It’s Earth Day and the President used the opportunity to stump for his vision of a more environmentally friendly country. I don’t know what your position on all of this may be and while I try not to get too much in anyones face about mine, you probably have guessed what it is if you read this blog much. Too the point, though, it looks as if any progress on reducing carbon is pretty much DOA in the Senate.

From Capital Gains and Games:

The question is how can we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make ourselves less dependent on foreign oil, and promote a stronger economy.  The answer is obvious to most economists — raise the relative price of carbon and return to the revenues to those most adversely affected.

Although the House may adopt a carbon cap-and-trade bill this summer, the Senate has already rejected any movement in that direction.  On April 1, by a 67-31 vote, the Senate adopted Senator Mike Johanns’ (R-NE) amendment to the budget resolution rejecting the use of reconciliation to help pass a carbon cap-and-trade bill.  That effectively doomed the bill for this year.

The only way the Senate will budge on raising carbon prices is if environmentally concerned Americans apply sufficient pressure to make it happen.

If we’re still in a recession or just an anemic recovery in 2010 expect the same result. You probably won’t even get anything through the House since that will be an election year.

We’ll see how much political capital Obama wants to spend on this. My guess is very little.