So with what was supposed to be slam-dunk Wall Street reform finally off their plate the Senate will turn to critical climate change legislation next, right?
Comprehensive immigration reform could still jump to the front of the Obama administration legislative agenda line in the wake of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, even though it’s clear that highly contentious issue has little chance of passing this session.
But mounting climate change evidence and the ongoing British Petroleum oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico would seem to give Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman’s American Power Act a leg up as the next-most-pressing agenda item.
What the New York Times deems the “nation’s leading scientific body” – the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council – this week issued a trio of comprehensive studies showing climate change is indeed happening and that it is caused by man.
The reports recommend immediate action and the adoption of a carbon-pricing system. It also concludes the Kerry-Lieberman bill’s target of reducing national carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is a reasonable goal.
Meanwhile, Americans United for Change recently launched a TV ad campaign skewering Senate Republicans in particular and the GOP in general for taking $35 million in oil and gas money over the last three and half years.
The ad uses brutal imagery of oil continuing to pour into the Gulf and urges Republicans to stop stalling climate change legislation, which the House passed last summer.
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