The BP oil disaster made a major energy bill more likely, but what about a climate bill? And does Obama understand that how he handles oil and climate will define his legacy?
When life gives you lemons … add some lemon dispersant and they’ll disappear from sight. Okay, wrong metaphor.
Obama has suggested many times that he aspires to be a transformational leader like President Reagan, the “great communicator.” Tonight, we may well find out to tonight whether Obama is a Reagan or a Carter. Does Obama understand that his first term will be defined by how he deals with the oil spill — and the looming threat of $4 gasoline as he runs for re-election (see “Peak oil production coming sooner than expected“)? Indeed, those two factors may determine whether or not he has a second term.
Future generation will judge his presidency as a success or failure solely on the basis of whether he spares them the multiple catastrophes that are likely if we stay anywhere near our current path of unrestricted unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions. Our children and grandchildren will hardly care about health care reform or the deficit or Afghanistan if the nation and the world are on an inexorable march to 9°F warming, 4 to 6 feet of sea level rise, rampant superstorms, widespread DustBowlif-ication, and hot, acidified oceans with ever-expanding dead zones — aka Hell and High Water.
Reagan had this favorite joke about an irrepressibly optimistic boy who, when shown a pile of horse manure, starts digging through it excitedly. When the puzzled adult says, “What do you think you’re doing?” the boy replied beaming, “With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!” CBS actually quotes Ed Meese saying of this:
“Reagan told the joke so often,” Meese said, chuckling, “that it got to be kind of a joke with the rest of us. Whenever something would go wrong, somebody on the staff would be sure to say, ‘There must be a pony in here somewhere.’”
Well, with all the friggin’ oil and dispersant mucking up the Gulf Coast now, there must be one hell of a pony in here. And maybe there is.
The conventional wisdom inside the DC beltway before the spill was that there was no possibility of passing a climate bill. And that pretty much meant there was no possibility of passing an energy bill, as I discussed back in February.
But now the uber-insiders at the Politico report today, “Gulf fuels new energy-bill push“:
Joel Benenson, a pollster for the Democratic National Committee and Obama’s presidential campaign, argues in a new briefing for top Capitol Hill officials that a comprehensive energy bill “could give Democrats a potent weapon to wield against Republicans in the fall.”
“The oil spill is intensifying the public’s desire for clean energy investments and increased regulation on corporate polluters,” Benenson writes in the briefing, which he prepared on behalf of the League of Conservation Voters.
“In the aftermath of the spill, people firmly believe Congress needs to do more than just make BP pay. Even when pressed with opposition messaging that now is not the time for some ‘job killing energy tax,’ people coalesce around comprehensive clean energy reform. Consequently, support for a comprehensive energy bill is very high. With the right messaging, that support holds strong in the face of harsh opposition attacks.”
Well, Graham appears to have lamely abandoned his own challenge, embracing the too-little, too-late Lugar bill (see In the mother of all flip-flops, Graham rejects his own climate bill, endorses Lugar’s “half-assed energy bill,” which means he “just made the problem worse”).
But if Graham and a few other GOPers can rally around Lugar, then Obama certainly has a legitimate shot at getting 60 votes for Lugar plus some sort of a shrinking carbon cap through the Senate, even if it requires strengthening the bill in conference and having it pass both houses in the lame-duck session after the election.
Yes, the extra-constitutional 60 vote “requirement” in the Senate can potentially do in even the greatest of leaders in our current political climate (see “The central question for 2010: Will anti-science ideologues be able to kill the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill?“). So as I wrote back in January:
Ultimately, the President is going to have to do exactly what he did in Copenhagen if he wants a bill “” negotiate directly with leaders and iron out a deal with specific language.
This speech tonight will set the tone for the tough messaging and personal lobbying that is to come. After 100,000,000 gallons of oil and 1,000,000 gallons of dispersants dumped in our Gulf, I want to see the damn pony!
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Joe,
When Obama (Axelrod and Emmanuel) hear pony they think we’re saying pink unicorn!
Obama should have known last year in January that he was a one-term president. The Republicans and Tea Baggers and the Media have done everything in their power to make sure that Obama is not reelected. As a one-termer Obama could either be a caretaker for the Republican Corporatists or make some necessary changes that progressives could see and appreciate. Tonight is probably his last chance not to be just a maintenance man for the real governors. Tonight could be his defining moment as the leader of a great American movement away from the fossils into the sunlight.
The warming is just not there. I do realize with central planning and outrageous energy prices, many will stop use of a/c in their homes. Obama was there from day one. He was on the links and did nothing but talk. If we relax some interference, the cleanup will be shorter. Obama just messed up on this event. BP will not longer be available to squeeze money out to subsidize wind turbines.
