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Courtesy of Enviroknow, some resources re the coming Kerry-Graham-Lieberman “climate” (???) legislation:

— It is expected to be dropped this coming Monday, aka Offshore Drilling Day.

— The rollout next week apparently won’t actually include the introduction of the bill.  It will be handed over to Senator Reid so he can bring it directly to the floor if/when he gets the votes, bypassing the committee process.  Republicans will undoubtedly throw a fit over this, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if Max Baucus joins them.

— A week ago today POTUS called the bill “one of these foundational priorities that needs to be done soon.”  But there is currently some confusion over whether the Senate will take up climate or immigration first.  After FinReg there probably won’t be time to do both.

— There are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about the bill’s chances:

• A coalition of midwestern Democrats want state laws to be pre-empted as part of the deal, but Senator Boxer is opposed to the idea.
• Senators Landrieu, Graham, Webb, Warner and others want coastal states to receive some of the revenues from expanded offshore drilling, but Senators Dorgan, Rockefeller and Bingaman are strongly opposed to the idea.
• Senator Menendez is openly threatening to vote against the bill due to the expansion of offshore drilling.
• Senator Sanders has a host of other concerns, including state pre-emption and undue support for the nuclear power and coal industries, among others.
• It remains to be seen whether any Senators will draw a line in the sand over the issue, but several grassroots environmental organizations are prepared to pull their support if the legislation takes away the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

— The environmentalist base is not at all pleased with how Senator Kerry appears to be handling some of the contentious provisions, particularly pre-emption of the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

— An outline of the bill that was leaked about a month ago showed that it was relatively close to Obama’s campaign proposals, although some details have changed since then and details are still very fluid.

— Kate Sheppard outlined some of the latest details last night:

• The bill would remove the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, and the states’ authority to set tougher emissions standards than the federal government.
• There will be no fee—or “gas tax”—on transportation fuels. Instead, oil companies would also be required to obtain pollution permits but will not trade them on the market like other polluters. How this would work is not yet clear.
• Agriculture would be entirely exempt from the cap on carbon emissions.
• Manufacturers would not be included under a cap on greenhouse gases until 2016.
• The bill would provide government-backed loan guarantees for the construction of 12 new nuclear power plants.
• It will contain at least $10 billion to develop technologies to capture and store emissions from coal-fired power plants.
• There will be new financial incentives for natural gas.
• The bill would place an upper and lower limit on the price of pollution permits, known as a hard price collar. Businesses like this idea because it ensures a stable price on carbon. Environmental advocates don’t like the idea because if the ceiling is set too low, industry will have no financial incentive to move to cleaner forms of energy.
• The energy bill passed by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year will be adopted in full. This measure has sparked concerns among environmentalists for its handouts to nuclear and fossil fuel interests.

— Senators Voinovich and Lugar, two Republicans who have been considered potential pickups on this, floated a ‘half-assed’ energy-only bill as an alternative earlier this week.