As if Obama doesn’t already have enough on his plate – healthcare reform is still stalled in the Congress, direct talks with Iran are starting tomorrow and a complete review of US strategy in Afghanistan is underway – now the great battle of over climate has officially begun in Washington. And this one is likely to make all the fights over bailouts and healthcare look like childs play.
Today Senate Democrats published the bill they want to pass introducing limits on carbon emissions for the first time in America. And already millions of dollars are being spent on lobbying and advertising as industry and environmental groups prepare to fight it out and already the dubious statistics, half truths and propaganda are spreading.
The angry white man of the moment in America is Fox News host Glenn Beck (the inspiration behind those tea party protests of the summer) and he is clearly going to make climate change his next big issue.
Already he has forced the resignation of Obama’s “Green Czar” Van Jones with a very personal series of attacks on his show. He compares Al Gore to Hitler as he insists that Gore is exaggerating the threat from global warming. And now he is using his programme to claim that the climate change bill would cost every American $1761.
These figures are not based on what’s actually being proposed in congress but instead on an entirely different proposal that would not use revenue raised to offset costs to households and business. But that won’t stop the furious right-wing repeating this number daily.
In fact they are even trying to claim it will cost every American $1761 daily not annually. And this is just the beginning. It’s going to get really nasty from here
The House of Representatives has already passed an emissions bill but it can’t become law until the Senate pass one too – and this is where the real fight will be. Obama wanted to have signed the legislation before the big climate change summit in Copenhagen in December but there is very little chance of that. Especially as the Senate bill is more ambitious than the house one – aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 – up from the 17 per cent the House agreed on.
Although it’s worth remembering that when the US talks about emissions reductions they are using 2005 as their baseline – not 1997 which is where the UK and everyone else counts from.
So they mean emitting 20 per cent less carbon dioxide than they did in 2005 – not 20 per cent less than was being emitted in 1997 – so it’s a much smaller total reduction even though the percentages sound impressive.