Pennsylvanians Protest Rep. Thompson's Anti-Environmental Votes

Oil companies and other polluters have once again convinced a new crop of political leaders to take a crowbar to the nation’s environmental laws and try to wedge open a few new loopholes.

It first happened in 1995.  Congress’ attack on the Environmental Protection Agency and their efforts to add anti-environmental riders to budget bills became a central issue as President Clinton vetoed the bills, leading to the last government shut down (and Republican losses in the 1996 elections).

Fast forward to 2011.  The new GOP majority in the House is traveling down the same path, loading up their 2011 spending bill with assaults on the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act that amount to the largest assault on America’s bi-partisan legacy of environmental and wildlife safeguards in history.

Who are the House leaders making these decisions?  Meet Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky), the new chair of a key congressional subcommittee on energy, who explained to the National Journal why Republicans are trying to block EPA from enforcing the Clean Air Act:

“This is a much broader issue than the health of the American people and lungs and emphysema; it’s how can we balance that in the global marketplace for jobs.”

Rep. Whitfield’s premise that Americans must sacrifice our children’s lungs in order to protect jobs points to the huge gulf between the extreme views of some GOP House leaders and the American public.  The polluter bailouts nestled in the 2011 budget bill have become a liability for the House GOP.  The attacks on the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act are starting to expose the hidden agenda of members like Rep. Whitfield, and they are now a barometer of the extreme political agenda that is being advanced under the guise of deficit reduction.

Public Backlash to Attacks on Environment

The sneak attacks have also created a backlash among the public (not surprising, since 3-out-of-4 voters support the EPA setting tougher standards on pollutants such as mercury, smog and carbon dioxide).  After the vote, House members returned home for the recess, where they have faced tough questions from angry constituents.

Here’s a local press report of a town hall meeting held by Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH), who recently won back his seat in New Hampshire’s second district:

“About 50 people crowded into the Salem Town Hall to hear from the Republican congressman, who took questions on illegal immigration, the national debt, health care, education, and other topics. But climate change and regulation of greenhouse gases dominated most of the discussion…”

Not many of Rep. Bass’ colleagues were as willing to have public meetings during this recess, but that didn’t stop concerned constituents from turning up at their offices.  A few that are being reported by local news stations and creating buzz include constituents of Representatives Glenn Thompson and Jim Gerlach in Pennsylvania and Steve Stivers in Ohio.

Congress’ attacks on the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Acts have also rallied a broad cross-section of civic leaders across the nation who are speaking out, including:

• Doctors and nurses
• Hunters and anglers
• Churches and religious leaders
• Workers and labor unions
• Business groups and small businesses
• State and local officials
• Scientists
• State Wildlife Conservation Groups and National Environmental groups

Hopeful Signs?

A piece of good news comes from the same House GOP leaders who initially opened the door to adding polluter favors to the budget bill.  A temporary 2-week extension offered Friday night is a clean bill without any of the oilmarks included one week ago.  While this is good news, it is a baby step and may be a fleeting victory.  The House GOP leaders are still threatening a showdown with the Senate and President Obama, and they have not given any sign that, as the additional 2 weeks expire, they will back away from the extreme and reckless bill they recently passed.

It’s still not clear where this showdown is headed when any short-term extension expires.  President Obama promised a veto of the House budget bill passed last week.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) got it right when he said this week:

“We believe that the hundreds of riders and legislative matters [added to the House CR] are strictly the worst kind of politics. How do they expect us to agree to any of that? And we’re not going to. … The CR is to deal with funding for our government, not all these other goodies they think are cute at this time.”

House GOP leaders have proven with the 2-week extension that they are capable of leaving the polluter favors and oilmarks out of the spending bill.  They would be wise to do so.

Editorial Boards and Opinion Leaders Speak Out

The backlash against the extreme environmental attacks in the budget bill have also attracted the attention of editorial boards and opinion leaders across the nation.  Rob Perks at NRDC has been tracking these stories on his blog, which you can read here.  I have captured a sampling of media below.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA) Editorial:  Pollution pinata: Budget cutting becomes an excuse for EPA attacks

But for a sense of spending cuts made solely for political sake, nothing quite beats the attack on the environment in this spending bill. The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act were assaulted repeatedly. Much of it took the form of stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of its enforcement powers to protect the health and well-being of the American people.

