Congressional fission

While I think most reasonable people agree that an ideal climate change bill ought not include monstrous subsidies to the nuclear energy industry, I think David Corn is mistaken in implying that nuclear subsidies killed second iteration of the McCain-Lieberman bill. Frankenblockquote:

Environmental groups endorsed the [first iteration of the] McCain-Lieberman bill, which compelled major industries to reduce greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The League of Conservation Voters called it "a relatively modest reduction" but an "important first step" that would "send an important signal to the global community." It was indeed the first serious attempt in the Senate to impose a cap on global warming emissions.

Ten months later, the bill was defeated by a relatively close margin, 55 to 43....

About a year after their bill was defeated, McCain and Lieberman began drafting a new version. It was close to the original, but with one significant addition: billions of dollars in tax subsidies for the nuclear energy industry....

In May 2005, McCain and Lieberman reintroduced their climate change bill—with the subsidies. McCain acknowledged that "friends" in the environmental movement were opposed to the nuclear provision. He spoke at length in the Senate to defend this part of the bill: "The idea that nuclear power should play no role in our energy mix is an unsustainable position.... I, for one, believe it can and should play an even greater role, not because I have some inordinate love affair with splitting the atom, but for the very simple reason that we must support sustainable, zero-emission alternatives such as nuclear if we are serious about addressing the problem of global warming.... I am a green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy."

His friends were not persuaded. While the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation continued to support McCain, the Natural Resource Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and others mounted a fierce campaign against the new bill. On June 22, 2005, it came up for a vote and was defeated 60 to 38. Several Democratic senators who had backed McCain's original legislation—Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)—defected, and McCain picked up no new Republicans. (Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both voted for it.) "The staff didn't fully appreciate how much opposition there would be to the nuclear provision," Wicke says, adding, "I could say it was a bit of miscalculation.... It did stymie this climate change legislation." After collecting 44 supporters for the first bill, McCain had lost ground.

And indeed, the nuclear subsidies in M-L 2.0 cost the duo the support of several anti-nuclear Democrats in what would have been a losing cause anyway. The lesson here, then--if the plan is to achieve a consensus solution to the climate change crisis--is that it's important to strike a balance between the concerns of anti- and pro-nuclear members of the Senate. Personally, I have mixed feelings about that approach. It is, however, what Lieberman and Warner are trying to do with their legislation, and in the end, by being vague about the subsidy question, they secured environmentalist hero Bernie Sanders' support in getting the bill out of the EPW committee.

It would be rash, though, to conclude that nuclear subsidies are an all-purpose poison pill just because a narrowly divided, Republican-controlled Senate happened to kill something as regulation-oriented as a climate change bill.