Teeing up a new climate bill, this time with oil’s blessing
A new climate/energy bill is in the works, c/o Senators Lieberman (I-CT), Graham (R-SC) and Kerry (D-MA), and while the contents are far from ideal, this trio has already made a few politically astute choices in this iteration.
The new bill takes a more fragmented approach to the climate issue, creating a cap-and-trade market strictly for emissions from electric utilities and a linked-carbon fee system for oil and other transportation fuels, writes ClimateWire’s Darren Samuelsohn. Thus far, no one in Congress has dared to swap the word “fee” with the dreaded “tax,” which would raise hackles on both sides of the aisle; but in effect, those fees would amount to a tax to consumers as producers pass those costs down the supply chain. This proposal has the blessing of the American Petroleum Institute (they came up with the pitch), and the bill’s authors hope this approach will ease the pain to consumers and render the bill more politically palatable.
Unfortunately, this approach leaves several huge portions of the U.S.’s contribution to global carbon emissions unaddressed:
- Emissions from manufacturing operations such as cement manufacturing, which is largely powered by coal on-site;
- Greenhouse gases released by oil drilling and refining processes (only levying a fee based on fuel sale/purchase relieves the oil industry of this obligation);
Other nagging questions about the proposed bill include how high the proposed carbon “fee” would be, where in the supply chain it gets levied, and how this piecemeal approach to addressing U.S. CO2 emissions will affect their negotiators’ credibility in the next round of UNFCCC talks.
