Yesterday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted to report out climate legislation, with ten Democrats voting yes, one Democrat (Montana’s Sen. Baucus) voting no, and all of the Republicans boycotting. If you look at the vote tally (using Project Vulcan data), you find that the states of senators voting "no" emitted 29.4 tonnes of carbon per capita, and the states of "yes" voters emitted 13.3 tonnes per capita, compared with a national average of 20.9 tonnes per capita.

What do you think? Does this mean that the likely impact of cap-and-trade legislation on the members’ states influenced their votes? We would say it does, as we implied in a post we put up the other day on the household costs by a bill by metro. However, Matthew Yglesias would likely disagree, going by his response to our previous examination of this issue.

Matt doesn’t think representatives from metros (or states) with higher carbon emissions are less likely to support cap-and-trade. Instead, he argues that “the primary driver of the politics of climate change is general ideological factors, followed by the interests of energy producers rather than consumers.” That is, he thinks that industry opposition to carbon legislation is a stronger motivator of "no" votes than consumer opposition—an interesting theory that we can almost buy. Did you see all those anti-climate bill industry ads during the World Series?

Strong words from Montana's Max Baucus on the prospects of climate legislation passing within a year:

Baucus insisted that the bill would cross the finish line, which would require both Senate passage and a successful conference with the House. "There’s no doubt that this Congress is going to pass climate change legislation," he said. "I don’t know if it’s going to be this year. Probably next year."

That's fairly newsworthy, especially since, in recent weeks, various centrist Democrats have been talking about laying the issue aside for now. West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller recently told Politico that a cap on carbon might have to wait until after the 2010 midterms. And Nebraska's Ben Nelson has flatly stated that a climate bill won't pass this Congress.

Evidently, Baucus disagrees—and his views do carry some weight. Not only does he chair the Finance Committee, which will do the heavy legwork in deciding how the pollution permits are allocated under a cap-and-trade bill, but he comes from a big coal-mining state and his support will mean a lot to other jittery coal senators (much like how, in the House, Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher's blessing helped convince a lot of Democrats from coal districts to support the Waxman-Markey bill). The flip side, naturally, is that Baucus wants a less ambitious bill—he's already insisted that the current goal of cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020 is too stringent.

On a related note, Ben Nelson's comment today that lawmakers may have to postpone climate legislation because of the awful jobs picture seems awry. For one, even if Congress passed cap-and-trade tomorrow, the program wouldn't take effect until at least 2012—long after the recession had subsided. And, in the meantime, the surety that a price on carbon was on the way could have a short-term stimulative effect by spurring new investments. As Chuck Gray, the executive director of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, argued last year, the swirling uncertainty over future carbon prices has been preventing many utilities from planning and financing new projects.

(Plus, it's also possible, as economist Michael Roberts has argued, that a looming carbon cap could spur some owners of carbon-based fuels—oil, coal, or natural gas—to extract resources more quickly in the short run, before those fuels are taxed or capped. That, too, could help jolt the economy, though presumably it's not a case most environmentalists are keen on making. )

Well, that was anti-climactic. The Environment and Public Works Committee just voted 11-1 to approve a cap-and-trade bill and report it out to the Senate floor. Since Republicans were still boycotting the mark-up, creating a stalemate, EPW Democrats just decided to get around them by skipping the usual amendment process—instead, they'll offer their changes later, on the floor. Max Baucus was the only senator who voted "no," saying that he wants the climate bill to proceed, but thinks EPW should mark the bill up in committee. (Presumably, his Finance Committee will get its own chance to amend the bill later.)

So, uh, what does it all mean? Basically, the climate bill's out of the hands of Barbara Boxer and EPW at this point. The Republican boycott was circumvented. A few of the other committees—like Finance—could now take a whack at it, but it's mainly going to be shepherded by Harry Reid from this point forward. And the "tri-partisan" negotiations between John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham are going to play a key role in delineating the broader outlines of the bill (which will likely mean more offshore drilling, more support for nuclear, and who knows what else).

Given that a number of people have been grumbling about Boxer's handling of this bill, and given that James Inhofe and other EPW Republicans were going to absurd lengths to bog down the legislative process (e.g., demanding a five-week EPA analysis that the EPA itself said would be a waste of time), the vote today will likely give the bill some forward momentum, but oy, what a weird week.

