Partisan Debate Over Climate Change Intensifies in Senate

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000003206018

CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE
Sept. 18, 2009 – 1:58 p.m.

Partisan Debate Over Climate Change Intensifies in Senate

The partisan debate over the cost of climate change legislation has flared anew as the Senate prepares to release its bill, with both sides wielding competing studies that project wildly varying price tags for the plan.

The perceived cost of a climate bill, which could transform the U.S. economy by setting a price on fossil fuel emissions, is viewed as a crucial political tool in helping pass — or kill — the legislation. Supporters say the cost to households will be minimal and the legislation would stimulate development of job-creating alternative energy industries. Opponents say it will hurt the economy by raising prices for consumers.

As both sides ramped up the partisan rhetoric, a newly released Congressional Research Service report analyzed seven studies on the projected cost of a House-passed climate bill. Authors of the CRS report concluded it’s nearly impossible to predict the true cost of the legislation.

…

“It is difficult (and some would consider it unwise) to project costs up to the year 2030, much less beyond,” wrote the authors of the CRS paper, energy and environmental policy experts Larry Parker and Brent D. Yacobucci. “The already tenuous assumption that current regulatory standards will remain constant becomes more unrealistic as time goes forward, and other unforeseen events (such as technological breakthroughs) loom as critical issues which cannot be modeled.”

…

[Birthmark]

1. Why do anything now while they still have excuses...

...for inaction? After all, the real problems won't start until long after the Republican Senators are dead, and if Christianity is right, burning in Hell.