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Beyond baby steps: Analyzing the cap-and-trade flop
Beyond baby steps: Analyzing the cap-and-trade flop
By Bill McKibben
Watching the collapse of the effort to create a cap-and-trade plan for carbon emissions in 2009-10 was profoundly depressing. Reading Theda Skocpol’s insightful history [PDF] isn’t much more fun — but it’s certainly useful, in a Santayana kind of way. Since this is a mistake we can’t afford to repeat (the planet is running out of spare presidential terms and congressional sessions), Skocpol performs a real service by helping figure out what went wrong.
The first thing to be said, I think, is that this behind-the-scenes route was worth a try. Given the stakes, you would think elite players, especially in the business community, would have been willing to make the relatively small and painless changes the cap-and-trade law envisioned. Such inside-the-Beltway lobbying is how most environmental change has come, at least since the decline of the ’70s-era movement that really powered the most important legislation.
But this was too big — there was too much money at stake. The climate issue, it turned out, didn’t fundamentally resemble acid rain after all. The fossil fuel companies, which had spent a lot of money helping erect the hard-right political edifice then near its height in D.C., saw that they didn’t have to give away anything. They could block even this small change for now, and continue to put away truly record profits.
If the inside-the-Beltway groups had been able to turn to a real grassroots activist movement, the outcome might have been different. But that movement didn’t really exist, and many of the big players had only disdain for its embryonic form — they liked talking with corporate honchos more than treehuggers. And so the lobbyists from the green groups were walking naked into the offices of senators, who recognized that they lacked the ability to inflict pain or offer reward. The result was the rout we saw.
- more -
http://grist.org/climate-energy/beyond-baby-steps-analyzing-the-cap-and-trade-flop/
By Bill McKibben
Watching the collapse of the effort to create a cap-and-trade plan for carbon emissions in 2009-10 was profoundly depressing. Reading Theda Skocpol’s insightful history [PDF] isn’t much more fun — but it’s certainly useful, in a Santayana kind of way. Since this is a mistake we can’t afford to repeat (the planet is running out of spare presidential terms and congressional sessions), Skocpol performs a real service by helping figure out what went wrong.
The first thing to be said, I think, is that this behind-the-scenes route was worth a try. Given the stakes, you would think elite players, especially in the business community, would have been willing to make the relatively small and painless changes the cap-and-trade law envisioned. Such inside-the-Beltway lobbying is how most environmental change has come, at least since the decline of the ’70s-era movement that really powered the most important legislation.
But this was too big — there was too much money at stake. The climate issue, it turned out, didn’t fundamentally resemble acid rain after all. The fossil fuel companies, which had spent a lot of money helping erect the hard-right political edifice then near its height in D.C., saw that they didn’t have to give away anything. They could block even this small change for now, and continue to put away truly record profits.
If the inside-the-Beltway groups had been able to turn to a real grassroots activist movement, the outcome might have been different. But that movement didn’t really exist, and many of the big players had only disdain for its embryonic form — they liked talking with corporate honchos more than treehuggers. And so the lobbyists from the green groups were walking naked into the offices of senators, who recognized that they lacked the ability to inflict pain or offer reward. The result was the rout we saw.
- more -
http://grist.org/climate-energy/beyond-baby-steps-analyzing-the-cap-and-trade-flop/
Why the environmental movement couldn’t get cap-and-trade passed
By Philip Bump
The 2010 failure of the Senate to pass cap-and-trade legislation is a scar the environmental movement tries to ignore but can’t stop examining. It sits there, barely healed, still painful — a reminder of the lost promise of a new president and a brief House majority.
Harvard University political scientist Theda Skocpol has released a long, robust assessment of what went wrong in the political fight. It’s a detailed document that analyzes the politics of environmental policy leading up to the fight and in the years following, drawing direct contrast with the push for healthcare reform. Why that effort succeeded — barely — at the same time that cap-and-trade failed is interesting.
Skocpol’s thesis for why cap-and-trade failed can be simplified to a few points: failed organizing efforts by advocates for the policy, an attempt to craft legislation behind closed doors at a moment that demanded transparency, and (of course) massive shifts in public opinion due to the concerted efforts of opponents of action.
It’s that first point that is perhaps the most instructive, if I may betray my prejudices. Skopcol notes that environmental groups shifted focus away from the grassroots after winning key environmental protections. “Once those laws and federal regulatory bureaucracies to enforce them were in place,” she writes, “the DC political opportunity structure shifted — and so did the organization and focus of environmental activism. Big environmental organizations headquartered in Washington DC and New York expanded their professional staffs and became very adept at preparing scientific reports and commentaries to urge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) onward.”
- more -
http://grist.org/news/why-the-environmental-movement-couldnt-get-cap-and-trade-passed-2/
By Philip Bump
The 2010 failure of the Senate to pass cap-and-trade legislation is a scar the environmental movement tries to ignore but can’t stop examining. It sits there, barely healed, still painful — a reminder of the lost promise of a new president and a brief House majority.
Harvard University political scientist Theda Skocpol has released a long, robust assessment of what went wrong in the political fight. It’s a detailed document that analyzes the politics of environmental policy leading up to the fight and in the years following, drawing direct contrast with the push for healthcare reform. Why that effort succeeded — barely — at the same time that cap-and-trade failed is interesting.
Skocpol’s thesis for why cap-and-trade failed can be simplified to a few points: failed organizing efforts by advocates for the policy, an attempt to craft legislation behind closed doors at a moment that demanded transparency, and (of course) massive shifts in public opinion due to the concerted efforts of opponents of action.
It’s that first point that is perhaps the most instructive, if I may betray my prejudices. Skopcol notes that environmental groups shifted focus away from the grassroots after winning key environmental protections. “Once those laws and federal regulatory bureaucracies to enforce them were in place,” she writes, “the DC political opportunity structure shifted — and so did the organization and focus of environmental activism. Big environmental organizations headquartered in Washington DC and New York expanded their professional staffs and became very adept at preparing scientific reports and commentaries to urge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) onward.”
- more -
http://grist.org/news/why-the-environmental-movement-couldnt-get-cap-and-trade-passed-2/
This is how close climate change legislation came to being passed.
July 2009:
House passes landmark climate change bill
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/26/us-climate-usa-congress-idUSTRE55O4R120090626
September 2009:
Boxer, Kerry Set to Introduce Climate Bill in Senate
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/09/28/28climatewire-boxer-kerry-set-to-introduce-climate-bill-in-43844.html
October 2009:
Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill: Chairman’s mark and EPA analysis released
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-23-kerry-boxer-clean-energy-bill-chairmans-mark-and-epa-analysis
November 2009:
Boxer Statement on Committee Passage of S. 1733 – The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Majority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=c512ac4d-802a-23ad-4884-2b95a8405efe
Unfortunately, by the time the bill got to the full Senate, it was attacked from all sides. Close = no bill.
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