Emailing "Specter's Defection: What Does it Mean for Carbon Caps?"
I previously
blogged about the Waxman-Markey carbon limit legislation in the House of Representatives. I wrote:
For IT techs around the country, the lesson is simple: carbon regulation is coming. It won’t come for another 12-24 months, but when it does, we are all going to have to figure out (1) how to measure the carbon footprint of our enterprise (including data centers, client workstations, everything), and (2) what to do if that footprint is larger than what the government says it needs to be.
I based my conclusion based on the fact that the Democrats do not have a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats in the Senate, leaving the Republicans the ability to block the bill in the Senate.
Yesterday, Arlen Specter became a Democratic senator from Pennsylvania. His reasons for doing so are pretty transparent. Pennsylvania has steadily become a blue state, with more than 200,000 voters switching their party registration from R to D in the last election. If he ran as a Republican in the primary next year, he would have suffered a humiliating loss to another candidate, Pat Toomey, who is far more conservative than Specter, and who has the backing of what's left of Pennsylvania Republicans. The only way for him to have a chance to win re-election was to switch parties. Of course, switching parties doesn't mean that he'll switch positions and go along with the Democrats on all issues. In his press conference yesterday, he specifically re-stated his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (an important piece of legislation for Democrats), which would ease the process for unionization in the workplace. So the question on my mind this morning is: Will Specter's switch mean more likely passage of carbon cap and trade? That question is also tackled on the
WSJ Blogs and
Platts. I think both miss the mark.
My conclusion is that the answer is Yes, it's more likely. Here's why.
As a moderate Republican, Specter was never part of the party that denied the existence of global warming or that the government shouldn't do anything about it (unlike Palin, Jindal, Limbaugh, Boehner, etc). On the other hand, Pennsylvania is coal country, and Specter won't support any legislation that will hurt the coal industry even further. Here's his official
stance on climate change legislation:
Much attention is currently focused on the issue of climate change, an issue that I have been following for some time. As early as 2001, I urged the President to address greenhouse gas emissions by having the United States , as the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, take a leadership role on climate change. During consideration of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, I introduced a bipartisan amendment with Senator Bingaman calling on the U.S. Congress to “enact a comprehensive and effective national program of mandatory, market-based limits and incentives on emissions of greenhouse gases.” The passage of this amendment on June 22, 2005, was a step forward and formed the basis for legislation we introduced on July 11, 2007, S. 1766, the Low Carbon Economy Act which would slow, stop, and reverse the growth of greenhouse emissions while protecting our economy and encouraging comparable action by our major trading partners and key contributors to global emissions.
The legislation is already
under fierce attack from Republicans, and I believe that Democrats in Congress and President Obama will make some key concessions such as allowing free allowances to companies to address the cost issue. Democrats will not, however, yield on the heart of the legislation, carbon cap and trade. Since Specter has supported carbon caps in the past as long as the effect on coal jobs in Pennsylvania is addressed, I believe there's a good chance he will support the Waxman bill.
Even if he does not, however, Specter's defection is still good news for the bill. That's because he can still vote against the bill, but vote for cloture. Remember, the magic 60 number simply permits Democrats to cut off Republican debate and put the bill up for a vote. During the vote, a simple majority is enough to pass the bill. Therefore, it's conceivable that Specter will vote with other Democrats for cloture, and yet still vote No on the bill to show his voters that he cares for them. The end result is the same -- the bill passes assuming at least 51 Democratic Senators vote for it (and they will).
A lot still needs to happen. Al Franke from Minnesota still needs to be seated in the Senate (he will). The bill still needs to pass the House (it will). And finally, the bill still needs to pass the Senate. Before yesterday's defection, I would have given the climate bill a less than 50% chance of passing before the end of 2010. Today, I'm upgrading my assessment to better than 50%. For IT companies, the need to plan for a carbon-limited future just became a lot more pressing.