Heated responses are coming in about the watered down energy bill Senate leader Harry Reid just buried. Here’s what he said “Over my 40 years in public service, including my time as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I have seen the evolution of public perception and political will on global warming and energy policy. And, of course, we know the cost of inaction. The Gulf oil spill was the most recent warning, but other reminders happen every day. Rising energy costs and our dangerous dependence on foreign oil demonstrate our urgent need for a national clean energy strategy. Democrats are firmly committed to achieving this goal. I had hoped Republicans would be equally committed; it is, after all, their future, too. I had hoped they would join us to see where we could find common ground. Senator John Kerry has worked harder than I’ve ever seen a senator work to bring them along. But they have decided, en bloc, to block sensible legislation that reduces pollution and lowers carbon emissions. They have chosen short-term political gains over solving our country’s long-term energy challenges. They might think that strategy will pay political dividends in November, but down the road we’ll all be paying for our inaction.
For long-standing supporters of comprehensive clean energy legislation — and I include myself in that camp — this development was undeniably disappointing. But it is not an excuse to sit on our hands. As Majority Leader, I had a tough call to make: either allow Republicans’ delaying tactics to stop us from doing anything on energy, or do what we can to create green jobs, address the Gulf oil spill and continue to gather support for a comprehensive clean energy bill. I chose the latter option to ensure that these goals can be accomplished now instead of later.”
Josh Harkinson from Mother Jones writes:”The Senate’s climate bill is officially dead. And given that Democrats will almost certainly hold fewer seats in Congress next year, major action on the climate is unlikely to be revived anytime soon. Andrew Revkin, Joe Romm, and Tim Dickinson place a fair share of the blame on Obama. From Dickinson’s widely-quoted Rolling Stone piece yesterday:
Handled correctly, the BP spill should have been to climate legislation what September 11th was to the Patriot Act, or the financial collapse was to the bank bailout. Disasters drive sweeping legislation, and precedent was on the side of a great leap forward in environmental progress. In 1969, an oil spill in Santa Barbara, California – of only 100,000 barrels, less than the two-day output of the BP gusher – prompted Richard Nixon to create the EPA and sign the Clean Air Act. But the Obama administration let the opportunity slip away.
Early on, Obama failed to challenge blowhards such as Senator Jim Inhofe who distorted the science of global warming. Revkin points out that the president has not invited researchers and climate analysts to the White House (as even Bush did). And after BP’s well blew out, Obama’s infamously milquetoast address from the Oval Office never connected the disaster with the need for a cap on carbon. All of this wasn’t for a lack of pressure from his allies. Nine high-profile environmental groups wrote a letter to the president pleading that “nothing less than your direct personal involvement” will break the logjam in the Senate. Al Gore ultimately said what Obama wouldn’t: Placing a limit on global-warming pollution and accelerating the deployment of clean energy technologies is the only truly effective long-term solution to this crisis. Now it is time for the Senate to act. In the midst of the greatest environmental disaster in our history, there is no excuse to do otherwise.
Of course, there’s always an excuse in Washington. Voting for a climate bill might hurt the reelection prospects of swing-state Democrats. The Senate, exhausted in the wake of its tough votes heath care and financial reform, might have never overcome a filibuster. And, to be fair, Obama has already done more for the climate than any president before him. But no matter: The confluence of a huge Democratic congressional majority and a huge ecological catastrophe wrought by the fossil fuel industry could have presented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rewrite the rules of climate politics. With a little bit of leadership. Unfortunately, a little bit of leadership on the climate is more than we’ve got right now.”
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins CEO, Green For All “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate will not pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation.
The American people need and deserve a climate and energy bill that makes a real difference in fighting climate change while creating jobs that will help pull the economy out of recession. American policy can be smart enough to help the country now while protecting our children and our grandchildren. And we refuse to hand over the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency to big polluters in hopes that it will be enough to buy baby steps towards a clean-energy future.
It is heartbreaking to see our elected officials in Washington, D.C., let the American people down. It is just as heartbreaking that we as an environmental movement have, quite simply, failed to get the job done.
This must serve as a personal wake-up call to all of us. America will not break its addiction to fossil fuels until we all change our own behavior. And the environmental movement needs to rouse people to make that change. Our movement needs to reflect the hearts, minds, and interests of everyday Americans.
Until we can craft clean-energy policy that inspires both the struggling white coal miner in West Virginia and the black mother with two asthmatic children in South Central Los Angeles, our movement will not be able to lead the country the way it needs us to.”