Energy to Burn

CONGRESS IS back, and its agenda is crammed with contentious issues that demand lawmakers' attention. Iraq and the appropriations bills that keep the government running are just two of them. But at some point the House and Senate will have to reconcile their respective energy bills passed this summer. It's not certain when that will happen; what's certain is that it's not going to be easy.

Each chamber produced a bill that contains provisions killed by the other. For instance, the Senate's energy legislation raises fuel-economy standards to an average 35 miles per gallon for all cars, trucks and sport-utility vehicles by 2020, the first such boost since 1975. But the House bill has no such hike, thanks to infighting between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). Meanwhile, a renewable energy standard, which would require utilities to derive 15 percent of their electricity from wind, biomass, solar or geothermal power by 2020, barely passed the House in under-the-wire voting before the summer recess. It was killed in the Senate.

Adding to the sense that a House-Senate conference committee is going nowhere fast is the fact that no conferees have been announced. If past is prologue, once the conference does get underway, we'll see lobbyists for the coal and auto industries do everything they can to water down or eliminate provisions not to their liking. Sooner or later, those and other industries will have to do something to curtail their emissions of greenhouse gases, which enhance global warming. As we have said, the only way to do that is for the federal government to tax carbon and let the market figure out how best to adjust.

A cap-and-trade system or an outright carbon tax must get a full and open hearing. But a suggestion by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) to delay the conference on the energy bill so that legislation on cap-and-trade could be added is not the way to go. Such a move could only distract Congress from passing fuel-economy and renewable-energy standards -- baby-step gains in addressing global warming but gains all the same.