Climate 411

The House Energy and Commerce Committee continues to slog through debate on the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Debate has been slow because opponents of the bill plan to introduce a whopping 450 amendments. You might think the unusually high number of amendments shows genuine concern about the issue, but some of the proposed measures are truly bizarre.

Among the amendments that opponents say they’ll introduce are provisions to eliminate all the tax benefits for any business in USCAP — a group of major corporations that support a carbon cap. USCAP includes companies like PepsiCo, Shell Oil, Duke Energy, PG & E and Johnson & Johnson.

Another proposed provision specifically targets a much smaller, non-profit group — us. That amendment would call specifically for reviewing the tax status of Environmental Defense Fund.

Those amendments haven’t been introduced yet, but they’re still on the list of 450 so that could materialize at any time. It’s hard to imagine how these actions would benefit the debate over climate change.

Perhaps opponents have no substantial ammunition with which to attack this bill?

Recently, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been one of the loudest voices against a climate change bill. But now they have formidable opposition from … some of the members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

It looks like the Chamber started lobbying on this issue without checking with some of their largest members —  like Johnson & Johnson and Nike — who support a carbon cap. Now the Chamber is getting called out in the press. Oops.

Here’s the story from Politico: “Chamber under fire on warming“