We’re celebrating great news out of Minnesotaand South Dakota this week:

“After almost five years of planning and permitting efforts, the participatingutilities in the proposed Big Stone II Project announced…Monday that they willend their quest to build the project’s large coal-fired power plant andassociated transmission facilities.”

We echo our own Cesia Kearns, aSierra Club staffer from Minnesota, in what the halting of Big Stone II means for the region.

“The failure of this enormous proposed coal plant expansion unravels the myththat the Midwest is starving for more electricity, and that coal is theonly way to adequately meet that perceived need,” Kearns said.  “This victory demonstrates thateven when we may lose the battles - consistent pressure, engaged citizens, andstrong partnerships can win the war.  It’s a strong example of how even though the regulators may be on theside of a developer, the public is not.”

We salute our tough band of local residents in South Dakota and Minnesota(the plant was proposed for northeastern South Dakota,near the border with Minnesota),who spent the last five years fighting this dirty coal plant. The Sierra Club also partnered with grassroots, state, andregional organizations during this long and difficult campaign. Theyknew how bad the air pollution and global warming contributions this plantwould spew forth would be, they wanted clean energy for their region, and evenwhen the going got tough, they never gave up.

Stopping the Big Stone II projectprevented about 4.7 million tons of CO2, or the equivalent of the pollutionfrom roughly 670,000 cars (substantially more than all the cars in South Dakota) from entering the atmosphere every year.

The residents so entrenched in this fight against Big StoneII helped lead a long fight against the MinnesotaPublic Utilities Commission for its issuance of an air pollution permit for theplant and, equally importantly, an enforcement action targeting the existing coal-firedunit at the Big Stone facility for past violations of the Clean Air Act.  We also challenged the state of South Dakota‘s Clean Air Act plan for failure to comply with federallaw.

Kearns added that one noteworthy example of the grassroots pushfor clean energy was the mention of Sierra Club’s “footprintpetition” in the Administrative Law Judge’s written recommendation to theMN Public Utilities Commission to deny the certificate of need for Big StoneII’s transmission lines.

“The footprint petition was a longswath of fabric with the signatures and outlines of the footprints of over2,000 Minnesotans who wanted to see global warming solutions in Minnesota,” explained Kearns. “It was presented to the Administrative Law Judge duringa public hearing in Ortonville, Minnesota - the town closest to the location of the proposed plant.”

This plant’s demise is also a signof impending climate legislation. Otter Tail Power had pulled out of this plantback in September, citing, among other reasons,“a high level of uncertainty associated withproposed federal climate legislation and existing federal environmentalregulation.”

No other utilities stepped in to takeover the Big Stone II expansion themselves – because the companies all knowthat this legislation is coming.

Coal power is not the future of U.S. energy. The public isspeaking up for more clean energy. And from coast to coast, that voice isgetting louder every day.

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Today, far less natural gas is flared off both in terms ofvolume and, consequentially, as a percentage of our much higher current energyconsumption. Oil prices have, of course, risen dramatically over the past 40years, but environmentalists have also been working hard to get oil and gascompanies to reduce gas flaring. Nonetheless, it is estimated that the worldstill flares off several weeks’ worth of natural gas supply each year.

Left with far fewer resources, future generations will bedumbfounded at our wastefulness. Why did we not take action sooner?

Ask anyone today, and the answer would be that we leavematters up to the market. And for a long time, the market’s answer was thatnatural gas was a waste product of oil extraction in many cases. We chose toimplement legislation banning gas flaring; here, government interventiontrumped the market. Another option would have been to mandate a higher pricefor gas so that the profit margin for oil and gas would have been more equal.Utilities would have at least been encouraged to use gas turbines to generateelectricity where gas is plentiful; the higher prices could then have beenspread across all power consumers. The market would still have been free—companies still could have done whatever they want—but it simply would havecovered more resources.

Here, we see why this option was not pursued: while ourresources would have been used more efficiently, electricity rates would havegone up. Rate hikes are politically unpalatable in the Anglo world, even ifthey help us use resources more efficiently. So we let oil compete with gas,and oil won for decades. And we flared off tremendous amounts of natural gas.

