Climate Change... Which Members Of Congress Would Vote To Drown Their Own Constituents?

In June of 2009, we had a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president. The Republicans didn't have much-- other than K Street. Obama and the Democrats were determined to deal with Climate Change. They failed. I think Ed Markey was just elected senator from Massachusetts because of his leadership in this struggle. He and Henry Waxman put together the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a cap-and-trade bill that limped through the House-- passing 219-212 and got destroyed by the Senate. When the House voted on June 26, 44 Democrats crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP, including Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA) and a whole slew of ConservaDems, most of whom were victims of the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010. Democrats just did not turn out to vote for these conservatives who were disappointing them. Carney lost his seat that day. So did two dozen others just like him. And the Republicans regained the House.

Why do I single out Chris Carney? Yes, he was one of the worst and most corrupt of the Blue Dogs elected in the 2006 anti-Republican tsunami and, yes, he certainly deserved to lose his seat. But I singled him out for another reason altogether. Investigative reporter Lee Fang examines how K Street cash warps the system in his new book, The Machine, and he begins by discussing a letter Carney got from an astroturf GOP front group.

"We ask you to use your important position to help protect seniors and other consumers in your district from higher electricity bills," wrote Helen cast of the Dunmore Senior Citizens' Center, in a letter requesting that Congressman Christopher Carney (D-PA) oppose Waxman Markey, the cap-and-trade legislation making its way through Congress in the summer of 2009. Helen Cast, however, didn’t exist. The senior center in Carney's district had no position on climate change and energy policy.

Similar letters, using almost identical language and formatting, were sent from local chapters of the NAACP, the Erie Center for Health and Aging, the American Association of University Women, and nearly half a dozen other organizations, to congressmen in competitive districts before the vote on the bill. Staffers working for freshman Congressman Tom Perriello, a recipient of the anti-cap-and-trade faxes, decided to call some of the groups. They discovered that the letterhead was fake, the names made up, and the letters forged and sent without the consent of the groups. In fact, the letters were written by Bonner and Associates, a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. that was working on behalf of the coal industry.

The lobbying coalition behind the forged letters, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, also funded a $28 million campaign of targeted advertising, rallies, and organizing around congressional town halls in 2009. A loophole in lobbying law, however, ensured that none of this spending was recorded or disclosed at the time.

Perriello ultimately voted for Waxman Markey, but two other Democrats who received the fake letters voted no. The onslaught of lobbying slowed and watered down the legislation until it could be killed in the Senate months after it barely passed the House of Representatives.

The window of opportunity to deal with global warming closed largely as a result of the failures associated with Waxman Markey. Despite widespread belief in action on climate change among the American public, near consensus in the climate science community on the urgency of action, and the job-creating and utility rate–cutting benefits of clean energy policy, the bill still failed in a Democratic Congress with a Democrat in the White House. The coal and oil lobby proved to be too strong.

The secret to the failure to act on global warming lay in the dramatic expansion in what is known as “outside lobbying.” This type of influence peddling seeks to manipulate the public into pressuring regulators and lawmakers. In many cases, like the coal industry’s forged letters, corporate interests construct the perception of public support using deception and coercion. But this type of lobbying isn’t registered, because registered federal lobbying only applies to firms that spend over 20 percent of their time speaking directly to lawmakers.

The work of integrating grassroots groups, orchestrating letter-writing campaigns, rallies in support of corporate lobbying goals, and phony studies published by think tanks is typically tasked to public relations companies that work in tandem with traditional K Street firms.

Managing public opinion has been a key component of lobbying since the early twentieth century. Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud living in America, developed some of the first major corporate campaigns to shift policy through public relations. For Mack Truck, for instance, Bernays set up conferences in the Waldorf Astoria and created front groups like the Better Living Through Increased Highway Transportation to influence the development of the interstate highway. His tactics remain the basis for an industry that is exploding in growth inside the Beltway.

One might quip that anti-environment fanatic John Mica may one day see the value of his Orlando area home rise dramatically, as rising oceans cover Miami and southern Florida and make Mica's home-- over 200 miles from Miami Beach-- beachfront property. This year, Mica will be facing off against progressive Democrat Nick Ruiz, for whom environmental sustainability is a primary reason he's even running. This morning he told me that "the ramifications of John Mica's time in Congress (he's 70 years old, and has been entrenched in Congress since 1993 like a giant lobbyist tick) are much more serious. As such a longstanding artifact of Congress, no single central Florida federal representative could be more to blame for Florida's horrible ecological mismanagement than John Mica. Since his two decades in office, the Indian River Lagoon is dying; algae is spreading; dolphins, manantees and fish are dying off in record numbers, stunning biologists and residents. Florida's rivers and conservation areas are being strangled by pollutants, all because of the decreasing oversight of agencies like the EPA. And John Mica continues to act to further limit their ability to protect these areas. All of this destruction can be laid at the feet of the worst representative for the environment that Florida could ever have elected: Mr. John Mica."

Now even conservative organizations-- like the R Street Institute we talked Thursday-- are telling Republicans in Congress to stop with the ostrich behavior and face the challenges of climate change... before it's too late. R Street president Eli Lehrer: "Rather than pretend climate change isn't a problem, there are ample opportunities for Republicans to point out the obvious flaws in the left's plans to deal with it and offer alternatives of their own... Nobody seriously involved in the policy debate over climate change-- not even those the left unfairly labels as “deniers”-- actually denies that humans influence global climate. There’s also no dispute that the Earth is warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution or that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can trap heat energy."

