Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend that Democrats still may take up a comprehensive climate-change plan after the November elections.
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KERRY: But let me just say to you it is not dead, not by any sense of the imagination. First of all, this issue is not going away.
HUNT: Including the possibility of a lame duck session?
KERRY: Including the possibility of a lame duck, sure, absolutely.
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HUNT: Let me get to the president in a moment, but you talked about the Republicans. Fair enough, it is certainly right. But Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Jay Rockefeller -
KERRY: Well, Mary Landrieu is prepared to be supportive. And others are prepared to -
HUNT: But Rockefeller, Nelson, Dorgan -
KERRY: We have a couple of people who don’t support the bill -
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KERRY: You need one or two Democrats. You can’t live in a difficult state and respond to that reality, where others in the country could have stepped up? I do not accept that. We have well over 50 votes, Al, to proceed forward in one fashion or another.
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HUNT: You mentioned the president a moment ago. Some environmentalists have been very critical of the White House for not being aggressive enough on this. What specifically do you want President Obama to do now? You said he has committed to you. What do you want him to do?
KERRY: Well, I think we have to have some key meetings with key players from the utilities and others to bring people together, including senators, to work towards the kind of compromise that is necessary here. People have to know it really counts.
HUNT: And he has to be part of that?
KERRY: People - yes, I believe the White House has to be part of that. He doesn’t have to be part of every meeting. But I think it is important for him to weigh in with some colleagues, to be - even to go to some of the difficult states at the right moment and talk to people about why -
linkWith all the work Senator Kerry has put into this bill and given that he can count more than 50 votes in support (not unlike the health care bill at one point), it's inconceivable that he's going to give up on the effort to pass this. Overcoming a filibuster is likely the chief obstacle.
Still, the media is declaring the bill dead, and it's not just them. Some environmentalists are distraught. From Joe Romm:
Rolling Stone: "Instead of taking the fight to big polluters, President Obama has put global warming on the back burner"<...>
Obama is the first president in history to articulate in stark terms both the why and how of the sustainable clean energy vision. Last April,
he said, “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy.
The choice we face is between prosperity and decline.” In October, he
said at MIT, “There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs.”
Pretty (harsh) words. But the question now is whether he really believed what he said. On the one hand, he made bigger investments in clean energy than all of his predecessors combined and put into place fuel economy standards that represent the biggest greenhouse gas reductions in US history and his EPA has declared carbon dioxide a pollutant that must be regulated because it endangers public health and he personally intervened to stop the Chinese from making Copenhagen a total failure. These are major achievements that under any other circumstances would make Obama the greenest president in US history.
But on the other hand — or really it is the other hand, heart, brain, and rest of body — he has let any chance of comprehensive climate legislation die without a fight. Many of us have documented this emerging story piece by piece over at past year, but Rolling Stone puts it all together:
A comprehensive energy and climate bill – the centerpiece of President Obama’s environmental agenda – is officially dead. Take it from the president’s own climate czar, Carol Browner. “What is abundantly clear,” she told Rolling Stone in an exclusive interview on July 8th, “is that an economy-wide program, which the president has talked about for years now, is not doable in the Senate.”
But the failure to confront global warming – central not only to Obama’s presidency but to the planet itself – is not the Senate’s alone. Rather than press forward with a climate bill in the Senate last summer, after the House had passed landmark legislation to curb carbon pollution, the administration repeated many of the same mistakes it made in pushing for health care reform. It refused to lay out its own plan, allowing the Senate to bicker endlessly over the details. It pursued a “stealth strategy” of backroom negotiations, supporting huge new subsidies to win over big polluters. It allowed opponents to use scare phrases like “cap and tax” to hijack public debate. And most galling of all, it has failed to use the gravest environmental disaster in the nation’s history to push through a climate bill – to argue that fossil-fuel polluters should pay for the damage they are doing to the atmosphere, just as BP will be forced to pay for the damage it has done to the Gulf.
Top environmental groups, including Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, are openly clashing with the administration, demanding that Obama provide more hands-on leadership to secure a meaningful climate bill. “We really need the president to take the lead and tell us what bill he’s going to support,” says Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund. “If he doesn’t do that, then everything he’s done so far will lead to nothing.”
But Obama, so far, has shown no urgency on the issue, and little willingness to lead – despite a June poll showing that 76 percent of Americans believe the government should limit climate pollution.
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UPDATE: For the sake of completeness and so as not to be misunderstood by those who aren’t regular readers and didn’t see my June 30 post (”
Republicans demagogue against market-oriented climate measures they once supported“),
most of the blame should go to the
anti-science, pro-pollution ideologues. They have spread disinformation and poisoned the debate so that is no longer even recognizable. Who could have guessed just a couple of years ago, that the GOP champion of climate action would now trash a bill considerably weaker than the one he tried to pass twice? (see
Rolling Stone on “The Climate Killers: 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb the climate catastrophe.”)
And if you are keeping score at home in the blame game,
the media is the second most culpable group for their generally enabling coverage — see
Must-read (again) study: How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress.” along with
And the 2009 “Citizen Kane” award for non-excellence in climate journalism goes to …Those two groups deserve about 90% of the blame (60-30?), I think (assuming that we assume the 60 vote antidemocratic super majority requirement is unchangeable). The other 10% goes to Obama and his team (along with Senate Democrats, scientists, environmentalists, and progressives) — and let’s not forget the “Think Small” centrists who also helped shrink the political space in the debate (see “
Michael Lind of the New America Foundation misinforms on both climate science and clean energy“).
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Let's see: "The failed Presidency" of likely "the greenest president in US history" who shares 10 percent of the blame for the bills death (delay).
Gee, you think before the update, the original post was an overreaction?
President Obama is moving on this based in part on the sense of urgency expressed by many. There is no doubt that he doesn't have the passion, conviction and longstanding commitment to this issue that Senator Kerry has. Still, it's likely that Kerry's determination to see this through is keeping the President focused on the issue.
Why Climate Change Legislation is NOT Dead follks!Something is going to happen in 2011 that is going to FORCE the Congress to put a price on carbon and that is that the EPA is going to regulate the HELL out of CO2.
As a result, I wouldn't be surprised if indeed a climate legislation bill will be passed in the lameduck Congressional session because the business community fears the EPA's regulation MORE than a price on carbon.
The Supreme Court ruled 3 years ago that carbon dioxide can be considered a pollutant and can be regulated. In 2011 the EPA is expected to regulate the HELL out of carbon dioxide which will force the business community to make a choice: endure STIFF regulations or make put carbon pricing on the market.
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The downside to this approach is that it's subject the politics of the administration in charge and also to court challenges. Congressional action would be permanent, barring a super majority of climate deniers taking control of Congress.
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