The current debate about allowing EPA to regulate carbon emissions or encouraging Congress to act in its stead is a significant and heated one. However, we believe there are more effective and pragmatic ways of reducing carbon emissions than government mandates, regardless of which branch of government is issuing them. For example, using America’s most reliable, efficient and environmentally friendly fossil fuel, natural gas, and using it as efficiently as possible, can significantly reduce carbon emissions.

To that end, government policies that promote the increased use of natural gas are the most effective way to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy efficiency. And because natural gas is domestically abundant—more than 97 percent of the natural gas we use comes from North America—it contributes to our energy security as well.

The fact is that, for four decades, natural gas residential and commercial customers have been leading the way in energy efficiency and carbon emission reductions. For example, the number of residential households using natural gas increased from 38 million in 1970 to 66 million today — an increase of more than 70 percent — yet aggregate residential consumption over that time has remained essentially flat. That is because residential natural gas users have cut their natural gas use, per household, by about 40 percent. This decline in residential gas usage per household is due to better insulated homes, more efficient appliances and conservation/efficiency programs that are supported by natural gas utilities.

This remarkable success in both reducing natural gas usage on a per-household basis and increasing appliance efficiency should be considered when crafting a national energy strategy. An effective course of action would be to continue to support these successful approaches and encourage other innovative ways to promote conservation.

We believe that natural gas could, and should, be used as a tool to improve environmental quality and energy efficiency. An approach to reducing emissions that is focused on appliance efficiency standards, building codes, and utility-supported conservation/efficiency programs has a proven track record for residential and commercial natural gas customers.

Let’s focus on what works for America, our environment and our future. We need to be talking about natural gas - domestic, abundant, affordable and available right now.

These comments are submitted by Kathleen Rest, executive director of Union of Concerned Scientists.

The resolution offered by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to force the EPA to rescind its finding that global warming emissions harm public health is an unprecedented assault on science. The Senate should reject it.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that heat-trapping emissions qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The court directed the EPA to limit those emissions if the agency determined that climate change endangers public health and welfare.

Last December, after an extensive scientific review, the EPA issued its “endangerment” finding. Among other things, it found that public health would be put at risk from longer heat waves that harm the sick, poor, and elderly; extreme weather events that could lead to death and injuries; and increases in ground-level ozone that would exacerbate respiratory illnesses such as asthma. Now the EPA is moving forward carefully and pragmatically with its required regulations limiting global warming emissions, focusing only on the very largest polluters.

Senators should applaud the EPA for taking action, but instead Sen. Murkowski’s resolution would force the agency to reject the science and stop protecting the public from global warming emissions.

Sen. Murkowski’s resolution is far-reaching. It would allow the nation’s largest power plants and factories to continue to spew dangerous pollutants. Additionally, the Murkowski resolution would jeopardize the historic agreement that set the first joint fuel economy and global warming tailpipe standards in over thirty years. In 2020, those standards will save more than a million barrels of oil per day, cut our emissions more than 200 million metric tons, save motorists more than $32 billion at the pump, and create as many as 200,000 new jobs across the country.

The Obama administration has issued a veto threat, and more than 1,900 U.S. scientists have voiced opposition to the Murkowski resolution. The Senate must reject this attack on science and oppose the Murkowski resolution. But it’s not enough for the Senate to simply avoid attacking the science, it must affirmatively act to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill now

IECA is on record supporting cost-effective action that would reduce GHGs through energy efficiency, including several non-cap and trade policy options that will increase jobs and competitiveness of the manufacturing sector. However, allowing EPA to regulate emissions is the wrong approach.

Everyone, even at EPA, agrees that Congress should determine how the country addresses GHGs. Allowing the EPA to proceed is to allow unelected bureaucrats to determine what energy sources will be used, how much energy will be used and by whom without regard to the price of electricity, natural gas, and gasoline for all consumers, and without consideration to economic growth or national security. It is critical that energy prices in the US are globally competitive so that we can compete; grow our businesses and increase jobs and exports. Letting the EPA regulate GHGs will lead to increased business uncertainty, increased cost of compliance and substantially increased energy costs in a time when we are still struggling to recover from a global recession.

