Cross-posted from The Daily Musing
One might think all environmentalists are happy with the passage of the climate change legislation this evening. After all, some progress is better none, right?
Not exactly. At least that's not how all environmental activists see it.
Before the bill came up for vote Friday morning, I spoke with senior representatives from Greenpeace and Environment America. (HuffPost's Sam Stein and Ryan Grim reported on Sierra Club's views here.)
Their views on the bill were not only different, they were polar opposite.
Environment America, like Sierra Club, wanted it to pass. "We support the strongest possible bill moving forward," Ivan Frishberg, EA's political director told me. He recognized that it had flaws and was not strong enough, but considered it a necessary step in the right direction.
"The momentum from victory on a weak bill at least gives us momentum to keep working to do more of this. But a loss on something like this really sets us back for years and years and years to come," said Frishberg.
Greenpeace couldn't have disagreed more. Deputy campaigns director Carroll Muffett said right away in our interview: "We were not able to support this bill since it came out of committee," adding that according to Greenpeace, this bill is worse than nothing."
It seems reasonable that some efforts to cap greenhouse gas emissions are better than none, right?
Not to Muffett. He predicted that passage of the bill would allow the oil and coal industries to block future clean energy legislation, on the grounds that they've already made their concessions.
Bottom line, according to Muffett, was that "if this bill does pass, I’m not optimistic that it will lead to any change." Greenpeace did not believe this would harm prospects of a better bill in the future. "This problem has to be dealt with and this bill does not deal with it," he concluded.