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The election of an anti-cap & trade Republican to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy is further clouding prospects for a climate bill in the Senate. And that in turn makes prospects for strong global action on climate change even murkier. Peter Thomson reports.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. The White House said today that President Obama is willing to work with Republicans on his legislative priorities including climate change. But yesterday’s election of a Republican to fill the senate seat held by the late Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy may put climate legislation further out of reach. Senator-elect Scott Brown campaigned against a comprehensive climate bill now working its way through Congress. And his victory could also dim prospects for international cooperation on greenhouse gas pollution. The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson has more.
PETER THOMSON: The chances of getting a comprehensive climate bill through the Senate this year were never good. With yesterday’s Senate election in Massachusetts, its chances may have fallen toward zero.
FRANK MAISANO: I think it really punctures that balloon that we were going to have a climate bill this year that democratic leaders were still holding out for.
THOMSON: That’s Frank Maisano, an Energy Specialist at the firm of Bracewell and Guiliani. He represents energy companies and other big greenhouse gas emitters. Maisano says it’s not just that the Senate may have lost a sure vote in favor of the pending climate bill. It’s also that yesterday’s results showed that even voters in solidly democratic states are worried about the costs of climate legislation. The Senate bill, sponsored by Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, would institute a cap and trade system for climate pollution. That system would raise the cost of fossil fuels and, the argument goes, nudge industry toward cleaner energy. Senator-elect Scott Brown campaigned against the bill, saying it would hit already reeling consumers in their pocketbooks. And Frank Maisano says Brown’s victory likely will lead wavering senators in other key states to reject the bill as well.
MAISANO: It just won’t give folks who have to go back to those states in the Midwest and the Southeast and the mountain states, and it won’t give them any interest in supporting something that’s going to increase those costs to their constituents.
THOMSON: Supporters of the cap and trade bill say it includes mechanisms to reduce the economic impact on consumers. But the bill is complicated, and those mechanisms would be indirect at best. And yesterday’s election suggests that voters don’t seem to be in much of a mood to trust such promises. And that’s left even some supporters of strong action on greenhouse gas emissions saying its time to step back and simplify.
EILEEN CLAUSSEN: We need to do something that is simple and understandable and doesn’t include a lot of side deals. And we could never pass a 2,000-page bill.
THOMSON: Eileen Claussen is the President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. She agrees that the sweeping Boxer-Kerry bill is dead. But she says it may still be possible to do something less sweeping but still important. Claussen says there may well be sufficient support for an energy bill that’s more narrowly focused on how electricity is produced.
CLAUSSEN: Either a limit on utility emissions or some kind of a clean energy performance standard that requires us to be producing carbon-free electricity.
THOMSON: But if cap and trade really is off the table, at least for now, that could further cloud negotiations with other countries on an international deal to reduce greenhouse pollution. The U.S. has already come under fire for proposing fairly modest emissions cuts at the recent Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. But even those targets were tied to the cap and trade bill. And without a firm commitment from the U.S., other countries may waiver on their own promised emissions cuts. For the World, I’m Peter Thomson.
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