Likewise, there’s little doubt that the worst plausible projections of sea level rise and temperature change resulting from this warming trend would present major problems in almost every corner of the globe. While more carbon in the atmosphere could have some benefits, such as fewer deaths from cold, it’s also likely to pose a variety of severe problems ranging from droughts and floods to the destruction of commercial fishing. Nearly any accounting of these costs indicates they will exceed the benefits."

What was that crack about "those the left unfairly labels as 'deniers'?" Is he kidding? Has he never met anti-Science sociopaths like David McKinley (R-WV- $725,776), Steve Scalise (R-LA- $520,735), Marco Rubio (R-FL- $529,013), Fred Upton (R-MI- $1,723,236), Joe Barton (R-TX- $3,852,995), Ted Poe (R-TX- $413,453), John Boehner (R-OH- $2,763,714), Bill Cassidy (R-LA- $407,750), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA- $179,244), Morgan Griffith (R-VA- $386,588), and Paul Broun (R-GA- $118,350)... these guys, all of whom have had their careers financed, at least in part, by oil, gas and coal companies. The dollar amount next to each name is how much in legalistic bribes they've taken from these companies to say the crackpot nonsense on this video:



The half dozen states that will suffer the most catastrophic consequences of rising sea levels-- in order of magnitude-- are Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia. All 6 states will be absolutely devastated if nothing is done about global warming. These are the bribed climate change deniers whose districts will be most underwater in another few decades:

• Steve Scalise (LA-01)
• Charles Boustany (LA-03)
• Steve Southerland (FL-02)
• Ander Crenshaw (FL-04)
• Ron DeSantis (FL-06)
• Bill Posey (FL-08)
• Gus Bilirakis (FL-12)
• Bill Young (FL-13)
• Vern Buchanan (FL-16)
• Tom Rooney (FL-17)
• Patrick Murphy (FL-18)
• Trey Radel (FL-19)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27)
• Jack Kingston (GA-01)
• Mark Sanford (SC-01)
• Tom Rice (SC-07)
• Walter Jones (NC-03)
• Randy Weber (TX-14)
• Blake Farenthold (TX-27)
• Steve Stockman (TX-36)

This list of congressmen above have decided to drown their own constituents in return for bribes from energy and natural resources companies... and their constituents keep electing them. By the way, notice that there's only one Democrat on this list.

Do Democrats in DC Get Neutered Before Taking Up Residence?

It seems like it's been decades since gruesomely conflicted Beltway Democrats, struggling with the absurdity of trying to maintain a Big Tent-- and keep the corporate money flowing-- had the courage of their convictions and even a modicum of, as Hemmingway put it, grace under fire. Instead of bold leadership, we've come to expect weak, pale compromises as a matter of course. Yesterday Conrad was in total Beltway mindset-- trading some cheap temporary tax increases for giving the far right their 7 and a half decades long dream-- opening the door of dissolving the social compact embodied by Social Security. "But the Senate’s vote coupled with Democrats’ willingness to give ground on entitlement cuts would make the pressure to compromise exceptionally strong, Conrad said." That isn't a Democrat; that's a Beltway Democrat.

Beltway Democrats are so insecure that they're always rooting around in the intellectual garbage bin of Republicanism finding terrible GOP ideas to claim as their own. Now we have Democrats stuck with a complicated, shady loser of an idea like widely unpopular healthcare mandates, a Republican concept from a time when "right wing" could be placed just about where the Beltway Democrats are today (the GOP have moved on to undreamed of places). Why didn't the Beltway Democrats pass single payer when they had a chance? Did they expect the GOP to support them? To be less vitriolic in their denunciations just because mandates were a (bad) Republican idea? These political hacks actually deserve the torment they've been served up. The fact that they're all that stands in between the rest of us and out-and-out fascism is nothing short of frightening-- especially when you consider that only 62 (+ Bernie Sanders) in the House and just one (Russ Feingold) in the Senate had the guts grace under imaginary fire to vote against Bush's fascist, unconstitutional and grotesquely misnamed Patriot Act in 2001.


Raul Grijalva reminded me this morning that Ed Markey had a much more progressive position on global warming that was widely backed by progressives but that the conservative cap-and-trade point of view became the "consensus" that progressives got stuck with by following Democratic Beltway leadership. This one-hand tied behind one's back position makes negotiations untenable. The progressive budget-- which is the only one of the 3 Democratic proposals calling for ending the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and the only one that actually calls for a concrete end of oil subsidies-- wasn't supported by The Leadership and now the official Democratic position (Van Hollen's conservative Establishment perspective is the House Democrats' alternative to the bizarre and extremist GOP bill.

Yesterday Ezra Klein asked (and answered) What went wrong with cap-and-trade? Another half-assed, long-discarded Republican halfway measure that was conceived to fail... embraced by clueless, cowardly, conflicted Beltway Democrats. Cap-and-trade was never a progressive solution; it was, at best, an enlightened conservative position-- perfect for the Beltway crowd:

A few years ago, cap-and-trade was, if not a consensus position in the Republican Party, then at least one with substantial support. John McCain had his own plan-- a plan he continued to promote through the 2008 election-- and he wasn’t, by any means, fighting a lonely battle. In fact, one of his co-sponsors was then-Sen. Barack Obama [the others: Lieberman and Snowe]. In the states, a number of Republican governors were also pursuing cap-and-trade plans, including Tim Pawlenty, who’s now running for president and has denounced his efforts to fight climate change as a terrible mistake.

