The latest talk on the Hill has it that climate legislation has no chance this year, given the bandwidth consumed by high jobless numbers, financial reform, a healthcare debate hanging around like an unwanted in-law, and the starboard turn of 2010 electoral politics.
The conventional wisdom is that the Senate will settle for a small-bore, energy-only bill and call it a day.
Senator Lindsey Graham, who articulates the energy stakes facing America better than anyone in government today, slapped that notion down hard in a February 3 talk to business leaders visiting D.C.:
If the approach is to try to pass some half-assed energy bill and say that’s moving the ball down the road, forget it with me.
Senator Graham, who’s out on a precarious limb negotiating a climate and energy deal that can seize 60 votes, is not in the Rahm-like habit of indulging casually in crude metaphors. There was good reason, however, for him to push the needle into the vocabulary red zone.
Looking left, he sees calcium dissolving around the Democrats’ spinal cords.
Looking right, he sees my way or the highway Republicans who need reminding that they’re still 19 votes short of being able to dictate energy policy entirely on their terms.
Out in blogland and talk radio, the climate change debate has taken on quasi-theological overtones – angels-dancing-on-pinheads food fights about climatology esoterica that most in the political and media worlds are spectacularly unqualified to pass definitive judgment on.
If Frank Luntz’s latest poll is on the mark, such squabbles are a sideshow to workaday worries about jobs, clean air, and freeing America from Middle Eastern oil – the cash register of terrorism.
Luntz’s numbers show that if people were convinced that a climate and energy package could solve those problems, they would be inclined to back it – regardless of what they believe about climate change.
The road forward on jobs, energy security, and environmental stewardship, Graham is telling anyone who will listen, is a grand bargain on climate and energy.
Given the Senate’s makeup, the grand bargain necessarily would have to include elements that the purity potentates at both ends of the spectrum wouldn’t care for.
Democrats would have to swallow more nuclear power incentives and expanded production of domestic fossil fuels. The MoveOn legions already have commenced baying at the prospect.
Republicans would have to accept a price on carbon emissions. Watch for veins to start throbbing in many temples within the Tea Party brigades.
The linchpin of the deal that Graham wants is the carbon price, which would serve as a driver for expanding nuclear power, cleaning up coal, and diversifying America’s energy portfolio, thus spurring economic growth and lessening the strategic liabilities of oil dependence.
As he put it in his talk to the business leaders: “I don’t think you’ll ever have energy independence the way I want it until you start dealing with carbon pollution and pricing carbon. The two are connected in my view – very much connected.”
A grand bargain, by definition, could only work as a package deal. Graham knows how tempting it would be for lawmakers to talk themselves into playing small ball – picking the issue apart, settling for the easy stuff, eating dessert, passing on the vegetables, and saving the unpopular decisions for mythical future lawmakers who supposedly will have the will and willingness to play the long game that the present generation supposedly lacks.
If Congress yields to that temptation, then watch China run up the score in creating jobs, industries, and export opportunities in energy technology, Graham warns: “Every day we wait in this nation, China is going to eat our lunch.”
And, Graham might have added, don’t count on China being half-assed about it.
9 responses so far
1 sinz54 // Feb 8, 2010 at 9:24 am
Climate-change is the most difficult part of Obama’s agenda to pass, now that the Dems lost their supermajority in the Senate.
Because it’s the only issue that the Repubs refuse to believe is a real problem.
Ask Repubs about health care, and most of them will agree it needs reform (though they disagree sharply with the Dems about what types of reform).
Ask Repubs about immigration, and they will agree it needs reform too (though again, their prescriptions are different from the Dems).
But many Repubs do not believe that anthropogenic global warming is really happening. Many even believe it’s some kind of hoax concocted by Al Gore and left-wingers to hamstring and cripple the United States.
And that view is reflected in the public opinion polls. Roughly half of Americans don’t believe that global warming is real.
You can’t get legislation passed to deal with something that so many folks don’t think is a real problem.
So I don’t see a path to get global warming legislation passed. Certainly not this year, when many incumbent Dems have tough fights for re-election.
2 DG // Feb 8, 2010 at 5:34 pm
sinz54 is incorrect.
Climate change action is not a partisan issue.
Conservatives from Newt Gingrich to John McCain (remember McCain/Lieberman cap and trade bill?), and the majority of thinking people understand the consequences. A small minority typically with other agendas are in denial or skeptical.
The U.S. military views climate change as a significant threat to national security. The new quadrenial review will outline the threats even more clearly than the last.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/13/us-dealing-with-security-concerns-from-change-in-c/
The SEC is requiring businesses to state their climate change plans. The EPA is bound by the Supreme Court to regulate and no matter how many votes the Murkowski efforts garner, Obama will not sign it.
Any businesses expecting to work in Europe and pretty much the rest of the countries in the world (except the U.S. Somalia and Cuba) will have to address their carbon pollution. That does not leave many trading partners for this country does it?
There are real controversies in policy areas that need to be discussed.
3 DG // Feb 8, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Oh, sorry, I missed a few countries in the list of dissenters from the Copenhagen Accord:
To date, one nation (Cuba) has informed the United Nations that it will not be a party to the Copenhagen Accord. Cuba was one of the five nations that openly dissented and therefore prevented the adoption of the Copenhagen Accord by consensus, (the other vocal dissenters being Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Sudan).
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=971fd952-5c7a-4857-91a2-43d64a0cdd38
Strange bedfellows indeed!
4 kevin47 // Feb 8, 2010 at 9:26 pm
It’s kind of a perfect storm (no pun intended) for Democrats on global warming.
