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pricing carbon. By putting it with all the Gulf coast stuff, it sort of hides that he is being less than courageous. If he gets everything he called for, he will have done at least three major things. The first is to insure that BP pays those affected. I doubt that they can pay the full cost of everything this accident caused. The second is that he is very likely to get the changes in regulation that he wants. The third is the huge commitment to rehabilitate the environment in the Gulf to where it should have been doing things environmentalists called for for decades.
All of those things should easily get support - though the last might require some lifting.
I suspect the thought is that the last one will get sufficient praise from environmentalists that he can afford to disappoint them on not pushing for a real climate change bill. It would seem that the Lugar bill or the Bingaman bill are not out of line with what he is asking for. If passed, he likely would praise the money going to clean energy, without noting it was a lost opportunity. (That bill would be the right time for the Sanders amendment. The justification then would be not just the cost savings, but that it lowers the price of the fuel we want to get away from.
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