Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer is delaying work on a climate change bill until September, instead of completing it before the August break.
According to the Washington Post:
The Senate delay came as Congress was preoccupied with healthcare reform, Obama’s top legislative priority, and as senators continued to bicker over how to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide without putting U.S. businesses and consumers at a disadvantage.
The Post report goes on:
At a meeting of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations in L’Aquila, Italy, leaders failed to get China and India to sign onto a goal of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in half by 2050.
President Obama and other leaders did agree to “language supporting a goal of keeping the world’s average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit),” according to the Associated Press report. The report goes on to say that “it remains only a target, however, and it is far from clear that it will be met, especially as China, India and other rapidly industrializing nations generate and consume more energy from coal and other sources.”
U.S. Senators and G-8 leaders may not want to deal with climate change this summer, but I started reading Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008) and plan a series of blog posts on the author’s ideas for reducing CO2 emissions and dependence on foreign oil, and encouraging a sustainable energy economy.
With respect to today’s developments, Friedman in his book argues that a carbon tax is more efficient and transparent than a cap and trade system for reducing CO2 emissions; he also predicts that China’s and India’s growing economies will be hostile in the near term to climate change regulations.