The Investigative Reporting Workshop released a report on Thursday detailing how one of the first big chunks of money for clean energy under the stimulus package is actually being spent. Our findings (I was the lead reporter on the story) can be found here.

Most interestingly, we found that the program, which is designed to reimburse companies for 30 percent of the cost of building a renewable energy facility, has given out $1.05 billion since Sept. 1. Almost all of it (91 percent) has gone to 11 wind farms (a mix of solar, geothermal and biomass projects collected the rest).

The 11 wind farms are scattered throughout the United States, but the companies who own them and ultimately benefited from U.S. taxpayer funds are scattered across the globe. In fact, 84 percent of the total – $849 million – went to projects owned by foreign companies.

On one level, it’s very much an old-fashioned “How-Are-Your-Tax-Dollars-Being-Spent?” story. We looked at who owned the projects, what country they call home and who built the wind turbines that were installed (turbine manufacturing is where you find most of the long-term economic activity associated with building wind energy). We also looked at who lobbied Congress for renewable energy incentives the stimulus bill. We found a mixed crowd of international companies, including huge conglomerates like BP and Alstom — better known for their carbon and nuclear programs, all eager to come to America and take advantage of the package’s benefits for clean energy (hardly a secret).

We also examined how this money was disbursed with virtually no strings attached (there is no obligation for any of this $1.05 billion to be reinvested, though several of the companies have said they will).

But there is more than this one level to the story, and the deeper issues have serious implications for anyone interested in clean energy’s future in America. In a nutshell, the fact that European companies are lining up to collect stimulus money is indicative of something bigger: the American clean energy sector is not in great shape. There are only two major U.S.-owned manufacturers of wind turbines (GE Energy and Clipper Wind), and they produced less than half of the turbines installed last year. Even less this year.

The biggest developer of wind farms is still NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light, but the Spanish firm Iberdrola is second. Foreign companies riddle the rest of the top ten. (Fascinating charts showing market share can be found on pages 14 and 15 of the American Wind Energy Association’s 2008 annual report.) Since the economic crisis of last fall, U.S. companies have pulled back their investment and foreign companies have charged ahead.

So, how did we get here?

It’s not a secret. Once upon a time, American innovators invented the modern turbine. After a brief moment of patriotic pride in the accomplishment, we mostly abandoned it until recently when we decided wind should be a bigger part of the renewable energy mix. Even in those brief periods when Americans did support wind, we loved other energy forms more (here’s a great chart illustrating federal incentives for various energy sources through 2003).

Numerous attempts to get wind going were made through the 1980s and 1990s, and numerous American wind companies stumbled and fell. Meanwhile, European countries were subsidizing their wind industries and pouring money into their technology development.

It is not a coincidence that the No. 1 supplier of wind turbines globally (and largest foreign supplier in the United States) is Denmark-based Vestas. Denmark set ambitious goals for their wind industry and backed them.

Other European countries did the same, and now Asia and China are following suit, pumping money into their industry and watching as they spring from nothing to major players. Indian companies have been selling turbines in the U.S. for several years now, and minutes before our report was released on Thursday, the first major deal to bring Chinese-built turbines to the U.S. was announced.

Does it matter that we have to rely on foreign companies to build our wind power?

Several people I spoke to about this story -– analysts and other journalists -– have made a comparison to the auto industry. One person asked me, “Is a Honda Odyssey manufactured in Lincoln, Alabama, a Japanese car?”

On the one hand, we live in a global economy where international borders are increasingly meaningless. Money knows no borders and so much of our economic system is based on international trade and manufacturing. And when it comes to many of the leaders in wind energy (Denmark, Spain, etc.), we don’t face the sort of geopolitical issues like we do with oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Nobody worries about an addiction to Danish wind technology.

And in the midst of the worst recession in decades, a job is a job. Micheline Maynard’s new book argues that in many cases, it does not matter who owns the company, because it is the jobs we need.

An industry analyst I interviewed asked me why, if you’re talking about creating direct economic benefit — jobs and investment, here and now -– would you care if a turbine plant in Iowa is Spanish owned?

“The only thing that goes back to Spain is the corporate profits,” he said.

Well, the corporate profits and the fact that Americans are dependent on foreign technology, of course.

