Kevin Vranes has a phud in Physical Ocean- ography and Cli- matology. He now studies sci- ence policy and politics at the Yesterday I posted a blurb about the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee white paper on future regulation of GHGs. The white paper is here and although Domenici's name appears first, everybody knows that Bingaman is driving this, so I'll continue to call it the Bingaman/Domenici paper for now.
(After watching for the past two years Bingaman try to drive debate on GHGs and Domenici often resist debate on GHGs, I can't give Domenici his props just yet. Although, I will admit that Domenici resistance to throwing GHG language into the energy bill was done because he wanted that turkey to pass and knew that GHG language was going to make it that much harder. Since Bingaman was close to getting some language in, my guess is the two made some sort of deal in which Bingaman would back off then in exchange for getting Domenici to go along with an effort later. Any local knowledge on this, J. Fleck?)
Comments from me forthcoming, but for now I just wanted to throw the paper out there....
Comments
# 1 | John Fleck | March 1, 2006 3:08 PM
Domenici's reasoning on leaving GHG language out of the energy bill was clearly, as you say, a pragmatic decision. The bill was full of such pragmatism - a very complex game theoretical problem in figuring out a package of things that could actually pass. It was very much an excercise in the possible.
That said, I take the current effort - and Domenici's role in it - as sincere. One of the interesting things I've learned in my years of covering Domenici for the newspaper is that he is very comfortable listening to input from scientists, and more savvy than most at understanding how to plug that into a political framework.