Copenhagen & "Climategate", Political Chaos Heats Up

Sarah Palin's Climate Change arguments heat up.

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G.O.P. criticizes Pres. Obama's proposed Climate Pact deal.

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The battle over Climate Change.

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Arrests, rattled nerves in Copenhagen



Black police vans, with sirens screaming and occupants clutching semiautomatic rifles, barreled past the iconic Marble Church here Sunday, rattling the nerves of climate change conferees trying to enjoy a final break before this week’s intense finale.

That collective flinch — after a weekend of mass protests and arrests — summed up the unsettled mood heading into an unpredictable week of negotiations, demonstrations and speeches by a diverse group of leaders including Al Gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hugo Chavez, Mike Bloomberg, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Barack Obama.

Nearly every international conference concludes with a flurry of backroom talks and cliffhangers — but the United Nations Climate Change Conference has more than its share of looming drama, making for an anxious final week at the big green summit in the big gray Danish capital.

“There really hasn’t been anything resolved during the first week, so this is the week where everything will happen,” said Nick Berning of the Friends of the Earth, a climate reform group critical of President Obama for not adopting more aggressive climate change targets.

“A lot of times they settle the negotiations behind closed doors and wait for the ministers, Cabinet [members] and heads of state to finalize the deals, but not this time,” added Berning. “They have a lot of unsettled issues to resolve, so there will be real negotiations right up to the end.”

The conference, with its 15,000 delegates and media horde, seems to be built on a foundation of sand, shaking with every lowering and heightening of expectations — exemplified by Obama’s on-again, off-again plans for the two-week confab.

With seven inconclusive days on the books, virtually everything of importance remains up in the air.

There’s no agreement yet on binding targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, despite productive pre-conference talks among the United States, India and China.

There’s no deal on how much aid the United States is willing to pay poor countries most harmed by global warming, with Obama seeking $1.2 billion from a recalcitrant Congress despite demands for much more.

Even basic logistics remain undecided. As of Sunday night, key members of the House and the Senate, who hold the fate of any deal in their hands, were unable to commit to prying themselves free from the intensifying health care debate on Capitol Hill.

There’s a very real possibility that congressional climate change heavyweights — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) — won’t make it to Denmark or will stay for only a few hours.

Last week, Democratic House members joked that Inhofe’s presence would be more important than their own, in that the world could see what Obama had to deal with.

But European Parliament delegate Dan Joergensen expressed real disappointment when told that key members of the Democratic delegation might not attend, describing Kerry as a “front-runner” on the issue whose presence at previous climate conferences in Bali and Poznan had moved things along.

“He builds momentum by being there,” Joergensen said. “It’s sad [if] he can’t come.”

Still, only one Democrat really matters, and Obama’s decision to attend the talks this week — as opposed to the sleepy kickoff session — “overshadows everything else,” Joergensen added.

And that raises another big question: Will Obama leave Copenhagen with his “American Idol” status among Europeans, Asians and Africans intact, at a time when his approval rating back home is sagging?

“He has a tremendous challenge of managing expectations this week,” said Jason Grumet, a former Obama environmental adviser who runs the Bipartisan Policy Center, a moderate Washington think tank.

“Most other nations don’t appreciate that our legislative process was built for comfort and not for speed,” Grumet said. “They don’t appreciate the razor’s edge he has to walk with the Senate back home, so there’s a real effort under way just to help countries understand the American legislative process.”

Inhofe, a fiery global climate skeptic from oil-pumping Oklahoma, gave the international community a taste of that process on Sunday by questioning Obama’s right to offer the conference a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

“The president can’t do that,” Inhofe told “Fox News Sunday.” “The emissions reductions he has talked about are what you would find in [the bill passed by the House], and that isn’t going to happen. Of course that bill is dead; it will never even be brought up again.”

But Obama’s team, Grumet said, won’t sacrifice its own agenda to answer critics or appease international admirers. At the top of lead negotiator Todd Stern’s wish list is selling China and, to a lesser extent, India on international monitoring of their emissions, regardless of what the agreed-upon targets turn out to be.