Passing a bill that would delay EPA action does not remedy the problem of business uncertainty and will cause much needed capital to remain on the sidelines. Passing a bill that exempts small emitters would pick winners and losers within business sectors and threaten jobs. Fortunately, bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate with support of Democrats and Republicans that would immediately prevent EPA regulation of GHG emissions. Congress must not let the EPA usurp its policymaking role, it should prevent EPA regulation as soon as possible and work toward cost-effective action that would reduce GHGs.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s EPA resolution, set for a 6 hour Senate showdown today, is really about the legitimacy of climate science, not the appropriate role for EPA in controlling greenhouse gases.

The Senator argues that she wants the legislative branch to deal with the climate change issue instead of a federal agency. But the text of her one-sentence resolution disapproves of EPA’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

It was the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act in Massachusetts v. EPA that set the agency on the road to the endangerment finding. When the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases were a “pollutant” under the Act, the only choice for the agency was scientific: whether emissions contributed to climate change and thus represented a threat to public health and welfare.

Congress could easily revise the Clean Air Act to exclude greenhouse gases from EPA’s authority under that law, but that is not the move that Senator Murkowski is proposing. Instead of removing EPA’s authority, her resolution disapproves of EPA’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases are a threat. Under the Congressional Review Act, which has been used successfully only once in the past, that disapproval would undo the agency finding, which is based on decades of climate science.

In some contexts, for example, where an agency is interpreting a statute, it makes perfect sense for Congress to step in if its intent was misunderstood by the agency. But in this case, rather than making a policy choice, the Senator is proposing to substitute Congress’s scientific judgment for the agency’s. On these kinds of scientific questions, there are good reasons to think that an agency like the EPA is in a better position to know the right answers than Congress.

The resolution is currently 10 votes shy of the 51 needed to pass in the Senate, the House isn’t likely to be enthusiastic, and President Obama has threatened to veto even if the votes were found. So ultimately, the measure is largely symbolic, but may serve as a litmus test for how for how many Senators are willing to sign-on to climate change denial.

In the end, it could actually make sense to curtail or direct the EPA’s authority in certain ways to keep the agency from duplicating work that legislation would cover. But until we see what form a final climate change bill might or might not take we don’t know how best to do that. Defanging the EPA now assumes Congress will get its act together and pass comprehensive legislation—putting the cart far ahead of the horse.

Having just recently returned from a trip to the EU, which included visits to regulators, government offices, energy companies and more I am beginning to see things in a bit of a different way. The climate debate seems to be pretty much over in the places I visited. The connections between carbon and climate change seem rather clear to the regulators, the business people and others. I met some energy company people who are looking at carbon charges as business propositions. It seems that they were seeing them as such from almost the get go.

We visited a carbon capture site in one country. The energy company we were visiting wanted to build a gas fired generating plant. The government told them that if they wanted to do this they would need to do something about CO2 and climate change. The major energy companies we visited all take carbon charges for granted as thing that will be with them for many years to come. There is a huge interest in CCS in the EU.

Climate change concerns seem to be a significant part of European culture now.

When we returned to the US, after a two week journey where the public transport and airlines worked without a flaw – and on time. We landed in Newark to change to a beastly hot prop plane that left 2 hours late, and did not have space for some of our luggage. I don't say this to just complain about the obvious differences in transport infrastructure that we experienced, but also to show a metaphor of, well, inertial stagnation. As the steward began to pass out tiny napkins and tiny pretzel bags I looked out the window as my blood pressure rose.

How could we as such a great nation hold ourselves back from the new energy and environment futures that await us?