On Wednesday in San Francisco President Obama called out climate change deniers in Congress. Though mostly Republicans, there are plenty of Blue Dogs and other ConservaDems who are just as guilty. Obama kept it general:

"There are climate change deniers in Congress and when the economy gets tough, sometimes environmental issues drop from people's radar screens," Obama told about 200 guests at the Pacific Heights residence of internet billionaire Marc Benioff, according to an official transcript. "But I don't think there's any doubt that unless we are able to move forward in a serious way on clean energy that we're putting our children and our grandchildren at risk. So that's not yet done."

Is cap-and-trade that "serious way?" It's certainly the conservative way-- as opposed to the reactionary way (denial).



David Spratt's book, Climate Code Red, is based on an idea Beltway Democrats order their lives around: habitual low expectations and a culture of failure. "There is an urgent need to understand global warming and the tipping points for dangerous impacts that we have already crossed as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. We are now in a race between climate tipping points and political tipping points." In an interview with Ross Garnaut, who was an advisor to the Australian Labor government at the time, Spratt makes the point that the business as usual Democratic approach to climate change-- although its core meaning could have just as well been said about any and all change Obama didn't deliver on-- is that "the essence of the solution is to recognize the need, based on the scientific imperatives, to de-carbonize the economy as fast as humanly possible, for the state and society to plan and support a rapid transition far beyond the speed at which market mechanisms can effectively work. Given the emergency speed at which this must be done, simply using price mechanisms will lead to a policy failure with catastrophic consequences for most people and most species.

"It is fatuous to believe that simple pricing/market mechanisms can achieve the wholesale restructuring of society in the decade or two we have to achieve this task before the falling dominoes of carbon cycle feedbacks start crashing around our ears, signalling that we have left it too late to stop the climate catastrophe sweeping far beyond the capacity of human action to further affect its trajectory."

Oh no, make it stop! The 2012 campaign is under way!

Yes, it's 2008 GOP presidential hopeful-turned-2012 presidential hopeful "Minister Mike" Huckabee, trying his darnedest to figure out whether he's for or against cap-and-trade. Let's see, if it's a day with the letter "d" in it . . .

by Ken

Let's not misunderestimate, as Republicans like to say, how grim these next two years are going to be, with both Republicans and right-wing "centrist" Dems running as hard right in the face of the perceived national mood as their stumpy little legs will take them. We need to remember that President Obama isn't just a born capitulator when it comes to negotitation, although all the available evidence indicates that he is. A good portion of what he's "capitulating" to is stuff that in his heart of hearts he wants to see done anyway. He's just willing to carry it however much farther he has to in the face of those howling Teabaggers and other right-wingers he can feel gaining on him.

So with people like "Sunny John" Boehner and Eric "A Disgrace to the Jews" Cantor and Darrell "OK, I'm a Crook, but What of It?" Issa and a bunch of other committee-chairng hooligans occupying positions of actual governmental power, thereby amplifying their already wildly disproportional access to the infotainment noozemedia, not to mention Senate Minority Leader "Miss Mitch" McConnell commanding every obstructlier troops of obstruction, and an economy still in hell and a war with no end in sight, and so on and so on, it's not going to be pretty. Still, there are already indications aplenty that the New Order isn't going to be the ideological juggernaut it was cracked up to be -- mostly by those very same infotainment noozemedia, come to think of it.

The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson has (I dare say) some fun with the already-evident fractures in his column today, "Why so frightened, GOP?"

[D]uring the lame-duck session, it seemed to dawn on GOP leaders that they begin the new Congress burdened with great expectations -- but lacking commensurate power. It's going to be a challenge for Republicans just to maintain party unity, much less to enact the kind of conservative agenda they promised to their enthusiastic, impatient voters.

Robinson points to the possibility of increased defections from the formerly lockstep Senate GOP minority -- "there could be as many as 11 Republicans who might defect and vote with the Democrats, depending on the issue." He concludes: "The new Senate will be considerably more Republican than the old Senate, but whether it's more conservative remains to be seen."

Whereas the very fact that "the new House will be decidedly more conservative than the old House" may actually be "the problem." Can Speaker-apparent Boehner really handle his new Teabagging cohorts?

Republicans face what, for them, is an unpleasant but inescapable reality. Ideologically, most Americans describe themselves as moderate or conservative; but when it comes to getting assistance from the government, most Americans are moderate or liberal. Look at health care, the issue that won the election for the GOP. According to polls, voters clearly favor the benefits that Obama's reforms will provide. All they really oppose is the insurance mandate that makes those benefits possible.

The idea of small, limited government may be appealing, but this is a big, complicated country. As some Republicans already know, and others soon will learn.

MEANWHILE THE PUTATIVE GOP PRESIDENTIAL
CAMPAIGNS HIT SOME ROUGH PATCHES OF ROAD

As a report by the AP's Charles Babington is headlined in today's Post: "GOP hopefuls find some issues a hazard early on." So we've got:

* South Dakota Sen. John Thune (you mean to tell me this doodybag is a 2012 GOP presidential hopeful?!) has been caught making a precipitously quick conversion from compulsive earmarker to a scourge of earmarks -- er, "explaining" that "I support those projects, but I don't support this bill, nor do I support the process by which this bill was put together."

