Senate climate bill may drop cap and trade

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

A compromise climate bill being developed in the Senate may drop controversial cap and trade legislation passed by the House.

The last best hope to get a climate-energy bill through Congress this year may be to drop long-held "cap-and-trade" plans for an economy-wide price on carbon emissions and instead target just the utility, transportation, and industry sectors of the economy.

That scenario, now emerging in the Senate, set energy industry officials and environmental groups scrambling to evaluate how to deal with new legislation that's being developed behind closed doors and whose details are still unknown.

Broad outlines of the legislation – including a pullback from cap and trade – were reported over the weekend by The Washington Post. Details were in short supply as trial balloons floated and popped at the Capitol.

But even lacking details, several analysts say that such a move would be a broadly significant and dramatic shift away from the nationwide cap-and-trade climate-energy bill passed by the House of Representatives last June but tarred by opponents as a "cap-and-tax" bill.

Architects of the new bipartisan bill are Senators John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman (I) of Conn., and Lindsey Graham ® of South Carolina. The latter was quoted over the weekend as saying in a private meeting that "cap-and-trade is dead."

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010...p-cap-and-trade

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Now if we could just get them to repeal the incandescent light bulb ban in 2012, I'd be happy....

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Good.

[Ban Hammer 13,349]

i wonder which one steven is gonna give up.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Of course they will drop it. They are not going to change anything or they would have changed something by now. Global warming is fixed, no need to go any further. Al Gore did a great job.

[scandal 951]

I'm puzzled by the right's opposition to cap and trade.

Well - not really. I mean, of course I know the true reason they oppose it. They are heavily lobbied by industries which have a vested interest in polluting freely. Most notably power generation and oil industries. The GOP opponents just do what their paymasters tell them to do, that's not surprising at all.

What I mean by puzzled is why the conscientious right - the conservative academics, the more principled GOP members of Congress - would oppose it.

And I mean by this not the Global Warming debate. Leave that aside, presumably there is (or should be) widespread agreement on several points.

1. Pollution is bad. It harms our air and water and environment. It stunts our health and kills our wildlife and puts carcinogens in our air and water and food.

2. Pollution is indiscriminate in its victims. Smokestacks waft their emissions over many square miles, and winds bear them long distances. Water-borne pollutants enter the rivers and streams and aquifers and affect millions many miles from the source of the pollution.

3. The result is that individual polluters don't have much incentive to reduce emissions because there is usually no specific victim to sue them, or gain to be made over a competitor by investing in technology that reduces emissions.

Obviously, it is in the public interest to encourage industrial techniques that reduce such pollutants. This can be done by regulatory action. Or, it can be done through free market techniques, by fostering a system that encourages innovation and competition to "build a better mouse trap" and reduce pollution. That's where cap and trade comes in. If companies are offered an opportunity to look at their emission reduction as a profit center rather than just a nuisance, we unleash the creative potential of the profit motive. We do this in other industries - think of the secondary markets for mortgage backed securities and other derivative instruments. Or the insurance market. The ability to offset one person's problems (financial risk, pollution, what have you) to another eager to "invest" in the very same commodity is what makes a market.

One would think (one really would, right?) that the champions of free markets and minimal government regulation would welcome this approach to reducing America's emissions. And it needn't have a thing to do with whether global warming is or isn't the greatest hoax the world has ever seen.

[Peikko 1,575]

The champions of the American free market dreampt it up, and foisted onto Europe and those who signed up to Kyoto, because they demanded those conditions in order to sign up to Kyoto, and then didn't. It's fantastic that now this is seen as a plot by the evil Mr Gore. I love historical revisionism

[Ban Hammer 13,349]

I'm puzzled by the right's opposition to cap and trade.

Well - not really. I mean, of course I know the true reason they oppose it.

to make it real clear why i don't, see the picture john galt posted.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I'm puzzled by the right's opposition to cap and trade.

And I mean by this not the Global Warming debate. Leave that aside, presumably there is (or should be) widespread agreement on several points.

1. Pollution is bad. It harms our air and water and environment. It stunts our health and kills our wildlife and puts carcinogens in our air and water and food.

2. Pollution is indiscriminate in its victims. Smokestacks waft their emissions over many square miles, and winds bear them long distances. Water-borne pollutants enter the rivers and streams and aquifers and affect millions many miles from the source of the pollution.