How could so many be turning their backs in the political realm to the complexities of climate change, but also of the dangers and security threats that climate change could bring. Surely there are uncertainties. Climate change is a "wicked problem" maybe because of the complexities and uncertainties that is presents. Understanding the potential effects of climate change also requires a very broad view of analysis. It requires one to be truly multidisciplinary and ready to look for the systems shifts that might happen.

I have been involved in the study of climate change since I was first introduced to the subject while at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the mid-1980s. Over the years I have looked at the data, the theories, and the debates many sides. I have been skeptical at time and have often made sure to read the counter arguments against the connections between what we as a species do and climate change. I assign articles by the climate skeptics to my classes. I present many sides of the climate debates in my energy classes. It is important for students and the other people I advise to come to their own conclusions.

To this end I think it is important that we phase in whatever changes the ultimate debates will bring about. To land massive changes on a skeptical public will likely cause a lot of pushback and could actually cause weaker policies to be developed.

It will take time to get the public to come to some kind of consensus on climate change and CO2. This did not happen overnight in the EU and will not happen overnight here.

This can be helped along with better education and information programs from all sides. Look at the decline in the smoking of cigarettes. Look at the use of seatbelts today vs. 1960. Look at the taking out of lead from gasoline and house paint. Look at how some harbors and rivers have been cleaned up in this country. (Take for a very good example, Boston Harbor. This is a very different body of water than what it was 20 years ago.) Take a look at the more enlightened views toward nuclear power that have developed in the last few years. Take a look at the reactions in the public to the oil-lanche (it is not a "spill") in the Gulf of Mexico. Take a look at how families and farmers are using pesticides now compared to those uses in the 1970s.

People learn. Leaders need to lead, and lead their people in the right directions. Handing them the equivalent of small bags of pretzels of ideas about climate change in order to get elected or re-elected is not the way to do this. Leaving them to sit in a potentially heated up planet is also not the best of all possible leadership results.

The bills presented by the Congress on environment and climate issues are just part of the overall national and world debates on these issues.

Can we please bring those debates to higher levels and can we please bring in competing rigorous scientific and other analyses? Our country deserves better than partisan bickering and attempts to hoist the lowest common denominator onto the pandering pedestals of partisanship.

If these bills end up being just another party split vote they will have accomplished very little of what really needs to get done.

This Thursday, the Senate has reserved six hours for debate and then a vote on Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) resolution of disapproval of EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions endanger public health and welfare. The resolution needs 51 votes to pass the Senate; it is subject neither to filibuster nor amendment.

Passage of the resolution would remove EPA’s authority to regulate GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act. An immediate casualty would be a deal between the Obama Administration, states, and automakers on new Clean Air Act GHG emission standards for motor vehicles.

What should we expect on Thursday? Let’s say for the sake of argument that we know how the far ends of the political spectrum will vote. But what about the moderates – those critical 15-20 Senators whose votes ultimately would be needed for Senate passage of climate change legislation?

A number of these Senators have expressed concerns about climate change, but also have expressed concerns about EPA regulation of GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act. The Act is very ill-suited to regulation of GHG emissions. The agency’s authority to use market-based approaches could be clearer, and the statute’s plain language implies potentially onerous regulation of very small facilities. EPA’s recent efforts to moderate the reach of regulation to only larger sources – the Tailoring Rule – may not pass court muster. All in all, EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act is an option that falls a distinct second to a new program designed by Congress itself.

Nonetheless, the Murkowski resolution is very strong medicine. It would derail EPA’s authority indefinitely, and would upend the deal on motor vehicles – which, by promoting fuel efficiency, not only benefits the environment but also promotes energy security.

For these reasons, some moderates might vote against the Murkowski resolution while citing preferred alternatives – other approaches that simply would curb or delay EPA regulation of stationary sources.

