Undressed Rehearsal (with UPDATE)

Not even World Environment Day could deter the partisan and corporate interest politics that destroyed the climate crisis bill in the U.S. Senate. In some ways all the posturing was a charade within a charade: the bill, too weak to do much good, was never in danger of being passed.

It was at best a dress rehearsal for a real bill and a real debate next year, with a real chance at doing something. But while the debate began to introduce the issues in Congress, it also undressed John McCain's pretend support for doing something about the Climate Crisis. He was for this bill before he was against it. McCain is all talk on the issue.

But this bill that was charitably described as a first step but not the actual solution by the head of the UN climate panel was deemed inadequate by other environmentalists." We're thankful the bill was introduced," said Kierán Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity,"but more thankful that it did not pass." Clearly it's going to take President Obama to get a good bill introduced and an overwhemingly Democratic Congress to even get it sincerely debated.

This debacle is in the context of extraordinary weather events continuing (such as the flooding rains in Indiana and tornadoes outside Chicago and the worst-in-50-years rain in China just on Saturday) punctuating larger climate shifts--in the U.S. a moister East and a much dryer West: last week Governor Schwarzenegger officially declared that the entire state of California is in a drought, which it has been unofficially for a couple of years.

These changes are happening much faster and on a bigger scale than many scientists expected, and that's especially the case in the Arctic, where new evidence emerged of the break-up of the Arctic ice cap.

The Climate Crisis is obscured by rising oil prices and a weakening U.S. economy, which are not only related to each other but to the Climate Crisis--both in causes and in solutions. But oil companies are the richest corporations on the planet, and with their political minions they continue to obscure this connection, and charge that confronting the Climate Crisis will damage the economy and ordinary life. Nobody says it will be easy, but the solution common to all three areas is precisely to deal with the Climate Crisis through clean energy industries.

Update: Senator Obama has issued a statement on the bill. In part:

“As this week’s debate on climate change has unfolded, the American people and those watching us around the world had every reason to hope that we would act. Every credible scientist and expert believes action is necessary. This is critical and long overdue legislation that represents a good first step in addressing one of the most serious problems facing our generation.

Like many of my Senate colleagues, I believe the legislation could have been made even better. Had there been a substantive Senate debate about some of the concerns with this bill, I believe the outcome could have generated broad support. It certainly would have received my support.

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in the Senate has chosen to block progress, rather than work in a good faith manner to address this challenge. This is a failure of our politics and a failure of leadership — a President who for years denied the problem, and a Republican nominee, John McCain, who claims leadership on the issue but opposes this bipartisan bill.

We can’t afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake."