I’ve picked up on a couple of mentions lately of Senators on both sides of the aisle starting to work on revenue-neutral alternatives to the Waxman-Markey type of cap and trade climate legislation that has been the focus of attention ever since Obama came into office.

There’s been talk of the GOP staff on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, reporting to Sen. Murkowski of Alaska, possibly working on a revenue-neutral carbon tax proposal.

And Cantwell and Collins are proposing a “cap and dividend” plan, also to be revenue-neutral.

Gee, sounds familiar.

Frustratingly, I could probably have just cut-and-pasted my entire May 2009 column on this topic into a new post with no changes, and none of you would have realized it.  Because that’s how little things have moved forward over the past nine months.

Hopefully by now, however, it’s becoming more clear to politicians that any climate change legislation, if it’s to have a chance of passage at all, must be perceived as something other than just another tax-and-spend proposal. It has to be simple, and it should be tanglibly revenue-neutral. 

Leaders of the U.S. cleantech industry always claim they need a national price on carbon, first and foremost, so it’s nice to see some legislative efforts refocusing on just that.  Even if they’re not centerpiece efforts quite yet…