainties that could cause problems in the market.

One of the weakest features in both the House and Senate climate bills is the large quantity of offsets that polluters are allowed to buy in place of purchasing allowances or reducing their own emissions.  I have spent a lot of time talking to leading experts and analyzing the international offset market, which has led me to realize that large-scale, inexpensive international offsets don’t exist nor will they (see “Do the 2 billion offsets allowed in Waxman-Markey gut the emissions targets?“) — whereas large-scale inexpensive domestic emissions reductions strategies do (see “the 2020 Waxman-Markey target is so damn easy and cheap to meet“).

Moreover, CBO projects that roughly half of the domestic offsets will come from actual reductions in U.S. emissions (in uncapped sectors).  As for international offsets, they aren’t as bad as many people think (see “The CDM: Rip-offsets or real reductions?“), they haven’t gutted the Europe’s Kyoto targets under their trading system (see “Europe poised to meet Kyoto target: Does this mean the much-maligned European Trading System is a success?“), and lots of countries want to join the market (see “Japan’s carbon cuts may include offsets“).  That said, they need greater supervision (see “UN suspends largest CDM auditor — Copenhagen needs to clean up the Clean Development Mechanism, Senate should keep House’s tough offset language“).

The good news is that the Senate bill seems like a genuine improvement over the house bill in this key area, according to my guest blogger, Victor B. Flatt, the Taft Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Law, and the Distinguished Scholar of Carbon Trading and Carbon Markets, Global Energy Management Institute, University of Houston, Bauer College of Business.  His post, “Kerry-Boxer an Improvement over ACES on Offsets,” was first published by the Center for Progressive Reform here.

With respect to offsets, the Kerry-Boxer bill is a distinct improvement over the ACES. It allows a relatively strong approach to offset integrity, avoiding negative social or environmental effects, and facilitating possible integration with other systems. It also addresses some issues that will be important to the functioning of a trading market, but still leaves some uncertainties that could cause problems in the market.

Probably the most important difference between the bills is that the Kerry-Boxer bill does not specify which agency would be in charge of administering and ensuring the integrity of any offset program. In the House bill, a last minute compromise switched all of the administration of biological sequestration offsets to the USDA from the EPA, a change widely criticized by environmentalists because of the belief that the USDA would not be as effective in regulation. The Kerry-Boxer bill doesn’t specify any agency, instead referring to the executive branch actor only as “the President” (which means it could be delegated to one or more different agencies). Of particular interest is that in the 801-page draft which leaked out yesterday, the program was administered by the EPA, but that this provision was dropped from the proposed bill. This might indicate that Senators Boxer and Kerry prefer the EPA as the offsets administrator, but that they are willing to have some ambiguity on the issue if it helps win farm state votes.

With respect to offset integrity, Kerry-Boxer makes accounting for offset reversals (when the anticipated amount of offsetting fails to occur) a key part of the bill; and unlike the Waxman-Markey bill, reversals are to be avoided and accounted for in all offset categories, not just biological sequestration. This is very important as it closes a huge loophole which could have destabilized the system and market. Though expanding the accounting for reversals to all offset categories, Kerry-Boxer does generally follow the lead of Waxman-Markey in dealing with offset reversals. Section 734(b) requires that the President require offset developers to either contribute offset reserve amounts to a central account registry equal to the probability of reversal times the total offset credit amount, or to hold insurance that would allow for the purchase of offset or emission allowance credits for any offset failure. The offset reserve option also features the requirement that the reserve be replenished by the project offset developer with half of the lost credits for an unintentional reversal or all of the lost offset credits if an intentional reversal. One could suppose that since unintentional reversals could be fully accounted for in the initial reserve requirements (since unintentional offsets should coincide with statistically likely failures) having a replacement of only one half of the loss would be more than sufficient to preserve the integrity of the system. The truth is that reversal probability calculations are so unknown at this time that we cannot be sure about the ratio of reserves to failures. Requiring a one-half replenishment might be more than sufficient or not enough. It is really a guess at this point, and though the statutory requirement of one-half is pretty specific, other provisions of the bill would allow the President to take actions to preserve the integrity of the required reductions.

