AHC: Byrd-Hagel Doesn't Deter Climate Debate

OTL The situation for dealing with climate change at the turn of the century got buggered by both the dot-com bust and 9/11 as far as Congress was concerned regardless of who was President.
It didn't help that the developing countries (Brazil, India, and China, mostly) threw a fit about getting carbon caps slapped on them. They wanted the 1st world to pay for retrofitting to Kyoto Protocol compliance.
The US balked b/c to the GOP and farm-belters of any persuasion of being a foreign -aid ripoff subsidizing our competitors. :rolleyes:

Ironically, most of the gear they wanted- coal scrubbers and other stuff was stuff the US made and could've made a tidy profit exporting or licensing to local manufacturers. :eek::eek:

It didn't help that W and his cronies had as much interest in addressing climate change as converting to Leninism, but as your OP makes it clear, it's getting Congress to run with the ball of Kyoto protocol compliance, not block it.
 
It didn't help that the developing countries (Brazil, India, and China, mostly) threw a fit about getting carbon caps slapped on them. They wanted the 1st world to pay for retrofitting to Kyoto Protocol compliance.
The US balked b/c to the GOP and farm-belters of any persuasion of being a foreign -aid ripoff subsidizing our competitors. :rolleyes:

Could the US have tried to tackle this distinction unilaterally, independently of signing Kyoto? What about tackling carbon emissions, combined with "carbon tariffs"?
 
Could the US have tried to tackle this distinction unilaterally, independently of signing Kyoto? What about tackling carbon emissions, combined with "carbon tariffs"?

It's going to take some VERY strong leadership coming from Congress or the White House. A big element in the lack of action on climate change by the federal government is due to the MASSIVE amounts of influence wielded by the oil industry, the financial "industry", and the degree to which one is heavily dependent on the other. When you look at the sums of money spent directly on disinformation campaigns it gives you a sense of how much the oil industry alone is invested in stopping any efforts to address climate change in their tracks.

The only way you're going to beat that is with a powerhouse in the White House, in charge of Congress, or with massive populist outcry. If you remove 9/11 that could get you the third option when dovetailed with the anti-globalization movement, otherwise you'd need a modern TR in the White House or the most aggressive Congress since the 19th century.
 
It's going to take some VERY strong leadership coming from Congress or the White House...

The only way you're going to beat that is with a powerhouse in the White House, in charge of Congress, or with massive populist outcry... you'd need a modern TR in the White House or the most aggressive Congress since the 19th century.

You know, as it happens, I was thinking President McCain could fit the bill here (he may not be as ecologically conscious as Gore, but aside from that, I'd say he's got the kind of personality I think we're talking about here).
 
You know, as it happens, I was thinking President McCain could fit the bill here (he may not be as ecologically conscious as Gore, but aside from that, I'd say he's got the kind of personality I think we're talking about here).

Personality alone won't do the job. My professor in a class on unfree labor in America put it the best, I think, when she said environmentalism and climate change are the 21st century equivalent of the abolitionist debate: justified by moral and practical necessity but to implement would require upsetting a powerful, well-established socio-economic elite. It will take more than the right personality, you need someone who is not afraid of upsetting the status quo in a pretty serious fashion.
 
Carbon cap legislation is highly unlikely.

If the fracking thing happens 15 years sooner, then maybe, because all the natural gas will offer a cheap way consistent with existing interests to meet emissions goals. But there are technological reasons why fracking didn't happen sooner than it did.
 
My professor in a class on unfree labor in America put it the best, I think, when she said environmentalism and climate change are the 21st century equivalent of the abolitionist debate: justified by moral and practical necessity but to implement would require upsetting a powerful, well-established socio-economic elite.

A fair point, though I wouldn't say the oil and coal companies of today are anywhere near as powerful as the slave owning class of antebellum America were.

Carbon cap legislation is highly unlikely.

What about a carbon tax? Or any other action on climate change?
 
What about a carbon tax? Or any other action on climate change?

Nothing significant. OTL, we didn't even come close. So its not like there's a few tweaks we could do that would lead to radically different outcomes.

Unless you count big subsidies and mandates for renewables as action on global warming, in which case you probably could, since we already got a lot of that under Bush and Obama.
 
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