Every day it seems a story comes across the news wire stating that the Senate is not going to pass a climate bill this year.

If I could repeat that, the Senate is not going to pass a climate bill in 2009, OK?

And yet, every day we get a story written as if this is beyond comprehension, only to have a quote from another senator restating the obvious.

"It's common understanding that climate-change legislation will not be brought up on the Senate floor and pass the Senate this year," Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D., Mont., told Dow Jones Newswires.

Baucus said he planned to hold a number of hearings on climate legislation and eventually mark up a bill in his panel. "But I don't know that I can get a bill put together by this year, as important as climate-change legislation is," he said.

Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on jobs on Tuesday. A good summary and some comments can be found at www.farmpolicy.com

Yet, there are people still trying to push a late climate bill. They operate much like a coach on one of those 1-7 NFL teams trying to rally the team to keep playing. Or a fan of one of those teams who for some crazy reason keeps watching them. But I don't know anybody like that.

United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, on Tuesday was the latest to ask the U.S. Senate to pass a climate bill before UN talks on climate in December.

"From what I heard today, there is great support in the Senate for action on climate change," Ban Ki-moon was quoted saying in Associated Press. "I would sincerely hope that the Senate would take necessary action as soon as possible."

His plea makes the second time in as many weeks a world leader has showed up at the Capitol asking for action. Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel made the same case last week.

While the House has passed a climate bill, it was by the thinnest of margins, one to be exact. It passed with 219 votes and needed 218. In an interview last week, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., author of the House climate bill agricultural amendment, dubbed, the Peterson amendment, told Environment & Energy Daily he would vote against a final bill, even though he voted for the House version.

Peterson told E&E "he considers his work on the bill done: He has no interest in working to advance climate legislation further," the article stated.

"Do I care? No," he said of the bill's passage.

Food Fight

The Guardian in England is looking this week at the "fight over the future of food" which examines the conflicts of demands for higher food production and need for a new "Green Revolution," in contrast to resistance in some countries to biotechnology. That includes growing resistance to technology in the United States as well.

http://www.mg.co.za/…

I can be found on Twitter at chrisclaytonDTN.