At a factory in Wuxi, China, workers lift solar panels onto conveyor belts, while others in white lab coats move between machines as they check on a process for etching and engraving silicon wafers to form solar cells.

This scene in itself isn’t remarkable. But there is a new sort of excitement about the work. China’s production of solar panels has grown quickly in the past two years; it is it now the world’s leading exporter. When Matt Lewis, a representative of the California-based nonprofit ClimateWorks, visited the factory in October, he said it reminded him of his native Silicon Valley: The workers, even ordinary line workers, had a sense that they were part of building the future, the hot new industry.

This comparison makes some in the United States, and especially in Washington, nervous. Thomas Friedman has used the bully pulpit of his influential New York Times column to warn that the United States is engaged in a global green-tech competition with China, whose potential dominance represents a “new Sputnik.” (“How do you say ‘clean your clock’ in Chinese?” he wrote.) This notion, conjuring residual memories of the days in which U.S. rivalry with Soviet Union was crystallized in the space race — when the word “Sputnik,” the name of the Soviet space program, inspired quivers of anxiety about America’s political and economic prowess and its existential place in the world — has today struck a resonant chord in Washington, drawing upon existing fears and mistrust of China.

While some U.S. politicians and commentators still paint China as the global pollution villain, especially after the disappointing outcome at Copenhagen, others are beginning to take green China seriously — as a threat. Last fall, for instance, when Senator Charles Schumer got wind of a planned wind farm in west Texas, announced by a partnership of American and Chinese companies, that would use some wind equipment made in China and potentially create new jobs across the Pacific, he recommended blocking stimulus money from the project, rather than help boost green China. The stimulus money “is supposed to create jobs in America,” he wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu. (The new wind farm would also have created 300 jobs in Texas, but Schumer was worried that a greater number could be created in China.)

Last month, a front-page Sunday piece by Keith Bradsher of the New York Times took the competition metaphor a step further and declared that China was in fact already winning the green-tech race. The article, “China Leading Race to Make Clean Energy,” made the rounds in Washington with its assertion that China had passed the U.S. and several western European countries to become the word’s top manufacturer of both solar panels and wind turbines; it quoted the CEO of a private equity firm in Beijing saying, ominously, “Most of the energy equipment [of the future] will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China.’”

The Times article also raised another spine-tingling geopolitical comparison — this time not likening Beijing to the latter-day USSR, but to the modern-day Middle East. “[China's] efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies,” Bradsher wrote, “raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.”

In other words, China might become the Saudi Arabia of alternative energy; the implication seems to be that not only might green China pose an economic threat, but the sheiks of Beijing might soon wield undue political influence over a “dependent” United States.

Few business stories have ever been imbued with so much gravitas, so many fears, so many metaphors, so much geopolitical speculation, as the recent articles and coverage of China’s growing green-tech manufacturing sector.

Behind these fears, there is something worth probing — and some myths worth dispelling. Just what are Americans afraid of? To distill the cloud of anxiety, there seem to be three chief fears. The first is very tangible — jobs. The second is about America’s place in the world — will the U.S. remain a global leader in innovation? And the third is about leverage — will the U.S. control its future, or be beholden to a foreign energy gatekeeper, one that exerts undue pull on its economic or foreign policy?

“Even when you are looking at these big numbers that are coming out of China today, I think it really pays to give a close look at what is actually happening on the ground,” says Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The River Runs Black. “Then you begin to get a different, more nuanced picture than what is blasted on the business section of the New York Times.”

The first essential fact to be aware of is that most news stories about China’s green tech gains are about manufacturing. China is becoming the wind-turbine factory to the world for much the same reasons it has long been the TV and t-shirt factory to the world: lower wages, lower land prices, fewer regulatory and other requirements, etc. This isn’t particularly surprising, and it shouldn’t be seen as a reversal of the status quo. What’s changed most dramatically in the last five years has been growing global demand. With significant government investment, Chinese factories have planned for and stepped up production accordingly.