So what's going on with the Senate climate bill? Kate Sheppard has the rundown of all the latest dips and dives. The two main developments are a) the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill is still, very slowly, tunneling its way through the various committees, but it's been bogged down by the fact that Republicans have boycotted the mark-up process in the EPW committee and are demanding further economic analyses of the bill; and b) John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Republican Lindsey Graham are now hashing out their own, parallel, proposal for a bipartisan climate bill. Here's Kate's read:

I don't think this announcement is as much of a big deal as other some have suggested. It has always been the case that Reid would have the ultimate authority to combine and tweak a final bill on climate and energy, and would do so with the goal of crafting something that can garner 60 votes. And in the weeks since Kerry and Graham coauthored their editorial calling for climate action, it has become clear that there is a separate track of negotiations going on outside of Boxer's committee—a track that is designed to help appease senators who want a greater role for nuclear, coal, and domestic oil.

What is important is both the public appearance by Graham and the emergence of Lieberman as the third wingman. In his remarks, Graham seemed to distance himself from Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee that have thus far boycotted markup of the Kerry-Boxer bill. "My hope is that participation is seen as positive," said Graham. "If you can't participate in solving the problem, then why are you up here?"

Indeed, take a look at Graham's remarks during the press conference he held up on Capitol Hill with Lieberman and Kerry today. He does sound awfully sincere about banging out some sort of climate bill, despite the heavy shelling he's taken from conservatives in South Carolina. "Our country doesn’t have a vision on carbon," he said. "We need one. And we need to lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution. Our country doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to build a green economy and never will until we price carbon."

Of course, that doesn't mean it's all placid sailing from here on out. As I reported earlier this week, finding common ground between conservatives and liberals on nuclear power could be a devilish task, although there are signs that many nuclear skeptics are softening their stance. As for the Kerry-Boxer bill, there's still that nasty stalemate in the EPW committee, and Graham said today that he actually agreed that the committee should delay five weeks for further EPA analysis. (Essentially, Republicans like George Voinovich think the agency's being too optimistic about the impact of a carbon cap, and what the EPA to redo its work with different, gloomier assumptions.)

At this point, the odds of a bill passing still look reasonably decent, but it's looking less and less likely the Senate will make much headway before the Copenhagen talks in December—which is why U.N. officials are starting to lower expectations for that summit and talking about extending the climate-treaty negotiations through to next year.

In an interview with The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert, Al Gore made an interesting point I hadn't seen elsewhere (it's that last paragraph there):

Once the world makes it clear that we are going to follow a roadmap to a low-carbon economy, the best-managed businesses will seek to race out in front of that emerging trend. Indeed, you’re already seeing a lot of them do exactly that.

And along with legislation and the treaty, there is also the prospective regulation of CO2 by the E.P.A.; the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision giving a green light to private lawsuits against large CO2 emitters based on tort law; and the prospective requirement to begin, this January 1st, reporting CO2 emissions, a requirement that will cover the emitters of eight-five per cent of the CO2 in the U.S. each year, with the first public release of that annual report coming a year from March.

The last time this kind of reporting mechanism was used, with the toxic reporting initiative, it triggered a mad scramble by the top ten emitters in each city to get off that top ten list.

Just to recap, the EPA finalized its greenhouse-gas reporting rule back in September; it will require the 13,000 or so biggest polluters in the country to start measuring their emissions. The data will become public in 2011. A recent Forbes story noted that some companies are already doing what Gore predicted—finding ways to use energy more prudently and curbing their emissions in order to look better when those reports become public. (What's more, simply by tallying up their emissions, many businesses are discovering just how much energy—and hence money—they're wasting.)

That's not surprising. For years, a lot of companies have tried to foster an eco-friendly image, but now there'll be actual benchmarks to contend with—and greenwashing will be a lot harder to pull off. This sort of voluntary action isn't really a substitute for carbon caps, but it can certainly quicken the rate of change.

Bernard Avishai, the author of two excellent, but sometimes misunderstood, books on Israel and on Zionism,  is a professor of business at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and on top of the transformation of the older industrial into a new cyber-industrial economy. Avishai has written a very important article on the electric car for Inc.  

Most discussions of energy conservation and climate change pivot on the question of how much of a sacrifice in GDP and consumption Americans will have to make to prevent worldwide calamity in 50 years, but in his account of the electric car, and its place in a new economy, Avishai shows that energy conservation can actually fuel economy growth. It’s the best argument I’ve read for a “green economy.”

