What the Liberals are saying, verbatum:

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

So we are committed to an effective environmental response to the challenge of climate change but it must be economically responsible as well.  There is no point exporting the emissions and the jobs, because otherwise the world will just keep getting warmer and we will start getting a lot poorer.

Rep. Henry Waxman, fresh out of a White House meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, pushed back against those who have suggested climate change legislation might need to be put on the backburner.

Waxman (D-Calif.) said his Energy and Commerce Committee expects to mark up a climate change bill by the Memorial Day recess and present a bill for Obama's signature by the end of the year. He also said Obama is fully supportive of that timetable.

"We said we're moving it this year, and he didn't object," Waxman said following the meeting between members of his committee and Obama.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs bolstered Waxman's comments, stating in his press briefing that progress on a climate change deal was made during the meeting and that legislation is "clearly ... a major priority of the president's." Gibbs said Obama is "hoping to get something done this year."

http://www.truthout.org/050609O?n

Democratic centrists are pressing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to set aside a flagging climate change bill to focus on what they think is a more achievable goal: overhauling the nation's healthcare system.

But those close to Pelosi (D-Calif.) say she is charging forward on cap-and-trade legislation, despite the potential defections of Democrats who represent states with industries that would be adversely affected by the bill.

Pelosi views the bill's troubles as predictable and solvable aspects of the legislative process.

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), a leader of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, sees healthcare as a more productive use of time.

"What a number of us believe is that if we're in the business of passing legislation, healthcare is where we ought to be putting our emphasis," said Davis, a vice chairman of the business-minded New Democrats. "That means putting that over climate change policy. But in the throes of a recession, more of a burden on industry is not a good idea."

Davis, who is running for governor in a coal-dependent state, says with Republicans united against the Democratic cap-and-trade plan, the legislation could easily be derailed with a substitute. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) provided such a substitute earlier this week when he offered up a plan to accelerate offshore drilling, and deemed cap-and-trade hopelessly "stalled."

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dem-centrists-press-pelosi--to-shelve-climate-change-bill-2009-05-06.html

meanwhile .....

"And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

That was Sen Richard Durbin, the powerful Senate Democratic whip, irate as the banking lobby, with foreclosures soaring across the nation, blocked a core reform for beleaguered homeowners that would give judges the right to modify mortgages in bankruptcy court.

But it isn't just the banks. Agribusiness is protecting its obscene subsidies. The insurance companies are deploying legions of lobbyists to gut the public plan in health care reform, the heart of President Obama's plan. The utilities are carving out exceptions for coal plants. Multinationals are clearly on the way to disembowelling Obama tax proposals. The military industrial lobby is a good bet to frustrate Defense Secretary Bill Gates' modest procurement reforms.

This isn't about America being a "center-right country," the myth that pundits still peddle about the American people. This is about Congress being bought and sold, pure and simple. Each night, Washington slurps on political fund-raisers. Each day, the deals get cut; the favors get done. Now with Republicans lining up lemming-like to obstruct anything Obama, Congress can be bought on the cheap. The lobbies have only to enlist (suborn, bribe, seduce, finance) a few of what the press insists on describing as "moderate Democrats" in the Senate to stop any reform they don't like.

What's often forgotten in this squalid exchange is that the very Americans the legislators preen to represent are the victims of their various corruptions.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009051906/corruption-dangerous-your-health

and elsewhere .....

The intent of the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 was to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

But now, because of this law, the paper industry is using more fossil fuels than before.

Prior to Congress deciding it could use tax policy to re-engineer America's energy use from on-high, the paper industry had been 70% fuelled by something called black liquor, a natural by-product of the paper making process. In other words, the paper industry was inherently energy efficient, until Congress got involved.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized a 50-cent per gallon tax credit for mixing gasoline or diesel with an alternative fuel. To get the credit, paper companies began to mix diesel with their black liquor. In other words . . .

The government is paying the paper industry to use a less efficient, environmentally-destructive fuel!

The cost of this scam could reach US$8 billion this year. [Source: The Nation]

The US Congress could mess up a train wreck.

At first glance, this appears to be an example of "unintended consequences," but this assumes we really know what Congress intended . . .

• The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was 1,273 pages.
• The House passed the bill just one day after it was filed.
• The Senate passed it one day after that.

It's impossible to believe that any member of Congress had the chance to read & completely understand the bill. This means that those who voted for it didn't really know what the intention was. Someone could have wanted the paper industry to have a hidden subsidy. But if the Read the Bills Act had been in force, the Energy Policy Act would have been . . .

• read before a quorum in both chambers, giving all members a chance to review it thoroughly
• posted on the Internet for seven days before a vote, so the public could review it too
• someone might have seen that this legislation had the potential to cause the reverse of its supposed purpose.

Without the Read the Bills Act, messed up train wrecks like this are bound to continue. In the past two weeks, the House passed 23 bills totaling 209 pages, while the Senate passed 5 bills and 99 pages.

We won't know until it's too late how many messed up train wrecks are hidden in these bills,

And this will continue to be the case until we pass the Read the Bills Act.

Please use our quick and easy Educate the Powerful System to tell your Congressional employees to introduce and pass DownsizeDC.org's Read the Bills Act.

RISING carbon dioxide emissions are turning the oceans acidic in an irreversible process that threatens coral reefs and food security, the world's scientific academies have warned.

Seventy academies, including the Australian Academy of Science, urged governments meeting in Bonn for climate talks to tackle the issue in the new United Nations treaty on climate change to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

In the past 200 years the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities, and the current rate of acidification is much more rapid than at any time during the past 65 million years, the scientists said in a joint statement.

Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society in Britain, said that unless global carbon dioxide emissions were cut by at least 50 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050 there could be an "underwater catastrophe" and loss of marine life.

"The effects will be seen worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging local economies that may be least able to tolerate it," Professor Rees said. "Copenhagen must address this very real and serious threat."

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see toon at top, read more at the SMH and read stuff about global warming including global warming is baloney on this site... unfortunately the main part of the blog has vanished when the site moved providers, but the gist is clear...

Coalition frontbencher Andrew Robb says the Federal Opposition's position on emissions trading has not changed.

Yesterday Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull said the Coalition was working on amendments to the scheme.

But Mr Robb, the Opposition's emissions trading spokesman, says that does not mean Mr Turnbull has changed his view that the bill should be delayed until next year.

"The Coalition is looking to find what amendments would be necessary to make what is at the moment, a deeply flawed scheme, something that would be acceptable," he said.

"He did not put a timeframe on it."

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The coalition members stand firm, diletantly: they dont believe in climate change, anyway... see toon at top.