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TOPIC: "Climate Bill Cheat Sheet" (Kate Sheppard, MotherJones.com, 5/12/10)


Diamond

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"Climate Bill Cheat Sheet" (Kate Sheppard, MotherJones.com, 5/12/10)
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Read @ MotherJones.com

Climate Bill Cheat Sheet

After six months of grueling negotiations, John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on Wednesday unveiled a 987-page draft of climate and energy legislation that they believe can win the support of 60 senators. "We are closer than we've ever been to a breakthrough," said Kerry at the bill's release. Notably absent, however, was their onetime Republican co-author, Lindsey Graham (SC), who walked away from the effort amid partisan wrangling over the legislative calendar. So, after all the delays and setbacks and suspense, what's in the bill?

The draft is a complex attempt to balance competing demands. In a nod to environmentalists, it imposes some new restrictions on offshore drilling. And it retains the same key targets included in the House bill that passed last June: a 17 percent reduction of carbon emissions by 2020 and an 83 percent reduction by 2050. But in a move to please polluters, it establishes a slower phase-in of carbon regulations for many of the country's biggest emitters. Utilities will be subject to carbon restrictions beginning in 2013, followed by manufacturers and other heavy emitters starting in 2016. The legislation also lavishes major financial incentives on coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.

Other key provisions, many demanded by industrial-state or moderate Democrats, include:

  • Heavy emitters that are especially energy intensive or vulnerable to international trade will also receive a significant number of free allowances to help them adjust to the carbon limits.
  • A so-called border adjustment—a tax on imports from countries that haven't imposed restrictions on greenhouse gases.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency would no longer have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.
  • States would lose the ability to set their own carbon limits.
  • A firm "price collar"—an upper and lower limit on the price of carbon, which is intended to keep the market stable. The price of carbon permits will be set at a minimum of $12 per ton (increasing at 3 percent over inflation each year) and a maximum of $25 per ton (increasing at 5 percent over inflation annually).
  • Two-thirds of revenues generated by the sale of permits would be returned to consumers, either through direct rebates or in allocations to local distribution companies. Kerry promised Wednesday that the impact of the bill on consumers would be "very, very minimal."
  • $54 billion in loan guarantees for up to 12 new nuclear reactors.
  • Free allowances for coal-fired power plants to help them cover the expense of developing technoology to capture and store carbon emissions. New coal plants permitted between 2009 and 2019 will be required to cut emissions by at least 50 percent; plants permitted in 2020 and beyond will be required to reduce emissions by at least 65 percent.

Kerry and Lieberman attempted to quell some of the outrage over offshore drilling by allowing states to opt out of lease sales off their coasts and veto drilling in neighboring states if it's determined that a spill could harm their environment or economy. But the draft measure also includes revenue-sharing for states that allow drilling off their shores—which opponents believe provides an incentive for states to greenlight more drilling.

Continues @ MotherJones.com
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Still digesting it all..

__________________
Democracy needs defending - SOS Hillary Clinton, Sept 8, 2010
Democracy is more than just elections - SOS Hillary Clinton, Oct 28, 2010

Madam Secretary Blog at ForeignPolicy.com
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Diamond

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Read @ WashingtonPost.com

Sens. Kerry and Lieberman introduce compromise climate bill

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2010

 

Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced a compromise climate bill Wednesday, hoping public concern about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will boost the measure's long-shot chances for passage.

While the legislation is different from the House-passed climate bill in several respects -- it seeks carbon reductions from separate sectors of the economy rather than imposing a nationwide limit, and it provides more incentives for new nuclear power and offshore oil drilling -- it still faces a steep hill in attracting the 60 votes needed for passage.

"There are those who will say this is the wrong political season," Kerry said at a news conference, surrounded by business and environmental leaders. "But we're here today because we believe good policy is also good politics."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that he and other Republicans will fight the legislation. "Whatever its intentions, this bill is little more than a job-killing national energy tax," he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has made it clear that the climate bill needs to be within striking distance of the required votes before he will bring it up to the floor.