The key is not thinking simply of car sales, but of the huge infrastructure of small and large firms that will have to spring up in order to sustain electric cars. Where will they recharge? How will it be possible to prevent them from recharging at the same times? How will drivers know where the nearest recharging station is? What kind of devices can be installed in the neighborhood and home to facilitate recharging? What kind of software will be needed to coordinate the components of the electric car? How will utilities have to reorient their output?

If you imagine what the growth of the oil-powered automotive industry meant for the economy of the 1920s or 1950s—again, measured not just in auto sales, but in gas stations, garages, roads, repairs, parts, etc.—you’ll get an inkling of what the transition to electric cars could entail. It wouldn’t mean sacrifice; instead, it would spur growth and jobs. And as Avishai suggests, the Obama administration seems to understand this and is encouraging the new industry.

A bear mauled two Muslim separatists after finding them in its den, the BBC reports. Turns out civil strife is actually good for wildlife: 

Wildlife experts say the conflict in Kashmir has actually resulted in an increase in the population of bears and leopards.

Following the outbreak of the insurgency people had to hand in their weapons to police - which put a halt to poaching.

As a result, there has been a greater incidence of man-animal conflict, say experts.

There have been many reports of bears and leopards killing or mauling humans in different parts of the Kashmir valley in recent years.

One of the big business stories today was that Warren Buffett is planning to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which boasts one of the largest freight-rail networks in the country. Buffett told reporters that the move was "an all-in wager on the economic future of the United States." That's certainly encouraging. But there's also a less-noticed energy angle here.

Specifically, the BNSF railway serves a lot of coal fields in the West, including Wyoming's vast Powder River Basin, and hauls enough coal on its routes to supply about 10 percent of the electricity in the United States. So Buffett's essentially betting that coal's going to remain a major part of the U.S. energy mix for quite some time, even as the country moves to cut carbon emissions. (Via e-mail, Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch points out that Buffett also owns MidAmerican Energy, a large Western utility that owns 11 coal-fired plants and has fought hard against caps on carbon emissions.)

Is it crazy to bet on coal in the face of looming climate legislation? Eh, not really. As a new Greenpeace report points out, the House climate bill actually does quite a bit to ensure that coal has a bright future. There's $10 billion for research into capturing carbon emissions from coal-fired plants, plus billions more for deployment. And the bill exempted many existing plants from new pollution standards, which will enable utilities to keep some of their older, dirtier plants chugging along for years to come. Environmentalists have been lobbying to change some of these provisions in the Senate, but Buffett seems awfully confident that won't happen.

(Flickr photo credit: railtalk)

Okay, here's the latest on the ongoing mini-drama over the Senate climate bill. Earlier this morning, the Environment and Public Works committee met to begin marking up and amending the bill, and Republicans carried out their early threat to boycott the session—only George Voinovich showed up, to lodge a complaint. Voinovich asked committee chair Barbara Boxer to postpone the markup until the EPA had done a full analysis of the initial Senate draft. (This would delay the mark-up by about five weeks, since it takes time for the agency to run its different models.)

Boxer, for her part, pointed out that the EPA had already done extensive economic analysis of the House climate bill. Then, last month, the agency combed through the Kerry-Boxer draft Senate climate bill, noted that most of the provisions were virtually identical to the House legislation, and so declared that its analysis applied there, too. There were a few minor differences between the two bills, so EPA staffers looked those over carefully and pointed out what the effects would be. Meanwhile, it's not like the EPA's just stepping aside: Once all Senate committees have marked up the current draft and we have a final bill, the agency will do a full modeling run of that version before it comes up for a floor vote.

Voinovich has a fair point when he says we need to understand the full effects of this rather large piece of legislation. But there's a huge body of information as is. True, the agency could take another five weeks to do another full modeling run of the current Senate draft, as Republicans prefer, but it's extremely unlikely that we'll discover anything new. And, of course, that initial draft is going to change significantly. What's more, one of the lurking problems here is that Voinovich simply believes the agency is being too optimistic about the effects of the bill—he appears to want the EPA to revisit its assumptions and redo its work again and again until he gets the answer he's looking for. 

In any case, it looks like the bill's moving forward. Yesterday, Boxer made a few modest concessions to James Inhofe and other Republicans on the committee, saying she would extend the deadline to offer amendments and would pause the markup process this afternoon and bring in EPA staff, who could answer any questions Voinovich or other Republicans might have. But, at this point, she's not yielding to their demand for a five-week delay—indeed, she suspects that James Inhofe and other Republicans on the EPW are just trying to do whatever they can to delay a bill they had no intention of voting for anyway.

