The bill
quietly breathed its last on, fittingly, a sweltering July day.
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
For Fixing the Climate, Lessons From Health Care Energy Reform's Failure Looks Awfully Familiar For Energy Reformers, Echoes of
2010-07-30 23:20:01.173 GMT
For Fixing the Climate, Lessons From Health Care Energy Reform's
Failure Looks Awfully Familiar For Energy Reformers, Echoes of
1993
By Josh Freed and Matt Bennett
Aug. 1 (Washington Post) -- With the United States mired in
a job-killing recession, a Democratic president asks a Democratic
Congress to pass sweeping reform of a major sector of the
economy. "We can no longer afford to continue to ignore what is
wrong," he explains. "We must fix this system, and it has to
begin with congressional action." The public, however, rejects
this plea. The proposal dies in Congress, and recriminations
begin. Chastened and disappointed, advocates regroup and seek a
new path forward.
This is the story of President Bill Clinton's effort to pass
health-care reform in 1993. But it also describes this year's
attempt by President Obama and congressional Democrats to pass
sweeping energy reform. The energy bill, with its centerpiece
cap-and-trade policy, would have set a limit on greenhouse gas
emissions throughout the economy and offered incentives for
cleaner energy. That effort ended late last month when Senate
Democratic leaders acknowledged what insiders already knew --
they had come up fewer than 10 votes short.
It was a devastating setback for all of us who have worked
on this issue. Just as many progressives believed they'd elected
a president who would bring them health-care reform in 1993,
energy advocates felt that Obama would bring us immediate efforts
to tackle climate change. When world leaders failed to achieve a
breakthrough in climate talks in Copenhagen last December, we
focused all of our efforts on Congress. Ironically, we had to
wait until the new version of health-care reform cleared the
decks.
But as the health-care debate extended into the new year and
Sen. Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts, giving Republicans
another vote, the chances for energy reform diminished. Sure,
there had been some hints of progress. For instance, advocates
worked with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to muscle a
cap-and-trade bill through the House last year. But it was clear
that this was going to require some work in the Senate. When the
financial reform bill cut in line after health care, the
prospects of a tired and depleted Senate turning to climate
change seemed slim.
When legislation dies, it is often with a whimper, not a
bang. The final months of the cap-and-trade debate saw the air
seep slowly from the balloon -- strategy meetings we attended
that once drew dozens were attracting just a handful. The bill
quietly breathed its last on, fittingly, a sweltering July day.
It wasn't the first defeat. Cap-and-trade had fallen short
in three previous sessions of Congress. But this one seemed
different. George W. Bush was gone; Democrats controlled
Congress. And reform proponents had made enormous strides.
Once-hostile businesses, such as big utilities and oil companies,
were on board. Environmental groups had come together behind a
smart, well-funded public education campaign. Democrats in
Congress across the spectrum, from Rep. Rick Boucher (Va.) to
Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), were cutting deals and making progress.
The finish line was finally in sight.
But we didn't get across. And the anger is real. One
environmental group staffer told us they contorted themselves to
accommodate everyone, and got left knotted up and empty-handed.
Others are grumbling that, after spending $100 million to build
public support for energy reform, they were left at the altar by
Congress and the administration. And no one is madder than some
House Democrats in conservative places such as Virginia, Ohio and
Missouri who cast a tough vote for a cap-and-trade bill that
didn't even make it to the floor of the Senate.
Most of the anger is properly directed at Republicans, who,
but for a few brave House members, put their party ahead of their
country's economic, security and environmental interests. But
fury at the other side has never stopped progressives from
circling up a firing squad.
All of this is depressingly familiar to those of us who were
around for the Clinton health-care fight. In both cases,
advocates badly misread the public mood. When the health-care
debate began in 1993, 64 percent of Americans supported the idea
of covering the uninsured; similarly, polls this year indicated
broad support for action to address climate change. But what the
public supports and what it wants can be very different. Most
people in 1993 had insurance; what they wanted were reduced costs
and stable coverage. They turned against health-care reform when
opponents convinced them that they wouldn't get either and that
the benefits would flow elsewhere.
Similarly, while people generally support energy reform,
their focus isn't really on what the world will look and feel
like in 2050. But unlike with health-care reform, the Earth
cannot wait 17 more years for us to match our arguments to the
public mood. Just last week, scientists determined that the past
decade was the Earth's warmest on record. If we proceed with
business as usual, there is scientific consensus that global
warming will tip into an unstoppable spiral that will have a
devastating impact on the planet.
For most Americans, however, the distant threat of global
warming is not enough to prompt action. In the teeth of a
recession, it is clear that advocates have to focus public
attention on the economic benefits of shifting to clean energy,
as well as the risks of doing nothing. The global race is on,
and, just as the tech boom of the 1990s did for the United
States, clean energy will create good jobs and huge economic
growth for the winner. The question is who that will be.
Right now, it is not us. China, South Korea, Germany, Spain
and France are already transitioning to clean energy, investing
billions in research and creating robust domestic markets. On the
very day that the Senate bill was declared dead, China announced
that it is making $740 billion in new clean-energy investments,
according to China Daily, the state-run English-language
newspaper. China also announced that it is imposing a domestic
price on carbon.
Such moves are not motivated by environmental altruism. The
market for clean-energy technology is expected to double to $2.7
trillion by 2020, and it is estimated that the clean-energy
sector will employ 20 million people by 2030. If we don't act
now, we're going to be buying clean-energy products from China
rather than building them here and selling them to the rest of
the world. In fact, we already are. America has a trade deficit
in clean-energy technology.
For the United States to get back in the lead in this energy
race, we must put a price on carbon, though with a mechanism that
is less complex than what cap-and-trade has become. This price
can generate the revenue that the United States desperately needs
to heavily invest in clean-energy innovation. With the right
incentives, we can develop clean-energy technologies that are as
affordable as coal and oil, creating jobs and new industries.
Reform advocates long ago began to understand the power of
this message. Prominent activists -- including Al Gore -- started
talking less about saving the planet and more about spurring
economic growth, improving national security and ending pollution
disasters such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
So why did we come up short?
Partly, it was lousy timing. Reform opponents were able to
argue that any increase in energy costs, no matter how small,
would be an unsustainable burden during a period of extreme
economic distress. But we also handed them some ammunition. As
the bill got bigger and more complex, opponents were able to
distort the cap-and-trade idea to argue that it was a giveaway to
unpopular businesses.
Both Clinton's health-care reform experience and today's
cap-and-trade defeat contain lessons for the next energy reform
effort. They were each based on good ideas and sound policies,
but they became too opaque and filled with special pleadings to
sustain public support. They made complexity a virtue to try to
mask relatively modest cost increases for the middle class, and
neither did an adequate job of explaining the benefits to average
Americans. And both withered under fierce opposition.
Obama passed health-care reform by pivoting away from talk
of universal coverage and convincing enough of the public that
the bill would address fundamental middle-class concerns and
bring stability and security to those who already had insurance.
True, health-care reform barely limped over the finish line. But
that is how big change happens. In 2011, energy reform advocates
should take a page from the health-care playbook and make the
same kind of changes if we are to achieve similar results.
Josh Freed is the director of the Clean Energy Program at
Third Way, and Matt Bennett is a vice president and co-founder of
Third Way.
-0- Jul/30/2010 23:20 GMT
