Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.), the authors of a comprehensive climate bill, on Tuesday. Photoe: epa/ZUMApress.com

If President Obama hoped that his meeting with key senators on Tuesday would produce anything resembling a consensus on energy legislation, he came away disappointed. Democratic leaders emerged from the meeting expressing their grudging willingness to compromise further — provided some sort of emissions limits are put in place — while Republicans continued to hammer emissions controls as an “energy tax.”

But the events of the day may have brought some clarity to a point that has gradually emerged over the past two weeks: If the eventual energy bill is to include a price on carbon, it’s likely to affect the utilities sector only.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a moderate Republican without whose support energy legislation stands virtually no chance of passing the Senate, issued a statement after the meeting expressing hesitation on an economy-wide carbon cap — a provision many scientists consider essential to efforts to fight global warming.

“On the complex and difficult question of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, there is no consensus at this time,” Snowe said. “From my perspective, I’ve long asserted that placing a price on carbon will send the appropriate signals to entrepreneurs that would unleash the innovation to position America as a global clean energy industry leader. However, today we are in different and perilous economic times. … We cannot afford economy-wide approaches to carbon reduction that could cost consumers another 18 cents per gallon of gasoline in this struggling economy or subject our manufacturing sector to unnecessary regulations when they’ve already reduced their emissions by five percent below 1990 levels.”

Her solution? “I believe that one possibility is to more narrowly target a carbon pricing program through a uniform nationwide system solely on the power sector which is the sector with the most to lose from the EPA regulations and it’s also the sector in which businesses actually make decisions today based on prices 20 to 30 years in the future.”

It’s hardly a new idea. Two weeks ago, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel proposed a utilities-only cap as a possible compromise solution. And last week, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, the most vocal advocate for climate legislation in the electricity industry, co-authored an op-ed in Politico in which he expressed openness to a carbon price for utilities alone — provided other sectors eventually follow.

“It’s time for all of us — politicians, business leaders and environmentalists — to put wishful thinking aside, establish realistic goals and develop a consensus for legislation that can be passed this year,” he wrote, along with Pew Center on Global Climate Change president Eileen Claussen. “If that means capping emissions from the utility sector first — so be it.”

But they added, “Electric utilities may be willing to go first. But they are not going to be willing to go alone.”

Exactly how other sectors would be added remains unclear.

“Some climate bills have featured a sort of Phase Two,” said Marchant Wentworth, deputy legislative director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, where other sectors are phased in “four, five, six years down the road.”

But Wentworth was skeptical that a utilities-only bill would be able to pass a Senate where Republican opposition to climate legislation has grown increasingly intense.

“Is there something unique about a utility-only bill that gets you more support in the Senate than a comprehensive bill?” he asked. “Can you get to 60 [votes] on utility-only? No.”

Still, for all the disappointment among environmentalists over the repeated compromises Democrats have made on climate legislation to win over moderates, some argue that a utilities-only cap would achieve most of the goals of an economy-wide carbon pricing scheme. The question now is whether Democratic leaders in the Senate can muster 60 votes for even a weakened bill to overcome a Republican filibuster.

The answer may be in the president’s hands — at least according to Senate Majority Harry Reid.

“I think it’s pretty clear we have to do something,” Reid said last week. “The question is, what do we do? Now, a lot of that depends on what the White House is going to do to help us get something done.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a leading voice for strong climate action, thinks Obama took an important step in that direction in the meeting Tuesday.

“He didn’t lay out a recipe, but he made it clear that a price on carbon is a very powerful instrument,” Merkley told The Washington Post. “He said it’s a very important tool and one we should thoroughly explore. … He made a point of raising carbon pricing a number of times. I dont think he would have done so if that wasn’t very important to him.”

But the president himself equivocated on the need for a price on carbon following the meeting.

“The President told the Senators that he still believes the best way for us to transition to a clean energy economy is with a bill that makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses by putting a price on pollution — because when companies pollute, they should be responsible for the costs to the environment and their contribution to climate change,” the White House said in a statement. “Not all of the Senators agreed with this approach, and the President welcomed other approaches and ideas that would take real steps to reduce our dependence on oil, create jobs, strengthen our national security and reduce the pollution in our atmosphere.”

