Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today confirmed that floor debate on a sweeping energy and global warming bill that will be sold to the American public in part as an economic stimulus measure will be held early next year.

“We’re going to try to do that sometime in the spring,” Reid told reporters when asked about the window for moving a climate bill onto the Senate floor.

So E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reports.   Ideally the debate would start by the end of February, so the Senate vote could be finished by early spring, as I recently wrote.   The bipartisan team of Senators crafting a bill with the White House plan on a blueprint by Copenhagen:

Kerry and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are taking the lead in writing the climate and energy bill with a goal of releasing a blueprint before U.N. global warming negotiations start Dec. 7 in Copenhagen.

The good news is that Reid sees this bill as part of the economic stimulus and jobs package the administration is putting together, which should increase the motivation to pass it:

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Yesterday, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) disparaged President Barack Obama’s efforts to fight global warming and build a green economy. The Senate, bogged down by Republicans and conservative Democrats, has become the key impediment to the passage of an international climate treaty and clean energy legislation. Unveiling a $100 billion nuclear-industry subsidy plan with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Webb disparaged the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733) drafted by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), saying he “would not vote for it“:

In its present form, I would not vote for it. I have some real questions about the real complexities on cap and trade.

Last year, Webb asserted that “we can’t just start with things like emission standards at a time when we’re at a crisis with the entire national energy policy.” Webb seems to be aligning himself strongly with Republicans who believe that climate change is not a real threat that requires significant reductions in emissions. Perhaps the veterans and military leaders that have mobilized in Operation Free should give him a few briefings.

The Alexander-Webb Clean Energy Act, by providing taxpayer subsidies for nuclear energy but no economic incentive to shift from carbon power or keep costs down, “could pave the way for the same kind of industry-wide meltdown that happened in the 1970s and 1980s.” Dr. Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, has found that “even with climate change policy looming, nuclear power cannot compete in the marketplace, so its advocates are forced to seek to prop it up by shifting costs and risks to ratepayers and taxpayers.”

The federal government has long played a prominent and productive role in the research and development of advanced new technologies, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission deserves increased funding. There are elements of the Webb-Alexander bill that would make sense as part of the Clean Energy Jobs Act. But the aging, capital-intensive, increasingly expensive nuclear industry is not ever going to be a driving source for new jobs. As standalone policy, this bill would simply raise economic and security risks for Americans for the benefit of bankers and polluters.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is trapped by the toxic coal-dominated politics of his struggling state. He seems to be hoping global warming will simply disappear over time, like Republicans who have called for delay after delay in action. “I’m totally unconcerned about Copenhagen,” Rockefeller told Politico, justifying his own calls for delay. “I’m concerned about West Virginia.”

Because of the dilatory tactics of Webb, Rockefeller, and other Democrats, Kerry and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are struggling to keep the consideration of green economy legislation on track. Kerry is now backing off his commitment to “providing the ‘framework’ of legislation before the Copenhagen meeting.” Reid has placed financial reform on the calendar before the Clean Energy Jobs Act, and is now calling for a “jobs creation bill” as well.

Unfortunately for unemployed Americans, the Senate continues to ignore the obvious — that strong climate legislation would reward companies for creating jobs instead of pollution.

“Very exciting day here in Beijing.  There’s enormous interest in both governments in working together to fight climate change.  The package announced today is far-reaching and can make a real difference in cutting emissions.”

That’s an exclusive quote from David Sandalow, DOE’s Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs, who just emailed me from China about the newly announced U.S.-China cooperation plan.  Sandalow is going to be in Copenhagen, so I hope to have a real interview with him then.  For details on this plan (with links) and what it means, here is analysis by Andrew Light and Julian L. Wong of the Center for American Progress.  Note that the deal goes beyond “obvious” areas like efficiency and renewables to include things like shale gas, which appears to exist in abundance in China and could allow repowering of existing Chinese coal plants and more rapid medium-term reductions than people have thought possible.

This morning, a comprehensive plan for U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy and climate change was announced in Beijing by President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao. The overall plan is much more ambitious in scope and depth than we had anticipated and contains directives to create various institutions and programs addressing a wide array of cooperation on clean-energy technologies and capacity building, including very important efforts on helping China build a robust, transparent and accurate inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions.

These efforts include cooperation in the following areas:

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“World leaders say Copenhagen to be a steppingstone to final climate deal,” as I wrote on Sunday.   Here is an excerpt from  Time magazine’s take on the matter, “World Leaders Put Off a Climate Change Treaty,” by Bryan Walsh:

If there is a bright side, however, the deliberate downshift in expectations for Copenhagen could make it easier for world leaders, including Obama, to attend the summit and draft a stronger political agreement. In addition, diplomats could build out the framework of a future agreement, with the hope that, should the Senate pass carbon legislation early next year, a deal with real numbers could be finalized relatively quickly.

