Taking meaningful steps to pursue sensible policies to deal with E3 challenges (economy, energy, environment) and seize E3 opportunities will take leadership and political courage. Leadership to move past simply testing the political environment via polling, wetting the finger to see which way the wind is blowing at the moment. Political courage to stand up to powerful interests (investing heavily to perpetuate the polluting status quo from which they profit so greatly) and the powerful (and deceitful) attacks that they will inflict on any and all who actually fight to create a better future for America and Americans.
Sadly, there are many in the US Senate who claim to care about these issues and who state that dealing with global warming matters, but who are unwilling to stand up and be counted in accord with these statements. They are showing themselves as unwilling to lead and without the courage to stand to deceitful astroturf distortions of the realities of the challenges and the opportunities before us.
Some recent Senate votes critical to the chance to move forward on sensible climate legislation bring visibility to this issue, providing a touchstone against which to measure a Senator’s seriousness when it comes to deal with the climate crisis. Putting aside the Republicans, none of whom voted for sensible paths forward, those voting the ‘wrong’ way on critical legislation included far too many Democrats.
There were two critical sets of votes on budget amendments.
The first fell directly into the trap of placing the economy versus the environment, the false statement that being sensible in environment (and energy) issues is somehow not smart for the economy. There were Sense of the Senate votes that climate-related legislation cannot ““increase electricity or gasoline prices”. This included the passed Amendment No 731, introduced by Senator Thune (R-SD), which is the very sort of political trap requiring leadership and political courage to opposed. Voting no was the right thing to do, but would open the path to 15-second attack ads that “X voted to increase your electricity prices”. A critical element in moving forward toward an Energy Smart future is to recognize that we must speak to “energy services” and “the cost to own” rather than the “cost of a form of energy” and “the cost to buy”. California has some of the highest specific costs per kilowatt hour of electricity that are found in the United States, yet Californians have seen their electricity bills grow far less than elsewhere in the country because those higher unit prices are used to subsidize energy efficiency programs throughout the system, which helps hold down demand. Thus, while paying more per kilowatt hour, Californians receive significant help that enables keeping total costs lower through efficiency. (And, don’t worry, Valley Girls do have portable phone chargers, iPods, and big-screen TVs.) Those opposing moving forward scream “electricity prices will go up” and too many cower, not willing to speak to overall benefits in the face of this truthiness-driven attack. (After all, how can anyone claim that they can keep oil prices from going up?) Only eight Senators stood up with leadership and the courage to say that this was an absurd amendment, intended to forestall action rather than a meaningful attempt to help move the nation forward. Thus, a tip of the hat to Senators Bingaman (D-NM), Cardin (D-MD), Corker (R-TN), Durbin (D-IL), Feinstein (D-CA), Menendez (D-NJ), Udall (D-NM) and Whitehouse (D-RI) for going on the record with their “NO” votes and their rejection of this false economy vs environment framing.
The second set of votes fell directly into the issue as to whether a Democratically-controlled Congress will be in a position to actually pass meaningful energy, energy efficiency, and climate-change legislation. A potential existed for using reconciliation to pass climate-related legislation: reconciliation meaning that a simple majority, rather than a super-majority of 60 votes, would be required to pass the legislation. In short, a path to avoid giving road-block Republicans veto over steps to move forward in ways supported by the majority of the American public. Amendment 735, introduced by Sen. Johanns (R-NE), prohibiting this passed 67-31, supported by 26 Democratic Party Senators.
What is the language that falls into this situation:
“would invest in clean energy technology initiatives, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, or help families, workers, communities, and businesses make the transition to a clean energy economy.”
Thus, we cannot see electricity or gasoline unit costs go up to help pay for helping “families, workers, communities, and businesses” become more energy efficiency, for example? We can’t raise prices of polluting energy sources to start to value the damage that their use does to the Commons? (Those pesky external costs, which include increasing asthma rates in our children, brain damage from mercury in the environment in our babies, and increasingly severe storms that devastate our homes and communities.) We can’t raise prices to help put in wind turbines, which cost more upfront but then next to nothing to run for decades to come? (Of course, we can have rates going up to help pay for new coal-fired power plants, but have them increase to eliminate the need to even have them.)
Matt Yglesias commented on these votes
This is good for Republicans, since it helps them achieve their goal of destroying the planet. And it’s good for Democrats, since it helps them achieve their goal of pretending to try to avoid the destruction of the planet while ensuring that, in practice, the planet is destroyed. And Senators Johanns was born in 1950, so he’ll almost surely be dead by 2050 (along with countless residents of flood-prone areas of the developing world) so it’s basically all good.