The bill also embraces the notion that offsets should not cause impacts on the environment or other important social interests in many different bill sections. Just as in Waxman-Markey, the offsets advisory board, which is to make recommendations on offset categories, is to also give advice and recommendations to the President on “ways to improve or safeguard the environmental integrity of the programs.” (731(c)(6)). But in addition to considering environmental issues with respect to offset categories, the bill also requires the president to act (including rejecting individual projects) “to avoid or minimize, to the maximum extent practicable, adverse effects on human health or the environment resulting from the implementation of offset projects under this part.” (Sec. 732(c)). This gives the President or implementing agency authority to create regulations about environmental harms from offsets or reject offsets outright, and this is a very important recognition that offsets may create environmental or other harms. The President is also given broad leave to require that project developer’s applying for offset credit provide information about environmental or other effects of the offsets, by having a catchall phrase that the President can require all offset verification reports to have “any other information” that he believes necessary to fulfill the requirements of the Act. (736 (c)(6)).

With respect to the emissions allowance market, the offset parts of the bill have some positive attributes. It pulls back from the initial offering in Waxman-Markey of whole categories of already approved offsets (which the project developers wanted), replacing it with a requirement that the advisory board come up with the first set of categories within a year, but does then specify particular categories which the advisory board should consider. This basically ensures that the Advisory Board can approve these initial categories very easily without too much delay, which should increase the overall market liquidity. There is still the problem that the President is given power to assign offset reversal compensation to anyone (734(b)(1)), which means that in theory, the underlying inherent (not speculative) value of an offset could be decimated without warning, creating a toxic asset which could infect other commodity classes. However, when read with the other reversal provisions, which require insurance or reserves of the offset project developer, it seems unlikely that the holder of an offset would be required to account for reversals. Even if this is true, since it is so important to the market that holders of approved offsets do not bear the risk of arbitrary reversal, the bill should be changed to specifically hold only the offset developer responsible.

This bill comes a long way in ensuring integrity, recognizing relations to international systems (a provision requiring that forestry offset credits be able to meet international standards under the UNFCCC), and accounting for the important environmental impacts that offsets can cause. If it can make corrections to assist the market, this will be an excellent offset system to work with.

I have taken the liberty of changing “Boxer-Kerry” to “Kerry-Boxer” throughout this reposting.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

“I applaud Chairmen Kerry and Boxer for their leadership on comprehensive energy reform. With the draft legislation they are announcing today, we are one step closer to putting America in control of our energy future and making America more energy independent. My Administration is deeply committed to passing a bill that creates new American jobs and the clean energy incentives that foster innovation. I commend Senators Boxer and Kerry for their work and look forward to signing comprehensive energy legislation that addresses this urgent challenge.”

That is a statement from our President on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. Here is Gore’s:

“I applaud the leadership of Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry and their committees’ efforts to advance historic comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation in the U.S. Congress. The broad majority of Americans supports clean energy legislation and understand the urgency with which we and our leaders must act. Today’s Senate action brings our nation one step closer to enacting the policies that will create new jobs and industries by repowering America with clean energy, bring meaningful cuts in global warming pollution, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. With the eyes of the world upon us as we near treaty negotiations in Copenhagen in December, America has the opportunity to lead the international community and enact a truly global response to the climate crisis.”

Senator Kerry has everything you could possibly want to know about the bill here:

Read an overview of the bill.
Read a summary of the bill.
Read a section by section summary of the bill.
Read the press release announcing the introduction of the bill.
Read a description of the Pollution Reduction and Investment mechanism in the bill.
Read endorsements by business, political, and religious leaders
Read the full bill text.

Here are some of the key details from Wonk Room:

EMISSIONS LIMITS: As Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) requested, the 2020 target for greenhouse pollution reductions has been strengthened to 20 percent below 2005 levels, instead of Waxman-Markey’s 17 percent target. “At the end of the day, what happens early on is what’s most important, not what your goals are 50 years from now,” Sanders told E&E News. “That’s a significant step forward.” Reflecting the fact that emissions are already 8.5 percent below 2005 levels, these stronger standards will spur greater investment in clean-energy jobs.

