Climate Bill May Become Cold Case

A global warming bill to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions finally passed out of a key Senate committee this week, but in a way that may spell its demise — at least for this year.

By clearing its first Senate hurdle, the Kerry-Boxer bill at best may have achieved a symbolic victory, as Reuters news agency put it, "allowing President Barack Obama to tout progress in the run-up to next month's global warming talks in Copenhagen."

Only Democrats voted for the bill in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, but not even all of them. Sen. Max Baucus, a moderate from Montana, opposed reducing emissions 20 percent in 10 years from 2005 levels as too steep. Every committee Republican boycotted the vote after unsuccessfully calling for more study of the bill's economic effects. Normally, at least two opposition party members are required for a vote.

Democrats' hardball tactics, said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy for the free-market think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, "so poisoned the atmosphere in the Senate that the terrible Kerry-Boxer bill is now dead." CEI's energy policy expert Christopher Horner concluded the "transparent end-run around ... not only is an admission that the bill's floor chances are nonexistent, but it further dooms them."

The political dust-up means the Senate probably isn't likely to adopt global warming legislation by mid-December, when 180 nations meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to consider a worldwide treaty to curb greenhouse gases.

The Senate difficulties passing a bill to match one passed by the House of Representatives in June is a microcosm of international difficulties in reaching consensus on what, if anything, to do about global warming's presumed threat, and how to allocate the costs.

As the Canadian tourist bureau touts the benefits of a warmer Canada while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports experiencing the third-coldest October since 1895, consensus on whether a problem exists is becoming nearly as difficult to achieve as worldwide political action to solve a problem that so far is demonstrated only in computer model projections.

Political improbabilities were underscored when Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared before Congress this week to urge the U.S.

to come to Copenhagen ready to agree to legally binding emission reductions because there "is no time to lose." However, Ms. Merkel is being lambasted by European greens for "risking the failure of a global deal in Copenhagen" by blocking aid commitments for climate change, according to an article in Germany's Der Spiegel.

Even global warming zealots concede a treaty is unlikely in Copenhagen, partly because China and India have agreed not to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions unless wealthy Western nations pay them for mitigation measures. Meanwhile, Ms. Merkel "enraged environmentalists" by opposing massive transfer payments from European Nations to Third World countries, according to published reports.

As the world comes to the end of the 11th consecutive year of a nonwarming trend, the issue of global warming seems to be cooling off. That may save us from economy-stunting emission reductions.

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