With the vote on the climate change bill coming up today, here are three important things to keep in mind:
1. Democratic leaders had the votes for passage on Tuesday night Despite the push from more than two dozen advocacy organizations to urge their members to call Congress, what more than one staffer has called the most intense whip operation they have ever seen, and even a public exhortation from President Obama himself, Democrats had the votes to pass this bill on Tuesday night.
The Democratic whip operation gave a deadline of 5 p.m. on Tuesday for members to report their vote intention on the climate change bill to their regional whips. A couple hours after that, the Democratic leadership announced they had a deal with Collin Peterson, and set a floor vote for Friday (today). There is simply no way that is a coincidence, or that the leadership would have set a date on the vote unless they had the votes in hand. The leadership even told the Washington Post more htan 24 hours ago that they had the votes to pass the bill.
I know they are trying to get as many votes as possible, but there is still something disingenuous about the way grassroots activists were asked to take action on a bill after it was assured of passage. They were given little or no role in the deal-making process, and no green group that I know of really attacked Collin Peterson when he was holding up the bill. Bringing them in at the end seems like a way for organizations to trick their members into think they made a difference, even though they were marginal to the overall process.
Constituents contacting Congress make much, much more of a difference during the deal making process. Asking them to take action on a deal that has already been made comes off as patronizing.
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In the extended entry, I explain why Waxman-Markey is likely to be amended once it passes. Also, I agree with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in that we should start thinking about safe geo-engineering projects, given that governments pretty much anywhere do not appear either willing to able to put an appropriate price on carbon.
2. There is a good chance the bill will be amended later on. Even if Waxman-Markey eventually passes into law, there is a very good chance it won't stand as settled law for very long. This is because it meets three of the four criteria that make a bill more likely to be amended, reversed, or superseded by later legislation.
The margin under which is passed (the smaller the margin, the less sustainable the policy)
The complexity of the legislation (the less complex the legislation, the less sustainable the legislation)
The degree of difference between the House and the Senate versions of the bill (the more difference, the less sustainable the legislation)
Whether the bill was passed under unified or divided partisan government (legislation passed under unified government is more sustainable)
Waxman-Markey will pass with narrow majorities in both chambers. It is very long and complex (over 1,200 pages). Also, the House and Senate versions of the bill are probably going to differ from one another quite a bit. The only thing it has going for it is that it will be passed under unified government.
3. It won't prevent a global warming catastrophe Here is Secretary Energy Steven Chu, declaring that Waxman-Markey, plus a bilateral agreement with China, plus a new international protocol at Copenhagen by the end of the year, will not stabilize the atmosphere at 450 ppm of CO2 or less:
"The fact is, we're not going to level out at 450 ppm," [Chu] says. "We're going to go over 450 ppm. So what will we do? I'm not in favor of deploying geoengineering. But thinking about it is OK."
For a moment, the room goes quiet. In effect, the United States secretary of energy has just told an elite group of scientists and politicians that, no matter what happens with climate legislation this summer in Congress, no matter what China does or does not do, no matter what targets are set at climate negotiations in Copenhagen later this year, our future as a species is likely a grim one. Chu has uttered the politically unthinkable: that his own administration's efforts to halt global warming might not be enough to avert a catastrophe.
There are a lot of studies predicting different impacts from Waxman-Markey. However, if the Nobel-prize winning Secretary of Energy in the administration that is actually pushing the bill doesn't think that the bill will avert a climate catastrophe, then there is an extremely high chance that a climate catastrophe will not be averted.
So, I'm with Chu on this one. Since we are not going to have a sufficient governmental solution from pretty much any of the major players on climate change, then we should at least starting thinking, and talking, about geo-engineering solutions.
Any such solution needs to be quickly reversible (in other words, sticking a million Frisbee-sized mirrors in space at a Lagrangian point isn't going to work), and not employ chemicals dangerous to humans (aka, created saltwater clouds or pumping sulfur high into the atmosphere won't work). My personal favorite is to plant several billion new trees, as trees have consistently proven to be the best technology for removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in solid form. Surely, a program to plant twenty billion new trees worldwide would create a lot of job, build a lot of international cooperation, and remove a helluva a lot of carbon from the atmosphere.
No matter what we come up with, something like that is going to be necessary soon, since it is highly unlikely that major governments in Europe, North America or China are going to enact policy that puts an appropriate price on carbon anytime soon.
