Cross-Posted from: HERE
I’m pretty sure that from now until the Senate votes on a climate bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will look at what he’s going to have to do to get 60 votes for a measure, and add 30 seconds to his schedule every day where he takes a pillow and cries into it. The Senate is where legislation goes to die. As elated as I was at passing the Waxman-Markey bill out of the House, it hit me pretty fast that this was going to get ugly.
Environmental groups have been talking about the idea of strengthening, but in the Senate what kind of grassroots pressure and mobilization would that really take? What kind of bill would we end up seeing if we had “business as usual” activism on this bill? The first thing I want to do is talk what is necessary for a much stronger bill, and I must admit that this has long odds considering we came up short in the easier of the two chambers. Next, I’m going to show you what compromises would have to be included in the bill in order to reach 60 votes assuming the level of support by the American public is as dull as it was in the House.
Getting a Better Bill
Although getting to 60 votes is much more of a challenge there are some potential advantages that we didn’t have in the House for this particular bill in my opinion that shed some light on how you strengthen.
1. The Obama Factor: Barack Obama didn’t make his energy legislation a very public issue at all until the day before the vote in the House. Although his administration did some furious work behind the scenes leading up to the vote, there was no full court press in the media. No town hall events like there are with healthcare. The media was busy covering healthcare while the climate bill snuck through like a trojan horse. Although this certainly frustrated environmental groups, Obama has saved up political capital to use on the Senate side if he intends to use it(and if he has any left after healthcare). There are some signs already that Obama is looking to take a much more aggressive approach on the Senate. When the House bill passed Obama changed his Saturday radio address from the subject of healthcare to the energy bill. This past Monday, he sought to keep the focus on energy by announcing new lightbulb standards, while recounting what his administration has done so far on energy, and about how important it is the Senate acts on the climate/energy bill. One big disadvantage we face with the public is they’ve had to withstand 8 years worth of climate denial and delay by the Bush Administration. If Obama used his oratory skills and popularity to highlight the issue of global warming, and more importantly the economic benefits of a strong energy/climate bill, he could shift some public opinion. For the bill to have any chance of strengthening, Obama needs to go on the offensive publicly, and trade political favors with swing vote Senators privately.
2. More Media As I said above, the media hardly covered the bill at all. Everyone was so distracted by healthcare, Mark Sanford dropping his pants and running off to Argentina, and celebrity deaths. Then, boom all of the sudden a historic climate change bill passes out of nowhere. Monday felt quite different, as stories on the House bill were in plenty of papers, and all over the news shows. Now the media could be a good thing or a bad thing. Typically they screw it up and exaggerate the costs of action versus the need to act. However, good smart media work by advocacy organizations and pro-action businesses, as well as politicians at the local, state, and Federal level supportive of climate legislation getting on the airwaves and talking up the bill could make a positive difference. This would also give Obama more pressure to draw the spotlight to himself and articulate what he wants to see in the bill.
3. Have a unified mass message: It would be important for all trying to strengthen to recognize that most Americans don’t know intricacies of climate legislation, and could care less whether you cut emissions 17% below 2005 levels or 25% below 1990 levels. They don’t know whether a 100% auction is better than 15% auction. They can’t describe offsets. I saw a poll once that only a quarter of Americans know what cap and trade means. The message to the public in the media and from the grassroots shoudn’t be policy-wonk specific, the objective just needs to be to get the American people behind acting now. I like to use the simple line “more clean energy and less pollution”. That’s got to be the kind of mass messaging used. The opposition is very good at sticking to simple(and untrue) mass-messaging. We’re pretty terrible at it so far, and our positions are all over the place. Another benefit of a simple unified mass message that everyone can agree on is it would be much easier for the media to report our point of view. If behind the scenes and in the lobby meetings there are 10 different positions on whether we need… 40% of 25% reduction or whether a carbon tax would be grand or if we need a 100% auction or this is the best bill ever and will solve global warming…fine. Keep it to yourself when you’re talking in public. Keep it simple and you can keep the bill simple. Make it complicated, and the American public will tune out, and you’ll get a giant Harry Potter book written by Big Coal and Big Ag.
