Wanna Strengthen The Climate Bill? Get This One Passed.

As Mother Jones recently chronicled, the environment community is fractured on the House clean energy and climate protection bill, though the bigger pieces -- Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, League of Conservation Voters -- are squarely for it.

Al Gore last night in a open invitation conference call sought to rally activists to call Congress before Friday's House vote and demand passage. But with a fair amount of internal debate persisting about the merits of the bill, along with much of the progressive media infrastructure failing over the last several weeks to highlight the twists and turns of the legislative drama, many progressive citizen-activists have not been especially motivated to engage Congress on climate, if they were even aware that the time was ripe for engagement.

The latest flare-up within the progressive movement is unconfirmed speculation that environmental groups supporting the bill are resisting attempts to try to strengthen the bill on the House floor, for fear that such attempts would threaten the fragile coalition of green-state, coal-state, oil-state, and farm-state Dems needed to attain a majority.

Is this a helpful debate to have right now?

To answer that, first answer this question: do we need a stronger bill with fewer concessions to carbon-polluting industries?

Look at this way. Duke University professor Prasad Kasibhatla concluded that if the rest of world follows our lead after the House bill approach is implemented, we would keep carbon pollution below 450 parts per million. Some scientists say that's enough to avert a climate crisis, while some say we need to reach 350.

In other words, we don't know for sure, but a stronger bill would be the safer route.

So, how best to do that?

Anyone who has closely followed the legislative sausage being made knows the following:

1. Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey had to do Herculean wheelin'-and-dealin' with fossil-fuel lovin' Dems to painstakingly piece together this compromise.

2. They did it without having any grassroots intensity in support of a strong carbon cap to hold skittish congresspeople's feet to the fire. In fact, Waxman and Markey had to do these deals precisely because they had no grassroots political leverage.

Which means pursuing last-minute amendments is futile.

There is zero reason to believe that the coalition could hold if any changes were made to the bill at this point. (Or to be more direct, there is zero reason to believe any amendment that would strengthen the bill would pass in the first place.)

Berating the Big Green groups for being strategic realists is not a useful internal debate to have. Their political calculations are not why the bill required multiple compromises.

The missing ingredient throughout this process has always been grassroots intensity, which has been depressed thanks to the fractured environmental community and lack of attention from both traditional media and progressive media.

You want to set the stage to strengthen the bill? Add that ingredient. Call Congress. Call 877-9-REPOWER. Pass the bill with a burst of grassroots momentum.

Don't sit on your hands and let Waxman and Speaker Pelosi drag the bill over the finish line with a whimper. Send a message to the Senate, where the current bill will face an even rougher road. Let Congress know that voters are watching this vote, and will reward congresspeople who had the vision to combat global warming.

From a political perspective, the details of the compromise don't matter right now. It's simply a global warming bill. And congresspeople are listening to find out if their constituents want a global warming bill, don't want a global warming bill, or don't care one way or another.

The best thing to do right now, is to give Congress the right answer.

Cross-posted at OurFuture.org

Follow Bill Scher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billscher

Comments

[VikThor]

Just wondering.
Have you read all 1000+ pages of this bill?
Or is it 1300+ now?
Which version are you for, since it sounds like you didn't want any further amendments to it?

Has anyone had time to actually READ and UNDERSTAND this whole thing?

1000+, or 1300+, pages is longer than most of my college textbooks were. Usually you have at least a semester to study them.

I admit, I've not read the whole thing.
but some absurdities that have come to light elsewhere:
Controlling what type of lightbulbs used to illuminate artwork in your private home.
Controlling how close you can plant trees to your house. (shouldn't that be LOCAL Zoning regulations??)
Having to fully retrofit a house to meet standards for new houses before you can sell it, even if the buyer recognizes that it is an older house?
(and would this apply to sales of apartment complexes? I've lived in apartments here in Phoenix that had single paned windows. I've had to pay more for electricity, due to that. [and yes, we did run AC pretty much 24/7... then the LOW temperature of the week is in the low 90s, it is pretty much needed. We kept thermostat set @ 80.])

This bill is attempting to do to much MicroManagement of our lives.

[JanBjernfalk]

Lay a cow-pie and then try to polish it later?

Great strategy.

[Lorianne]

Cap-and-trade does more harm than good

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/25-3

[research]

A simple 1$ per ton carbon tax makes much more sense.

[evilconservative]

CO2 is to a large extent, what we exhale. What in the hell is wrong with you people? How is it possible that it is a pollutant? WAKE UP! The "science" of man-made global warming is NOT settled (sorry, Al) and many of the scientists formerly in-line with that dogma are running away from this idiocy. Every country that has enacted legislation similar to the absurd Waxman-Markey legislation are repealing it. It has been a disaster for their economy. Try reading something other than this blog or the NY Times, et al, or watching CNN / MSNBC and you might hear another story.
How can we be so foolish and irresponsible?

[research]

National security is plenty of reason to get off oil and gas and into rooftop solar and biochar.

Mercury pollution mountain top removal etc, damage our people's ability to work, fight and live. so we need to phase out coal as well.

Nukes lead to nuclear proliferation thus nuclear war, so nukes are out.

See my profile for proof.

[NL207]

"National security is plenty of reason ..."

Bankruptcy is plenty of reason not to ....

[research]

rooftop solar is cheaper.

biochar eliminates landfills.

Is that hard for you to understand? Bankruptcy is continuing with fossil and nukes.

[Javani]

"From a political perspective, the details of the compromise don't matter right now. "

I think you are talking to a near empty audience.

I do not know when it all changed. Perhaps this year when people started examining cap and trade.

For the deep believers in the environmentalist grass roots, I think the turning point was Gore's hasty appearance before Congress early this year expressly supporting cap and trade. It was a Shakespearian scale stab in the back to his supporters. For some time they worried whether he was for a carbon tax and against cap and trade. I think this chatter in began in 2006. They searched his writings for answers, swore he was for carbon tax, worried his financial investments boded otherwise.

Then, the great relief. Gore's 2008 video at Monterey addressed his followers' concerns. He flat out came out for revenue-neutral carbon tax. Flat out said it. Then he showed pics of his investments to satisfy concerns--there were windmills and so on--nothing about carbon credit schemes.

His followers were relieved.

But then, when it mattered, he came before congress this year and with a smile stabbed his supporters in the back with support of cap and trade.

Not that many people noticed, mostly his now humbled supporters. And no one else will know, unless they write about it. I felt bad for them, they were sincere, not NGO fronts funded by Wall Street money.

[Bill Scher - Huffpost Blogger]

Gore has never approached carbon cap and carbon tax as an either/or choice. He has explicitly said he is for both.