Competing companies: While the proposal I describe above—leveling the profitmargins for energy resources—was not implemented for fossil fuels, it hasbeen used successfully for renewables. It is called feed-in tariffs (FITs), and it isthe driver behind Europe’s main successstories.

Its detractors in the English-speaking world used the samelogic that was used 40 years ago in the petroleum industry: we needcompetition, and price fixing is anathema to free markets. Of course, the United Stateshas had price fixing in the electricity sector since the 1930s (that’s what ismeant when we say that utilities are “regulated”)—but let’s focuson what is meant by “competition.”

Normally, when we think about competition, companies come tomind: GM versus Toyota,Dell vs. Apple, etc. Of course, there is also competition between products andtechnologies, such as between VHS and Betamax (or, for my younger readers,between Blu-ray and HD DVD). Notice that Betamax and HD DVD disappeared fromthe market completely—which is itself a considerable waste of effort andinvestment, though having a single format certainly has its advantages.

If we now look at ways of generating electricity, we seethat it would be nice to have competition between companies, but what sensedoes it make to have competition between resources? If we can leave theresource untouched, then it remains available for future generations—noproblem. But if we have to discard one (natural gas) in order to get at another(crude oil), then it makes sense to ensure that the profit margins on the bothresources are roughly equal so that it pays to exploit both resources insteadof wasting one. The resources need not compete as long as the extractioncompanies do.

Wind and solar may seem to differ in one respect: we cannotexhaust them. The sun will not be depleted regardless of how many solar panelswe have, and no number of wind turbines will measurably reduce the amount ofwind on Earth. Nonetheless, the amount of renewable energy we neglect to usecan also be considered waste. Each day, we get a certain amount of potentialsolar and wind power. Were we to use more of it, our consumption of non-renewableresources would be reduced. As a result, the range of our fossil fuels could beextended dramatically.

RPS, cap-and-trade, FIT: If we agree that we would be willing to pay more today inorder to use both our renewable and non-renewable resources more efficiently,the question is which policy promotes competition among companies, notresources. Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) are old-school thinking;utilities have to meet a target for “renewables,” and if no furtherspecifications are made, then renewables compete with each other. The cheapestwins, and the rest go nowhere.

Emissions trading is a more recent idea, but it is evenworse in a way. Here, large energy producers and consumers are required toreduce emissions. The scheme is praised for allowing decision-makers theflexibility to choose the cheapest way to meet their target: technologyoverhauls (“clean coal”), investments in third-party offsets (tree plantationsfunding for technological overhauls abroad), the purchase of allowances fromother market players, new low-carbon technologies (renewables), or perhaps justpaying a fine. Here, renewables not only compete with each other, but also withall of these options.

Neither RPSs nor emissions trading ensures a comparable,reasonable return on investments in both wind and solar. FITs do. Critics ofFITs charge that the policy “picks winners,” but the charge onlyapplies to the energy sources promoted—not to any particular companies ortechnologies. True, those of us who support FITs for solar and wind have pickedthese two resources as winners—guilty as charged. But we have not, to takethe example of solar, picked any particular company, nor have we even picked aparticular technology. Who can say whether crystalline or thin film panels (orperhaps something else) will be more popular in 2020? Indeed, if we provideroughly the same profit margin for concentrated solar power and photovoltaicstoday, we may find that the one or the other is clearly preferable by 2030—but then, we may nonetheless choose to keep the more expensive one as a nicheproduct despite the price difference. After all, it would have been thesensible thing to do with natural gas 40 years ago.

We have a history of taking only the cheapest energy first.Our children will pay the price that we refused to pay, so they may very wellview our old-school thinking as myoptic. FITs are the new school.

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Kay Hagan (D-N.C.)

