European officials said Thursday, November 5 they were now striving for a political agreement instead of a new treaty to allow the U.S. and other rich nations to make commitments that are not legally binding. That announcement is said to be “an implicit admission of defeat” as the treaty had been due to be completed in December at a 192-nation conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In the Senate, potential Senate Republican backers of climate legislation say the decision Thursday by Environment and Public Works Committee Democrats to report a bill under protest from all GOP panelists might have essentially killed it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) who will likely put together a final bill to send to the floor said the product from Boxer’s panel “will be the base of the bill.”

One of the arguments Senator Boxer has made about not doing a fuller EPA analysis before the bill was reported out was that that was not done before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee marked up and approved a bill this year that Reid will merge with a cap-and-trade strategy.

The Energy and Natural Resources Committee is holding a hearing next week on options to mitigate climate change beyond the cap-and-trade programs that would be established in the Kerry-Boxer and House-passed bills.