legislation

While industrial agriculture fouls the Mississippi, the EPA cowers in the corner

Industrial agriculture thrives on its ability to skulk away from — or, to use economist’s argot, "externalize" — the costs of its considerable ecological messes. Often, it does so with the tacit approval of the federal government, in direct violation of federal law. In Iowa, for example, the state’s 2,100 CAFOs (confined-animal feedlot operations) regularly […]

Take action on the energy bill

... go here and sign the petition. As we've seen, the bill is hanging by thread with a threatened presidential veto and partisan squabbling in the Senate. Still, if Bush is going to threaten a veto, best to actually make him do so, and force the key issues, fuel economy standards and a renewable portfolio standard, into the public eye and hopefully the presidential campaign.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

A detailed breakdown of the differences from earlier drafts

Here’s a document from the Senate offices of Lieberman and Warner, forwarded along by multiple folks top-secret sources. It shows the differences between the August draft version of their bill and the version that will be released tomorrow. I pass it along for your edification. (You’ll see that the improvements in allocation were somewhat more […]

Consensus Senate climate bill will largely retain original weaknesses

Over at E&E Darren Samuelsohn has the goods (sub. rqd.) on changes to the Lieberman-Warner bill to be introduced tomorrow: Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) have made two major changes to global warming legislation they plan to introduce tomorrow, including tighter caps on heat-trapping emissions in 2020 and fewer free credits for […]

Lieberman-Warner bill to be introduced tomorrow; green groups fight over strategy

The Lieberman-Warner climate bill will likely be introduced tomorrow and — given its status as the consensus bill and the most likely to pass — the green world is on the edge of its seat. The draft (PDF) that was released in August fell short in a few key respects: the short-term targets were too […]

Big Green savages Dingell’s carbon tax

"Man always kills the thing he loves," wrote naturalist Aldo Leopold in the environmentalist bible, A Sand County Almanac. Leopold was referring to Americans' destruction of the wilderness, but he could have been describing the green establishment's hostile reaction to the "hybrid carbon tax" proposed by Michigan Rep. John Dingell last month.

Dingell's tax package, combining a carbon-busting tax on fossil fuels, a surtax on gasoline and jet fuel, and a phase-out of subsidies for sprawl homes, should have been greeted by environmentalists like the Second Coming. Extrapolated to 2025, the carbon tax alone would cut annual CO2 emissions by 1.3 billion metric tons (a sixth of current emissions) and curb U.S. oil usage by 2.8 millions barrels a day (mbd). With Dingell's petrol surcharge, the savings swell to nearly 1.6 billion metric tons of CO2 and 4.5 mbd, more than the entire oil output of Iran.

Further savings would come from abolishing the tax-deductibility of mortgage interest on houses larger than 4,200 square feet, a loophole that has underwritten millions of McMansions on America's SUV-crazed exurban fringe. (Smaller houses down to 3,000 square feet would also lose some deductions, on a sliding scale.) Taken as a whole, Dingell's proposal would be a giant step toward what Friends of the Earth terms "decarbonizing the tax code." It would also embody the cardinal sustainability precept that keeps Europe's carbon footprint at half of ours: energy prices must tell the truth, even if it requires taxing fuels.

Alas, with the lone exception of FoE, leading Big Green groups have gone after Dingell's proposed bill like a clear-cutter on crank.

The CAFE standards vs. carbon tax debate is more complicated than we imagine

One of the most frustrating aspects of the climate debate has to be the fact that just about every informed pundit, across the ideological spectrum, agrees that a carbon tax would be an outstanding way to reduce carbon emissions — and yet no one considers such a tax politically feasible. One might suggest that if […]

Can the House and the Senate agree on energy legislation?

The prospects for a successful reconciling of the House and Senate energy bills remain as iffy today as they were last month. How sad such failure would be at a time of record oil prices and a growing consensus of the need for urgent action on climate change.

The big obstacle right now is that Senate Republicans oppose a House-Senate conference. E&E News (subs. reqd.) reports:

"It looks like Senate Republicans are not going to agree to a conference, so we will probably see the same process on this bill that we saw with several other pieces of legislation this year," [Henry] Waxman [D-Calif.] told reporters after the meeting.

What is this alternative process?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) intends to reconcile the House and Senate energy bills without convening a formal conference committee.

Even this approach is no guarantee of success, as many roadblocks remain in Congress and the White House:

Two insiders say climate legislation unlikely while Bush is president

I think this Reuters article is password protected [Update: here’s a free version], but the gist is that two fairly knowledgeable sources — Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chair of the Senate Energy Committee, and Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch — said last week that climate legislation is highly unlikely to be passed in this […]