The range and destructiveness of these assaults were breathtaking. They include provisions to curtail the scientific study of climate change, blocking the EPA from protecting wetlands and streams from harmful dumping, stopping the EPA from dumping waste from mountain top removal in stream valleys, and, that old GOP favorite, barring the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

The National Wildlife Federation called the spending bill a “pollution pinata.” It identified 14 egregious examples of environmentally damaging amendments for which the total budget savings was zero (although many of them will end up costing the nation money by endangering public health). It also noted that an amendment that would have eliminated billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to oil companies was defeated. So much for this being all about the deficit.

New York Times: Why Wouldn’t the Tea Party Shut It Down?

Look to Washington for the bigger story. As The Los Angeles Times recently reported, Koch Industries and its employees form the largest bloc of oil and gas industry donors to members of the new House Energy and Commerce Committee, topping even Exxon Mobil. And what do they get for that largess? As a down payment, the House budget bill not only reduces financing for the Environmental Protection Agency but also prohibits its regulation of greenhouse gases.  Here again, the dollars that will be saved are minute in terms of the federal deficit, but the payoff to Koch interests from a weakened E.P.A. is priceless.

USA Today Editorial

If [entitlement] costs are contained, there will be no need to live with dirtier air or other cuts rooted more in ideology or corporate self-interest than in governance that is effective, affordable and responsibly financed.

Times-Picayune (LA), House Republicans are cutting a lot more than the deficit

Last November Americans demanded that Congress take immediate action to shrink fish and wildlife populations, speed the end of duck hunting, reduce the safety of our drinking water, destroy more wetlands, dirty the air we breathe, increase the rate of sea level rise swamping our coast- and protect profits for oil companies.

Didn’t know that?

Then you haven’t been listening to Republicans like our own Steve Scalise (R-Jefferson) and Tea Partiers who now control the House of Representatives. All those changes are included in the budget resolution they sent to the Senate last week.

Patriot-News (PA) Editorial:

“The BP oil spill, the worst in America’s offshore drilling history, is not even a year old. Only weeks ago, lawmakers demanded more accountability in drilling and oversight. Now Republicans see no issue chopping away at that oversight.”

Albany Times Union Editorial:  An Assault on the Environment

The new House Republican majority likes to say that the American people spoke last year. If the GOP’s spending bill is any indication, it seems the American people are clamoring for more mercury in their fish, oil on their coasts and pollution in their drinking water. Those would be just some of the environmental highlights of a House spending bill to keep the government running through Sept. 30. Or perhaps anti-environmental highlights would be more apt. Anti-health, too.

Detroit Free Press Editorial:  U.S. House Republicans swing a dangerous budget ax

The budget passed by U.S. House Republicans — it got zero Democratic votes — early last Saturday morning is rash and dangerous. Designed to get the country through until Oct. 1, the House resolution slashes programs in midstream and ties the hands of several departments, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency.

New York Times Editorial: The Dirty Energy Party

Yet even this retailored approach is sure to whip the Republicans into a fresh frenzy of opposition. They have already made clear their determination to cut off financing and otherwise undermine the Environmental Protection Agency, which plans to regulate carbon emissions from power plants and other industrial sources using its authority under the Clean Air Act.

But basic scientific research? Energy efficiency? Cleaner fuels? The House Republican budget resolution gives the back of its hand to even these worthy and unobjectionable strategies, which until now have enjoyed reliable bipartisan support.

Concord Monitor (NH) Editorial: A Vote for the Environment is a Vote for N.H.

Generations of 2nd District congressmen (including Bass himself, in an earlier congressional tenure) have consistently argued that representing New Hampshire means looking out for the environment. In this case, the health of Bass’s constituents could be improved by better regulation of aging power plants to the west. The health of everyone’s constituents will be improved by more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. And, of course, there is an economic component to that environmentalism too: New Hampshire’s tourism and recreation industries depend on climate protection.

Raleigh News & Observer Editorial (NC): Mercury Rising

In one of history’s sorrier twists, Republicans in the U.S. House are down on the Environmental Protection Agency, way down. This week they’re trying to gut its powers to regulate pollutants in the air, on farmland and in water. Yet the national movement to protect our environment had its roots in the heyday of Republican Theodore Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon helped create the EPA. So why all the animosity now? Overreaching regulations that stifle business, agency opponents say. However, the EPA generally proposes rules that are required by law – and common sense. The more we know about ill-health in humans and ill-effects on the natural world, the more obvious it is that industrial processes must be regulated for the common good. Some pollution is inevitable, but the government is right to put a lid on it.