The one GOP senator who helped craft the proposal, South Carolina's Lindsey O. Graham, abandoned the effort last month. He said last week that the bill has a diminished chance of passing, in part because of Senate Democrats' desire to pass immigration reform this year.

The measure would provide financial incentives for a range of energy producers, including regulatory risk insurance for 12 new nuclear plants, $54 billion in loan guarantees, $2 billion a year for coal technologies that can capture and store greenhouse gas emissions, and $7 billion a year to improve the nation's transportation infrastructure and efficiency.

It aims to encourage offshore oil drilling but also imposes significant checks on the activity by giving states the right to veto oil drilling off the shores of a neighboring state and opt out of drilling that would occur in waters within 75 miles of their own shores. It requires an Interior Department study to determine which states could be economically and environmentally affected by a spill, and those states would be able to block drilling by passing legislation. The states that go ahead with drilling would retain 37 percent of the federal royalties raised as a result.

Continues @ WashingtonPost.com


------------------------------
Read @ Time.com

Kerry, Lieberman Unveil Climate Bill

Posted by Jay Newton-Small Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 5:07 pm

What is it about Senator Lindsey Graham that brings out the Mr. Smith in the most inveterate politicians? First, Chuck Schumer unveils their working draft of immigration legislation in the vain hope that by making a good faith, bipartisan bid some other Republicans might sign on; the response has not been deafening. Now Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman are pushing ahead with climate change legislation, even though Graham last week said that it's “impossible” to pass such a bill in this climate. “There are those that would say that this is the wrong time,” Kerry said in unveiling the 1,000-page bill this afternoon. “This is a vote for policy over politics.”

Kerry went on to note that other big bills such as health care reform and financial regulatory reform were, at given times in the past 12 months, declared DOA. “But they were resurrected,” he said, “and we believe with the help of President Obama and the Democratic leaders that we can do it again.” Graham, who was absent from the press conference, was ambivilent in a press release: "I am interested in carefully reviewing the details of the new proposal."

The problem is that we are entering a season shortly where policy ceases to exist and Congress will revolve around politics: the midterm elections are less than six months away. And however noble the compromise (“I don't want to be standing before God on Judgment Day and be saying, ‘Gee the votes just weren't there,'” Joel Hunter of Northland Ministries practically preached to the packed room), there's not an incumbent on Capitol Hill who wants to be passing gas taxes right now.

At first I was baffled: why put out such an enormous bill only to see it picked apart for the next six months to a year?

Continues @ Time.com



__________________
Democracy needs defending - SOS Hillary Clinton, Sept 8, 2010
Democracy is more than just elections - SOS Hillary Clinton, Oct 28, 2010

Madam Secretary Blog at ForeignPolicy.com
Project Vote Smart - Stay informed and engaged!


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I wonder with the BP spill how the public is going to receive this proposed measure.

With the money that big oil has, there's a ton of money for the built into this bill. I understand that financial incentives are necessary, but, this much?

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Diamond

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freespirit wrote:

I wonder with the BP spill how the public is going to receive this proposed measure.

With the money that big oil has, there's a ton of money for the built into this bill. I understand that financial incentives are necessary, but, this much?


It seems to have at least temporarily dampened the Energy bill within the Congress itself, quite reflective of how people feel about the situation.  Following is a good article with good summary.

Read @ NY Magazine

Oil-Spill Fusion

The gulf disaster may derail Obama’s grand climate bargain—but there may be a radioactive way to put it back together.

Among the many appalling efforts to politicize the disaster now unfolding on the Gulf Coast, none was more grotesque than Michael Brown’s—he, apparently, is still out there somewhere, doing a heckuva job. On a pair of cable appearances last week, the much- and justly derided former fema head launched a bid to recast his public image from that of buffoonish incompetent to lunatic conspiracy theorist.

“I would not be surprised if the White House said, ‘You know, we might be able to … use this crisis to our advantage,’ ” Brownie told Fox’s Neil Cavuto. “Let this crisis get really bad, and then we will step in. We will be able to shut down offshore drilling.”

