Climate Advocates on the Defensive as Congress Returns

After a year of hope, 2010 is starting out with proponents of action on climate change facing an uphill battle.

In 2009, a new president moved into the White House, Congress inched toward passing a bill to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the Copenhagen climate summit waited as a hopeful coda to a year of climate action. It ended up being a year of mixed results, however, and the prospects for climate action this year appear equally mixed.

Congress gets back into full swing next week, and several senators have made assurances that climate change will be one of the first issues they discuss.

For Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), that means a new attempt to block greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA.

Comprehensive climate change legislation, called for by President Obama called a year ago, may find itself just one more fish in a rather full legislative pond this year. Health care and financial reform are expected to be the main priorities for Congress this year, with issues like immigration policy and lowering greenhouse gas emissions fighting for the remaining attention.

"I think there is still definitely a shot for getting a climate measure this year," Manika Roy, vice president of federal government outreach at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told SolveClimate.

"One essential ingredient is the president's commitment to this issue. If the president says an energy bill is one of his top two or three priorities this year, then there is a good chance.”

But the discussion on Capitol Hill will not just be about how best to fight climate change.

In December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared that greenhouse gases were a danger to public health and welfare. To comply with a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, the agency said it would have to act to regulate them if Congress failed to take action.

Murkowski (photo) decried the EPA's move as "backdoor climate regulation," and she is now proposing an amendment that would block the EPA's capacity to regulate greenhouse gases.

Proponents of climate action say the ones attempting backdoor regulation are the Alaska senator and her supporters with their effort to undermine the Clean Air Act and distract from legislative efforts to regulate greenhouse gases from Capitol Hill.

In recent days, proponents have also uncovered unsettling links between lobbyists and Murkowski's first try at an amendment to strip the EPA of any future greenhouse gas-regulating power, in September.

One lobbyist, a former official in the Bush administration, Jeffery Holmstead, acknowledged to the Washington Post that he was involved in writing the amendment.

Holmstead has represented AMEREN Corp, Arch Coal, CSX Transportation, Duke Energy, Edison Electric Institute, Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, Energy Future Holdings, Mirant, Progress Energy, Salt River Project and Southern Company, according research by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington. In all, Murkowski’s campaign committee and political action committee have received at least $126,500 from Holmstead’s firm, clients and clients' employees since 2004, the group finds. It notes that Southern Co., which has donated $38,000, owns the top three most-polluting power plants in the nation.

Roy does not see anything too out of the ordinary about the lobbyist involvement.