Wisconsin State Journal: Lawmakers should reject cuts to EPA

To ensure that the health and environment of Wisconsin’s families are protected, Wisconsin’s members of Congress should reject the funding cuts, and instead stand up for cleaner air, cleaner water, and preserving our environment.

Providence Journal (RI) Editorial:  EPA Under Attack

Republicans in Congress, and some Democrats, are bent on blocking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from curbing greenhouse gases. For that matter, they would be happy to have the agency stand back in a number of areas, from safer toxic coal-ash disposal to improving the efficiency of industrial boilers and solid-waste incinerators. One reason they give is that regulation is bad for business. The main source they cite: senior business executives desirous of maximum short-term corporate profits, and thus maximum compensation for the execs. The other aspects of the equation — public health and welfare — are rarely mentioned. Indeed, the long-term health of the U.S. economy stands to benefit greatly from a shift to cleaner and more efficient energy.

St. Petersburg Times (FL) Editorial: Serving Ideology, Not Voters

The House plan also takes aim at specific regulations that Republicans find politically objectionable. For example, it bars the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing limits on carbon dioxide pollution. Like a tea party manifesto, the plan strips funding from federal regulatory agencies that protect workers, food safety and the environment.

Battle Creek Enquirer , Stop Attack on Clean Air, Water

What do clean water and clean air have to do with the budget? Absolutely nothing – the budget deficit is being used as cover to mount a reckless and irresponsible sneak attack on the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act that endangers the air we breathe, the water we drink and the wildlife and lands we cherish.

South County Independent (RI): Don’t Water Down Clean Air Act

Some members of Congress have launched a stealth attack on one of the most important laws protecting our health and our children’s future by adding amendments to the Continuing Resolution – a stop-gap measure to keep the government running through the end of this fiscal year – that would roll back portions of the Clean Air Act.

Miami Herald, Fouling the Clean Air Act

Largely hidden in its attack on the federal budget, the House of Representatives has approved a key Republican campaign promise to big business: Protecting it from what the new majority argues are the handcuffs of environmental safeguards. The Republicans would cuff the Environmental Protection Agency instead.

The Colorado Independent, Gardner Hammers on EPA Re Clean Air Act But Poll Says Voters in CD4 Want More Regulations

U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., helped lead last week’s GOP onslaught against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, despite polling in his congressional district showing two-thirds of his constituents feel “Congress should let the EPA do its job.”

The Tennessean: Air Standards Have Saved Lives for Decades

Having personally experienced a child struggling for breath during an asthma attack, I can assure you little else matters when children’s health is at risk. This is why I’m so offended by a number of professional politicians’ attempts to undermine life-saving protective health standards enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Concord Monitor (NH): An assault on our air, water

Passed under cover of night on Saturday, this bill endangers the health of New Hampshire’s children, elderly citizens and other vulnerable populations by blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job and cleaning up coal-fired power plants and other large sources of dangerous carbon dioxide pollution. It also cuts the EPA’s overall budget by the largest percentage in 30 years, severely threatening the agency’s ability to ensure that all New Hampshire residents have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.

AlterNet, Get Ready: The GOP Has Declared War on the Environment

Republicans are trying to take down the EPA and with it environmental regulation that seeks to protect our air, water, food and health.

Des Moines Register (IA):  Budget Deficits and the Environment

H.R. 1 cuts the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by almost a third and hamstrings the EPA’s ability to protect the environment and Americans’ health. For example, the measure prevents the EPA from protecting communities from mercury, lead, arsenic and other toxic air pollution from cement plants, leaving thousands of children exposed and at risk of asthma, slowed brain development and other neurological disorders. The EPA safeguard that the measure blocks would have reduced mercury pollution by more than 90 percent and saved 2,500 lives each year.

Chicago Tribute Local (Libertyville, IL), Dold Out of Touch on Environmental Issues in the 10th Congressional District Illinois

Salem News (OR), Editorial Backlash to Republican Budget Attack on EPA Health Protections

Despite the fact that we are living in the hottest decade since record-keeping began, legislation protecting the planet from catastrophic climate change died in the U.S. Senate. Every Republican senator and even a few Democratic senators from coal- or oil-producing states refused to support passage of the comprehensive energy reform bill, forcing a colossal failure on clean energy/climate legislation. Now our children and grandchildren will pay the price for our worst failure as a nation.

Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other oil producing countries must be cheering over this recent decision to shelve comprehensive energy reform. That is really good news for OPEC and these countries. It means that Americans will continue sending them a billion dollars every day. With the assurance from American Petroleum Institute and their congressional allies, OPEC and the other nations can be confident that we were never serious about ending our dangerous oil addiction in the first place.

The Chinese are cheering too.

The failure of this country to act on comprehensive energy reform means that as an earlier adopter of such policy, China will gain control over the new energy economy. It was no coincidence that two days after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the Senate was short five votes to block the filibuster in order to pass comprehensive energy reform, China announced it would begin pricing carbon and establishing a carbon market. With this important commitment, the Chinese will soon dominate world carbon trading. Sorry, Chicago.

In the two years that Congress has been dragging its feet on clean energy reform, China went from having very little new energy manufacturing capacity to becoming the largest manufacturer of wind turbines and the number-one producer of solar panels in the world.

During the height of the recession, China decided to take that opportunity to build high-speed electric rail service to every major city within its borders. It is half way to reaching that ambitious goal and projects completing it by 2014. While the Senate fiddled, China was burning up the new energy markets.

There is the price for climate solutions and then there is the cost of inaction. The price of addressing climate change is expected to be in the range of 1-2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product over the next several decades. The cost of unchecked climate change is something much, much greater. The average global temperature has increased 1.3 degrees F during the past 100 years and the pace of this increase is accelerating. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2010 promises to be one of the hottest, if not the hottest, years on record. We already are seeing massive forest fires around the world, more intense storms and flooding, expanding deserts, glacial melting and alarming declines in phytoplankton in all the oceans.

Phytoplankton are critical for our future. They are the base of the ocean’s food chain and the primary producer of much of the oxygen we breathe. Research data from just under a half million observations gathered for more than a century were used by Dalhousie University researcher Daniel Boyce to determine that the number of phytoplankton in the world’s oceans has decreased by about 40 percent since 1950. Boyce has warned that ocean warming is an important factor in the phytoplankton decline.

Too many senators are listening to polluters instead of the scientists or to the majority of Americans who support a new energy economy. They have learned nothing from the Gulf disaster and the high price we pay when oil lobbyists dictate energy laws.

There can be little doubt that the Senate’s failure to act will let polluters off the hook while jeopardizing wildlife and our children’s future.

Every American needs to wake up to what is not going on in Washington and rediscover our personal duty to maintain a viable democracy capable of making timely, responsible decisions. I have heard a lot of excuses for inaction. Reluctance to act is generally linked to two myths—”too big to fail” and “too small to matter.” Those who believe the Earth is just too big to be impacted by human activities promote and hide behind the first myth. Many who know better express the second myth that “my efforts are too small to matter.”

I have often wondered which myth is the most dangerous and concluded that they operate in tandem as a dangerous duo threatening the future inhabitability of the world.

We must reject this thinking not just by voting but by being active, engaged citizens who know how to make a difference by working together.

His appearance at the talks is considered especially important given that healthcare continues to dominate the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised to move forward with healthcare reform hoping to hold votes in December. The timing of these votes could directly interfere with the Copenhagen meetings, preventing Senate climate leaders John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) from traveling to Copenhagen and build support.

Obama’s announcement also coincides with the announcement of a provisional greenhouse gas emissions target for 2020 in the range of 17% below 2005 levels. These levels will be placed on the bargaining table at Copenhagen and closely parallel with levels included in the House climate bill passed earlier this year, as well as the Senate bill that will likely reach the floor in the spring.

Possibly due to the youth campaigns that have urged Obama to action,the White House will host a Clean Energy Economy Forum with youth leaders from around the country on Wednesday, December 2 from 4:00-7:00 pm. Campus Ecology’s own Praween Dayananda will be in attendance, along with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, and other Administration officials. The forum will address the benefits of the clean energy economy for younger generations and the role young Americans have in being leaders in and benefiting from those opportunities.

The forum will be webcast live here, and will also be open to the public through a Facebook application which allows the public to watch and discuss the event live. The White House will be keeping up with the chat, taking questions, and incorporating feedback from chat participants during the event.

