Temperature records continue to fall across the country. In Washington D.C., which experienced it’s warmest June on record, Senators are picking up the debate on the climate change bill. While temperatures warm, glaciers melt, and sea level rises, there is little hope of that the bill will receive the necessary votes to prevent it from being stalled.
Paul Krugman of the New York Times asks why the climate bill died. His answer: few legitimate doubts about the science remain, and the scientists and the economics weren’t to blame. Rather, greed and cowardice killed action on the climate change legislation. The whole world, he warns, will pay the price.
Writing in the New York Times, Lee Wasserman, the Rockefeller Family Fund head, ascribes failure of the cimate bill to four threads: focussing on green jobs rather than the climate; devising a bill for polluters, not the American people; making it too complicated; and failing to win people’s support for it.
President Obama invited 23 senators last Tuesday to the White House to discuss energy policy, to no effect. Democrats insisted on pricing greenhouse gas emissions; Republicans insisted such a “tax” would wreck the economy. Various senators suggested approaches; Mr. Obama listened but endorsed none.
President Obama recently said he would fight for passage of the climate/energy bill. Today he began keeping that promise, threatening to veto Senator Lisa Murkowski’s (R, Alaska) resolution preventing the E.P.A. from regulating greenhouse gases. A statement sets forth the White House position.
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President Obama signalled at a speech Wednesday that he would push for passage of the Clean Energy Bill this year. As the Gulf spill has focussed attention on the costs of the nation’s dependency on oil, many have urged the President to advocate a clean energy future. Now he has begun to do so.
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Andy Revkin here reflects on the opportunity President Obama has to set the nation the goal of achieving new oil and energy futures. At stake are the environment, the economy, and the climate. All will depend on meeting this test as the U.S. did President Kennedy’s challenge of reaching the moon.
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Tom Friedman in his New York Times column says that President Obama disappoints by failing to lead on energy. The Gulf oil spill gives Obama an opportunity to ask the American people for sacrifice, something only possible after a catastrophe. Friedman urges: Don’t squander your 9/11 moment, Mr. President.
The climate bill just introduced includes $2 billion to make coal cleaner through carbon capture projects. In this New York Times article, Robert Bryce cites three problems: capturing the CO2 can cut plant output by 28%; taxpayers would bear most of the cost; and the public would oppose the needed pipelines.
In this instalment of NYT’s Room for Debate series, five commentators from all sides of the spectrum weigh in on the chances for passage of the Senate climate bill authored by Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman. It’s no surprise that their views of the odds vary as widely as their perspectives.