Hey, John Kerry! We don't have 26 years to stop climate disasters!
I appreciate all the work John Kerry has done in support of passing a climate change and green jobs bill in the Senate. I'm glad he pledged to keep fighting for it even though a major cap-and-trade bill probably won't pass this year.
That being said, I'm irritated by something he said in his statement about their decision to give up on the cap-and-trade bill without a vote.
“I just want to say to all of you on a personal level, that you know I watched Ted Kennedy over 26 years fight to get tough things passed. And in 1970 he began that effort to pass health care reform. We just got it this year. This is not going to take that long. This is not going to take close to that long.
It had better not take that long. Leading climate change scientists have been warning us we have 3-6 years to act if we're going to avoid catastrophic impacts. They started saying that four years ago.
Let's review some problems that scientists tell us will get worse if we fail to act quickly.
More catastrophic flooding and unpredictable rain, like what we've seen too much of this year. The expansion of invasive species that could harm other plant and animal life. That includes some pests that spread disease or attack food crops. Unpredictable flooding during planting and harvesting season, along with more droughts in summer. More severe tornadoes and hurricanes.
In other words, more communities will be destroyed and more people will die. We can't afford 26 years of stalling while the Neville Chamberlains of the Senate appease the fossil fuel industry. That's beside the fact that no one has come up with a better jobs recovery program than investing in more clean energy and efficiency projects.
It's fine to blame Republican Senators. The party of "just say no" is playing political games with life-and-death decisions like health care, unemployment benefits, and climate change.
But it's disingenuous to blame just Republicans when we have backward Democrats like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson. The bill didn't need just one Republican vote. It needed several more to make up for conservative Democrats.
We also have to put blame on the Governor of West Virginia for replacing Robert Byrd with a shameless lackey for the coal industry. That's when serious climate change legislation died.
This reminds me of the Illinois General Assembly's habit of avoiding controversial votes on the floor. Senate Democrats could force Republicans to filibuster and explain their subservience to the fossil fuel industry. But, that creates a problem for Democrats.
Every Senator would have a vote on the record that voters could hold them accountable for. There would no longer be wiggle room for vague promises about supporting action on climate change. I suspect that Democratic leaders are foolishly avoiding a controversial vote to help their own members up for election this year. They should remember that just because most lobbyists oppose cap-and-trade doesn't mean that most citizens do.
On the plus side, I was worried that too many fossil fuel subsidies in the Kerry-Lieberman bill could have caused it to do more harm than good. Heavy coal subsidies already make it difficult to create room in the market for renewables. Ending all coal giveaways at the federal, state, and local level might be nearly as effective as a cap-and-trade system.
If a cap-and-trade bill doesn't pass this year then the movement needs to focus on how to reduce carbon in a way that doesn't depend on a federal solution. It has to be a movement of local action because the US Senate is a subsidiary of the coal industry.