UPDATE: Two Senators cancel their CLEAR climate bill presser, details below the Continue reading line.
Climate bill on the ropes
By: Darren Samuelsohn
July 20, 2010 03:10 PM EDT
The Senate climate bill has been at death’s door several times over the past year. But with the days before the August recess quickly slipping away, the case may truly be terminal now.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has wanted to introduce a sweeping energy and climate bill by next week, and Reid even told POLITICO on Monday night that the package was almost ready to go.
But by Tuesday afternoon, Reid was noncommittal about when a bill would come or what it would contain.
“We’re going to make a decision in the near future,” Reid said, describing plans for a Democratic caucus on the issue Thursday. “We’re really not at a point where I can determine what I think is the best for the caucus and the country at this stage.”
…
“The clock is our biggest enemy,” Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) told reporters Tuesday, shortly after a meeting with several major electric utility industry CEOs who asked for a delay in the floor debate. “Some people know that. We have to figure out what is doable in this short span of time. That’s the test, and we’re going to take a look at that.”
Read the entire article at Politico
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UPDATE:
Another sign of Climate bill DOA, I just got this email sent to me. As reported on WUWT in this story yesterday: Two Senators upcoming presser on CLEAR Act
that event is now canceled:
=============================
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED.
Controlling Greenhouse Gases: The CLEAR Act Option
With Remarks by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan M. Collins (R-Maine)
Thursday, July 29, 2010, 2:00–3:30 p.m.
G11 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20002
1:45 p.m.
Registration
2:00
Introduction:
KENNETH P. GREEN, AEI
2:10
Address:
SENATOR MARIA CANTWELL (D-Wash.)
SENATOR SUSAN M. COLLINS (R-Maine)
2:40
Respondents:
ALAN D. VIARD, AEI
KENNETH P. GREEN, AEI
3:00
Question and Answer
3:30
Adjournment
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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“lip service” is a wonderful term. It seems possible that neither Reid nor Obama really wants this thing due to the evolving uncertainty over the reality of the conditions it would supposedly address.
So verbally support it, but don’t knock yourself out trying to make it happen.
Notice what he says:
“We’re really not at a point where I can determine what I think is the best for the caucus and the country at this stage.”
Who comes first in his mind? Certainly not the people that he was elected to represent.
Mr. Chu and the EPA have undermined the President by their holding on to bad science.. ie.. the IPCC and the hockey stick(s). They surely have read ClimateAudit and other relevant blogs. Some homework, and some honesty, such as a public admission that the hockey stick(s) and impending doom predicted by some are not empirically supported, would have made the difference to Obama. Goodby House majority. goodbye second term. This has been a government run by beliefs, not science.
Hmmm … I wonder if this new bill will contain any additional, obscure provisions like the ‘Gold Coin Tax’ embedded deep in the hell [sic] care bill …
.
“The clock is our biggest enemy.” Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) told reporters Tuesday.
It most certainly is, and in more ways than one. The November elections and the slow awakening of the electorate that CAGW science has been manipulated will hopefully drive a stake through the heart of this blood-sucking legislation.
The Senate has already voted yes on the climate bill. They had the opportunity to stop the EPA from back door implementation of CO2 control but voted it down (including my two spineless Senators, Warner and Webb). Thanks to their perfidy and/or lack of courage, we now have a situation where the EPA can shut down power plants, refineries and other sources of CO2 without mentioning CO2 or they, in most cases, mention it as a “side benefit”.
One example was the AMP coal-electric plant in Ohio. In its place the DoE allocated some money for a gas pipeline to make a natural gas electric plant instead. But they also persuaded AMP to make a number of shady deals for solar power (I mean shady in a literal sense). This means that customers in rural areas who don’t know better will be cajoled by various means into paying 50% more for feel-good green power mostly by their municipalities signing them up without their consent or knowledge.
The upshot is simple, 30 year contracts with 2% escalators for wholesale power from politically correct sources as a starting down payment for the complete political correctness (i.e. unavailability at any reasonable price) of energy. This is the way the EPA under this administration will accomplish their agenda: stopping power plants and refineries top down (but using false CAA pretenses) and signing up the rubes for expensive new power from the bottom up.
Remember when they were supposed to introduce this on “earth day”? And then it kept getting pushed back, and back, and back. Looking like Reid is down to 3 choices:
1) introduce a stripped down energy bill with no carbon plan, which would infuriate the left.