GREEN TRANSPORTATION: Kerry-Boxer includes Sen. Tom Carper’s (D-Del.) push for green transportation, devoting “a guaranteed share of revenues from carbon regulation to transit, bike paths, and other green modes of transport.” The SmartWay Transportation Efficiency Program is modeled on the Clean, Low-Emission, Affordable, New Transportation Efficiency Act (S. 575 / H.R. 1329), co-sponsored by Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), and Ben Cardin (D-Md.).

COAL PLANT GREENHOUSE GAS REGULATION: Kerry-Boxer follows Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) call that “the EPA has to have authority to regulate coal plants under the Clean Air Act.”

Kerry-Boxer includes placeholder language for carbon market regulation, to be provided by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Sen. Boxer plans to hold hearings on the legislation over the following weeks, with the aim of reporting the bill out of committee by the end of the October.

At the behest of a bloc of senators from states with major natural gas reserves — Michael Bennet and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and David Vitter (D-La.), Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) -- Kerry-Boxer also includes provisions that provide extra rewards for coal plant owners to switch to natural gas. Murkowski, Landrieu, Vitter, and Brownback are still expected to oppose the legislation as a job-killer.

Several senators, led by Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), are hoping to reform and strengthen the federal renewable energy standard included in the Energy Committee companion bill when debate reaches the Senate floor.

A number of senators have committed to passing strong climate and clean energy legislation, including Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), who is “optimistic we can turn energy potential into reality and help create new job opportunities at home by producing more clean energy in the United States.” After telling a global warming skeptic that “climate change is very real,” Stabenow was eviscerated by the right wing. Both Brown and Specter have committed to voting against a Republican filibuster of climate legislation -- a key move for President Obama’s progressive energy agenda.

Related Links:

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

MEMO TO THE MEDIA:  The nation’s energy and climate problems have reached the point where obstructionist politicians cannot be given a free pass to simply criticize those attempting to solve those problems while offering no credible alternatives or business-as-usual policies.

At 11:30 ET, Senators Boxer and Kerry (and others) will introduce the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.  For the cost of about a postage stamp a day per U.S. household, the bill would generate millions of clean energy jobs, while preserving and protecting clean air, clean water, and a livable climate.

At 2:45 ET, Senator Inhofe and other GOP Senators will hold a “Press Availability on Boxer-Kerry Energy Tax” in Senate Radio-TV Gallery S-325.  But in fact, it is Senate conservatives who are pushing the really big tax on Americans — a double tax, really, since doing nothing on climate and clean energy is the one certain way to ensure

We know that if the final energy and climate bill that hits Obama’s desk retains the energy-saving provisions of the House bill, it could save $3,900 per household by 2030 and would cut the U.S. foreign oil bill $650 billion through 2030, saving $5,600 per household.

The only existing GOP energy proposal, the American Energy Act (AEA), is nothing more than a good old-fashioned 25% energy tax on consumers (see here).  The GOP plan — or doing nothing at all, as the GOP Senators will apparently propose today — means no savings from energy efficiency, no stop to soaring oil prices and a soaring trade deficit in oil when the economy and petroleum price rebound.  It means no effort to preserve a livable climate.  In short, it is just Cheney-lite, if it’s possible to be lighter than the Cheney energy plan.

What are the benefits to our children of not destroying their livable climate, of averting 10°F warming over much of this country and 5+ feet of sea level rise by century’s end, of not turning the oceans into a large, hot, acidified dead zone?

York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity published a recent analysis that found the “clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill creates $1.5 trillion in benefits.”  But that was at a low societal cost of carbon.  For a more reasonable estimated cost of the impacts of carbon dioxide, say, $68, they estimated the total cumulative net benefit of climate action is $4 trillion (see Chart 2, page 31 here).  And that didn’t even include an analysis of the plausible worst-case scenario for global warming, which we now know is 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic in 50 years!

In fact, a more rigorous new analysis by top “scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” found the “net present value of climate change impacts” of $1240 TRILLION on current emissions path, making mitigation to under 450 ppm a must.

