What's up with Waxman/Markey? And what about Cap and Trade?

What does it actually do? Why is it so monumental? Who supports it? What is there to fight about?

So: it comes as a relief to many environmental enthusiasts that bills like Waxman/Markey and Van Hollen have finally made their way to the floor of congress. The same as any other hotly contested issue, these bills have met an extreme amount of media attention and many arguments have risen concerning how each policy in the bills is implemented, the philosophies of both, and exactly how the legislation could possibly affect the economy.

Even broader than the issues of implementing these policies (if and when they're voted through Congress) is the stress imposed on US policymakers to take action in the face of the approaching global summit on climate change in Copenhagen this December. The US and China have been identified as -globally- emitting 40% of the world's CO2 emissions. So we have to do something, but what do we do, and is it right?

Fighting over which bill begins at their stated and summarized goals. Both bills seek to reduce carbon emissions by nearly 85% by 2050, using the same incremental reductions in the same year periods. The bills start to differ in who to reduce these emissions:

From Mike Sandler on the Huffington Post:

Waxman-Markey contains several sections (titles) that set renewable energy standards, change fuel composition, set automobile and land use planning requirements similar to California's AB1493 and SB375, and more. The bill could also result in pre-empting regional climate programs currently under development such as the Western Climate Initiative. What it doesn't do, is say who will shoulder the costs implied in making fossil fuels more expensive. Van Hollen's bill, by contrast, does only one thing, but it's the most important thing: making polluters pay and returning the money to consumers. Waxman-Markey will work its way through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Van Hollen will start at the House Ways and Means Committee, since it involves distributing revenues from the sale of emission permits, which is essentially money. It's possible that at some point the two bills could be combined.

Length alone, Waxman certainly is the greater waste of trees; it's 600 pages to Van Hollen's 20 pages. However, Van Hollen's bill has yet to garner as much public support (according to GovTrack), while Waxman's bill has made headlines and drawn a lot of media attention...the only downside to this being that it has also dragged in a healthy dose of naysayers. Perhaps the Waxman bill is more comprehensive, but when looking over the summary on GovTrack, it becomes clear that the shear magnitude of the bill and all the tasks therein, the EPA is going to have a hefty dose of new standards to implement when it already deals with such a massive amount of enforcing....

What makes me worry now is how little we know about carbon capture programs and their environmental impact...plenty of science exists on either side of the issue, but how are we supposed to know what it will do before we try? If the Earth is already changing rapidly because of everything else we're doing, it seems like strategies should be focused on converting waste and reusing it, rather than the age-old tradition of packing it up and putting it away forever...even though carbon is natural, burying it thousands of feet down doesn't change the fact that its basically still a human-made dumping ground.