Incidentally, not everyone seems to agree with Boxer's style. One anonymous Democratic aide grumbled to the Politico today, "She's poisoned the waters." Indeed, it's possible Inhofe is forcing this fight because he knows Boxer has a reputation as a combative liberal, and that that could scare off moderates. So we'll see how this all plays out. But for now, Boxer appears to have the better argument.

Much is in question today as Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairman Barbara Boxer tries to push ahead with work on climate-change legislation, with Republicans threatening a boycott of the markup. What is certain, however, is that cost issues—costs to the overall economy, costs to certain sectors, and costs to families—will loom huge in the coming weeks.

On the overall impact, the most recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates a cap-and-trade bill will depress GDP growth 0.2 percent to 0.7 percent by 2020, though some contend legislation will actually boost growth, while others like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce foresee massive layoffs. Across sectors, several studies show varied impacts, with energy-intensive industries losing more jobs than will be created in clean energy. But we’ll leave those aside for now.

Today, we are interested in the cost impact of legislation on households, and here we are generally reassured that the newest EPA analysis, which concludes that a climate package like the one being considered by the Senate would cost the average household only around $80 to $111 per year. That seems supportable. And yet, that’s a national figure, and so it remains unsatisfying. Of course, many, many national averages obscure significant variation across America’s diverse array of metropolitan areas. Also, our 2008 research that ranked the carbon emissions of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, located significant variation  between the energy use and emissions of the “cleanest” and the “dirtiest” metros.

So we decided to drill down a little on the household costs for metros, somewhat as Nate Silver did at the state level, using the CBO’s household cap-trade cost-impact figures for different income groups and the Brookings carbon footprint data for metropolitan areas. (Look here to check out what we did).

At the risk of seeming like I’m kissing up to the boss’s family, I have to flag this great essay by Jonathan Safran Foer in The Wall Street Journal making the Swiftian case for eating dog. After all, pigs are just as smart, but there’s nothing keeping most of us from firing up the spit-roaster. And of course, throughout history many people have taken to canine cuisine. It’s worth pointing out a few highlights from his essay. Here’s the best plank of his argument, the environmental reason for putting Fido on the dinner menu:

Three to four million dogs and cats are euthanized annually. The simple disposal of these euthanized dogs is an enormous ecological and economic problem. But eating those strays, those runaways, those not-quite-cute-enough-to-take and not-quite-well-behaved-enough-to-keep dogs would be killing a flock of birds with one stone and eating it, too.

In a sense it’s what we’re doing already. Rendering—the conversion of animal protein unfit for human consumption into food for livestock and pets—allows processing plants to transform useless dead dogs into productive members of the food chain. In America, millions of dogs and cats euthanized in animal shelters every year become the food for our food. So let’s just eliminate this inefficient and bizarre middle step.

At the end of the essay he makes an important point:

There is an overabundance of rational reasons to say no to factory-farmed meat: It is the No. 1 cause of global warming, it systematically forces tens of billions of animals to suffer in ways that would be illegal if they were dogs, it is a decisive factor in the development of swine and avian flus, and so on. And yet even most people who know these things still aren't inspired to order something else on the menu. Why?

Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity.

Exactly. Food culture is so deeply wedded to issues of personal choice that it makes talking about the global impact of meat consumption a political non-starter. What's needed is for incisive writers to grapple with the question of why most people who are aware of all of the rational reasons not to eat meat do so anyway, and that’s why I’m looking forward to reading his new book.

(Flickr photo credit: BlissAbyss2112)

Last month, the Maldives held its cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the fact that the island nation is at risk of vanishing as global warming causes sea levels to rise. The cabinet members all put on scuba gear, got paired with a diving expert, and had to communicate by writing on whiteboards with nifty waterproof pens.

Now the Nepalese government is trying to do one better, announcing its own cabinet meeting on... Mount Everest, in order to draw attention to melting glaciers. "Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and other Cabinet members will fly by plane to the 17,400-foot (5,300-meter) camp, the starting point for mountaineers attempting to climb the world's highest mountain," the AP reports.

What's next? Maybe some African country can drop its cabinet via helicopter into the middle of the Sahara, leaving them with nothing but sand dunes and camels—and, of course, news crews for the photo op.

(Flickr photo credit: amd300466)