Yesterday I posted briefly about a new climate change proposal floated last week by the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman team in the Senate. The problem they’re trying to solve is a political one: since the cap-and-trade bill in the House (ACES) has become radioactive, they need to somehow implement carbon pricing without looking like they’re just doing the same thing as the House bill. But how? Their answer is a change in policy: instead of a single, economy-wide cap on carbon, how about treating various sectors differently? Maybe a cap on coal, a tax on oil, and something else for industry.
But what was the problem with ACES in the first place? David Roberts figures there were three big ones. The first is that too many people just fundamentally misunderstood how it worked and who would benefit. Plus this:
Second, relative to Big Coal, Big Oil got the short end of the stick in ACES. Unlike the utilities, oil companies (or rather, their representatives in the House, who are mostly Republican) weren’t in the room during negotiations, so they didn’t get many favors. But while coal has a lot of power in the House, oil has enormous power in the Senate, particularly over the conservadems and Republicans needed to put the bill over the top. Big Oil’s choke hold on the Senate explains a great deal about the dynamics of climate legislation in that body.
And third, senators — particularly conservadems and Republicans — have an obsession with nuclear power that is nothing short of pathological. It would take a post, nay, a book to dig into all the reasons why, but suffice to say, to get any conservative votes in the Senate will require major sops to nuclear. Again, these particular senators, not being the sharpest pencils in the box, never understood that a cap on carbon would in and of itself provide a massive boost to nuclear. They want something special for nukes. Special and big. Something that will really piss off liberals. And they’ll get it.
So will the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal fix these problems? The short answer is no: it will just piss off some brand new constituencies without really gaining the support of the folks who were opposed to ACES in the first place. For the long answer, click the link.