We’ll know a lot after the speech tonight. I look forward to Joe’s take and input from commenters here.
Great post!!
Adding some additional info from the Politico article you cited:
“And the Obama administration has told key senators that ‘an energy deal must include some serious effort to price carbon as a way to slow climate change,’ according to a Senate Democratic leadership aide.
‘No traditional ‘energy only’ bill [without climate-change provisions] meets their sense of what’s credible as a response to BP, or the president’s own 2008 rhetoric,’ the aide said.”
That’s good!
America’s petroleum, Britain’s mess.
Has anyone else noticed British Petroleum buying adspace on environmentalist site’s like Greenman’s Youtube site(http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610)?
Maybe they should rename to Brutish Petroleum.
Joe, you are on fire today!
However, I doubt Obama will go as far we want. And I don’t agree that history will judge him on his climate record – he will be judged on the economy, and, if it keeps going, the Gulf spill. Does anyone (outside of this blog) remember Carter in any terms but gas lines and hostages?
Obama can’t even bring himself to do what needs to be done to get people back to work – no way he’ll stick the Dems neck out for climate legislation before the midterms. After November, he’s a lame duck.
The best I’m hoping for is a little more discipline over big oil. That’s really all that he has political cover for.
Obama is likely to be more ‘transitional’ then ‘transformational’.
He resembles more like a 1970 Richard Nixon- who was transitional between the left and the emerging conservative ideology we have had the last 40 years.
As for climate change- which the more sophisticated eye can already see- the ‘average’ person still cannot pick up the sublime but profound changes that are currently taking place.
A future really ‘progressive’ President will be forced out of necessity to make the changes in Carbon emissions. The problem by then however will be it will be too little too late to neutralize the changes that will likely bring profound changes on human civilization.
Janice Smith
the warming is ‘there’ you are wrong. All the events that James Hansen spoke of in 1988 are certainty happening; increased torrential precipitation; warming seas that have increasing acidity,hotter weather, droughts.
If we blame Obama- and kiss up to the corporations like BP- and ignore the obvious warming- with 393PPM Co2–the highest in 3 million years- you can not only kiss off the human civilization that has thrived the last 12,000 years- but the horrid republican party and their party of fascists.
gee did you read obama’s speech to the naval air station in pensacola
today. the pensacola news journal has it. that must have been the kick.
maybe the rest of the country needs more of a speech about so much
other that is going on in the world.
Please submit questions for Obama at http://www.youtube.com/whitehouse – currently I don’t see anything about the general need to address dependency on oil. You can vote for other people’s questions too.
Thanks for the link Simon, I put up a question. Anyone know if we can we watch the speech online?? I am in Costa Rica!
Here’s my submission:
“If the oil in the Gulf wasn’t killing aquatic life and species along the shore, it would be burned instead, toxic emissions killing people from cancer, causing tree death and crop failure. Shouldn’t we ration fossil fuels? http://www.witsendnj.blogspot.com“
Wit’s End, live at 8 PM http://www.whitehouse.gov/
Thank you for addressing the extra-constitutional* filibuster in your post. That’s the “elephant in the room”, or perhaps more rightly the lion in the door – although Obama does sometimes acknowledges its existence, he’s not willing to face it down as he must.
*Actually, while the filibuster on normal legislation is just extra-counstitutional and against the founders’ will, the filibuster on changing the filibuster itself is out-and-out unconstitutional “prior restraint”.
An energy bill without a carbon price fails as an energy bill because investors don’t have any information about the possible carbon price in the future and therefore can’t properly make investment decisions.
If you’ll recall, Carter had enough foresight to see, and say, that we needed to save energy, invest in alternatives, and reconsider some of the notions of the “Amurican Way”. He had the patience and wisdom to not knee-jerk react by invading at the conflict which has come to represent something completely different from what actually happened. In other words, he was head and shoulders above the vast majority of people in the US including its other “leaders” (aka political followers aka Congress) in terms of wisdom, maturity, love of peace, and intelligence. He was ridiculed for it. While far from perfect, he was better than this country deserved. If we had followed his way, we wouldn’t be in this energy and climate crisis now.
Reagan, on the other hand, followed people into denial, self-aggrandizing anti-intellectual idiocy and mental isolation backing corporate-military imperialism, and got there the way most recent Republican presidents have, with dishonest, probably illegal campaign tactics.
Is that what you mean by finding out whether Obama is a Carter or a Reagan? The day after his speech I think it’s pretty clear which side he came down on; he’s continued his “bipartisan” policy. That is, he’s reinforced the collapse of the Democratic Party which now has absolutely no purpose except as a beard for far-right Republicans.