NOTE:  Unexpectedly, Rep. Bono Mack (R-CA) voted “yes” — and the bill passed 33-25!  She later said, ““While I still have significant concerns about this bill, particularly with regard to its cost and its failure to recognize innovative technologies like advanced nuclear energy, I believe this is the right direction for our district, for our nation and for our future.”

UPDATE:  Al Gore’s statement is at the end.  The New York Times labels Waxman-Markey “the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress.”

Every journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step — including stopping human-caused global warming at “safe levels,” as close as possible to 2°C.  Many people have asked me how I can reconcile my climate science realism, which demands far stronger action than the Waxman-Markey bill requires, and my climate politics realism, which has led me to strongly advocate passage of this flawed bill.

The short answer is that Waxman-Markey is the only game in town.  If it fails, I see no chance whatsoever of stabilizing anywhere near 350 to 450 ppm since serious U.S. action would certainly be off the table for years, the effort to jumpstart the clean energy economy in this country would stall, the international negotiating process would fall apart, and any chance of a deal with China would be dead.  Warming of 5°C or more by century’s end would be all but inevitable, with 850 to 1000+ ppm.  If Waxman-Markey becomes law, then I see a genuine 10% to 20% chance of averting catastrophe — not high, but not zero.

Today was the first genuine step that the U.S. House of Representatives has ever taken on climate.  And since the Committee is stuffed with members representing traditional (i.e. polluting) energy industries, it shouldn’t be harder for the full House to pass this bill than it was for the committee.  That said, the House GOP leadership is certainly much savvier than Joe Barton (see here) — and agricultural and other interest groups have yet to flex their muscle.  Much work remains keep the bill as strong as possible even in the House.

For climate politics realists, it will be a staggering achievement if, in 12 months or so, an energy and climate bill that looks something like Waxman-Markey is signed into law by President Obama.  After all, the United States hasn’t enacted a major economy-wide clean air bill since the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.  And that bill had a cap-and-trade system where 97% of the permits were given to polluters.  And it focused on direct, short-term health threats to Americans.

The forces that are lined up against serious climate action today are incredible:

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House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking minority member Joe Barton (R-TX) said that to Jay Inslee (D-WA) at a little after 7 PM EST.

I haven’t been live blogging best but it was an unexpected statement.  Barton also said to Inslee, “you have been an indefatigable proponent of the bill.”

Anybody watching the tedious markup of the Waxman-Markey clean energy and climate bill, saw a rare moment of bipartisan levity:

[Note:  If a typical flash-in-the-pan gets 15 minutes of fame, it's only right that a speed reader get two minutes of fame.]

TPM explains why Waxman had a speed reader on hand in the first place:

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Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

A new study by a Department of Energy laboratory predicts that consumers would see a negligible increase in their electricity costs if Congress requires utilities to produce up to a quarter of their power from renewable sources. The analysis of three Democratic proposals to impose a national renewable energy standard (RES) of 20 to 25 percent concludes that electric rates would increase less than one percent under any of the plans proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA). The report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. concludes:

None of the RES bills modeled have a significant impact on consumer electricity prices at the national level.

During Senate debate on a 15 percent RES in late 2007, utilities including Southern Co. and American Electric Power Co. claimed the measure could cost $67 billion or more. The NREL study is the latest analysis to rebut arguments from some utility companies that a national RES would impose high costs on consumers. On the Waxman-Markey proposal of 25 percent RES by 2025 and a 15 percent electricity and 10 percent natural gas EERS by 2020:

“Given the amount of eligible renewable generation projected in the reference case, the RES is not expected to affect national average electricity prices until after 2020. . . By 2030, electricity prices are projected to be little changed from the reference case in both RES cases, with 2030 prices less than 1 percent higher than in the reference case.” [Energy Information Administration, April 2009]

“By 2030 the aggressive EERS and RES policies in the draft bill would save consumers over $200 billion dollars per year compared to the costs that would be incurred if investor-owned utilities are left to pursue their preference for expensive central station generation units.” [Consumer Federation of America, 5/21/09]

The Union of Concerned Scientists found that a 25 percent RES by 2025: “would create more than three times as many jobs as producing an equivalent amount of electricity from fossil fuels — resulting in a net benefit of 202,000 new jobs in 2025.”

The comprehensive energy and climate change legislation sponsored by Waxman and Markey and now being debated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would establish a national RES of 15% by 2020. It would also require utilities to reduce electricity demand by another five percent through efficiency measures.

The NREL study, like earlier ones, forecasts significant regional differences in how states would be able to meet a national RES. Western states, which have abundant wind and solar resources, would likely exceed the national requirement and be able to sell renewable energy credits. Southern states would rely more on purchased credits and electricity produced by biomass.

