House passes controversial climate change bill by just 7 votes, after last-minute push by Obama

After three hours of debate, and some last-minute lobbying by President Obama, the House of Representatives tonight narrowly passed the Waxman-Markey bill to combat climate change by setting up a cap-and-trade system.

The tally was 219 to 212 -- a mere seven-vote margin, with 44 Democrats voting no, according to the New York Times. Here's a breakdown of the roll call, which shows Rep. C.W. Bill Young  and Gus Bilirakis voting no along with most of the GOP, and Rep. Kathy Castor voting yea with most, though not, all of the Democrats.

The bill is "a patchwork of compromises," notes the Times, and "falls far short of what many European governments and environmentalists have said is needed to avert the worst impacts of global warming. And it has pitted liberal Democrats from both coasts against more conservative Democrats from areas dependent on coal for electricity and heavy manufacturing for jobs."

And as tough as the passage was in the House, "it is just the beginning of the energy and climate debate in Congress, since the issue now moves to the Senate, where political divisions and regional differences are even starker."

Here's President Obama's Rose Garden speech today in support of the bill's passage:

--Craig Pittman

Comments

[paminator]

I ran across an interesting article today. Power Engineering June 2009, page 6. In it, David Walsh, of Mitsubishi Power Systems, claims that upgrades to existing coal power plants in the U.S. could, without using one more ton of coal, deliver an additional 50 GigaWatts of power to the grid. The upgrades could be done for less than $1500/kW.

To put this in perspective, that is the equivalent of 50 new 1.1 GW nuclear reactors, which currently price out at $7000/kW. Renewables, of course, are even more expensive than nuclear power on a delivered energy basis.

So, here sits an additional energy source, located near load centers and transmission lines, capable of supplying six times more energy than all of the existing U.S. wind turbines combined (28.5 GW at 30% availability), or 25 times more energy than all existing solar systems combined in the U.S. (8.8 GW at 23% availability), with ZERO additional carbon or any other emissions, and a reduced thermal footprint on cooling water sinks, for a fraction of the cost of any alternative.

Man this bill pisses me off. Minority leader Boehner said it well- “Hey, people deserve to know what’s in this pile of s–t.”

[Tino]

paminator, I am disappointed that you are not toeing the party line -- coal is EVIL and must be stopped!

Engineering facts and economics are irrelevant!

"The time for debate is over." -- Al Gore

[get-smart]

Now the dirtbag politico/lawyers are sending the rest of the jobs overseas.

So what are the young people, who are just entering the workforce to do? There are no jobs!!

Is this a new kind of treason that hasn't been defined yet? or is it a treason of collusion of the DC politicos with the third world garbage?

Is it a Treason by National Suicide? - in the name of psychobabble. Why should we go down in flames with these dirtbag lawyers in DC?

Every gallon that is saved here will be burnt in China!

Is this the handicapping of the US so third world countries have the edge over the US to equalize the playing field?

I do not have words yet that describe this Treasonous National Suicide!

Cheers -

[paminator]

Tino- I guess I should be cheering for Paul Krugman's rants in the NYT about Congressmen being charged with treason 'against the planet'(!) because they didn't vote for crap and tax.

Of course, Krugman also said this in a recent blog posting-

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/climate-trade-obama/

A summary-

"The goal of Waxman-Markey is make the cheapest form of energy we have more expensive, consequently making everything produced in this country more expensive. It would defeat the purpose of this legislation to allow U.S. consumers to evade this energy tax by purchasing products from countries like China that choose not to adopt a similar tax.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense to restrict Americans' access to products from these countries, and the president is wrong to oppose such restrictions. What about that don't you dumb hicks understand?"

The more people understand this perfectly accurate point about crap and tax, the more likely the politicians who supported crap and tax will be turfed out on their back-ends in 2010 and 2012.