We should ALL tell all the oil Senators to take off-shore drilling out of the climate bill – Senate switchboard: (202) 224 3121. If enough people speak up we can improve our government.

It might just help tip the balance towards a better climate bill, without trinkets for the fossil industry. People can see how destructive it is, in a way that many are blind and can’t imagine how bad climate change will be.

No “Oil-spill-alarmist” disinformation is being generated. The pictures are not being censored and distorted by the fossil industry the way the equally if not far worse scenarios (that science provides) of climate change are.

Now we have a chance to take oil out of the climate bill.

I absolutely agree with Bill that: “Dirty as the water is off the Mississippi Delta, that’s barely the tip of the damage from fossil fuel. If that oil had traveled down a pipeline to a refinery and then into the fuel tank of a car, it would have wrecked the planet just as powerfully.

We now realize, as we didn’t on the first Earth Day, that the slick of carbon dioxide spreading invisibly across the atmosphere is driving change on a massive scale: by raising the planet’s temperature, it’s melting everything frozen, raising the level of the ocean, powering ever stronger storms. In the Gulf, and in every other ocean on the planet, that extra carbon is turning seawater acid.

You can’t see it, but it’s wrecking marine life far more effectively and insidiously even than the spreading oil.”

The evidence is quite clear that only with a D majority can we hope to get good environmental legislation.

Here’s all 50 roll call votes in the Senate on environment and renewable energy since the BTU tax in 1993. (No doubt it continues back but this is documented)

Virtually every vote shows virtually all the Ds Support and all Rs Oppose all the environment and renewable energy votes (and renewable supporting amendments in larger bills).

http://www.matternetwork.com/2008/9/mccains-50-votes-against-clean.cfm

Here’s a summary of (part of Obama’s) unprecedented record with links to each case

http://cleantechnica.com/2009/12/03/energy-push-rivals-manhattan-project-says-wsj/

Republican constituents need to let their Senators know if they want them to begin to vote for the environment and renewables.

However powerful, uncompromising solutions are not what we’re offered as the alternative.

Which would you choose between

a.incremental, compromised solutions now, or

b.even more incremental, and even more compromised solutions later

(And that could be much later – these would only be offered the next time Democrats get a majority – which could take as long as a decade… or might be in 5 years, who knows?)

http://cleantechnica.com/2010/04/24/planet-needs-gets-new-name-eaarth/

I worked for Bill’s Step it Up Campaign in 2007 that made it clear to congress that we had to step it up to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. 2007 was when the Democrats first got hold of the Senate, so that was when we had to lay out the highest goals. That’s when no compromise was worth making, and we got that message out, and pushed the Boxer bill that the Union of Concerned Scientists called the Gold Standard of climate bills (there were 9 that year).

But now we are within months of losing the climate voter majority in the Senate. Now we must hold our ground and pass what we can now. It will NOT get easier over the next few years.

This is the time to cling to the cliff before we are kicked off it again. If we don’t pass something we’ll have nothing to show for this brief chance we got.

Without a (lower each year) “Cap” (= punishable with fines for exceeding) how would you ensure that an overarching national limit on greenhouse gases is actually adhered to?

Without “trade” (auction fees paid to fund renewables with fees on polluters), how do you plan to fund the massive government investment in renewables? We agree we need a big investment to switch – initially.

Look at how successfully our EPA-administered cap and trade has worked to reduce acid rain pollution. Caps ensure we achieve the target, trade creates the funds to do it with.

31 groups have sold their soul to achieve the achievable (and I suppose keep contributions coming in) while Greenpeace and McKibben stick to their guns – hoping perhaps that Americans realize that even what’s adopted is a long-way from actually being effective.

Most climate experts agree Cap and Trade will simply be a money-making scheme for Wall Street and I guess you folks haven’t found enough ways for Wall Street to rob you blind. But don’t mind me, I’m just a Canadian who wonders how a one-mind, two-party system can be called the greatest democracy on earth.

This is a Bushism – you’re with us or agin us. It’s dumb, short-sighted and bloody typical of your ridiculous system. USA! USA! USA!

[SK: There is no chance for Wall St to make money off it. The auctioned trading would be done (just as it is now for acid rain) between polluters only, and it only involves swapping permits, and would be administered by the EPA as acid rain pollutant trading is now. That got pollution down.]

Perfectly put. This is EXACTLY why many of us oppose weak environmental legislation getting passed. Cap and Trade is/was/always will be a terrible, terrible excuse for environmental stewardship. Using it as an example of ‘the possible good’ is misleading.

Sorry, Susan, but your defeatist attitude is why we have no strong progressive party in the U.S., fail to lead the world in tackling climate change, and precisely why McKibben, Greenpeace and others have to fight so much harder to achieve entirely achievable goals.

Maybe both sides (IMHO) would be better in addressing small incremental items slowly building on incrementalism and showing what works. It could start with (I’m being selfish here)with a Renewable Energy National Standard.

After that go after each issue in kind in a slow deliberate matter. The public is not in the mood for massive overall change that affects their bottom line (ie. more taxes, less jobs and higher costs) all hitting at once. Greenpeace and others are just not being realistic in what can be done and accepted in the short and long run by the public. Bribes on both sides in many forms can not be hidden any more, it all comes out and the word spreads.

[SK: The problem with doing each element in turn would be that it would take 30 years to pass everything in the bills at this rate (because filibusters). The advantage of having everything wrapped into one energy bill is that its component parts can get through in a matter of hours once cloture to vote is allowed. ]