Doing nothing thus imposes an unimaginable burden — a multi-trillion dollar carbon pollution tax — on our children and grandchildren.

A do-nothing energy policy also means higher energy bills in the next decade, just as it did in the last one.  In April, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a detailed analysis showing the main result of the Bush-Cheney plan was that energy costs rose more than $1,100 for the average American household:

Over this period, the typical annual American household expenditure on electricity rose more than $170, and the typical annual American expenditure on gasoline rose more than $960 (in 2007 dollars). Note that the gasoline price increases listed here do not include the unprecedented $147 per barrel of oil and $4.11 gasoline prices that occurred in the summer of 2008.

Here is more of CAP’s analysis of the impact on Americans of the failed conservative energy policies of the last decade:

America needs to invest in a diverse clean energy economy now instead of doubling down on dirty energy. The recession and the low prices of gasoline and electricity provide an opportunity to ensure the next period of economic growth is not like the last one.

Economic growth under Bush lasted from November 2001—when the United States emerged from the first Bush recession—to December 2007— the beginning of the second Bush recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, which tracks and measures business cycles.

Over Bush’s period of economic growth, expenditures on electricity for a typical American family (earning the median income) grew 16 percent to $1,285 in 2007, up from $1,106 per year in 2002, an increase of $179. The typical family’s expenditure on gasoline grew nearly 70 percent to $2,418 in 2007, up from $1,450 in 2002, an increase of nearly $1000 (All dollar amounts in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars.)

The price of gasoline and home electricity grew faster then general inflation because of the lack of diversity in our energy system and spiraling global demand for fossil fuels: 1.6 times faster in the case of residential electricity and a staggering 6.4 times faster in the case of gasoline.

These price spikes occurred despite the Bush administration’s massive public subsidies for dirty energy. The 2005 energy bill contained a token level of investment in renewable energy, but it also provided billions of dollars of support for dirty energy, offering $27 billion in subsidies for coal, oil, and nuclear energy.

Although the current recession has dragged down gas prices from the record $4.11 per gallon of July 2008, gas prices still averaged $2.01 in March 2009, up 67 percent from a $1.28 average in March of 2002. The fundamentals that created the huge increases in oil and electricity prices from 2002 through the summer of 2008—after the recession officially began but before demand plummeted worldwide—still lurk, and will return with a vengeance once the global economy begins to rebound.

Doing nothing is the most costly option.

Related Links:

Science historian Weart on global warming

Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science

“Many , including us,  find deniers’ claims irresponsible.”

The Senate climate bill has a name: The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

Okay, it’s not a clever acronym, like the House’s American Clean Energy and Security act or ACES. The key point is jobs and American power.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and the lead sponsor of The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.  He lays out the case for the bill in Politico, “A new path for energy use.”

[I am told the word "energy" is in the bill title (and that the Politico piece has it wrong).  Senate Environment and Public Works committee has Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.]

You’ll notice Kerry never uses the term “cap and trade,” which is arguably the lamest phrase ever developed by progressives since, oh, I don’t know, maybe “public option.”  The bill is a pollution reduction and investment bill.

Kerry seems seems to me to have the basic messages right, so his piece is a must-read for progressives who want to know the pitch:

For decades, politicians have talked about the importance of ending America’s addiction to oil and investing in energy that is made in America and that works for America -- from coal and nuclear to solar and wind.

But with the Clean Jobs and American Power Act, which we are introducing Wednesday, we at last have an opportunity to put our country on that path -- a path more critical because of the urgent threat of global climate change.

The Clean Jobs and American Power Act is aimed at no less than the reinvention of the way America produces and uses energy. It will be a challenge, but America has never shied away from a challenge before.

Reinventing the way we use energy can also be the cornerstone for decades of economic growth and a stronger, more powerful America. Today, 15 million Americans are out of work. We send $1 billion per day overseas to feed our oil addiction. Scientists and generals warn that climate change caused by carbon pollution threatens our health and our national security. Each of these factors weakens America.

Rarely have we faced so many challenges, but rarely have so many challenges also culminated in such an enormous opportunity -- an opportunity to put millions of Americans back to work, to invest in homegrown innovation and to protect our children’s health and our environment.

