Comprehensive climate legislation is finally being subjected to debate in the House energy committee this week, but Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA,7) is taking to the blogs to defend his own climate proposal. McDermott says his plan provides more stability than the cap and trade program established in the energy committee bill.

McDermott is taking up the cause of the pro-cap, anti-trade crowd both in his own Ways and Means Committee, which McDermott's office tells me will produce its own climate legislation this session, and in this editorial, published yesterday on The Huffington Post.

Technically, McDermott's plan is a permit system, but whether it is really all that different from a carbon tax--which most legislators agree is politically unfeasible in the current economic climate--is a little less clear. McDermott's plan appears to differ from a carbon tax only in its minor operating procedures--instead of Congress setting a flat tax rate, the Treasury sets a rolling permit price schedule--and effectively takes the keys to lowering emissions out of the market's hands, as a cap and trade system would have it, and putting them into the government's.