For example, Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and Robert Casey (D-PA) have suggested a bill that would exempt smaller facilities from EPA stationary source regulation, effectively codifying an approach similar to EPA’s Tailoring Rule. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has a “time-out” idea – a bill that would suspend any EPA regulation of stationary sources for two years.

Of course, the other alternative for the moderates is to roll up their sleeves and shape the Kerry-Lieberman bill to their liking. The bill would supplant most Clean Air Act authority of EPA to regulate GHG emissions in favor of a comprehensive climate-specific program. The debate on Thursday could provide an arena in which moderates begin to make their preferences heard on the timing and content of energy and climate change legislation.

With this range of options, it will be important not only to count votes on Thursday, but also to listen to what Senators say. It could provide a roadmap for future action in the Congress and the EPA.

This commentary does not necessarily represent the views of Van Ness Feldman, P.C., or its clients.

I find it shocking that a few Senators are moving forward with efforts to undercut the EPA even as oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s blowout.

Not only could these Senate resolutions prolong our oil addiction by delaying America’s shift to cleaner energy, but they will also undermine one of the government’s most effective tools for holding polluters accountable--the Clean Air Act.

Now is not the time to have faith in polluters’ ability to police themselves.

Yet despite all of BP’s broken promises about its safety measures and ability to clean up offshore spills, Senator Murkowski thinks we should trust polluters to handle the problem of global warming too. She doesn’t want the EPA to get involved with limiting global warming pollution from power plants, oil refineries, and cars.

Indeed, her resolution would void recent EPA efforts to reduce dangerous pollution, including new standards to cut carbon emissions and improve fuel efficiency for new cars, SUVs, and light trucks--standards that also will save billions of gallons of gasoline.

Murkowski’s resolution would knock the EPA rules of the picture, sacrificing a quarter of the fuel savings expected from standards set together with the Transportation Department. And that means consumers will buy 18.9 billion gallons of gasoline and spend around $56.7 billion at the pump that they wouldn’t have to if the EPA retained its authority.

Instead of indulging industry’s desire to dump carbon pollution into the air without limit, Senators should be working on cleaner, safer solutions. They should pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation that retains the EPA’s ability to enforce pollution reductions. This is the most effective way to cut pollution, protect our oceans, and reduce our dependence on oil.

In 2007, the Supreme Court gave to EPA what Congress would not: a charge to regulate CO2. To protect the public for potential fallout from this misstep, federal lawmakers should close the door on the agency’s sweeping CO2 agenda under the Clean Air Act. Anyone familiar with the more than 3-decade-old CAA and its reauthorizations knows that Congress intended it to apply only to conventional air pollutants. That its Section 202 may not have been worded sufficiently for five Justices is no excuse for allowing the Act to morph into economy-wide climate legislation.

When Congress reauthorized CAA in 1990 -- two years after Al Gore made global warming a household phrase -- legislators explicitly decided that EPA should not be able to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2). A Conference Committee removed the language which would have granted EPA such authority. That expulsion and the CAA’s legislative history should have guided the Supreme Court. That it didn’t says more about the Court’s political correctness than about the law.

Though all approaches currently being considered by the Senate (proposals by Murkowski, Rockefeller, Casey Jr., and Carper) would have to be agreed to by the House and signed by the President to have an official impact, a strong vote Thursday on Senator Murkowski’s resolution would be enough to send a clear message to both Senate leadership and the White House. To stop EPA from continuing down a path that will inflict great damage economically, accomplish little environmentally, and have many unintended consequences across the board, Congress must use the appropriation process to prohibit the agency from using any funds to regulate CO2.

Once EPA begins regulating CO2, there is no logical stopping point. If it tries to limit its scope to mobile sources, activists will sue. And the resulting settlement process will extend the agency’s regulatory reach deeper into America’s economy. Experts have cautioned that EPA’s proposed tailoring rule has no legal foundation in the CAA and, therefore, will get struck down -- forcing EPA to regulate thousands of small businesses: from energy plants to neighborhood dry cleaners, from dairy farms to restaurants.

