Senate Climate-Change Legislation Delayed Again, Outlook Dims for Action This Year

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--In the midst of a crowded Senate calendar and a ferocious lobbying campaign against the "cap and trade" provisions of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, two key U.S. senators said they would push back the introduction of their climate-change bill until later in September. In a joint statement issued August 31, the primary authors of Senate climate-change legislation, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a member of the Finance Committee, cited Sen. Kerry's hip surgery, the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, and the far-ranging and highly-charged debate over health care as reasons for the delay in introducing a climate-change bill.

Earlier this summer, Boxer said she wanted to begin marking up a bill in early August. After a series of hearings before the Environment Committee in July and August, Boxer postponed introduction of a bill until early September, when the Senate returned from its August recess. The Senate reconvenes Tuesday, September 8. The latest delay, Boxer and Kerry said, will provide them with additional time to "reach out to colleagues and important stakeholders."

They will probably need all the outreach they can get. Public outrage about proposed healthcare overhaul, on display at "town hall" meetings held by Senators and Congressmen during the August recess, has forced a recalibration of timetables for consideration of that legislation, which has the effect of pushing back climate-change and other legislation. In the words of one observer, "Health care has sucked all of the oxygen out of Washington."

The Boxer-Kerry statement didn't reference other factors that could imperil, or kill, climate change legislation, including a fraying electric-utility industry coalition, growing concern about the potential skyrocketing of electric rates in states that heavily rely on coal for their electricity, and a furious lobbying campaign against the bill by Republicans, including the ranking minority member of the Environment Committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.). Republican senators are virtually united in their opposition to what they expect to come out of the Environment Committee, and even some Democratic senators are wavering.

Throughout August, Midwestern news media carried prominent stories about climate-change legislation's potential to drive up local electric rates by 20-50%. Calls to one senator's office were said to be running 70-to-1 against the legislation. In public, backers of climate-change legislation continue to predict that legislation can be passed this year. But privately, even the bill's backers acknowledge the timetable is extremely tight, and the odds grow longer with each day.

The Environment Committee still needs to introduce a bill, have the committee mark it up, and then vote on it. But the Environment Committee is not the only senate committee working on energy or climate-change legislation: The Energy, Commerce, and Foreign Relations committees all exercise jurisdiction on separate bills that concern, to one degree or another, energy or climate change. Earlier this summer, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed its own energy bill, S. 1462, the American Clean Energy Leadership Act.

Given the Senate's wide range of legislative activity on energy and climate change issues, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has told all committees with energy or climate legislation to wrap up their work by September 28. At that time, Reid may try to create a single energy bill out of provisions from various bills. Or he may push one bill to a Senate vote while holding back other bills.

Assuming the Senate can overcome an almost-certain filibuster and pass a bill on energy and climate change, that bill would then need to be reconciled with the House legislation authored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which the House narrowly passed in June.

Hundreds of interest groups have been busily lobbying senators during the summer, seeking to protect their constituencies, modify timelines, or change standards. The natural gas industry, which was virtually absent in deliberations over Waxman-Markey, have been particularly active in the climate-change debate taking place in the Senate.

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