Post From the Policy & Lobbying Side of LCV

LCV's Policy and Lobbying department is going to start guest-blogging on LCVlive about the day-to-day developments of environmental priorities on the Hill.

As most of LCVlive's readers likely know, the biggest environmental action on the Hill recently was Warner-Lieberman bill, also known as the Climate Safety Act. This piece of legislation would have been the first global warming legislation in the history of the country. The bill established a market-based cap-and-trade system limiting global warming, mirroring on the federal level what almost 30 states are implementing in some fashion. The bill stalled when the Senate voted 48-36 to end debate. Some post-game thoughts:

Joe Lieberman, who has co-sponsored global warming legislation in the past, found an unlikely ally in his bi-partisan co-sponsor John Warner. Warner, a retiring Virginia senator who has historically voted against global warming legislation, rethought his position when his young grandchildren urged him to do something about the problem. The pair, along with Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer, showed tremendous leadership in driving this legislation. The environmental community, including LCV, worked hard throughout the process to strengthen the act by upping targets to where science says we need to be and ensuring the proceeds went to public benefit instead of polluters, while fighting against bad amendments such as subsidies for the nuclear industry or a "safety valve" which would effectively curtail the bill if gas prices reached a certain price.

However, a group of anti-environment Senators, with Jim Inhofe and Mitch McConnell leading the charge, resorted to cheap obstructionist tactics. In a move that you'd think would only happen in Hollywood, these Senators made the clerks read the entire 492-page bill aloud, which took 10 hours.

In spite of this, 54 senators voted or issued statements in support of continuing the debate. This is great progress, since the last global warming vote we had 38 Senators voting in favor of global warming legislation. Clearly, however, we still have work to do, and one of the most important steps is that we need to elect pro-environment candidates in 2008.