EPA was created to protect the environment, not manage the economy. Regulating CO2 under CAA would allow the agency to exercise more economic power than the Treasury Department or any other fiscally-focused Executive Branch agency. Agencies already have a hard enough time carrying out duties authorized under law. It’s impossible for them to undertake missions that have nothing to do with their statutory purposes.

Based on findings of numerous analyses, we know that absolute CO2 reductions -- consistent with the President’s objectives -- would significantly raise energy costs, stifle job creation, and do little to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations since the developing world is the major source of emissions. As a nation we can continue our good progress in reducing carbon intensity and build on the Major Economies initiative to fashion a global approach consistent with each nation’s abilities and economic objectives.

Now is a time for cautious action and a focus on economic priorities. Our nation is struggling to climb out of a deep recessionary hole. And evidence to date suggests that we may not have turned the corner and still face the risk of a double dip recession. Regulatory actions that impose higher costs on consumers and businesses would increase that risk even more and deter business from the type of capital investment that would create jobs and contribute to strong economic growth.

A vote for the Murkowski or Rockefeller resolutions will strip EPA‘s ability to protect human health and the environment. At a time when the Gulf oil spill reminds Americans that our dependence on oil is dangerous to our economy, our health and our environment, these amendments will extend America’s dependence on oil.

What's more, the Murkowski resolution would erase popular, practical decisions. For instance, the auto industry recently pushed for national vehicle emissions standards, which the Obama administration granted. These vehicle standards put America on a path to cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars that will result in cleaner air and more money in the pockets of Americans. Murkowski’s resolution would eliminate the administration’s ability to set these standards, making the country even more dependent on oil than we are now.

But it’s also important to point out why EPA is regulating in the first place. In 2007, The Supreme Court ruled that EPA must regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases if they were found to be a threat to human health. Responding to the court, EPA issued a scientific finding that confirmed the threat and allows for greenhouse gases to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The Murkowski resolution overturns this science-based finding, denying that greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health.

The Clean Air Act and its amendments have dramatically cleaned up America’s air. In this case, the Clean Air Act would be used to make sure new power plants and major emitting sources meet safer and cleaner standards – something that’s in America’s best interest. Furthermore, the EPA Administrator has indicated that existing facilities would not be regulated, only large emitting sources like power plants -- not small and medium-sized businesses.

As the oil laps up on the shore of America’s beaches, Congress should do everything in its power to make America’s energy cleaner and safer, not dirtier and dangerous to our health. Preserving EPA’s ability to clean the air is just common sense.

Let’s be absolutely clear here. Overturning EPA’s endangerment finding -- that greenhouse gases are a risk to public health and welfare – would send exactly the wrong signal about the serious nature of this issue. To take such an action, just days after our nation’s top scientific body (the National Academy of Sciences) issued a loud and clear call for action, should be unthinkable.

Some may vote for the resolution not intending to repudiate the science but to reserve the right of Congress (and not EPA) to set policies to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. If this is their rationale, then a vote to delay EPA regulations for two years (along the lines of Sen. Rockefeller’s bill) might make more sense.

But the National Academy of Sciences’ reports underscore the urgency of the problem and the high costs of delaying action. Given that EPA has already both delayed the effective date of its rules and limited their applicability to the very largest sources, this proposal seems like it fixes a problem that no longer exists. Alternatively, a possible proposal from Sen. Casey and Sen. Carper would essentially codify EPA’s regulations, keeping in place EPA’s efforts to focus on the largest sources first and removing the legal uncertainty that hangs over these efforts. While potentially useful, there is of course an even better solution.

The Senate could (and should) avoid all of the above and instead invest its time and energy over the next two months finding the common ground required to pass a clean energy and climate bill. By going down this path, the Senate would achieve its goal of being the one to determine how greenhouse gases are regulated (including the role EPA should play). Above all, it would be taking a critical first step in creating the clean energy economy that will be essential to our economic and environmental well-being in the 21st century.

