{"id":171,"date":"2010-07-28T14:03:17","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T19:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=171"},"modified":"2013-07-19T12:30:19","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T17:30:19","slug":"new-house-senate-spill-bills-have-little-or-nothing-on-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2010\/07\/28\/new-house-senate-spill-bills-have-little-or-nothing-on-climate\/","title":{"rendered":"New House, Senate Spill Bills Have Little or Nothing on Climate"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

by Hannah Chang<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, July 27, oil spill response bills were introduced in both the House and Senate.\u00a0 These bills are a legislative response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster but also contain the remnants of comprehensive energy and climate change legislation that was shelved<\/a> by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on July 22.\u00a0 According to President Obama, the severely pared-down clean energy provisions of the oil spill legislation would be \u201can important step in the right direction<\/a>\u201d towards future comprehensive climate legislation.\u00a0 Given that the 238-page House bill introduced by Rep. Rahall of West Virginia has no clean energy or energy efficiency provisions at all, and that the 409-page Senate bill never once mentions climate change, characterization of these packages as even \u201ca step,\u201d much less an important one, towards clean energy reform and climate change legislation is optimistic to say the least.<\/p>\n

This blog is the first of three in a series that will address the very few climate change-related provisions of the newly-introduced spill bills.\u00a0 The House bill focuses narrowly on oil spill response.\u00a0 The Senate bill is only slightly more pertinent to climate change and contains two sections relevant to the reduction of greenhouse gases: Division B \u201cReducing Oil Consumption and Improving Energy Security\u201d (addressing clean vehicles) and Division C \u201cClean Energy Jobs and Consumer Savings\u201d (creating a rebate program for home retrofits that would increase energy efficiency).\u00a0 The next two blogs in this series will closely analyze Divisions B and C of the Senate bill.<\/p>\n

As the following shortened Table of Contents indicates, the House bill, H.R. 3534<\/a> entitled the \u201cConsolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act of 2010\u201d (CLEAR), focuses on oil spill response, including reform of the Department of Interior, reform of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and provisions for improved regional coordination and oil spill accountability.<\/p>\n