Six short weeks ago, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was an ostensibly moderate Republican who was considering voting for the Kerry-Boxer climate bill, albeit on her dubious terms (vigorous expansion of nuclear energy and domestic oil drilling). Today, she introduced a disapproval resolution designed to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Murkowski's resolution comes in the wake of last week's EPA endangerment finding, and follows her prior failed effort to delay EPA action.
Ironically, her disapproval resolution announcement is made on the same day as a new study showing Alaska's northern bluffs eroding at a rate of 30 to 45 feet per year, with no end in sight.
- Murkowski's past efforts to delay EPA regulations
Murkowski's claim to infamy in climate circles is well documented. In September, she sought to delay EPA regulations with a significant amendment to a boring bill, that of appropriations for the Interior Department (HR 2996), which would have barred the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases from stationary sources (e.g., power plants, not cars) for one year. Her rationale had the usual cliches regarding the economy; shorter and more accurate, from climate blogger Joe Romm: Murkowski proposes to fiddle while Alaska burns. (As it turns out, different parts of Alaska are burning, melting, and falling into the sea.) The amendment never made it to the floor, but apparently her hatred for the Clean Air Act has festered.
- Today's action
Today, Murkowski issued a press release and gave a Senate floor speech declaring that the EPA's endangerment finding "endangers jobs, it endangers economic growth, and it endangers American competitiveness." Instead, she wants the EPA to stop its work to give Congress "the time it needs to draft, debate and ultimately pass climate legislation."
The disapproval resolution is headed to the Environment & Public Works Committee (the same committee that overrode a Republican boycott of the Kerry-Boxer bill); if that committee does not favorably report the resolution within 20 calendar days, it may be discharged upon petition by 30 Senators. Once a disapproval resolution is placed on the Senate calendar, it is then subject to expedited consideration on the Senate floor, and not subject to filibuster. The procedure has been used once, to disapprove of President Clinton's workplace ergonomic resolutions considered to be "midnight resolutions" by Republicans. Here, Murkowski would need to find 11 Democrats willing to cross party lines and eviscerate the Clean Air Act on a far larger issue.
The Center for Biological Diversity has spoken against Murkowski and in favor of clean air:
It is a sad day when a United States senator attempts to stop a federal agency from enforcing one of our nation’s most successful and cost-effective laws – the Clean Air Act. We applaud the EPA for moving forward to implement the Clean Air Act to avert catastrophic runaway global warming and protect the air our children breathe. Unlike the current anemic Senate bills, the Clean Air Act is the only existing tool that can ensure that the United States develops a truly science-based greenhouse-pollution cap.
Although Murkowski pays lip service to the idea of effective Congressional action capping carbon, her track record demonstrates her hypocrisy. She's repeatedly urged the stand-alone passage of the American Clean Energy Leadership Act, a weak renewable-energy-only (no cap on carbon) bill passed out of the Energy & Natural Resources Committee. Last week, she welcomed the Cantwell-Collins Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal bill as a "bipartisan effort to advance a more sensible approach to greenhouse gas emission reductions." "Sensible" is Republican-speak for "ineffective"; CLEAR's cap on carbon of about 5% by 2020 stands in sharp contrast to the 17% or more in the cap and trade bills.
Murkowski is up for reelection in 2010. So far, she's received $139,400 from the oil and gas sector, ranking third in the Senate, according to Open Secrets. Open Secrets also lists her as ranking second in donations from the electric utility sector. Not that the money changes her ineffective sensible approach at all.
- While Murkowski Fiddles, Alaska Erodes Into the Sea
The Alaskan island village of Shishmaref (home in Shishmaref shown in photo) has already been moved, and the village of Newtok is likewise being moved at a cost of $400M. Today, University of Colorado, Boulder researchers released a study finding that Alaska's northern bluffs are being eroded at a rate of 30 to 45 feet a year (click through to watch time-lapse photography of the erosion). The bluffs are being hit with a "triple whammy" of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity. No end to the erosion is in sight.
There's also no end to the erosion of Republican values. Alaskan voters need to understand that she's actively undermining the interests of her state.