The Clean Jobs and American Power Act takes a comprehensive approach to meeting our energy challenge head on.

It sets ambitious carbon pollution reduction targets, creates powerful new incentives for companies to find the most cost-efficient ways to meet them and makes historic new investments in technology and efficiency that will improve every sector of our energy economy. And it does not raise the deficit by one single dime.

Based on the successful bipartisan plan that reduced acid rain, a market-based pollution reduction and investment system will set ambitious yearly targets. It will reduce carbon pollution 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050, a decrease that scientists consider the minimum necessary to avert a climate disaster.

This system is tough on corporate pollution, taking aim at America’s largest polluters: those emitting 25,000 tons of carbon each year. The 7,500 facilities covered in 2012 -- mostly power plants, industrial facilities and petroleum and petrochemical operations -- account for nearly three-quarters of America’s carbon emissions. Farmers and nearly all small business are exempt. More than 98 percent of all American businesses fall below the threshold.

The bill is designed to offer big polluters options: Those that need more time to clean up their emissions can pay for the continued right to pollute. Those companies that decrease pollution quickly and affordably stand to profit.

This bill creates powerful new market incentives for developing clean energy and improving energy efficiency. Americans invented the technologies behind wind and solar energy, but countries like China and Germany have surged ahead of us. This bill provides new funding for research and deployment to make us the world leaders once again.

Every dollar spent on clean energy creates nearly four times as many jobs as a dollar invested in oil and gas. These are good-paying, regionally diverse jobs for American workers of all educational backgrounds -- and best of all, they can’t be shipped overseas.

As we transition to this new energy future, we need game-changing investments and improvements throughout our entire energy system. We can’t afford to ignore any homegrown energy resources. Because coal will remain an important part of America’s economy, we must help the coal industry reinvent itself -- that includes rewards for installing new technology to capture and store carbon pollution before it reaches the air we breathe.

Natural gas will receive similar incentives to increase cost-effectiveness and galvanize technological advances. We will also make the investment in research, development and worker training needed to build the next generation of American nuclear power plants.

Of course, the cleanest and cheapest kilowatt of energy is the one you never use. More than 1,000 U.S. cities have adopted tough environmental standards for new construction and for refitting existing buildings. We respond to the urgent requests of our governors and mayors by funding these efforts.

As our energy economy races ahead, no one should be left behind.

This bill protects everyday consumers. Rebates on monthly electric bills will ensure that energy remains affordable for low- and middle-income families. And a new market-based mechanism will kick in as needed to keep prices stable.

This bill also includes targeted protection for our manufacturing sector, to ensure that American companies remain competitive and keep jobs here at home. New programs will train workers to succeed in the new clean energy economy.

We can do all those things, and more, to make America safer and stronger. But only if we reinvent the way America uses energy.

It won’t be easy. For too long, Washington let Big Oil and special interests stand between us and our goals. This has hurt our economy, helped our enemies and risked our security. But the time has come to put America back in control, and the Clean Jobs and American Power Act at last turns rhetoric into reality and puts us on that path.

Related Links:

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”

The final bill will not be unveiled until tomorrow, but Senators Kerry and Boxer (and their cosponsers) have managed to put together a bill that I believe is environmentally, economically and politically stronger than the House bill.

The Washington Post reports:

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will unveil a bill Wednesday that aims for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the year 2020, according to several sources and a close-to-final version of the bill obtained by The Washington Post.

Note: While that 800-page bill linked to above may be “close to final,” it will change in many places, so I would not rely on it too heavily for specific details.  Indeed, Greenwire (subs. req’d) reports an aide to Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) saying, “It’s a snapshot in time of our restructure of the [House] bill, but it doesn’t really reflect where the bill is now.”

Certainly 20% is better than the House’s 17% — and more than justified by both the science and recent emissions trends (see “EIA stunner: By year’s end, we’ll be 8.5% below 2005 levels of CO2 — halfway to climate bill’s 2020 target“).

Unlike the Waxman-Markey bill, the Senate proposal preserves the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate large sources of greenhouse gases, such as coal-fired power pants.

