Flanked by fellow Democrats, members of the military, and a crowd hoisting signs with buzzwords like "clean energy" and "green jobs," Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) today released the first draft of their legislation to curb U.S. emissions and combat climate change.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), center, and John Kerry (D-MA), left, at a 2008 rally. Photo: NWF/Flickr

But environmental groups are already lamenting that scientific consensus has urged a 40 percent pollution reduction below 1990 emissions levels in order to effectively forestall the negative effects of climate change, making the Boxer-Kerry bill "woefully inadequate," in the words of Center for Biological Diversity executive director Kieran Suckling.

And the Senate bill's transportation provisions, as Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported yesterday, offer only a marginal improvement over the House version, which gave transit and other clean transport just 1 percent of the proceeds from any cap-and-trade carbon regulation system.

The Senate bill's section on allocations -- the amount of aid provided to state governments and various industries to help meet emissions-reduction goals -- is subject to change as the environment committee, which Boxer chairs, and other panels attempt to amend the legislation.

As it stands, however, the Senate would require states to use 10 percent of their allocations to reduce transportation-based emissions. The House climate bill, by contrast, allowed states to use up to 10 percent of allocations on transportation but did not make it mandatory.

Boxer and Kerry's draft also includes a "set-aside," in Washington parlance, for transit grants to help states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) meet national standards for cutting transport-based emissions.

Those transit grants, distributed according to existing federal formulas, would be funded by auctioning a still-undetermined amount of emissions allocations and depositing the proceeds in state Climate Change Response and Transportation Funds (CCRTFs). After 10 percent of CCRTF funds went to coastal states, to help cope with the risk of climate-induced floods, and 1 percent went to Indian tribes, 50 percent of the rest would go toward transit.

Electric vehicles, including electrified transit, fares better under the Senate bill. The Department of Energy would have full control over a still-undetermined share of allocation auction proceeds, with the dual mission of establishing reliable infrastructure to fuel electric vehicles and developing "a national transportation low-emissions energy plan."

Also noted yesterday: The Senate climate draft features a provision that allows states to set higher fuel-efficiency rules for taxicabs than the national standard, which will hit an average of 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016. The taxis language would allow New York City, represented by environment committee member Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, to press on with plans, derailed in federal court, to transition to an all-hybrid taxi fleet. Rep. Jerrold Nadler has introduced a companion taxi bill in the House.

Meanwhile, transportation reform groups are already strategizing about how to increase the bill's focus on their area -- which currently accounts for one-third of U.S. emissions but stands to receive far less than the 10 percent of total climate revenue that is mandated in the so-called "CLEAN TEA" legislation.

The fate of transit and other clean transport may rest with Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the upper chamber's lead sponsor of "CLEAN TEA." Carper, who was not present at today's Boxer-Kerry press conference, released a statement that notably withheld an endorsement of the current climate bill:

Senators Kerry and Boxer have worked hard to produce the bill they released today and I congratulate them for their efforts so far. It is now time for the Senate committees to get to work examining the bill's provisions and considering any changes necessary. ... I expect there wil be some important changes made as this effort advances and we build consensus around how to address this vitally important global energy and climate challenge.

Few on the Hill expect the Senate to be able to meet its initial goal of voting on a final climate bill before United Nations climate change talks begin in December in Copenhagen. Still, Senate passage next spring remains a distinct possibility -- which makes the Boxer-Kerry bill's relative alignment with the House version one of its biggest political selling points.

As one of the House climate bill's lead sponsors, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), put it: “Given the Senate draft’s structural similarity to the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, a legislative solution that can pass both chambers of Congress is finally within sight."

The question is, how much of a solution will the final product turn out to be?

At a morning workshop about the challenges to funding transit during an economic downturn, Ravitch spoke about the current impasse in Albany that's putting New York's transit system at risk:

The difficulty, politically, in my judgment, is very obvious. There are very few short-term dividends, for people who run for office, in long-term investments. They don’t get the benefit out of it. It doesn’t have the same electricity to it as keeping the fare low. The benefits may not be realized until future generations. That is a political problem.

People are going to have to bite the bullet, in terms of usage charges and various taxes that will generate the revenue streams we need in order to build.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who served in the state legislature when the MTA was emerging from the financial catastrophe of the 1970s, added this perspective:

The 1970s crisis allowed us in the 80s to put new revenue streams in place and implement the original MTA capital plan. We had the ability to do these things because people remembered the bad times. But then you start to get complacent.

The politics in the legislature is more difficult now than it used to be. The Senate has switched parties; Republicans would like it to go back the other way. The Republicans won’t vote for anything and the Democrats can't unite. The only way around that, frankly, is for a few Republicans to step up to the plate. How do you do that? The leadership could step up and do a deal. It takes delicate political negotiating behind the scenes, and whether the public-spiritedness is there, I’m not at all sure.

During the Q&A, federal funding for transit service came up. Veronica Vanterpool of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign asked the panel about the budget crisis now facing transit agencies across the country. The feds used to fund transit service, she noted, but they don't anymore, and the stimulus bill failed to include operating assistance for transit. She asked why the federal policy changed in the first place, and what are the impediments to operating assistance now.

Nadler explained:

The Republicans who took over Congress in the 90s were ideologically opposed to operating assistance; they killed it. We’re going to try to do it again. (The House passed a bill last year that would have granted some operating assistance, but it did not clear the Senate.) There is a fixed determination in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to restore operating assistance at this point.

New York City DOT chief Janette Sadik-Khan, who also heads the National Association of City Transportation Officials, said that words matter when pushing policy:

Language is important. When we talk about operating assistance, you would think we were talking about giving crack to cities. If we start to talk about energy independence grants, it starts to resonate a little better on the Hill.

Here's another highlight from Sadik-Khan, which she delivered during a plenary session about how federal policy needs to adapt and improve:

For 50 years we have had no national vision for transportation. We are working under an outdated mission, with outdated institutions. Our competitor nations are not saddled with that. We are increasingly a metropolitan nation, but our institutions do not reflect that. NYCDOT is larger than two-thirds of the state DOTs, and yet we do not have direct access to federal transportation funds. I am hobbled by the fact that we can't access the funds that we need.

David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington has a great report about how it all went down on the House floor.

Also on the horizon: getting the Senate to include funding for transit service in its version of the stimulus bill.