The good news is that the key building blocks for a final bill already exist. Instead of postponing action, the Senate has the opportunity to use the upcoming weeks to find the sensible solutions urgently needed to get our nation on a path that enhances our energy independence, protects against environmental disasters, spurs the growth of new technologies, and slows climate change.

Overturning EPA’s endangerment finding is a constitutional imperative. Unless stopped, EPA will be in a position to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards for the auto industry, set climate policy for the nation, and even amend the Clean Air Act — powers never delegated to the agency by Congress.

Worse, America could end up with a pile of greenhouse gas regulations more costly and intrusive than any climate bill or treaty the Senate has declined to pass or ratify, yet without the people’s representatives ever voting on it.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res.26) would nip this mischief in the bud by overturning the endangerment finding. The resolution puts a simple question squarely before the Senate: Who shall make climate policy — lawmakers who must answer to the people at the ballot box or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges appointed for life?

Precisely because S.J.Res.26 would restore political accountability to climate policy making, regulatory zealots are waging smear campaigns against it. Climate Progress calls it “polluter crafted” (impossible, because the form and language of the resolution are fixed by the Congressional Review Act). MoveOn.Org warns the resolution condemns many Americans to “smoke the equivalent of a pack a day just from breathing the air” (nonsense – just one cigarette delivers 12-27 times the daily dose of fine particulate matter that non-smokers get in cities with the most polluted air). Environmental Defense Action Fund claims the resolution will give corporate polluters a “bailout” (also impossible, because S.J.Res.26 is not a tax or spending bill).

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) tries to equate S.J.Res.26 with a hypothetical vote to overturn the Surgeon General’s famous report linking cigarette smoking to cancer. We’re supposed to be scandalized that Congress would attempt to repeal science and keep us in the dark about threats to our health and welfare. This too is calumny.

First, the Surgeon General’s report was purely an assessment of the medical literature. It did not even offer policy recommendations. If the endangerment finding were simply one agency’s review of the science, Congress would have no business voting on it either. Unlike the Surgeon General’s report, the endangerment finding is both trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes Congress never approved.

Second, although some oppose the endangerment finding on scientific grounds, S.J.Res.26 neither takes nor implies a position on climate science. The resolution would overturn the “legal force and effect” of the endangerment finding, not its reasoning or conclusions. The resolution is a referendum not on climate science but on the constitutional propriety of EPA making climate policy without new and specific statutory guidance from Congress.

Former EPA Administrator Russell Train contends that Congress already signed off on whatever greenhouse gas regulations EPA adopts. When? Why, back in 1970 – decades before global warming became a political issue – when Congress enacted the Clean Air Act. Congress authorized EPA to evaluate individual pollutants, and established a scientific criterion as the sole trigger for action: whether a pollutant “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger” public health or welfare. EPA bases its greenhouse gas regulations on its endangerment finding, so the Clean Air Act is working “as Congress intended,” Train concludes.

But all this proves is that EPA has jumped through the requisite procedural hoops, which nobody disputes. That in no way demonstrates that Congress meant to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. Train ignores the obvious. Congress did not design the Clean Air Act to be a framework for climate policy, has never voted for the Act to be used as such a framework, and has never approved the far-reaching regulatory ramifications of EPA’s endangerment finding.

As even EPA admits, applying the Act “literally” (i.e. lawfully, statutorily) to CO2 leads to “absurd results.” For example, EPA and its state counterparts would have to process an estimated 41,000 pre-construction permits annually (instead of 280) and 6.1 million operating permits annually (instead of 14,700). Such workloads vastly exceed agencies’ administrative resources. Ever-growing backlogs would paralyze environmental enforcement, block new construction, and thrust millions of firms into legal limbo.

