My head is spinning from the latest developments in the long-running soap opera of climate and energy legislation in the US Senate. Plus, I am finally reading How Democratic Is the American Constitution? and I’m even more depressed now than when I wrote this post, SPQR. Basically, we can never be a real democracy – you know the concept: one person, one vote – because of the US Senate. We can’t alter the intrinsic utterly non-democratic nature of the US Senate because the US Senate can forever prevent it.
Anyway, if you want to try to count the angels on the head of the pin on climate legislation, I refer you to the excellent SolveClimate here: “Reports out of Washington have alternated between sky-is-falling disaster and soothing claims of only minor delays in producing a Senate climate bill.”
If the Senate legislation – as near as we’ve been able to determine what the heck it’s going to be – were subject to an environmental review process, I think I would recommend not granting the permit. The negative environmental impacts in wasting hundreds of billions dollars more on nuclear power and “clean coal” appear to me to overshadow whatever gains we may see in the deadly slow process of lowering GHGs in KGL. (Maybe it should be KL, now that Lindsey Graham has gone off whining.) What an incredible policy black hole the US Senate is.
A bad bill is worse than no bill at all. Let the superb Lisa Jackson do her work at EPA. Let the states and cities pursue more of the excellent work they’re doing. Let DOE prime the pump further on efficiency and renewables, and also let’s all pray that Ken Salazar does the right thing this week on Cape Wind.
Update: Here’s an AP story that says the climate ship of state is back on the high seas.