The diversity of opinions on energy legislation notwithstanding, Obama remains optimistic about the prospects of a bill.

“The President is confident that we will be able to get something done this year,” the White House said.

Under pressure from the White House, BP has agreed to set aside $20 billion in an escrow fund to compensate victims of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, The Washington Post reports. The fund will be overseen by Kenneth Feinberg, President Obama’s “pay czar” who led the effort to pay families of victims of the 9/11 attacks.

Obama is expected to announce the deal later today.

President Obama addresses the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday night. Photo: epa/ZUMApress.com

In his speech to the nation from the Oval Office Tuesday night, President Obama laid out a three-step plan to mitigate the damage from the BP oil spill and compensate affected residents along the Gulf Coast.

Missing from his address, however, was a concrete proposal for how to wean the country off of fossil fuels like oil. And environmental activists who had hoped the president would take the opportunity to call on the Senate to pass carbon-capping climate legislation likely came away disappointed.

In the past, Obama has argued that the only way to end the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and become the world leader in clean energy production is to put a price on carbon emissions. And on a call with reporters before the president’s speech, a senior administration official said Obama “absolutely” believes that a price on carbon is the only way to achieve a clean energy future.

But in his address from the Oval Office, the president avoided any mention of a cap on carbon — or the terms “climate change” or “global warming.” Instead, he spoke vaguely about the need to move away from fossil fuels, telling the nation that “the time to embrace a clean energy future is now.” As for how to get there, he applauded the “strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill” passed by the House of Representatives last June but did not call on the Senate to follow suit.

“I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party — as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels,” Obama said, adding that some approaches with “merit” include energy efficiency measures, renewable energy targets and more funding for research and development.

“But the one approach I will not accept,” he continued, “is inaction.”

Still, with Senate leaders meeting on Thursday to discuss the fate of an energy bill — one that now appears unlikely to include a declining cap on carbon emissions — advocates of a carbon pricing system had been counting on the president to throw his weight behind at least a limited emissions control scheme.

A carbon pricing system has support from diverse sectors of the economy — including BP itself. In his testimony to the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee today, Lamar McKay, the chief executive of BP America, told the lawmakers, “BP still firmly believes that the best way to move this process along and tackle man-made climate change is by putting a price on carbon. A price reflecting tightening constraints on carbon would both drive energy conservation and make lower carbon energy choices more cost competitive.”

And despite arguments to the contrary by some opponents of carbon pricing, polls show that a cap on greenhouse gas emissions remains fairly popular among the American public. A Pew poll released Monday found that by a margin of 66 percent to 29 percent, most Americans support “including limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in comprehensive energy legislation.” Pew also reported that 56 percent of respondents said that protecting the environment is a higher priority than keeping energy prices low.

But 68 percent of respondent wanted the country to expand its exploration and development of coal, oil and natural gas — a position Obama has likewise embraced.

On Tuesday, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has taken the lead in crafting a climate bill with carbon controls, admitted that his bill did not yet have the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. “We don’t have the 60 votes yet,” he said. “I know that. But we’re close, enough to be able to fight for it, and we’ll see where we wind up.”

For this reason, some Democrats have been hoping for the president’s intervention to urge the Senate to pass some form of carbon cap. The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group, responded to the speech with a mix of faint praise and disappointment that Obama didn’t call for provisions like those being pushed by Kerry and Lieberman.

“We’re glad to hear the president wants to move toward cleaner energy policies,” the Center said in a statement, “but they can’t simultaneously include incentives for more offshore drilling or the gutting of our nation’s flagship environmental laws — like the current Kerry-Lieberman bill — and they must reduce carbon to levels that scientists say will help avoid the worst effects of climate change.”

Following the speech, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took questions from people throughout the country via YouTube. In response to a question about the need to transition to clean energy, Gibbs said, “I hope you heard the president commit once again to doing everything in his power to pave the way for a clean energy future for our country.”

