Today was a wild day of hearings on the climate bill. Every single Republican boycotted Senator Barbara Boxer's Environment & Public Works committee hearing, rejecting her olive branch offer to have an Environmental Protection Agency official testify to address their supposed concerns about inadequate EPA modeling. Next, Republicans stayed seated when German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued for urgent action on climate change. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blinked agreed to give the Republicans the time they said they needed to obtain an EPA analysis, despite Senator Boxer's defiant stance yesterday.
Then the United States Chamber of Commerce caved.
For anyone who's missed the Chamber's well-documented hatred for the idea of climate change, suffice to say that a few months ago the Chamber suggested putting climate change on a Scopes monkey trial, linking itself to creationists, James Inhofe, the Flat Earth society, and others untethered to reality. Starting in mid September, the Chamber began shrinking, losing utility companies, Apple and other technology companies, most of its members, and its credibility, leaving ordinary Americans to wonder who does the Chamber represent? (photo credit: Washington State Historical Society via Grist)
Today, the Chamber reversed itself and waved a (mostly) white flag. At the end of the half-empty hearings, a mysterious letter was handed to Boxer. The letter, now on the Chamber's website, is entitled "Climate Change -- A Different Approach."
It is time to consider a different approach.
The challenge of drafting comprehensive climate legislation is not "whether" to do something, but "how." There are many good ideas out there that can serve as a solid, workable, commonsense and realistic foundation on which to craft a bill. The Chamber commends Senators Kerry and Graham for their recent New York Times editorial on the need for comprehensive climate legislation. The Chamber welcomes the call for a new conversation on how to address the issue, and believes their editorial can serve as a solid, workable, commonsense foundation on which to craft a bill.
Before you ask: No, it's not a prank, this time.
The devil is in the details. The Chamber may want a climate bill passed, but it doesn't want one that "resemble(s) the failed climate proposals of the past, such as bills that jeopardize American jobs, create trade inequalities, leave open the Clean Air Act, open the door to CO2-based mass tort litigation, and further hamper the permitting process for clean energy." And the Senators singled out by the Chamber's letter for proposing "good ideas" are something less than progressive. I've prepared this handy pocket-sized chart to match the Senator with the "good idea":
* Alexander: "100 nuclear plants," no cap on carbons
* Barrasso: "pledges to fight cap and trade"
* Baucus: wants to weaken cap on emissions
* Bingaman: cosponsor of Mark Udall's nuclear power bill, chair of committee that passed weak renewable energy bill ACELA
* Cantwell: alternative non-cap-and-trade bill, praised by Exxon Mobil but scorned by environmentalists, has virtually no impact on carbon emissions by 2020 when scientists say it's most needed
* Dorgan: praises ACELA, opposed to cap-and-trade
* Lieberman: sees himself as a roving ambassador for...for what, exactly?
* Murkowski: open to idea of Kerry-Boxer bill, as long as nuclear power and oil drilling are expanded, leaving one to wonder how more oil drilling is supposed to reduce carbon?
* Vitter, whose website doesn't list environment as an issue and whose activities on energy seem to date to April 2009 and earlier, and likes more drilling;
* Voinovich, who has been the public face of Inhofe's efforts to slap the olive branch out of Boxer's hand.
A number of amendments were offered today. Senator Boxer is seeking to both preserve and limit the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases following the EPA's lead in regulating only large carbon emitters and not every church bake sale and donut shop in America. More on this later. Senator Carper introduced an amendment, putting a drastic cap on mercury, that I applaud. We'll be watching the amendments and the Senators.
I commend the Chamber for taking one step off Inhofe's flat-earth world and toward the reality of passing a climate bill. However, for anyone who missed my subtle use of boldface, it's pretty obvious how the Chamber wants to shape the climate bill. Update -- And to respond to some of the comments, I don't propose that we sit idly by and let the Chamber remove the cap. We have lines in the sand to draw. We have work to do, to keep the bill from being a "clean coal" porkfest.