But there’s no getting around the fact that as the science of climate change grows more dire, the global political system seems increasingly unable to deal with that reality. “We don’t want a global suicide pact,” said Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, a low-lying Indian Ocean nation that could be swamped by global warming – caused flooding. “We want a global survival pact.” But the world’s most influential leaders still aren’t ready for that.

South Korea to Cut Greenhouse Emissions 30% from expected 2020 levels

South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest polluter, said it plans a 30 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 even as a binding global accord on climate change appears unlikely at next month’s summit in Copenhagen.

“South Korea’s voluntary target will stimulate efforts by the global community despite the pessimistic outlook for the Copenhagen meeting,” President Lee Myung Bak said in a statement today. The goal is set at the highest level recommended for emerging economies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change under the United Nations, according to the statement….

South Korea had outlined in August three proposals: cutting emissions by as much as 4 percent by the end the next decade from 2005 levels; capping them at the 2005 output; or allowing an 8 percent increase by 2020….

The target “basically corresponds to 4 percent cut from 2005,” Choi Seung Kook, secretary general of Green Korea United, non-profit environmental group, said by telephone. “Still, a forecast based on business as usual levels in 2020 is changeable and the target itself falls short of goals of other countries.”

South Korea’s annual emissions may rise to 813 million metric tons by 2020 in the absence of measures to curb carbon output, a committee under the presidential office said Aug. 4. That would be an increase of 37 percent from the 594.4 million tons produced in 2005.

This target will be a true “challenge for South Korean industries, where carbon emissions doubled in the period from 1990 to 2005, the fastest rate in the OECD,” as the WSJ noted.  “The steepest cuts will occur in construction and transportation, the government said. In construction, which accounts for 25% of carbon emissions, South Korea is targeting a 31% reduction by what they would have been in 2020. In the transportation sector, which accounts for 17% of emissions, it plans to trim emissions by 33% to 37%.”

Concentrated solar thermal goes dry (cooling)

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The authors of SuperFreakonomics simultaneously insist they accept the science — “Like those who are criticizing us, we believe that rising global temperatures are a man-made phenomenon” — while at the same time labeling global warming a “religion” (see here).  And we’ve seen one award-winning journalist explain “Freakonomics Guys Flunk Science of Climate Change.”  But now, as this stunning Charlie Rose video shows, we have the clearest demonstration that both Levitt and Dubner don’t accept and don’t understand the science.  This is a Wonk Room repost.

Appearing on PBS’s influential Charlie Rose Show last week, SuperFreakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner expanded upon their destructively uninformed portrayal of climate science, even throwing into question man’s influence on global warming. When Rose asked him about the controversial “global cooling” chapter, Levitt fatuously claimed that “what we actually said is not even very controversial.” Levitt said that SuperFreakonomics is “not denying that the Earth has gotten warmer.” After Rose interjected, “And it’s man created,” Levitt said, “It’s harder to know whether it’s man created”:

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It is not really news that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is not an animal lover — or, I should say, is not a live-animal lover.  That’s especially true for animals that happen to stand in the way of producing more fossil fuels:

• Protecting polar bears gets in way of drilling for oil, says governor Palin
• Palin’s axis of evil animals: Beluga whales join polar bears and wolf cubs
• And who really cares about wolves or their cubs anyway?

But if the Washington Post, which has four stories on Palin and her new book, Going Rogue, today, can take the headline quote above and put it on their front page in big type, well, then it must be news:

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Conservative ideologues have increasingly made opposition to bipartisan action on global warming a litmus test for Republicans seeking national office (see “Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 1: Conservatives vow to purge all members who support clean energy or science-based policy” and”Part 3: RNC Chair Steele withdraws support for Rep. Kirk over his vote on climate and clean energy bill“).  Apparently this litmus test doesn’t just include embracing ideological positions on policy, but also on science.  The best example of that is Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), who is widely seen as a top-tier candidate for the 2012 presidential nomination.  Pawlenty already earned a “Full Flop” from PolitiFact because of his complete reversal of position on cap and trade policy — from strong support to strong opponent.  As Think Progress reports, he clearly deserves another for his politically motivated questioning of basic climate science.

Speaking to the Economist recently, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) told reporters that he questions the science underpinning climate change. Pawlenty explained that while the earth might be warming, it is unclear “to what extent that is the result of natural causes.” As ThinkProgress has noted, Pawlenty has veered sharply to the right to appease a right-wing, tea party base. Although the tea party movement demands strict adherence to far right positions, as a Democracy Corps study shows, much of the movement sees political issues through a prism that is simply divorced from reality.

In appeasing the tea party base, Pawlenty not only dismisses the stark reality that human-caused carbon emissions are the largest contributor to climate change, but he also sacrifices his own credibility. Over the course of the last three years, Pawlenty has gone from an outspoken proponent of clean energy to a Glenn Beck pandering climate change denier:

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