Advocates of a cap on carbon aren’t so sure they did.

President Obama speaks from the Oval Office on Tuesday evening. Photo: The White House

Addressing the nation from the Oval Office for the first time, President Obama tonight laid out his plan to contain the oil spill and compensate people and businesses who have suffered from its effects.

Obama called the crisis “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced” and “an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.” He then outlined his “battle plan” to mitigate the ongoing oil leak.

It features three steps. The first is the cleanup effort along the Gulf coast. Obama emphasized that “from the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation’s history.”

The second is assistance to the coastal states. “Tomorrow,” Obama said, “I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.”

Finally, there is the need to prevent future disasters along these lines. Part of that is a reassessment of the role of offshore drilling.

“A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe — that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions would be taken,” Obama said. “That was obviously not the case on the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why. The American people deserve to know why.”

Marianna Day Massey/ZUMApress.com

President Obama is stepping up his engagement on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill this week, conducting a two-day tour of the Gulf states and returning to make his first speech from the Oval Office on Tuesday, in which he’ll lay out his plan to force BP to create an escrow account to compensate people for losses they’ve suffered as a result of the spill.

Environmentalists will no doubt cheer the president’s full-court press against the oil giant, and some are growing more optimistic that they can use the spill as a rallying point to clamp down on offshore drilling. But the biggest issue for environmental advocates still looms large, and the oil spill is unlikely to be its savior.

That, of course, would be comprehensive climate legislation. Despite initial hopes in the green movement that the spill would spur a move away from the country’s reliance on oil, the disaster has had the opposite effect. An expansion of offshore drilling was supposed to be one of the key compromises that would bring oil-state Democrats and moderate Republicans on board. Now, with the country’s appetite for offshore rigs vastly diminished, the compromise has collapsed — and so has the key support of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of three initial sponsors of the Senate’s climate bill, who announced his plan last week to vote against the bill as a result of its new restrictions on drilling in the wake of the spill.

On Thursday, Senate Democrats will meet to discuss the next steps for energy legislation, and the most likely result will be that climate gets dropped from the equation. The eventual bill will probably focus on incentives to boost the country’s renewable energy portfolio, and will draw mostly from two existing energy-only proposals: one by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and one by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), unveiled last week and endorsed by Graham.

But environmental advocates point out that the two proposals don’t purport to tackle climate change. Neither of them imposes a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s dubious that the renewable energy targets they set would be anything more than the projected renewables use under the status quo.

One hope for the left could come in the form of plan being unveiled this morning by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Like the other proposals, it doesn’t try to cap carbon emissions; instead, it’s a more progressive energy bill with an emphasis on ending our oil addiction — a pragmatic attempt to capitalize on anger over the spill.

Dave Roberts reports:

Merkley’s proposals are all focused on oil, and for now that’s probably the right strategic play. (If there’s anywhere Reid will be feeling bold, it’s on oil.) His plan would radically ramp up electric vehicle deployment, create ambitious 2030 fuel efficiency goals for vehicles and heavy trucks, ramp up production of advanced biofuels, and shift some heavy trucks to natural gas. Those are all, while ambitious, fairly familiar goals. Added on are some more interesting and overdue progressive initiatives: reform land use to serve people rather than cars, shift freight from trucks to rail and ship, and reduce the use of heating oil in homes through efficiency retrofits.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Merkley suggests the creation of a National Council on Energy Security, similar to the National Economic Council, located in the office of the president. The NCES would insure that energy goals don’t get lost from administration to administration. They would monitor progress, determine whether things could me moving faster, and make recommendations to the President and Congress. This, more than anything else, would count as elevating oil reduction to genuine national priority.

Of course, it’s too soon to leave climate legislation for dead. But Republicans are trying hard to put the final nail in the coffin. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell continued to harp on the push for cap-and-trade legislation late last week.

