AFP Story - US Senate to bring climate framework to Copenhagen: Kerry

[beachmom]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gI7rdmWyhtXrLYYb_uohkpH0_YFg

WASHINGTON — The US Senate will complete the framework of climate change legislation before next month's high-stakes summit in Copenhagen, Senator John Kerry promised UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday.

"We are engaged in the process that will hopefully put us in a position to go to Copenhagen with a sort of framework, or outline, or where the Senate will be heading in its legislation," Kerry told reporters after meeting Ban at the US Capitol.

The Senate has not followed the House of Representatives in finalizing the first-ever US federal caps on carbon emissions, raising fears that the December 7-18 talks in the Danish capital will flop without the world's biggest economy.

Kerry, a former presidential candidate who authored climate change legislation introduced into the Senate, said he told Ban that senators were "engaged in a very intensive process.

"What I wanted to convey to the secretary-general -- and I think it's important to all those taking part in Copenhagen -- is we are very serious about our goal," Kerry said.

I wonder what is going on. There is more at the link about Baucus (sigh, sigh, sigh), but I wonder if this is more messaging for Copenhagen or whether there really is a chance to get 60 votes.

More here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120136597

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the author of the Senate bill that would set the first-ever U.S. limits on greenhouse gases, said Tuesday that he hoped to have an outline of where the Senate was headed by the time of the Copenhagen meeting. Kerry, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., are working to piece together a bill that can get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate.

Kerry's bill last week was voted out of a Senate panel, sidestepping a Republican boycott. But five other committees will also have a say in the legislation.

On Tuesday, Kerry said that the bill would come to the floor "as soon as practical" and he was confident that when it did, the U.S. Senate would do its part.

Lieberman said he expects debate before the full Senate to begin early next year.

"But we will go to Copenhagen with a House-passed climate change bill, some momentum in the Senate ... and the Obama administration clearly supportive of climate change legislation," Lieberman said.

[Luftmensch067]

1. Whatever is going on

It's clear that JK is not giving up. I love that he is so flexible and creative and never takes a defeat as the end, but rather as challenge.

[karynnj]

2. About Baucus

I watched the Finance Committee hearing yesterday. I think there is some hope, though not much, for Baucus. The witnesses to the hearing included two that were very obviously against the bill, Thorning and Green.

Baucus very skeptically questioned the testimony of Thorning, who has a model that produces results far different than all other models. He called it the outlier and his face (to me) looked unconvinced. (She very haughtily said that was because her model was a macro economics model and it was dynamic, rather than static. In fact, the difference from Kerry's questions (and her responses) seems to come more from assumed values that were different than those of others. Kerry also brought up the point that there was no attempt to model savings due to greater efficiencies - even though there are many companies where that has been their experience. ( As this is something a dynamic model could include ( probably by making efficiency a function of cost of energy - so efficiency would increase dynamically as cost increases), not including it when the experience Kerry noted exists and because basic economics would suggest that you would do more to control usage as something increases in cost, suggests that she has an agenda.

Baucus had to leave before the end, but it will be interesting to see if he has moved at all since that hearing. I would assume that one thing is sure - it will not have made him more likely to fight the bill.

(The hearing did make me see how weak and provincial the arguments of people like Grassley are and why they will be hard to change. He spoke of jobs, in refining, that would be lost and what they contribute to Iowa. Now, it is true that long term, these refineries may be smaller or gone. To Grassley, this was tangible and what he was hearing when he speaks to people in Iowa. Those people, who are identifiable and who could lose are more visible than the people who will get Green jobs or the cost to Iowa if climate change makes them less ideal for agriculture.)