Waxman-Markey Passes House 219-212!

Wow, one hell of a day!  I was in DC for most of the hours of the day with many other youth(and a few older) climate activists rallying around climate legislation with the chant “we want more!”, to having a presence in the halls of Congress with the green shirts, to engaging Congressmen as they walked to the gallery, to attending the gallery to watch the vote.  Time for an outburst…MAN AM I PUMPED.  Here are the results of the vote.

I’m pretty exhausted, but I want to make a few comments and observations before passing out.  I will add more depth to some of these later on.

1.  Congressman Frank Kratovil from District 1 in Maryland voted yes for the bill, and we very much owe him our thanks.  I will be writing a separate post thanking the Congressman for his “yes” vote.  To provide a tiny bit of background, District 1 in Maryland, is heavily Republican, it went 60-40 for McCain in 2008.  However, Kratovil won as a Democrat taking the seat for the first time in a couple decades.  I worked very hard in 2008 for his election because I saw that district as the one vote in the state I could tip towards a climate bill in 2009.  I led a lobby meeting with a group of activists last week that met with his chief of staff and we  made convincing arguments for him to support the bill.  Kratovil was on the fence up until the last few hours, and ultimately cast his vote and helped tip the scales in our favor.  I know the calls into his office were heavily against this bill, but he took the tough vote, and not very many politicians do that.

2.  As I said I was in the gallery watching the floor vote.  Dennis Kucinich held his “no” vote until the vote threshold crossed 218 with a minute left.  As you may or may not know, the super-liberal Kucinich had stated he wanted to make a statement that the bill was woefully inadequate by voting no.  Why then, did he hold his vote until the bill has certainly passed?  Because passing this piece of legislation for the good things it does is far more important that defeating it because of its flaws, and despite his bluster Kucinich knew it.

3.  We need more.  That was a true and prevailing theme at the rally today, and it was spot in.  Although I have been a proponent of the legislation because I think it does far more good than harm and has some great provisions that some in the environmental community are determined to ignore, when I have made demands to representatives they have always been for a stronger bill.  This is a mediocre bill.  The biggest weakness BY FAR is the short term target, 17% below 2005 levels doesn’t cut it for an adequate global treaty.  We’ve got to make it stronger.  I think the energy efficiency standard should be better, not just from an emissions reduction standpoint but a practicality standpoint.  We can do A LOT better than the 5-8% energy efficiency standard we have with existing technology easy.  There are other concerns I have which I won’t go on too much of a rant on right now.

4.  I do however need to stress a blunt fact.  This bill barely passed as is.  That’s the state of this political system until the 2010 elections.  If we want a stronger bill, or even to hold the line on the current bill, we’re going to need a much stronger and better coordinated grassroots effort in the Senate, which is a minefield.  I’ll probably rant more about this later, but since there’s no viable alternative, instead of acting  like Friends of the Earth and trying to kill our only climate legislation, go after your Senator hard on the need for THIS bill to be better.  Don’t go off on a rant about imaginary simple carbon taxes(because the tax code is so simple and corporations never abuse it) that will not happen because no one except those lost in a political fantasyland and Exxon Mobil support them.

Last, I know(unapologetically) that I have a more positive view(meaning a C grade) on Waxman-Markey than many of my peers that I work with on this stuff.  These differences thus far have not become an issue since we’re always asking for the bill to be strengthened anyways.  I can tell you all this much about this vote today.  It was a historic vote.  The first time climate legislation was voted on in the house, and the first time it passed out of a chamber in the Congress.  There’s a long way to go to get something useful out of the Senate, and I got the distinct feeling in the final hours leading up to the vote that many of those wearing the green shirts with me today did not want to see the battle end here.  Despite the bill’s flaws, everyone was nervous as hell when the votes were being tallied up.  When the bill passed, the many green shirts in the gallery broke into a resounding applause, hooted and hollered, and high-fived.

Just like Dennis Kucinich, throughout the day many of  those that I’ve fought for climate legislation with for as long as I’ve been doing activism arrived at the same place I did back in May.  This legislation was the only train leaving the station for a long time, it has it’s problems, but it does far more good than harm.  I have my fingers crossed that more of the progressive community will recognize this, take to the streets and the phone lines and the halls of the Senate buildings, and give America and the world the strong climate legislation it needs.  I know that’s what I’ll be working for in these upcoming months.

**Update 7/1/09**: Great article by Politico on how close this really was.

Subcommittee Hearing on Mountaintop Removal

I’ve written a couple of columns on the atrocities of mountaintop removal, which can be found here and here.  Of recent, media and actions surrounding mountaintop removal have  escalated from climbing a dragline to a massive protest just a couple days ago.  How fitting then, there we have the first Senate subcommittee hearing ever on the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining.  Even better than the Senator holding this hearing is Ben Cardin of Maryland(I live in Maryland).  With this being too good to miss, and with me conveniently being in DC anyways because of climate bill-related activities, why not sit in on this firsthand?  It turned out to be quite interesting, I want to highlight a few details from my attendance below.