Hope springs eternal, but the idea of waiting to “spring” for Senate action doesn’t fill me with hope. In 2010, the Senate will convene in January, not March. The Senate’s unfinished business on clean energy and climate should be on deck as the Senate’s highest priority after health care. Speaker Pelosi and the House worked impressively already this year to pass a clean energy jobs bill that puts America on a leadership pathway for reducing pollution and tackling climate change. When health care is done, the Senate needs to turn to the energy reform and climate package that Majority Leader Reid has put in motion. As we head into 2010, President Obama should make clear that delivering the clean energy jobs & climate bill to his desk is his top priority for unfinished business.

In the meantime, President Obama will send a team to the climate negotiations in Copenhagen. He has been an impressive leader on climate change in his first year — from tailpipe standards to a promising new dialogue with China. But Copenhagen and the coming months will be the pivotal test of whether he can break through the politics of inaction and the millions of dollars spent by oil companies and their allies to block progress. It is unlikely that the President will close the final deal on a new global agreement in December. More likely, he will prepare the way with an interim deal and ask the world to wait on Congress for the final package. If so, it will take a vigorous White House determination to move advance the bipartisan efforts being led by Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman to the front of the line.

Americans have had enough delay. We can’t afford to wait and let clean energy jobs go to other countries ready to invest in clean energy. We can’t wait to break our addiction to oil. We can’t wait to take the responsible steps necessary to protect people and wildlife from a warming world.

Yesterday, both the bad liquid coal amendment and the mediocre, compromise liquid coal amendment failed, leaving liquid coal out of the energy bill completely. This thrilled the environmental community (including NWF), but could hurt the bill’s overall chances for passing since Republican leadership has said they will filibuster the whole bill if it doesn’t include more fossil fuel (oil, gas or coal) production.  Talk about being stuck in the dinosaur age! (ba-dum-ching!) The bad Bunning-Domenici bill liquid coal bill failed. But, In trying to get it passed, Domenici and others had argued so strongly that the Testor compromise bill was terrible and unattainable, they couldn’t turn around and vote for the compromise bill, so it lost. Voting against the compromise was a rare mix of enviro champs and anti-enviros (Boxer and Inhofe voting together at last).

Today, we’re slated for more votes, including the bad Levin Fuel Economy amendment, which would weaken fuel economy provisions already in the bill. This will be a tight vote, so please give a quick call to your senators and make sure they will vote against the Levin amendment. It’s unclear when or if a renewable energy standard amendment will come to the floor, and it’s doubtful that it will be Senator Bingaman’s 15 percent renewables by 2020 that we so desperately need.

Finally, a quick reality check that this bill may be hard to get into law anyway: Republican senators are threatening to filibuster and the President is threatening to veto. The President is threatening a veto mainly because the “NOPEC” amendment passed yesterday, essentially declaring OPEC a violation of US anti-trust laws. Many see this NOPEC amendment as merely a symbolic gesture, but the President doesn’t want to upset OPEC, saying it would hurt US interests abroad.

Stay tuned for votes…

Over the weekend over 100 amendments were filed for the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wanted to wrap up debate on the energy bill this week. Hmm… something’s gotta give, and it’s going to be the number of amendments voted on. With no voting today, we are likely to see a glut of voting tomorrow and Wednesday – but not 100 votes – before Sen. Reid invokes a closure vote to end debate on the energy bill and moves on to immigration.

Joining the 3 big amendments yet to be dealt with (CAFE-Fuel Economy; Renewable Energy Standard; and liquid coal), is Sen. Baucus’s $13.7 billion tax package to provide incentives for renewables and close tax loopholes for oil and gas leases. These 4 amendments are likely to come up this week, but could easily get waylaid if Senate leadership doesn’t have the votes. Speaking of which…

The scenario surrounding the Bingaman RES (Renewable Energy Standard) vote is a bit complicated. Republican leadership has threatened to filibuster; the Democrats could let them filibuster and have a “cloture” vote – needing 60 votes to end the filibuster – then have an up or down vote, which would need 50 to pass. Or, they could accept a deal where they have an up or down vote but needed 60 to pass. The way this plays out will depend on timing, whether they have the votes, and political grandstanding. We are working to get as much support for this amendment as possible, with the added message that this is too important to play politics with and senators should oppose the filibuster.

Finally, other issues we will be watching this week: Biden-Lugar resolution to get the US to re-engage in international climate treaties (will likely need 60 votes); an Arctic drilling amendment (unclear if it will be voted on, or just debated); a Climate registry amendment to get industry to monitor their carbon emissions (this was rejected by Sen. Domenici as “non-germaine”, or not relavant, to the bill; we are working to have it be allowed as an amendment).

Until the Votes begin tomorrow…