On Climate Change, Resignation, Already?

Photo: Flickr/Gerald Simmons

So after much chatter, we are only finally seeing the start of the long climate-change bill fight. Senate Democrats introduced a draft of a climate bill Wednesday that suggests the legislation will include a more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions target than one passed by the House. The New York Times reports:

The measure, sponsored by Senators Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts, seeks to achieve by 2020 a 20 percent reduction from 2005 levels of carbon dioxide emissions, compared with 17 percent in the House bill, according to the 801-page draft, which circulated on Tuesday. The House and Senate bills both include a long-term target of an 83 percent reduction by 2050.

Reactions are already flowing in thick and fast, with Andrew Revkin musing about the absence of the C-word. The Senate version is called “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” while the earlier House one is called “American Clean Energy and Security Act” — in both cases, leaving out any overt reference to “climate”. Revkin acknowledges how that word lacks political traction and laments how “the economics of climate legislation still seems to matter more to many people than what a bill would do to limit environmental risk”.

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Poverty Survey May Help Obama’s Case

Photo: Flickr User NESRI

The latest poverty figures released by the Census Bureau today might just serve to buttress some of the main points in President Obama’s Congressional address last night. According to a Reuters report, the bureau reported the U.S. poverty rate rose to its highest level in 11 years in 2008, rising to 13.2 per cent from 12.5 per cent in 2007.

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Enlightening America’s Self Interest

Photo: Flickr User Liberal Democrats

Here’s a thought: Even if you think global warming is a sham, wouldn’t the invention of environmentally friendly technologies and the reduction in our carbon emissions STILL be a politically superior thing to be doing, underpinned by a stronger moral case? Sure, the cost of adapting to climate change is immense, but for a country that likes to see itself as a global power, any domestic legislation guided by narrow self interest and a failure to engage in the global process would invariably compromise that reality — especially in a multi or unipolar global polity.

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