* Our old pal Willard Romney is caught joining in the right-wing jihad against the Obama health care package and its infamous "individual mandate" when that mandate is essentially identical to the one he incorporated into the health care reform he oversaw as governor of Massachusetts.

* Outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been caught telling whoppers about labor unions, which he could only back up with reference to a passel of lies upchucked by Veronique de Rugy a "senior research fellow" at George Mason University (which, it shouldn't be forgotten, has been permanently tainted by gobbling up those Koch Brothers millions; to quote the title of a post I wrote in October, "It's important that everyone associated with George Mason U. suffer the stigma of the Koch Bros.' Mercatus Center") on, as I live and breathe, Andrew Breitbart's website! Is there anyone in that chain of stupidities with a brain capable of even recognizing truth?

* Former Arkansas Gov. "Minister Mike" Huckabee, who this month claimed, with regard to cap-and-trade: "I never did support and never would support it, period," the only small, itty-bitty problem is that --

at an October 2007 meeting of the Global Warming and Energy Solutions Conference in New Hampshire, Huckabee said: "I also support cap and trade of carbon emissions. And I was disappointed that the Senate rejected a carbon-counting system to measure the sources of emissions, because that would have been the first and the most important step toward implementing true cap and trade."

In his post-facto weaseling he managed to drag the Chinese into his own poor-quality lying: Voluntary cap-and-trade, it appears, is OK, "but I was clear that we could not force U.S. businesses to do what their Chinese counterparts refused to."

* That sad hack Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour of course had his seemingly inevitable momentum toward 2012, er, sidetracked with his serially embarrassing blithering in defense of racial segregation.

Ha ha ha, see the bozos run. But that brings us to the true horror underlying all of these stories: Hide the children and the silverware, the 2012 campaign is upon us.

May God have mercy on our souls.

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Preview: Paul Krugman And The End Of The World (As We Know It)

Driving past Valero service stations without stopping, or cheering when Valero's stock heads for the crapper, isn't, in my estimation, doing enough for the concept of building a green economy. I got rid of my Mercedes and bought a Prius and that's not enough for me either. I feel I get closer by having decided in the 1960s to not eat meat. That's a big contribution in terms of what it actually accomplishes for the planet. If we'd all do it there would be no man made climate change problem. And this coming Sunday Krugman is going to be warning NY Times readers in no uncertain terms that "we are facing a rise in global temperatures that will be little short of apocalyptic," although I'm not sure where he gets the "short" from. He handles it from the political perspective-- how to wean ourselves away from fossil fuels without destroying an economy based on... fossil fuel consumption.

Like the debate over climate change itself, the debate over climate economics looks very different from the inside than it often does in popular media. The casual reader might have the impression that there are real doubts about whether emissions can be reduced without inflicting severe damage on the economy. In fact, once you filter out the noise generated by special-interest groups, you discover that there is widespread agreement among environmental economists that a market-based program to deal with the threat of climate change-- one that limits carbon emissions by putting a price on them-- can achieve large results at modest, though not trivial, cost. There is, however, much less agreement on how fast we should move, whether major conservation efforts should start almost immediately or be gradually increased over the course of many decades.

...Just as there is a rough consensus among climate modelers about the likely trajectory of temperatures if we do not act to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases, there is a rough consensus among economic modelers about the costs of action. That general opinion may be summed up as follows: Restricting emissions would slow economic growth-- but not by much. The Congressional Budget Office, relying on a survey of models, has concluded that Waxman-Markey “would reduce the projected average annual rate of growth of gross domestic product between 2010 and 2050 by 0.03 to 0.09 percentage points.” That is, it would trim average annual growth to 2.31 percent, at worst, from 2.4 percent. Over all, the Budget Office concludes, strong climate-change policy would leave the American economy between 1.1 percent and 3.4 percent smaller in 2050 than it would be otherwise.

Economists who analyze climate policies agree on some key issues. There is a broad consensus that we need to put a price on carbon emissions, that this price must eventually be very high but that the negative economic effects from this policy will be of manageable size. In other words, we can and should act to limit climate change. But there is a ferocious debate among knowledgeable analysts about timing, about how fast carbon prices should rise to significant levels.

On one side are economists who have been working for many years on so-called integrated-assessment models, which combine models of climate change with models of both the damage from global warming and the costs of cutting emissions. For the most part, the message from these economists is a sort of climate version of St. Augustine’s famous prayer, “Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.” Thus Nordhaus’s DICE model says that the price of carbon emissions should eventually rise to more than $200 a ton, effectively more than quadrupling the cost of coal, but that most of that increase should come late this century, with a much more modest initial fee of around $30 a ton. Nordhaus calls this recommendation for a policy that builds gradually over a long period the “climate-policy ramp.”

On the other side are some more recent entrants to the field, who work with similar models but come to different conclusions. Most famously, Nicholas Stern, an economist at the London School of Economics, argued in 2006 for quick, aggressive action to limit emissions, which would most likely imply much higher carbon prices. This alternative position doesn’t appear to have a standard name, so let me call it the “climate-policy big bang.”

