Wind seems knocked out of Obama's climate agenda

In Lisbon during this month's Group of 20 trade summit, President Obama sizes up an Opel Ampera, an electric car to be made by GM in the United States and sold in Europe.

The fight over U.S. environmental policy will shift next year as Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, leaving the Obama administration chasing smaller victories in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What's dead for now is the ambitious climate bill that President Obama had backed, which sought to commit the U.S. to reduce industrial pollution 17% from 2005 levels by 2020. Companies that came in under those caps could trade, or sell, their pollution credits to others.

Obama couldn't get the bill passed this year when Democrats controlled both the House and Senate, and he has said he'll pursue smaller measures — what he calls "singles" instead of "home runs" — that could draw GOPsupport.

He has cited efforts to promote electric vehicles, nuclear power, renewable energy and energy efficiency. He also has touted the Environmental Protection Agency's plans, beginning next year, to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act if it deemed them pollutants, which it has done. Critics say the EPA cannot impose limits without Congress' OK.

House Republicans, likely to be led by Ohio Rep. John Boehner, indicate they — along with Democrats including Sen.Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Texas' Republicanattorney general, Greg Abbott— will challenge the EPA's authority to regulate climate-altering gases.

"It's certainly a top priority," says Boehner spokesman Michael Steel, describing the EPA's proposed rules as a "backdoor" tax on businesses.

That's not the only Obama challenge. Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas, seeking to chair the House Science and Technology Committee, has promised "strong oversight" of the administration in "key areas" that include climate change and energy research.

Vying to lead the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee are several Republicans including Rep.Joe Barton of Texas, who apologized to BP this year for the political pressure it faced over the massive Gulf of Mexico spill, and Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, who thinks the threat of global warming is overstated and who has quoted Scripture to say the Earth will end only when "God declares it is time to be over." Shimkus favors updating coal-fired plants as a way to address a warming climate, his spokesman Steve Tomaszewski says.

"The whole atmosphere has changed dramatically in just a year," says David Kreutzer, an energy and environmental scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has criticized Obama's cap-and-trade approach. Kreutzer says even bipartisan efforts, such as the $5 billion Home Star program to retrofit homes, will likely be challenged. He says a similar Obama effort to weatherize U.S. homes with insulation, caulking and other upgrades moved too slowly and lawmakers are less willing now to "sign a blank check."

"This is a very volatile period," says David Goldston, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

"Everybody is rethinking their priorities," says Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. He says it was a "mistake" for environmentalists to focus single-mindedly on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, he says, they need to pitch their concerns as "kitchen table" issues that directly affect people. For example, he cites the presence of the estrogen-like chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, in food packaging. "That's personal to them. Climate is not," he says.

"Climate ... seems to have become a dirty word," says Melinda Pierce, lead lobbyist for the Sierra Club. She says environmentalists need to seek smaller, specific victories. "If we talk electric cars," she says, "people find that appealing."

The biggest environmental changes next year, however, may not come in Washington but in California, as the state moves to implement its landmark, bipartisan law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through financial incentives and its own cap-and-trade plan. Californians solidly defeated a November ballot measure, Proposition 23, that would have suspended the law.