Photo: Harry ReidWith hopes for a comprehensive climate bill dead, the latest question for climate-watchers is whether or not Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid will offer a vote on Sen. Jay Rockefeller's (D-W.Va.) amendment to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases for two years. Without a carbon pricing scheme or even a renewable electricity standard, the EPA is the only remaining avenue to restrict carbon emissions. The agency has drafted a slew of new regulations that would begin in January, but Republican senators and some moderate Democrats who fear the economic effects of unwieldy new restrictions have mounted a …

Gov. Schwarzenegger at a press conference. Photo: Office of the GovernorThe latest California ballot measure to make a national splash addresses neither marijuana nor gay marriage, but an even more contentious issue these days: cap-and-trade. Proposition 23 would suspend California's statewide cap-and-trade plan, currently scheduled to take full effect in 2012, until unemployment drops to 5.5 percent in the state for a full year. The carbon pricing scheme is one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pet projects, and it is a key component of the emissions reduction measure known in California as AB 32, which Schwarzenegger signed in 2006 despite intense …