Environmental Leader

Despite Republican pleas to slow down on the Senate climate bill, Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee are hoping to mark up the bill as early as next week.

Led by committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Democrats hope for S. 1733 (PDF) to set the stage for adoption by the full Senate.

Yet Republicans are calling for a time-out. Republicans James Inhofe of Oklahoma and George Voinovich of Ohio say they haven’t had enough time to study that cap-and-trade provisions, reports the New York Times.

Inhofe claims that Boxer is not working in a bipartisan spirit, bragging that when he was committee chairman during the Bush years, he let negotiations drag on for two years on the so-called “Clear Skies” initiative, which would have overhauled the Clean Air Act without setting GHG limits.

Inhofe also continues to threaten a boycott of the markup process.

Voinovich said that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has not fully vetted the modeling of the Senate bill.

Republicans also want any climate bill to be “deficit-neutral,” a concession that Boxer said she is trying to accomplish, in concert with the Congressional Budget Office.

Industry groups are starting to chime in, as well.

The American Trucking Associations have said that cap-and-trade legislation would do little to cut emissions but would add significant costs to the trucking industry, reports Refrigerated Transporter.

In other climate bill news, both the House and Senate have confirmed that they do not intend for the climate bill to regulate emissions from livestock herds, as some ag groups had feared, reports bnet.