Browner: No more mega bills; Future green bills to be smaller

Your broom is waiting on the runway, Carol.

The Hill reports,

The era of big energy legislation is over.

Carol Browner, President Obama’s former climate czar, said it has become clear that sweeping energy and climate change bills are a thing of the past.

“Going forward I think that it is hard to imagine returning to the days of thousand-plus [page] bills,” Browner said in an interview with the Climate Progress blog.

“I think that the Congress has spoken, I think the American people have spoken, they want smaller bills that are more easily understood,” Browner said in the audio interview.

Browner, who left the White House earlier this year, is senior fellow with the liberal Center for American Progress, which also hosts the Climate Progress blog.

During her tenure at the White House, the House passed a sweeping climate change and energy bill in 2009 when Democrats controlled the chamber. But major climate and energy legislation collapsed in the Senate last year.

Major energy bills were signed into law in 2005 and 2007.

Going forward, Browner said progress on green energy will come through smaller bills that she said can nonetheless have a substantial impact.

She cited proposals for a renewable energy standard, which would require utilities to supply escalating amounts of power from sources like wind and solar, and a cousin of that plan called a clean energy standard that credits a wider array of low-emissions sources.

“We can do a lot in terms of creating a clean energy economy in this country through smaller bills,” Browner said…

Whatever, Carol. No significant Carol Browner-supported bill, big or small, will be signed into law anytime soon.

Read The Hill article.