Friends of the Earth Goes it Alone: Urges 'No' on Climate Bill

The House climate bill took another hit this week as Rep. Henry Waxman made further concessions, this time to farm-state Democrats, to ensure the bill's safe passage on Friday. Even weakened, though, the bill continued to draw support from most of the big environmental organizations.

Except for Friends of the Earth. The organization is going it alone with an ad campaign and request to its members to demand better legislation from Congress. FOE President Brent Blackwelder is publicly urging Congress to either substantially strengthen the bill or vote no.

“Corporate polluters including Shell and Duke Energy helped write this bill, and the result is that we’re left with legislation that fails to come anywhere close to solving the climate crisis,” Blackwelder wrote.

“Worse, the bill eliminates preexisting EPA authority to address global warming—that means it's actually a step backward.

“This exercise in politics as usual is a wholly unacceptable response to one of the greatest challenges of our time, and it endangers the welfare of current and future generations. … If the ‘political reality’ at present cannot accommodate stronger legislation, their first task must be to expand what is politically possible—not to pass a counterproductive bill.”

That position hasn’t been easy hasn't been easy to take. Some of the largest environmental groups, including NRDC and EDF, were involved with Shell and Duke in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a consortium that wrote the industry-environment compromise that the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill is based on. Groups that have questioned the legislation have been pressured to back off.

Blackwelder has also been pressured to support the bill, as well as to delay releasing an FOE report that looked into Wall Street’s expectations for the bill's cap-and-trade program and the high potential for gaming and corruption in a carbon-trading system.

“We’re getting a lot of criticism, but we’ve spoken honestly about the defects we see in this bill and that this is going to be a setback,” Blackwelder told SolveClimate. “If you have a proposal that can’t stand the light of day, then it’s time someone said ‘Hey, the emperor has no clothes!’”

When Reps. Waxman and Ed Markey accepted U.S. CAP’s compromise as the foundation for their climate bill, they set the bar too low, Blackwelder said.

“If you’re going to deal from a low point, it’s only going to go lower. Now, we’ve got a deal that will basically eviscerate biofuels standards," he said, referring to the latest concessions for farm-state Democrats. "It’s just one thing after another.”

“We’re going to stand up for what the science calls for and point out the flaws.”

It’s unlikely at this point that House Democrats will attempt to strengthen a bill that they’ve already watered down to win what could be a close vote on the House floor Friday.

Under House Minority Leader John Boehner's orders, Republicans have almost uniformly lined up in opposition. Some coal-state and Midwestern Democrats, despite the concessions Rep. Collin Peterson wrung from the bill's sponsors this week, could still oppose the bill, as could some on the left who oppose cap-and-trade or say the ACES bill in its current form simply doesn't do enough.

The Rules Committee set a 9:30 a.m. Thursday deadline for submitting amendments to the ACES bill. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and a few other House members are quietly considering amendments, however the Rules Committee would not say how many had been submitted as of today.

Greenpeace isn’t counting on amendments strengthening the bill now, though the group is remaining "agnostic" on the vote, spokesman Daniel Kessler said.

“We will keep calling upon President Obama to stick to his campaign pledge to stand with the science. He can act administratively or insert himself into the House debate, and its only through his leadership that we stand a chance against all of the politics and special interests," he said.

Attachment	Size
LCV Letter on ACES.pdf	173.22 KB
29-Group ACES Letter.pdf	60.71 KB

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