Train praises Administrator Lisa Jackson for taking a “measured approach” and demonstrating her “sensitivity to economic concerns” by exempting, for six years, all but the largest CO2 emitters from permitting requirements. But the Clean Air Act nowhere gives the Administrator the authority to suspend or revise the permitting programs’ applicability thresholds. EPA’s so-called Tailoring Rule is actually an amending rule.

To pound the square peg of climate policy into the round hole of the Clean Air Act, EPA has to play lawmaker and effectively change the statute. This breach of the separation of powers only compounds the constitutional crisis inherent in EPA’s hijacking of fuel economy regulation and climate policymaking.

The importance of the vote on S.J.Res.26 is difficult to exaggerate. Nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability hangs in the balance.

EPA's authority to limit emissions emanates from a US Supreme Court decision in the Fall of 2007, under the Bush Administration, giving such powers to the Executive Branch under EPA recommendations. It would seem somewhat extreme -- even if technically possible -- for Congress to turn against a decision from our Supreme Court.

It is more likely that the process will be staged. After all, we imposed limits on vehicle emissions in March 2010, and now the Kerry-Lieberman Senate Bill proposes to extend these limits to stationery sources. This includes a cap-and-trade approach similar to what the House voted in June 2009, which is a mini-version of the carbon market of the UN Kyoto Protocol. In other words -- while the US process has been slow there is a convergence towards an international agreement that everybody was hoping would emerge from Copenhagen last December, and did not -- where US was perhaps a main missing link.

While handcuffing the EPA is a bit extreme, there is always something in between. To sugar the pill, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., would delay EPA's carbon dioxide regulations for two years while Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Tom Carper, D-Del., would allow EPA to regulate only the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, such as power plants and oil refineries. The representative of the energy industry, Robert Kuhn, supported such limits along with cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate unveiling of the Kerry-Lieberman Bill. Actually, car manufacturers also supported the March 2010 35.5 miles per gallon emission limits by 2016 that President Obama sancioned together with EPA and the DOT.

US industry seems to be aligning in favor of emissions caps -- first the automobile industry and now energy sources -- and the House voted in 2009 in favor of cap-and-trade.

What is the immidiate situation? If the Casey and Carper proposal wins the day, it would exempt small businesses and farms, leaving only large stationary sources such as power plants and refineries to participate in a cap-and-trade regime. This would be a major step forward in any case, since large stationary sources together with the vehicles make up the large majority of all carbon emissions in the US and would have a measurable impact on our nations' contribution to climate change. We are after all the largest industrial nations' emittor.

President Obama is cautiously moving forward and gaining steadily the support of US industry -- even while the general public seems as confused as ever.

Despite all views to the contrary therefore the situation can be described as many steps forward and a few step backwards. The main moves seem to have achieved industry's support and the situation seems better than the media seems to appreciate. We are slowly but surely converging to an American market mechanism to control emissions of CO2 -- a US-based cap-and-trade regime -- at least for large emission sources. This regime would be similar to the US regime that succeeded in capping the sulphur emissions that damaged our ozone layer from large power plants. The resulting SO2 market was successfully traded in the Chicago Board of Trade since 1993 and is a success story for market based control of environmental pollutants that are known to be dangerous to humans.

We are also slowly converging to a solution that meshes with international law, since US legislation is moving towards the Kyoto Protocol and its carbon market, which I wrote into the Protocol in 1997, a market that is now trading $165 billion per year and has many important US participants and supporters.

The carbon market plays an important role because it makes it clear that environmental solutions can lead to profits and not just to costs. China's astute policy in becoming the world's largest exporter of windmill and solar enery equipment is an important case in point. Shall we let them take the lead?

We seem to be converging, but the question is whether we are moving too slow. The potentially catastrophic risks created by environmental excesses and possibly by climate change seem to loom larger every day, a dangerous horizon that is closing in on us. Time is of the essence, we cannot procastrinate any longer. The coming week will lay the cards on the table. Time is not on our side.

