Senate Begins Climate Bill Debate Amid Lowered Expectations from UN

Posted by Steven Zweig on October 29, 2009 at 9:37 am

Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), co-sponsors of the Senate climate bill. (image: 1sky.org)

Ships that pass in the night: even as the U.S. Senate begins urgent debate on a climate change bill, the U.N. is scaling back its expectations for a climate change treaty this year.
Of course, these actions are not unrelated—the Senate is trying to move forward on its version of legislation previously passed by the House in large part to support U.N.-led negotiations on global warming; and the U.N. has been lowering its expectations in response to a realistic appraisal of the chances of comprehensive energy reform in the US becoming law before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.

Climate legislation has been one of a number of priorities of the Obama administration. Under prompting by the administration, the House passed a bill designed to slow global warming by reining in carbon emissions. A measure of how seriously the administration and its supporters take the twin goals of moderating climate change and supporting a multilateral, internationalist approach to engagement with other nations is that they are pushing ahead with the Senate bill at this time to help U.N. climate negotiations.

Ordinarily, one would think that with major (and divisive) health care legislation, military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, a continuing recession, and Wall Street regulation all simmering—or in some cases, boiling over—simultaneously, taking on the sticky issue of climate change legislation would be a difficult feat for any administration. Most voters would forgive the government for back-burnering climate change at this juncture.

However, even while both Congress and the White House are focused on health care, both bodies are pressing ahead with climate legislation. As reported by the Associated Press Tuesday, Senate hearings are set to begin on the climate bill sponsored by Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. The hearings are chaired by Senator Boxer, head of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and are supported by the White House. The level of support—and rhetoric—by the White House and Senatorial allies is considerable—three Cabinet Secretaries (Energy, Interior, and Transportation) and two administrative heads (EPA and Energy Regulatory Commission) will testify for the bill. Meanwhile Senator Boxer herself has put out an affecting YouTube video starring her 10-month-old grandson, in which she pleads for public support to combat global warming. Watch the video below:

embedded by Embedded Video

This rush of activity seems to be in response to the U.N.’s concern for the fate of climate change negotiations. In just a few short weeks, nations are to convene in Copenhagen for talks on global warming, but without U.S. support—signified by climate change legislation—“it’s hard to say how far the conference will be able to go,” according to the director of the U.N.’s Climate Change Support Team. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made mitigating climate change a top priority and has put his moral authority behind the effort. Ban visited Seattle on Monday to press for U.S. action, and plans to meet with leading Senators to encourage passage of the bill.

The Boxer-Kerry bill is very similar to the one recently passed by the House. Its centerpiece is using a cap-and-trade mechanism to achieve a hoped-for 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 40 years.

There is considerable controversy over two major aspects of the legislation:

•    How the right to emit is allocated. Originally, it was proposed to auction off carbon credits to fund a middle-class tax cut, but this was subsequently changed to distributing the credits among different industries for free. In any politically-driven distribution, there are winners and losers; at present, it looks like industries whose support is seen as critical, such as utilities or steelmakers, are winners, while the oil industry appears to be a loser, receiving a small share of the allocations. The industry claims that this will impose a “tax” on the economy, given how ubiquitous oil is in manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, or, in the Northeast, home heating.

•    The total cost. Increasing the cost of emitting carbon will increase the cost of using fossil fuels. The question is, by how much? On that topic, there is no agreement, with estimates ranging from a low of less than $100 per year at the outset to a high of almost $7,000 by 2035, when substantial reductions are required.

Similarly, at an international level, there is considerable controversy as well, primarily over how the costs of fighting global warning will be apportioned among nations. Developing nations want their own efforts to be paid for or subsidized by developed countries, including especially the U.S. As the world’s richest nation and second-most prolific emitter of greenhouse gases, U.S. leadership on climate change efforts is vital in order to come to—and implement—any international agreement or action plan. Thus the aggressive push at a time when there is so much else to tackle, to pass climate change legislation as well.