WASHINGTON - Congress has been debating climate change for more than three decades now, almost since scientists first started warning about the phenomenon of global warming.
And while there’s been some modest legislation passed here and there, the sweeping changes in U.S. law most everyone from oil companies to environmentalists now says are necessary have so far proven elusive.
The closest anyone came was back in 2010 when Democrats proposed a cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions. The bill passed the House but never won over the necessary number of votes in the Senate - despite efforts by some Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Eleven years later, the situation has only grown more dire, with scientists now warning that if the Earth’s temperature increases by just 1.5 degrees Celsius we can expect massive crop failures, large swaths of the world’s coastlines under water and devastating droughts and wildfires.
With polls showing climate change of increasing importance to Americans, Congress is at it again to try and find a deal on climate change. But so far there is little sign of progress.
At an event held by Columbia University this week, Rep. David McKinley, R-W.V., a climate moderate in his party, said the atmosphere around climate in Congress had only grown more partisan in recent years.
“It’s worse,” he said. “Sooner or later people have to be able to talk to each other, and as long as people keep ramming partisan legislation past us that’s not going to happen.
What has McKinley annoyed is a sweeping climate bill authored by Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which aims to get the United States to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 through moves like requiring power companies to only sell zero-carbon electricity by 2035 and spending $500 billion on electric car infrastructure, while setting up programs to help workers in the fossil fuel sector transition to new jobs.
That has met with near universal disdain from Republicans, who argue that government mandates are an inefficient and overly costly way to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, they are pushing for increasing government spending on research into technologies like carbon capture to reduce emissions from fossil fuels without eliminating them all together.
Democrats largely see this as a stalling tactic to avoid the hard work of reducing emissions, which have been coming down over the past decade but not nearly at the pace scientists say is necessary.
But not all. Rep. Kurt Schrader, an Oregon Democrat, is working with McKinley on legislation that would create a clean electricity standard starting in the early 2030s, after a decade of pumping government funding into clean energy research in areas such as carbon capture, nuclear energy and renewables - the idea being the technology will be economic by that point.
“If this bill passes there’s a clean energy standard in the law,” Schrader said at the Columbia event. “(Power companies’) future depends on them making the investment in partnership with the federal government. And it’s written in that if you’re not making progress we’ll go back to the old regulatory framework.”
This middle-ground approach failed to attract much enthusiasm when the pair introduced the bill last year, with Republicans balking at any concession to a government-imposed emissions standard and Democrats worried it’s just too slow.
But with the two sides at loggerheads, middle ground might be all Democrats can get - short the party successfully doing away with the filibuster.
Likewise, Republicans could see McKinley and Schrader’s bill as their best option on a climate deal, avoiding more aggressive policies down the road.
“Kurt and I are sitting here quietly building up bipartisan support,” McKinley said. “When (Democrats and Republicans) realize their bills aren’t going to go anywhere, they're going to look over at what we're doing.”
Whether sufficient numbers of Republicans and Democrats would actually support the bill is another matter all together.
Seemingly necessary to success would be winning over centrist politicians like Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who is considered among the most conservative in his party. But when asked about whether Manchin liked his bill, McKinley was elusive, saying only, “my staff has talked to Joe.”
james.osborne@chron.com
Twitter.com/@osborneja
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Can Congress finally come to terms on climate? - Houston Chronicle
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