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Gore on The Daily Show

Senate Republicans are demanding lengthy economic analyses ofprogressive clean energy policy, despite having spent careers votingfor and against major energy legislation without such delay. This weekthe Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted its debate on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (CEJAPA), claimingthat the Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of the economicimpacts was not sufficiently thorough. Before they launched theirboycott, committee ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Sen.George Voinovich (R-Ohio) demanded a “full analysis” that satisfied their particular requirements:

As we’ve noted in previous letters and requests, getting a thorough, comprehensive economic analysis of the Kerry-Boxer bill is an essential component of a meaningful legislative process.To accomplish that, EPA needs to do a series of model runs examiningkey provisions in the bill, with a number of sensitivity analyses oncritical issues, including, among others, the availability of offsets,potential growth in nuclear power, and the extent of emissionsreductions by developing countries. Anything less than a full analysis of this kind will be unacceptable.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate RepublicanConference, piled on: “We want to participate in any clean energy bill,but we’re not willing to do that until we know what it costs.”

“It undermines the credibility of the process,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). “It’s not constructive to the process to proceed without knowing what it costs.”

On Monday, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.),Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) joined Inhofe todemand a “complete and substantive analysis of any bill that attempts to address this issue” and “complete data anda thorough vetting” before the EPW Committee took action.

Yesterday, Sens. Gregg, Susan Collins (R-Maine), Olympia Snowe(R-Maine), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) sent a letter to the EPA saying, “We cannot support legislation”without “a clear picture of the bill’s impacts on our economy,” sayingthe EPA analysis needs to be completed “prior to any action in EPW.”

Their arguments fall flat, however, because these and other senatorsroutinely voted on energy and global warming bills without anyanalysis. Since 2001, the Senate has debated at least eightenergy or global warming bills where there was no analysis by EPA,Congressional Budget Office, or the Energy Information Administrationcompleted in advance of Committee deliberations.  In several cases, there was no full analysis before the bill was voted on by the entire Senate:

- Energy Policy Act of 2002 (H.R. 4): EIA and CBO analysis conducted after both committee passage and full Senate consideration.

- Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 (S. 139): EIA analysis conducted before full Senate consideration. No committee consideration.

- Energy Policy Act of 2003 (H.R. 4/S. 1005): EIAand CBO analysis conducted after committee passage. Limited CBOanalysis completed before full Senate consideration, EIA analysis after.

- Climate Stewardship Act of 2005 (S. 342): No analysis conducted before full Senate consideration. No committee consideration.

- Energy Policy Act of 2005 (S. 10): CBO analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

- Energy Savings Act of 2007 (S. 1321): CBO analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

- America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191): EIA and EPA analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

- American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (S. 1462): CBO analysis completed after committee passage.

Sen. Murkowski notably had no problem voting for the American Clean Energy Leadership Act this June, even though CBO analysis was only completed in September.

The fact that these and other bills moved through committees withoutany analysis sharply contrasts with the mountain of assessments of thisyear’s clean energy legislation. Full EPA, EIA, and CBO analyses were conducted of the House bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), and the EPA has conducted additional analysis of the Senate legislation. The Republicans’ interest in analysis islittle more than an excuse for delay and defeat of clean energylegislation. In one of the boycotted hearings this week, Sen. Boxernoted that the “EPA has also indicated that this economic analysisreflects hundreds of thousands of pages of backup documentation” about the related House bill. EPA Director of Congressional Affairs David McIntoshappeared before the Committee to reiterate that CEJAPA and ACESwere very similar:

[EPA economic] models are not designed to detectfine-grain details in this kind of legislation. So changes in thelegislation at that level of detail will not even show up in theeconomic computer model. Second, it costs the EPA at least $135,000 and1600 man-hours of time to run a bill through the agency’s full suite ofeconomic computer models.

Nonetheless, Republican boycotters wanted EPA to spend five weeksand $135,000 of taxpayer money to conduct a redundant analysis beforethey would agree to a vote.

Today, the committee approved CEJAPA on an 11-1 vote. Every Republican was absent without leave.

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What does recent Senate drama on the climate bill mean? Peak Boxer

When asked in mid-October if she would support a climate bill with cap-and-trade, the senator replied, “We’re certainly talking about it. The Kerry-Boxer bill is ... out therebut it’s not complete yet. So I’m certainly going to have to wait tolook at the bill. I certainly say that climate change isreal; I am extremely concerned about it. And I want to do what we needto do to be sure our country and the rest of the world is on the righttrack to reduce the CO2 emissions.”

