Four Democratic Senators have called for cap-and-trade to be abandoned in its current form and passed in smaller chunks. They prefer a focus on renewable energy.

�The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,� Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. �I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.�

The resistance by Lincoln and her Senate colleagues undercuts President Barack Obama�s effort to win passage of legislation that would cap carbon dioxide emissions and establish a market for trading pollution allowances, said Peter Molinaro, the head of government affairs for Midland, Michigan- based Dow Chemical Co., which supports the measure.

�Doing these energy provisions by themselves might make it more difficult to move the cap-and-trade legislation,� said Molinaro, who is based in Washington. �In this town if you split two measures, usually the second thing never gets done.�

Lincoln is joined by Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kurt Conrad and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. There are at least eleven other Democrat senators who want changes to the House bill. Harry Reid is still pushing for a vote, but even the guys who invented cap-and-trade don't like Waxman-Markey. Why is this still in the news?

The Minnesota Free Market Institute (full disclosure: I am a senior fellow) is hosting a climate symposium on August 19, 3-7pm. NARN is hosting several of their speakers tomorrow on the shows. Mitch Berg will have Dr. Fred Singer, the keynote speaker for the event. I am pleased to welcome to the Final Word John Coleman, KUSI meteorologist and founder of the Weather Channel, and Prof. Al Pekarek of SCSU. The topic of the day will be climate change, and in both these gentlemen's cases I want to explore the treatment of skeptics by their professions. Both are signatories of the Manhattan Declaration, which calls for the U.N. to reject Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and "[t]hat all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith." Please call us with your questions at 651-289-4488 as you listen to Mitch (1-3 pm) and me (3-5) on The Patriot.