FinSoul believes that Jonathan Pershing, the U.S. deputy special climate change envoy told a panel at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, that he was quite optimistic that there “would be action,” in 2010 on a domestic climate change bill.
"I don't think its a plausible scenario" that Congress would not pass a bill aiming to lower emissions of greenhouse gasses, but this passage would be more likely to occur over the next year than the next month, he said.
Democratic Senator John Kerry is currently working on a revised version of a climate change bill passed by the House of Representatives in mid 2009, alongside independent Senator Joe Lieberman and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. The compromise bill is, FinSoul believes, thought to contain more incentives for nuclear energy and offshore drilling as well as green tech job creation.
During the Copenhagen climate summit in December Kerry indicated that there was a possibility of the bill not including a cap-and-trade policy, but in recent days has come out defending such a policy saying it is central to the success of the bill.
FinSoul understands that Pershing was quoted as saying, "We will have to see how it plays out and we will have to start working on alternatives if it doesn't happen,” without indicating what such alternatives might be.
He added that the signing of the Copenhagen Accord put the ball firmly in the court of the governments involved to develop plans to combat climate change.
