ACES Passes

To note the obvious catch-up news from last night, the Waxman-Markey American Climate and Energy Security Act passes the House of Representatives late yesterday after a weird John Boehner effort at a quasi-filibuster. The bill has its shortcomings, but people should recognize an enormous achievement here by Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, and Nancy Pelosi all of whom drove this forward against fairly daunting odds. In my experience around Washington, DC exactly zero hack political consultants take the view that saving the world from catastrophic climate change is a clever thing for a politician to make a top priority. At the same time, speak to scientists across a variety of fields and they’ll all say that, as a matter of substance, saving the world from catastrophic climate change is the most important thing for politicians to make a top priority. Few politicians are inclined to choose the latter consideration over the former, but those three members of the House of Representatives did and thanks to their skill and determination have been able to pull off an important bill.

Now, of course, the legislation goes to the Senate which, historically speaking, is where good and important ideas have gone to die. Brad Plumer says “I’m not convinced this thing is dead in the Senate (more on that later), but it’s obviously a much steeper challenge.” That’s not reason for hope. The challenge in the House was pretty darn steep. At the end of the day, climate is just exactly the sort of issue where the American political system is well-designed to catastrophically screw up. The incentives are all horrible. Things will only happen if a certain number of people decide to step up, and behave in a statesmanlike manner. You don’t need 100 Senators to do that, but you do need more than zero.