Graham, Kerry, Lieberman meet with Rahm Emanuel — and then Chamber of Commerce, whose VP of Gov’t Affairs said, “generally we were in synch”!

Seeking to resuscitate stalled global warming legislation in Washington’s suddenly changed political climate, a bipartisan group of senators including John Kerry of Massachusetts has been conducting private talks this week with the White House and a key business group over an array of concessions sought by Republicans.

The election of Scott Brown as Kerry’s colleague has added urgency to the negotiations for a compromise….

The front page of yesterday’s Boston Globe proves that I am not the last optimistic person about the bipartisan clean air, clean energy jobs bill, which preserves a livable climate and reduces our nearly $1 billion a day dependence on foreign oil.

Trying to win Brown’s support for a deal is part of the effort.

Good.  The bill can’t pass without at least 4 Republican votes, and very possibly more.  I’ll discuss the prospects for getting Brown’s vote in a later post, but fundamentally, the bill doesn’t merely require several R’s to have a chance at passing.   It would be far better for the nation if it had more like 6 to 8, even at the expense of putting in some really annoying crap in the bill.

Yes, I’d still like to see a bill that Snowe, Collins, Graham, Lugar, Voinovich, Murkowski, Brown, and even John McCain would support — okay, maybe McCain is hopeless, especially now.  The point is to send a message to the nation and the world that America is in this for the long, long haul.

I don’t think it is news to CP readers that in every bill that must be done, there is an element of … Mary Poppins:  a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down (see Graham (R-SC): “If you had a bill that would allow for responsible offshore drilling, a robust nuclear power title, I think you could get some Republican votes for a cap-and-trade system”).

Enviros increasingly get this:

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I’ve been crashing on the page proofs of my new book, Straight Up:  America’s Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on [the] Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions.  That and three speaking engagements are why I haven’t been blogging quite as much as usual over the past week.

And yes, I just noticed there’s no “the” before “Status Quo Media.”  Does that seem right to you?

Plus I’d love any suggestions for marketing the book, which will come out sometime in early April.  Book cover ideas are welcome, too — the image at the right is what you currently see at Island Press (where you can go to see a book blurb, if you don’t know that it’s a collection of the best 1% or so of my blog posts).

Now, about that title contest I held last year with its more than 200 entries (see “Contest: Come up with a title for my book“).

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The climate and clean energy jobs bill hasn’t been that much further out.  Maybe the 20-yard line.