I find it easiest to make sense of the arguments by thinking of policies to reduce carbon emissions as a sort of public investment project: you pay a price now and derive benefits in the form of a less-damaged planet later. And by later, I mean much later; today’s emissions will affect the amount of carbon in the atmosphere decades, and possibly centuries, into the future. So if you want to assess whether a given investment in emissions reduction is worth making, you have to estimate the damage that an additional ton of carbon in the atmosphere will do, not just this year but for a century or more to come; and you also have to decide how much weight to place on harm that will take a very long time to materialize.

In a corporate economy geared towards quarterly results, a political culture polarized into a life-and-death struggle around a 2 year electoral cycle (if not a 24 hour news cycle) and a popular culture that has enthroned instant gratification, Krugman's warnings are likely to be almost completely ignored-- when not being scoffed at and demonized. It's tragic since it means the end of the world as we know it.

If Al Gore Campaigns Against John Barrow Will It Help Our Society To Deal With Climate Change?

My doctor's always trying to persuade me to use these radical-- and often deadly-- treatments that Western medicine pushes on unsuspecting patients that fall into their clutches. He always tells me how young I am and how I can live to be 100. I'll pass. I was just reading Thom Hartmann's book this morning, Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture. So far hasn't has gotten into the relative attributes of Mozart and Lady Gaga. But I did read about what the world would be like if my doctor was right and I lived to be 100. Boris Worm is a scientist at Dalhousie University in Canada. In 2006, the NY Times reported on findings he and colleagues from all over the world made pointing to the unraveling of marine ecosystems and a global collapse of all species currently fished.

In an interview, Dr. Worm said, “We looked at absolutely everything-- all the fish, shellfish, invertebrates, everything that people consume that comes from the ocean, all of it, globally.”

The researchers found that 29 percent of species had been fished so heavily or were so affected by pollution or habitat loss that they were down to 10 percent of previous levels, their definition of “collapse.”

This loss of biodiversity seems to leave marine ecosystems as a whole more vulnerable to overfishing and less able to recover from its effects, Dr. Worm said. It results in an acceleration of environmental decay, and further loss of fish.

Dr. Worm said he analyzed the data for the first time on his laptop while he was overseeing a roomful of students taking an exam. What he saw, he said, was “just a smooth line going down.” And when he extrapolated the data into the future “to see where it ends at 100 percent collapse, you arrive at 2048.”

“The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I said, ‘This cannot be true,’ ” he recalled. He said he ran the data through his computer again, then did the calculations by hand. The results were the same.

“I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what the future will bring, but this is a clear trend,” he said. “There is an end in sight, and it is within our lifetimes.”

You might not care about the invertebrates-- or even the traif or the sharks-- but Hartmann is quite persuasive in explaining how whole ecological systems work and how you can't pull out pieces here and there and expect the whole thing to continue functioning. No more salmon, tuna, seabass, cod, monkfish, talapia, mahi mahi, anchovies, herring, trout, sole, flounder, snapper... Hartmann:

With a human population pushing seven billion and the number of humans who eat a meat/fish-rich diet (versus mostly a plant-rich diet) moving from under a billion to more than three billion (each consuming between ten and thirty times the basic protein necessary to feed the livestock, and each producing between ten and thirty times the waste upstream as the result of factory and fish farming), the capacity of the planet to carry this huge burden of human flesh is rapidly becoming exhausted.

As with wild fish, wild areas are vanishing, along with their incredibly species-rich habitats, leading to the loss of more than a hundred species a day worldwide. Rain forests-- the richest source of biodiversity on land, the source of 20 percent of the planet's oxygen, and a major regulator of the world's weather-- once covered 14 percent of the planet's land surface; they now cover a mere 6 percent and, without major interventions, may be entirely gone (or thinned to the point of practical uselessness) within thirty to forty years.

They already make that imitation crabmeat out of pollock, sugar, sorbitol, wheat or tapioca starch, egg whites, and vegetable or soybean oil (as well as the carmine, caramel, paprika, and annatto extract to give it a realistic reddish color) but with the pollock scheduled to be out of stock by 2048 too, they'll have to revise the recipe. More tapioca starch? And even if they come up with some kind of fish substitutes we can consume as pills or liquids... well, it just won't be the same and, what are they going to do about the damn oxygen?

Yesterday Al Gore came up with a radical approach in a NY Times OpEd: defeat all the politicians who are burying their heads-- and our future viability-- in the sand. Sounds rationale.

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy-- the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

...[E]ven though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.

The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants-- especially carbon dioxide-- have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting-- and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing-- much less reduce them... The political paralysis that is now so painfully evident in Washington has thus far prevented action by the Senate — not only on climate and energy legislation, but also on health care reform, financial regulatory reform and a host of other pressing issues.

This comes with painful costs. China, now the world’s largest and fastest-growing source of global-warming pollution, had privately signaled early last year that if the United States passed meaningful legislation, it would join in serious efforts to produce an effective treaty. When the Senate failed to follow the lead of the House of Representatives, forcing the president to go to Copenhagen without a new law in hand, the Chinese balked. With the two largest polluters refusing to act, the world community was paralyzed.

...From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis — inconvenient as ever — must still be faced.
The pathway to success is still open, though it tracks the outer boundary of what we are capable of doing. It begins with a choice by the United States to pass a law establishing a cost for global warming pollution. The House of Representatives has already passed legislation, with some Republican support, to take the first halting steps for pricing greenhouse gas emissions.