That’s a good change, but it’ll be a huge fight to keep it.

“It’s clearly stronger than the House bill,” said Frank O’Donnell, who heads the advocacy group Clean Air Watch. “This very well may be the high-water mark for strong action on climate in this Congress, since it will face many efforts to erode it as it moves through the Senate.”

CP readers will not be surprised if that target changes as the bill winds its way through the Senate — and your 60 seconds to cry about that political reality is over …. now.  The bill keeps the key House targets of 42% cut by 2030 and 83% by 2050.

The Senate bill also aims to ease concerns among both Democrats and Republicans about the expanding carbon footprints of China and India, by requiring the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a report each year “regarding whether China and India have adopted greenhouse gas emissions standards at least as strict as those standards required under this Act.”

If the administrator of the agency “determines that China and India have not adopted greenhouse gas emissions standards at least as stringent as those set forth in this Act, the Administrator shall notify each Member of Congress of his determination, and shall release his determination to the media,” the draft bill states.

Not quite how I might have phrased the language, but then I didn’t write it.

The bill makes a monumental improvement over the House bill by adopting a version of the carbon collar I proposed, as discussed here:  In a “a sharp departure from the House measure,” Boxer climate bill to adopt a price collar for allowance auction.

The floor price is $11 (the draft bill above is, as I say, not final) and the ceiling is $28 — and they both starting rising 5% plus inflation each year.  The draft bill adds an excellent twist — from 2018 on the ceiling rises 7% plus inflation each year.  I hope that is true of the floor, also.  I’ll report back on that as soon as I know.

Fence-sitting Senators and industries can legitimately see the Carbon Collar as achieving stronger cost-containment protection than their analysis suggests the House bill now provides, including protection against speculators running the permit price up, while progressives can legitimately see it as achieving better environmental outcomes than their analysis suggests the House bill now provides. Win-win.

The bill also has stronger oversight of the carbon market, and since this is a major sticking point for many senators, I’m sure the language will get tougher:

Boxer and Kerry propose a different approach for oversight of the carbon market, which in the House bill is shared between FERC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with FERC regulating the cash market for allowances and offsets and CFTC handling the derivatives market.

The draft Senate plan, in contrast, would place the carbon markets under a single regulator — the brief carbon market section would have CFTC regulate both markets. It also broadly empowers the regulator to prevent manipulation of these markets and eliminate “excessive speculation” that adds to price volatility.

Lawmakers are likely to seek more detailed provisions that place controls on these markets.

The bill will have more support for coal with CCS (see “Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) joins key Dems in proposal to boost carbon capture and storage in climate bill“).  The sponsors are working hard to get Byrd to agree to support cloture, to be one of the 60 Senators needed to stop the inevitable, immoral filibuster by anti-science conservatives.  I mostly don’t care how much money they offer to CCS, since I doubt many such plants will be built, so I doubt most of that money will be spent.  The key point, though, is to make sure the final bill only subsidizes and incentivizes the incremental cost for CCS — and not the coal plant itself.

You can bet on both a strong natural gas title and a strong nuclear title in the final Senate bill — neither of which can be found in the House bill.

The Senate draft also has a modest nuclear title, although pro-nuclear senators are likely to push for significant incentives in the final measure. The bill’s nuclear title would steer money to the Energy Department for implementing programs to expand expertise in the nuclear field. Advocates of expanding U.S. nuclear power say there are not enough nuclear engineers and other experts to work on the hoped-for buildout of new reactors.

The nuclear title also has a section titled “Nuclear Waste Research and Development,” but it is left blank, stating “to be supplied.”

Again, one can throw money at nukes, but they have priced themselves out of the market for the foreseeable future — see “Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid.”

UPDATE:  E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reports on the natural gas incentives in the bill:

In an attempt to lure new advocates for the bill, the latest Boxer-Kerry draft would provide incentives for deploying natural gas-fired power plants beyond what the House climate bill provides.

The bill would establish an incentive fund to reward power generation sources that “replace or retire” power plants whose emissions exceed the 2007 average greenhouse gas emissions per megawatt-hour rate of the U.S. electric power sector and that do not receive a production or investment tax credit the year they are placed in service or in 2009. To receive the incentives, the replacement units must reduce emissions by increasingly steep levels below the 2007 targets through 2030.

