Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today said the Senate may not act on comprehensive energy and climate change legislation until next year, given the chamber’s busy fall schedule.

This E&E News PM (subs. req’d) piece is mostly a “Dog Bites Man” story — especially with the key qualifier “may” — isn’t really news to anybody who’s been paying attention or reading this blog:

• “Obama can get a better climate bill in 2010.  Here’s how” (Jan. 26)
• Majority Leader Reid: Senate to wait for House cap-and-trade bill, effectively delaying final bill until 2010. Here’s why that should be good news. (Apr. 21)

I’d say right now it’s about 50-50 we get a vote this year,  and as readers know, I don’t think it matters terribly much.  There’s gonna be a Senate vote on a climate bill — that is clear from Obama’s decision to speak at U.N. special session on global warming (and Todd Stern’s testimony). Even Inhofe knows that.  We get one bit at this man apple, so the key is to work hard and pick the best time to pass the damn thing.

That said, I’d say the ideal time for a vote might be the first week in December, right before the international conference at Copenhagen.  That’s when maximum attention and pressure can be brought to bear on this historical vote.  But I do expect Copenhagen to 1) not have a final deal but 2) to move the negotiations forward, so  having the debate and vote in January can also work.

I do think this vindicates my original recommendation back in January that “Obama needs to pass in 2009 the mother of all energy bills” and then pass a climate bill in early 2010.  But now I think it is much too late to split the bills, as much as some members might like that.  Nor does it appear that is Reid’s preference:

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Speaking on the Senate floor this morning, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) responded to criticism that he does not support climate change legislation. Dorgan reiterated his opposition to the creation of a carbon market with a cap-and-trade system to limit global warming pollution. He aggressively dismissed the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the clean energy and climate legislation supported by President Obama and passed by the House in June. Arguing that the energy legislation crafted by the Senate Energy Committee “takes significant steps towards addressing climate,” Dorgan calls for its passage “and then at some point later bringing a climate change bill to the floor”:

I hope very much when people think about energy and climate change, that a consideration will exist of bringing a good energy bill to the floor that is a significant step in the right direction for climate change. And then at some point later bringing a climate change bill to the floor, because I think they are related but separate. And I think it would be much smarter to get the value and the success of an energy bill that’s now out of the committee and ready to be dealt with by the Senate at some point very soon.

Watch it:

Dorgan’s belief that energy and climate policy are “separate” mirrors the argument made by House Agriculture chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) that “mixing climate change together with energy independence” isn’t smart. In fact, reforming our broken energy policy requires recognition that the entire lifecycle of energy use matters.

Worse, however, is Dorgan’s claim that the legislation the Senate energy committee approved — the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA) — is a “giant way towards addressing climate change.” This is simply untrue. As Center for American Progress Action Fund John Podesta has described, the Senate bill is “weak, toothless, and unacceptable.”

The Senate bill has a ineffectual renewable electricity standard — which Dorgan seemed to recognize when he said it should be raised to match the level in ACES — in addition to expanded subsidies for nuclear, coal, and the oil and gas industries. In no way would its passage begin to reduce the global warming pollution of the United States, the essence of a “climate bill.”

Dorgan also pledged his allegiance to coal, which he calls “our most abundant resource,” despite it being — unlike the wind, sun, and tides — a finite fossil fuel. This year alone, Dorgan has received $225,910 from coal-powered electric utilities and is the number two recipient of coal mining cash in the Senate.

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Right after the House passed the climate and clean energy bill, uber-denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) told Tulsa World that, from a Senate perspective, “It’s dead in the water.”

In a CleanSkies op-ed Monday titled, “Sen. Inhofe: GOP Beware: Though Now Stalled, Cap-and-Trade is Alive and Well,” admits, the climate bill “is very much alive.”  But  what is most amazing about this op-ed is the unintentionally revealing explanation Inhofe offers for the revival of the bill’s chances:

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Back in May,  the Obama administration announced it would move forward on national standards for new vehicle fuel economy and tailpipe greenhouse gas emission (see here):

“This is a very big deal,” said Daniel Becker of the Safe Climate Campaign, a group that has pushed for tougher mileage and emissions standards with the goal of curbing the heat-trapping gases that have been linked to global warming. “This is the single biggest step the American government has ever taken to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Today the Administration rolled out the final details.  The AP reports:

The Obama administration is unveiling plans to require higher efficiency standards for cars and trucks and tougher rules on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson planned to release the proposed regulations Tuesday. They call for the auto industry’s fleet of new vehicles to average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. The plan follows up on President Barack Obama’s announcement in May that the government regulations would link emissions and fuel economy standards.

Greenwire (via the NYT) notes, “The carbon dioxide limit under the plan — which will apply to passenger cars, light-duty trucks and medium-duty passenger vehicles — would reach an average of 250 grams per mile per vehicle in 2016.”

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China’s Hu to unveil new climate proposals to U.N.

China’s President Hu Jintao will present China’s new plans for tackling global warming at a United Nations summit on climate change later this month, the country’s senior negotiator said on Tuesday.

“He will make an important speech,” Xie Zhenhua told reporters ahead of Hu’s trip next week to the United Nations and the G20 summit of major rich and developing economies in Pittsburgh. Hu “will announce the next policies, measures and actions that China is going to take,” added Xie, who steers China’s climate policy as vice director of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission.

Xie said China will strengthen its policies and take on responsibilities in keeping with its level of development and practical capacities, but declined to give further details. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will host a special summit on September 22, to discuss climate change.

House Passes Wind Energy Bill

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The Energy Information Administration released its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) last week with a bombshell prediction for near-term carbon dioxide emissions:

Projected carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels fall by 6.0 percent in 2009 because of the weak economic conditions and declines in the consumption of most fossil fuels (U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Growth Chart).  Coal leads the drop in 2009 CO2 emissions, falling by nearly 10 percent because of fuel switching from coal to natural gas in the electric power sector.  The projected recovery in the economy contributes to an expected 0.9-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2010.

Now that’s the perfect storm:  a weak economy, low natural gas prices, state renewable energy standards, and a clean-energy-friendly stimulus (see “EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus!“).

This 6% drop in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in 2009 is double the drop EIA had projected just 5 months ago in its  Updated Annual Energy Outlook 2009 Reference Case Reflecting Provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Recent Changes in the Economic Outlook, which had this chart:

If my calculations are right, this means by year’s end we’ll actually be more than 8.5% below 2005 levels in energy-related CO2 emissions, which make up the overwhelming majority of U.S. greenhouse gases.  And that is halfway to the 2020 Waxman-Markey target!  And EIA doesn’t project a dramatic recovery in emissions in 2010 — just a 0.9% rise.

This has a bunch of big implications for what the Senate should do in writing its climate bill:

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Ocean temperatures are at record levels (see “Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land.”)  The 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s, meaning  “this will be the hottest decade in recorded history by far” –  and that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s.  The World Meteorological Organization Secretary General explained to the bewildered editors of the Washington Post:

Data collected over the past 150 years by the 188 members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through observing networks of tens of thousands of stations on land, at sea, in the air and from constellations of weather and climate satellites lead to an unequivocal conclusion: The observed increase in global surface temperatures is a manifestation of global warming. Warming has accelerated particularly in the past 20 years.

What follows is Wonk Room repost of yet another addition to the right wing disinformation campaign — Fox News host Bill O’Reilly promoting “the conspiracy theories” of Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi, who “scoffed at the connection between global warming and wildfires in California.”  Indeed “Bastardi “” who has an undergraduate degree in meteorology from 1978 and no other academic credentials “” went so far as to claim”:

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