“China’s willingness to accept any kind of verification is far more important than the target. ... Creating a long-term process for oversight is in many ways more important than superficial agreements on emissions or funding because it’s something that provides a foundation for future agreements,” he added.

Hovering over the whole conference are the short-term worries about safety and the possibility that disruptions outside the massive Bella Center on the south side of town will overshadow progress inside.

More mass protests are planned during the critical final days of negotiations, and a handful of violent activists on Friday splintered off from a much larger peaceful demonstration, spurring a major crackdown that led to the arrest of more than 1,300 activists.

On Sunday, convoys of Politi vans raced through the narrow cobblestone streets, pinning tourists on sidewalks, as Danish police raided a second residence they said was being used by “troublemakers” to hoard gas masks, stones and paint.

Still, authorities released all but a handful of the 968 protesters detained Friday, sparking complaints by civil libertarians that the overreaction is worse than the threat.

“We have already said that we cannot avoid that some innocent people will be detained,” said Lars Borg, a spokesman for the Copenhagen police, adding: “We are very sorry about that.”



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Global Media Demands Climate Change Deal Be Reached...56 International Newspapers

Copenhagen Climate Change Conference: "Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation"


Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.



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Sources: Guardian.co.uk, Politico, Google Maps

"Climategate" E-mail Scandal May Damage Green Energy Agenda...Hoax Or Science?

Hacked e-mails about Climate Change Data has caused heated debate among Scientists and u.S. Congressional Members.

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Cautious optimism precedes Climate Summit. Over the next two weeks in Copenhagen, 192 nations will try to find common ground on how to reduce global warming. NBC’s Anne Thompson examines what’s at stake.

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Republicans push on "Climategate"



A series of embarrassing e-mails stolen from a British climate research center last month has wreaked havoc in the obscure academic circles of climate science.

Now Republicans hope the "Climategate" e-mail scandal will do the same to the Obama Administration’s Environmental Agenda.

Global warming skeptics believe that the correspondence, which shows scientists debating whether to manipulate scientific data to strengthen the case for man-made global warming, is a smoking gun that will change the dynamics of the climate debate. Activists also hope the purloined e-mails will derail Democratic climate negotiations on Capitol Hill and the upcoming International Talks in Copenhagen.

“The elephant in the room is the questions raised by the e-mails which have been made public,” said Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday. “Anyone who thinks that the e-mails are insignificant, that they don’t damage the credibility of the entire movement, is naive.”

The controversy has rallied and outraged conservative activists who believe the exchanges stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit prove that climate scientists colluded to suppress data on how humans have affected climate change.

They’re pointing to comments that show scientists using a science journal “trick” to manipulate data, vowing to keep challenging studies out of journals even if “we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is” and deriding questions from climate skeptics as “crap criticisms from the idiots.”

“This is a sea change in our culture,” said Marc Morano, a former Republican staffer turned prominent climate change skeptic. “Wait until January or February; you’re going to see numbers [on belief in global warming] that have dropped through the floor.”

The scandal thus far has not gained significant traction with voters beyond the conservative base, given that a majority of Americans — and most policymakers — still believe global warming to be a scientific fact. But Republicans hope that their ongoing investigation will push the issue into the mainstream.

On Friday, a top official at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change promised to investigate claims that the scientists purposely manipulated their data.

And Republicans know that the issue will continue to energize their base as they move toward the 2010 elections. Support for curbing greenhouse gases has become toxic among conservatives, who have made opposition to cap-and-trade proposals a key tenet of their party purity test. Recent polling has also shown a dramatic drop in the number of Republicans who believe in man-made global warming.

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina has already jumped on the scandal as a way to attack Sen. Barbara Boxer, her liberal Democratic opponent in environmentally friendly California.

The Fiorina campaign slammed Boxer for focusing on the legal questions surrounding the stolen information instead of the validity of the science.

“While the legal issues in this case merit a full investigation, Americans also deserve to know the truth, especially as Boxer continues to force job-killing ‘cap-and-trade’ legislation through the Senate,” Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager for communications Julie Soderlund said in an e-mail.

Boxer, who’s known as one of the most outspoken environmentalists in Congress, called for the prosecution of the hackers who stole the e-mails on Wednesday.

