That means that Boxer will stay on as the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Here’s what I had to say about Boxer in my midterm energy/climate preview:

[Boxer] has been a key player in drafting climate change legislation (remember the Kerry-Boxer bill?). But amid accusations that she is too partisan, Boxer played a largely behind-the-scenes role in the most recent Senate run at climate change legislation. Instead, a bipartisan trio of lawmakers — Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and, for a while a least, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — took the lead.

“I ask that you hold off for the time being on pulling away any resources from the Gulf of Mexico — including individuals that would have to spend time drafting testimony and preparing for questions,” he wrote in a letter to [Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.)]. “Until we are comfortable that pulling people and resources away from the incident is appropriate and won’t jeopardize the ongoing cleanup and coastal protection operation, I ask with the utmost sincerity that the committee wait at least a couple more weeks before holding hearings.”

There’s no indication that Boxer has scheduled such an examination. But the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which had originally scheduled a hearing on the spill this Thursday, has pushed back that gathering to next Tuesday.

The announcement is good news for environmentalists, who watched House lawmakers pass a comprehensive (if watered down) climate change bill over the summer, only to see the Senate dragging its feet even to unveil a bill.

That, Boxer says, is about to change. “Momentum for this effort is growing every day,” she said in a statement, “and we are broadening and deepening our coalition with each step in the process.”

The first day’s testimony, scheduled for Oct. 27, will feature Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Witnesses on the 28th and 29th have yet to be named.

The committee will mark up the bill “as soon as possible after our hearings,” Boxer said.

The powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee reportedly wants to author the allocations portion of a cap-and-trade policy, but so far he’s been wrapped up in health care policy. His committee has held just one hearing on climate policy so far this year, one that Baucus did not attend due to commitments on health care. And while he wants to stake a claim on climate policy, he’s made it clear that he won’t get to it until after health care. “We’ve got health care. It’s going to take up most of the month. It’s going to be difficult to also do [climate],” he told reporters.

The real question is how much leeway Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will give him. Reid originally set a Sept. 18 deadline for committee work on the climate bill, which he pushed back to Sept. 28. But now Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee that has jurisdiction over the majority of climate policy, has said she won’t have her bill ready to be introduced until “later in September.”

Boxer has said that she intends to present and pass a comprehensive bill – with the allocations portion included – out of her committee, and let Baucus author his own if he so chooses. She told reporters in August that her staff is not working with Baucus’ to craft the allocations portion.

“I welcome all the committees to write whatever parts of the bill they feel they have jurisdiction over,” Boxer said in August. “I am happy to see all the committees getting involved. And then Harry Reid is going to take all the bills.”

There has been no official word yet from Reid on whether there will be a new deadline for committee work that Boxer and Baucus, and up to four other committees that have some jurisdiction, will be expected to meet. Reid’s office has only put out an official statement thus far acknowledging the delay in EPW and arguing that Reid still “fully expects the Senate to have ample time to consider this comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation before the end of the year.”

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But you’d be wrong.

Asked yesterday by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) if the House-passed climate change bill contains enough funding for public transit, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood appeared to have no opinion whatsoever. “We’ll be happy to consult with you on this,” LaHood told lawmakers on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “As soon as you know what direction you want to take we’ll be there with whatever technical assistance we can provide to ya.”

It’s a curious response, if only because LaHood’s opening statement was a five-minute plea for a greater emphasis on public transit as a key component of tackling climate change. Sure, Congress will have the final say on the bill, but that wasn’t what Carper was asking. He was asking for guidance so that lawmakers would know what direction they want to take. Instead, LaHood punted, applying no pressure on the lawmakers drafting the bill.

Carper, it turns out, had good reason for choosing his question: He’s the lead sponsor of a bill that would dedicate 10 percent of cap-and-trade allowances to fund public transportation, bike paths and other green-travel initiatives. By contrast, the climate change bill that passed the House last month includes only 1 percent for public transit.

The Senate’s climate change proposal is expected for release in September.

Enter Common Cause, which, using figures gathered from Senate documents and the Center for Responsive Politics, reveals today that the gas, oil, mining and electric interests have combined to spend nearly $24 million lobbying Congress on the bill in the first three months of this year alone, while tallying another $4 million on direct campaign contributions over the same span.

“The energy industry is betting millions that they can buy influence in Congress and protect their profits, even if it means blocking an important step towards clean, renewable energy and a healthier planet,” Common Cause President Bob Edgar said in a statement accompanying the report.

House lawmakers passed their version of the controversial cap-and-trade climate bill last month, with Senate leaders hoping to take up their own (yet-unreleased) version later this year, even despite a tight legislative calendar. Leading the Senate charge is Environmental and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who held a hearing earlier this week to guide the direction of the bill.

Proving that the energy industry knows where to turn the screws, members of the EPW panel have received more than $2.1 million in contributions from the oil, gas, mining and electric industries in the last 30 months. Leading the list of recipients is Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), the senior Republican on the panel who for much of this decade fought the idea that global warming is real. Inhofe has toned down his message over the years — at this week’s hearing he merely accused Democrats of “subsidizing the East and West coasts at the expense of the heartland” — but his ability to pull in campaign cash from the nation’s biggest polluters has remained constant. Indeed, they’ve given him more than $630,000 since 2007.