“What I believe most of my members, if not all of them, and a substantial number of Democrats in the United States Senate will not be interested in is seizing on the oil spill in the gulf and using that as a rationale, if you will, for passing a national energy tax referred to down here at the White House as cap and trade,” McConnell said Thursday.

Photo: NASA

The scientific consensus on geoengineering — a manipulation of the environment to counteract climate change — has come a long way in the past few years. As recently as 2006, it was unthinkable to many climate scientists that leaders in their field would seriously consider the idea of shooting reflective particles into the atmosphere or dumping massive quantities of iron into the oceans.

“When I first started looking into this in 2006, it was like talking to an insurance salesman about his porn habit,” said Jeff Goodell, whose book on geoengineering, “How to Cool the Planet,” was published on Thursday. “Nobody wanted to talk about it openly.”

These days, however, a growing number of scientists are devoting their careers to researching geoengineering, defined by the British Royal Society as “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming.” But while most scientists may agree on the need to study this worst-case approach to addressing the climate crisis, a political consensus on the issue remains a long way off, as liberals and environmentalists have been reluctant to consider this radical solution that some conservatives have been quick to embrace.

Geoengineering takes two principal forms. One involves increasing the planet’s reflectivity in some way, so that less sunlight warms the earth and temperatures drop. This approach can be as simple as Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s proposal to paint roofs white (although that would barely make a dent in global warming) or as complex as replicating the effects of a volcano by shooting sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere. It can be done rather inexpensively — some experts say a sulfur dioxide injection would cost under 3 cents per ton of carbon negated, compared to the $10- to $30-per-ton pricetag that comprehensive climate legislation would likely impose — but it’s only a patch: Carbon levels would continue to rise, and if geoengineering efforts stopped, temperatures would shoot up.

The other form involves sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, potentially by adding iron to the oceans to encourage carbon-absorbing algae blooms or by pulling carbon out of the air and sending it deep underground. This approach would actually reduce our carbon levels and could avoid some of the ethical issues of reflectivity engineering, but it’s likely to be much more expensive and slower to take effect, and it presents its own host of practical concerns.

In either case, nearly all climate scientists agree, geoengineering should not be regarded as a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but rather a backup plan in case other efforts fail to prevent a climate crisis. Many hope that geoengineering theories remain just theories: There are far too many unknowns, and after all it was our manipulation of the planet that led to global warming in the first place. But with temperatures continuing to rise and the prospects for cutting carbon emissions uncertain — particularly after the failure of last December’s international climate conference in Copenhagen — some argue that it would be foolish not to explore our options.

“One of the greatest misapprehensions about the climate crisis is the notion that we can fix all this simply by cutting emissions quickly,” writes Goodell. “We can’t. Even if we cut CO2 pollution to zero tomorrow, the amount of CO2 we have already pumped into the atmosphere will ensure that the climate will remain warm for centuries.”

“To be responsible, you really have to plan for the worst,” said Eli Kintisch, whose own book on geoengineering, “Hack the Planet,” is scheduled for publication on April 22.

Heading the push to explore geoengineering is what Kintisch calls the “Geoclique,” led by climate scientists Ken Caldeira of Stanford’s Carnegie Institution for Science and David Keith of the University of Calgary. Partly thanks to their efforts, geoengineering has rapidly moved into the scientific mainstream.

“The change is stunning,” said Keith in an interview. “I keep walking into meetings where I expect everyone to be opposed, and they’re not.”

But a scientific consensus has yet to translate into a political one. As many liberal environmentalists have sought to avoid debate on the issue — “for fear that talking about it would reduce the pressure for cutting emissions,” according to Keith — some Republicans have signed onto the notion of geoengineering, creating an unlikely union between climate scientists and conservatives who often put little stock in what climate scientists have to say.

“It’s definitely an alliance of strange bedfellows,” Caldeira says.

For conservatives who oppose efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, geoengineering provides an opportunity to shift the debate over global warming from its causes to its effects — from carbon levels to rising temperatures. This serves multiple purposes: It allows some of them to maintain their argument that global warming is caused by changing solar patterns rather than human activity, and it creates an opportunity to control climate change without placing limits on polluting industries.