For starters, they misread the public’s attitude toward the issue. They anticipated a strong backlash from the business community, and so geared their cap and trade legislation so as to pass the cost directly to consumers. Not sure this was going to fly anyway, but certainly not when corporations and governments are seen by both sides of the aisle as conspiring to shirk any accountability.
Then we had Climategate, which called into question that which the public was beginning to accept as settled. The import of the e-mails as it related to AGW has been debated ad nauseum, but the left did a very poor job of framing the issue. Dismissing the e-mails left the impression that this is simply business as usual, that the consensus under-girding environmental policy was consistently impaired by naked self interest.
Part of the reason the story was left to simmer is that the Dems crafted cap and trade legislation, and left it on the back burner while they focused on health care reform. That was dumb, and served to impair health care reform efforts as well.
Copenhagen was problematic on a couple of fronts. First of all, and this is a broader issue, I don’t think Americans like the idea of crafting legislation abroad. It makes it seems as though other nations are dictating our policies to us.
Second, the fact that China basically ruled the roost at Copenhagen made any reform efforts seem futile. People aren’t going to buy into a trillion dollar cap and trade package if that the impact of the reforms will be rendered moot by larger, developing nations who refuse to adopt the same policies.
Third, Copenhagen occurred at the onset of one of the wildest winters in memory. It is easier to gin up hysteria about the warming Earth when localized phenomena (such as hurricanes) can be tied to AGW.
It has nothing to do with Republicans thinking Al Gore invented global warming. If that is how environmentalists continue to regard opposition to their ideas, they will be blindsided by each and every new impediment they encounter.
5 kevin47 // Feb 8, 2010 at 9:39 pm
“Conservatives from Newt Gingrich to John McCain (remember McCain/Lieberman cap and trade bill?), and the majority of thinking people understand the consequences.”
I do remember the McCain/Lieberman bill. It was criticized by the left as a paean to corporate interests, and rightly so. This bill is quite a bit worse in that regard.
6 balconesfault // Feb 9, 2010 at 1:31 am
They anticipated a strong backlash from the business community, and so geared their cap and trade legislation so as to pass the cost directly to consumers.
There are only two ways to reduce carbon emissions.
1) Increase costs via taxes and let the marketplace pass costs through to the consumers … who will reduce consumption in response to costs.
2) Proscriptive limits on carbon emissions, which will result in driving up consumer costs thanks to the laws of supply and demand
Costs were always going to be passed through to consumers. Because without rationing, which would be insane, consumers won’t reduce consumption without price increases.
That’s why I laugh each time I hear people talk about passing back money gained from carbon taxes to consumers in tax rebates. Which of course would largely eliminate thir motivation to reduce fuel/power consumption, and thus undermine whatever you were trying to accomplish with the tax in the first place.
The import of the e-mails as it related to AGW has been debated ad nauseum, but the left did a very poor job of framing the issue.
There is no “left” to act as a point spokesman for this issue and thereby frame it.
, I don’t think Americans like the idea of crafting legislation abroad. It makes it seems as though other nations are dictating our policies to us.
Yeah? After increasing our debt to China tenfold during the last Administration, with no real way to wean ourselves from the Chinese financing our debt in the short term … we might as well get used to it.
Although we will be able to have the consolation of China increasingly buying American subsidiaries who will interject themselves into the American political process via massive political advertising, so eventually their concerns will become incorporated in our decision-making without any need for messy summits and treaties.
7 kevin47 // Feb 9, 2010 at 6:58 am
“Costs were always going to be passed through to consumers.”
While this is true of any tax, the way in which this bill is structured has clearly presented a political problem. The only way the left can pass this is to pretend it won’t cost anything. But yes, I agree with you.
“There is no “left” to act as a point spokesman for this issue and thereby frame it.”
There is always a left. At present, it is approximately, albeit imperfectly, represented by the Democratic party, which failed to frame the issue.
“Yeah? After increasing our debt to China tenfold during the last Administration, with no real way to wean ourselves from the Chinese financing our debt in the short term … we might as well get used to it.”
This overblown, but were it so, it represents a poor argument for outsourcing our environmental policy to Europe.
8 balconesfault // Feb 9, 2010 at 7:41 am
There is always a left. At present, it is approximately, albeit imperfectly, represented by the Democratic party, which failed to frame the issue.
Data handling and e-mails by researchers in Great Britain are not really under the control of the Democratic Party, despite what many pundits may tell you. Personally, I’m concerned enough about the last decade being the warmest in recorded history, and the worldwide significant reductions in major glaciers which provide critical water supplies.
This overblown, but were it so, it represents a poor argument for outsourcing our environmental policy to Europe.
There are many of us who believe that working in concert with the rest of the developed world on climate change legislation is in our best interests.
“Outsourcing our environmental policy to Europe” is a slogan, pure and simple – and one that reeks of know-nothingness.
9 kevin47 // Feb 9, 2010 at 8:17 am
“Data handling and e-mails by researchers in Great Britain are not really under the control of the Democratic Party, despite what many pundits may tell you.”
Nope, but Cap and Trade is, and they are the ones charged with defending the bill on its merits.
“Personally, I’m concerned enough about the last decade being the warmest in recorded history, and the worldwide significant reductions in major glaciers which provide critical water supplies.”
I’m sure you are, but you are not the one who needs to be persuaded.
“There are many of us who believe that working in concert with the rest of the developed world on climate change legislation is in our best interests.”
Indeed, but again, you are not the one who needs to be persuaded.
““Outsourcing our environmental policy to Europe” is a slogan, pure and simple – and one that reeks of know-nothingness.”
Yep. It’s a slogan, just like “accepting settled science” is a slogan. The former is more compelling than the latter, was my point.
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