Natural gas could qualify under the provision both as a fuel that produces 50 percent less carbon dioxide emissions than coal and as backup generation for wind, solar and other intermittent renewable energy. Intermittent backup resources are another category that would qualify for the incentives.

The draft is going to change many, many times in the coming weeks:

Both the early draft and the Boxer-Kerry bill due for release tomorrow will leave blank key information about how the senators intend to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in emission allowances. Following the path of Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, those figures will come next month when Boxer releases a chairman’s mark of the bill before an EPW Committee markup….

Boxer plans to release another version of the legislation in mid-October as a chairman’s mark. Hearings are also expected next month, with an EPW Committee markup before November. Several other Senate committees are also planning to weigh in, with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) the ultimate judge on what the bill looks like before the floor debate.

And it may not change in ways that progressives like:

Tony Kreindler, spokesman for the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund, sent an e-mail to reporters Tuesday morning cautioning that the bill likely would change markedly in the coming weeks as the Senate Finance and Agriculture Committee weighs in, along with several centrist legislators who want to modify it, such as Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.)

“Though the process sounds daunting, complex processes are part and parcel of passing major legislation,” Kreindler wrote. “The most important thing is that the draft be taken for what it is: a starting point that Senators can work with, tailor, and pass.”

Exactly.  What matters is the bill that ends up on Obama’s desk.

I’ll end with an excerpt from the post I wrote after Waxman-Markey passed the House:

My Salon piece, “One brief shining moment for clean energy” [notes] “the country can only contemplate serious environmental legislation when we have the unique constellation of a Democratic president and [large] Democratic majorities in both houses, an occurrence far rarer than a total eclipse of the sun.”

This bill would complete America’s transition to a clean energy economy, which was begun in the stimulus (see “EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus!“).  Within four decades, the vast majority of American’s carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel consumption will be replaced by the technologies discussed here:  “An introduction to the core climate solutions.”

This bill makes possible an international deal in Copenhagen this December….

As Nobelist Gore wrote earlier today, there was no “backup plan”….

The Kerry-Boxer bill is now the only game in town.

If you want a clean energy future with millions of clean energy jobs, this is the bill.  If you want a chance at a global climate deal and hence a chance at preserving a livable climate, this is the bill.  If you want to shut down most of the dirty coal plants in this country in two decades, this is the bill.

We’re all going to have to fight as hard as possible to keep this bill as strong as possible.  This bill is key to taking back control of America’s future from Big Oil, the corporate polluters and their lobbyists, and you can be sure they are going to fight as hard — and as dirty — as possible to kill it.

Related Links:

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”

The Climate Post is a weekly roundup of climate news, produced by the The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.

First Things First: When we last left our Senate, Barbara Boxer suggested a bill, similar to the one that the House passed in June, would be ready for the Environment and Public Works committee on its first day back. That was Tuesday. Political reality, the complexity of legislation, and Sen. John Kerry’s  recent hip surgery have together postponed the Senate climate debate. Everyone, even on the many “islands” of the climate archipelago, is talking about health care after the president’s major address last night, and that legislation may take up most of the Senate’s calendar this fall. Boxer has indicated the climate bill will come by the end of the month. Proponents and opponents are unlikely to similarly delay their intensifying debate about economic costs; a New York University center just weighed in with a new “informal analysis” [pdf]. Whatever the course of the bill, other parts of the Capitol are going ahead with their own green reforms.

The Senate delay clouds up skies above Copenhagen, where international climate negotiators will assemble in less than three months to hash out a potential global agreement. Without passage of a Senate bill, the U.S. team is expected to have less clout to pull together the fractured international debate. The United Nations-guided process is riven by disagreements between rich and poor nations. The two most significant from each group, the U.S. and China, will continue their high-level engagements this fall, when President Barack Obama travels to Beijing. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) told reporters in the Chinese capital this week, “I’d place higher odds on the ability of the United States and China to reach an agreement than I would on us passing legislation or on having Copenhagen agreed.”

