In an unsurprising move, Senate majority leader Harry Reid made it official this afternoon. He announced he would introduce an “admittedly narrow, limited” energy bill that contains no greenhouse gas provisions and maybe even no renewable electricity mandate. The votes, he said, just weren’t there.

“It’s easy to count to 60,” said Reid, according to Politico. “I could do it by the time I was in eighth grade. My point is this, we know where we are. We know we don’t have the votes.”

Despite tireless climate champion Sen. John Kerry’s  vague assurances that he will keep negotiating for a cap on carbon emissions at some future point in time, Democrats just gave up on the last, best chance to pass a global warming measure anytime soon.  How often does an oil spill Armageddon come along to illustrate why this matters? And the Democrat majority ain’t getting any bigger in November, that’s for sure.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world gets it. For god’s sake, even China — America’s eternally convenient climate punching bag  — is reportedly on the verge of establishing a mandatory carbon trading program by 2015.

Looking for someone to blame for this sad state of affairs? Here are a few options:

1) Beholden Democrats: If Republicans go down in flames together, Dems are the stumbling drunks who wouldn’t know party discipline if it hit them upside the head. A few from states such as Louisiana and Nebraska, beholden to their home-state energy interests, balked at any measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Even Sen. Reid screwed things up when he suggested he would make politically convenient (for him) immigration reform a priority over climate. Compared to the House-passed version from a year ago, the failed bill was already watered down to cover only electric utilities — even that would only secure only some 53 Democrat votes. Hence, we can also blame:

2) Promiscuous Republicans: The John Boehners and James Inhofes of the Senate would probably wait until the Earth looked like it belonged in The Day After Tomorrow before voting for a climate bill. But some more moderate GOPers, notably South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe played coy — teasing their support for a compromise that they abandoned in the end.

3) Mr. Clean Energy Revolution himself: Green groups have been torn of late about whether to go attack President Obama’s lame climate campaign or whether to pull their punches for the best hope they’ve got. Obama never gave a rousing speech dedicated to climate change and never pulled out the big guns in lobbying for what was supposedly one of his top policy priorities coming into office, as Dot Earth’s Andy Revkin sums up so well.

4) Greedy Power Companies: After Big Oil and Big Manufacturing eked out a pass from the climate bill in the end — it came down to electric utilities, which represent a major portion of U.S. emissions. Would they go-it-alone? Some executives did in fact negotiate in good faith for a bill they could live with. But, sensing their leverage, they also tried to win major exemptions from existing air pollution rules, making the negotiations a tough pill for liberals to swallow in the end.

5) Big Green vs. Grassy Green? The environmental world is increasingly fractured between two camps (see #4 above). Big Green groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, believe the best strategy to win a climate bill is to negotiate politically realistic compromises with energy interests. Grassroots groups such as Greenpeace or 350.org are less willing to settle and believe a push from below is the key missing piece. Both ideally want the same thing in the end, but this division of interests is not helping anyone.

In the end, there is no one person, industry or group who killed this bill. But, I’m honestly disappointed in President Obama for not doing more to back up Sen. Reid. The health care bill and the financial reform bill looked bleak, but in those cases, our leader would not settle for inaction. As always for climate, here’s to next year.

Photo Credit: Sister 72, Flickr User

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Who Killed the Climate Bill?

Under pressure from the gun-rights lobby, House Democrats might exempt the National Rifle Association from pending campaign finance legislation. As you might recall, earlier this year, the Supreme Court upended 100 years of campaign finance restrictions, determining for the first time in the 223-year history of our Constitution that corporations are equivalent to human beings under the First Amendment. It was a startling chapter in the Roberts Court’s embrace of conservative judicial activism — one that disgusted the American public and earned a central role in coverage of President Obama’s second State of the Union address.

Since that remarkable demonstration of judicial prerogative, Democrats have included campaign finance reform among the planks in a populist platform that they hope will mitigate losses in the mid-term elections. That political calculus, however, is giving way to pressures from the NRA.

While conservative politics undergoes an identity crisis, with moderates losing out to the looniest elements of the hardcore right, Democrats on Capitol Hill seem bent on sacrificing their principles to maintain the broad tent that brought them electoral landslides in 2006 and 2008. The latest lamb sent to the slaughter? Common-sense gun regulation.

Despite myths about gun regulation propagated by the NRA, America’s history of protecting citizens by limiting access to firearms is long and proud. Democrats on Capitol Hill, however, seem on the precipice of forgetting such history amid pressure from short-term political demands.

Right now, in exchange for a promise that the NRA will not actively oppose current campaign finance regulations under consideration, House Dems have formulated a compromise that would exempt the NRA from the proposed law. You read that correctly: Dems on the Hill are sacrificing American lives, all to avoid an active challenge from a powerful interest group. It’s a move that speaks not only to the NRA’s extraordinary reach — but to the desperation of the Democrats, in what’s shaping up to be a disastrous year for them at the polls.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Under NRA Pressure, Dems Propose Unraveling Gun Regulation