With the Senate beginning to debate a comprehensive climate and energy bill, President Obama has begun speaking out, very explicitly, on the need for the United States to assert its dominance in the clean energy sector -– i.e. to control the profits and the technology.

One week ago today, speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama challenged the nation to be the clean energy leader:

“Countries on every corner of this Earth now recognize that energy supplies are growing scarcer, energy demands are growing larger, and rising energy use imperils the planet we will leave to future generations.

And that’s why the world is now engaged in a peaceful competition to determine the technologies that will power the 21st century. From China to India, from Japan to Germany, nations everywhere are racing to develop new ways to producing and use energy. The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy.

I am convinced of that. And I want America to be that nation. It’s that simple.”

If a comprehensive climate and energy bill passes with a requirement that 15 to 20 percent of our energy should come from renewables by 2020 or 2030 (as various drafts circulating Congress currently do), we’re going to be buying a lot of turbines. So, it seemed to us at the Workshop that now would be a good time to talk about who we’ll be buying them from.

View the full report on the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s Web site. You’ll also find charts, an interactive map of wind farms currently under construction and audio of administration officials describing how recipients can use their stimulus funds. The Workshop is a non-profit investigative journalism organization, based at the American University’s School of Communication. It’s mission is to provide high-quality investigative journalism reports and make the results available to the public and other news organizations to use.

When it comes to the debate over climate and energy legislation, there are those in Congress and business for whom any bill will always be too much, and there are lawmakers and environmental groups for whom no bill will ever be tough enough. In between the two extremes, there are the middle paths, variously labeled as “centrist,” “moderate,” or “compromise” alternatives. Some of these are more viable than others, some are well-defined proposals, and some are just talking points being pushed by coalitions of like-minded senators who want a hand in shaping a final bill.

How do you get 60 senators to agree on a single ice cream order?SeRVe61 via FlickrIn reality, most of them are just variations on the larger theme. 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. But at this particularly unfair ice cream parlor, the kids all have to share the same helping, begging the question: Is there one flavor that can please at least 60 senators and get the backing of the House?

Handicapping the various approaches in the Senate isn’t easy. Honestly, no single proposal has a chance of winding up as the final favorite. It’s more likely the final climate and energy bill will be a mix of flavors, more sundae than ice cream cone.

The thing about ice-cream sundaes is that they’re rarely good when crafted by committee. Once the Senate is done ordering, will we wind up with a pleasing dessert or a sticky mess? It all depends on how strong your stomach is.

Coal Ice Cream

There’s a strong bloc of coal-state senators who have already made their feelings clear: They want giveaways for coal. There was a similar movement in the House, and as a result its Waxman-Markey bill ended up with a strong coal flavor. The problem with adding coal to the mix is that for a lot of other lawmakers, it ruins the climate bill. If a good, pure climate bill is a scoop of vanilla, the plan to include incentives for greenhouse gas–emitting utilities (and exceptions for coal mines) is the equivalent of adding a big dollop of coffee ice cream. It has a distinct flavor, and any amount of it tinges anything it melts into.

Unfortunately for coal haters, this flavor is likely to be dropped in the middle of our sundae … highly likely. It happened with Waxman-Markey, and for the predictable reasons (like the big coal lobby, inclusion of powerful coal-state Dems in the middle of the process, etc.) it’s going to happen again.

Cantwell & Jerry’s

A proposal from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) offers a different take on cap-and-trade. Written from the left of Kerry-Boxer and just 32-pages long, it’s a pint-sized piece of legislation [PDF] that turns the cap-and-trade equation on its head (it doesn’t bother with a complicated trading system — it starts at the top where the carbon enters the system and caps it there). Unlike Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer, both of which would give away substantial portions of any carbon credits, Cantwell’s proposal requires that 100 percent of the credits be purchased by the industries that need them, making it a proposal that only a true liberal could love.

Cantwell’s plan would push the flavor of the sundae away from coffee (er, coal) to something more natural tasting. But like a good Ben and Jerry’s flavor, as well intentioned as the folks behind it are, it’s going to be a niche flavor. There are some good arguments that it would make the cap-and-trade process smoother — limiting carbon by focusing on energy inputs, rather than emissions — and some of that may be reflected in the final bill. But it’s just not appealing to enough people to ever be the No. 1 brand.

