WASHINGTON - T. Boone Pickens and Oklahoma House Speaker Chris Benge were among those promoting natural gas Wednesday during a hearing on Capitol Hill that one member of Congress called preaching to the choir.

The hearing was organized by the newly formed and quickly expanding Natural Gas Caucus, a group of House members from all parts of the country, that plans to push natural gas to the forefront of debates about clean energy and job creation in the United States.

"The decisions Congress makes today will determine the stability of our domestic energy industry and the future of our nation," said Rep. Dan Boren, the Muskogee Democrat who is co-chairman of the caucus.

"It is our job to help our colleagues in Congress understand the great success story there is to be had here with natural gas."
Chicken and egg?

Much of the testimony focused on how to expand the use of natural gas to take advantage of huge discoveries made in the United States.

Pickens, the legendary oilman and investor who has been pitching natural gas as a bridge fuel until wind power and other alternative sources can be developed on a broad scale, said the United States can cut in half its dependence on OPEC just by retooling some 6.5 million trucks to run on natural gas.

He said the service stations and other infrastructure needed to support a major conversion would spring up naturally as the vehicles hit the roads. But some lawmakers seemed perplexed, wondering if there wasn't a chicken-and-egg question involved with producing natural gas vehicles before there were enough places available to fuel them.

Ronald W. Jipson, president and chief executive officer of Questar Gas, said lawmakers should target "the low-hanging fruit" first, trucks and fleet vehicles, to allow for the natural gas delivery system for vehicles to develop.

As you read this, the Environmental Protection Agency is modeling the economic impacts of a semi-draft form of the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade legislation. "Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer said a bill EPA is analyzing should be marked up in her panel by the second week in November. An EPA official said the agency has pledged to deliver the cost analysis Friday, in time for a three-day set of hearings starting Oct. 27."

We'd do it too. But we can't. According to Congressional Quarterly, the senators "produced a ‘semi-final draft' of the legislation -- including the critical formula for distributing billions of dollars' worth of pollution credits to different industries and interest groups." But that draft is unavailable to the public. It has only been given to the EPA to model the economic impacts.

President Obama, in his memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies, wrote that "Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use."

Bill Beach, the director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, wrote a letter to Senator Boxer (CCing Senator Kerry, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Senator Inhofe) asking for a copy of the semi-draft legislation to model the economic effects of the bill.

SINCE spring, Washington's political oddsmakers have figured climate change legislation had two chances in the U.S. Senate: slim and none. While a similar bill got through the House of Representatives, consensus was that legislation built on carbon emissions caps, effectively creating a national energy tax, would stall in the Senate.

MultimediaPhotoview all photos Still, when liberal Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts launched their global warming bill three weeks ago, they got the endorsement of conservative Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina - reportedly lured to the bill by provisions calling for new nuclear power plant construction. Might cap and trade rally in the Senate?

Let's hope not. As Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, noted recently, Boxer-Kerry is still a bad idea at its core. Tacking on a few nuclear power provisions, which are needed, "doesn't cancel out or eliminate a national energy tax," Inhofe said.

Indeed, Boxer-Kerry would dramatically change life in America - as would the House-passed bill - if it became law.

The bill's chief feature would mandate a 20 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Kerry said the bill is a "pollution reduction bill," resisting the cap-and-trade label that refers to the government setting limits on emissions of carbon dioxide. Generally, businesses and industries that are under the caps can sell or trade their excess to those that are over the caps.

The talk of the Beltway climate change debate these days is nuclear power. Suddenly a potential compromise has emerged to couple cap-and-trade legislation with provisions to advance construction of new nuclear power plants. But is it real, or just another mirage concocted by the industry's fiercest opponents? As of now, one can only speculate. But if last year's debate on Lieberman-Warner is any guide, one should expect little of anything that matters for nuclear. During the debate, former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) said, "We're going to have a nuclear provision, I can assure you of that." Democratic opposition assured that the final bill was nuclear-free.

Such opposition, of course, is unsurprising. Consider that some of the same senators who now talk of nuclear compromise have plainly identified themselves as staunchly anti-nuclear. During the debate on the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2005, for example, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said, "Nuclear power is not the solution to climate change, and it is not ‘clean.'"

But let's assume that the industry's opponents have a "road-to-Damascus" conversion, and agree to support provisions that can encourage construction of new nuclear power plants, including, to name a few, further streamlining the regulatory process, support for reprocessing, and loan guarantees for new plants. These are steps that Congress can and should take. But we can't forget the essential point: attaching them to a national energy tax doesn't cancel out or eliminate a national energy tax.