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...the Republican-controlled Congress: Bills on energy and climate change (unless they used those words as cover for fossil fuel extraction or oil drilling) became trapped in the legislative logjam.
But something altogether different is afoot in the 110th Congress. With Democratic control, a flood of new energy and climate legislation has been unleashed, and some of it has at least reasonable prospects for passage. And congressional hearings are uncovering information that was long kept secret. Sunlight, they say, is the best disinfectant.
"So much is going on," says Julia Bovey, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "There has been a backlog of questions concerning how the Bush administration and federal agencies under his watch have been treating the environment. Now, with new leadership, they want answers."
While clean energy advocates for groups like NRDC, Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club swarm Capitol Hill and try to influence legislators, the rest of us may be having trouble keeping score as new bills are being introduced almost daily, and all of them claim to be the key to cutting fossil fuel dependence and effectively reducing emissions (either because they're hard hitting or, conversely, weak enough to win passage).
LOTS OF LEGISLATION
Probably the strongest bill currently pending is the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (S.3698) in the Senate, now known as Sanders-Boxer. (It was initially sponsored by Barbara Boxer [D-CA] and James Jeffords [I-VT], but since Jeffords' retirement new Senator Bernie Sanders [I-VT] has adopted it.)
Implementing Sanders-Boxer would require drastic reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, capping them at 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The House has a similar bill, the Safe Climate Act (H.R. 5642) sponsored by Henry Waxman (D-CA). It would also cap CO2 at 80 percent of 1990 levels.
Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced a bill, the Global Warming Reduction Act of 2006 (S. 4039) with language slightly more palatable to industry capping emissions at 65 percent of 2000 levels by 2050. And there are at least three other less-inclusive bills pending that address global warming, introduced by Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), Representatives Wayne Gilchrest (RMD) and John Olver (D-MA), and Representatives Mark Udall (D-CO) and Tom Petri (RWI).
The best-known bill, the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act (S. 1151) was introduced by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT). The original McCain-Lieberman bill was regarded as a halfway measure by many environmental groups because it only required capping emissions at 2000 levels by 2100. A reintroduced bill in the current Congress has stronger caps: It requires that emissions be reduced to 2004 levels by 2012, 1990 levels by 2020, and 60 percent below 1990 by 2050. But even this bill contains large subsidies for the nuclear power industry. "That's a deal breaker for us," says NRDC's Bovey. "We completely disagree that we need nuclear power to meet our global warming targets--we have biofuels, wind and solar. Nuclear is already over-subsidized, and they haven't solved the waste and safety issues."
In an interview, Senator Lieberman said his bill has the most bipartisan support of the "economy-based" climate bills, but he declined to predict which bill would be approved....
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