Over the weekend, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) released some details about their upcoming “tripartisan” energy/climate bill. (I wrote about it here.) This has prompted a flurry of press coverage, as various senators and interest groups react to the proposal.
The result? A torrent of confusion, nonsense, and outright falsehoods. Hooray for the Senate!
First, to get clear on the KGL proposal: they would keep a cap-and-trade (or possibly cap-and-dividend) system for utilities, while oil producers and users would be subject instead to a simple carbon tax. Heavy industry would be exempt from the cap to begin with and would be moved in over time. In other words, the econony-wide cap-and-trade system has been broken in two. Now there’s a mini-C&T system and a carbon tax. But carbon is still being priced; the cost of fossil fuels will still go up.
Do senators get that? It would appear not. Indeed, it’s become pretty clear that most conservative and “centrist” senators don’t have even a rudimentary understanding of carbon pricing. They think the KGL plan is better, but at no point does any of them offer any coherent policy rationale for that preference. And as far as I can tell, journalists don’t even ask the question. This is political Kabuki without even a thin veneer of serious policy considerate. (Usually they have a veneer!)
Start with this characteristically weightless Politico story.
“Any movement away from an economywide cap-and-trade system is a movement in the right direction,” said GOP Conference Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, who said the new direction “makes a lot more sense.”
Why is anything other than economy-wide cap-and-trade better? Why is the sectoral approach better? No clue. He doesn’t say. Or this:
“I’m very open to that,” Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu said of the new proposal. “I’m completely opposed to economywide cap and trade. A compromise that Lieberman, Kerry and Graham were working on might have more potential.”
Why is she opposed to economy-wide cap-and-trade? Why does KGL have “more potential”? She isn’t asked, and doesn’t say. Moving on:
“I’ll be certainly listening to it,” New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg said of the proposal. “It’s got a lot of evolution in it right now.”
Too bad Waxman and Markey didn’t think to put some evolution in ACES. Or something.
“You can’t use cap and trade anymore because it is like manure on the trough,” said Voinovich. “It’s defined, and people are opposed to it.”
Ah ha! At last a reason to oppose cap-and-trade! Except, uh, it’s completely wrong. Every poll in the last five years, almost without exception, has shown that the public favors regulating carbon pollution and they like ACES, the cap-and-trade bill that does it. From a poll out just last month:
When asked whether they “support or oppose regulatiing carbon dioxide ... as a pollutant,” 73 percent said yes, with only 27 percent opposed, including 61 percent of Republicans. This was more than the 67 percent who supported “expanded offshore drilling” or the 49 who wanted to “build more nuclear power plants.”
Throw in a rebate to cover higher electricity prices (a provision included in ACES), and 66% specifically support a cap-and-trade system, which is pretty extraordinary for a fairly technical policy. So when Voinovich says “people are opposed to it,” he’s either abjectly ignorant or the “people” he’s talking about are his fellow senators. Ah, life inside the snow globe...
...Suffice to say, I could go on pulling dumb quotes like this for many more pages. It’s just profoundly depressing that world-historically consequential policy is being shaped by people who don’t understand how it works and are primarily motivated by marching orders from corporate polluters.
But, you know ... welcome to the U.S. Senate.
More:
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-04-stupid-things-senators-are-saying-about-kerry-graham-lieberman/
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