The hearing was slated to begin at 3:30, so I thought I’d show up at 2:30 to get a good spot in line.  It turns out it would’ve been better to arrive at 10:30!  When I showed up there was a line of 50-75 people already, so I had to go all the way to the back, which made my chances of getting into the hearing room seem pretty poor.  Most of the people in the line were mountaintop removal activists, however in front of me were 3 men that worked for the coal industry.  Soon thereafter, a large group of pro-coal supporters with shirts reading “friends of coal” showed up.  I would say the line grew by 30 or so people.  These people appeared to be guided/led by coal industry lobbyists in suits.

Then at about 3:20 a staffer came out and declared that there was no way everyone was going to fit into the room, and people near the back of the line should go to the overflow room.  Although some people around me left, I stayed in line a little longer just to see how discouraged the people in front of me got.  When they let people in, I wasn’t anywheres near the front when the room filled up.  However, when everyone in front of me asked if waiting would be a good idea, the staffer told them “very little chance any of you will get in”, and this caused everyone in front of me(a good 30-40 people) to leave.  Suddenly I was at the front of the line, where I was told I stood no chance.  About 15 minutes later someone left the hearing room, and I was in.  Slick I know.

I missed the first panelist who must’ve gone pretty fast, but he next panel had 4 speakers on it.  It included organizer Maria Gunnoe, who famously won the  Goldman Environmental Award, and has a very great story.  Others on the panel were Dr. Margaret Palmer who worked in the Chesapeake Environmental Laboratory University Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences, the Deputy Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and the cabinet secretary for West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection(DEP) Randy Hauffman.

The first speaker I heard was Randy Hauffman of  DEP.  Now, DEP basically works as hard to undermine environmental protection and laws in West Virginia as the Bush EPA did to undermine those nationwide.  Hauffman was pretty vague and contradictory, saying on one hand people had the right to clean water and that government had an obligation to provide that right, and then talking about the need for mountaintop removal for mining jobs and economic growth.  He also indicated he’d like the EPA to back off of West Virginia with the Clean Water Act since when it was passed it was delegated to the states to decide how to implement(or in DEP’s case, dodge).

Next was organizer Maria Gunnoe, who was by far the best speaker who really put a face to the issue, and made Hauffman’s arguments look like a joke(yeah I’m biased).  Really though you could tell why Gunnoe was worthy of an award and was an environmental leader in her community.  She spoke very boldly and didn’t hold anything back, talking about mountaintop removal mining as providing “temporary jobs and temporary energy”, and how people quite frankly can’t live around this kind of practice because of the blasting, the chokingly poor air quality, and the terrible floods.  Also, since the soil is so messed up, there’s no filtration of stormwater runoff into the watersheds, which along with all the coal pollution and sludge makes the water pollution terrible.  Gunnoe’s closing statement was the highlight, declaring that “the coal will run out, we’ll be left with no water, no air, no jobs, and no energy”.  I looked over at the DEP guy and he looked like someone had just handed him a pink slip.  Gunnoe got a standing ovation, and I felt compelled to join in the clapping.

After a short recess, Dr. Palmer was next and she discussed in further detail the impact on the water quality, and lent a very credible voice to the science around the issue.  Palmer said what we all know except in greater detail than I can recall here.  She said the environmental impacts are substantial and permanent, a very strong “I would certainly not let my children play in the streams”.  When asked by Senator Cardin what could be done to restore the watersheds after mountaintop removal mining, Palmer said there was no scientific evidence the impacts on water quality could be reversed, except for geologic time passing(ouch).

I suppose I must’ve missed the testimony of the Tennessee Deputy Commissioner, since Cardin started questioning the panelists.  A couple of noteworthy questions was Cardin asking the West Virginia regulator what could be done to preserve the headwaters and streams.  Hauffman didn’t have much of an answer, and it pretty much summed up to ‘we’ve been doing better in managing this issue, we’re for science being the driver, solutions are sought, and more money for research is needed’.  Basically, cutting through the bs the answer was “we can’t”.  The ranking Republican member Lamar Alexander who was the only other Senator there asked the Tennessee Commissioner whether or not coal mining practices in Tennessee involved mountaintop removal.  I’m not sure how true this is(perhaps I misheard), but the response was that this had not been done for the last 10-15 years.  He was also asked whether or not Tennessee companies could dump mining waste into the valley fills, and he answered no.  The implied message was that a coal producing state of Tennessee could manage just fine without mountaintop removal, while West Virginia was saying it needed to continue doing it.  When the Commissioner was asked whether or not the Federal law should be changed and applied to all the states, the Tennessee Commissioner said yes.  The last noteworthy question was Cardin asking Hauffman from DEP what kind of economic development he was referring to when defending mountaintop removal.  Hauffman was once again very dodgy and unconvincing, saying that they’ve been slow at redeveloping the areas they’ve mined, but are getting better, and will be working harder on both redevelopment and on restoring the land by planting trees.  It wasn’t very confidence inspiring.

All in all, this was a good hearing with good questions, some insightful testimony, and I liked the fact that the activists got into the hearing room, and all the coal supporters got stuck in the overflow room where no one could see them.  I’m also very appreciative of the fact that my Senator Ben Cardin is leading on this issue.  He is very good on environmental and energy issues, and very smart.  He’s also found a way to get bi-partisan support from Republican Lamar Alexander on his legislation to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to prevent the dumping of “fill material”, otherwards known as mountain mining waste, into the streams and valleys below.  This would be a big deal.  I wish him the best, and I’m proud he’s a Maryland Senator.