{"id":237154,"date":"2010-01-27T14:12:39","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T19:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=74953"},"modified":"2010-01-27T14:12:39","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T19:12:39","slug":"does-graham%e2%80%99s-backtrack-spell-the-end-of-cap-and-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/237154","title":{"rendered":"Does Graham\u2019s Backtrack Spell the End of Cap-and-Trade?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Roberts thinks so<\/a>. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) unlikely support<\/a> for comprehensive climate legislation represented the best hope for passage of a cap-and-trade bill. Now, his remarks<\/a> that the House and Senate climate bills “are going nowhere” and a “massive cap-and-trade system that regulates carbon in a fashion that drives up energy costs” is “dead” have burst the bubble of environmentalists who, frankly, never really expected the conservative Graham to remain a forceful advocate for a policy that’s anathema to the right.<\/p>\n

The levelheaded Roberts writes:<\/p>\n

\n

To me, regardless of what Obama or Reid may want, this signals the death knell for a comprehensive cap-and-trade program, this year and probably for the duration of Obama\u2019s term in office. If Graham won\u2019t go for it, no Republican will, certainly not the 6-8 Republicans needed. Indeed, opposition to cap-and-trade has become part of the Republican purity pledge<\/a>. As long as the rabid teabag base has total control over the party, there will be no flexibility on this. And 41 senators is all they need to block it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

With Democrats’ 59-seat majority in the Senate likely to be reduced to 53 to 55<\/a> after the midterm elections, if cap-and-trade doesn’t happen this year, it won’t happen for a long time. The House leadership’s impressive success in passing a landmark climate bill, the hope engendered by the tripartisan climate talks<\/a>, President Obama’s Copenhagen pledge to cut America’s emissions by around 17 percent by 2020 — all that might have just gone down the drain with a Scott Brown-influenced change of heart by the senior senator from South Carolina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Roberts thinks so. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) unlikely support for comprehensive climate legislation represented the best hope for passage of a cap-and-trade bill. Now, his remarks that the House and Senate climate bills “are going nowhere” and a “massive cap-and-trade system that regulates carbon in a fashion that drives up energy costs” is “dead” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}