Peacocks and Passions on Display in Senate Climate Debate

With the U.S. House of Representatives having narrowly approved a climate change bill late last month, attention has now moved to the Senate, which is busy debating just how to craft a version of its own. Setting aside leaders like James M. Inhofe, the Republican senator from Oklahoma who has referred to global warming as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” the chief concern surrounding any potential climate legislation in the United States is this: How will it affect the ability of American industry to compete around the globe? It is a fair question, particularly as rapidly industrializing nations — chiefly China — continue to resist the idea of implementing their own emission caps. “The logic is not difficult to understand,” Mr. Inhofe said in a speech on the Senate floor as his colleagues in the House were preparing to vote on their bill. “Carbon caps, according to reams of independent analyses, will severely damage America’s global economic competitiveness, principally by raising the cost of doing business here relative to other countries like China, where they have no mandatory carbon caps.” Jobs and businesses, Mr. Inhofe said, “will move overseas.” Whether or not that logic is as airtight as Mr. Inhofe suggests is widely debated — not least by a parade of witnesses now being called before various Senate committees and subcommittees to testify on the needs, merits and implications of climate policy generally and a cap-and-trade system specifically...NYTimes