About a year ago I posted the opinion poll in the right hand column. The question reads:
How likely do you think it will be that at least one branch of Congress will pass meaningful global warming legislation next year?
- No question about it (13%)
- Very likely, but not certain (12%)
- 50/50 (13%)
- I wouldn't put money on it (29%)
- Snowball's chance in a warming world (27%)
- Your guess is as good as mine (6%)
The percent of responses are in parentheses. Fifty-six percent of all respondents are pessimistic, but I think most of the pessimism occured in the early part of 2007. It looks like something is going to happen fairly soon.
From Grist: A Green Tug of War:
Environmental groups in Washington, D.C., are bitterly divided over which climate-change bill to back. Biz-friendly Environmental Defense is embracing the new Lieberman-Warner bill
in the Senate, while more radical Friends of the Earth is bashing the bill for being too weak and handing out too many subsidies to polluters. Other groups are walking a fine line -- praising the bipartisan effort behind Lieberman-Warner but insisting it needs to be strengthened. Meanwhile, the bill got its first hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday (10/24) and is gradually gaining support from senators on both sides of the aisle.
Here is a summary of the range of climate bills:
At the weak end of the spectrum of Senate climate bills is one offered by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). It centers around a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse-gas emissions, but initially it would hand out about 80 percent of emissions credits to industry instead of making companies pay for them, and it includes a "safety valve" mechanism that would dump cheap credits onto the market if trading pushed the price above a preset ceiling. It has virtually no support among Democratic leaders or environmental advocates, but a number of power companies and unions back it.
The strongest bill -- the one basically every enviro would choose to implement if given the keys to the American political system for one day -- was introduced months ago by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). It would cut greenhouse-gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, aggressive reductions on par with what the mainstream scientific community says are needed. Boxer chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over this issue.
But much of the focus right now is on the America's Climate Security Act formally unveiled on Oct. 18 by Sens. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.). It's projected to lower emissions as much as 19 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and as much as 63 percent by mid-century via a cap-and-trade system, and it doesn't include a safety valve. It calls for about 20 percent of emissions credits to be auctioned initially, with the rest allocated freely to emitters and the states at a rate that declines over time.
Count me as a fan of the Lieberman-Warner bill. Does that make me "biz-friendly"?
And here is a question, born out of a complete unwillingness to do my homework, what is the difference between Bingaman-Specter's "hand out about 80 percent of emissions credits to industry instead of making companies pay for them" and Lieberman-Warner's "about 20 percent of emissions credits to be auctioned initially"?
