Senate Clean Energy & Climate Bill: "Why It Matters"

On Tuesday, the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee begins its mark-up of the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act. Here's a video from Committee Chair Barbara Boxer on why it's so critical we act now:

Bush's EPA Rewrites Clean Air Standards "Based on the Interests of Polluters"

Some presidents would react to news their popularity was at a historic low by trying to do things that were, y'know, popular. Not President Bush. He's apparently decided to take the opposite approach, instead trying to set a new low for popularity that will stand the test of time, much like the consecutive games streak of Cal Ripken, Jr.

This should help:

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday limited the allowable amount of pollution-forming ozone in the air to 75 parts per billion, a level significantly higher than what the agency's scientific advisers had urged for this key component of unhealthy air pollution.

Administrator Stephen L. Johnson also said he would push Congress to rewrite the nearly 37-year-old Clean Air Act to allow regulators to take into consideration the cost and feasibility of controlling pollution when making decisions about air quality, something that is currently prohibited by the law. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that the government needed to base the ozone standard strictly on protecting public health, with no regard to cost. [...]

With Democrats in control of Congress, the proposal to rewrite the Clean Air Act appears to face long odds. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) called the move "outrageous," adding in a statement, "The Bush Administration would have us replace clean air standards driven by science with standards based on the interests of polluters."

Here in Virginia, even the new weak Bush standard would mean Richmond, Hampton Roads, Roanoke, and outer DC suburbs Caroline and Stafford Counties will be in violation.

Of course, none of this affects us here in Northern Virginia. We haven't met federally required ozone limits for nearly 20 years. And we're adding lanes of highway. Why start now?

Genuine or Greenwashing: Warner's Climate Bill

After Sen. John Warner's announcement last week that he won't seek another term, National Wildlife Federation President Larry Schweiger released this statement:

Senator Warner is poised to end his nearly 30-year Senate career tackling the biggest challenge of our time: global warming. This year, Senator Warner has taken a leadership role to advance legislation to address global warming as a national security priority. He has recently outlined a bi-partisan proposal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) that would reduce the pollution causing global warming and provide resources to help protect the Chesapeake Bay and other fish and wildlife habitat from climate change. The two senators lead a Senate subcommittee that can advance action on this critical issue this Congress.

No topic splits environmentalists right now like the Warner-Lieberman bill being drafted in the Senate. Some groups are hopeful Warner-Lieberman will be tough enough that it's worth supporting, while others think Warner-Lieberman will be so soft it deserves to die in committee. They want the bill sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) -- the toughest bill in the Senate -- or nothing.

Marc Guenther at Huffington Post recently called Warner a lynchpin on climate change legislation:

Warner could be the key to getting a bill out of the Senate Environment Committee, where Democrats hold only a one-vote edge. He comes from state where, it's safe assume, there are strong, conflicting opinions about climate change; the commonwealth includes both coal mines and the coastline along the Chesapeake Bay. But he's also a national security geek, and he has said that he's worried that global warming could lead to environmental refugees and political instability.

Meanwhile, to deal with fears that carbon caps will damage the economy, four Senators -- Republicans Warner and Lindsey Graham of South Caroline and Democrats Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana (the land of oil & gas & Katrina) -- introduced legislation that would aim to protect consumers and business from the potential costs of carbon regulation.

The four senators want to create something called a Carbon Market Efficiency Board, modeled on the Fed, to build some flexibility into the regulatory scheme. This board could ease up on an emissions cap if the economy is suffering, but only by lowering the cap in the future. In effect, it would give industry the freedom to pollute more now so long as it pollutes less later, once economy rebounds. (emphasis added)

Open Left's Matt Stoller has offered the most stinging criticism of Warner-Lieberman (thanks to Lowell for the tip). However, I'm not sure how Matt can say "it's a terrible legislative package coming to the floor in the fall" when we don't know all the details yet.

Some environmentalists counter that it doesn't matter which bill comes up for a vote -- President Bush will surely veto any serious global warming legislation and the Senate doesn't have enough votes to override -- it's the roll call itself that matters. Force all one hundred senators to go on the record on a serious bill. No more equivocating. Do you recognize the settled science or are you an unrepentant denier? Then the voters can be clear about their choices in 2008.

But Matt is right when he says, "We get one bite at this apple." If soft legislation passes and we try to firm it up later, Republican climate change deniers will say, "See? We told you so. They won't be satisfied until the economy is crippled."

Cross-posted from RaisingKaine.com

Newsweek Exposes Global Warming Denial Industry

Newsweek has a great cover story this week exposing how companies like ExxonMobil fund global warming deniers:

Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

[...]

The response to the international climate panel's latest report, in February, showed that greenhouse doubters have a lot of fight left in them. In addition to offering $10,000 to scientists willing to attack the report, which so angered Boxer, they are emphasizing a new theme. Even if the world is warming now, and even if that warming is due in part to the greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, there's nothing to worry about. As Lindzen wrote in a guest editorial in NEWSWEEK International in April, "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe."

[...]

This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.

My only question is, if the global warming denial business has been booming for 20 years now, why has it taken Newsweek (and the rest of the mainstream media) this long to expose it?