“You call it Climategate; I call it e-mail-theft-gate,” she said Wednesday. “It seems to me they must have been hacking this for years, and just before Copenhagen, they came out with them.”

Boxer’s comments echo those of other Democratic climate supporters, who say that skeptics are taking passages from the more than 1,000 e-mails out of context to undermine public confidence in climate science.

“The key point is, however this particular controversy comes out, the result will not call into question the bulk of our understanding about how the climate works or how humans are affecting it,” top White House top science adviser John Holdren said in testimony before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming on Wednesday.

Democrats have largely dismissed the whole controversy; Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse described it Wednesday as a “little e-mail squabble.”

“While I would absolutely agree that these e-mails show a lack of interpersonal skills,” said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, “I have not heard anything that causes me not to believe that the overwhelming consensus [is] that climate change is happening and that man-made emissions are contributing to it.”

But Democratic dismissals haven’t stopped Republican climate skeptics from hoping that climategate will do everything from kill the cap-and-trade bill to derail the international negotiations in Copenhagen.

Republicans used several congressional hearings this week to question top White House officials about the controversy.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), in a hearing before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said the e-mails could suggest “a massive scientific international fraud.”

“The scientists may be able to change their story and do more research, but once Congress passes a law, it will be as difficult to undo the consequences of that law as putting milk back in the cow,” he said.

In the Senate, Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee turned a hearing on the Federal Toxic Substances Control Act into a referendum on the e-mails.

“The allegedly unethical and potentially illegal behavior by climate scientists may undermine the legality of the EPA actions,” said Missouri Sen. Kit Bond.

Republicans in the House and Senate have called for a Congressional investigation into the dispute.

Reps. Joe Barton of Texas and Greg Walden of Oregon sent letters to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Wednesday asking the administration officials to disclose any role their agencies played in funding or data sharing with the climate scientists exposed in the e-mails.

“Whatever one’s position on the science of global warming,” said Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top GOP member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “One cannot deny that the e-mails raised fundamental questions: among other things, transparency and openness in science.”

But not all Republicans see the e-mails as quite as big a crisis for climate science.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) dismissed the controversy as more of a public relations problem than a serious scientific meltdown.

“There’s always been some skepticism about some of that,” he said. “I think that from a public relations view, that’s not really the best way to go to Copenhagen, very frankly.”



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Pres. Obama Optimistic About New Climate Plan Deal

According to recent Scientific research Mega Tsuanmis are headed for Miami Beach, Fl., Virginia Beach, VA., New York City and Boston, MA.

More Information on East Coast Mega Tsuanmis can also be found on the History Channel website at this link.












Obama's New Climate Plan


Could Obama actually return from Copenhagen with a deal? The White House is suddenly feeling a gust of optimism. Richard Wolffe on how he might earn that Nobel Prize after all. Plus, read our user's guide to the state of the climate-change debate.

The last time President Obama made a late schedule change to travel to Copenhagen, the gamble failed badly: Despite a spirited speech, he returned empty-handed as his hometown of Chicago lost the contest to host the 2016 Olympics.

But late Friday afternoon, the White House repeated the gamble. Less than two months since their last Copenhagen debacle, the president’s staff moved his plan for travel to the Danish capital back a week—from the start of the U.N. climate talks, to the end of the tortured process.

It could turn out to be another reckless wager risking the president’s prestige. But the White House is betting this one turns out differently. Obama’s aides seem confident that several months of patient diplomacy is about to pay off.

The mood inside the West Wing late Friday was cautiously, but palpably, optimistic about securing a Copenhagen deal. By pushing back Obama’s arrival date, the president’s aides have significantly recalculated the risks involved in the talks. A summit that seemed, just a week ago, doomed to failure is suddenly suffused with a burst of hope.

The initial plan allowed for Obama to leave early if it looked like the talks were heading for deadlock. That scenario seemed fraught—raising the very real prospect that close on the heels of the widely criticized Asia trip, the president could once again travel abroad only to return home empty-handed. But as of late Friday, the mood shifted; a deal once considered out of reach might now be in sight.