The transition from candidate to senator seems to have affected Hagan’s environmental agenda: in 2008, her campaign website called for reducing carbon emissions 60 to 80 percent by 2050, but the energy page on her Senate website doesn’t mention climate or greenhouse-gas emissions at all, instead making vague calls for energy independence, energy efficiency, and cutting-edge energy technologies. In April, the senator, along with 25 other swing Democrats, voted against using the budget reconciliation process to pass a climate bill.

In a letter to a constitutent in early November, Hagan appears optimistic about climate legislation in general but stresses that she will closely review any bill before making a decision:

Thank you for contacting me regarding global climate change and federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions nationally and internationally. I greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on this important issue.On June 26, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act of 2009 (H.R.2454). Similarly, on September 30, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S.1733) was introduced in the Senate. It has since been referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for further review.Both pieces of legislation would regulate carbon emissions by establishing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from large U.S. sources like electric utilities and oil refiners. The goal of both bills is to reduce emissions through a system of tradable permits modeled after the successful Clean Air Act program to prevent acid rain. If emitters are unable to reduce their emissions, they will be able to purchase allowances from other sources that have excess permits. This market-based approach is preferred because it provides economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions at the lowest cost to the economy. The bills would also invest in renewable and clean energy, provide incentives to encourage increased energy efficiency, and create thousands of high-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced.Like you, I believe that we must work together to address the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. As a state senator, I worked to place North Carolina at the vanguard of energy independence and sustainability by requiring local utilities to utilize renewable resources in the production of electricity. I was also a strong proponent of the North Carolina Biofuels Center, as well as cutting-edge energy research and development throughout the University of North Carolina system. I believe that North Carolina can become a leader in the new energy economy, and I support a commonsense approach to meeting emerging energy challenges while protecting economic competitiveness for our nation’s workers and industries.With this in mind, I anticipate the opportunity to work with my colleagues in the Senate to craft comprehensive energy legislation that will address vital environmental concerns while placing North Carolina and the nation at the forefront of the 21st-century energy economy. I believe strongly that we must work to ensure that the impact of any federal energy initiative does not fall disproportionately on North Carolina or low-income citizens, and will work with my colleagues and affected communities to achieve this goal. While comprehensive energy legislation has not yet been considered by the full Senate during the 111th Congress, I will review any proposal carefully to ensure that federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses do not negatively impact the citizens of North Carolina.Again, thank you for contacting my office. It is truly an honor to represent North Carolina in the United States Senate, and I hope you will not hesitate to contact me in the future should you have any further questions or concerns.Track the climate debate and take actionSincerely,   Kay R. Hagan

As a state senator, Hagan earned an 85 percent rating [PDF] from the Conservation Council of North Carolina and helped to pass a renewable portfolio standard requiring the state’s utilities to meet targets for use of renewable energy.

Do you know what your senators think about climate legislation?  Ask them, then tell us what you find out.

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What does recent Senate drama on the climate bill mean? Peak Boxer

Fist things fist: If this section’s headingdoesn’t look quite right it’s because there are a few r’s missing. Thatwas true this week of the Senate Environment and Public WorksCommittee, a panel of Democrats whose Republican sparring partnersboycotted work on the climate bill co-sponsored by Chairwoman BarbaraBoxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). The Republican senatorscriticized the majority for moving ahead without an EPA analysis of thebill, which is similar to one that the House approved in June. The billpassed out of the committee this morning by a vote of 11-1, with Sen. MaxBaucus (D-Mont.) voting against it, and all the R’s abstaining.

Committee drama set the stage for Sens. Kerry, Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to announce yesterday that theyare pursuing parallel negotiations on a climate bill, and are in discussion with theadministration, Senate colleagues, and outside interests, including thenewly minted American Businesses for Clean Energy.

Expectations for the Copenhagen climate talks continue to drop solow that the conference might end up being declared a success solely onthe basis of having enough folding chairs and scratch paper forattendees. Climate envoy Todd Stern told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that in Copenhagen the U.S.hopes to lay groundwork for agreements on contentious issues in thenear future.

