Even with our existing Congress, the more the temperature keeps soaring and the rainstorms keep pounding, the more political leverage we have. The timidity of elected leaders who've acknowledged the crisis but done little to address it has been nearly as much a barrier as the blindness of those who deny it. So when the weather begins hitting home it gives us a chance to insist our elected officials actually lead.
They have this chance now with a renewed version of a bill that would have reversed oil company tax breaks to pay for $32 billion of incentives for renewable energy production. Given the magnitude of the crisis, that's still far too modest an investment, but it would help. This past June, the Democratic Senate leadership dropped the legislation when they fell three votes short of overcoming a threatened filibuster; they also dropped a companion bill requiring all U.S. utilities to get 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020, a requirement already law in 23 states. They dropped these measures to be able to pass a larger bill that raised automobile mileage standards, supported biofuels development, created new appliance and lighting efficiency standards, and supported research into fuel-efficient vehicles and carbon sequestration.
Now, the Senate and House are about to take up renewable energy measures incorporating their earlier core proposals. The House and Senate versions have some important differences: The Senate bill contains a dangerous sentence, slipped in by nuclear lobbyists, that would let the Department of Energy underwrite virtually unlimited loans for nuclear construction. But if they can eliminate that provision and combine the best of their two bills, passing them would be a valuable step.
So what do they do about the filibuster? They need to call the bluff of the obstructionists. They have one of the necessary three votes with the return of South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson from his brain injury. Barbara Boxer, who was attending the birth of a grandchild, gives them another. As they need only one more vote, and didn't have the support of ostensible global climate change activists like John McCain, who opposed rescinding the tax breaks for oil companies, they can begin by denying the opponents the power simply to table the bill by threatening endless debate.
Imagine if opponents filibustered, and instead of just letting them log in and register their vote, the Democratic leadership forced them to defend and keep defending their position for the duration of the debate. Suppose they didn't just do it for a single day or two, as with the Iraq timetable resolution, but used the resistance as an opportunity to hold a national discussion-extended as long as needed-on this fundamental issue. If opponents quoted the scientific deniers, supporters could cite the 99.9% of climate scientists who've described this as a human-caused crisis of the greatest magnitude. They could talk about how oil and coal corporations, led by ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy, have used the strategy of the tobacco companies (and even some of the same Thank You for Smoking-style PR firms) to create a strategy of deliberately sowing doubt by supporting these same deniers and the front group institutes that host them. They can talk about how much these corporate interests have given to specific Senators blocking the vote. If the debate goes long enough, the supporters can read the list of political contributions repeatedly, until the links finally begin to register in the public mind. This could even pose an opportunity-before climate change fatigue, like compassion fatigue, sets in-to draw the links between solving the climate crisis and eventual necessity of real campaign finance reform.
After a season of caving until Congressional ratings are now below those of Bush, Democratic leaders in charge of bringing legislation to the Senate floor should welcome a filibuster, not fear it. So should their handful of Republican allies who want to pull their party back to the "reality-based community." What a chance finally to address core issues, beginning with the costs of doing nothing on climate change. Supporters could discuss the disasters in their own home states and in the states of the legislation's opponents. They could talk of the 200,000 Katrina exiles still dispossessed from their homes. They could describe melting polar icecaps and the potential for a world of climate refugees. They could highlight the value of actually building an American renewable energy industry and moving down a sustainable path. The longer the debate dominated the headlines, the more they could make clear what's actually at stake.
This may not happen on its own. It will likely take sustained citizen pressure. But the floods and droughts signal a world of catastrophe that we've been moving toward, mostly unknowingly, our entire lives. With the scientific consensus on global climate change nearly universal, innocence and ignorance are no longer an excuse. We have an opportunity both to talk about the profound recklessness of our current path and to invest in alternatives that can avert the worst disasters. If we're gong to change America's political culture enough to respond adequately to the crisis, we'll have to link the stories of disaster hitting America's eyes with the root choices that have helped make them happen.
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