The details of such an accord remain elusive at this hour. And any climate deal coming out of Copenhagen is likely to be seen by environmentalists as an inadequate disappointment. But by the same token, any agreement will be hailed as a significant change from the deadlock that marked the Bush era. It could also change the complexion of the debate over whether Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize he’s slated to accept next week in Oslo.

So what changed?

While the Washington press corps and much of the country was obsessing over the party crashers and Tiger Woods’ transgressions, the White House was quietly building momentum toward a deal. Obama returned home from his much-maligned Asia trip to announce specific targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions—pledging to cut them 17 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2020. China followed with pledges of its own. While the cameras were trained on the Salahis, Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were carrying on off-air talks. The results: India promised to cut carbon intensity (relative to India’s economic growth) by 20 to 25 percent below 2005 levels over the next decade.

The second step came among the richer nations this week, in Obama’s face-to-face sessions with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as well as his phone calls with the British, German, and French leaders. Together, they negotiated an arrangement they hope will effectively silence the complaints of the poorer countries of the developing world, who could still stymie any deal in Copenhagen.

Their offer: $10 billion a year by 2012 to help developing countries deal with and adapt to climate change. The promised cash amounts to a big boost in development aid, and was justified by the White House on humanitarian and security grounds to mitigate the impact of climate change.

The aid also represents a dramatic effort to secure the support of smaller, less-wealthy countries in Copenhagen. Those nations form the G-77 group of developing countries, an unwieldy and unpredictable bloc currently chaired by the government of Sudan.

For all the optimism, the risks of a Copenhagen collapse remain real. At the same time, the White House cannot afford to invest too much attention on yet another foreign-policy challenge—so close on the heels of the Afghan speech—while most Americans are focused on the still-weakened state of the U.S. economy.

After this week’s jobs summit and a surprising decline in the unemployment rate, Obama’s aides are determined not to let this month’s European travel eclipse a focus on U.S. jobs.

So the president will deliver a speech on the economy before departing for Oslo next week. And during the Copenhagen talks, the administration will highlight the presence of American businesses that seek to profit from—and create jobs in—the clean-energy economy that Obama hopes to jump-start.

When the president returned from Asia two weeks ago, many pundits panned the trip as an epic failure that effectively doomed the climate talks. One Politico headline read: How Copenhagen Died During Obama’s Asia Trip. Now Obama hopes he can resurrect Copenhagen before Christmas, and enjoy not one but two victory laps in Europe.



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Obama Shuffles Copenhagen Trip To Attend International Climate Talks

President Obama changes summit trip plan


President Barack Obama is pushing back his trip to Copenhagen in order to be at the international climate talks during the critical negotiating period.

The president was scheduled to attend the conference immediately before receiving his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 9 but changed his plans after decisions by China and India to curb greenhouse gases boosted the chances for real progress to be made at the talks.

He now plans to travel to the talks on Dec. 18.

“Based on his conversations with other leaders and the progress that has already been made to give momentum to negotiations, the president believes that continued U.S. leadership can be most productive through his participation at the end of the Copenhagen conference,” the White House said in a statement.

Roughly 100 world leaders plan to attend the talks, largely at the end of the conference. The change in Obama’s schedule is a strong signal that U.S. negotiators believe the negotiations could result in a political agreement to curb greenhouse gases worldwide and a framework for signing a legally binding treaty in 2010.

As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China is considered key to laying the groundwork for a global agreement to cut emissions. Last month, after bilateral talks with the administration, China agreed to a carbon intensity target that would lower emissions 40 percent to 45 percent per unit of gross domestic product. India announced its own 20 percent to 25 percent carbon intensity target earlier this week.






W.H. raises Climate Summit stakes


President Barack Obama is heating up his efforts on climate change, with decisions that have some Democrats in Congress starting to sweat.

The announcement Friday that Obama is pushing back his appearance at the Copenhagen summit to its final weekend, the critical negotiating period, signals a willingness to pour significant political capital into his climate agenda – and raises expectations that the White House will reach agreements both internationally and at home.

The impact of the scheduling change is magnified by expectations that the Environmental Protection Agency will finalize a key move toward regulating greenhouse gases, with the final release of its endangerment finding expected as soon as Monday.

