Energy Progress

Maria Cantwell expressed it with inarticulate brilliance on the Senate floor: they were "at the precipice" of something special. I think she meant "the verge", but, though it's the wrong word, it gets across the magnitude of the potential accomplishment.

The Big Crevasse she's referring to is the adoption of more aggressive CAFE standards than Detroit wanted. The target, a 35 mpg fleet average for passenger vehicles sold in the US by 2020, is hardly revolutionary, but still would represent real progress in the key objective: the simultaneous pursuit of reduced fossil fuel consumption and reduced emissions of pollution and greenhouse gases. The target will allow those manufacturers who can do better to trade off some of the excess improvement in MPG, and thus should ensure that there will be a way to make it (given that plenty of individual models can already exceed 35 MPG, and that there's plenty of identifiable improvements throughout the fleet).

The only thing better would have been a more substantial commitment to research and development of low-greenhouse-gas renewable fuels. For the most part, we can blame Pete Domenici for blocking that, though it might have passed if the Senate Democratic leaders had gone in for nuclear, too (for the most part, we can "blame" Harry Reid for that--I'm not sure if he deserves contumely or praise for that, though I'm pretty sure blocking more potential waste in his home state will work politically for him).

The bill as a whole had some nice subsidies for the ethanol/biofuels crowd, so it brought in some bipartisan support from the Midwest. The vote to invoke cloture was close, 62-32 (60 needed), but the vote on overall passage of the bill was more one-sided. It had next-to-nothing for Big Oil (so, for example, Democratic Senator Landrieu of Lousiana voted against). Big Wind, though, which needs a kickstart, didn't get one.

The key political deal in the Senate passage was on the CAFE standards. From the statements on the floor, we can deduce that the agreement was that the more-challenging standards than Detroit wanted (as represented by both Democratic Senators from Michigan; Detroit pushed for ones that would not have required any change in their course toward glacial progress, hindered by persistent marketing of guzzlers) could be included, as long as it was done by voice vote. More than just the Michigan Senators, I think Senators from both parties saw danger in these long-term standards; who can be sure where this issue will go, electorally, particularly with the current vulnerability of the American auto manufacturers? Thus the desirability of no recorded vote--they can all fall back on the same, "bipartisan agreement in the national interest" line no matter what happens in the treacherous domains of vehicle manufacture, energy production, Mideast politics, etc.

This is only a "potential" breakthrough, because there are still many possible pitfalls--conference committee revisions, an uncertain response from the White House with little likelihood of overriding a veto (even though the bill passed by more than two-thirds, I think). The Energy Bill and the Immigration Bill have been running a race in the Senate in recent days. The final fortunes of both bills are uncertain. They are both complex issues on which the President has not taken unreasonable, dug-in positions, so they are potential successes. Of the two, the Energy Bill is far more important to me and my Ten-Point Program (see update in http://chinshihtang.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html).