Dem’s climate change bill heads to the Senate.

Last week we sent our investigative badger off to Washington D.C to get the latest scoop on the Democrats proposed climate change legislation currently on the floor of the House of Representatives. As most of you know from our last post, the climate change bill has been under increased scrutiny and criticism. Members from both sides of the aisle have attacked the mandate of the bill and accused it as either being too weak or inflationary.

Many of the attacks upon the global warming bill focus upon its central aspect, the CO2 cap & trade system. Both Dem’s and Rep’s have accused this system of failing to properly regulate high polluting companies and energy industries. The current proposed system allows companies to trade and buy credits. Instead of imposing strict environmental sanctions, the bill incurs additional charges upon companies that exceed their CO2 quotas. Republicans have also argued that the additional cost of these credits, will instead, be passed onto consumers in the form of price hikes, rather than onto the companies themselves.

Despite its varied criticism, the bill introduced by Californian Rep. Henry Waxman passed the floor vote by 219-212 and has now been passed through to the Senate floor. It’s still unknown if a Senate floor vote on the bill will be held in 2009, there is a possibility that it will dragged out till 2010. If the bill is delayed the looming midterms could have a potentially disastrous effect on the legislation as senators will be reluctant to pass a bill which could raise constituents’ energy prices across the states.

The current global warming bill illustrates a complete change in US energy and climate change policy compared to the previous administration. Current talks with China ahead of the UN’s climate change conference in Copenhagen also signify the US’ renewed commitment to environmentalism and green causes.