The Breakthrough Institute

Well, there's a lot to quote from out there, with all of the activity surrounding Waxman-Markey. Here's a selection:

"On the drawing board is a vast and unfathomably complex new system, which fosters corruption, raises little revenue and tries to suppress the incentives that are its entire purpose. Otherwise, it all looks quite promising."

--Financial Times op-ed (h/t Prometheus)

"I've been working extensively to fashion a controlled program that Congress can adopt which will preserve coal jobs, create the opportunity for increasing coal production and keep electricity rates in regions like Southwest Virginia affordable. The compromise that I have reached with Chairman Waxman achieves those goals....

First, we provide emission allowances under a cap and trade program to electric utilities for free. That provision will keep electricity rates affordable in regions where most of the electricity is coal fired, and Southwest Virginia is certainly such a region. Secondly, we provide two billion tons of offset each year during the life of the program. Those offsets would enable electric utilities like AEP (American Electric Power) to invest in forestry, agriculture and projects like tropical rain forest preservation in order to meet their CO2 reduction requirements under legislation. Therefore, they can comply with the law while continuing to burn coal."

--Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA), key swing member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and lead negotiator of many of the weakening changes made to the bill over the weekend.

"[M]aking dirty energy more expensive doesn't make any clean energy. Making dirty energy more expensive will only make it relatively cheaper to produce clean energy, it won't make it absolutely cheaper. Meanwhile, folks back home will end up paying more than they have to for dirty energy and they won't necessarily have any more clean energy to show for it. And if they do have any new clean energy to show for it, it'll take a whole lot longer and a whole lot more time, and cost a whole lot more to get it.

I think that there's a more effective and fair way to get what we want. We need to make direct public investments in research and development of cheap and clean energy. Investing on the scale of the Apollo Program or the Manhattan Project is the best way to create clean energy that's both cheap and abundant, and that's what we need to do."

--Congressman John Barrow (D-GA), another swing member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, less than pleased with the bill's investments in clean energy innovation.

"The introduced bill includes significant improvement compared to the discussion draft circulated on March 31st, but some of the changes would reduce its ability to quickly transform our energy system. The legislation would reduce global warming pollution and consumer energy costs more effectively if it guaranteed greater investments in cost effective energy efficiency."

--NRDC letter of support for ACES (scroll down to find the letter).

"Chairmen Waxman and Markey have picked the lock; it's a huge boost for passage of a cap this year. This bill can win not only the support of environmentalists and business, but also the diverse group of regional interests that make up the Congress. It's a watershed agreement."

--Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund.

"Despite the best efforts of Chairman Waxman, this bill has been seriously undermined by the lobbying of industries more concerned with profits than the plight of our planet. While science clearly tells us that only dramatic action can prevent global warming and its catastrophic impacts, this bill has fallen prey to political infighting and industry pressure. We cannot support this bill in its current state."

--Greenpeace statement of opposition.