Word: carbonization
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...them. The Kerry-Boxer bill is only one of several pieces of legislation that the Senate will need to consider as it takes on cap and trade - about which the Finance Committee is only one powerful group that will have its say - and the chances that any kind of carbon cap will pass seem vanishingly small. As long as the Senate is stuck on other business, like health care, Obama and his negotiators will have their hands essentially tied at the U.N. climate-change summit in Copenhagen three months from now. They can't commit the U.S. to carbon cuts...
...absence of congressional action, the President does have other options. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday announced a proposed rule that would regulate carbon emissions from large emitters - primarily power plants - that emit 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases or more. The rule is the latest step in the EPA's response to a 2007 Supreme Court case that classified carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants that required EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act. The proposed rule will oblige those large emitters to get permits that demonstrate they are using the best available technology for controlling...
...proposed rule marks the first time the Federal Government has tried to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse-gas emissions. But again, the details are far from certain. It's not clear yet what "best available technology" will mean for carbon - especially in the case of new coal plants, which have no real way to drastically limit carbon emissions. And the rule is certain to come under attack from industry opponents; by putting only large emitters under the proposed rule, the EPA saves a lot of expense for small businesses but could be accused of being unfair to larger ones...
...Kerry-Boxer bill, most environmental groups supported it, happy to see a bill with a tighter short-term emissions-reduction target. But the bill still has plenty of holes for a piece of legislation that has been in the works for months, saying little about how allowances for carbon emissions would be distributed among polluting industries - a key part of any cap-and-trade bill. And with natural gas fans blaming the bill for having too little support of natural gas and nuclear fans saying there's not enough support of nuclear, gathering up support from Republican Senators and even...
...their part, more-radical environmental groups, including Greenpeace, withheld support from the Kerry-Boxer bill - as they did the House cap-and-trade bill - saying its carbon cuts were far too modest to save the climate. Scientifically, they're probably right - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that developed nations like the U.S. need to cut carbon emissions 25% to 40% by 2020 to keep global warming within what is hoped are safe limits. Politically, however, that seems out of question for Congress. Which is why Obama's speech at the U.N. last week was an exercise...