Alexander’s Space Ice Cream

Most on the right side of the Senate would rather not see a climate and energy bill at all — many still won’t admit there’s either a climate problem or an energy problem that can’t be solved with coal. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), however, has been quite active in promoting a plan for expanding nuclear power. Not so long ago, it was thought Alexander might actually come to the table with some kind of serious proposal, but lately, he’s seemed more interested in taking the wind out of the clean-energy movement.

His proposal to build 100 nuclear plants in the next 20 years seems kind of grandiose (there are only 104 commercial nuclear plants operating in the country now, and not one has been brought online since 1996), bordering on disingenuous. Alexander’s “concern” about non-nuclear energy sources is how much space they take up — wind energy, for example, apparently leads to energy sprawl, and that poses a threat to his beloved Great Smoky Mountains (good thing all those upwind coal plants aren’t a threat …).

Yes, Alexander does have a point that nuclear energy is a low-carbon solution, but it’s hardly without environmental concerns. Between his sales pitch for nuclear as a space-saver and it’s kind-of-creepy, decidedly unnatural downsides, it’s only fitting that Alexander would be asking for a big scoop of that dehydrated horror — space ice cream. And as much as many environmentalists hate it, there will probably be some of the freeze-dried nuclear flavoring dumped on top of whatever climate and energy bill ekes into the law books. It won’t be the 100 nuclear plants that Alexander is calling for, though… for the same reasons we don’t make ice cream sundaes out of space ice cream — it’s too unnatural and too creepy for too many people.

Lieberman’s Neapolitan

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) was the original cap-and-trade guy, back when he was a moderate with cred on both sides of the aisle. Rumor has it he’s back at it again, trying to tie together the coal-state Dems and the nuclear-loving moderate conservatives.

But Lieberman’s flavor is kind of like Neapolitan ice cream — OK in theory, but who wants something that isn’t really vanilla, isn’t really chocolate, and isn’t really strawberry? (Coincidentally, it apparently freeze-dries into space ice cream very well.) Maybe 30 years ago, the Senate was the kind of place where that “little bit for everyone in the same plastic tub” mentality prevailed, but today the upper house is a highly partisan place.

Kerry-Graham Parfait

What’s most likely to happen with Lieberman’s proposal is it will provide an opening for the nuclear folks to push for a strong nuclear title. In fact, it’s already happening — Senate Dems who want a deal on climate so badly are already doing just that. Lieberman has been instrumental in getting Kerry to sit down with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-N.C.), a Republican who says he doesn’t want to be the party of “angry white men” (and even suggested angry men should leave a town hall meeting if they didn’t like him paling around with Kerry).

Graham and Kerry’s joint proposal calls for expanded use of natural gas and nuclear, offshore drilling, and protections for U.S. industry faced with competing against less-carbon-concerned foreign competitors. But for every voice hailing the joint offering as an answer, there are two furious voices complaining. And let’s not forget, Graham isn’t endorsing the current draft legislation — in fact, he’s quite openly trying to replace the cap-and-trade that’s already been written (or to use his words at 1:29, “make sure it’s dead.”)

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A Sticky Mess?

The climate bill will change from what we first knew as the Kerry-Boxer bill. On Oct. 27, when hearings on the bill are scheduled to start, it may very literally be like standing in line at the ice cream parlor with 100 school kids — some screaming exuberantly, others having a temper tantrum, and more than a few crying because their scoop fell on the floor. The rest of us aren’t getting any ice cream until they’ve all been placated.

Oh, and by the way: After you convince your school-bus load of senators to dig into the compromise sundae, you’ve got to figure out how to get at least 218 House members on board too. A razor-thin majority of representatives ate at the same ice cream parlor earlier this year, and not many left with a good taste in their mouths.

There are some who are just desperate to get any climate bill at all — they may be willing to stomach whatever pile of melting ice cream is plopped in their bowl by these unruly kids. Of course, there are also those who have checked out and want no part of the process.

As the climate bill meanders its way through the Senate over the next month or so, all sides will need to stop hoping for a bill that meets every one of their criteria. Reaching a compromise, as the debate over health care reform is already showing, will come down to a key question: How much are the Democrats willing to give away in order to secure one or two votes from the other side of the aisle? Or, more simply: how badly do they really want ice cream?