“There’s no question that this is a game changer,” said Carter Roberts, president of the World Wildlife Fund. “It’s huge, it’s important, and it’s logical given the momentum that’s developing around the world and in next the two weeks.”

The moves have cheered environmentalists worldwide, who in closed door conversations had previously admitted some frustration with what they saw as a lack of public action by the White House on its climate agenda.

“Having decided to join dozens of other world leaders in the right place, at the right time, President Obama is now reinvigorating the U.S. approach to the climate talks at this defining moment in history,” said Oxfam spokesperson Antonio Hill.

And they’re putting new pressure on the Senate, which has stalled in its efforts to pass a cap and trade bill amid skepticism from coal, manufacturing, and rural state Democrats. Any international agreement to curb greenhouse gases would need Congress passing legislation capping emissions in the U.S., the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter, after China.

“The road to Copenhagen goes through the U.S. Senate,” said Peter Goldmark, the head of the climate and air program for the Environmental Defense Fund.

The White House said Friday that Obama would travel to Copenhagen at the end of international climate talks, rather than in the first week of the talks, as originally planned.

The change in schedule is a strong sign of confidence by the administration that they will reach a political agreement in Copenhagen – and that they want to take credit for leading the process.

“Based on his conversations with other leaders and the progress that has already been made to give momentum to negotiations, the President believes that continued US leadership can be most productive through his participation at the end of the Copenhagen conference,” said the White House in a statement.

Typically, major decisions at international climate forums come during the last weekend of the conference. Nearly 100 world leaders plan to attend the Copenhagen talks, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The original plan for Obama attend in the middle of the first week would have allowed the White House to demonstrate an American commitment to curbing greenhouse gases while putting it a distance from the conference if negotiators fail to reach agreement by its end.

Now, much of the deal is on his shoulders.

“They’re going to be faced with the question of whether they really did something or did we just have a bunch of press conferences and claim victory at the end, which is generally what happens at these meetings,” said Frank Maisano, an energy specialist at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, which lobbies for utilities and coal interests.

But the concessions that will be necessary to get an international agreement could be risky domestically. A deal in Copenhagen will require the United States to commit billions of dollars to help developing nations deal with the severe storms, droughts, and other destructive impacts of global warming.

On Friday, the White House promised to pay “its fair share” of the $10 billion annual payment to poorer countries.

That could be a tough sell domestically, given the country’s’ high unemployment numbers, mounting debt, and deep economic recession.

“I’m surprised the president would commit our nation to billions in new and long-term spending, particularly in a year that has seen our government rack up a record deficit, and before our economy is back on track,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, (R-Alaska), the highest ranking Republican member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee.

“My home state of Alaska literally has villages falling into the ocean – where’s the support for the people in our own country being affected by climate change?”

The scheduling decision comes as advocates and lawmakers prepare for the expected release next week of the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding that will formally announce that greenhouse gases are a danger to human health and welfare. The decision opens the door for the agency to begin regulating emissions across the economy by imposing new rules on auto manufacturers, utilities, and other industrial polluters.

The finding puts new pressure on Congress to pass climate change legislation that would preempt the new regulations before the EPA begins acting.

It also raises the stakes for the Administration and for moderate Democrats.

The only other ways to stop the EPA from regulating, say experts, is with a lawsuit or for Congress to vote to defund the EPA.

If climate change legislation fails to pass and a lawsuit doesn’t stop the new rules, manufacturing and coal state Democrats could find themselves stuck between attacks that they are hurting hometown economies and defunding a key White House initiative.

“The Administration appears to be playing for keeps here,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners.



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Climate Bill Faces Major Hurdles...Possibly No Hope For Passage

Climate bill faces hurdles in Senate


The climate-change bill that has been moving slowly through the Senate will face a stark political reality when it emerges for committee debate on Tuesday: With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

Like the measure adopted by the House, the legislation favors a cap-and-trade system that would issue permits for greenhouse gas emissions, gradually lower the amount of emissions allowed, and let companies buy and sell permits to meet their needs -- all without adding to the federal deficit, according to projections. But key Republicans are making their opposition clear, even as Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has enlisted Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) as his most visible GOP ally in gathering support for the bill.

Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee who was initially seen as one of the few Republicans who might consider backing the majority, is helping lead the opposition.

"Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now?" he asked during a hearing last week. "Wouldn't it be smarter to take our time and do it right?"

He wrote Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson twice this summer to ask for a more detailed economic analysis of the House-passed climate legislation, and he has joined the other six Republicans on the committee in boycotting the climate bill's markup, scheduled for Tuesday.

The measure has deeply divided Democrats. With states in the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain West dependent on fossil fuels for energy, many senators are worried about the legislation's impact on industry and consumers.

"I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home will be disadvantaged," Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told CNBC on Friday, explaining why he did not think the bill Kerry had sponsored along with Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) could pass.

So Democratic leaders, with the support of the Obama administration, are trying to sway at least half a dozen Republicans by offering amendments to speed along their top priority: building nuclear power plants.

Graham has suggested provisions on nuclear power and offshore oil drilling that could win his support for a cap-and-trade climate bill. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) has established a bipartisan working group of 17 Senate offices that is close to producing a detailed amendment aimed at hurrying the construction of U.S. nuclear reactors.

But it remains unclear whether that approach will hold currency in the current era of political polarization. One of the top Republicans whom Democrats hope to recruit in this effort -- Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), whom Graham and Kerry recently buttonholed on the Senate floor -- has voiced skepticism about the legislation.

"A tepid nuclear title isn't enough to get her to support a bad climate bill," said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Murkowski.

Graham and Kerry are set to meet Wednesday with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, as well as with Obama's top climate adviser, Carol M. Browner, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to discuss a possible compromise. They are also setting up meetings with colleagues on the issue.

"I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home will be disadvantaged," Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told CNBC on Friday, explaining why he did not think the bill Kerry had sponsored along with Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) could pass.

So Democratic leaders, with the support of the Obama administration, are trying to sway at least half a dozen Republicans by offering amendments to speed along their top priority: building nuclear power plants.

Graham has suggested provisions on nuclear power and offshore oil drilling that could win his support for a cap-and-trade climate bill. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) has established a bipartisan working group of 17 Senate offices that is close to producing a detailed amendment aimed at hurrying the construction of U.S. nuclear reactors.

But it remains unclear whether that approach will hold currency in the current era of political polarization. One of the top Republicans whom Democrats hope to recruit in this effort -- Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), whom Graham and Kerry recently buttonholed on the Senate floor -- has voiced skepticism about the legislation.

"A tepid nuclear title isn't enough to get her to support a bad climate bill," said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Murkowski.

Graham and Kerry are set to meet Wednesday with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, as well as with Obama's top climate adviser, Carol M. Browner, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to discuss a possible compromise. They are also setting up meetings with colleagues on the issue.

It is what Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope calls "the old formula for bipartisanship."

"They would agree on a goal, they would not agree exactly on the means to a goal, and they'd come up with a legislative solution that takes elements from both sides," he said.

And Graham, for his part, has become a lightning rod for controversy back home. On Oct. 22, the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group funded in part by energy companies, launched a radio, TV and online advertising campaign in South Carolina that has cost "close to $300,000" so far, according to the group's spokesman, Patrick Creighton.

Featuring a Halloween theme, the TV commercial warns of "some scary stories coming out of Washington" and says, "The latest is Senator Lindsey Graham's support for a national energy tax called cap-and-trade."

Creighton said the group questions why Graham says a deal will help offshore drilling, which Congress has already allowed.

Groups backing the climate bill came to Graham's defense last week. They aired radio and television ads that featured state Sen. John Courson, a conservative Republican who became concerned about global warming after witnessing the decline of polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba.

"Out-of-state interests are attacking our Senator Lindsey Graham," Courson says in an ad underwritten by Republicans for Environmental Protection, "because he's backing an energy plan that produces more power in America."

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said he is optimistic that the parties can reach an accord because Americans are not divided along party lines on global warming. "Is there bipartisanship in the country? I think clearly there is," he said.

State lawmakers who came to advise the White House last week on climate saw a different picture. "We looked for any Republican, in any state legislature in the country, who supported a bill," recalled Minnesota state Rep. Jeremy Kalin. "We found not a one."


Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC