Last week's cap-and-trade bill failed pretty decisively in the Senate. I think that's probably a good thing, as passing a mild global warming bill in 2008 rather than waiting for 2009. what with President Obama/McCain and more Senate Democrats seemed like an odd choice. But to hear Ron Brownstein tell it, the bill didn't just fail -- it got its ass kicked, and the backers made the sort of major mistakes that could have killed it even under more favorable circumstances. The bill was a) comically complicated, b) only partially effective, and c) poorly sold. But it still scared industry. In other words, it wasn't good enough to gain enough support or bad enough to buy off enough stakeholders. All in all, a pretty dispiriting test run.
