QUICK NEWS, 8-9: ON THE NO-ENERGY BILL, 1; ON THE NO-ENERGY BILL, 2; ON THE NO-ENERGY BILL, 3; ON THE NO-ENERGY BILL, 4

ON THE NO-ENERGY BILL, 1
We’re Hot as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take It Any More; Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming
Bill McKibben, August 4, 2010 (TomDispatch)

"Try to fit these facts together…According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record…[A] study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950…Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.

"…And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have -- they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action…I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy."

click thru for more on the movement

"For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a great debt, and not just for their hard work. We owe them a debt because they did everything the way you’re supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn…[T]hat was not enough…[N]ow we know what we didn’t before: making nice doesn’t work…

"…I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that “green jobs” polled better than “cutting carbon.”…In the end, though, all these focus-group favorites are secondary. The task at hand is keeping the planet from melting. We need everyone -- beginning with the president -- to start explaining that basic fact at every turn…Energy independence is nice, but you need a planet to be energy independent on…Mysteriously enough, this seems to be a particularly hard point for smart people to grasp…"

click thru for more on the day of action

"…If we’re going to slow global warming in the very short time available to us, then we don’t actually need an incredibly complicated legislative scheme…[and if] we’re going to get any of this done, we’re going to need a movement, the one thing we haven’t had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we’d get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways…[don’t work]…That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work.We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we’ll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion…

"The big environmental groups are starting to wake up, too. The Sierra Club…[is] working hard with stalwarts like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth…Churches are getting involved, as well as mosques and synagogues. Kids are leading the fight, all over the world -- they have to live on this planet for another 70 years or so, and they have every right to be pissed off…But no one will come out to fight for watered down and weak legislation…We may need to get arrested. We definitely need art, and music, and disciplined, nonviolent, but very real anger…Mostly, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we’ve got. It’s not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we’re going to have to raise our voices."


ON THE NO-ENERGY BILL, 2
Four Ways to Kill a Climate Bill
Lee Wasserman, July 25, 2010 (NY Times)

"IF President Obama and Congress had announced that no financial reform legislation would pass unless Goldman Sachs agreed to the bill, we would conclude our leaders had been standing in the Washington sun too long. Yet when it came to addressing climate change, that is precisely the course the president and Congress took…[They wove] four coordinated threads into a shroud of inaction…"

[Thread No. 1: Climate is out; green jobs are in:] "…Carol Browner, the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy… told climate bill advocates that, given the polling, they should avoid talking about climate change and focus on green jobs and energy independence… [O]ur national comprehension of climate change continues to stagnate. Virtually the only public officials working to shape opinion on this over the past two years have been those committed to misrepresenting the science."

Just because legislation succumbed to electioneering is no reason to impugn then very important construct. (click to enlarge)

[Thread No. 2: Devising a bill for historic polluters, not the American people:] "...[T]he Beltway wisdom has been that it is impossible to pass a bill without the approval of historic polluters, particularly the utilities, which run coal-burning power plants, the nation’s single largest source of climate-changing pollution. The administration and Congress did their best to get the industry’s permission for new regulations. They proposed handing power companies hundreds of billions of dollars worth of allowances to pollute, additional billions to subsidize the development of technology to sequester carbon from coal-fired plants, and evisceration of federal authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon…[But] it wasn’t enough."

click thru for more info

[Thread No. 3: A Rube Goldberg-policy construction:] "… Because Congress built a policy machine designed for special interests, most proposals were chockablock with policy contraptions impossible to even explain, much less put into effect. Provisions included pollution allowances for favored corporations, carbon credit-default swaps, complicated worldwide offset provisions…and loopholes to extend the life of the dirtiest coal plants… This rush to the trough was inevitable once President Obama ditched his plan to push a simple market-based bill that would have required polluters, rather than citizens, to pay for switching from fossil fuels to [New Energy]…"

[Thread No. 4: The public sits it out:] "…American history has few examples of presidents or Congresses upending entrenched interests without public pressure forcing their hand… Citizens wouldn’t support an approach they couldn’t understand to solve a problem our leaders refused to acknowledge. Even the earth’s flagging ability to support life as we know it couldn’t stir a public outcry. The loudest voices insisted that leaders in Washington do nothing…They obliged."


ON THE NO-ENERGY BILL, 3
The Dems’ Climate Change Fail
David Jenkins, July 26, 2010 (FrumForum)

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s recent announcement that the Senate will not take up a comprehensive energy and climate bill this year is the inevitable result of Reid and President Obama failing to lead on the issue and squandering one opportunity after another.

"In what might be described as the “audacity of nope,” the White House bristled at criticism that the president had not been engaged enough in the effort and lashed out at the environmental community…[but the] sad reality is that neither the President nor the Majority Leader ever got behind any specific approach or piece of legislation…The White House is lamely blaming lobbyists for not doing the president’s job of specifying what he wants and securing votes to drive his proposal to passage… Reid focused his ire on Republicans…[He]should review his office’s news clippings."

click to enlarge

"In April, as Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) were about to unveil their bi-partisan bill, Reid blindsided the trio by suggesting that he wanted to put climate on hold and move immigration reform to the top of the agenda...Graham, who was also putting together an immigration reform bill for next year with Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), saw that Reid and the White House were playing political games and withdrew from the climate effort.

"Another Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, is co-sponsor of a bipartisan cap-and-dividend climate bill with Maria Cantwell (D-WA)…Neither of these bills had clear support from President Obama and Senator Reid. Neither Obama nor Reid has said much of anything about the Collins-Cantwell bill, the only bipartisan bill in the hopper."

click to enlarge

"Instead of getting behind a specific bill, Obama and Reid spoke in generalities and stood on the sideline…trying to gauge…[where there were] 60 votes…What kind of leadership is that?..[and] letting everything from healthcare to financial reform leap ahead of [the climate and energy bill] on the schedule.

"…[T]his prevented the Democrat caucus from being unified on an energy and climate strategy…Democrats in the Senate were undisciplined in both purpose and message…[It is] true that most Republicans remain opposed to putting a price on carbon pollution…[but there are] Republicans willing to work constructively to pass a climate bill... Much of the blame for failing to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation properly rests with a risk-averse President and Majority Leader…"


ON THE NO-ENERGY BILL, 4
There Will Be An Energy Bill...soon
Joe Klein, July 23, 2010 (Time Magazine)

"Why [will there be a energy bill soon]? Because there is a Supreme Court ruling, now three years old, that carbon dioxide is a poison that needs to be cleaned up. Next year, the Environmental Protection Agency will begin regulating the hell out of Co2. The business community won't like that, nor will many Republicans. [and an energy bill putting a price on carbon is the only alternative]…

"…Senator Maria Cantwell…has offered a [Cap and Dividend] bill--with Maine Republican Susan Collins as co-sponsor--that would force the 2000 top polluters to participate in an auction to purchase the right to spew; 75% of the income would be returned as a "dividend" to taxpayers, the other 25% would go to alternative energy… Senator Lindsey Graham…[recently] said he was certain that more than a few of his Republican colleagues would vote for putting a price on carbon…"

click to enlarge

"And so…[the pulling of [Senate] environmental legislation should be considered a pre-election maneuver. Given a choice between taxes and potentially punitive regulations, the wise--the more elegant; the less expensive--choice is a tax every time…

"…It is an essential conservative principle: you tax the things you want to discourage. Pollution is certainly one; dependence on foreign fossil fuels is another--and that's why I hope the next iteration of energy legislation is called: The National Defense Conservation Act."