About our recent, unexcused absences … : What many Indians lack in understanding “global warming,” they make upfor in knowledge that their climate is changing. That’s a centraltakeaway from Climate Post’s recent three-week voyage throughIndia. It’s also the central problem in writing about climate change:Scientists commonly define “climate” as a statistical average ofweather events, somewhere, over a long period of time. So personalobservations, such as, the rainy season isn’t so rainy lately, are oflimited scientific value. We can note that extreme events—flooding,drought, erratic weather, coastal erosion, the rest–resemble predictions, if they do. But there’s “no man behind the curtain” of climate change.

These on-the-ground observations may be of limited scientific value.But what makes them tangible is the way that en masse they begin toshape the very non-scientific public awareness and politics. KrishnenduBandyopadhyay, a Times of India special correspondent, toldme that editors have focused attention on climate change prompted notby politics, as is frequently the case in the U.S., but with decliningagricultural productivity. The eastern Indian state of Odisha (calledOrissa until 2 weeks ago) has many concerns. If there is anenvironmental problem happening anywhere in India, or the world, it canalso be found in Odisha. And climate risks in this region are halting.Last week marked the 10th anniversary of a supercyclone that killed10,000 people and dislocated more than 1.5 million there. Poorer areasnever recovered and fears linger. “They shouldn’t call [storms]‘low-pressure systems,’” said Prafulla Kumar Dhal, who works for alocal social welfare agency called BISWA. “They should call them‘normal-pressure systems.’”

The U.S. climate debate often feels hollow (mostly–anyone rememberKatrina?) because it is largely driven by political concerns andscientific data, not people experiencing the meteorological weirdnessthat, if nothing else, Occam’s Razor suggests may be partly influencedby climate change. It’s a common assertion in the climate communitythat poor and vulnerable nations will experience the severestdislocations. It’s a less common assertion that poor and vulnerablenations are already beginning to see strain, are aware of it, and areunhappy. In some ways I learned more about it my first two days inIndia than in the previous 10 years I’ve spent writing about it.

Beyond the foreign section: The trip to India was organized by the U.S. State Department’s Office ofInternational Information Programs, though I traveled as a privatecitizen unencumbered by any official messages, tasks, or requests.Mostly, I was asked to go over and meet with Indian journalists so thatwe can compare notes about what works and doesn’t in climate coverage,and find ways to work together. The trip culminated in a New Delhijournalism conference, organized by the International Federation ofEnvironmental Journalists, about bridging the gaps between climatechange reporting in the North and South.

Discussions frequently turned to how difficult it is for Indians tosee anything beyond Washington, and for Americans to see anythingbeyond Delhi. Some Indians I met tend to see America as monolithic or acartoon. President Obama is seen by some as no different from PresidentBush on climate policy, even if he has the Senate to fault. ManyAmericans who think about it see India only as the first part of thephrase “India and China,” without recognizing the complexities, that 99percent of Indians live below the U.S. poverty line or that there are100 million-200 million more Indians without electricity than there areAmericans in total. There is much work to do bringing Indians andAmericans together electronically.

Now appearing on the international stage: India’s Minister of Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, isinteresting to watch. He must balance the demands of his government,which is reluctant to amend its incalcitrant position in the climatenegotiations, and his interlocutors in the West, who are reluctant toamend their incalcitrant positions in the climate negotiations. Thisweek he is encouraging Indians to see climate change as a leadership opportunity—and aresponsibility to the future, and to internalize its meaning ratherthan play victim to a problem of the West’s creation.

The Obama administration appears poised to make more progress in itsbilateral relationship with India than with any other nation. PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh will visit Washington this month and enjoyPresident Obama’s first state dinner. Trade and geopolitics arebringing the two nations together, cautiously.

Statistical threats leave no fingerprints: India may be more vulnerable to large-scale climate change than anyother nation. Seventy percent of its rainfall comes during monsoonseason. Unusual variability in the monsoon has led to drought andflooding. Melting Himalayan glaciers threaten fresh water supplies forhundreds of millions. The Bay of Bengal is eroding a string of Odishavillages I visited. BISWA’s Prafulla Kumar Dhal spoke of a well-knowntemple, the adjacent ponds to which had dried up. “The gods know thatthe climate is changing,” he said, seemingly incredulous. Maybe so,maybe not. Some weird stuff is happening in India. The question, whatif anything will we do about it, remains unanswered—in Washington, NewDelhi, Copenhagen, and elsewhere.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.