4. Fewer Targets: Although it normally takes more pressure to influence a Senator than a Congressman, Senators are also more vulnerable to not getting re-elected than Congressman. This can once again work in the grassroots favor if they are out in force. If we aren’t we’re doomed regarding strengthening. From my view the fact is(as we’ll see later), about two-thirds of the Senators are firmly in the “yes” or “no” column when it comes to climate legislation. This means there are around 30 targets that environmental groups would focus on if we were smart. The bill is only as strong as the 60th Senator who votes for it. I’m not suggesting we completely ignore those who are definitely voting yes or are completely unreachable, but lets face it we have limited resources, money, volunteers, and time. If you live in a place like California or most of the Northeast, using all these resources to pressure your Senators isn’t very worthwhile. National environmental groups would in my opinion be smart to dramatically(and temporarily) shift most of their resources to swing states. If you’re part of a college group or local chapter in a non-swing state, you need to find ways to outreach to swing states via phone and e-mail to anyone who has so much as signed a postcard (not fun work I know).
5. 350: As many know, 350.org is holding a global event on October 24 where groups of people all over the US and the world will be taking actions to symbolize the need for strong bold action on climate change. If the bill hasn’t been voted on by this day, it could lead to a lot of grassroots pressure to push for a stronger bill. I see this day as a rallying point to get the bill over the hump. Activists should seize it as such, and leadership in the Senate would be wise to hold off on putting the bill to a vote until after this day.
6. A US-China Deal: I know that the US and China are having bilateral talks to try and work out a deal between each other for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. From what I’ve read, those talks haven’t been going so great, but it would be great if some kind of commitment could be struck in the fall. Even if it’s lousy, this would signal to Senators concerned about the “will China act?” argument against domestic legislation that China will act. Even if the simple message that got out to the public was “China agrees to global warming deal with US”, this will cause a surge of support for domestic action.
7. Grassroots Pressure: This was lacking too much on the House bill, which caused Waxman and Markey to make concessions. Despite accusations that national green groups gave in, if you don’t have strong grassroots support behind you and you’re lobbying in Washington, there isn’t much power to wield. The need for more pressure is obvious, but I couldn’t exactly ignore it. There isn’t much of an answer to this problem beyond what I said above. Groups have been trying to figure it out for decades. They’d better get it right in a couple months.
That’s all I’ve got for how you get a stronger bill. If all these incredients came together, I think it could happen. The second part will examine what kind of concessions we would see in a Senate bill without a lot of things changing, or as I like to call it, “business as usual activism”.
Matt, thanks for the column. I think, however, the priorities (I’m not sure if the list was meant to be ranked by importance) is backwards. The idea that any politician – Obama or otherwise – can swoop in and save the day is silly. The operative word is “I agree with you, no go out and make me do it.”
Over the past few decades, contrary to #7 here, green groups haven’t spent decades trying to figure this out. They have spent decades trying to milk money out of grassroots environmentalists to pay for their expensive lobbying and policy jobs in DC. If the only infrastructure you’ve built is in DC then there is no way to “go out and make them do it” because people in DC don’t vote. If the big green groups spent a majority of their money on genuine organizing to build a popular movement around this issue then we might have a chance of strengthening it in the Senate.
Until then we’ll have to keep doing what we’ve been doing – praying that the Obama-god will swoop in at the last minute and save the day. Talk about faith based programs, that’s not a strategy at all.
Thanks Jay, just for the record I wasn’t ranking them by importance, cause #7 is the most important, and I mention it a few times in numbers 1-6. These are all just things I think we would need to see/do for a stronger bill.
I agree we shouldn’t pray Obama will swoop in and save the say(that’s why I wouldn’t bet my life on waiting for the EPA to regulate CO2), but a big bill requires a big push by the president. It’s not the silver bullet, but if you don’t have Obama out in front you’re in trouble.