The effort to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to regulate the most dangerous set of air pollutants in human history is nothing but grandstanding. Everyone knows it. The Clean Air Act has been an unquestionable success in reducing many other injurious air pollutants during its 40

-year history. Why would the Senate want to stop the Clean Air Act from addressing global warming? Because industry would actually have to change its ways. Because the harmful energy status quo would be threatened. Because the obscene cash cow for big coal and big oil would finally come to an end. If the Senate succeeds in curtailing the Clean Air Act, we will know the corruptive force of campaign money has penetrated the soul of our public’s interest in a safe future.

I’m scratching my head. In the middle of the nation’s largest environmental disaster, does it make sense for an oil-state senator to force a vote on a bill to reign in EPA – on carbon or anything else for that matter? Especially if the public will think it is driven largely by oil companies?

Even though the Murkowski Amendment has little to do with the oil spill, November may not be kind to Senators who vote against EPA. They’ll have lots of explaining to do. The public is worried sick. Every day they see the oil spill hitting another beach, they get madder at the government for being too soft on oil companies. All of Florida is at risk – and maybe the whole East Coast? Media attention is not going away. Investigative reporters are connecting the dots between this crisis and the consequences of the past 8 years of limp environmental enforcement. How will Senators want to be portrayed against that backdrop? Voting to stop EPA, or voting to help EPA? This has the potential to be a binary vote – either you’re clean or you’re dirty.

Still, the various factions in the Senate who are concerned about EPA “going rogue” on carbon have a point: EPA’s existing authorities are not crafted to allow a cost effective response to climate change. But the answer is not to attack the science and remove the authority ala Murkowski. The answer is for Senators to provide EPA and other agencies with a comprehensive new law addressing our energy needs and climate change. The answer is to pass a bill that will spark a clean energy revolution – one that unleashes new investment, diversifies our energy mix, creates new clean energy jobs and lowers the risks of fossil fuel extraction, whether in coal mines or on drilling rigs.

It’s encouraging that this week, President Obama and Senator Reid both began to hit their stride on the critical need for comprehensive energy and climate legislation. It looks like they will raise the political stakes even higher with floor votes on such a bill in July. There isn’t much time on the legislative clock, but there may be just enough time to get it done.

Senators should crave a Rose Garden signing ceremony on a clean energy bill this year – responding to an environmental disaster with the biggest environmental vote of the 21st Century. Murkowski’s alternative is a little less appealing: a picture on the Capitol steps with happy industry lobbyists whom you helped wriggle free of a carbon regulation by asserting that you know the science better than the EPA experts. Not a pretty picture.

Senators should bar the Environmental Protection Agency from going around Congress to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. They can do this by voting for Senate Joint Resolution 26, a bipartisan measure introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

The resolution would overturn EPA’s 2009 "endangerment" finding, which concluded that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The finding paved the way for EPA to regulate car and light-duty truck emissions of greenhouse gases, which in turn has triggered subsequent EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from other commercial and industrial sources.

Massive and rapidly imposed restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions would harm the American economy and hit every American in his or her wallet. If EPA’s aggressive campaign to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act is successful, it will add billions of dollars to the cost of doing business in the United States, raise the cost of energy and other products for American families, wipe out the jobs of millions of American workers, and simply shift greenhouse gas emissions from the United States to other nations without any increase in environmental protection.

Restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions were never authorized or contemplated by members of Congress when they enacted the Clean Air Act. Sen. Murkowski’s resolution simply recognizes this truth and calls a halt to EPA’s greenhouse gas campaign before it harms the American economy, destroys American jobs, and costs families and farmers billions of dollars.

Senators should also reject any effort to codify the EPA’s recently released "tailoring" rule into law. That rule could subject only stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions of 100,000 tons or more annually to state government permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act, however, sets a permitting threshold of 250 tons annually for emissions from major sources.