Waxman Markey Bill

Sow your wild votes

10 races to watch in 2010 0
Posted 9 Feb 2010 5:31 PM By Lisa Hymas, Samantha Thompson Even without a presidential contest, this election year will be a doozy. Green angles are cropping up in close races from California to Texas to Illinois.
Reports of climate bill death are greatly exaggerated 3
Posted 7 Jan 2010 10:44 AM Despite speculation from a few Beltway pundits, recent events suggest that there is momentum for the passage of a comprehensive clean energy and global warming legislation in 2010.
Herding cats

Q&A: what will happen with climate legislation in 2010? 1
Posted 7 Jan 2010 10:01 AM The global recession, the midterm elections and a weak deal at Copenhagen all play a part in the future of cap and trade.
What might Sen. Byron Dorgan’s retirement mean for climate legislation? 1
Posted 6 Jan 2010 10:26 AM What's bad news for the Dems in the longer term could be good news for the climate bill in the short term. Nate Silver had given Dorgan a "Probability of Yes" vote of 22 percent. He was certainly going to be among the 5 toughest Dem votes to get. But now he doesn't face a tough reelection, and the Senator from the state he himself calls "the Saudi Arabia of wind" is free to vote his conscience.
Copenhagen changes the ground on which we stand

The moral equivalent of slavery 89
Posted 21 Dec 2009 11:18 AM Like John Brown at Harpers Ferry, it's time for climate activists to rise up and take a stand. No more negotiating on an issue that's unjust, immoral, and leading us to ruin.
Silver Lining Dept.

Three good things that might come from Copenhagen 5
Posted 21 Dec 2009 11:10 AM So Copenhagen was a disaster -- that doesn't mean nothing came of it. U.S. environmentalists should dig deep for the take-home message.
Obama science advisor John Holdren on U.S. strategy in Copenhagen 3
Posted 17 Dec 2009 1:53 PM One of the puzzles about the U.S. strategy here in Copenhagen is how it expected that its pledge of a 17 percent emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2020 could be taken seriously as a negotiating stance.
Why Cantwell-Collins is best—and how it just might win 11
Posted 14 Dec 2009 10:09 AM Both climate bills begin with descending carbon caps that, along with supplementary policies, promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at roughly the same rate, and both protect domestic industries by imposing fees on carbon-intensive imports from countries that don’t limit emissions. But from there the two approaches diverge markedly.
Fourteen Democratic senators stick up for coal 6
Posted 12 Nov 2009 5:58 PM Thursday, 14 Democratic senators affirmed their allegiance to the profits of polluting industry at the expense of the health and jobs of their constituents. In a letter to Senate leaders, a bloc of senators with powerful coal interests in their states called for "fair emissions allowances in climate change legislation." Their definition of "fair," unfortunately, turns out to be full taxpayer subsidies for global warming polluters.
When will we stop paying the hidden fossil fuel tax? 1
Posted 30 Oct 2009 2:11 PM Last week, the nation suffered from major sticker shock when we learned that our use of fossil fuels comes with a hidden price tag of $120 billion per year.
Five scoops of compromise

Sampling the competing flavors of the Senate climate debate 0
Posted 26 Oct 2009 1:54 PM Senators of all stripes are screaming for some kind of climate and energy bill, but like schoolkids at the ice cream parlor, each is crying out for a different flavor.
Supply and demand

Kerry-Boxer muddies handling of international offsets 0
Posted 26 Oct 2009 10:23 AM The Kerry-Boxer climate bill's treatment of international carbon offsets should be modified to align it with the Waxman-Markey approach. Otherwise, U.S. policy could have a ripple effect that would weaken international carbon trading schemes.
One step forward, several back

The Kerry-Boxer bill is not “more ambitious” than Waxman-Markey 2
Posted 26 Oct 2009 2:18 AM I'm sure Steve Mufson and Juliet Eilperin didn't choose the headline, but whoever did, I think it's a real mistake to refer to the Kerry-Boxer bill as "a bit more ambitious" than its Waxman-Markey counterpart in the House. This became conventional wisdom almost immediately, but it seems to me both wrong and pernicious -- the more Kerry-Boxer is seen as a leftward move from the House bill, the more senators who want to be seen as moderate will want to be seen hacking it down.
Confusion in the Senate regarding allowance allocation 1
Posted 23 Oct 2009 11:37 AM There are sound reasons for considering allocation mechanisms other than free allocation -- for example, auctioning allowances (more about this below) -- but the distribution of those allowances that are freely allocated need not be a great source of concern.
Tim Flannery boils it down

Put a cap on it, America! 4
Posted 22 Oct 2009 4:55 PM The U.S. Congress absolutely must pass climate legislation that puts a cap on the country's total carbon emissions, Australian climate activist Tim Flannery says. Failure to do so will undermine the international climate talks.
Climate bill breakdown 2
Posted 7 Oct 2009 3:48 PM Wondering how the Senate's Kerry-Boxer climate bill stacks up against the Waxman-Markey version in the House? Russ Choma does the math.
Garbage in, garbage out

Economics of climate legislation deserve honest accounting 0
Posted 5 Oct 2009 2:33 PM The debate over the Kerry-Boxer bill has picked up where Waxman-Markey left off: the economics of climate legislation.
New Cantwell climate bill is simpler and more equitable 5
Posted 5 Oct 2009 1:34 PM On Sept. 22, in a speech to 100 world leaders gathered at the United Nations to discuss climate change, President Barack Obama declared the U.S. "determined to act." But at the same time, word began to circulate on Capitol Hill that the Senate might be equally determined not to vote on the climate bill any time soon.
Revealing the mysteries of Pittsburgh

Pa. Rep. Doyle on getting blue-collar support for a climate bill 0
Posted 29 Sep 2009 1:02 PM How does a blue-collar guy from a Pittsburgh steelworking family end up supporting a climate bill in Congress? Rep. Mike Doyle explains how he came to believe that climate legislation is good for his manufacturing-heavy district and the whole country.
As good as it'll get

Boxer-Kerry climate bill: what to watch for 2
Posted 28 Sep 2009 11:12 PM Sens. Boxer and Kerry plan to introduce their climate bill tomorrow. I'm in NYC and DC this week, so it's been tough to find time to write, but here are a few brief notes on what to watch for.