Best of Times, Worst of Times for Climate Action

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way. –Charles Dickens

After two-and-a-half years of work and $2.5 million of investment in research and writing, the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP) will shut down on April 30. We will end the project in a political and social climate much like that described by Charles Dickens in the opening passage of A Tale of Two Cities.

Of all the important changes that have occurred since we started PCAP in January 2007, the biggest of course was the election of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. president. We now have a leader who understands the threat of global climate change; who believes that the path out of economic crisis is green; and who has begun to rally and prod Congress and the American people to action.

That type of leadership was PCAP’s fondest aspiration. We’ve tried to help by producing hundreds of proposals for how the president could jump start federal climate leadership in 100 days and, longer term, reinvent the federal policies and programs that were created by and for the industrial era.

At risk of overwhelming the new administration with ideas, we set out to demonstrate that climate action can and must involve much more than a cap-and-trade bill, as important as that bill is.

To create the action plan, we contracted or corresponded with more than 400 people in the energy, climate and environmental fields, including some in Obama’s election campaign and some who now are part of the Administration.

In the process, I’ve discovered a few principles that I believe should guide national policy. I’ve summarized them for political leaders, policy wonks and posterity in a two-part presentation on the web, titled “The Fierce Urgency of Now”. I hope you’ll find some good ideas there; I know you’ll find conclusive evidence that I do not have a career in film.

Of course, PCAP has been just one of scores of groups producing climate and energy ideas for the Obama Administration. As an ad hoc project headquartered far outside the Beltway at the University of Colorado-Denver, we have been an uninvited newcomer among the many well-established environmental NGOs that have carried the green banner so well and so long. But we were blessed with an amazing group of national advisors, generous contributors, and the license to push the policy envelop, and the feedback we’re received from kindred groups as well as members of the Obama team persuades us that we made a difference. That has made all of the working weekends, pre-dawn starts and cold suppers worthwhile.

And yet, if President Obama’s overt and active commitment to climate action makes this the best of times, this also is the worst of times for many of my friends and colleagues who are sacrificing their budgets and family lives to create the political will for genuine progress in reducing America’s greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s the worst of times because they are heavily outnumbered in the climate wars on Capitol Hill. As has been widely reported in recent weeks, there are more than 2,300 lobbyists working the climate issue in Congress, a 300 percent increase over the past five years. Only one in eight of them represents the green side of the climate issue.

The Center for Public Integrity, which generated these numbers, estimates that lobbyists spent $90 million on climate issues last year – and the evidence suggests that the forces of stasis had the bigger budgets.