No Climate Bill Until 2010 at the Earliest

by Mike Smith · 2009-11-04 13:16:00 UTC
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Is Climate Change being put on the back burner? After Blog Action Day, 350.org's events recently, and all the conferences and gatherings in the run up to Copenhagen, the momentum may lead to domestic legislation passing anytime soon.

With Republicans boycotting the markup of a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee bill (can we call this the billibuster?) before it can even hit the floor, the hopes of a deal being done before Copenhagen now seems unrealistic. The committee could forge ahead despite the boycott but, but other committees still need to weigh in — and they aren't making any plans to do so yet.

Commerce Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said on Tuesday that “Some people are talking about not doing it until after the 2010 election.” That would be a long time to wait, and would hardly show how serious America is about fighting climate change if it takes it that long to get legislation passed. Rockefeller is one of a handful of Democrats who may block legislation, fearing it would harm their coal-dependent economies. As a climate change representative for Algeria said this week, industrialized countries are too concerned with economic and political problems, and not sufficiently concerned about the damage that climate change is already causing to developing countries.

Photo credit: Rob Crawley

Mike Smith
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