Comments on: Waxman-Markey bill: Crunch time

By: Is America’s Climate Change Bill as good as it should be? Does it matter? | Entangled Alliances

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:57:28 +0000

[...] Waxman-Markey Bill: Crunch Time This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 23:59. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]

By: Edward Crocker

Edward Crocker — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:04:05 +0000

yeah, I’m not so optimistic as you that obama will step up when the bill hits the Senate, but I completely agree that this is simply the start of what will become an increasingly productive debate, even if it is a bit of a whimpering start.

By: Chris Fellingham

Chris Fellingham — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:07:38 +0000

Sure it’s been gutted down a lot from where it staqrted but if no other bill on climate change related issues were passed it will still have a dramatic impact in terms of shifting the US.

~The main reason is that carbon will at last have an associated price – however small will significantly alter the ivnestment climate.

Furthermore, Obama has been working closely behind the scenes on this one or at least the white house has, but i think he’s saving his influence for the senate battle ( see fivethirtyeight’s coverage).

Finally, I think this is a game changer I’m 100% certain this is simply the start of the climate change debate and as sceptics become increasingly isolated – the public will become increasingly open to further legislation.

By: Edward Crocker

Edward Crocker — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:42:45 +0000

the problem with waxman/merkley is two-fold: one, Obama isn’t putting his political capital on the line, since he’s completely focused on healthcate reform. two, the bill’s been gutted somewhat by the agriculture committee chairman and others. it’s still a good bill, but it’s not a great bill; and it’s now off to the senate to get gutted some more.
I guess it really suffered from being concurrent with health reform. shame.