Google Rolls Out Home Energy Software

Google’s initiative to allow people to monitor their energy use on their computers took a step forward on Wednesday, as the company announced partnerships with eight electric utilities that will be the first to use its “Power Meter.”

Essentially, the secure software gadget will interact with the intelligent metering devices currently being installed by utilities for their customers. The software will “show consumers their home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer,” the company says.

Googlers testing the device, which includes a graphic-rich, Web-based interface, have reported learning which appliances cause the largest spike in home energy use “” causing them to make changes like ensuring that an energy-intensive dishwasher or washing machine is fully loaded.

“One of my colleagues learned that her pool pump had been operating for years,” said Dan Reicher, the head of climate change programs at Google.org, with whom I spoke last month….

Google cites studies that suggest consumers could cut their electricity bills by 5 percent to 15 percent if they had access to information about how much electricity they are consuming.

Existential question:  Would such savings be energy efficiency — or conservation?

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As the House Energy and Commerce Committee completes its work on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, Al Gore’s army is mobilizing to support it.

Gore hosted a North American Summit late last week in Nashville, convening 500 of the 2,600 volunteers he’s trained to deliver his “Inconvenient Truth” presentation. Five hundred was the maximum number that could crowd into the ballroom of the Hudson Hotel for what amounted to a pep rally for long-overdue climate action in Congress.

The purpose of the summit was twofold. Gore and his roster of speakers gave his volunteers fresh ammunition for their public education efforts, including information on the public health implications of global warming and a review of current science by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-winner of the Nobel Prize awarded to Gore and the IPCC.

The summit’s second mission was to encourage the thousands of volunteers Gore has trained to join his “Repowering America” campaign, launched some months ago after he proposed that America receive 100 percent of its power from renewable energy within 10 years.

Repowering America is being administered by another Gore organization — the Alliance for Climate Protection — best known for the series of television spots it has aired on climate action. Now, the Alliance is organizing volunteers to hold town hall meetings, write letters to the editor, contact members of Congress and recruit more people in support of bold action on energy and climate policy. As one Alliance speaker told the Summit, “TV ads show you have money. A grassroots movement shows you have passion.”

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The deal was set this morning.  As this Washington Post (among others) just reported:

At the start of Day Four of the committee’s debate, ranking Republican Joe Barton (Texas) said he and Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) had agreed to limit debate on each new amendment to 10 minutes. That came after a second marathon session yesterday, in which the committee members spent much of their morning talking about a small change related to nuclear power. They spent much of the evening talking about a proposal to auction off all pollution credits, instead of giving many away for free. That amendment was eventually crushed, in a 52-4 vote.

“We have agreed to expedite the process today,” Barton said. “We will have a final-passage vote this afternoon, within an hour or so after the House concludes its business.”

Barton said that Republicans would give up their right to demand the reading of the 900-plus-page legislation. That potential delaying tactic had worried Democrats so much that they had a speed reader on call, Dow Jones reported.

In return, Barton said, Waxman had agreed to hold more hearings on the bill’s “cap-and-trade” scheme, after it had passed committee.

Yeah, more hearings!

The bill seems headed for passage early this evening.  Stay tuned!

For conservatives, a far, far greater threat than catastrophic global warming is the possibility the government might pass national regulations that require businesses and consumers to save energy and reduce pollution (see “The real reason conservatives don’t believe in climate science“).  Indeed, so great is this fear, that even members of Congress from one of the states most threatened by global warming — Louisiana — would rather let their state be inundated from unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions than take sensible, cost-effective steps to reduce the risk of that horrendous outcome, as Brad Johnson explains in a post first published here.

Invoking a Nazi reference today, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) argued that establishing national energy efficiency standards for buildings would create a “global warming Gestapo.” Scalise attacked the provision in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454) to create a federal building efficiency code (Section 201), calling it “ludicrous”:

Let’s go to the bill and look at the penalties. Because there are actually civil penalties in this bill. We’re actually creating a global warming police. . . And then further to page 236: “Each day of unlawful occupancy shall be considered a separate violation.” We’re setting up a global warming Gestapo that can literally come in and now this new term, “unlawful occupancy.” Now living in your home is considered unlawful under this bill.

This is ludicrous.

Watch it:

Putting aside Scalise’s inflammatory rhetoric, his understanding of the provision “” which would save working families and businesses millions of dollars, create hundreds of thousands of green jobs, and tackle the nation’s biggest source of global warming pollution “” is flawed. Scalise ignored the difference between energy efficiency building codes and safety codes. Scalise was also seemly ignorant that the legislation explicitly preserves local building codes that meet or exceed the national standard, while providing federal support for states to implement new standards. Federal enforcement would only take place if states failed to act.

Without irony, Scalise argued that fighting global warming would threaten the health and safety of Lousianans in danger of “hurricanes and flooding” and tornadoes:

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