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The $3 billion federal program was kinda sorta supposed to send inefficient, high-polluting, belchy vehicles to an early grave. Instead it put a lot of new large, inefficient vehicles on the road, according to an AP investigation of new government records.

The most common deals swapped old Ford or Chevrolet pickup trucks for new pickups that got “only marginally better gas mileage,” the analysis found. Old Ford F-150 for new Ford F-150 was the most common exchange. Buyers were 17 times more likely to purchase an F-150 (rated at 16 miles per gallon) than a hybrid Toyota Prius.

At least 15 owners of large pickups cashed them in for new Hummer H3 SUVs that get only 16 mpg. Excuse me, but why did the government even send claims forms to Hummer dealerships? Government officials are “investigating” out how these deals squeaked through, the AP reports.

About 1 in 7 of all deals went for vehicles that got 20 mpg or worse. If you think about it, though, 20 mpg really isn’t such a bad rate ... for 1979.

There were plenty of signals before the one-month summer program began that it was a poor method for cutting pollution (note our roundup of early warnings). There’s also a lively debate on whether it made sense as economic stimulus.

“If we’re looking for the environmental story here, we’re going to be disappointed,” Jeremy Anwyl, of analyst firm Edmunds.com, told the AP. “It might have started out from the perspective of improving the environment, but it got detoured as a way to stimulate the economy.”

That pretty much nails it.

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Senate Democrats push climate bill through committee

Europe places outcome of Copenhagen squarely on Obama

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the Kerry-Boxer bill by a vote of 11 to 1, with the seven Republicans on the committee absent from the discussion and vote.

The panel is among five other Senate committees which also will weigh in with their draft bills on slowing the pace of climate change before a bill receives a vote in the full chamber, possibly next year.

“We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott we have been able to move this bill forward,” said committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) after the vote.

Republicans, who boycotted the deliberations for three consecutive days, said they would oppose the bill until they had a “comprehensive analysis” of the economic impact of the legislation from the Environmental Protection Agency.

But Boxer said further analysis by the agency was not necessary, and maintained that the EPA’s environmental impact assessment of a similar bill approved in June by the House of Representatives was sufficient. “We found that, after questioning the EPA extensively, that the Republicans’ demand for another EPA analysis now would be duplicative and a waste of taxpayer dollars,” she said.

Committee rules require the presence of at least two members of the minority party, but Boxer sidestepped the boycott using parliamentary procedures that allowed her to pass the bill by a simple majority of members present, a tactic Republicans decried as a “nuclear option.”

At a press conference earlier this week, she signaled the tactical maneuver ahead.

“What they’re doing is highly unusual. And what we’re doing in response is highly unusual,” she said, adding that her actions were completely “by the Senate rules.”

Meanwhile, the lone Republican at Thursday’s vote, ranking committee member James Inhofe (Okla.), in a two-minute declaration said his party’s position had not changed.  “We still are asking for the same thing,” he said.

Republicans also criticized the Democrats’ bill as doing too little to promote nuclear energy and said it’s likely to lead to a spike in energy prices.

One Democrat, centrist senator Max Baucus (Mont.), who serves as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, broke with his party as the lone Democrat to vote against the bill, saying that its goals for reducing greenhouse emission levels were too ambitious.

The Senate legislation faces a long and contentious process ahead, and must be reconciled with a House bill that calls for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and by 83 percent by 2050.  The Senate’s bill calls for a 20 percent cut by 2020.

Both bills would create a cap-and-trade regime, aimed at setting the total level of domestic emissions allowable and then allocating quotas to companies.  Firms that emit less than their quota would be allowed to sell their surplus allocation to others that exceed theirs. Those in excess could also face fines.

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Why developing countries cannot afford failure in Copenhagen

Still, Gore spoke clearly about the energy and technology solutions that exist, what it will take to actually implement them, and why it ain’t happenin’. The Daily Show published a two-part extended interview on its site—here’s part one:

... and here’s part two:

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