Public, Activists Miles Ahead Of Congress, WH On Climate Action - Nation

Public awareness of the climate crisis has grown enormously in the United States over the past two years, but the government's response lags far behind. Now, however, Washington's sluggish pace is calling forth a surge of activism aimed at persuading the next President and Congress to be far bolder--to advocate and deliver solutions as big as the problem.

"The general attitude in the country now and certainly in Congress is, 'Let's take some steps, make some progress and applaud ourselves.' That is not sufficient." So says Betsy Taylor, chair of 1 Sky, a new initiative that hopes to unite the broad array of groups focusing on climate change into a coherent national movement. "What has happened to the climate in the last twelve months has changed the game," Taylor argues, citing recent studies projecting that the Arctic will be free of summer ice by 2030. "That means we are thirty years ahead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst- case scenario for Arctic melting. But on Capitol Hill, none of the proposals getting serious attention propose anything close to what science says we need--deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 80 percent cuts by 2050. Our side really needs to up the ante."

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The emerging climate movement's first skirmish will come in the next months, as Congress considers bills on energy and climate. McKibben says it would be better to pass nothing than to approve a weak bill that gives people the impression the problem has been solved: "Since Bush is going to veto it anyway, there is no reason to make less ambitious than what science requires. Climate change isn't like other issues. It doesn't do any good to split the difference to reach a deal everyone can live with. Climate change is about the laws of physics and chemistry, and they don't give."

What gets accomplished in 2008, says Taylor, will frame the choices made in 2009 and beyond: "We want to raise the bar of what's possible for the next President and Congress. We want bold leadership commensurate with the scale of the problem." McKibben argues that "with every passing week it is more clear that climate change is the great issue of our time, just as civil rights was in the 1960s." Passing a bill that matches what science says and then securing a similar agreement at the international level "would be two of the hardest policy achievements we have ever had to do," he adds. "And I'm not sure we're going to succeed. But if we are to succeed, I am sure we're going to need a movement just as strong as the civil rights movement was. And that's what we're trying to build."

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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071022/hertsgaard