Obama Administration Announces Copenhagen Schedule, Including Presidential Visit
On Wednesday, December 9th, President Barack Obama will participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15).
For the first time, the U.S. delegation will have a U.S. Center at the conference. U.S. delegates will keynote a series of events highlighting actions by the Obama Administration to provide domestic and global leadership in the transition to a clean energy economy. Topics will range from energy efficiency investments and global commitments to renewables policy and clean energy jobs. The following keynote events and speakers are currently scheduled:
- Wednesday, December 9th: Taking Action at Home, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson
- Thursday, December 10th: New Energy Future: the role of public lands in clean energy production and carbon capture, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar
- Friday, December 11th: Clean Energy Jobs in a Global Marketplace, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke
- Monday, December 14th: Leading in Energy Efficiency and Renewables, Energy Secretary Steven Chu
- Tuesday, December 15th: Clean Energy Investments: creating opportunities for rural economies, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
- Thursday, December 17th: Backing Up International Agreement with Domestic Action, CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley and Assistant to the President Carol Browner
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose envoy Todd Stern is in charge of U.S. climate negotiations, was not part of the announcements.
Senate Watch: Bingaman, Boxer, Lincoln, McCaskill, Merkley, McCain, Murkowski, Reid, Rockefeller, Sanders, Whitehouse 1
Numerous Democrats are voicing opposition to acting on climate change.
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)The Hill “We’ve got all kinds of difference of perspective of where the Senate is and where the votes are and where the Senate should try to move,” Bingaman said of his meeting with the other chairmen. Bingaman, the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he would be willing to pass energy legislation separately from a cap-and-trade bill to address climate change.
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)E&E News It’s pretty clear that there seems to be a developing consensus that we want a more flexible opportunity for all countries to achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions. The idea that the only test of a country’s ability to achieve greenhouse gas reductions is whether they adopt a formal cap is just not necessarily the appropriate measure.
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)The Hill “I’d love to get it done tomorrow,” said Boxer, who acknowledged others are less intent on moving that quickly.
Claire McCaskill (R-MO)The Hill “I’m not in a hurry to do that,” she said of climate change legislation. “I think the energy bill we did in the Senate Energy Committee gets us a long way toward job creation and moving us from an old-energy economy to a new-energy economy, which is really what the objective is — lowering carbon output and lessening dependence on foreign oil.”
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)Wall Street Journal It’s really big, really, really hard, and is going to make a lot of people mad. Climate fits that category.
John McCain (R-AZ)Politico There are folks who would say, ‘Well, let’s just shut down coal-powered plants.’ That is not going to happen. You are not going to have 60 votes in the Senate to shut down coal.
Lisa Murkowski (D-AK)Wall Street Journal The delay was “just a matter of reality, they can’t get anything done at this time,” said Sen. John McCain, who has previously supported climate legislation. He has said he wouldn’t support the current Senate proposal because of disagreements over its handling of nuclear energy.
E&E News You know what, we’d get blamed at Copenhagen if we acted or if we didn’t act. It is what it is.
We’re obviously not going to be doing that [passing a climate bill] prior to Copenhagen. Do we walk into Copenhagen with this label that the U.S. has failed?
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)The Hill When asked Tuesday about the timing for climate change legislation, he told reporters that “we are going to try to do that sometime in the spring.”
The Hill Most of the country doesn’t know what cap-and-trade is. They have no idea. I would say half the Senate have no idea what cap-and-trade is and could not explain it.
He said climate legislation should not reach the floor before July of next year, putting the controversial bill on the schedule only months before Election Day. “You have to get this stuff out to the American people before you change their lives, and we are not paying any attention to that,” Rockefeller said.
Rockefeller said his state would be the most affected and that his residents need more time to know what the bill is about. “Right now they don’t, and therefore they are terrified and furious, and I don’t blame them,” he said.
National Journal I’ve got a responsibility to let them know what their options are. But nobody can talk about options right now. I think my problem with climate change right now is that it’s a subject that relatively few people know about. It’s sort of an elitist subject.
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)Politico They don’t have a deal until they get the coal-state senators, and they are a long way from doing it. They’re going to need us to pass a bill.
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)Politico “I’ll do everything I can to oppose that,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said of the lowered targets.
