[Disclaimer: I'm writing this in my personal capacity.]
The House has scheduled a vote for tomorrow on the Waxman-Markey energy bill. This is a very hard vote. The environmental community is deeply split on the bill, as are the progressives in Congress. The basic arguments on each side can be summarized as follows:
• Pro: Climate change is the biggest catastrophe we face, a moral challenge surpassing every other. We cannot afford to wait any longer to address it. This bill is essential, putting in place an unprecedented and absolutely necessary framework to regulate carbon emissions at a rare moment when it's politically possible to put such a framework in place.
• Con: This bill has been so compromised that it isn't worth supporting. While it moves us forward in some areas, it moves us backwards in other key areas - especially relative to coal. It gives away billions to polluters. Historically the Senate and the reconciliation process only further water bills down. What we get out of the House, at this rare moment when it's possible to address this, should be far more progressive and far less compromised.
What I am describing is not a disagreement among progressives on the need to address catastrophic climate change, nor is it a disagreement about the fact that this is a deeply compromised bill. It is almost entirely a disagreement about what is possible politically and whether this is (a) the best we can do and a singular opportunity to do it, or (b) not as good as we can do and we should do the work of making it substantively better.
I'm not here to advocate for one side or the other in that particular argument. Honestly, I can't tell from where I sit which is the more correct analysis. But there is something which is extremely clear to me: we need to be prepared to step up now to provide real support to those Members of Congress who by behaving in a genuinely principled way put their re-election chances at risk.
If you're a progressive in a marginal district, voting no is the smart move. It gives the Republicans no ammunition against you. When gas prices are sky-high next summer, they can't say it's because you voted for a huge tax increase on energy. And you can say to progressives that you did it because this bill wasn't good enough; you're covered coming and going.
However, if this does turn out to be the one chance we get, then defeating the bill is arguably the kind of mistake that would haunt a person of good conscience for a lifetime.
For those same progressives in marginal districts, voting yes ends up being entirely about conviction and principle, because it sure as heck isn't the savvy political move. It gives the Republicans ammunition - "Rep. Such-and-Such voted for the largest tax increase in history, and your gas and energy prices have skyrocketed because of it. Vote them out, now." And in those marginal districts, where we don't have the concentrations of environmentally-minded voters present in places like the district I ran in, that argument will carry weight.
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We talk a lot about wanting representatives who will display courage and conviction. But the real test of that isn't what they do when it's easy - it's what they do when it's hard.
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We will have some Members who are about to do something incredibly hard because they truly believe it's right. It seems to me that it's worth moving mountains to keep people like that in Congress.
There's a filing deadline in a few days on June 30. I've just dropped $1000 I can't really afford into trying to help them. Will you join me?
(My son Henry asked me on a sunny day roughly two years ago if he could use my webcam and he then recorded this. It was unscripted and unrehearsed. For this child, and for all the others like him, I'm doing everything I can.)
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