Friday, December 14, 2007
Editorial: Hot, then cold on global warming
The state's senior senator disappointed when he cast his lot with his party to block an energy bill stronger on renewables.
From the RoundTable blog
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If you want to leave a legacy of good global environmental stewardship, you have to stick with it.
Virginia's Sen. John Warner defied the Bush White House this year by co-sponsoring a strong bill to curb the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. Warner saw the impact carbon emissions are having on global warming and understands the dire effect global warming is likely to have on the nation's defense.
He chose principle over party, the national interest over entrenched special interests.
Yet, the GOP warhorse refused Thursday to break with fellow Republicans on a Senate energy bill that would have provided billions of dollars in tax incentives for conservation and renewable wind and solar energy, a real downpayment on a more Earth-friendly national energy mix.
The rub was that the incentives involved a budget trade-off that would have eliminated tax breaks for the carbon-spewing oil and gas industries.
Warner could have, but failed to, cast the one additional vote needed to invoke cloture and end a Republican filibuster on a version of the bill that contained those provisions.
Granted, President Bush had promised to veto that version -- which the House passed last week by a vote well shy of a two-thirds, veto-proof margin. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid immediately set to work Thursday on a revision that eliminates the tax package and stands a much greater chance of becoming law.
Even in its stripped-down version, its passage would mark real progress.
The revised energy bill still would increase corporate average fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks by 2020, up from the current 25 miles per gallon. And it would require 36 billion gallons of biofuels to be blended with gasoline by that year.
Warner can reason that his vote against cloture forced a Democratic compromise that yielded real action. But in doing so, he withheld part of that good-faith downpayment on reducing greenhouse gases.
Oh, how slowly the nation is moving toward reordering its energy priorities. If lawmakers had passed the tougher energy bill and Bush had vetoed it, the slim Democratic majority in Congress probably would have ended up in much the same place -- but, perhaps, with greater momentum to push through change.
Warner is heading into retirement well-respected on both sides of the Senate aisle. His name might propel the Lieberman-Warner "Climate Security Act" through heavy resistance if, as expected, the Senate takes it up in the spring. He should take every opportunity to build that legacy.
