House Floor Vote – The word from Capitol Hill is that the crucial vote on the Waxman-Markey package of energy and climate change titles is going to happen this week. The timing as Steny Hoyer indicated previously was to be sometime on either side of the July 4th recess. The word yesterday was that it wasn’t going to happy but “The Hill” reports here that “In a surprising development, House Democrats have reached an agreement to bring a sweeping climate change bill to the floor by the end of the week…”
“The Hill” – an indispensable news source – also reported here last week on Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to collar some Republican votes. I lauded Mary Bono Mack for being a lonely voice in her caucus. Let’s hope she can help lasso some votes.
UPDATE: Deal sends global warming bill to House floor from the AP. “The breakthrough came hours after President Barack Obama at a news conference called on the House to pass the legislation, and a new EPA analysis showed that it would raise household energy costs on average only an extra $80 to $111 a year.” See also this from “The Guardian.”
Economic Analyses – Here is some input on the dollar figures for the Waxman-Markey bill – and the politics of the numbers – from The Center for American Progress. (I’ve stipulated here before that the CAP is distinctly partisan, but that I think their analyses are usually pretty much on the money.) To quote on their view of the debate on whether or not W-M is going to break the bank or be a positive economic influence: “The latest CBO analysis should end this once and for all. Indeed, the CBO found that, for ‘households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020.'”
The CAP article also cites Paul Krugman from yesterday: “The point is that we need to be clear about who are the realists and who are the fantasists here,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote. ‘The realists are actually the climate activists, who understand that if you give people in a market economy the right incentives they will make big changes in their energy use and environmental impact. The fantasists are the burn-baby-burn crowd who hate the idea of using government for good, and therefore insist that doing the right thing is economically impossible.'” (I wish Krugman would just say what he means.)
Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate – I’ve been placing a lot of hope on these series of meetings of the world’s 19 largest emitting nations plus the EU. Meeting in Mexico this week, President Felipe Calderon warned that the stakes were too high to let climate change negotiations fail and said that the global recession was no excuse to reduce focus on solving the crisis. This article from Reuters reports “Calderon said failure to reach an agreement would be more costly than going ahead with spending on climate goals. ‘Climate change will cost Mexico more than 6 percent of our gross domestic product, which is many times more than we are investing in the fight against climate change,’ he said.” Don’t expect any breakthroughs from the meeting this week, but do look for some significant news when the leaders meet in Italy in July.
Betsy Kolbert on Jim Hansen – There’s a must-read profile in the “New Yorker” this week of America’s leading climate scientist by America’s leading climate journalist. (Registration is required, but try the newsstand or your local library if you’re not a subscriber.) Hansen’s recent modeling at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies indicate that the situation is even worse than he feared. The article looks at, among other things, Hansen’s activism.
Demonstrations and Debate in West Virginia – The “breaking news” on Hansen is that he’s accepted a challenge from the chief of Massey Coal to debate. According to the “Charleston Gazette” here, it’s going to happen tomorrow. This coincides with demonstrations today at a highly visible and controversial Massey facility in West Virginia. For more on coal and its impact on local communities, see some of my posts on mountaintop removal mining, and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
