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Obituaries aside, the climate bill still livesPath to 60 votes open if Obama and Reid can lead.
Monday, Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman were scheduled to release their own energy and climate bill at a major Washington press conference after months of negotiations. But it was not to be. Over the weekend, political maneuvering concerning immigration reform derailed the announcement, thus leading to more obituaries. The trigger was Arizona’s passage of the nation’s toughest immigration law last week. Senate Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, responded to Arizona’s action by proposing that the Senate debate the immigration issue on the floor – possibly ahead of any climate policy discussion. The unspoken logic was that the immigration debate could galvanize Hispanic voters in California and Nevada and lead to higher voter turnout in key races (including that of Sen. Reid). Sen. Graham, one of the few Republicans willing to work with Democrats on bipartisan legislation, was furious. As a leader in past immigration reform efforts, Graham knew how much work remained to complete a viable immigration bill. He saw the prospect of a Senate floor debate on immigration as a recipe for further political division. So to make his point, Sen. Graham wrote Sen. Reid to announce that he was walking out of final talks on the climate bill. On the face of it, this sounded like the “dead as a door nail” obituary. But remarkably the climate bill is still alive. Key senators and White House officials are trying to work out a compromise that would allow the climate debate to go first and then have immigration addressed at another time in the Senate calendar. Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman met last night, and while they did not report any progress on procedural issues, they agreed to forward their bill to the EPA for economic analysis, a key step in having the bill ready for floor debate. Even amid the political rancor in Washington, we still have a bipartisan energy/climate bill that has the support of many of America’s businesses and environmental groups, a House-passed companion in Waxman-Markey, and a path to winning 60 votes in the Senate this year. Climate has been the single highest priority of the environmental community and its supporters for a decade. We need to take advantage of this opportunity because the House and Senate may be less friendly to climate legislation after the November elections. The K-G-L bill would lock in a 17% reduction in greenhouse gases from 2005 levels by 2020 and allow the U.S. to meet international commitments President Obama made in Copenhagen last year. To stem the tide of political obituaries, President Obama and Majority Leader Reid need to set the schedule, stay engaged in the process, and help the K-G-L authors get the 60 votes. Only with this kind of leadership will we see comprehensive energy and climate legislation come to pass. Comments
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This proposal is for a better climate bill combined with a huge increase in employment and a sensible way of dealing with illegal immigration.
MANY NEW JOBS AT LOW COST
David Gordon Wilson (professor of mechanical engineering, emeritus, M.I.T.)
The energy crisis from 1973-81 was not a happy period for Americans, but it was also a time when entrepreneurs and engineers formed a huge number of new businesses aimed at producing low-cost solar cells, new types of high-efficiency engines for automobiles, better insulation and insulating windows for our houses, and so on. I worked in the energy field and I was asked to consult by many of these small – and large – companies. One was, for instance, Sanders Associates of Nashua NH with which I worked on a 100-MW solar turbine plant that got close to reality. It was an exciting time for thousands of businesses that were close to major solutions to different aspects of the energy shortage and of the extraordinarily high prices of oil.
And then around 1981 the price of oil collapsed. Most of the companies working on solutions to the energy problems were either closed down or severely cut back.
The message for today is simply this. If we could find a painless way of increasing the price of fossil-fuel energy and of the emission of pollutants we could produce a similar surge of new businesses if there was a reasonable guarantee that the increased prices were here to stay. They deserve to be: economists are continually telling us that fossil fuels and polluting emissions are severely underpriced. Many economists propose energy and emission taxes such as cap-and-trade.
Such taxes have, however, three severe disadvantages. They are regressive, hurting the poor more than the rich. They cause inflation. And they give huge amounts of money for Congress and the administration to spend on boondoggles like bridges to nowhere.
All three problems can be reversed by the following simple and relatively low-cost plan. Congress should enact a law that would put a fee (NOT a tax) on all fossil fuels and easily measurable emissions starting six months in the future and increasing by increments every three months thereafter. The fees could start at the equivalent of 25 cents per gallon for gasoline. No one, not even the president or ministers of religion, would be exempted. The fossil-fuel producers could pass along as much of the fees in increased prices as they wished. All the collected fees would be put into an impregnable trust fund. At the end of each month, the trust fund would be reduced to zero by transferring exactly equal amounts to the bank accounts of every legal citizen in the US of seventeen and over. The cost-of-living index would be required to account for the rebates in addition to the many price increases, thus negating any inflationary effects. Poor people, being lower users of energy and lower pollutant emitters, would get more back in rebates than they would pay out in fees even if they could not change their fuel and other purchases. Richer people would invest in every possible way of avoiding the increased fees, thus producing an explosion of employment. Congress could halt the increase of the fees at any time. The result would thus be an almost cost-less improvement in life for everyone, especially for those out of work and for the poor. The distribution of the rebates would require some funding, as would a branch of the FBI that would vigorously pursue would-be cheaters. (The only people really hurt would be illegal aliens who would pay the higher prices without getting the rebates.)
(A fuller treatment of the policy is given at lessgovletsgo.org)
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If the climate /energy bill passes, will it be a good bill? Can the climate/energy bill pass and also be a good bill? This depends on whether it will be debated sector by sector (see categories “Senate Debate” http:/NewWindsOfChange.com). And whether lobbyists or the public interest prevail in the debate.
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"... Harry Reid [proposed] that the Senate debate the immigration issue on the floor – possibly ahead of any climate policy discussion.... Sen. Graham, one of the few Republicans willing to work with Democrats on bipartisan legislation, was furious."
Sen Graham was not the only one. As a green who has followed the energy bill for 14 months now, the idea that an immigration bill would suddenly go first is an outrage. Thank heavens for Graham standing against it. (Perhaps Kerry or Lieberman should have stood up too, but as the potential 60th vote on both bills, Graham has much more leverage.)
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In trying to break out of the grip of “practical politics” I’ve been trying to put the climate bill in a wider context (see my blog -- today’s (June 6) "NYPA reviews N.Y. Great Lakes wind power proposals" in a http://NewWindsOfChange.com). It includes that “Industry sources estimated offshore wind power would cost about $4,000 per kilowatt, versus $2,000 for onshore wind, $4,000 for nuclear, $2,200 for coal, $1,000 for combined-cycle natural gas and $6,200 for solar photovoltaic” and asks if these are roughly correct (which they might not be) is the only reason for choosing off shore hydro the 30% yield target that NY has? and also how would this change under a cap and trade system?” The same questions are asked here.
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