Let Your Lawmakers Know that the Clock Is Ticking on the Climate Bill

Congress has returned to work on one of the most ambitious legislative agendas we have seen in years. What does this mean for people who support clean energy and climate legislation?

It means the urgency has never been greater. Three forceful deadlines are looming ever closer:

• The Earth's Deadline: Key studies this year have found that global warming is accelerating faster than previously thought and that climate change impacts are already impacting our lives.
• The Economy's Deadline: Despite sightings of green shoots, our economy remains in desperate need of capital investment and job creation--the very things that a climate bill will unleash on a grand scale.
• The International Community's Deadline: In less than 100 days, climate negotiators will meet in Copenhagen to devise a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. If the United States shows up empty handed, China, India, and other nations can say they are off the hook.

Let's not forget that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set his own deadline: He said he intends to pass a climate bill by the end of the year.

Last week, Senators Boxer and Kerry announced they would delay the drop of their draft climate bill a few weeks. In the meantime, NRDC will urge Senators Boxer and Kerry to include strong targets and firm timetables in their draft to get America moving on the path to addressing climate change.

And as the draft emerges, we will take Senator Reid at his word that the bill will come to a vote before the year is over. Indeed, we will hold him to it.

Because while the health care debate may have slowed the climate bill down, it is our job to move it forward again. We will get that job done in the field.

The Washington Post recently reported that the majority of Americans support President Obama's clean energy policies. The environmental community is combining forces with labor unions, religious communities, business leaders, and the youth movement to carry the voices of those millions of Americans to elected officials.

We have already accomplished a great deal. We spent the summer helping to pass the House climate bill, exposing fraud within the dirty fuel lobby's opposition, and responding to genuine excitement for the clean energy opportunities among America's workers. I saw it myself last week when I attended a Made In America rally with steelworkers in Gary, Indiana.

We will build on that work. Our major media and grassroots campaign will reach out to senators in their home districts, and we won't let up if their support for green jobs waivers.

I look at the next few months as among the most challenging in my career. There is a lot of organized opposition to change, even though that is what President Obama was elected to do. Indeed, despite the misleading right-wing onslaught, recent polling shows just how popular clean energy legislation is with most Americans.

Still, it will take a relentless drumbeat of support to drown out the industry's fear mongering.

That won't be an easy task. You can help by clicking here and telling your senators you support this bill.

And remember, since the House passed a clean energy and climate bill back in June, we are half way there.

This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.

Comments

[noneIn2008]

Richard Feynman - "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

[jer9848]

If you want to dabble in solar Harbor Freight is great.Bought mine there. GO GREEN!!!

[research]

they are ok, but you can do better:
1.55 per peak watt panels! retail!
http://www.atensolar.com/EPV.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm

[Angie Cordeiro - Huffpost Blogger]

"FUEL Filmmakers Unveil World's First Algae-Fueled, 150 MPG Car (VIDEO)"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-grayson/fuel-filmmakers-unveil-wo_b_279038.html?show_comment_id=30551824#comment_30551824

[research]

You can't possible believe that the ACCES creation of the largest new derivatives market in history has ANYTHING to do with the climate.

And 50B$ to coal , the actual cause of global warming?????

And little for Rooftop PV solar and Waste BioChar, the two actual ways to solve the energy problems we have: cheaper, safe, clean and forever.

Rooftop solar is the cheapest electricity you can buy, the panels have dropped to 1.55$ per peak watt, allowing large and DIY installations under 2$ per peak watt grid connected, which works out to 3 cents per KWH of 30 years.

1B$, 1/50th the coal giveaway, would build think film solar panel factories capable of 300 GW peak per year. Yes there is enough roof area.

See my profile for complete details and links.

[sheila]

All it would take to get BIPARTISAN SUPPORT for a clean energy bill is DEMOCRATICALLY OWNED AND PRODUCED CLEAN ELECTRICITY THAT WE CAN OWN AND SELL.

The right wingers are unlikely to sign on to anything "just" to help the environment, especially if they think it will hurt the economy (wrongly or rightly), but they all certainly understand that if WE are allowed to own and produce and sell the power, instead of Chevron, Bechtel, Goldman Sachs, BP, Pickens and other Big Energy robber barons, and get a decent return on investment (say 10%) for installing rooftop solar on our own properties with our own money, then they would join together with us treehuggers and push for clean energy. There is more than enough existing rooftop to produce 100% of US electricity usage already.

The Envirocrats have created a false divide, here, pretending that it's Big Fossil Fuels against everyone else. The real fight is between ALL forms of Big Energy (including Big Solar and Big Wind) against the environment, ratepayers and taxpayers. If you want to win, you need to include people who care about the economy as much or more as the environment. Point of use, democratic­ally-owned solutions within the built environment are the only WIN/WIN.

[RomeoMD25]

The global warming scam passed by Congress. Goldman Sachs is in the middle of it, as usual– a potential trillion dollar sure thing.

And Former Vice President Al Gore who will profit from the cap-and-trade plan through his company, Generation Investment Management,–
Gore is joined by three former Goldman Sachs heads in their carbon offsets business.

The overall polar bear population has increased from about 5,000 in the 1960s
to 25,000 today, and the only two subpopulations in decline are in areas where it has been getting colder over the past 50 years. Polar bears have survived long periods of time when the Arctic was much warmer than today. Yet alarmists say the bears cannot survive this present warming without help from government regulators.