Waxman Markey hits the House floor

The House Dems managed to vote the Waxman Markey carbon cap and trade bill to the floor, setting it up for a vote in the near future.  It's breaking largely along party lines (as most legislation does), with Republicans arguing it will cost Americans thousands of dollars per year in higher energy costs, Democrats arguing the costs will be minimal (with support from recent EPA and Congressional Budget Office studies).  The EPA and CBO found it would only cost the average American household in the $100-175 range per year, while Republicans are claiming the cost will be in the thousands.

Once the debate began on the House floor, one Republican went off on a rant about how it's all just a hoax, and got applause from his fellow conservatives.  So it's nice to see that there's a good intellectual dialogue going on already.

Al Gore wrote a blog entry on the bill, saying "there is no back-up plan".  I think he's exactly right.  If we don't pass this bill, there's nothing in the wings.  We won't pass carbon legislation for years, and we'll go into the Copenhagen negotiations in December with nothing to add.  What's the point in agreeing to carbon emissions reductions when you can't get the related legislation passed?  China will have little motivation to reduce their emissions when we continue to fail to regulate ours.  To be blunt, I think if this bill doesn't pass, it will be a disaster.

A good gauge will be the margin by which it passes in the House (assuming it passes, which it should).  If the Democrats can hold most of their moderates and get a few Republicans on board, it bodes well for passage in the Senate.  If it only passes by a slim margin, the road through the Senate will be extremely difficult.  No doubt they'll hold off on bringing it to the Senate floor until the climate (no pun intended) is more favorable (i.e. higher gas prices, stronger economy, better approval for Obama).

Pelosi has said she wants a vote on the bill in the House before the 4th of July break.  You can see a list of undecided congressmen here.

Yeah they've been negotiating this bill for quite a while and making concessions to make as many people happy as possible.  If they can't get it to pass now, it's just not going to happen with this bill.

They can try again with a somewhat similar bill.  But they'll have to draft up a new version, it will probably have to have lower reductions target than Waxman Markey, which won't make liberal Democrats happy, and probably still won't bring many (or any) more conservatives aboard.

The thing is, it's not really about the details at this point.  There are a few congressmen who are worried about impacts to their home district (mostly moderates who live in areas heavily dependent upon coal), but the bill should pass the House without their support anyway (knock on wood).  The questions then are the margin by which it passes, how well the Democrats hold together in the Senate, and if they can pick off a few Republican supporters (i.e. moderates like Snowe and Collins).  But if the bill fails and you modify the bill a little bit and re-introduce it, you're going to get the same result, and no politician wants to waste his time on that.

That is pretty agressive, but utilities already have some degree of renewable energy, and 20% over a decade is certainly plausible.  If you count hydroelectric, PG&E already meets that standard.  I don't have a problem with it.

As for the bill as a whole, I think it's reasonable.  The 17% GHG emissions reduction target by 2020 is too weak, IMO, but I like the 83% by 2050.  Some concessions were made that I'm not thrilled with, but overall it's a solid bill.  Not terrific, but I know it's the best we're going to get anytime in the forseeable future.  There are a lot of aspects to like about it too, like support of renewables and energy efficiency and such.

That was quick.  The good news it that it passed the House.  The bad news is that it only passed 219-212.  So it's going to be a tough road in the Senate, and I suspect the Dems will wait a while before bringing it to the floor.

There was a good speech on the House floor given by Rep. Doggett (D-TX).

FiveThirtyEight has an article on the likelihood of passage through the Senate, and what it will take.

In short, in order to gain enough support to pass the Senate, more compromises will be made and the bill will be watered down further.  Which is certainly unfortunate, but it can always be improved in the future, as Joe Romm notes, the original Clean Air Act or Montreal Protocol were also too weak.  But it's crucial to get the framework in place.

FiveThirtyEight also has a cool map illustrating the CBO estimated energy costs due to Waxman Markey on each state.

Great article.  Friedman really echoes my thought process on Waxman Markey and the Republican reaction to it.

James Hansen is a terrific climate scientist, but when it comes to policy, I think he's consistently wrong.  Joe Romm has a great response to Hansen's article in Climate progress titled

It's similar to when the claimed the MIT study concluded the bill would cost the average family $3,100 and the scientist said they were misrepresenting his study.  From what I understand, they're only looking at direct costs without looking at the offsetting savings from various programs and rebates.  Bucket had a pretty good response to this question here.