Politico I think there’s a danger that coal interests will demand such a large share of the proceeds of the bill that it creates a backlash. So I think they’ve got to be aware of their own prudential limitations.
Senate Watch: Cardin, Conrad, Dorgan, Graham, Grassley, Kerry, Lieberman, Lugar, Murkowski, Rockefeller
As international leaders let the timetable for a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol slip to 2010, Republicans call for “starting from scratch” as Democrats and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) hope that spring will be a final deadline for passage of climate legislation.
Ben Cardin (D-MD)Kent Conrad (D-ND)E&E News Conventional wisdom is that you have until the spring to get controversial issues moving. If not, it’s difficult to see getting through closer to the elections.
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)E&E News I’m encouraged by it. Senator Kerry has certainly been good at reaching out. He’s been very serious about reaching out. We’ve been sharing things with him. We have more to share. He’s very good at listening, which is the best way of succeeding around here.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)Politico Good policy is going to be left behind by the insistence that the climate change bill has to be done first or together.
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)E&E News We don’t want it to slip into the summer.
E&E News But I do appreciate what Lindsey Graham is trying to do in the sense of nuclear and more offshore drilling.
Several senators say they would prefer to have a better idea what major developing countries plan to do under the auspices of the U.N. talks before they sign off on any domestic emission restrictions. “That’d make a big difference. If we passed a bill that the rest of the world didn’t follow, then Uncle Sam could soon become Uncle Sucker and export all of our jobs to China.”
Joe Lieberman (I-CT)E&E News If you get into an artificial timeline, then you don’t give people the opportunity to feel they’re being listened to, or their ideas are being processed. Let’s just work it day to day and we’ll see where we are. Maybe something breaks and you move faster than you thought? Maybe something slows you down because you need another figure or analysis? What I feel confident about, and what I think is important for the legislative tracking, if you will, is every day we’re making progress.
Richard Lugar (R-IN)E&E News Lieberman said he hoped Baucus would chime in before Reid sends the overall bill on to CBO and EPA for analysis. “The framework won’t be whole without that.”
E&E News I don’t want to deter for a moment the enthusiasm of this particular conference. But I need some benchmarks of how we measure what occurs. I want to know the costs, what’s anticipated, what the outline really creates at a time when really my constituents and those of my colleagues are talking principally in this country about unemployment, about the recovery of our economy, of how we make headway in terms of conservation efforts to save money.
Lisa Murkowski (D-AK)I don’t see any climate legislation on the table here now that I’d support. We really have to start from scratch again, and I think there are ways of doing that.
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)E&E News Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she is willing to work on climate and energy legislation with the three senators “if they can find some middle path that perhaps we haven’t pursued.” “It depends how it’s handled. If the way EPW handled climate change is the way it’s going to roll out from here, it’s doomed.”
E&E News There’s some possibility of people saying that it’s too controversial a bill in an election year. Which is sort of the opposite of how a democracy ought to work. You go ahead and take your chances on that and you get re-elected. But people’s business comes first.
Senate Watch, Slowing Progress: Baucus, Harkin, Kerry, Lieberman, Lugar
Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)Wall Street Journal It’s common understanding that climate-change legislation will not be brought up on the Senate floor and pass the Senate this year.
John Kerry (D-Mass.)AgricultureOnline Quite frankly, I don’t know that we’re going to do anything on it until next year because we have the health bill.
Politico As soon as it is practical with respect to the health care debate and financial regulator reform this legislation will come to the floor of the Senate and the United States Senate will do its part.
Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.)Wall Street Journal I don’t want to create artificial deadlines which get in the way of our being methodical about this. The main thing to do here is to build the adequate base of support and consensus.
Richard Lugar (R-Ind.)Politico I feel the meetings that Sen. Kerry and Graham and I have had so far that we are making some progress here and we can move it along.
Wall Street Journal I don’t see any climate bill on the table right now that I can support. We really have to start from scratch again.
Senate Watch: Baucus, Kerry, Menendez
Washington Independent I am committed to passing meaningful, balanced climate-change legislation. I am committed to legislation that will protect our land and those whose livelihood depends on it. I want our children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy the outdoors the way that we can today. So I’m going to work to pass climate-change legislation that is both meaningful and that can muster enough votes to become law. [...] Let me be clear. We should work to minimize any job losses. But we should recognize that in the case of acid rain [in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments], the negative [economic] consequences were far less than projected. We should keep this in mind when similar claims are made about the effects of legislation to address climate change.
