With the Obama Administration focusing on passing health care legislation as its No. 1 priority and financial services overhaul as its second goal, the future of climate change legislation and carbon trading looks uncertain, at least for 2010.In a video interview, Editor-at-Large Ivy Schmerken spoke with Larry Tabb, founder and CEO of Tabb Group, about the likelihood of the U.S. Senate passing climate change legislation this year, and how the financial industry would react to carbon trading as a new asset class.

"Copenhagen didn't go the way people were expecting. The outcome of Copenhagen was not as extensive as people were looking for," said Tabb in the interview, referring to the conference on climate change that failed to pass a global framework for reducing carbon. While Tabb believes market participants would react well to having carbon trading as another asset class, he sees problems with getting the law passed in Congress, which would require it to issue the pollution credits and essentially levy a tax on a certain class of companies, such as utilities, that are the heaviest producers of carbon.

The other problem is the election of Democrat Scott Brown in Massachusetts. With Brown, a Republican taking the 60th senate seat, Tabb said the Republicans could filibuster the bill. "From a practical purpose, trying to create a market-driven trading environment for pollution rights is a great idea. That said, I'm not sure that we're seeing critical mass to actually make this go forward. I'm not sure we'll actually get the regulation we need to do this," said Tabb in the interview.

In a video interview, Editor-at-Large Ivy Schmerken spoke with Larry Tabb, founder and CEO of Tabb Group, about the likelihood of the U.S. Senate passing climate change legislation this year.