With the utterly inadequate Lieberman-Warner Coal-Subsidy Actbeing (mis)repesented as the (fools') Gold Standardin Global Warming legislation, one has to wonder quite seriously (and with real trepidation) as to what will come from W's White House.
First, as I've warned and feared, the pressure is mounting to act now before the next President enters the Oval Office with an even larger Democratic majority on the Hill. Those who care about Global Warming issues and who have been arguing in favor of Lieberman-Warner seem to operate from a base assumption that George the W will simply veto anything that passes Congress. Well, just a minute ...
Bush administration officials have told Republicans in Congress that they feel pressure to act now because they fear a coming regulatory nightmare.
That "regulatory nightmare"? How about instituting meaningful regulations that will dissuade serial polluters from continuing their violation of the air and water that your and my children breathe and drink? The "nightmare" they are seeking to avoid: actually bearing any responsility for how their actions and activities affect others, including the unborn. And, to avoid actually having to pay for the costs that they impose on others through their pollution.
Now, the Lieberman-Warner Coal Subsidy Act is already enough of a disaster. That bill utterly fails to pass must on even the most basic definitions of core principlesthat should guide global warming legislation:
- Meet scientific requirements: L-W doesn't even meet a 50% chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.
- Polluters pay: Almost 40% of L-W's pollution permits will be given away, given a windfall profit to polluters who will bear lesser incentive to reduce their pollution.
- Socially equity: L-W will transfer financial resources from the 'average' person's pocketbook into the bank accounts of major corporations.
Okay, so the Lieberman-Warner bill is bad, but it
is
already too much for John McCain to sign up to. Does this suggest that Hell is freezing over when it comes to George the W and Global Warming as a path to aid John McCain's presidency? Give McCain a seemingly reasonable bill, one the media might will fawn over in ignorance, to make him seem a reasonable actor when it comes to actual legislation on Global Warming?
"This is an attempt to move the administration and the party closer to the center on global warming. With these steps, it is hoped that the debate over this is over, and it is time to do something," said an administration source close to the White House who is familiar with the planning and who said to expect an announcement this week.
Yes, right now the majority of Americans understand that the Republican Party is out-to-lunch in its denial of reality when it comes to Global Warming. Thus, it looks like the White House planning a blitz to try to con the American public (through cooperative "journalists") that this is (no longer) the case. Hmmm, wonder why they think a sleight-of-hand like this might work.
Not a done deal ...
There is pressure on the White House to reject even a tepid move.
The Times regurgitates talking points about how wonderful US policy already is in this regard:
"U.S. taxpayers are already spending more than $40 billion a year to address climate change, and to date we're achieving better results than the Europeans are under a bureaucratic regulatory framework. That should be kept in mind before any rash — or political — decisions are made inside the White House. Excessive regulations would come with significant economic consequences and additional costs for consumers."
How many different ways to highlight that this truthiness goes past deception to flagrant untruths? In any event, this type of blustering right-wing opposition will help give cover to what will almost certainly be a highly flawed and wrong-headed proposal for the Bush Administration. Being able to hold up loud complaints from the even more lunatic fringe of the party, traditional media outlets will posit George W Bush's proposals as somehow reasonable. As they are, without a doubt, going to be even worse than Lieberman-Warner, the pressure will be on to find a "compromise" between the already disastrous L-W and the likely utterly disastrous Bush proposal. In this discussion of political gamesmanship, the baseball of Hill strategy, reality and what science says is required will be shunted aside. That shunting aside, however, is not some casual issue to be accepted lightly.
When it comes to Global Warming legislation, it looks like the debate is about to change ... and not for the better.
UPDATE: And, it is changing ...
This came up in the White House press conference today.
Q Can you talk a little bit about this reported global warming initiative, the timing on that, and what that would entail?
MS. PERINO: Sure. I think that Steve Dinan did a pretty good job this morning of capturing where we are in terms of the discussions.
In other words, we leaked to the WashTimes as a testing the water move.
This is -- I would say right now there's no presidential statement scheduled, although that could change.
We're trying to see how warm the Global Warming water really is and whether we can get away with this ...
