Senate Most Likely to Pass Energy-Only Bill

GreenTracker| President Obama acknowledged yesterday that the Senate’s energy bill will likely not contain cap and trade legislation. As we’ve reported pre-Copenhagen, the Senate concerns go beyond environmental action and into a desire not to create another Wall Street trading scheme with no real benefits to taxpayers, but big ones for traders and developing countries.

Cap and trade emissions trading doesn’t activate actual emissions reductions but ‘horsetrading’ between rich and developing countries.

Senator Byron Dorgan on Monday said he wants the Senate to pass the Energy and Natural Resources Committee bill (S. 1462 (pdf)) that establishes a nationwide renewable electricity standard, along with a raft of other energy incentives, including a provision that could bring oil and gas rigs closer to Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“If you ask somebody who believes fervently in cap and trade and a lower carbon future, ‘What would you specifically do to achieve that?’ they’d talk about the very things we’ve put in this energy bill,” Dorgan said. via NYTimes