Federal Agencies Roll Out Greenhouse Gas Regulations, Initiatives

The 1990s was a lost decade on the climate change issue in the U.S., mostly thanks to the hidebound U.S. Senate.  In 1993 it defeated President Clinton’s BTU tax proposal, in 1997 it repudiated the Kyoto Protocol (which at that time still technically was only a draft, not a final accord) with its 95-0 vote in favor of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, and in 1998 it defeated  “America’s Climate Security Act of 2007,” also known as the Lieberman-Warner bill. 

EPA Administrator Carol Browner, in choosing to be MIA, also served as an obstacle, albeit a quiet and passive one.  So President Clinton and Vice President Gore essentially limited the administration’s remaining climate change efforts to signing up corporate partners to its voluntary Climate Change Action Plan, supporting research, and launching an earnest but low-level public awareness effort that made a point to avoid the media, in which this writer participated.  Of course, the U.S. and the world community then lost another precious eight years under Dubyah and his administration, no need to elaborate. 

Today, 16 years after the U.S. Government should have started mobilizing the country to address global warming, we finally have a White House, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and a Department of Energy (DOE) moving forward with meaningful measures to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. 

Republicans Sneer, Democrats Fidget, Copenhagen Looms

Three cheers for Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry.  In September they introduced S. 1733, “The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” the Senate’s legislative vehicle to realize President Obama’s climate change ambitions, and on November 5 it passed Boxer’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  So much for the good news. 

The 959-page bill passed the Democratic wing of the committee by 11-1, with Democrat and Finance Committee chair Max Baucus opposing and Republicans unanimously boycotting.  Baucus is not the only Democrat loath to address global warming, and in the U.S. Senate, with its labyrinth of arcane rules and procedures, having just a tiny handful of your own party’s members opposed while the other party is united against can signify imminent defeat. 

It’s the same woebegone domestic politics bedeviling the climate change issue as before, with Democrats fearful and divided about responding and Republicans united in their intransigence.  President Obama’s original game plan – to have a robust, new climate change law in hand to show global climate negotiators at Copenhagen that the U.S. finally means business – is looking like yesterday’s news and today’s fish wrap.

Obama's Climate Change Bill: Don't Look Next If You're Squeamish

As you might recall, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), better known as President Obama’s climate change bill, on Friday night, June 29.  The bill squeaked by on a 219-212 party-line vote, with the opposition including 44 Democrats and all but eight Republicans. Supporters hailed the bill’s passage in the House as a historic achievement and a tribute to the uncanny political skills of Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the bill’s authors Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA).

The Senate will take up the Waxman-Markey bill sometime in fall, probably in conjunction with Senator Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) less ambitious American Clean Energy Leadership Act, a mixed bag of something for everyone, including fossil fuel and nuclear energy proponents, which passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on June 17.

However, if you’re looking for climate change legislation that boldly whips the nation forward by aggressively curbing our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, don’t look here.