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The Senate and House have cast important votes to determine the future of carbon emissions regulations in the U.S. Thankfully the news is good.

Advocates for strong action on climate change and the nearly 3/4 Americans who believe the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should protect public health, are celebrating an important victory. Yesterday the Senate rejected multiple proposals to end the EPA climate authority. Now climate deniers and big polluters (including the Koch brothers) are mourning a significant defeat and blow to their dirty energy agenda.
 
Notably, four amendments to small business legislation, entirely for the purpose of limiting the EPA’s role in regulating carbon emissions, were defeated. Three were from Democrats, mainly Max Baucus (MT), Debbie Stabenow (MI) and Jay Rockefeller (WV), whose amendment to halt EPA use of the Clean Air Act for two years fell 88-12. The final blow (or fail) for polluter-friendly legislators came when Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) proposed an amendment to exempt power plants, refineries and other carbon polluters from oversight. His amendment was a precursor to Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and House colleague Fred Upton’s (R-MI)  bill to end the EPA’s power to protect public health and the environment from the effects of climate change, known as H.R. 910 the “Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011”. Needing 60 votes to pass and securing only 50 votes in support.

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Climate policy can make for strange bedfellows – perhaps none as strange as the former vice president and Republican senator from Oklahoma, whose views on most issues could not be more divergent. Yet on one issue – related to climate change, no less – they agree: black carbon, or, as it’s more commonly known, “soot,” is a dangerous pollutant that deserves more study.

In fact, Inhofe considered it a grave enough threat that he recently co-sponsored a bill with Democratic Senators Carper, Boxer and Kerry to prod the EPA into studying the health and global warming impacts of black carbon emissions.

And while the insufferable Oklahoman may insist that his support for the legislation in no way contradicts his established denier bona fides – for good measure, he unleashed a typically scathing critique of the Obama administration’s proposed environmental policies the same day the bill was introduced – there is no denying that black carbon, the product of fossil fuel consumption and biomass burning, is a major agent of climate change.

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Climate change denier extraordinaire Marc Morano dropped a news release on my desk this morning and smiled broadly when I said, “Hey, are you Morano?” - a smile that turned more sardonic when I told him who was asking.

Morano, whose political bona fides include inventing the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth when he was working the hill for Rush Limbaugh, has been reduced to tagging along with the staff of Barbara Boxer, the popular Democratic Senator from California who pushed Morano’s boss, James Inhofe, out of his old sinecure as chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Now, Morano gets to produce the “minority report,” a document of increasing irrelevance as the incoming administration firms up its climate change policy.

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Earlier this week it was revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney's office deleted portions of Senate testimony to be given by Centers for Disease Control Director Julie Gerberding, on the public health impacts of climate change.

Today, Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino is demanding an apology from Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) over comments she directed at Perino in regards to the climate censorship scandal.

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In a gesture that could never have prevailed under its former leadership (see James Inhofe or Marc Morano ), the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works has advanced the first bill calling for mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.

Nice to see the tide beginning to turn, despite the Administration's efforts to stand in the waves, holding hands with Canada and Japan trying to convince everyone that they have dry feet.

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Its refreshing to see the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee moving on from a debate over whether global warming is a hoax, to one of what to do about ever-increasing US greenhouse gas emissions.

Today the hearing was on the subject of “Emerging Technologies and Practices for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions.”