Japan’s newly elected prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has called for an aggressive national 2020 target of greenhouse gas emission cuts 25 percent below 1990 levels. Echoing statements made by U.S. officials, Hatoyama acknowledged that Japan’s own actions won’t solve the problem, but may speed along international talks. Japan’s largest business group has opposed targets more aggressive than 6 percent reductions. The new goal comes with a sizable caveat, that all other major economies ratify similarly stringent programs.

Oxford Economist Dieter Helm pinpoints a–perhaps the–central problem in international climate policy: Very little in humans’ history of acting as individuals or individual nations (and eschewing outside help), prepares us for a species-wide concern, such as global warming. In a brief excerpt posted by Roger Pielke Jr., Helm questions the utility of the EU reducing its emissions when the looming problem is coal-burning in China and India. One might just as well ask, Why buy solar panels for the roof when the world might see lower net atmospheric carbon levels, and it might be cheaper, if you just bought more efficient refrigerators for carbon-intensive neighbors on either side? (Novelty story of the week: This question would have a different answer if these hair-based solar panels, designed by a Nepalese 18-year-old, worked at scale and solved all energy woes.)

Assembling Armadas: Groups opposed to climate policy earned headlines in August for holding rallies or threatening spectacular legal challenges. The days before Congress’ return were marked by further consternation in the environmental community, when the president’s highly visible “green jobs” tsar, Van Jones, resigned amid controversy over recent comments and past positions. This week environmentalists tried to establish their own momentum, with the launch of Clean Energy Works, a coalition of climate hawks that boasts organizers in 28 states and plenty of voices in Washington. Discussion about how to talk about climate change continues, as Joe Romm at Climate Progress contributes this behind-party-lines look at messaging, highlighting this challenging puzzle: “Tell me in one sentence what team Obama says happens if we fail to pass the climate and clean energy bill.” (The link is rated PG for mild profanity in the headline.)

This announcement overshadowed the latest offering from a growing cadre of national security hawks. For the last several years figures such as former CIA director James Woolsey, former Secretary of State George Schultz, and former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, have brought attention to the potential defense and geopolitical implications of climate change. They now belong to the Partnership for a Secure America, a bipartisan “who’s who” of former senators, Cabinet secretaries, and White House officials, who have unveiled a letter linking climate change to national security issues and imploring the sitting government to act decisively and promptly.

Uncertain national affairs are weighing down carbon prices in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the carbon market that 10 states participate in from Maine to Maryland. The price for a credit to emit a ton of carbon dioxide has fallen below $2.60, because of the Senate delay, a drop in national gas prices, and general emission levels below original expectations because of the recession.

I was the Walrus: Thousands of Pacific walruses are herding in shallow waters and on land along Alaska’s northwest coast, apparently for reasons less felicitous than to try out the brand new Beatles “Rock Band” game and digitally re-mastered song catalog. This summer looks to be the third most extensive Arctic sea-ice melt on record, behind 2007 and 2005. As the ice vanishes so too does the walruses’ habitat. Clamoring for food and safety on land may bring environmental stresses and crowding that ultimately make shorelines increasingly difficult places for such large congregations.

Geoff Brumfiel at Nature’s “The Great Beyond” picks a head-scratching phase-space graph out of a prominent Royal Society scientific report on geoengineering, and traces how headline-writers struggled with it. The contrasts among the articles in the Register, Financial Times, USA Today, and elsewhere are quite striking (amusing), and reinforce why it’s so nice to have multiple news sources: The differences among them are the best indication of either what’s going on or how difficult it is to ascertain what’s going on.

How to Sound Fancy but Engage in Crass Rhetoric: If you, like Climate Post, are one of the few Americans whose primary association with the word “socialism” is Soviet terror-as-governance and the arbitrary murder of countless millions, then these are confusing times to read about health care and climate debates, in which that moniker seems to apply widely. In a setting as slapdash as this one, the only rebuttal that time permits to Jim Manzi’s recent essay at “The Daily Dish” is a poke at the headline, “The Socialism Implicit in the Social Cost of Carbon.” Just sayin’.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist

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