Senate Climate and Energy Hearings Begin Next Week

The first of four Senate hearings on energy and climate legislation will take place right after the nation [[less the New York State Senate, notes this disgusted New Yorker]] gets back from its Independence Day break.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works committee, has scheduled four hearings for July. The first, on July 7, will feature three top officials from the Obama administration on a morning panel: Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, an Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The GOP has invited Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to be part of an afternoon panel that will also feature representatives from Dow Chemical and the Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as Braddock, Pennsylvania MayorJohn Fetterman.

Gov. Barbour is considered one of the party's bright hopes for a 2012 presidential bid (especially in wake of recent sex scandals and other embarrassments that may have swept other party figures out of contention). It's not hard to predict what his testimony will be; On the Sunday, June 28 broadcast of "Face the Nation," Gov. Barbour slighted the House bill as an "energy tax," and described a fossil-fuel-dependent Republican energy strategy:

We want to use all of the American sources of energy we have. We have tremendous amounts of American energy, more off-shore drilling, more drilling in Alaska, more opening up of shales and tar sands in other places for oil and gas.

But also, nuclear energy is an enormous part of this country's future in electricity generation. Clean coal technology, to recognize we're the Saudi Arabia of coal and we want to be using that coal.

According to Darren Goode at CongressDaily ($ubs. required), the committee will have two hearings on July 14: one how agriculture and forestry can contribute to fighting global warming, and another on the transportation sector factors in to energy and climate policies.

On July 16, Boxer's fourth scheduled hearing will examine how business will need to transform to remain profitable in a low-carbon economy. It's very likely that legislators opposing greenhouse gas pollution caps will play the China and India cards at this hearing, arguing that if the US caps GHGs before India and China do, it will hurt the US economy. China, the US, and India are the world's first, second, and fourth-largest greenhouse gas polluters, respectively.

Goode writes,

Boxer is optimistic that at least one Republican senator will co-sponsor a cap-and-trade measure she wants to introduce this summer, an aide said...Democratic leaders in the climate debate are going to need the support of at least a couple of Republicans to reach that mark.

...Boxer this spring dispatched all panel Democrats to lead or co-lead various working groups tackling five key areas of a cap-and-trade bill to facilitate negotiations with moderates in both parties.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who had his seat on Boxer's committee taken away by Democratic leaders as punishment for campaigning for former GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has been the leading liaison in trying to get McCain on board.

(Thanks, Josh!)