Henry Waxman, chairman of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, yearns for cooperation on energy legislation in the next session of Congress. Sure he does.
"Wrestling each other into a stalemate is not a solution," Waxman told the US Chamber of Commerce in an Oct. 19 speech in which he regretted the group's opposition to an energy bill passed by the House in 2009. Waxman cosponsored the legislation, which would have established a cap-and-trade system to pursue aggressive cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. Similar legislation stalled in the Senate.
Stalemate, he calls it. To supporters of economically sustainable energy policy, failure to make Waxman's energy extravaganza law represents a triumph of the 111th Congress.
Working together
The liberal Democrat from California would have Americans believe that his effort to retool the US energy economy simply fell victim to a toxic absence of compromise in a politically divided legislature. "It is my hope that, in the next Congress, we can find a way to work together, on a common-sense basis, to address these issues and move forward together," he told the Chamber.
In fact, Waxman's bill was wrong nearly every way an energy bill can be wrong. Stalemate was too good for it.
The bill, HR 2454, was wrong because it put the federal government in position to make energy decisions for consumers and producers. It set renewable fuel mandates and energy efficiency standards for electric power generators. It created a bureaucracy to push deployment of "clean energy." It created a mechanism for rushing carbon capture and storage technology into service.
The bill, in other words, substituted the government for markets in crucial areas of energy choice, despite the government's abysmal record in this realm. Federal euphoria over hydrogen just a few years ago—and readiness to throw large sums of public money at it—is just a recent example of governmental energy folly. Even official judgment about "clean energy" is suspect. Richly subsidized ethanol has turned out to be far from the environmental balm promised by early "clean" hype.
HR 2454 also was wrong because it was unblushingly political. To sell the bill to industries craving certainty and escape from sudden costs, Waxman and his cosponsors offered to give away tradable allowances in the early years—then apportioned freebie tickets unevenly among industries.
HR 2454 thus became wrong because it was blatantly unfair. Refiners would have shouldered disproportionately large responsibility for emission cuts but received a tiny share of allowances.
HR 2454 was wrong, too, because it was deceptive. Cap-and-trade disguises an essential feature of any effort to cut greenhouse-gas emissions: an imposed increase in the cost of carbon-bearing fuels large enough to discourage consumption. And while fooling consumers into thinking they hadn't been subjected to the pain of a huge new energy tax, it would have inaugurated a market for state-contrived emission allowances—an invitation to trading shenanigans and corruption if ever one existed.
Disdain for activism
Perhaps most important in a political climate charged with voter disdain for federal activism, HR 2454 was wrong as a prominent item on the intrusive agenda the 111th Congress and the Obama administration tried to blitz into law. Now, the very reason to consider costly emission cuts has come under question as contrary science finally gets a voice amid controversy at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If Congress does revisit energy, it must finally heed questions whether imposed emission cuts can influence global average temperature enough to warrant the inescapably large costs.
And if Congress revisits energy with any hope for a new spirit of compromise, Waxman and his allies will have to admit how wrong they were in 2009. Prospects here are poor. In his Chamber speech, Waxman was still trying to pass off his effort to displace cheap energy with expensive energy as "a jobs bill."
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