Energy Bill Isn't Dead, Just Delayed....

     Everyone is talking about health care.

But don't let that absorb the fact that behind the scenes, both sides are still girding for a fight over climate change.

     The House, of course, passed the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) earlier this year. Since then, the health care debate has pushed aside the energy bill in the Senate.

     And the Senate is where the battle over the energy bill will be decided.

     The short-term outlook for the bill is cloudy right now. Politically, the debate over health care has sucked all the oxygen out of the system.

     That said, the energy bill isn't dead yet. There are two big pressure points still at play.

     The first is the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. The conference is intended to set the stage for a post-Kyoto framework to limit CO2 emissions.

     President Barack Obama campaigned to reduce the United States CO2 emissions last year, throwing his support behind the idea of a cap and trade bill. (So did John McCain, for that matter).

     The House version of the bill passed by just one vote. The votes are just as tight in the Senate. And so with the negotiations looming in December, the last thing the Obama Administration wants to see is to have a very public failure in the Senate before Copenhagen.

     What is more plausible is that Obama seeks to use Copenhagen to build support for a bill in the Senate in the weeks and months after December.

     This brings to mind the second pressure point, which is the Supreme Court Decision Mass. V. EPA, which basically orders the EPA to regulate the CO2 emissions from autos. The EPA is working on these regulations independent of Congress.

     But because the EPA process is administrative, it is more difficult for industry to weigh in. It's easy to imagine that auto industry lobbyists are arguing that singling out the auto industry to bear the burden of cutting CO2 emissions — especially now — is unfair.  That's a powerful argument for Congress to act instead of leaving the matter to the EPA.

     It's also easy to imagine that it will be months until the future of the energy bill is decided. So stay tuned.