From the diaries. --Joan
The big fight on the energy/climate bill is supposed to be whether the Senate can find 60 votes for, if not an economy-wide cap on carbon, then at least a utility-only (e.g., coal-fired electric power plants) cap on carbon. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), one of the flashier climate peacocks, says even that scaled back climate bill can't find 60 votes to pass the Senate this year.
The real fight is not on the floor of the Senate, but at the Caucus Room restaurant in Washington, where electric utilities attempt to eviscerate the Clean Air Act: not just relating to greenhouse gases, but also well-known health hazards such as mercury and sulfur dioxide.
Politico has the story, and it's not pretty: "The power companies want relief from the air pollution rules as a price of entry into negotiations if they are going to accept a mandatory carbon limit that won’t apply to other industries. The environmentalists are saying no."
And it's not just relief from new EPA rules on greenhouse gases, but "a number of existing Clean Air Act programs dealing with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury, including a new EPA rule proposed last week that deals with interstate pollution." Existing programs regarding criteria pollutants are supposed to be updated every so often, but weren't during the Bush years (surprise!), so utilities are facing a huge backlog of work.
The utility companies whine that avoiding the backlog is a necessary tradeoff if they'll be the only sector subject to a cap on carbon. They want relief on other pollutants. Let's be absolutely clear on the nature of that relief -- it amounts to an extortion demand.
The price of one baby step toward ensuring that carbon doesn't make half the planet uninhabitable is the right to dump highly toxic mercury into America's air, waterways, fish, and -- ultimately --people. And if they don't get their way, they'll oppose even the most modest climate bill.
David Roberts at Grist doesn't mince words: Utilities are trying to pull off the scam of the decade. If it goes through, "This deal really would do that: it would make the bill worse than nothing. It would be a step backward, on both climate and health grounds." Update -- Brad Plumer, at The New Republic, is equally harsh:Energy Bill Could Be a Disaster, if Utilities Get Their Way.
So far, environmentalists are standing firm in opposing the utilities' demand. Even Environmental Defense Fund, considered a pragmatic compromiser and in attendance at the back door meetings, signed on to a letter calling the utilities' position "unacceptable."
Elected leaders have stayed out of this to date. Politico notes that Senate staff aren't even in the room while these back door negotiations are taking place. I've been pleasantly surprised by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's backbone in the last few weeks on climate-related issues. I'd like to hear that he -- or President Obama, or one of the Climate Peacocks -- will just say no to the utilities' extortion demand, and move ahead with a bill based on scientific reality.
continued at Daily Kos....
