With the Waxman Markey Bill passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee thanks to the tireless and strong leadership of its Chairman, Henry Waxman (D-CA), there will now be some time for reflection on what happens next. The simple answer is “no one knows.”

The bill could be referred to other committees for mark-up — following the same process that we observed this week in Energy and Commerce. The House Agriculture Committee has expressed an interest in having jurisdiction over the bill. If so, then the bill will certainly be watered down further to placate agricultural interests. We saw a bit of this late in the debate over Waxman Markey when an amendment was offered to “grandfather” offsets for actions taken by farmers more than a decade before W-M is intended to go into effect, i.e., for emissions already reduced, as if that makes any sense. Even if the jurisdictional issues are resolved without a further referral, these concerns will necessarily be addressed if and when the bill comes to the floor. When (and if) the bill eventually comes to the full House it will face a range of concerns, almost all of which will lead to a further weakening of the bill and concessions to various interests who want a piece of the pie. An after this long process, whatever results, if approved by the House, is probably DOA anyway as the bill faces long odds in the Senate. There are a lot of wild cards in the mix not raised here as well.

Far more certain has been the reaction of advocates for action on climate change who have displayed a very wide range of responses to Waxman Markey.

For instance, Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress, champions W-M as the only possible vehicle for reducing US emssions, and rejoices at the bill’s progress thus far:

Many people have asked me how I can reconcile my climate science realism, which demands far stronger action than the Waxman-Markey bill requires, and my climate politics realism, which has led me to strongly advocate passage of this flawed bill.

The short answer is that Waxman-Markey is the only game in town. If it fails, I see no chance whatsoever of stabilizing anywhere near 350 to 450 ppm since serious U.S. action would certainly be off the table for years, the effort to jumpstart the clean energy economy in this country would stall, the international negotiating process would fall apart, and any chance of a deal with China would be dead.

At the other end of the spectrum Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action network (pictured in photo below at the protest, far right) was arrested yesterday along with 14 colleagues for blocking the office of Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA), a Democrat who supported W-M and help craft an important compromise (supported by Waxman and Markey) that got the bill out of committee.

For his part Congressman Boucher wants to see the current energy mix sustained for at least the next 10 years, relying on the offset provisions in W-M to allow business as usual to continue, as he relates early in the following clip:

Allowing business as usual for the next 10 years has proved too tough to swallow for some. For instance, a CCAN member relates details of a meeting with another member of the Energy and Commerce Committee he arranged via a hunger strike and office sit in:

I went to [Congressman] Mike Doyle’s (D-PA) office at 2 pm yesterday and told Pat Cavanaugh, his energy staff person, that I was a long-time climate activist on the 18th day of a hunger strike (www.fastingforourfuture.org) for strong climate legislation and that I wasn’t leaving until I met with Doyle. . .

But as I sat in Doyle’s office, no one with me, none of the press people who I called showing up to find out what was happening, thinking about what was going to happen at 6 pm, wondering if I had been too impulsive, wondering what would happen if I was arrested–because I was very clear that it was either talk with Doyle or that–wondering, wondering. . . after two hours of sitting, into the office comes Mike Doyle.

I’d never met the guy, so at first I didn’t know it had happened when he arrived. But when he sat down across from me and said something like, “I’m Mike Doyle, what’s up,” I knew it was game time. And for the next half hour I had the most intense, in-your-face, no-holds-barred discussion with an elected official I have ever had.

Doyle’s no dummy, and I have to acknowledge that he’s a strong debater. I didn’t get him to change his mind about the efforts that he and Rick Boucher have been leading to weaken the “discussion draft” of climate legislation Henry Waxman introduced on March 31st. The way Doyle described it, he was doing the bidding of Waxman, carrying water for him by going to the blue dog Democrats to find out what was necessary in order to get a bill out of committee. He also said his main thing was the 15% free emissions permits for steel, cement, aluminum and other energy-intensive industries during a 10-15 year transition period. But when I asked him why he was then supporting the idea that 40% of the permits would be given free to coal companies/utilities (local distribution companies), the best answer he could give was something like this, a very revealing answer:

“If you return money directly to the American people for them to use to pay for higher energy costs in the transition period, they’ll spend it on things like flat screen TV’s. By giving free emissions permits to utilities they can then pass on the savings directly to consumers.”

With the environmental community split, the Republicans must be enjoying a good bit of satisfaction, despite the movement of the W-M bill out of committee. Going forward, the bill will require ever more compromises, and it is hard to see these actions winning more supporters to the bill from the environmental community.

Waxman Markey may well have taken its first steps toward a protracted death spiral, taking with it any semblance of consensus and coordination of the environmental community about what to do on climate change.