by Andrew Miller
26. July 2010 06:40
"There is plenty of blame to share for the political demise of climate change legislation in Washington"
Writes the San Francisco Chronicle as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed yesterday that the Democrats were to abandon their cap-and-trade climate bill in the face of overwhelming opposition from the Rublicans, and a significant number of Democrats.
"Action on carbon is down the drain", writes Clive Crook of the Financial Times, while Bryan Walsh of Time magazine asserts "Cap and Trade is Dead (Really, Truly, I'm Not Kidding). Who's to Blame?". The New York Times, equally fired-up, takes us through "Four Ways to Kill a Climate Bill" in an op-ed by Lee Wasserman.
It doesn't take very long to get the gist of how the mainstream media are reacting to the failure of the climate bill. Anger, finger-pointing, and perhaps most disturbing of all, a genuine sense of abject hopelessness. As Joseph B. White admits in his Wall Street Journal blog,
"It didn’t take long for climate action advocates to start forming circular firing squads in the wake of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision Thursday to consign climate legislation to the congressional deep freeze."
He finished his article with a quote from Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, stating,
“It’s hard to see cap and trade coming back anytime within the next decade or maybe longer.”
So what's next? Surely not all is lost... Well, in the short term, Reid has announced that he will introduce a smaller, narrower bill in the next few days, but any hope of Republican support is unlikely.
CBS News quotes Philip Kerpen, conservative activist, who was quick to insist, "No Republican senator should vote for any policy change in the lame duck session, period." in response to the suggestion of a new bill.
Suspicious the cap and trade 'tax' will simply be snuck back in once the Senate bill is combined with the comprehensive climate bill that passed through the House last year, the irony seems to be that the comprehensiveness of the Democrat victory last year has shut down any hope of convincing Republicans to let anything through the Senate.
"Harry Reid has said he removed cap and trade from the energy bill," said Phil Kerpen... "Do we believe Harry Reid?"
Another bitter blow for the Obama administration.
So, is this really the end of any hope for passing a clean energy bill in the United States? Does it mark the "death" of cap-and-trade? Dark, difficult questions indeed. Still reeling from the UK government's decision to axe the Sustainable Development Commission last week, it's becoming more and more difficult to keep any kind of perspective, and evaluate what all this will all mean in the long-term battle to save ourselves from a climate meltdown.
It's hard not to feel an ominous strengthening of momentum, as the reality of run-away climate change seems to be picking up speed and leaving us far behind.