Later this week, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are expected to present for consideration similar cap-and-trade legislation.

I hope that it will place a true cap on carbon emissions and stimulate the rapid development of low-carbon sources of energy.

We have overcome existential threats before. Winston Churchill is widely quoted as having said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.” Now is that time. Public officials must rise to this challenge by doing what is required; and the public must demand that they do so-- or must replace them.

Great OpEd. But has Gore or anyone else convinced voters in Oklahoma who are set to re-elect climate change denier Tom Coburn? Has Gore or anyone else convinced voters in North Carolina who may be set to re-elect climate change denier Richard Burr? Has Gore or anyone else convinced voters in Louisiana who are set to either re-elect climate change denier David Vitter or replace him with climate change denier Charlie Melancon? Yes, Melancon, a putative Democrat-- same party as Gore-- and he's part of the problem, not part of the solution. Only eight-- yes, 8-- House Republicans voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act on June 26, 2009: Mary Bono Mack (CA) who was unwilling or unable to even persuade her husband, Connie, that this was important and nonpartisan, Mike Castle (DE), Mark Kirk (IL), Leonard Lance (NJ), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), John McHugh (NY), Dave Reichert (WA) and Chris Smith (NJ). It passed, barely, 219-212, with 44 Democrats, mostly Blue Dogs, joining the pave-over-the-planet crowd led by John Boehner and Eric Cantor. Will Al Gore help Blue America defeat John Barrow and replace him with an environmental leader (Regina Thomas)? The Indiana Democratic Party machine is about to saddle us with anti-environmental fanatic Brad Ellsworth, guaranteeing that Indiana voters concerned about these same issues Gore claims are so essential for the very survival of humanity, will have no choice whatsoever on election day, since the two Republicans running, a sleazy lobbyist in the pocket of every special interest under the sun (Dan Coats) and a certifiably insane apocalypticist whose only policy agenda-- aside from bothering gay people-- is to bring on the Rapture (John Hostettler), are actually worse than Ellsworth (who is already an "F" on these issues!

New Polling Shows Overwhelming Support For Cap-And-Trade Legislation-- Voters Ready To Decimate Conservative Opponents

Karl Rove may have been trying to rev up the old GOP smear'n'fear machine on the fascist-oriented Editorial Page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, but a new poll came out showing that what voters are really angry about-- at least those not brainwashed by GOP propagandists Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh-- is the concerted efforts of reactionary politicians to sabotage environmental legislation."[C]onservative opposition will be set for an election drubbing if it blocks a planned emissions trading scheme, according to a poll published Saturday." Predictions are that at least 20 non-rural conservative seats would change hands if they block the bill in the Senate.

The poll showed that 63 percent of opposition supporters in the cities thought the legislation should be passed, while only 28 percent thought it should not.

If one in 10 of those voters switched sides, it would cost the opposition 20 seats it holds with margins of less than 6.5 percent.

The survey also showed that younger opposition voters aged 18 to 34 favor the government's legislation by a margin of almost five to one.

Of course, we're not talking about the U.S. That's from a report about Australia. Idiot America (the book, not necessarily your brother-in-law), on the other hand, is currently consumed with making mountains out of molehills and may realize that our posterity will be so broke and so utterly owned by the wealthy elite that we might as well destroy the earth and save them the misery.

The alternative is another bruising battle with astroturfed zombies (knows as teabaggers in America) like the one over healthcare reform in which a significant minority of hate-spewing Americans decided to cut off their-- and our-- noses to spite... well to spite everything that makes their own lives not worth living. Why they don't commit mass suicide and let the rest of us get on with making the world a better place is unanswerable.

Tomorrow is not an option.

Those ought to be the words coming from the White House right now on global warming. Never again can we tolerate a year like 2009, when attempts to cap carbon pollution go nowhere. Already this month, President Barack Obama has confirmed two painful truths. First: Congress will not complete work on a global warming bill in 2009. And second, the corollary blow: There will be no international climate deal in Denmark next month, dashing years of international hopes.

So Mr. Obama should move quickly from explaining failure to achieving real success. He should travel to the Copenhagen climate conference in December and guarantee drastic action from the U.S. in 2010, even if it means blowing everything up in Congress and starting over. If a "cap and trade" bill won't fly in the Senate in 2010, then let the Environmental Protection Agency explore maximum-strength carbon regulations while, legislatively, we switch back to Mr. Obama's original presidential campaign plan: "cap and rebate."

Lots Of Hypocrisy, Lots Of Ignorance On Display In The House Today

This afternoon the House passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill (H.R. 2454) 219 to 212. Frankly I'm surprised they went after this one before-- not nearly as politically popular as health care reform-- first. Addressing climate change is still kind of abstract for many Americans-- and that includes for many American congressmen. The bill is a first step-- after 8 years of gratuitous anti-science fanatics at the helm-- on the road towards transforming how we produce and use energy.

The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change. The legislation, which passed despite deep divisions among Democrats, could lead to profound changes in many sectors of the economy, including electric power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction...

At the heart of the legislation is a cap-and-trade system that sets a limit on overall emissions of heat-trapping gases while allowing utilities, manufacturers and other emitters to trade pollution permits, or allowances, among themselves. The cap would grow tighter over the years, pushing up the price of emissions and presumably driving industry to find cleaner ways of making energy.

