UPDATE:  My Salon piece, “One brief shining moment for clean energy” is up.  We do need to savor moments like these, since, as I note in that article, given modern conservative ideology, which is 100% anti-conservation, “the country can only contemplate serious environmental legislation when we have the unique constellation of a Democratic president and [large] Democratic majorities in both houses, an occurrence far rarer than a total eclipse of the sun.”

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.

This bill would complete America’s transition to a clean energy economy, which was begun in the stimulus (see “EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus!“).  Within four decades, the vast majority of American’s carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel consumption will be replaced by the technologies discussed here:  “An introduction to the core climate solutions.”

This bill makes possible an international deal in Copenhagen this December — as well as a bilateral deal with China, hopefully sooner.  Had the bill failed, the chance of humanity avoiding catastrophic climate change would be all but eliminated.  As Nobelist Gore wrote earlier today, there was no “backup plan” to Waxman-Markey.   In this post, I will revise and extend the post I wrote after the bill passed the Energy and Commerce Committee (see “House committee approves landmark (bipartisan!) clean energy and climate bill “” political realists rejoice, climate science realists demand more“).

For climate-politics realists, the vote today is a staggering achievement.  Today was the first time the U.S. House of Representatives has ever voted on climate legislation.  This country 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, obvious, short-term health threats to Americans.  And that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, when the entire Republican establishment wasn’t dead set against any government led effort to reduce pollution.

Yet Waxman-Markey did get 8 Republican votes, which is 8 more than the stimulus bill got!  This bill needed Republican votes, which will also be true in the Senate.  The closeness of the House vote — with 44 Dems voting No — makes clear that the really hard work is yet to come.

And for those who say this doesn’t do enough — I agree 100%.  But then the original Clean Air Act didn’t do enough.  And the 1987 Montr©al protocol would not have stopped concentrations of ozone depleting substances from rising and thus would not have saved the ozone layer.  But it began a process and established a framework that, like the CAA, could be strengthened over time as the science warranted.  The painful reality of climate change is going to become increasingly obvious in the coming years, and strengthening is inevitable.

In the earlier post, I discussed the myriad forces lined up against serious climate action.  I won’t repeat that here, but instead want to excerpt something that David Corn wrote for Mother Jones, which states the climate-politics realist position very well — a position you might not associate with Corn and MJ:

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Doggett: “I Am Voting for Final Passage of the Climate Legislation in the Hope We Can Create a Better Bill”

Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) spoke on the House floor today about the Waxman-Markey bill:

“I struggled deeply about whether to support this flawed bill, but I finally determined that voting for it was my best hope for making it better.”

[Full text of his House floor statement follows below]

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In a C-SPAN interview today, Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) attacked green economy legislation, claiming it would “wreak havoc” on Alabama’s manufacturers. Even though a record-breaking heatwave has killed a woman in his state this week, the dynamic congressman now running for governor in Alabama explained his plan to vote against the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2998/H.R. 2454) today by arguing it would destroy his state’s fragile economy:

– “This bill is still going to wreak havoc with the manufacturing sector in some parts of the country.”

– “The Senate, for example, is not considering cap and trade. The cap and trade provisions are the ones that frankly would damage the manufacturing sector short term and have a lot of other unpredictable consequences on our economy.”

— “When we’re in the midst of a deep recession, we need to make sure we’re not making a dramatic change that could cost us jobs in the short term, because many states simply can’t afford to lose more jobs.”

– “This is the wrong time for cap and trade, this is the wrong time to impose a renewable electricity standard on the Southeast.”

Watch it:

Davis is wrong. In fact, the Senate is continuing to work on cap-and-trade legislation for passage this fall. Furthermore, Davis seems not to understand that states like Alabama need the clean-energy economy to recover from the Bush-Exxon recession.

A Clean-Energy Economy Will Create 29,000 Jobs In Alabama. The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), the EPA found, will “create strong demand for a domestic manufacturing market for these next generation technologies that will enable American workers to serve in a central role in our clean energy transformation” and “play a critical role in the American economic recovery and job growth.” A report from the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute “finds that Alabama could see a net increase of about $2.2 billion in investment revenue and 29,000 jobs based on its share of a total of $150 billion in clean-energy investments annually across the country. This is even after assuming a reduction in fossil fuel spending equivalent to the increase in clean-energy investments. [EPA, 4/20/09; PERI, 6/18/09]