Yes, this is bad news for U.S. cities like Detroit, where planners have recently been retrofitting old hot-rod factories into wind-turbine factories, such as an old Ford Thunderbird plant in Michigan that’s being converted into a green-tech manufacturing center in a bid to boost the local economy.

Manufacturing in China, especially low and medium-tech manufacturing, has certain clear economic advantages. But it’s also worth considering a few other facts. Most of the green manufacturing jobs that the U.S. stands to “lose” haven’t in fact been created yet; China will gain thousands of new jobs, but not necessarily at America’s expense. Moreover, the United States will still gain many new green-collar jobs, in installation and maintenance, which can only be locally based, as well as sales teams, conference planners, and other positions already arising to support the growing green-tech field.

Besides green-tech hardware, there’s also the question of the technology that enables it. Who will be responsible for the innovation that drives the low-carbon future? At present, America still has significant advantages — including the world’s leading university system and the entrepreneurial culture and venture-capital spigots of technology hubs, particularly Silicon Valley.

“Intellectual property rights have done a lot to hamper China’s development of green technology,” says Linden Ellis, U.S. director of nonprofit China Dialogue. “People would rather come to Silicon Valley and develop a technology where they know it will be protected by the law, right down to every line, than go to China and try to develop a technology there where maybe the components will be cheaper and there is a lot of interest, but people do not trust that their findings will be protected.”

Similar concerns have, for the past two decades, grounded Beijing’s attempts to build a domestic airline industry, considered the pinnacle of high-tech manufacturing. Foreign companies and top-notch engineers have simply been unwilling to share technology with China (Boeing has even avoided building factories in China, for fear of commercial espionage). The result: Planes that fly from Beijing to Shanghai today are still built by Boeing and Airbus.

Of course, most green-energy equipment won’t match the complexity of assembling something like Boeing’s new Dreamliner, but the airplane situation sheds light on two points: that cheap labor is hardly the only factor driving business decisions, and that, despite substantial government support, China’s domestic aerospace engineers have not yet produced research to rival that of Western competitors. (China’s university system and research labs are famously politically constrained, limiting their ability to attract top global talent.)

Of course, China would like to change this. Beijing is doing its best to both allay the fears of international partners and to nurture its own homegrown innovators. A program known as the “State High-Tech Development Plan,” launched by Beijing in March 1986 and nicknamed the “863 Program,” aims to develop top scientists in China and to incubate cutting-edge technology projects in energy and other sectors.

So far, its results have been modest over two decades: birthing a family of computer processors known as Loongson, and some technology used in the Shenzhou spacecraft. While the 863 Program’s track record should certainly dispel Western assumptions that no good research can come from China, it also disproves the notion that money alone can clone a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Sergey Brin.

This should allay some anxiety in Washington about America having fallen behind, but it is not a reason to become complacent. America has neither relinquished, nor is forever assured, her innovation crown.

Meanwhile, folks in the green-tech and environmental frontlines — as opposed to politicians and commentators — don’t see a “race” at all. “I do not see such a pattern exists,” says Wen Bo, a Beijing environmentalist. “The clean-tech war is overblown from the start,” says Richard Brubaker, an American environmental entrepreneur in Shanghai. To them, the green-tech “race” is not one that one side wins and the other loses, but a scenario where partnerships are sought out and the final equation doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.

“For now at least, there is a great symbiotic relationship with California and the east coast of China on green technology,” says Linden Ellis. “Where California has the know-how, the technology, the universities and programs dedicated to developing technology, people who are interested in piloting it on a very expansive scale, or trying new combinations, often seek out research partners in China.”

Similar partnerships can exist even when the focus shifts from research to commercial activity. Kevin Czinger, the CEO of a Santa Monica-based electric car company that partners with a Chinese battery company, noted in a New Yorker article that if the U.S. would stop feeling threatened by China’s progress on clean technology, it might begin to recognize its own strengths in this field.