“Conservatives can use it to bolster arguments they’ve made all along,” said Kintisch, “but I don’t think in the end, we’re going to be able to study this if it’s a conservative or liberal issue. If that happens, it just won’t go anywhere.”

Still, there are signs that the political mainstream is beginning to embrace the idea of “planethacking,” as Kintisch sometimes refers to it. Energy Secretary Chu, who as a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and a member of President Obama’s cabinet has served as a link between the scientific and political communities, told Goodell that “geoengineering is certainly worth further research.” In November 2009, the House Committee on Science and Technology held the first-ever hearing on geoengineering, although committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) insisted, “My decision to hold this hearing should not in any way be misconstrued as an endorsement of any geoengineering activity.” And last month, the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy created a task force that includes leading scientists like Keith and Caldeira to make recommendations on geoengineering to Congress and the administration this summer.

But one thing that’s still lacking is funding from Congress for geoengineering research, which Keith calls “crucial.” Caldeira has also advocated a federally funded “Climate Emergency Response Program” to explore our options if we need to cool the planet in a pinch.

Of course, if and when we reach the point of climate crisis, political disagreements are likely to subside. “If there end up being widespread crop failures and famines and that kind of thing, people are going to be willing to do something dramatic,” said Caldeira.

Still, even most advocates of geoengineering research would prefer not to see their ideas put into action. “I hope that we never launch particles into the stratosphere, dump iron into the oceans, or brighten clouds,” Goodell writes in his book. “I hope that the whole notion of geoengineering looks in retrospect exactly how it looks at first glance: like a bad sci-fi novel writ large.”

But while Keith and Kintisch both think there’s a chance we can avert a major climate crisis without resorting to geoengineering, Goodell disagrees.

“I think that it’s inevitable,” said Goodell, “and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. What I think is really important is the idea of us, meaning Western civilization, having a discussion about the kind of world we want to live in. Geoengineering forces that discussion.”

An ethanol production plant in South Dakota (iStockphoto)

Before the American Clean Energy and Security Act could reach the House floor for a vote on June 26, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) took to the podium and launched an improvised filibuster in protest of last-minute additions to the bill by the Democratic leadership. For over an hour, he read passages from the more than 300 pages of amendments, lambasting provision after provision on behalf of his frustrated Republican colleagues who balk at the expansion of energy regulation.

Now, as the Senate takes up debate on the legislation, the objections to some of these late changes are coming from a very different camp: environmental advocacy groups.

One of the most important amendments to the cap-and-trade bill, which seeks to lower the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and promote alternative energy sources, represents a compromise between the bill’s architects and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who threatened to block passage if concessions were not made to agricultural interests. The amendment significantly reduces the criteria that biofuels, such as ethanol and wood pellets, would have to meet in order to be considered “renewable” — a victory for farmers who grow these materials.

But a study by the National Resources Defense Council shows that these changes could reduce the emissions-cutting effects of the legislation by as much as a third, thereby undermining the bill’s central aim.

“The ACES bill is supposed to require a 17 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020,” David Hawkins, director of climate programs at the NRDC, stated in his written testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday. “Because of the biomass loophole in the House-passed bill, the real reduction achieved could be far less — as little as 11 percent.”

In an ideal world, biofuels would produce no net emissions, since when plants grow, they take carbon out of the environment, and when they are burned, they release that carbon back into the air. However, there can be indirect contributions to greenhouse gas emissions — for example, if the land on which crops for biofuels are planted would otherwise have been used for carbon-reducing trees, or for food that is then instead planted on a freshly cleared rainforest in South America.

The version of the bill passed by the Energy and Commerce Committee tried to enforce biofuel carbon-neutrality by factoring in these indirect effects on emissions and restricting the conditions under which biofuels would be considered renewable. The Peterson amendment stripped the bill of several of these provisions and prevented the Environmental Protection Agency from accounting for indirect land use issues outside the United States for the next five years. According to Peterson and his backers, indirect land use is difficult to calculate, and the EPA will need some time to properly assess its impact.