John Kerry (D-MA)Reuters We can not allow our manufacturing industries to fade as result of trade with countries that refuse to negotiate global solutions to global concerns. We must push our trading partners to do their part to curb harmful emissions and we must devise a border measure, consistent with our international obligations, to prevent the carbon leakage that would occur if US manufacturing shifts to countries without effective climate change programs.
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)DTN Well, EPA is poised to move. Everybody needs to understand that. I’m going to make this as clear as I can: I don’t think anybody is going to wind up [blocking] EPA, because there’s filibuster-proof capacity to prevent that from happening. I’ll personally stand on the Senate floor, day and night, to prevent that from happening. Therefore, success in this is not defined by stopping a Senate bill. The reason is, EPA will then regulate without assistance to coal, without allocation of allowances that help companies to make the transition. And then you’re out there on your own. So the game in town, folks, is here. It’s in the Congress, where we have the ability to mitigate the transitional costs and to be reasonable in the process. That’s something people really need to focus on.
E&E News Right now, plenty of other nations, including China, are ahead of us in manufacturing solar power technology, which better positions them for economic strength in the 21st Century. We have always been a world leader in innovation, and it’s time that we grab this economic opportunity.
Senate Watch: Baucus, Chambliss, Graham, Gregg, Harkin, Murkowski, Nelson, Rockefeller, Specter
Senators lay out their agenda after the Environment and Public Works Committee reported out the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.
Max Baucus (D-MT)E&E News That frees up the Senate, frankly. It frees up all members of the Senate who are interested in climate change, including those on the committee.
I don’t want to say we’re going to do something totally different. I’m respectful of the House allocation.
We have to be sensitive to our own industries, as other countries are sensitive to theirs. I strongly believe that an open trading system benefits all countries. It’d be unwise to retrench.
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)On his idea for triggers for stronger targets That’s something we can work out. Climate change is going to be with us, legislative efforts are going to be with us for a while. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. Plenty of time to work on this.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)Wall Street Journal The actions the EPA has taken and its plans to regulate greenhouse gases are a serious concern. However, EPA’s actions should not scare Congress into passing bad legislation.
Politico Now, it’s time to find a bill that will make good policy. Clearly, there are not 60 votes for that product.
Judd Gregg (R-NH)E&E News I appreciate the committee’s work. Now it’s time to find a bill that can make good policy. Environmental policy needs to be good business policy. If it’s not, there will never be 60 votes.
Tom Harkin (D-IA)Politico It’s hard to vote on a bill that big without knowing what it’s going to do. I don’t think that bill is viable in its present form, because we don’t know what it does.
E&E News on the 50-50 split of allocations to utilities based on retail sales and historic emissions It’s going to be changed. It can’t stay at 50-50. It won’t. It can’t.
E&E News I think it has left clearly a very bitter taste in many members’ mouths about how we’re part of a process on a very important issue. This may stall things out for a period of time.
Politico It dooms that particular legislation. The question is what comes next. We will see what Plan B is.
Ben Nelson (D-NE)E&E News We’ve been talking a lot about starting over with a blank piece of paper. I think this might allow for that. If that’s the case, that’s a positive.
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)Politico I don’t know that I’m playing a key role, but we’re talking. I think that’s important.
Arlen Specter (D-PA)E&E News What they have to understand is that the Senate is not ready to travel at their rate. And that the balance on this is among people like myself who come from coal state and manufacturing states who can’t just sort of meet the Copenhagen deadline. We’ve got to be satisfied that it’s a good bill and I’m not at this point.
Politico I think the bill could have been improved substantially.
Senate Watch: Baucus, Collins, Conrad, Dorgan, Gregg, Rockefeller
Senators respond to the Environment and Public Works Committee reporting out the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733) despite a Republican boycott.
Max Baucus (D-Mont.)Susan Collins (R-Maine)E&E News There’s no doubt that this Congress is going to pass climate change legislation. I don’t know if it’s going to be this year—probably next year.
Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)E&E News Collins also criticized the EPW Committee process yesterday. “It’s certainly going to make it much more difficult for people like me, who believe we need to have some sort of climate change legislation, to take seriously what the committee produced.”
Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.)E&E News I want to see agriculture treated more fairly.
Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)E&E News I have almost no interest in supporting something where we create a trillion-dollar carbon security market and have the investment bankers and speculators trade on Monday and Tuesday so we can find out what our energy is going to cost on Thursday and Friday.
Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.)E&E News “I found it surprising that the committee would vote it out without knowing what it does, which they don’t know because EPA hasn’t told us, hasn’t had time to score it.” Gregg said he is not a solid “no” vote despite the EPW Committee tumult. “I presume that a lot is going to happen before it’s completed,” he said.
E&E News Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), for example, said that he met with coal producer Arch Coal yesterday morning, and that the company wants the bill to go away. “And I understand that, but I mean, if it goes away, then natural gas will rule the world. And I’m not quite ready for that.”
EPA Investigating Legality of Coal River Mountain Destruction
EPA is closely examining the company’s compliance with all legal requirements.
As the EPA conducts its legal investigation, the blasting continues.
Senate Watch: Alexander, Baucus, Boxer, Collins, Inhofe, Reid, Specter
Max Baucus (D-Mont.)E&E News I am disappointed that Senator Boxer and the Democrats have reported another 1,000-page bill without a full understanding of what it will cost. Republicans want and expect to participate in any bill about clean energy, but taxpayers expect us to know what this bill costs before we start voting on it.
Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)E&E News I’m going to work to get climate change legislation that can get 60 votes through the U.S. Senate and signed into law.
E&E News We believe that to go back to another analysis when we already have an unprecedented amount of work based on 350,000 pages would be a waste of taxpayer dollars, would be duplicative.
Susan Collins (R-Maine)E&E News Now we take the best of Kerry-Boxer, the best of the energy bill, the best ideas from Agriculture, from Commerce, and meld together a bill. And this was a very important step in that process.
James Inhofe (R-Ok.)E&E News The members of the EPW Committee have got to make decisions on the bill that’s before them. And to require them to make decisions on incomplete information strikes me as foolhardy and as foreclosing any possibility of Republican support. I don’t know why you’d want to do that.
Harry Reid (D-Nev.)E&E News In the history of this, we’ve not been able to find a time when a bill has been marked up without minority participation.
Arlen Specter (D-Penn.)EnviroKnow The committee’s action today is a critically important step toward crafting a good strong clean energy and climate bill. There is much more work yet to do to obtain broad support for bipartisan legislation that can quickly put our nation on a path of reducing emissions cost-effectively and creating jobs and a cleaner more secure future.
E&E News I think the senators you have mentioned will look to substance, rather than form. And there will be that EPA analysis at a later time. This bill is going to be changed markedly, when you move down the road. So they will get substantively what they want.
Copenhagen is very important symbolically. And Copenhagen would have been more impressed had we moved further. But Copenhagen will be impressed at least that we have the resoluteness to move ahead now.
Senate Watch: Boxer, Harkin, Kerry, Lugar, Lautenberg, Voinovich
Senators attempt to negotiate the partisan battle over moving the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733) forward.
Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)E&E News We think this is going the extra mile for our friends on the other side, and we really hope they’ll return to the table. They have every reason to do that.
John Kerry (D-Mass.)E&E News I believe that Americans will accept higher prices as necessary for increasing our energy security and making necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but they also expect that the burden should be shared across the country.
Richard Lugar (R-Ind.)E&E News Over the years, whether it was with the leadership of Senator Jack Heinz, Senator John McCain or Senator John Warner, we’ve made progress on climate change when we’ve been able to overcome partisan divisions. We’ve never needed to do that more than today.
Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)E&E News [Boxer’s planned markup] would not be constructive as far as progress on the bill is concerned. I suspect that there’d be no particular reason for many members to support it.
George Voinovich (R-Ohio)E&E News Their behavior challenges everything that we’re about here: “If you don’t like it, turn your back and walk out.” It’s almost like school children over there.
E&E News I think we’ve made it pretty clear that we want a complete analysis of the bill. It’s been made clear to her that’s what we want. I think it’s a sensible approach because of the fact this is probably the most important piece of legislation this committee has undertaken since the Clean Air Act itself, maybe even more important.
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