Senator Kerry and Majority Leader Reid announced this week that cap and trade legislation is dead.
Technically, they announced that the legislation Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham have been crafting for a year now will not be introduced before the August recess. Reid will introduce a very minor energy bill instead. Theoretically, the meaningful bill could still be introduced in September, but if the leaders thought they were remotely able to pass the bill, they would be doing it now, before the fall election season kicks in. The vote is more difficult to win in September, not less. Nobody thinks they'll have the votes in September, and nobody thinks the bill will pass before the election. After the election everything gets worse. The legislative process has just missed its last best chance to deal with the most important challenge of our times. It's over. It's done. Politics has failed.
It's time for us to fix it.
First, I'd like to demonstrate that this analysis is valid. The time for serious action has come, and you shouldn't have to take it from me.
How about from Reid:
We know where we are. We know that we don't have the votes.
And Boxer:
We don't have the 60 votes.
And Waxman:
If they can't do it then they can't do it. But that's a real shame.
And Dorgan:
I don't think there are going to be two energy packages on the floor this year. Whatever comes on the floor on energy is going to be the package we're going to consider.
And EPA Chief Carol Browner:
What is abundantly clear is that an economy-wide program, which the president has talked about for years now, is not doable in the Senate.
And the headline writers of the New York Times:
Democrats Call Off Climate Bill Effort
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But the most powerful words are those of Joe Romm, the most plugged-in, politically and legislatively astute climate blogger there is. In a post called "The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, part 1", this previously optimistic fighter writes:
The mostly dead climate bill is now extinct. It has passed on! It is is no more! It has ceased to be!
[Obama] has let any chance of comprehensive climate legislation die without a fight.
And finally he goes all Shakespearean on our ass, regarding the missed opportunity that was the Gulf oil disaster:
We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
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According to ordinary political analysis, the bill is dead. Climate legislation is dead. The chance our country has to take arms against this sea of troubles and by opposing, end them, is gone.
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So we're going to have to do something extraordinary. We're going to have to do something that upends a normal political analysis. We're going to have to take this August and change the equation. And anyone who remembers last August, with the town halls and the death panels and the Tea Parties, knows how it's done.
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It's time to answer the Tea Parties with some C Parties.
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And E Parties.
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Climate Parties, and Energy Parties.
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It's time to stage a bunch of events in our own towns, while Congress is home.
It's time to gather our people and show that this bill needs to pass, that this problem needs to be addressed, that Climate is the problem of our generation, and Energy is the solution.
It's time to throw some street parties, with the creativity to attract the press, the messaging to get through to the public, and the commitment to get the attention of the politicians.
It's time to take this August as hard as the right-wingers took the last one, and demand the legislation our civilization needs, and hope like hell that we can change the narrative enough to get it.
Fortunately we've got an in. The press hook is so obvious that if we put up anything halfway decent, they practically have to cover us. After the absurd over-attention given to the Tea Parties, anything that's explicitly billed as a left-wing answer to the Tea Parties will get the assignment editor's interest. We'll get some kind of press, and the better and more creative our parties are, the more coverage we should get.
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And I thought all afternoon, and man, you can have some fun with a C Party!
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I imagine a grassy place near a major intersection with a lot of passing traffic. For the C party, you have climate stuff. Posters with 350 on them. Big thermometers -- real from the hardware store, and even bigger ones of cardboard. Empty rain gauges. Melting blocks of ice. Beetle-killed trees (easy to find in the West). Wilted crops, if anyone's willing to sacrifice their tomatoes. Maybe a kiddie pool filled with water, vinegar, and shells, for the acidifying ocean. Hurricanes -- the cocktail! (It's a party, right?) Hockey sticks. A bunch of the little green houses from a Monopoly set. Toy tanks and toy soldiers, if you want to be pointed. Bowls full of dust. If you're ambitious, you could set up a coal barbecue, paint the backside of a cheap frypan with blue and green paint, and then cook the earth with coal. That kind of thing. Whatever our collective mind can think of to communicate the problem: we're changing the climate, and we're gonna regret it.
And on the other side of the street, the E Party, because new kinds of Energy is the answer. And we likewise communicate that in as many creative ways as we can. Paint cardboard black and put a grid of duct tape on it to look like a solar cell. Find one of those decorative backyard windmills to represent wind power. Remote-control cars can represent electric vehicles. Train sets represent high-speed rail. Bring bicycles, CFL bulbs, caulk guns, and light switches; wave them at passing cars! If you want to get confrontational, you could buy some charcoal briquettes and make a big show of burying them, because we need to leave that shit in the ground. Likewise, you could build or draw an oil derrick and stick a ballcap on it, cause we're gonna have to cap the wells too. Senate politics may dictate that we soft-pedal the attack on coal (aka West Virginia's livelihood). But we should make a big cardboard model of the bill, and then pass it around the E Party... get it, pass the bill! And we should call out the votes we need by name, on homemade signs: Dorgan Conrad Rockefeller Goodwin Webb Bayh Landrieu Pryor Lincoln Nelson Graham Voinovich Snowe Collins McCain Murkowski Lugar LeMieux. The E Party is for solutions, and these are the people we need to get both domestic and international solutions rolling.
Combined, these two parties make for a pretty reportable demonstration. The contrast with the Tea Parties, and all the creative symbols we can muster, should help us get the attention of the press and then communicate our message through them: Climate is the problem, Energy is the solution, and we want 'em to pass a bill!
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I think these C Parties and E Parties could really work. I think a lot of our base wants to get out there and do something, and this is a cause that is unambiguously good and that we all really believe in. It's also a cause that is failing without our activism, and it's the crisis of our generation and the last foreseeable opportunity. We need to present our case to the public, we need to demonstrate our commitment to the Congress, and if we threw these parties every weekend in August, I think we could do both. Relying on our leaders has brought us to the brink of failure. It's time for us to change the equation with our own action. Taking over the narrative of August with our rallies and our arguments and our commitment and our demands is the best way I can think of to change the calculus in DC and ultimately change votes in the Senate.
Without some kind of intervention from us, there is catastrophe. With it, there's a chance.