Record snowfall has buried Washington — and along with it, buried the chances of passing global warming legislation this year. Cars are stranded in banks of snow along the streets of the federal capital, and in the corridors of Congress, climate legislation also has been put on ice.Voters are mostly concerned with jobs and the economy. Global warming is at the bottom of their list. And now, on top of that, the paralyzing snowfalls have made the prospect of winning support for a climate bill this year even less likely.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said the blizzards that have shut down Congress have made it more difficult to argue that global warming is an imminent danger. “It makes it more challenging for folks not taking time to review the scientific arguments,' said Bingaman, who as the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee has jurisdiction over energy and climate change issues.
Some Senate Democrats dismiss the role snow has played in the debate, but they acknowledge there is growing consensus that global warming legislation will not pass in the 111th Congress.
“I don't think that the climate change with cap-and-trade is going to pass this year,' said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who as Budget chairman is putting together Congress's annual estimate of how much revenue the government will collect next year and in future years.
Senior White House political adviser David Axelrod said: “If a consensus can be reached, we want to support that, but this is clearly an issue that Republicans and Democrats are going to have to do together. It is not something that one party or the other party can do.'
Whoa, Dave! Cats and dogs, living together?
At the start of 2009, Obama hoped to fund a major middle-class tax cut with the income from a cap-and-trade regulatory program that would have charged companies for pollution permits. But hardly anyone in the Senate is counting on new revenue from a cap-and-trade program anytime soon.Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which approved a cap-and-trade proposal last year, acknowledged that there are not yet 60 votes for an energy reform and cap-and-trade proposal.
But even the most ardent proponents of curbing greenhouse gas emissions sense their backs are up against the wall. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is leading a bipartisan effort to put together a compromise on energy and climate change legislation, has exhorted allies to act with greater urgency.
“You know, if Tea Party folks go out there and get angry because they think their taxes are too high, for God's sakes, a lot of citizens ought to be angry about the fact that they're being killed and our planet is being injured by what is happening on a daily basis by the way we provide our power and our fuel and by the old practices we have,' Kerry told his allies.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has called moving the bill a “headache.'
