Do dust-ups in the blogosphere offer any insight to the fate of real-world policies? On cap and trade, I think the answer is “yes.” Specifically, the travails of Waxman-Markey (W-M) cheerleader number 1 – Joe Romm – provides some insights as to how difficult a pill W-M has come to be for the progressive community.

In his latest public display of conflicted views on W-M Romm flip-flops again once again. In the process he ties himself in a funny-looking knot while giving me a cute new nickname, which I like much better than (“delayer 1000-eq”).

His contortions have not gone unnoticed, e.g., by the FT Energy Source which sees Joe being called out by his “friends” as a sign of dissension within the environmental blogosphere.

Keith Kloor has some fun with Joe’s flip-flops and calls him out for going “all in” on W-M:

Upset that some critics have accused him of “cheerleading” the WM bill, Romm is now flailing away, lashing out in typical, unseemly asides at all his usual bogeymen. More bizarrely, Romm is trying to convince his readers (and himself?) that he’s always been upfront about how foul-smelling the WM bill really is. Well, for those who care to follow it, here’s the paper trail:

May 12: “How I learned to stop worrying and love Waxman-Markey, part 2: In praise of domestic offsets.”

May 17: “…what it actually does is enact into law a sweeping clean energy revolution that puts the nation on a path to virtually eliminate global warming pollution from the entire economy in four decades.”

May 21: “House committee approves landmark (bipartisan!) clean energy and climate bill…”

June 1: “No, I’m not a cheerleader for this weak, cheerless bill.”

On a related note, it’s fascinating to watch Romm dig a hole for himself with comments like this, also from his recent tangential post:

To be clear, my perspective is that the chances of avoiding catastrophic climate change if Waxman-Markey dies is zero…

Now Romm has previously admitted that the odds are against this bill getting through the House and Senate. So what happens if the WM bill does die?

Is that it? Game over? Romm closes shop, and we wait for doomsday? There’s really no getting around zero. But if this bill goes down, you can bet that Romm will climb out of that hole he built and pretend like nobody saw it happen.

Meantime, back in the real world Congress is considering whether or not to bring Waxman-Markey to the floor for a full House debate before July 4. The hand wringing in the blogosphere coupled with the fact that some environmental groups have already removed their support for the bill suggests to me that the bill’s support among the progressive community rests upon a very unstable foundation.

Now it may very well be that the support of progressives, much less environmentalists, is no longer of much importance to the passage of Waxman-Markey. After all the bill has been designed to build as broad a constituency as possible by doing nothing much effectively other than moving money around and creating various mechanisms for any pain imposed by the bill to be avoided.

On the other hand, if leading champions of the bill in the environmental community (e.g., NRDC, EDF, etc.) come to decide that the bill has become weakened beyond salvaging or is otherwise no longer worthy of their support, it is possible that the whole process could come tumbling down and the bill gets pulled.

In short, the fate of W-M in the current Congress is highly uncertain with a wide range of outcomes possible. I’d still bet that the House passes something this year, but the odds of the environmental and broader progressive communities liking what results are trending down quickly.