Sen. Mark Udall Pushes National RES. But Where Is The Bipartisanship?

Sen. Mark Udall has done a functional job in his first term as Colorado’s senior Senator.  Far from leveraging his huge bases of support in the Denver-Boulder metro area, Sen. Udall has made more effort to reach across the aisle to the psychotic Cons of the 111th Congress who have ground the U.S. Senate to a near halt.  I have argued in numerous posts in plain and simple terms why this is such a bad idea.  To date, and in extreme summary form, we have a half-assed Stimulus Bill, a Health Care Insurance Bill Giveaway, a Wall St. Reform Scott Free Bill and no Climate and Energy Bill.  This situation largely exists because people like Sen. Udall and President Obama want to spend more time chasing the Holy Bipartisan Grail than passing powerful progressive legislation that might actually move this country forward in this 21st century.  To be clear, I do not consider either man to be a progressive; nor did I consider them to be so prior to the 2008 election.  The place I’m arguing from is that this country badly needs progressive legislation and we’re ill-served by the current crop of politicians who don’t care that the Senate is broken.

Recently, Sen. Udall announced that he really, really badly wants a National 25% Renewable Energy Standard by 2025 bill passed during this session of Congress.  That’s fair enough, I suppose.  Sen. Udall did establish some credentials as an environmental advocate in the state of Colorado and during his time as 2nd district Representative in the House.  But, as I’ve also argued in numerous posts, the U.S. Senate is where good legislation goes to die.  By moving from his base of support and joining the Quest for the Holy Bipartisan Grail in the Senate, I challenge the Senator on his calls for an RES.  If he’s not serious about truly enacting such a policy, or if he wants to give utilities policies they support in return for weakening the RES in any way, I’m not interested in listening to his announcements.

2010 East Coast Heat Wave Smashing Temperature Records

Another heat wave is gripping the U.S. east coast.  Triple-digit temperatures will impact the region today, just like they did yesterday.

The wide-ranging heat extremes should provide folks with a small taste of what every summer will feel like in 2100 if we don’t get our greenhouse gas pollution under control.  In fact, can anybody tell me why James Inhofe (Oil-Bought) and his grandchildren aren’t building igloos in Washington D.C. today to mock Al Gore?  A record snowstorm in February brought out the Inhofe clan, providing days of chuckles to the anti-science flat-earther crowd.  Where are they now?

Scientists in February told media organizations that massive snowstorms like the one affecting D.C. were more likely to occur today than they were 30 years ago because of the increased moisture capacity of the atmosphere that we’ve forced on the climate.  If we fail to clean up our act, massive snowstorms and record-breaking heat waves will be even more likely 30 years from today.  Count on it; or don’t – the climate will do what it is supposed to do, regardless of how many people choose to ignore it.

So far in 2010, there have been 3380 max temperature records as opposed to only 1273 min temperature records for the U.S.  In June alone, there were 808 heat records and a mere 167 cold records.  Global cooling, deniers?  I don’t think so.  This bears repeating: I think it is unfortunately likely that by the time Americans decide to take the kind of actions necessary to address climate change, heat waves like the one impacting the east coast will be a yearly problem.

What is the status of the Senate Climate & Energy bill?  The Con helping to draft the legislation has walked away from the process (like he was ever going to vote for it anyway) and Sen. LIE-berman and Sen. Kerry are hard at work gutting the remainder of the bill in order to entice other Cons (or just one Con!) to vote for the bill and send it along its merry way.  In other words, by the time it might make it out of the Senate, it will be all but worthless, despite what many are saying about it.  Health care legislative advances might be incrementally advanced.  Climate legislative advances cannot be.  The 40-year window that was available to us has already closed.  Robust climate legislation must be passed this year or Americans must become accustomed to enormous price tags to merely deal with the climate change effects that are guaranteed to occur.  If we want to mitigate or even reverse some of the damage we’ve caused, that will cost even more.  It seems to me we’ve made our choice and it’s a stupid one.