The Senate Energy Bill

GIVEN THE alternative of doing nothing about global warming — which President Bush and the Republican-led Congress excelled at for the past six years — the flurry of activity on climate change in Washington is welcome. President Bush at least agreed at the recent Group of Eight summit in Germany to international talks on the topic, and the Democratic-led Senate is debating an energy bill designed in part to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But here’s the problem with the latter: Nowhere in its 277 pages does the legislation even entertain the notion of incentives to curb greenhouse gas emissions, through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system or both.

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