Be forewarned that even CEJAPA’s biggest supporters say that much about the Senate bill will change. The first markup on Boxer’s Environment and Public Works committee is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 15. Until then, here’s how the two climate bills stack up against each other, and against some of the other climate and energy bills percolating in the Senate.

Emission cuts

•    Waxman-Markey: ACES would put a cap on greenhouse gases and require industries that emit high amounts of greenhouse gases to reduce their output. Using the 2005 emission levels as a baseline, ACES would cut emissions by 3 percent in 2012, 17 percent in 2020, 42 percent in 2030, and 83 percent by 2050.

•    Boxer-Kerry: CEJAPA would start by requiring a similar 3 percent cut in emissions by 2012, but it would require a sharper cut of 20 percent by 2020. Otherwise, the CEJAPA emission cuts are the same as those written up in ACES.

Emission permits
•    Waxman-Markey: ACES would require regulated industries to acquire permits (also called carbon credits or pollution allowances) for their emissions. At first, a large percentage of permits would be given out to affected industries and to other groups with a stake in the game. But eventually a fairly lively carbon-trading market is supposed to develop. This new carbon market would allow companies to purchase extra credits or bank and borrow credits. A company would also be allowed to sell their excess credits if they’re able to limit their emissions more than they’re required to. There would be a minimum price of $10 per unit for each carbon credit, starting in 2012. Government regulators would establish a maximum price of no more than 60 percent above a rolling average. If the concept sounds complicated and not terribly certain, many inside the industries that would be regulated tend to agree.

•    Boxer-Kerry: CEJAPA would try to create a similar system with the use of tradable credits. As with ACES the market for carbon credit trading would be fairly open — to a point. A key difference between the two proposals is the Senate bill’s attempt to manage any carbon market volatility that could hurt emitters struggling to control costs. While the Waxman-Markey version doesn’t offer any real limits on the maximum cost for a credit, CEJAPA would set a ceiling price (what Boxer calls a “soft collar”) of $28, adjusted for inflation. Once that market price is hit, federal regulators would have reserves of permits they could release into the market to try and control the cost.

Who gets the permits and money
•    Waxman-Markey: Some permits will be given away to various affected industries and others to groups that can help manage the cost of these changes for consumers. ACES has a fairly detailed description of how the give-aways will be handed out. For example, 15 percent will go to energy-intensive industries and 30 percent to local electricity distribution companies to help them keep the cost to consumers low. Some industries, like the auto industry, would get a share of the credits to develop a specific clean technology. Other groups would get credits to help fund transmission and efficiency projects.
In the first years of the cap-and-trade program, the federal government would sell 15 percent of the permits, and ACES has a fairly well fleshed out explanation of who will benefit from the proceeds of those sales. A big chunk of the revenue would go to help soften the blow of increased energy costs to low and moderate income households. Smaller percentages would be distributed to combat international deforestation, research advanced-clean energy, and help our country and others adapt and transition to a less carbon-dependent world.

•    Boxer-Kerry: How CEJAPA would divvy up the giveaways and the proceeds from the sale of the remaining permits is still unknown — it’s an area of the legislation with a lot of placeholders. In coming weeks the blanks will start to be filled in, but the hope is that by leaving the numbers blank for now, it gives lawmakers the flexibility to get industry backing by negotiating with major stakeholders. That said, one of the few firm numbers that is already written into CEJAPA is a provision to spend 25 percent of the revenues on federal deficit reduction — a dramatic increase from the roughly 8 percent ear-marked in ACES. Boxer began to fill in the details in an interview that aired on Sunday, Oct. 4, where she announced that up to 70 percent of the giveaways will go to making it easier for consumers to pay.

Offsets
•    Waxman-Markey:  One way carbon emitters can deal with tough carbon caps is to buy into offsets. Basically, if you emit three tons of carbon too many, exceeding the limit, you’d be able to compensate by planting enough trees to absorb those three tons (or at least some of it.) Waxman-Markey had fairly well outlined explanations for the tradeoffs — listing certain types of offsetting activities (at home and abroad) and naming the EPA as the adjudicator of what qualifies as a good offset and whether it’s being used.
•    Boxer-Kerry: Also includes an opportunity for carbon emitters to invest in offsets to help meet caps, but offers much less precise instructions as to what qualifies as an offset. What it does offer, in more precise terms, are the tools to scrutinize what will and won’t eventually qualify as an offset.

