Obama Concedes No Climate Bill By December
By Don | November 16, 2009
With less than three weeks left until the U.N. Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, the White House has admitted that there is little chance that the U.S. will be able to pass any comprehensive climate change legislation by then.
From the Politico
Shortly after Democrats took office last January, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) vowed the Senate would pass climate change legislation before the start of the international climate talks in Copenhagen.
But less than a month before the eyes of the world turn to Denmark, it’s clear that there’s no chance a bill will get through the Senate by then — a domestic policy failure that leaves the U.S. with a weakened hand as it seeks to negotiate a global warming treaty with the rest of the world.
At a climate meeting with world leaders in Singapore over the weekend, President Barack Obama expressed support for drafting a limited, short-term political agreement at Copenhagen instead of a legally binding treaty.
“It was unrealistic to expect a full, legally binding international agreement to be reached between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for economic affairs.
Top administration officials say that U.S. negotiators are unable to commit to any “hard and fast” agreements without having a bill through the Senate. And if the U.S. delegation did make any strong commitments on climate change, that could further jeopardize the chances of the Senate passing the legislation early next year.
“It’s pretty clear that if they agreed to lots of things or made a big deal, that the backlash in the Senate would be astounding,” said William Moomaw, a professor of international environmental policy at Tufts University.
The legislation already faces a steep climb through the Senate, regardless of what happens in Copenhagen. Progress has slowed since the House moved quickly to pass a bill last June, as high unemployment numbers and fierce debate over health care reform have pushed the environmental agenda to the back burner.
And lawmakers from coal and manufacturing-heavy states aren’t happy that more liberal Democrats are using the Copenhagen negotiations to ratchet up pressure to move the bill forward.
“I’m totally unconcerned about Copenhagen,” said Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). “I’m concerned about West Virginia.”
Some of the top foreign policy experts in Congress admit the United States is heading into the climate conference with a weak hand.
“The discussion in preparation for Copenhagen is clearly softened by the fact that most of our constituencies — in fact, most of our colleagues — want to talk about something else and that makes it more difficult to do something tremendously dramatic,” said Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.).
And some would-be Copenhagen attendees are already saying they’ll stay behind in Washington to work on bigger priorities if they have to.
“I’m going to Copenhagen unless there are votes here,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Health care “is clearly my top priority, but climate change we’re trying to obviously prepare at the same time.”
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other U.N. officials expect the Copenhagen talks to result in little more than a political agreement signed by world leaders — not the legally binding treaty to cut emissions they had once hoped to see.
The inability of U.S. negotiators to make firm promises about emissions reductions, international funding and other policy issues has made everyone else involved in the conference lower their expectations.
Coming fresh off a sweeping Democrat victory last November Senate Majority Leader and the White House felt confident that passing a climate change bill was all but guaranteed. then they ran into the headwinds of a poor economy and questions about the cost of the reforms to both the public and business.
The inability to pass the bill in the Senate this year means that it is probably dead until after the 2010 elections or even longer depending on the results next November.
Post #2461
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November 16 at 4:10 pm | #1 | Link
We DO NOT need the “Climate Bill”, otherwise known as the Cap and Trade Bill. This Bill if passed will send your utility rates into the atmosphere.
It will impact every house hold in America, except those in Government.
*This includes the elimination of Coal, and Coal Oil, which is the primary heating source in the Northern States.
*No Clean Coal Plants
*Up to $3.00 per gallon of Gasoline, plus more gas taxes.
*Electricity Bills will rise from 50% to 90% per household.
*Limitations on Natural Gas.
*Everyone will be forced to by Carbon Credits for any power usage.
But there is a new report out about the Climate:
A team of scientists has sent a letter to all U.S. senators warning that a claim there is “consensus” in the scientific community on the climate change issue is false.
The letter dated Oct. 29 reads in part: “You have recently received a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), purporting to convey a ‘consensus’ of the scientific community that immediate and drastic action is needed to avert a climatic catastrophe…
“The claim of consensus is fake, designed to stampede you into actions that will cripple our economy, and which you will regret for many years. There is no consensus, and even if there were, consensus is not the test of scientific validity. Theories that disagree with the facts are wrong, consensus or no.”
The five signees of the letter include professors from Princeton University, the University of Virginia and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The letter refers to an earlier open letter sent to Congress by those five signees and others declaring: “The sky is not falling. The earth has been cooling for 10 years, without help. The present cooling was NOT predicted by the alarmists’ computer models, and has come as an embarrassment to them…
“We are flooded with claims that the evidence is clear, that the debate is closed, that we must act immediately, etc., but in fact there is no such evidence. It doesn’t exist.”
The Oct. 29 letter also notes that the American Physical Society, an organization of physicists, did not sign the AAAS letter and states the society is “at this moment reviewing its stance on so-called global warming, having received a petition from its membership to do so. That petition was signed by 160 distinguished members and fellows of the society, including one Nobelist and 12 members of the National Academies. Indeed a score of the signers are Members and Fellows of the AAAS, none of whom were consulted before the AAAS letter to you.”
The petition reads in part: “Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.
“The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes — natural and human — on the Earth’s climate.”
The 160 signees of the petition range alphabetically from Harold M. Agnew, former White House science councilor and former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, to Martin V. Zombeck, a physicist formerly with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and include Ivar Giaever, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1973.