Winners and losers emerge in climate bill

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By Chris Kahn ASSOCIATED PRESS

Louis Blumberg, director of climate change for the Nature Conservancy's California chapter, envisions a system in which forest owners could make money simply by signing an agreement to cut down fewer trees for lumber.

The Nature Conservancy did just that last year with the Conservation Fund, a nonprofit agency that owns about 24,000 acres of redwood and douglas fir forest northwest of San Francisco. The groups changed the logging schedule on the property, and the fund expects to receive about $2 million from Pacific Gas and Electric, which participates in a regional climate initiative similar to the one that the Waxman-Markey bill would create around the country.

"This is really a model of what can happen," Blumberg said. "Property owners everywhere want to figure out a way to be part of this."

The Losers:

Anyone who pays an electric bill would likely feel the impact of climate legislation. Utilities will try to raise rates as they invest in cleaner-yet-more-expensive energy sources. Some have already announced plans to do so. Petroleum companies also may try to import more of their refined gas and heating oil from countries with no carbon law, which will raise costs.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency both issued estimates of how the climate bill would affect energy costs.

The CBO estimated the cost at $175 a year for the average household. The EPA forecasts $80 to $110 a year.

The American Petroleum Institute disputed both estimates, saying the bill could cost the average household up to $3,300 by 2020. "That is more than a few postage stamps," API President Jack Gerard said in a slap at Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. Markey has compared new energy costs to a postage stamp per day.

API has tried to paint the bill as a job killer that would choke off efforts to pull the economy out of recession.

"While we support creating new jobs, the legislation offers an unnecessary and false choice of eliminating good jobs in the oil and natural gas industry to create green jobs," Gerard said.