Waxman-Markey Directs Billions Of Dollars To Energy-Intensive Manufacturing. The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) includes cost containment provisions, allowances for worker assistance and training, investments in clean energy technologies, a new clean energy deployment agency, and billions of dollars in direct assistance to trade-vulnerable and other industries. [Committee on Energy and Commerce, 6/9/09]

A Renewable Electricity Standard Would Reduce Costs In Alabama. The Energy Information Administration projects that a renewable electricity standard of 25 percent by 2025 — much stronger than the one in the Waxman-Markey legislation — would drive electricity costs down by more than 10 percent in Alabama and throughout the Southeast, as utilities move away from increasingly expensive coal to renewable biomass. [EIA, 4/09]

Alabama Is Especially Susceptible To Global Warming Damages. As a coastal state, Alabama is highly vulnerable to the devastation of hurricanes, which will increase in intensity as the oceans warm and sea levels rise. Rainfall is expected to decrease, increasing the rate of devastating droughts like that of 2007. By the end of the century, Alabama will have deadly heat waves over 90 degrees for more than four months every year. [U.S. Global Change Program, 2009]

Davis claims to support clean energy reform, but he opposes any effort to limit the carbon pollution responsible for global warming. Like the House Republicans, Davis is in denial.

[This post was reprinted from thinkprogress.]

During the floor debate this morning over the historic American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) received a round of applause from GOP colleagues when he claimed that man-made global warming is a “hoax” with “no scientific consensus.” Broun, citing misleading statistics, also claimed that the bill would hurt the poor and “kill jobs:”

BROUN: Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus. “¦ And who’s going to be hurt most [by ACES] the poor, the people on limited income”¦the people who can least afford to have their energy taxes raised by MIT says $3100 per family. “¦ This bill must be defeated. We need to be good stewards of our environment, but this is not it, it’s a hoax! “¦ [APPLAUSE.]

Watch it:

Broun’s tired hoax claims aside, Broun’s $3,100 talking point is contradicted by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that that the average cost of the legislation would be only 48-cents a day, the price of a postage stamp, and that “households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020.” A report by the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts also found that the bill would create 1.7 million new jobs, including 59,000 new jobs in Broun’s homestate of Georgia.

- Ben Bergmann

Nobelist Al Gore just posted this message on his website:

A Historic Opportunity June 26, 2009:

Today is an historic opportunity to pass truly meaningful legislation to limit global warming pollution, vastly expand our use of renewable energy, and use energy far more efficiently. A victory today in the House of Representatives on the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act would represent an essential first step towards solving the climate crisis. This bill doesn’t solve every problem, but passage today means that we build momentum for the debate coming up in the Senate and negotiations for the treaty talks in December which will put in place a global solution to the climate crisis.

There is no back-up plan. There is not a stronger bill waiting to pass the House of Representatives. It’s time to get started on a plan that will create jobs, increase our national security, and build the clean energy economy that will Repower America.

[This post was reprinted from Thinkprogress.]

Yesterday on Fox Business, anchor David Asman hosted a round table dedicated to smearing the Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation. The discussion, including Fox Business’ Cody Willard and the Heritage Foundation’s David Kreutzer, lacked a single proponent of the bill. Concluding the segment, Asman asked Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) “” an opponent not just of clean energy legislation, but of green jobs in general “” if the bill would pass the House. He responded with a morbid comparison:

ASMAN: Congressman Bishop is there any chance at all that this thing won’t pass tomorrow?

BISHOP: Well there’s hope, we’ll see if “” I mean you guys covered a national tragedy today, let’s hope we don’t give you a tragedy tomorrow as well.

Watch it:

Earlier during the programming (the segment aired at 7:30 eastern time), the death of Michael Jackson was announced.

After long negotiations, House leadership has unveiled the final version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), to be voted on by the full House today. The bill’s author, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), introduced an amendment in the form of a substitute (H.R. 2998), which incorporates a score of amendments to the legislation. The schedule today includes five votes on the passage of this historic bill, which would national standards for clean energy and global warming pollution, with final vote expected at 5 PM:

1. H. Res. 587: Adoption of the rule to set the terms of debate, officially three hours in total.

2. H.R. 2998: Adoption of the Waxman amendment in the nature of the substitute.

3. H.R. 513: Adoption of J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) substitute, the New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence.