Beyond the perniciousness of Brown’s claim, what pushed it into nuthouse territory was its sheer level of dissociation from, ahem, reality. Although the Obama administration has (sensibly) put a temporary hold on new offshore-drilling projects pending an investigation of the BP spill, Obama himself has publicly reaffirmed his position that he “believe[s] that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security.” And the White House has so far done nothing to link the catastrophe either to the energy bill about to be introduced in Congress or to the president’s broader commitment to fostering a less carbon-based economy.

Indeed, this very absence of linkage is causing considerable concern among environmentalists and others on the left, who fear the Obamans may fail to seize a historic, however tragic, chance to build a public consensus for radical change. Alluding to a famous (or infamous, depending on your P.O.V.) aperçu of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the Grist.org blogger Jonathan Hiskes asked plaintively, “Whatever happened to never letting a crisis go to waste?”

It’s too early to know if such worries will prove justified or unfounded. But there’s no doubt that the politics attending energy and climate issues are fiendishly tricky, or that the spill has made them more, not less, confounding. For Obama to turn this crisis into an opportunity will require visionary leadership both political and substantive. It may also require him to more tightly embrace a cause that many liberals find tremendously discomfiting—though they really shouldn’t.

To understand why the BP spill complicates the prospects for the passage of an energy-climate bill this year, it helps to start with Obama’s recent (but now at least temporarily suspended) proposal on offshore drilling. Announced in late March, the plan was to open up huge expanses of water along the Alaskan coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic seaboard to exploration by oil and natural-gas companies for the first time in decades. (The Pacific coast and the Atlantic from New Jersey northward would have stayed off limits.) The first new lease sale, off the Virginia coast, could have happened as early as next year. The next ones, following study and approval by the Interior Department, would not have come before 2012.

Obama’s move was intended to break a logjam in the Senate on a bi-partisan piece of legislation being fashioned by Republican Lindsey Graham, Democrat John Kerry, and Whatever-the-hell-he-is Joe Lieberman. The problem boiled down to the fact that Graham stood alone in the GOP caucus in being willing to negotiate over, let alone sign on to, a bill designed to put a price on carbon and begin the shift toward alternative and cleaner fuels—unless, that is, it included a compromise that allowed more undersea drilling.

The White House’s announcement took Washington by surprise, sparking praise from some Republicans and criticism from some Democrats and a boatload of enviros. But the calculation behind the maneuver was evident enough. By loosening the drilling restrictions, the administration hoped to bring perhaps as many as half a dozen GOP senators to the table. And it reckoned that, despite all the howling, liberals would eventually go along with the grand bargain—just as they had backed down from their insistence on a public option when it came to health-care reform—to achieve the greater goal. And until the spill, there was a semi-decent chance the gambit might have worked.

But that was then and this is now. With the reality sinking in that oil might continue gushing into the gulf for months, a pair of Democratic senators, New Jersey’s Bob Menendez and Florida’s Bill Nelson, have declared their opposition to any bill that allows more drilling; Nelson went so far as to threaten a filibuster. Two key coastal GOP governors, Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger, have abandoned their prior support for the Obama compromise. Moderate Republican senator Dick Lugar is making noises that suggest he might agree.

Without the drilling provisions in the energy bill, however, its fate would appear to be dim. According to Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, any hope of passing the measure rested on three pillars: (a) new drilling and (b) new development of nuclear power in exchange for (c) putting a price on carbon emissions. “At least temporarily,” Kyl said last week, the BP spill “has knocked one of the legs of the stool off to the side, so my guess is that nothing proceeds at the moment.”

Continues @ NY Magazine



__________________
Democracy needs defending - SOS Hillary Clinton, Sept 8, 2010
Democracy is more than just elections - SOS Hillary Clinton, Oct 28, 2010

Madam Secretary Blog at ForeignPolicy.com
Project Vote Smart - Stay informed and engaged!
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