On June 26, 2009, The U.S. House of Representatives approved the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, the first bill passed in American history mandating limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The Act, also called the Waxman-Markey Bill, must now pass the U.S. Senate.

Its narrow passage in the House, 219-212, resulted from the lengthy courting of legislators who represented industrial, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors. The bill that finally emerged was loaded with complicated provisions and compromises, leaving both sides of the climate debate unsatisfied. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, acknowledging the bill as “a remarkable [political] achievement,” nevertheless blasted those Congressmen who rejected climate change and held up the bill’s progress. However, The Economist harshly criticized many of the bill’s provisions despite supporting its underlying cap-and-trade system:

The House’s climate bill is a masterpiece of obfuscation. Buried somewhere in the 1,200 pages of the American Clean Energy and Security Act … is a sensible cap-and-trade plan to curb emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). But it is so weighed down with giveaways, loopholes and needless complexity that many environmentalists hesitate to support it.

The bill’s immediate effectiveness in limiting emissions has indeed been watered down: 85% of pollution permits will be free allowances to polluters, and millions of government dollars will help industries like manufacturing and agriculture adjust to the new emissions standards. Yet this extra complexity addresses concerns that the cap-and-trade system will further stunt America’s economy with rising costs. Midwestern lawmakers pushed hard and received compromises for the free permits and extra funding to help retool their already-struggling industrial bases for a clean energy transition. Now as the bill heads to the Senate, lawmakers will continue to push their regional economic interests. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), for example, has introduced legislation called IMPACT that would set up a $20 billion loan program to provide additional help to smaller manufacturers and suppliers.

The debate is sure to intensify as midwest senators revive the age-old issue of tariffs and “border adjustments.” Those senators want to avoid harming U.S. companies in the international market and deter domestic firms from bolting to a cheaper, less-regulated country. The House already tacked on a last-minute addition to ACES, imposing border adjustments that “ensure that the U.S. energy-intensive industries are not placed at a competitive disadvantage by nations” without such regulations. However, opponents of trade regulations fear a trade war — especially with less regulated countries like India and China — could cause even greater economic repercussions. The inevitable disagreements in Senate chambers around international trade could become a showstopper for any sort of climate legislation becoming law; already, rifts are forming:

“This bill doesn’t pass unless it takes care of manufacturing,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said. “And this bill doesn’t take care of manufacturing without border adjustments.”

President Obama, while overall commending the House bill, told a small gathering of reporters June 28 of granting tariff authority: “At a time when the economy worldwide is still deep in recession, and we’ve seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out.”

A major source of disagreement is the accuracy of ACES economic and energy projections. The U.S. Energy Information Administration and Congress use a model called the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), which projects the supply, demand, and prices of the domestic oil market. NEMS is dependent on many assumptions such as the availability of renewable technologies in the market and projected economic growth. Thus, NEMS projections vary based on how designers believe this bill will increase the development and deployment of renewables. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency used a different set of models, as did the Congressional Budget Office, but the assumptions of any study are just as critical. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, criticized the CBO’s analysis of household cost from the climate bill by questioning its assumptions. Perhaps the only way to settle these disagreeements is the establishment of changeable regulations that allow the government to respond to unforeseen economic consequences.

Ultimately, political interests and uncertainty threaten to undermine the substantial body of research on climate change, highlighting science’s struggle with varied public interests. The indisputable evidence for climate change has been steadily mounting and the vast majority of scientists recognize its threat, yet the United States has not shown any successful response. In a recent Discover article, four scientists neatly encapsulate the current “state of the climate” and also comment on the political response to climate change. In the article, Stephen Schneider of Stanford University summarizes his outlook on science and policy: “I’m technologically optimistic and politically bleak.” As an escalating tariff battle looms on the horizon, we can only hope that the U.S. will finally adopt a framework both rigid enough to curb emissions and flexible enough to adjust economic regulations if current projections prove incorrect.

Elu1299 studies environmental science and public policy in Cambridge, MA.