4. Motion to recommit.

5. Final passage.

The final version of the Waxman-Markey act includes a mixed bag of changes. Weakening amendments include Rep. Collin Peterson’s (D-MN) concessions on behalf of Big Ag. In exchange for a restriction of the Building Energy Performance Labeling Program on behalf of the National Association of Realtors, Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s (D-CO) beneficial GREEN Act to spur energy-efficient homes will be adopted. Waxman included several other beneficial changes, including the Inslee (WA)-Markey (CO) clean-grid legislation, several critical green jobs amendments, and the Titus (NV)-Giffords (AZ)-Heinrich (NM) renewable energy standard for Federal agencies.

Below is a summary of the Waxman amendment, broken down by its the component amendments:

– Waxman (CA): Makes changes to accommodate States that utilize a central purchasing model for its renewable electricity standard, and makes additional changes.

– Inslee (WA) / Markey (CO): Provides FERC with sitting authority for the construction of certain high-priority interstate transmission lines constructed in the Western Interconnection and amends the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors.

– Peterson (MN): Requires the Agriculture Secretary to establish a list of types of domestic agricultural and forestry practices that result in reductions or avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions, exempts the agriculture and forestry sectors from the bill’s emission caps, redefines “biomass,” and grandfathers existing biodiesel plants to exempt them from lifecycle analysis under the RFS.

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The House GOP loves to repeat falsehoods about climate and clean energy action (see “MIT Professor tells GOP to stop ‘misrepresenting’ his work and inflating the cost to families of cap-and-trade by a factor of 10” and then again three weeks later, MIT Professor says GOP “misrepresentation” of his April 2007 study to project costs for Waxman-Markey is “inappropriate,” “silly” and “just wrong”).

If you are listening to the House floor debate over the “rule” that will set the terms of the debate for Waxman-Markey, then you’ve heard pretty much every Republican repeat the claim that the Congressional Budget Office found that W-M would add $.77 a gallon to the price of gasoline in the next decade.

That charge is false.  It comes from the American Petroleum Institute, (see here) which decided to ignore the actual CBO analysis and offer its own instead, claiming it is what CBO found.  The API is a strong opponent of the bill and has been pushing disinformation on global warming for more than a decade.

As a study by 5 national laboratories noted in1998, “$50 per tonne of carbon [$14 a tonne of carbon dioxide] corresponds to 12.5 cents per gallon of gasoline.”

To cause a $.77 increase in gasoline prices, the climate bill would have to result in greenhouse gas allowance prices of some $85 a ton of CO2. Now you can go to Table 3 of the CBO analysis yourself, and you’ll see that CBO estimates the allowance price will hit $26 a ton in 2019 – and that is in actual (not inflation-adjusted) dollars.  In 2008 dollars, that would be closer to $21 to $22.  So in fact the CBO estimates that gasoline prices in 2019 would be about 20 cents a gallon higher than today (in constant dollars). And that’s a lot lower than the price will rise if we don’t take strong action to jumpstart the transition to a cleaner, more efficient energy system.

In fact, CBO found, “Waxman-Markey cuts U.S. GHGs sharply but costs only a postage stamp a day “” without counting the efficiency savings.”

The U.S. House of representatives is debating landmark climate and clean energy legislation now — starting with the debate on the rule which limits total debate on Waxman-Markey bill to 3 hours, which means we should get a final vote by the end of the day.

The Waxman-Markey bill would dramatically shift the direction of US energy policy and put the nation on a path to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades, ultimately removing the overwhelming majority CO2 emissions from the nation’s economy by mid-century, while generating millions of clean energy jobs and restoring US leadership in the key industries of the future.

Over the next of several hours, you can watch this debate on C-SPAN (with various interruptions).  But one can hardly find any discussion of this most consequential legislation in the status quo media.  Even before the death of two pop icons, the coverage was very sparse.

Reuters worries “Michael Jackson overshadows Farrah Fawcett on a sad day.”  That’s the extent of the media’s introspection on its priorities!

Consider the paper of record today, whose front page (here) pretty much tells the rest of the media what the big stories of the day are.  We’ve got Michael Jackson on the cover.  Even Farrah makes the bottom of the front page where the short version of key stories inside are listed.  But no mention at all of the historic debate.  Indeed, there is no news coverage of this at all in the NYT (or much of the major media).

Now the NYT does have an excellent editorial on the bill, which I will reprint below.  But even there, the front page merely mentions that Paul Krugman has an op-ed.  So you’ll have to watch C-SPAN — and the blogosphere — for the real news of the day.  Here is the editorial, “The House and Global Warming“:

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