The prospects for achieving comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year, let alone a bill with enough teeth to cut climate-warming pollution in a serious way and tip the playing field toward clean energy, have dimmed considerably over the past few weeks. But other legislative opportunities are cropping up that hold keys to getting our country's response to the climate crisis on track.
The declining momentum for comprehensive climate and energy legislation is not surprising, considering the diminished resolve among Senate Democrats do anything big. Increasing numbers of Democratic senators have indicated that they would be comfortable running for the hills and passing an "energy-only" bill -- in other words a modest bill that lacks a cap on carbon pollution and contains industry-friendly policies. This approach resembles that taken in energy bills passed during the Bush administration. If senators decide they want to move in this direction, they've got a place to start. A polluter-friendly energy-only bill passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June.
President Obama offered only tepid pushback against such inclinations last week. And while Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the key Republican working with Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to craft a comprehensive bill, albeit a compromise one (e.g. one with more nuclear and offshore drilling), has said he is not ready to settle for a "half-assed" energy-only fallback, this is not very reassuring. Sen. Graham has indicated that one of his intentions in working with Democrats is to craft a bill that's even friendlier to corporate polluters than other, already polluter-friendly proposals.
While frustrating, the dismal prospects for achieving strong legislation this year need not forestall progress in the fight against global warming. There are other pressure points around which progressives can mobilize, not only to propel our country down a path to clean energy, but also to help crash the party polluting corporations have thrown with funds from our federal treasury. These include ending billions in subsidies to fossil fuel industries and stopping an expanded taxpayer bailout of the nuclear industry.
"The crucial factor in all of this is net energy. - Richard Heinberg
Before a certain critical mass of human population, and barring natural disasters, the world's ecosystems in had generally been trending towards increasing the amount of soil and living species. Fueled by sunlight, what was once a poisonous, lifeless ball of rock became ever more welcoming as net surpluses of that energy were cumulatively stored in the form of chemical bonds.
Fueled by fossil sunlight, humanity is currently engaged in the process of returning the planet to its bare, poisoned, inhospitable state.
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