For the moment, please refer to my comment on Joe Romm’s tirade about President Obama’s “failed presidency” in light of the decision by the Senate Democratic leadership’s to punt on climate change and energy. If Obama had tried harder, Romm opines, we’d have cap-and-trade. I have enormous respect for Romm’s perspectives and his energy, but I think he’s got this one wrong.
I’ll have a little more to say on this presently, but for now, here’s what I wrote, plus Joe’s response:
Michael (at #27) reminds us of what Joe says, but then seems to blow off: “…On the one hand, he made bigger investments in clean energy than all of his predecessors combined and put into place fuel economy standards that represent the biggest greenhouse gas reductions in US history and his EPA has declared carbon dioxide a pollutant that must be regulated because it endangers public health and he personally intervened to stop the Chinese from making Copenhagen a total failure. These are major achievements that under any other circumstances would make Obama the greenest president in US history.” On the one hand?! These measures are incalculably important – and you know it, Joe. He’s also whipping the G20 into giving up fossil fuel subsidies. $570 billion a year that helps keep ExxonMobil and the other dinosaurs further fed. He’s also moving with the Major Economies Forum to coordinate high-powered sustainability projects. He’s also funding R&D on renewables and energy efficiency as they’ve never been funded before, and bankrolling major projects.
Maybe, just maybe, Joe, you might consider that Obama and his team have known all along that you can’t put lipstick on a pig. The US Senate is a basket case. It is the single-most undemocratic institution in any democracy in the world. Andy (at #62) points out the obvious: that we, all of us, ought to support Tom Harkin in ridding the Senate of the insane filibuster rules. Byrd-Hagel passed 95 to 0! Between the utterly reactionary Republicans and the thoroughly parochial Democrats like Rockefeller, Goodwin (with Manchin in the wings), Ben Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln, and some others, you simply can’t get cap-and-trade out of the Senate.
You cannot get blood out of a stone. Obama and his team know that. You should learn that – and then give this administration the credit it deserves for standing up very tall and doing the critically important things that it can do – the very things that you enumerated.
[JR: Sorry. That might have made him a great President — if he did those things in the 1990s. But 1) he put it all on the line in Copenhagen, as he should have, to seal a deal built around the 17% pledge and 2) I believe he could have gotten a 17% deal in the Senate if he really tried starting last year. No U.S. bill = no global climate deal = failed Presidency.
The $570 B ain’t going away. It would be a big deal if they were, yes. But one must keep one’s eyes on the prize.]