It is telling what is left out of the increasingly dominant “U.S. versus China” green-tech “race” narrative. For starters, there are a lot of other countries at work developing green-tech and becoming significant green-tech markets — the low-carbon future, after all, isn’t solely a G-2 aspiration. Yet because the politics are different (there’s not the anxiety of the reigning superpower nervously eyeing the new kid on the block), the green aspirations of any country not named China are viewed through an entirely different prism by U.S. commentators. Germany, for instance, is home to the world’s top two solar manufacturing companies. Yet we don’t read headlines about Old Europe “cleaning our clock” to the 21st century.

“You haven’t seen this green-tech race raised over last 10 years while the Europeans have been innovating in this space more than the U.S.,” says Charles McElwee, an international environmental lawyer for Squires, Samson, and Dempsey based in Shanghai, “although that would have made more sense [than a U.S. versus China frame].”

Even as China’s solar panel exports grow, it continues to purchase clean locomotives from an American company, GE. Germany has developed world-class “green” metro cars, with China being a top customer. And French companies are among the world’s top innovators in water solutions. In other words, green-tech encompasses a lot more than windmills and solar panels — and progress in developing it can be a two-way street.

Article by Christina Larson appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

photo: kevinthoule, Miss Loisy

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Tom Friedman spent most of 2009 beating the China-is-winning-the-green-race-drum, and he has started 2010 with the same focus.

In Sunday’s New York Times, the news side of the house joined their editorial page colleague, writing in a front page story that Chinese “efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.”

To his credit, Friedman’s push has been all about policy. He wants the United States to go all-in in a space-race-like push to match Chinese innovation in energy technology (“E.T.,” as he has glossed it). But, what has eluded his attention – and is absent again in Sunday’s news piece – is the recognition that in order to match Chinese innovation, the policy changes that would be required in the U.S. electricity markets would necessarily have to go far beyond decoupling, one of Friedman’s personal causes.

China may be a leader, but it cannot be a model for the United States (nor can Europe, where a long-standing “welfare state” mentality and shrinking population and electric demand confound comparisons with the United States).

The Sunday New York Times only alluded to several reasons that China has an edge, now and for the foreseeable future. Below are three of the most important, all having to do with social, economic and policy considerations that go far beyond “E.T.” and the analyses of Friedman and his Times colleague Keith Bradsher:

1. Currency, Subsidies and Capital – “Green premiums” are a common feature of renewable energy policies worldwide. The money ratepayers cough up goes to utilities to offset the increased cost of buying renewable power. In turn, more renewable power is sold, and the subsidies pass directly through to the independent power producers who own renewable facilities. And, because they have to harvest the wind or sun, the trickle continues on to the manufacturers and fabricators of blades and panels.

According to Bradsher, China’s premiums are from .4 percent on the residential side to .8 percent commercial. U.S. lawmakers and business interests balk at increasing the cost of electricity to subsidize green power – whether it is done through a cap-and-trade program, national renewable portfolio standard, or otherwise. But, Chinese industry is running on such high margins when compared with Western competitors that the Chinese can afford a steep premium and still remain – and excel – in global competition.

The United States does not have the benefit of a political climate that can tolerate premiums at the level that could actually drive market-based growth in renewable energy, help drive innovation up, push the relative cost of manufacturing down, and complete the cycle by encouraging private investment.

2. Capacity Comes First – Friedman and others may be right that China is doing an exceptional job putting forth a very green face to the world — and, indeed, they are delivering. As Bradsher reports, “China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020….[t]hat compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States.” Bradsher continues, noting correctly, “China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year.”

In other words, while U.S. lawmakers – and even those in the green movement – continue to jostle over where money should be directed (subsidies for green power purchase, green tech research and development, energy efficiency) and debate whether we can stem the anticipated tide of growth in demand for environmental benefit, the Chinese have one directive: more capacity, now! And, a lot of it, from anywhere. They are not shy (nor ambivalent) about capacity growth. After all, it means economic growth.

In fact, in spite of the green push that Friedman heralds, Bradsher does note that most of the capacity growth to meet increasing demand will come from coal.

In the context of green tech competitiveness, the United States cannot be comforted by one of Bradsher’s final numbers on Chinese capacity: “To meet demand in the coming decade…China will need to add nearly nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will.”