Renewable electricity standard
•    Waxman-Markey: ACES creates a renewable electricity standard (RES) that would require that an increasing percentage of the nation’s electricity come from renewable sources — as much as 20 percent by the year 2020. One major caveat was that as much as 5 percent could actually be accounted for by improvements in energy efficiencies.

•    Boxer-Kerry: CEJAPA offers no federal renewable energy standard. There is, however, a provision to empower the EPA to give grants and other assistance in an effort to help various states meet their own renewable energy standard. The legislation also includes a separate grant program for bio-fuels and gives the EPA the power to set a national energy efficiency building code standard and assistance in retro-fitting older buildings to meet newer efficiency code standards. It is important to note that in most cases where CEJAPA omits key energy areas, the missing pieces can be found in the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA). This bill was written by the Senate’s Energy Committee in June, as the “energy” portion to CEJAPA’s “climate.” The ACELA draft proposes a 15 percent renewable energy standard, and allows 4 percent of that to come from energy efficiency savings.

Getting off carbon

•    Waxman-Markey: ACES is a true climate and energy bill, so it does include ample money for investment in renewable energy — as much as $190 billion by 2025. This counts investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and a number of technologies that do not make environmentalists happy, but do make coal state Dems smile, like, $60 billion in so-called “clean coal” research money.

•    Boxer-Kerry: At this point, CEJAPA is just the “climate” side of things, so it is thin on investments in new technology. That doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Its mate ACELA, the “energy” half of the equation, would create a clean energy investment fund, specifically for investing in new clean energies. That said, the provisions already penciled into CEJAPA that do deal with technology don’t particularly favor either clean/renewable energy, or coal — they offer some helping hands to three other energy sources — nuclear, natural gas, and biofuels — that boosters all felt were left out of ACES. Natural gas in particular gets a boost from CEJAPA, which would establish an incentive to help convince big coal burners to switch to natural gas, which emits about half the CO2 of coal. It’s significant that there is a nuclear title at all in CEJAPA. ACES didn’t bother with nuclear even though many conservatives like to think of nuclear as the ultimate clean energy. Obviously, this is a bone of contention, but it’s one that CEJAPA apparently is willing to deal with.

Cleaner rides

•    Waxman-Markey: Even before the Cash for Clunkers program struck such a chord this summer, the House passed a version of ACES that would provide one million vouchers to help consumers trade in older, less fuel efficient vehicles. The bill also had provisions to help support electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids — and the improvements to our transmission grid needed to support an expanded use of electric cars.

•    Boxer-Kerry: The Boxer-Kerry draft includes provisions to push states and municipalities into looking at how to plan for mass-transit and more carbon-friendly transit — think building trails and sidewalks to encourage bikers and pedestrians, and even plans for telecommuting. So does ACES, but with less emphatic language. CEJAPA requires using the money from credit auctions to support green transit planning, while ACES just allows it. CEJAPA also takes an interest in cleaning up taxis, a major source of carbon in metro areas that some more pro-active cities are already trying to tackle. CEJAPA wants stricter emissions standards for cabs than for other cars.

And who can blame them? Like health-care reform — and bad teenage slasher movies — the whole climate and energy debate seems to be moving very slowly down a well-trodden path toward a bloody ending.

Slasher flicks? See, big political debates in Congress, like your typical horror movie, teach us that those who linger when being pursued, whether by Republican senators or knife-wielding madmen, are targeted and picked off one by one.

Health-care reform started to stumble mid-summer as it became apparent that the House and Senate leaderships weren’t on the same page … and that nobody was listening to President Obama. When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) started acknowledging that a big breakthrough was needed, the White House did its best to pretend nothing was awry. The result: The few GOP moderates in the Senate (and a good number of centrist Democrats) were chased away from embracing any health plan.

