Who Killed the Climate Bill?
The climate bill is kind of like a suffering, wounded dog. You want to believe it's for the best when it's finally put out of its misery, except you wish it just didn't have to go down that like that.
In an unsurprising move, Senate majority leader Harry Reid made it official this afternoon. He announced he would introduce an "admittedly narrow, limited" energy bill that contains no greenhouse gas provisions and maybe even no renewable electricity mandate. The votes, he said, just weren't there.
"It's easy to count to 60," said Reid, according to Politico. "I could do it by the time I was in eighth grade. My point is this, we know where we are. We know we don't have the votes."
Despite tireless climate champion Sen. John Kerry's vague assurances that he will keep negotiating for a cap on carbon emissions at some future point in time, Democrats just gave up on the last, best chance to pass a global warming measure anytime soon. How often does an oil spill Armageddon come along to illustrate why this matters? And the Democrat majority ain't getting any bigger in November, that's for sure.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world gets it. For god's sake, even China -- America's eternally convenient climate punching bag -- is reportedly on the verge of establishing a mandatory carbon trading program by 2015.
Looking for someone to blame for this sad state of affairs? Here are a few options:
1) Beholden Democrats: If Republicans go down in flames together, Dems are the stumbling drunks who wouldn't know party discipline if it hit them upside the head. A few from states such as Louisiana and Nebraska, beholden to their home-state energy interests, balked at any measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Even Sen. Reid screwed things up when he suggested he would make politically convenient (for him) immigration reform a priority over climate. Compared to the House-passed version from a year ago, the failed bill was already watered down to cover only electric utilities -- even that would only secure only some 53 Democrat votes. Hence, we can also blame:
2) Promiscuous Republicans: The John Boehners and James Inhofes of the Senate would probably wait until the Earth looked like it belonged in The Day After Tomorrow before voting for a climate bill. But some more moderate GOPers, notably South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe played coy -- teasing their support for a compromise that they abandoned in the end.
3) Mr. Clean Energy Revolution himself: Green groups have been torn of late about whether to go attack President Obama's lame climate campaign or whether to pull their punches for the best hope they've got. Obama never gave a rousing speech dedicated to climate change and never pulled out the big guns in lobbying for what was supposedly one of his top policy priorities coming into office, as Dot Earth's Andy Revkin sums up so well.
4) Greedy Power Companies: After Big Oil and Big Manufacturing eked out a pass from the climate bill in the end -- it came down to electric utilities, which represent a major portion of U.S. emissions. Would they go-it-alone? Some executives did in fact negotiate in good faith for a bill they could live with. But, sensing their leverage, they also tried to win major exemptions from existing air pollution rules, making the negotiations a tough pill for liberals to swallow in the end.
5) Big Green vs. Grassy Green? The environmental world is increasingly fractured between two camps (see #4 above). Big Green groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, believe the best strategy to win a climate bill is to negotiate politically realistic compromises with energy interests. Grassroots groups such as Greenpeace or 350.org are less willing to settle and believe a push from below is the key missing piece. Both ideally want the same thing in the end, but this division of interests is not helping anyone.
In the end, there is no one person, industry or group who killed this bill. But, I'm honestly disappointed in President Obama for not doing more to back up Sen. Reid. The health care bill and the financial reform bill looked bleak, but in those cases, our leader would not settle for inaction. As always for climate, here's to next year.
Photo Credit: Sister 72, Flickr User
Jess Leber
is a Change.org editor. She most recently covered climate and energy issues as a reporter in Washington, D.C
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