Obama and senators seek climate compromise
President Obama convened a meeting of more than a dozen Democratic and Republican senators this afternoon to discuss energy and climate legislation.
Unlike some other recent White House bipartisan policy summits you may recall recently, there were no cameras, no bickering congressional party leaders and nowhere near six hours of made-for-TV talking points – just an 80-minute exchange that left participants with some optimism on an issue that many analysts and reporters left for dead a long time ago.
Still, there’s a long way to go toward consensus on a comprehensive energy bill that could clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold this year, which is why the more intriguing climate meeting today may have been the one directly preceding Obama’s: a Capitol Hill confab between the architects of the Senate climate bill and representatives from nearly every major industry group that the legislation figures to affect.
That meeting included officials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, major electric utility groups, the National Assn. of Manufacturers, the cement industry and mining interests, among others, along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who are piecing together a large-scale energy and climate bill with Obama’s blessing.
The senators’ message to the industry groups: Tell us what you need to support this bill. Be specific. After talking for more than an hour, the officials and the lawmakers agreed to reconvene next week. Then Kerry, Graham and Lieberman were off to the White House, where the president was searching for common ground among potential swing votes.
Kerry, Graham and Lieberman are centering their bill around a cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the utility sector and efforts to tax or limit emissions in other parts of the economy, including transportation fuels, along with boosts for nuclear power, offshore oil drilling and renewable electricity.Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the leaders of the energy committee, have already moved a bill filled with incentives to spur domestic fossil fuel and renewable power production.
Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have penned a “cap and dividend” bill to limit carbon emissions, sell permits to emitters and refund most of the proceeds to taxpayers. Democrats Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan have insisted on protections for domestic manufacturers.
Just today, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) outlined a series of regulatory measures aimed at reducing carbon emissions without imposing an emissions cap – including stricter energy-efficiency building codes, a ratcheting up of automobile mileage standards and a national mandate for low-emissions electricity usage.
Lugar’s office said early calculations suggest the measure would eventually reduce oil imports nearly 40%.Senators pitched those and other ideas at Obama during the White House meeting.
Afterward, a White House aide described the conversation thusly: “The President expressed his strong support for a bipartisan effort to establish clean energy incentives that will create jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil – and he made clear that the best way to drive a transition to a clean energy economy is to give business the predictability and certainty it needs to make investments. The Senators shared the common goal of moving America towards energy independence and creating clean energy jobs that can’t be exported, and they agreed to continue the dialogue about a path forward for comprehensive energy legislation.”
Attendees largely pronounced themselves encouraged.
Cantwell said in a press release that “There was a great deal of consensus in the room that energy and climate legislation can be a vital tool for creating jobs and improving our economy.”
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who partnered with Kerry on an earlier climate bill draft, said the meeting was “warm, positive and collegial” and that “although these Senators have come from different regions and different political parties, it is clear that there is broad agreement that energy efficiency and clean energy technologies are crucial to our leadership in the world and to job creation here at home.”
It’s clear that “broad agreement” could probably get 60 votes today. The devil, as they say, is in the details – for senators, and for the industry groups.
-- Jim Tankersley
The recent “Climategate” incident of climate science manipulation has shaken the foundations of both the science and politics of global warming. And when seen by those for whom environmentalism is a religion, Climategate reporting is blasphemy, herecy and sacrilege. Climategate has environmentalists and climate change crusaders scrambling to defend the crude and unsettled science of global warming proliferated by the U.N., E.U., Obama’s E.P.A. and the thousands of eco-nonprofits around the world that have leveraged gratuitous green lies as a routine fund-raising tactic.
As with most religions, environmentalism also has its false prophets, and its extremist followers. Here the ecologista claim moral authority by requiring your adherence to the cause of environmentalism. Your personal commitment and sacrifice for their fanciful and costly climate change imperatives provide your path to environmental enlightenment, purity and ultimate green redemption. Al Gore, one of environmentalism’s false prophets, has prospered mightily from the global warming hysteria he has promoted. Gore is not only a climate campaigner and partisan political operative, but also a green profiteer positioned to capitalize on government climate regulations such as the cap-and-trade carbon tax systems and renewable energy programs. He also operates a $300 million global propaganda campaign to eliminate coal and oil use in favor of unproven renewables.
E.P.A. regulations designating carbon dioxide a "pollutant" have prompted numerous business and government interests to challenge E.P.A. findings in court, and stop the costly new carbon cap-and-trade controls. These trials will ultimately require E.P.A. to prove the scientific cause and effect involving manmade greenhouse gases and global warming – the theories of global warming would be put on trial.
Corporate enterprise has also withdrawn its investments and ad campaigning for green policy priorities and products. Except for those for whom environmentalism is a practiced religion, eco-themes and incentives have been largely exhausted in our fickled popular culture. Speculative spending to fix eco-issues for political expediency during economic recession will only hasten and lengthen a global economic collapse, with far greater human suffering, conflict and pollution than any of the worst-case scenarios being proliferated in environmentalism's 21st-Century climate crusade.
Given recent climate frauds, it is clear that partisan ideologies and cultish environmentalism have replaced prudent science and economic realities in climate policy. What is also clear is that environmentalism no longer offers any product or service in support of our future security and prosperity. Militant environmentalism and green-obsessed bureaucrats have become an “axis of antagonism” that we can no longer afford. Yes, the Green God has died from its own hubris and corruption. May it, and its extremists, rest in peace.
Posted by: Paul Taylor Examiner | March 10, 2010 at 07:18 AM