With so fevered a push for capacity growth, the Chinese government will take it any way they can get it, and if it means creating a new global industry, all the better. Remember, investor certainty is much less an issue in the Chinese context already, where the government makes the rules and the investments. U.S. companies have no certain market for their products – be it energy equipment or green power – and have no incentive to “bet the house” on E.T.

3. Starting from Scratch Has its Advantages – The most remarkable part of the climate bill fight in the United States in 2009 was watching how battle lines were drawn over how proposed changes would impact vested interests and sunk costs. But, notwithstanding these political and business concerns are the technological and logistical questions that surround proposed expansion of the green grid. For example, there is already a transmission glut in the US, and building new high-voltage lines has proven to be challenging. But, any new large-scale renewable collection points would have to be integrated with the existing grid, and it is unclear – with opposition to the erection of turbines themselves still a hurdle – that building out an extensive new transmission work would be politically feasible.

Vested interests also have self-interest at stake. Indeed, U.S. utilities have a fiduciary duty to shareholders under American law, and current proposals do not accommodate those concerns to allow for buy-in.

Bradsher at least touches on this problem, noting that “in the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.”

This is the element of the equation that Friedman has consistently ignored in calling for the “space race” in green energy. Without immense accommodation being made to utilities and other interests who will have to decommission and divest themselves of existing equipment and infrastructure, Friedman’s challenge is a pipe dream. Electricity is still a regulated business, and it is possible to conceive of ways to change the regulatory climate so that utilities, their customers and their shareholders could absorb and recover the costs of a transition like this. But, it will be a political bloodbath.

The Chinese can take the required steps unilaterally. As Friedman notes in his Sunday column, China operates in a “Confucian-Communist-Capitalist‘ hybrid under the umbrella of a one-party state, with a lot of government guidance, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that is capable of making tough choices and long-term investments, without having to heed daily public polls.” Political problems, solved.

But, that notwithsanding, building out a renewable network from scratch – right alongside capacity growth – is a lot easier than trying to replace a dynamic existing system that is historically balkanized by state commissions, franchise territories and regional transmission organizations, while balancng the competing interests of reliability, capacity, efficiency and affordability.

Beat China? Or, First Among Equals – In his State of the Union address, President Obama exchanged some of his global credibility for an unexpected refrain of American exceptionalism. Specifically, in the energy context, he noted that China, Germany and India are ”making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs…I do not accept second place for the United States of America. ”

What the president did not acknowledge is that – perhaps for the first time since World War II – the United States is engaged (however passively) in a contest where its social, economic and political infrastructure puts the country at a distinct disadvantage.

It’s easy to chalk up the Chinese advantages to the obvious. Friedman is right, they are making a proactive “E.T.” policy push; and, yes, low-cost Chinese labor makes it nearly impossible for U.S.-made photovoltaic panels and turbine blades to compete on the open global market (hence the beginnings of tariff discussions and rules preventing federal spending on imported equipment).

But, favorable political and economic conditions are critical to the success of those initiatives. The United States cannot become an authoritarian, communist regime. Labor costs will not come into parity with China anytime in any living person’s lifetime.

Without significant re-regulation of our electricity markets, there is no formula for gaining ground anytime soon. We can dabble around the edges – and, yes, $11 billion in stimulus is just dabbling in this context – but, China’s E.T. edge only figures to expand in the near-term.

When we find a way to give utilities skin in the efficiency and green game, we will have taken a large first step toward leveling the playing field. Until then, as long as the entities that everyone in the country buys their power from are not incentivized to really get on board, we cannot expect the United States to bring E.T. home. And, going up against green energy’s Goliath, we need all the help we can get.

photos: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Slimmer Jimmer

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Ken Salazar's solar array and cowboy hat combo should be more common under the plan announced yesterday for the Southwest

Yesterday’s big announcement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar heralded what may be a new era for solar power, as thousands of acres of federal land in six Southwestern states were set aside to become a special federal solar energy zone designed to facilitate siting, construction and deployment of as much as 70,000 MW of new solar capacity.