I’d encourage the skeptics over the man-made climate change to think of the sky in Beijing.
The current consumption of dirty, noxious energy reminds me of human smoking habit.
Rock on, Matt. #7 (and #5 of course) methinks is a prerequisite to #1. That’s all.
This is a bit hard to swallow.
The problem with coming up with a unified messaging is that the discourse is completely and utterly dominated by a few big players (the big greens) who are willing to compromise (both in messaging and lobbying) or even actively promote everything the youth climate movement has come out against: from giving up on 100% auctions to carbon offsets to ditching environmental justice stipulations to grandfathering in the coal industry.
The big greens NGOs have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying for this bill – more than on anything in decades – not to mention many tens of thousands on the media work to promote it as the best thing since sliced bread. The big greens are so invested in it’s passage they can’t be trusted to do be honest dealers with the rest of the environmental movement in any of things you listed above.
As such, the only truly unified message we can possible have is that of the of USCAP (www.us-cap.org), the Oil / Coal / Gas / big “green” ngo joint lobby group which basically wrote the blueprint for this bill.
I’m sorry to say it, but every piece of evidence from their work on the bill in the House is that NRDC, NWF, WRI, and EDF are far more invested in the health of the USCAP coalition – in their alliance with the dirty energy industry in other words – than they are in unity with those of us concerned about equity, the pitfalls of the carbon market and non-solutions like nuclear power, and stopping coal in it’s tracks.
Face it: we aren’t going to have unity with USCAP.
Our option is to combat the hegemony of these groups work on this bill at every turn or to forget about this battle – which USCAP has one – and move on to future fights.
Thanks Cascadia, not that I expected the “big greens” or anyone else to actually follow my advice, but as I mentioned above, you’re not going to pass a strong climate bill if the American public is tuned out of the conversation. They don’t care about USCAP. They don’t care about a 100% auction. They don’t care about carbon offsets and they don’t understand environmental justice stipulations. They care about
1. Will this bill be good for the economy?
2. Why should we combat global warming right now with a bill?
3. Will this help us get off foreign oil?
Yes I’m generalizing, but like I said, if green groups/activists want to eat each other for lunch behind closed doors on the policy specifics, be my guest. In public, you’ve got the delay/denial messaging machine repeating simple lies, and the message from the pro-climate activists is all over the place.
From my perspective simplifying the message (ie, to bring more support to the bill so that it won’t get weakened in various sausage making in the Senate) is only pointful if your goal is a more pure form of the terrible USCAP agenda, which was for all intents and purposes the starting point for this bill and it’s “best case” scenario.
It adds insult to injury to be told essentially “fall in line behind the dirty energy industry’s climate agenda or you are sacrificing the perfect for the good.”
I reject this dichotomy of “you are either for progress on stopping climate change [and will support the climate bill no matter how awful it is] or against it [because you break the silence and raise wholly legitimate doubts in public about whether the climate bill will accomplish anything useful or promote a just climate future]“.
This is the dichotomy given to us by this rather profane alliance of big greens and big polluters: this climate bill is a joke and if we don’t use it as an opportunity to educate the public about the issues (carbon permit give-a-ways, carbon offsets, environmental justice, grandfathering in the coal industry) that you say they don’t care about — crucial and fundamental issues to a just livable climate future – than frankly we might as well just give up on that goal: when else are we to talk about these fundamental problems in the USCAP model if not now while it has some attention?? If not now, when?
Let’s give “the public” the benefit of the doubt that they can understand these things over time, that’s it better to do the right thing then to do the wrong thing quickly, and (pardon the language) call bullshit by name, rather than pinching our nose while we and the rest of the world eats it.
Ah well, we just have some disagreement since you think the bill is doomed to looking like USCAP regardless. From my perspective if we wait for the public to understand these things over time(which a lot of activists don’t fully understand), the world eats it. Not that I don’t think you aren’t making legitimate points, I just see it another way.