Navigating a Minefield Part 1

Cross-Posted from: HERE

I’m pretty sure that from now until the Senate votes on a climate bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will look at what he’s going to have to do to get 60 votes for a measure, and add 30 seconds to his schedule every day where he takes a pillow and cries into it. The Senate is where legislation goes to die. As elated as I was at passing the Waxman-Markey bill out of the House, it hit me pretty fast that this was going to get ugly.

Environmental groups have been talking about the idea of strengthening, but in the Senate what kind of grassroots pressure and mobilization would that really take? What kind of bill would we end up seeing if we had “business as usual” activism on this bill? The first thing I want to do is talk what is necessary for a much stronger bill, and I must admit that this has long odds considering we came up short in the easier of the two chambers. Next, I’m going to show you what compromises would have to be included in the bill in order to reach 60 votes assuming the level of support by the American public is as dull as it was in the House. Continue reading

Senate Committee Passes Global Warming Bill!

Exciting news! The Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions Act – GGERA (pronounce that with hard g’s – “gugera”) – was passed by the Senate Education Health and Environment Committee yesterday! That’s the first milestone in getting this bill passed, and it did amazingly well, passing 7-2.

The reason I’m EXTRA excited about this is that Andy Harris (remember him? 9% Andy?) supported the bill, making it officially a bi-partisan effort. It’s about time too, because really, global warming effects all of us, regardless of race or gender or political party.

So what’s next, you ask? The Senate floor. Which is where all y’all awesome grassrootsy folks come in. We expect the Senate floor to take up the bill early next week.

The Weak Senate Energy Bill

Many enviro groups have been touting the Senate Energy Bill that passed last week as a victory. I’m not impressed. In fact, I’m somewhat appalled.

Yes, the Senate passed a bill to increase fuel efficiency standards (from 25 to 35 mpg) for the first time since 1975 and yes, they managed to beat back some really bad amendments (including the amendment to promote dirty coal-to-liquid technology, which USCEC was heavily involved in advocating against). But defeating bad amendments does not mean we’re advancing, it simply means we’ve managed to avoid going backwards for the time being. And that it’s taken us over 30 years to increase our CAFE standards to a relatively low 35 mpg is nothing to be proud of.

Thomas Friedman summed it up in a NY Times Op-ed on June 24:

The whole Senate energy effort only reinforced my feelings that we’re in a green bubble