Today, it is wind’s turn in the sun. The front page of the Boston Globe and local broadcast reports are abuzz with the news that Governor Deval Patrick’s administration has released a new plan to re-zone state coastal waters to better balance the need for marine ecological protections with the hope that Massachusetts can harvest more of its offshore wind as useful electricity.

In the absence of all of the plan’s details (a full presser was scheduled for the afternoon of July 1 at the New England Aquarium in Boston), the media has already shifted to score-keeping. There is at least one clear loser, as the plan deals a death blow to a particular Buzzards Bay proposal for 300 MW of offshore wind. The wind farm would sit in what is now a restricted area.

The plan does set aside two specific areas for large-scale wind, and Jim O’Sullivan of the State House News Service quotes Ian Bowles, the state’s energy secretary, as telling reporters that “the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts] will want to put those areas out to bid and they would be, relatively speaking, on the fast track for development.” (sorry, SHNS is a subscription site – no link). Bowles allowed that the proponents of the Buzzards Bay project could bid to shift their 90+ turbines to one of the newly-designated areas, but added that he had no idea whether they intended to do so.

Bowles’ “fast-tracking” comment is direct, but not surprising. His own March Op-Ed in the NYT made reference to the administration’s perception of major offshore wind potential; and, those comments were strengthened considerably by the testimony Paul Hibbard, a state regulatory commissioner, gave before Congress in mid-June.

All the international investment, Washington clout and technological innovation in the world is for naught in a climate where a neighbor and ten friends can still get together and tie a project into a Gordian knot of appeals and reviews.

Until the full rule-making process is complete on both of these new policies, it is unclear what the real impact on siting will be. But, it seems obvious that neither policy will address all of the potential delays in getting turbines spinning. For example, the Massachusetts plan still grants local towns and regional planning agencies the authority to approve smaller wind projects in state coastal waters.

Taken together, yesterday’s federal announcement of a new plan for Southwestern solar zones and the Massachusetts offshore wind farm rezoning plan, demonstrate some interesting trends: first, a shift that brings policy more in line with rhetoric and second, a clear bias for executive action as against legislative enactment.

The two announcements are tangible steps toward aligning policy with the increasing rhetoric about the desire for greater renewable deployment. The major problem remains siting. Even in a fantasy scenario where there is no additional public opposition (which does NOT happen), the environmental and administrative processes at the local, regional, state and federal level are cumbersome.

Streamlined siting of generation assets is less meaningful without equivalent relief for building the transmission interconnections that are required to get wind off the high seas and solar rays out of the desert, and deliver usable energy to load centers.

The siting problem is a drag on development even as aggressive renewable portfolio standards have sent utilities out on the market for new renewable capacity (in spite of a year where they saw overall demand drop). It remains true even as huge sums of public money have been made available to subsidize renewable power and to spur development of new generation capacity.

Both of these announcements should – ostensibly – make siting, permitting and constructing a project easier. Both are still subject to public comment periods and possible amendment, but however the details emerge, it seems clear that what we will be left with is a more favorable climate for developers.

Both plans face at least one big additional question: even if they allow for streamlined siting of the generation asset, do they offer equivalent relief for building the transmission interconnections that will be required to get the wind off the high seas and the sun’s rays out of the desert, and deliver usable energy to load centers? Just ask Cape Wind, who was able to site their entire proposed farm in federal waters, whether relief from zoning and local/state court appeals for transmission infrastructure is needed.

The second trend is perhaps a little more wonkish and nuanced, but what does this spate of executive action mean for the future of energy infrastructure siting? Based on the blood bath that emerged in the House trying to get Waxman-Markey through, the measured bill that emerged, and the dim hopes of getting even that kind of bill through the Senate, it seems clear that if we are going to see swift, aggressive action on game-changing energy policy matters, it is likely to come from the executive corner of the government. While we can’t say how that trend might be greeted by the legislative bodies off in the other corner, we do have some indication of how the third member of the troika – the courts – will respond.

Swift, aggressive action on game-changing energy policy matters is likely to come from the executive corner of the government.

This spring, the Fourth Circuit rejected FERC’s attempts to grab a greater share of power under Federal Power Act amendments that were a part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Piedmont decision interpreted FERC’s backstop authority as a sort of riding crop that allowed the executive agency to help spur movement in state siting decisions and prevent undue or bad faith delay. The court expressly rejected FERC’s claim that the EPAct 2005 amendments allowed it to overturn the decisions of state siting agencies.

We may soon have a similar indication of the expansiveness of executive agency authority in Massachusetts. After receiving a consolidated “super-permit” from the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board, Cape Wind faces a new SJC appeal that is sure to allege that local zoning approvals should not have been preempted. Cape Wind already prevailed in a 2006 SJC decision that focused more on the question of administrative authority and practice than on the substantive issues around siting.

It will be interesting to see if the Massachusetts court follows the 4th Circuit in some sense by limiting executive authority over energy infrastructure. Either way, the fact remains that project developers will remain subject to a full panoply of potential legal remedies that opponents can use to delay construction. These policies themselves – in whatever form they ultimately take – will inevitably be tested and interpreted by the courts.

In spite of the new policies, a fundamental conflict in renewable energy generation siting remains: the resources are most often not collocated with load. In other words, the locals who are experiencing the hardships presented by the development are probably not the ones who need the increased capacity. Even if a developer can site a project in one of the Commonwealth’s new zones (say on the beaches south of Boston headed toward Cape Cod), they still face the fundamental question from locals: why should I allow 10 turbines on my beach so that you can generate more power for skyscrapers downtown? And that is to say nothing of the permits required to construct transmission lines, transformation facilities and other ancillary infrastructure needs.

It is a positive sign for developers when the leaders of our nation and our states decide to put some of their political capital where their rhetoric has been. But, none of these policies are a panacea. Developers need to focus on the whole project picture, but they must keep a wary eye at ground level. All the international investment, Washington clout and technological innovation in the world is for naught in a climate where a neighbor and ten friends can still get together and tie a project into a Gordian knot of appeals and reviews.

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EnergyWorks CR is going to spend the week taking a closer look at how the Senate is likely to mark-up the already near-unrecognizable Waxman-Markey bill that was passed 219-212 in the House late Friday. We will look with special attention at what is likely to happen to the transmission siting authority proposals on the Senate side, particularly in light of the recent action in the courts on FERC’s existing “backstop” authority over transmission.

Sunday’s NYT ran a couple of pieces on the climate change vote, both worth reading. Carl Hulse’s Congressional Memo unearths the eerie coincidence that may have some House Dems throwing salt over their shoulder, crossing their hearts or doing something to avoid a hex. As Hulse writes, in 1993, House Dems voted en masse (the House vote was 219-212) to enact a BTU tax. The Senate let the bill wither on the vine and suddenly in a tough mid-term year for the left (remember the “Republican Revolution”), many Democrats found themselves taking a beating for a vote that never had any hope of becoming policy.

Two key takeaways from the Senate shift and Hulse’s story:

First, Hulse is perceptive in noting that the House GOP never really mustered a persuasive enough rebuke of the Waxman-Markey bill. Granted, they did get a lot of givebacks for themselves and many of “their interests” (my quotations, not from Hulse), but still the “biggest tax increase in US history” schpiel just wasn’t enough. It almost sounded too much like a player piano tune from the GOP house organ to even engage the public. It will be very interesting to see if the Senate side GOP can do a better job of pulling out some sexier arguments. Their media allies on talk radio (Laura Ingraham is all over it) and in the conservative press have been doing a nice job pulling out the trade and global competitive disadvantage line of argument in recent days. With the economy still in a rut, that argument has more legs than knee-jerk tax increase palaver. Let’s see what else they can dig up.

Second, Hulse touches on the key difference that emerges from the structure of the Senate. Sure, the Dems have 59 votes, but they only have two per state. So, Dems don’t pick up those extra votes in bluer districts of Red or Brown Dog Dem states. For example, the House Dems got key support in Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky and even Idaho (all are 0 for 2 states in the Senate). Then there are the states like Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee where they stand to lose ground as well.