Just a little bit of background on this. So the President of the United States over the past several years has been working on a series of climate change initiatives.
Yes, those initiatives to help the climate change faster.
One of them last year -- it was in the 2007 State of the Union, he announced the 20-in-10 program, which is to reduce traditional gasoline use; replace it -- replace 20 percent of it with renewable or alternative fuels within 10 years. Congress passed that bill. It passed fairly quickly and it didn't quite go as far and as fast as the President wanted it to. It's more like 20 percent in 15 years. But the President was happy to sign the bill.
That darned Congress, those darn Democrats, they don't go far enough along to help the poor President solve GW. Anyone else have a stomach turning over?
In addition to that, last June, for those of you who were there at the G8 -- actually right before the G8, in May of 2007, the President of the United States had a conversation about -- had a speech about moving forward to make sure that we had a post-Kyoto process, post-2012 process, which we are now entering into; and one that would include the developing nations -- in particular, China and India -- because if you don't include the developing nations and their emissions continue to rise, and we ratchet ours back, basically what you do -- all of the economic models show that you shift jobs from here over there, and you continue to increase emissions because they don't have any limits, and you've not solved the global problem of global climate change.
That's right, the path to undercut the UN efforts by working to get a coalition of the polluters to work for the right to pollute even more.
So we entered into the G8 last year with a major economies meeting process. This has been well received. We had the first meeting in September of 2007. There's another meeting I think -- there was a meeting in Bali with the U.N. framework convention on climate change in December 2007.
That, duh, meeting where the US was booed and where the US was isolated in the world community.
In January I think there was another meeting. And then this coming Thursday and Friday, there's yet another major economies meeting that's going to be hosted by President Sarkozy in France. So the conversations that this administration has been having I would characterize as ones that have been ongoing, over many years, but increasingly so since last year as we initiated the major economies process.
Gee, I just don't understand how anyone could argue that the poor Bush Administration has not been a positive an active participant. Look at all these meetings.
So what you have now is two basic things. One, you have this major economies meeting coming up in which the President said, we all need to get to a goal by December 2008. Countries are working towards that and that -- the goals would -- I think the G8 this year is when they were thinking of every country being able to come forward and talk about what those goals are.
December 2008 ... hmmm ... is this to stick the next President with a goal set by the current Administration? Never entererd their minds, I'm sure. How about you?
In our process, we say that you can have a goal, but then for your plan, you can come up with the -- with your own plan. We're not going to ascribe how you're going to solve the problem to other countries. They're going to have to come up with that on their own because everyone has different fuel mixes and different economic mixes and industrial tracts.
Voluntary controls and standards work so well, don't they? Wouldn't you want car companies to voluntarily set safety standards?
Secondly, the other thing that you have is a regulatory train wreck with many different laws, such as the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. All have, coming up soon, regulatory paths on climate change that they were never meant to deal with; the original construction of these laws were never meant to deal with them.
"Regulatory train wreck" seems almost certainly a Frank Luntz tested term. This will be the argument that we'll be hearing, 'we're just working to make sure there isn't a regulatory train wreck that keeps effective responses to Global Warming from happening'. What should we bet that this will be a regular term in the RWSM?
And so what you have coming up in June now is a legislative debate. I believe Senator Reid has scheduled the first week of June to bring up a couple of the different bills that are on the path for debate on the Senate floor.
Well, by the way, bad bills. Bills that shouldn't be sent to the Senate floor because, even if they don't pass, they are setting the standard for future discussions and the bar for future debate. And, they are recklessly bad bills for the potential for establishing a prosperious, climate-friendly future for America and Americans.
And what the President and his team have been working towards is, one, our views on -- on especially the Warner-Lieberman bill, are well known, we cannot support it. But our views on how to do this the right way are things that we are talking about. And so I think that's what -- that's how I would characterize the conversation today.
Just like John McCain, the disastrous Lieberman-Warner makes Bush uncomfortable. That will be used as ammunition to argue that Lieberman-Warner really isn't so bad ... it is. And, we should fear that Lieberman-Warner might pass to be signed, as is, by George the W.
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