The Senate, far more susceptible-- at least in terms of effect-- to the blandishments of Big Business bribes than the House, is expected to weaken the bill considerably, if not kill it outright. Corrupt tobacco lobbyist John Boehner (R-OH) tried filibustering the bill but House rules only allow that to go on for an hour. In the end 8 Republicans abandoned their reactionary, backward leadership to vote with the Democrats. (All 8 Republicans voting "yes," represent districts that were won by Barack Obama last November.)

But as corrupt as Boehner is, many Republicans opposed the bill because they are flat-out insane, 21st Century versions of the kinds of elites who were ready to burn people at the stake for claiming the world wasn't flat or the center of the Universe. And few fit that description better than Georgia uber-reactionary Paul Broun, a perfect specimen of the entire Georgia Republican congressional delegation. No one expects anything else from Broun but he was heartily applauded from the floor, at least by other GOP reactionaries, "when he claimed that man-made global warming is a 'hoax' with 'no scientific consensus.' Broun, citing misleading statistics, also claimed that the bill would hurt the poor and 'kill jobs'.”

The DCCC was very quick to go on the attack against Republicans who voted "no." Here's a press release, emphasizing the chance to create 2.5 million clean energy jobs, they sent out to Alaska media regarding Don Young.

Today, Representative Don Young was given an opportunity to create millions of clean energy jobs, reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, and ensure that the United States leads the world in the global economy but Young decided to just say no. By voting no on the bipartisan American Clean Energy and Security Act, Representative Young chose to “just say no” to creating 2.5 million clean energy jobs that can’t be exported anywhere.
 
“Today, Representative Don Young chose to do nothing instead of taking action to create 2.5 million clean energy jobs and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil,” said Ryan Rudominer, National Press Secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Times are tough, people need jobs here at home and a plan to get America running on clean energy but instead of offering solutions, Representative Young continued saying nothing but no.”

So what about the 44 Democrats who voted "no?" Don't you just hate it when the DCCC looks that hypocritical? The Blue Dogs and other right-wing Democrats were out in force. Rudominer could as easily have said “Today, Representative John Barrow chose to do nothing instead of taking action to create 2.5 million clean energy jobs and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil." In light of the DCCC press release it looks especially hypocritical that Democratic leaders gave red state Democrats a pass to vote no, though many of them-- your Walt Minnicks (Blue Dog-ID), Chris Carneys (Blue Dog-PA), Ann Kirkpatricks (Blue Dog-AZ), Bobby Brights (Blue Dog-AL), Jim Marshalls (Blue Dog-GA), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), and Parker Griffiths (Blue Dog-AL), for example-- certainly don't wait for passes to cross the aisle, many of them voting with the GOP on crucial issues even more frequently than with the Democrats. A couple of progressives voted against the bill because they felt it was too weak and compromised, Dennis Kucinich being the most outspoken of them.

Bayh's Anti-Obama Bloc Teams Up With Senate Republicans To Kill Cap And Trade

Indiana's Evan Bayh, as deaf to America's needs as ever

The Senate started voting on instructions for the conferees for Obama's first budget last night. There was a well-coordinated effort by the Evan Bayh anti-Obama bloc to team up with Republican obstructionists to trim President Obama's sails when it comes to the kind of change agenda he campaigned on.

The day after the president went to Iowa to campaign for his clean energy ideas, Mike Johanns introduced the instruction that would make sure anti-envirnomental Republicans could use the filibuster to kill climate change legislation. The vote was to prohibit the use of budgetary reconciliation when it comes to voting on Obama's cap and trade proposal that is anathema to Big Business polluters and the corrupt members of Congress they bankroll like, for example, the Republican Party. And more than a few sleazy Democrats.

Democrats only needed 50 votes-- out of the 58 seats they hold-- to pass this. Instead Bayh's bloc and a gaggle of other corrupt and reactionary Democrats (+ a contrary Russ Feingold and Amy Klobuchar) voted with every single Republican. The Democrats who killed any realistic chance for environmental progress this year were:

Max Baucus (MT)
Evan Bayh (IN)
Mark Begich (AK)
Michael Bennet (CO)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Roland Burris (IL)
Robert Byrd (WV)
Maria Cantwell (WA)
Tom Carper (DE)
Robert Casey (PA)
Kent Conrad (ND)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Russ Feingold (WI)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Amy Klobuchar (MN)
Herb Kohl (WI)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Carl Levin (MI)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Claire McCaskill (MO)
Patty Murray (WA)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Debbie Stabenow (MI)
Jon Tester (MT)
Mark Warner (VA)
Jim Webb (VA)

27 Democrats voted with the Republicans and 28 Democrats voted with the president and 3 Democrats were absent. And that's the end of cap and trade. That was followed by just a standard anti-Obama proposal that basically says George Bush understood how to run an economy and Obama shouldn't do anything fiscally different from what he would have done had he decided to stay for another 4 years.

On Wednesday the House Republicans tried the same kind of stunt-- all 173 plus 23 mostly reactionary Democrats, trying to undercut Obama's change agenda. But they failed 196-227. The bad Democrats were basically the usual suspects who can't wait to prance across the aisle and vote with the Republicans against Obama: John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN), Parker Griffith (Blue Dog-AL), Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN), Suzanne Kosmas (FL), Betsy Markey (CO), Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA), Tom Perriello (VA), Earl Pomeroy (Blue Dog-ND), Tim Ryan (OH), Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), Zach Space (Blue Dog-OH), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS) and Harry Teague (NM).