3. The result is that individual polluters don't have much incentive to reduce emissions because there is usually no specific victim to sue them, or gain to be made over a competitor by investing in technology that reduces emissions.

There are pollutants and there is CO2.... which plants use. Cap and trade demonizes plant food and taxes it. It's clearly political. By bunching CO2 in with pollution they are intentionally trying to blur the line. Of course no one wants 'pollution' and they are using that black and white human opinion to lump in CO2.

'They' act like CO2 is the sole variable in global climate. It's not.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I'm puzzled by the right's opposition to cap and trade.

My opposition to the scheme is that it does nothing but create a slush fund for an extensive enviroterrorist wishlist. It is not as lame as carbon credits, but just as insidious in its silliness.

[scandal 951]

There are pollutants and there is CO2.... which plants use. Cap and trade demonizes plant food and taxes it. It's clearly political. By bunching CO2 in with pollution they are intentionally trying to blur the line. Of course no one wants 'pollution' and they are using that black and white human opinion to lump in CO2.

'They' act like CO2 is the sole variable in global climate. It's not.

1. I don't know who they italicized 'they' are. But clearly you do.

2. No one says CO2 is the sole variable in global climate. You are right. It is not. It is however a significant contributing factor and hardly negligible.

3. Removing stable carbon that has been trapped for millions of years in the form of fossilized coal or petroleum and releasing it in the form of CO2 into our atmosphere is changing the dynamics of our environment. Without arguing that such man-made carbon releases are or are not a significant cause of global warming, to not acknowledge the very basic fact that we are taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air on an industrial scale, and that this is something new and different than what has ever happened before, is baffling.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

1. I don't know who they italicized 'they' are. But clearly you do.

2. No one says CO2 is the sole variable in global climate. You are right. It is not. It is however a significant contributing factor and hardly negligible.

3. Removing stable carbon that has been trapped for millions of years in the form of fossilized coal or petroleum and releasing it in the form of CO2 into our atmosphere is changing the dynamics of our environment. Without arguing that such man-made carbon releases are or are not a significant cause of global warming, to not acknowledge the very basic fact that we are taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air on an industrial scale, and that this is something new and different than what has ever happened before, is baffling.

'they' are the people that want to shove cap and trade down our throats

[scandal 951]

'they' are the people that want to shove cap and trade down our throats

Oh, you mean ME

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I'm puzzled by the right's opposition to cap and trade.

Well - not really. I mean, of course I know the true reason they oppose it. They are heavily lobbied by industries which have a vested interest in polluting freely. Most notably power generation and oil industries. The GOP opponents just do what their paymasters tell them to do, that's not surprising at all.

What I mean by puzzled is why the conscientious right - the conservative academics, the more principled GOP members of Congress - would oppose it.

And I mean by this not the Global Warming debate. Leave that aside, presumably there is (or should be) widespread agreement on several points.

1. Pollution is bad. It harms our air and water and environment. It stunts our health and kills our wildlife and puts carcinogens in our air and water and food.

2. Pollution is indiscriminate in its victims. Smokestacks waft their emissions over many square miles, and winds bear them long distances. Water-borne pollutants enter the rivers and streams and aquifers and affect millions many miles from the source of the pollution.

3. The result is that individual polluters don't have much incentive to reduce emissions because there is usually no specific victim to sue them, or gain to be made over a competitor by investing in technology that reduces emissions.

Obviously, it is in the public interest to encourage industrial techniques that reduce such pollutants. This can be done by regulatory action. Or, it can be done through free market techniques, by fostering a system that encourages innovation and competition to "build a better mouse trap" and reduce pollution. That's where cap and trade comes in. If companies are offered an opportunity to look at their emission reduction as a profit center rather than just a nuisance, we unleash the creative potential of the profit motive. We do this in other industries - think of the secondary markets for mortgage backed securities and other derivative instruments. Or the insurance market. The ability to offset one person's problems (financial risk, pollution, what have you) to another eager to "invest" in the very same commodity is what makes a market.

One would think (one really would, right?) that the champions of free markets and minimal government regulation would welcome this approach to reducing America's emissions. And it needn't have a thing to do with whether global warming is or isn't the greatest hoax the world has ever seen.

Exactly. However, the Cap and Trade isn't necessary for the government to curtail CO2 emissions now. The EPA has every right within its jurisdiction to regulate CO2 emission as per SCOTUS ruling.