At around this point last year, the sheen had already rubbed off on the once-grand hopes for the international climate negotiations at Copenhagen that were to be held in December 2009. As the most important international gathering of the year drew closer, tensions between the Global North and South emerged that foreshadowed failure, the green movement fractured into bickering camps that couldn’t find consensus on what constituted optimum policy outcomes, while the fossil fuel industry steadily hammered away at what little popular support for progressive climate politics it could find.
At the time, Tea Party politics were coming into their own as the premier political movement to contend with on the national stage. But what was shocking was how easily pressed into service they were by big business intent on blocking any progress in Copenhagen. Tea partiers were willing accomplices in what turned out to be a successful campaign by the fossil fuel industry to scuttle any hopes of Congressional support for what could have been important American leadership at the gathering. By the time the president’s plane touched down in Denmark, it was clear Barack Obama did not have congressional support for pushing even modest policy reform on the climate issue, let alone the sort of sweeping measures that might actually protect future generations from the most adverse effects of global warming.
Jump forward a year, and suddenly the idea of making policy advances on the climate is not only choking out its last few breathes, but the challenge for progressives has shifted to keeping the United States from a headlong march back into the scientific dark ages. The midterms not only left the Democrats thoroughly thumped, but inaugurated a new batch of representatives that couldn’t be more antagonistic to the politics of environmental protection.
To get a sense what the new House looks like on climate issues, just read Elizabeth Kolbert’s latest in the New Yorker. Profiling the likely inheritor of the House Oversight Committee, Darell Issa (CA-R), Kolbert paints a frightening picture of what to expect from a GOP-majority congress.
The post comes with wide-ranging subpoena powers, and Issa has already indicated how he plans to wield them. He is not, he assured a group of Pennsylvania Republicans over the summer, interested in digging around for the sort of information that might embarrass his fellow-zillionaires: "I won’t use it to have corporate America live in fear." Instead, he wants to go where he sees the real malfeasance. He wants to investigate climate scientists. At the top of his list are the long-suffering researchers whose e-mails were hacked last year from the computer system of Britain’s University of East Anglia. Though their work has been the subject of three separate "Climategate" inquiries—all of which found that allegations of data manipulation were unfounded—Issa isn’t satisfied. "We’re going to want to have a do-over," he said recently.
And it only gets worse from there, culminating with Joe Barton (R-Texas).
Barton, of Texas—who is one of the House’s top recipients of contributions from the oil-and-gas industry—argues that CO2 emissions have nothing to do with climate change, and, in any event, people will just adapt. "When it rains, we find shelter," he has said. "When it’s hot, we get shade. When it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay."
Of course, not all Republicans have gone goosemonkey nuts on the issue of climate change. On Friday, former Representative Sherwood Boehlert argued in the Washington Post that GOPers need to put aside party politics and get serious about tackling the very real dangers of climate change."Scientific evidence that the Earth is warming is now overwhelming," Boehlert argued. "Party affiliation does not change that fact." Boehlert’s words were echoed by outgoing South Carolina Representative Bob Inglis, who compared the climate issue in front of the subcommittee on science and the environment to an ill child. "Your child is sick," he said. "Ninety-eight doctors say treat him this way. Two say no, this other way is the way to go." The choice to go with two dissenting voices is "taking a big risk with those kids."
Making sure the point wasn’t lost on his commie-fearing, market-opportunist brethren Inglis took his attack a step further.
I would also suggest to my Free Enterprise colleagues—especially conservatives here—whether you think it's all a bunch of hooey, what we've talked about in this committee, the Chinese don't. And they plan on eating our lunch in this next century. They plan on innovating around these problems, and selling to us, and the rest of the world, the technology that'll lead the twenty-first century. So we may just press the pause button here for several years, but China is pressing the fast-forward button. And as a result, if we wake up in several years and we say, "geez, this didn't work very well for us. The two doctors didn't turn out to be so right. 98 might have been the ones to listen to," then what we'll find is we're way behind those Chinese folks. 'Cuz you know, if you got a certain number of geniuses in the population -- if you're one in a million in China, there's 1300 of you. And you know what? They plan on leading the future. So...if you miss the commercial opportunity, you've really missed something.
Regardless, important voices within the GOP establishment continue cleaving to Michele Bachmann’s assertion that little things, like CO2 emissions for example, aren’t a concern because "carbon dioxide is natural." Look no further than incoming House speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who when "asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about his party’s plans to address climate change, he had this to say: "The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen, that it is harmful to our environment, is almost comical." Or take the words of John Shimkus (R-IL) who hopes to chair the next House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
At a congressional hearing in 2009, he dismissed the dangers of climate change by quoting Genesis 8:22: "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." He added, "I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for His creation."
Faced with the reality that even the most watered down and defanged climate bill would be dead on arrival in Congress, the Obama White House has shifted gears. As the next round of multilateral climate negotiations gets set to begin at the end of the year, the administration has begun to mobilize around what the Washington Post calls Plan B—a "set of new regulations that will cut emissions from power plants and factories." How, exactly, the White House plans to execute Plan B is a matter for speculation. It could negotiate directly with energy companies in an effort to get them to reduce emissions, or conclude "a series of small agreements on how to pay for measures such as reducing deforestation or how to help poor countries adapt to a warming climate, experts said, without having to get a treaty through a skeptical Congress."
Either way, Republican opposition is likely to be steep. The GOP response would likely center around frustrating any Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attempts at regulating carbon emissions. Again, Kolbert:
Before the election, congressional Republicans had talked of eliminating the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Why, after all, have a panel on energy independence and global warming if you don’t believe in either? Now James Sensenbrenner, of Wisconsin, who is likely to become the select committee’s chairman, is arguing that it should be preserved. His rationale? The panel provides an ideal platform for harassing the Environmental Protection Agency, which, in the absence of legislative action, is the only body with the power to regulate carbon emissions.
Meanwhile, the level of CO2 emissions continues to climb to what scientists believe will be new heights in the coming year. The likely results of the climate change that increased carbon levels produces will include rising sea levels, demographic stresses from environmentally displaced persons and increased competition for ever fewer water and food resources, to name but a few. The costs will be sever, both for the economy and international security. But don’t bother telling the newly elected House members. They’re too busy burying their heads in the sands of ignorance and the ideology of short-term political advantage.