Back to the Senate-- it must have been hard for the Bayh bloc to resist but all but one of them stuck with the Democrats and helped defeat it 54-40. Of course it was Ben Nelson, the worst rat in the Senate, who scurried across the aisle to vote with his reactionary buddies on this one. Every Republican voted with Gregg and Nelson. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) proposed an almost identical motion a few minutes later and it was defeated 56-38, Nelson, momentarily, back with the Democrats, playing the ridiculous game he and the clowns in his state love so well. Evan Bayh decided Obama needed another thumb in the eye, so he took Nelson's place with the GOP. Voinovich (R-OH), who hadn't voted earlier was back and he joined the Democrats in voting no, as did Susan Collins, though not, surprisingly, Olympia Snowe. Murkowski (R-AK) ducked out of voting this time.

There should be plenty more nonsense to come on this and the big one next week on whether Bayh's disloyal Democrats will also join the Republicans in killing health care reform the same way they killed cap and trade. If they do, it will be a much closer vote. Watch Obama explain what Bayh and his conspirators killed last night:



UPDATE: Will Blanche Lincoln Survive Politically?

Like reactionary Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet, Lincoln's polling numbers show tremendous vulnerability.

45% of voters support the job she’s doing while 40% say they disapprove of her work. Hurting Lincoln’s numbers are poor marks from independents, only 31% of whom say they approve of her performance while 50% rate her negatively. 73% of Democrats but only 22% of Republicans express approval.

And there are rumblings on the left that could hurt her with Democrats. She keeps voting with the GOP without gaining support from Republicans, although plenty of legalized bribes from Republican-type donors-- her votes are always for sale. I keep hearing that the SEIU may be in Little Rock canvassing for a potential Green Party candidate. If a Green candidate does as well against her as their candidate did last year against Pryor, Lincoln will have no chance of winning re-election. The poll results you see here (from Firedoglake), asked respondents about whether they would support a Green against Lincoln. Looks like by an overwhelming margin they would love to. Personally, I think it would be a lot easier to knock off Bennet; in fact, I'd say he has virtually no chance to be re-elected and I sure hope a progressive gets into that race before Democrats lose the seat to a Repug. Progressives didn't primary Ben Nelson last time and now we have him opposing Obama's agenda and even his nominees whenever he gets a wild hair up his ass.

Congressional Budget Battle In Full Swing-- First Casualty: Climate Change Legislation

Yesterday Republicans tried repairing some of the p.r. damage from their clownish budget-with-no-numbers stunt last week by marching Paul Ryan out to offer a rehash of failed Herbert Hoover/George Bush economic nostrums. Meanwhile, in the real world, both houses of Congress are debating the real budget bill submitted by the president. Yesterday an embittered Judd Gregg offered a snide Hooverish amendment that insisted that Obama's hands be tied as he tries to solve the mess Judd Gregg and his Republican colleagues worked so devotedly to help George Bush create over the past 8 years.

The amendment was defeated 54-43, every single Republican playing their irresponsible obstructionist game-- and joined by two Democrats, habitual aisle crosser Ben Nelson (NE) and, shamefully, Jon Tester (MT).

Soon after, 16 Senate Democrats helped the GOP kill any chance of passing meaningful legislation on climate change by rejecting the idea of voting for it under a budget reconciliation rule that prevents filibusters. Democrats crossing the aisle yesterday to doom the planet were Max Baucus (MT), Evan Bayh (IN), Mark Begich (AK), Michael Bennet (CO), Jeff Bingaman (NM), Robert Byrd (WV), Bob Casey (PA), Kent Conrad (ND), Byron Dorgan (ND), Dick Durbin (IL), Russ Feingold (WI), Kay Hagan (NC), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Herb Kohl (WI), Mary Landrieu (LA), Carl Levin (MI), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Claire McCaskill (MO), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Jay Rockefeller (WV), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Jon Tester (MT), Mark Warner (VA), Jim Webb (VA), Patty Murray (WA) and Maria Cantwell (WA).

The measure deals a blow to the Obama administration and liberal senators who were looking to pass a cap-and-trade system to put limits on carbon emissions blamed for global warming and to generate more than $600 billion in new government revenue. By attaching the cap-and-trade system to the budget resolution by way of the reconciliation process, cap-and-trade supporters would have lowered the number of votes needed to pass it in the Senate from 60 to 51.

The restriction on using reconciliation was proposed by Sen. Mike Johanns (D-Neb.) as a budget amendment. It was approved 67-31, with 41 Republicans and 26 Democrats voting for it.

Over on the House side yesterday, a resolution was passed that sets the rule under which the budget will be considered. It's just a procedural vote but it gave a good indication of how the first post-Bush budget would be treated by the House. Every single Republican voted "no" and they were joined by 4 of the most reactionary Democrats in Congress: John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID) and Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS)-- plus one disgruntled liberal (Dennis Kucinich). It passed 234-179. I hope Obama is pleased with himself for saving the worthless hide of John Barrow who, without Obama's heavy-handed intercession, would have probably been defeated by a progressive Georgia state Senator, Regina Thomas, in last year's primary.