The climate and energy debate may have gotten off to a stronger start, with a bill passing in the House in June after a tough fight. But then … it got put on the backburner. The House struggle didn’t thrill liberals or conservatives, and it left those in the middle uneasy. The result this month was Reid once again talking down the need to rush the climate issue, forcing President Obama to assure increasingly skeptical foreign partners that the U.S. Senate was capable of getting something done.

Maybe something will get done — Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, has promised a draft of a climate bill by Sept. 30, for real this time. But Boxer’s draft will be just the beginning. A Senate bill will be dragged through four more committees that can claim some form of jurisdiction. Each committee is its own collection of wandering interests that need to be corralled. Whether that happens may depend on how capable, or interested, each committee chair is, increasing the chances that the bill will get caught in the crossfire of a senatorial turf war.

Senator Barbara Boxer means business on climate … right?Boxer has a long history of strong support for environmental issues, and she’s at least nominally leading the charge with the release of her draft. She’ll have the support of another reliably liberal senator, John Kerry (D-Mass.), who will co-write her draft as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. But Boxer won’t be able to route the bill around Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) — the next most senior member of the EPW Committee and the chairman of the powerful Finance Committee, who apparently wants the naming rights.

Followers of health-care reform will recall that Baucus styled himself a bipartisan broker, convening meetings of the “Gang of Six” — moderate Finance Committee members from both sides of the aisle. Baucus also believes his committee should take the lead on discussions of how to finance cap-and-trade. His ability to wrest that control out of Boxer’s hands was based on the premise that pulling together a bipartisan health-care reform bill would boost his stock across the board. That didn’t happen.

If the senatorial turf war can be avoided — or settled relatively bloodlessly — Baucus will still be expected to wrangle a group of diverse and moderate Democrats on his own committee. Baucus himself is known as a moderate. His home state has huge coal reserves, and he’s hardly proven himself a reliable backer of environmental interests, much less a reliable Democrat. The common view is that having to cater to a group of moderate Democrats who aren’t firmly on board will force Baucus to craft a weak climate and energy bill. But will even a watered-down bill find centrist champions?

The climate and energy bill isn’t health-care reform. Almost all Democrats, and even some Republicans, want to talk about health care. On the climate and energy front, however, there is nothing resembling that kind of common ground. In fact, members of Baucus’ own committee — Democrats! — are openly taking shots at the legislation.

Support for health-care reform isn’t limited by geography — the uninsured and underinsured are found all over the country. Climate and energy hinges on much more regional concerns over the potential loss of manufacturing jobs and economic ties to coal and oil — emotional and touchy subjects for some of the members of Baucus’ committee.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) recently questioned whether combining climate and energy would be “too big of a lift” and told reporters that she saw “the cap-and-trade being a real problem.” Lincoln has praised a standalone energy bill drafted earlier this year as potentially “a great vehicle and bridge to get us where we need to be.” As the chair of the Agriculture Committee (where there will likely be interest in lowering the profile of wind and boosting ethanol’s part in the energy equation), Lincoln could do as much to weaken the bill as Baucus and his fellow Finance Committee moderates.

Three other moderate Democrats on Finance — Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad (both of North Dakota) — have openly questioned cap-and-trade as well. If you consider the reservations that prominent coal-state Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) might bring to the table, Baucus’ panel begins to look like a tough crowd. If Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow (D) wavers under pressure from industry and labor groups worried about cap-and-trade costing more manufacturing jobs, six of 13 Finance Committee Democrats are gone.

Of course, compromise will be essential to getting any bill through the Senate. But if Baucus steers a climate and energy bill too far to the center, it raises the specter of a revolt from the left — just like talk of dropping the public option did in the health-care debate. What becomes of Baucus’ health-care work remains to be seen, but his efforts so far have infuriated certain factions on the left end of the spectrum, which may affect their willingness to indulge a more moderate, Baucus-backed climate and energy bill.

In the meantime, supporters of a climate bill are wasting time, turning the advantage increasingly to the corporate and political interests opposed to capping carbon emissions. With so many moderate Democrats sitting on the important committees, opponents know they can kill a robust climate bill by picking off just a few senators from the majority party. The coalition of carbon interests that is spending tens of millions lobbying Congress may well turn the old slasher-flick ending on its head — in other words, a few surviving heroes won’t ultimately vanquish the knife-wielding killer; it will be the killer who prevails.