2) introduce a carbon capping plan, which would infuriate the middle and probably fail.
3) introduce nothing at all, and just say that you never could get agreement.
Option 1 is the best compromise for anyone who feels the need to get *something* accomplished, but I’m betting Reid goes for either #2 or #3.
It won’t happen this Summer, but I am sorry to say that this will probably be passed in NOV/DEC after the US elections–before the new congress is seated. Many of the fence sitters will have been defeated and they will pass this legislation in a lame duck session of congress. Unless the minority party has some parlimentary tricks to prevent action, this legislation will be one of the many things to be defunded and repealed in the years to come.
I wish I were more optimistic but I am afraid that is how it will go.
Tim
Again, all about control and ways to extort campaign contributions using favors from the government to the private sector. The tic is becoming bigger than the dog. Then the dog dies.
Senate climate bill “…may truly be terminal now. “
So it should be. World’s temperatures are regulated by Denmark Strait, narrow deep passage between Greenland and Iceland, or at least ‘misuse’ of Leohle’s latest data for temperature reconstruction shows it:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC1.htm
The clock is the enemy?
1 We will melt rapidly if we don’t empty our empty pockets?
2 The clock is ticking and the greenist extremists are afraid of losing the election?
3 There is pressure to have a few hours to read this fiasco before a vote is called?
4 All of the above?
The deadline on voting is before the election. There will not be enough votes to pass it after the election.
“Let me be perfectly clear”
This bill doesn’t have a chance of any sort in the winter when the snow is falling and schools shut down. Last winter Hansen called a march at a power plant and a blizzard stopped him in his tracks.
Politics, plain and simple.
Why attempt to push it through now and get hammered even more in the upcoming elections when they can lame-duck it after the elections without retribution for 2 years?
“The clock is our biggest enemy,” Sen. John Kerry””
Nothing like admitting just how crooked they really are.
What’s the matter, can’t ram this one though before anyone can read it?
If Junior MA Senator Brown goes full RINO and joins with John Kerry in voting for this wealth redistribution tax, he is dead to me.
Vote for us and we will give you good weather. Vote for us and we will control sea-level. Vote for us and we will save the planet. Vote for us because we know better than you ignorant schmucks what’s good for you and we deserve to be in charge.
After a lifetime of not taking any politician too seriously, certainly not taking any of them at their own evaluation, it is only now that I realise how truly, deeply stupid so many of these people really are. Thicker than two short planks doesn’t even begin to describe it.
To me it’s like a bad horror movie, where every time the monster finally seems to be dead, it keeps waking up and coming after its victims.
I won’t be convinced until this awful movie is really finished and I can read – The End.
wws says:
July 21, 2010 at 10:29 am
“1) introduce a stripped down energy bill with no carbon plan, which would infuriate the left.”
The stripped down energy bill got tacked onto a Defense Appropriations Supplemental bill. Since spending on Defense infuriates the left anyways might as well tack on things like nuclear loan guarantee’s and such and upset the left all in one go instead of upsetting them peacemeal.
j ferguson says (July 21, 2010 at 10:03 am): “It seems possible that neither Reid nor Obama really wants this thing due to the evolving uncertainty over the reality of the conditions it would supposedly address.”
It has nothing to do with reality. Even if climate scientists were unanimously against this bill, if they had the votes, they’d pass it.
They will be back.
One can only hope that the coming winter gets so friggin’ cold, that even politicians have to put their hands in their own pockets.
But I’m afraid that that would require an ice-age.
The cancellation of the CLEAR presser – could it be Victory? That’s a clear signal that Cantwell and Collins have thrown in the towel!
And I don’t think they can do it in a lame-duck session after the election – after a big win, there is no cost at all to the Republicans from implementing a cross the board filibuster and blocking *all* legislation until the new Congress is seated in January. *especially* if they have taken back the Senate and the House.
I lived in Nevada, I can tell you the first consideration is what is good for Harry Reid?
As one of their own dearly beloved idols once put it : this needs to be stopped “by whatever means necessary”.
Let’s hope this bill becomes a casualty of hard core common sense. Let’s hope that it’s creators receive the political ignominy they so richly deserve alongside all their cheerleading rent seekers and sundry parasitical control freaks.