The House has a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/politics/27climate.html"just passed/a Waxman-Markey on a 219-212 vote.
br /
br /That said, will it pass the Senate? It certainly won’t get strengthened there, dreams of some environmentalists aside. (That’s a fantasy I have, but not a dream, because I know it has zero chance.)
br /
br /It has tough sledding. Not so much because of GOP opposition, but because healthcare reform is the hot Senate topic right now, and the issue of whether or not Obama will bypass the Senate reconciliation procedures on that issue.
br /
br /That said, does Waxman-Markey matter?
br /
br /Well, maybe not.
br /
br /My take? Contra Gang Green enviro organzations (who, of course, value their Democratic Party “access” on a bill like this), I’m halfway in agreement, at least, with Greenpeace’s a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/press-center/releases2/greenpeace-opposes-waxman-mark"dump this sucker/a angle.
br /
br /What’s wrong with the bill? Per a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-24-waxman-markey-senate-climate/"Grist/a, a fair amount:
br /blockquote The biggest flaws environmental organizations have identified in Waxman-Markey include the removal of the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act, the grandfathering of old coal-fired power plants in the initial years of the cap-and-trade program, and the delay in considering the climate impacts of indirect land use in biofuel production, among others./blockquote
br /In other words, back to the BushCo era on CO2 regulation, back to the BushCo era, or staying there, on Big Coal, and kicking the can down the road on biofuels.
br /
br /Add in the fact that the Obama Administration teamed up to shift the U.S. “target year” for greenhouse gas cuts from 1990 to 2005, and this bill is Swiss cheese.
br /
br /Add in that USDA, not EPA, will regulate a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-24-peterson-waxman-markey/" will regulate details of the compromise with Big Ag/a, and it’s factory farm Swiss cheese.
br /
br /Finally, as noted in a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/politics/27climate.html"the bill passage story/a, the cap-and-trade credits will be treated as a kind of derivative, and we know what American financiers did with them the past several years.
br /
br /Meanwhile, Gang Green group League of Conservation Voters has already promised NOT to endorse Waxman-Markey opponents, a href="http://www.actgreenblog.com/2009/06/lcv-issues-ultimatum-to-congress.html"including real environmentalists who oppose the Swiss cheese/a,
br /
br /Anyway, I’m curious about your views, so take the poll if you would. (Multiple answers are allowed, as I have a bit of snark in it.)
br /
br /!-- // Begin Pollhost.com Poll Code // --
br /form method=post action=http://poll.pollhost.com/vote.cgitable border=0 bgcolor=#EEEEEE cellspacing=0 width=550trtd align=right bgcolor=#FFFFFFfont face="Arial" size=-2 color="#000000"a href=http://www.pollhost.com/font color=#000099Free polls from Pollhost.com/a/font/td/trtrtd width=500font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"bWhat's your take on the Waxman-Markey climate bill?/b/font/td/trtrtd width=500font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"centerinput type=radio name=answer value=1font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"Verynbsp;goodnbsp;pernbsp;thenbsp;currentnbsp;politicalnbsp;climate/font input type=radio name=answer value=2font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"Solidlynbsp;pernbsp;thenbsp;currentnbsp;politicalnbsp;climate/font input type=radio name=answer value=3font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"So-sonbsp;atnbsp;bestnbsp;innbsp;thenbsp;currentnbsp;politicalnbsp;climate/font input type=radio name=answer value=4font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"Somethingnbsp;isnbsp;betternbsp;thannbsp;nothing,nbsp;Inbsp;guess/font input type=radio name=answer value=5font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"Wherenbsp;wasnbsp;Obama'snbsp;leadershipnbsp;onnbsp;this?/font input type=radio name=answer value=6font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"Sometimesnbsp;thenbsp;so-sonbsp;isnbsp;thenbsp;enemynbsp;ofnbsp;thenbsp;better/font input type=radio name=answer value=7font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"Inbsp;reluctantlynbsp;agreenbsp;withnbsp;Greenpeacenbsp;-nbsp;dumpnbsp;it/font input type=radio name=answer value=8font face="Arial" size=-1 color="#000000"Weaknbsp;fromnbsp;thenbsp;start,nbsp;gotnbsp;worsenbsp;withnbsp;time/font input type=hidden name=config value="c29jcmF0aWNnYWRmbHkJMTI0NjA0NjY2MglFRUVFRUUJMDAwMDAwCUFyaWFsCUFzc29ydGVk"input type=submit value=Votenbsp;nbsp;input type=submit name=view value=View/center/font/td/tr/table/form
br /!-- // End Pollhost.com Poll Code // --
br /div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-4767805051181894529?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div
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