Politics Matters

The Lieberman-Warner global warming debated in the Senate last week went nowhere: Democratic leadership will yank it from the floor.  Why? Well, it seems as if a giant increase on gas prices — up to $0.50 a gallon — was kind of a tough sell when much of the country is reeling from $4 a gas.  The Politico explains:

With little chance of winning passage of a sweeping 500-page global warming bill, the Senate Democratic leadership is planning to yank the legislation after failing to achieve the 60-vote threshold needed to move the bill to the next stage. After a 48-36 vote on the climate change bill, the Senate is likely to move on to a separate energy debate next week.

The legislation collapsed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the poor timing of debating a bill predicted to increase energy costs while much of the country is focused on $4-a-gallon gas.

This, I think, represents something of a quandary for a number of liberal legislators. On the one hand, we’ve heard a lot about how global warming represents a dire threat to our nation’s security and energy future.  On the other hand, legislation to address it seems rather easily scuttled by political pressures. If it’s really that serious, shouldn’t there be more of a fight?

Furthermore, those pressures are focused on the issue of gas prices. The entire point of cap-and-trade legislation, however, is to raise energy prices.  (Cap-and-trade advocates believe that raising energy prices will discourage consumption and encourage innovation in low-carbon energy.)  So cap-and-trade advocates are going to have to find some way to explain to the public that they 1) want to enact a backdoor tax and 2) actually want to make energy — gasoline, heating, etc. — more difficult to afford.