This chapter addresses a variety of questions focused on congressional consideration of climate change legislation over a period of more than a decade: What killed the BTU tax in 1993 (Section 5.1), and what killed cap-and-trade legislation in 2010 (Section 5.2)? What were the patterns of voting behaviour in the House and the Senate when cap-and-trade legislation was considered? How much influence has business lobbying had on the outcomes of the effort to establish a national cap-and-trade system? How do institutional distortions of representation patterns affect the influence of carbon-intensive areas versus low-carbon areas? In Section 5.3, the questions concern the regulatory activities of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC): In the aftermath of the abandonment of cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate in 2010, what has been happening to EPA rules – and legal actions to oppose them? What has the SEC been doing about climate change issues?

The chapter builds on the analysis of business interests and lobbying activities in Chapter 2 by examining their role in the legislative process for specific bills in the House and Senate. It also compares congressional attitudes and actions with public perceptions of the problem and preferences for solutions in Chapter 3. It furthermore applies the patterns of economic and political geography in Chapter 4 to the issues of whether and how to develop a national mandatory cap-and-trade system.