The legislation establishes a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions and requires polluters to purchase allowances for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit. However, Hawkins charges that under the House bill, power plants could reduce their need to buy carbon allowances without actually cutting back on emissions.

“If a coal power plant replaces half of its coal with biomass, it has to hold carbon allowances for only half of its pollution,” he said in his statement to the Senate. “This makes sense only on the assumption that 100 percent of the carbon dioxide released when the biomass is burned was taken up from the atmosphere during its production.”

Nathanael Greene, director of renewable energy policy at the NRDC, concurred with his colleague. “In a worst-case scenario,” Greene said, “you’re going out to an old-growth forest that’s sequestered carbon over hundreds of years,” he said. “You take that, you chop that down, you burn that, and from the atmosphere perspective, it’s exactly the same as burning coal. In that case, it really doesn’t matter that you’re displacing coal. You’re adding just as much carbon to the landscape.”

The NRDC study on the effects of the lower biofuel restrictions was conducted about a month ago, but the figures were not released until Hawkins’ testimony on Tuesday before the Environment and Public Works Committee, according to Greene, who helped produce the study. Hawkins could not be reached for comment.

The 11-percent effective emissions reduction figure invoked by Hawkins represents the low end of the potential range calculated by NRDC; more likely, the number would be around 14 percent. Both figures are below the 17-percent target recommended by President Obama and prescribed by the legislation, which itself is too low for many scientists and environmental advocates.

Rolf Skar, a senior forest campaigner at Greenpeace, worries that additional support for biofuels could reduce the incentives for cleaner energy sources, such as wind and solar. “Putting them in the mix here just means that they’re going to substitute for windmills and other true sources of renewable energy,” he said, adding that the Peterson amendment “was clearly based on politics, and not science.”

On the other side of the debate, the farm lobby has cheered Peterson’s efforts. Farmers could derive substantial income from provisions that subsidize the production of biofuels.

“As a general proposition, we support what Mr. Peterson got in the House bill,” said Paul Schlegel, director of public policy at the American Farm Bureau. But he added that the Bureau opposes cap-and-trade legislation overall due to its costs for farmers and consumers of energy.

In a statement following the passage of the House bill, Peterson said, “This bill promotes homegrown, clean burning renewable fuels, which is one of the best things we can do for the economy and the environment.” Peterson’s office did not respond to a request for further comment.

Many environmentalists still hold out hope that the biofuels provision will be changed in the Senate.

Josh Dorner of the Sierra Club is optimistic that given the relatively liberal composition of the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee’s Democratic membership, the committee might be able to strengthen the biofuels language in ways the House could not. “If you look at the EPW Committee compared to the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House, it’s a much more hospitable environment,” he said.

Still, there is already evidence that the fight to maintain the farm-friendly biofuel provisions could be bipartisan. On Wednesday, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) stated his intent to keep all of Peterson’s provisions in the Senate version of the bill, and to add “more allocations and allowances” for agriculture.

“Farm interests probably have a stronger hand in the Senate,” Dorner conceded, “given that people in nearly every state have some sort of agricultural interest.”

Aaron Wiener is a reporter for the Washington Independent.

Well, that didn’t stop Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) from hopping on board the Boehner train. This morning, she wrote an op-ed in the Star Tribune that kept Boehner’s distortions alive, and then some. She argued:

Any way you look at it, it’s low- and middle-income Americans who will pay dearly for this. According to an analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the average American household could expect its yearly energy bill to increase by $3,128 per year. Using an analysis by Peter Orszag, President Obama’s budget director, that number would be closer to $4,000.

I can’t speak for Peter Orszag, but I have a feeling he would take issue with these numbers, too. A report issued by the Congressional Budget Office, of which Orszag was director until he was tapped for his new post, estimated that low-income families would see their bills increase by $680 annually. But since Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme, as outlined in his budget proposal, would give these families an $800 rebate, they’d actually come out ahead.

Take a look at the first figure in this CBO chart:

Aaron Weiner is a reporter at the Washington Independent.