The second Sunday NYT story on the climate bill is Jeff Zeleny’s on the White House’s last minute weekend address switcheroo: health care was out and climate change was in. More accurately, probably, someone figured it would be a shame to waste the weekend platform by talking about an ongoing fight instead of using it to tout a “win.”

The most telling moment of the remarks for me had to be the invocation of the Almighty: “So I want to congratulate the House for passing this bill, and I want to urge the Senate to take this opportunity to come together and meet our obligations – to our constituents, to our children, to God’s creation, and to future generations.”

Think the President is making a push for some of those Red state religious conservatives? This is a match that works on occasion, for example, liberals and evangelicals share a passion for third world poverty and social justice issues in that kind of context, but the planet? The environment? For everything, there is a season…is the climate – ahem – changing?

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The big day has arrived for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, expected to go to the floor for a vote in the House today. A quick perusal of the Op-Ed pages this morning adds little to the debate.

NYT and The Boston Globe both offer tepid – and somewhat mournful – endorsements of the legislation, citing its symbolic significance while noting the well-publicized giveaways and leaning heavily on CBO and EPA studies out this week that downplay consumer cost increases as a result of carbon charges. A lot of “the costs of inaction, of clinging to a broken energy policy, will dwarf the costs of acting now” kind of palaver in both. Quite frankly, they are so superficial as to be disappointing — kind of like the bill itself in the minds of many.

The LA Times editorial heats things up a little more, taking a position that corresponds a little more closely with the geographical battle lines that have been drawn in the bill’s mark-up and amendment process. LAT lambastes “the farm lobby” for carving out subsidies and weakening standards to the detriment of the bill, the country and the climate. Not exactly a profile in courage for the newspaper in the country’s second-largest urban area with the most celebrated emission-induced pollution-choked climate to attack farmers. But, you can’t blame them for taking the position. All politics is local, still accusing farmers of being “the shadowy Illuminati who rule Washington,” seems a little over the top.

WSJ – predictably or surprisingly, I’m not sure – goes with a climate change doubter in Kimberley Strassel’s column on the big day…and the best one she could find is an Australian PM. Not too persuasive.

From the same side of the fence, IBD calls Waxman-Markey the largest tax increase in US history and predicts the bill will make “Smoot-Hawley look like a speed bump.” In spite of the many doomsday economic predictions cited in the editorial, it never delivers a tangible look at the Smoot-Hawley comparison, perhaps the most significant unexplored discussion around the bill. What if other countries do not follow suit? What if Copenhagen doesn’t bring the kind of reform that Kyoto could not deliver? Will the US have put itself into a competitive rut because of the real or financial limits that carbon caps place on our economy? Conservatives have adopted a couple of cutesy phrases for the bill’s carbon provision (IBD favors “cap-and-tax,” I like conservative talker Laura Ingraham’s “knee cap our trade” gloss), but with distractions in the form of GOP dalliances from Sanford and Ensign this past week, the Right has not been hitting the trade implications of the bill hard enough, especially not the amendments that — apparently in violation of Nafta and WTO provisions — will add tariffs to imports from nations that do not cap carbon in an effort to prevent “leakage.”

All in all, this morning’s Op-Ed pages do not deliver a lot of surprises. Most analysis breaks down along the same partisan lines that have been drawn in the House debate. I haven’t had the chance to wade through the global editorial coverage of the bill yet — or find some of it amidst Michael Jackson coverage on international news site US pages — but, it is important to remember that the Senate still has to act before anything becomes a concerted US approach.

On that front, the math doesn’t look good. While the House bill faced high political hurdles from agricultural states and groaning industrial areas of the country, in the House those less populous places don’t have the same sway as they do in a Senate body that has two votes for each state. We’ve seen the compromise that the bill required in this setting; when California, Massachusetts, New York and other big states are put on an even playing field with Wyoming, West Virginia, Montana, the Dakotas, the Upper Midwest and the coal heavy Southeast, is it even conceivable that a consensus bill that actually caps carbon can emerge, or will offsets and alternative compliance methods make whatever reform is contemplated little more than illusory?

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