Green groups open 'climate war room'

By MIKE ALLEN & JIM VANDEHEI | 9/21/09 5:00 AM EDT
The cap-and-trade movement, spooked by the pounding health care reform took over the August break, is scrambling to persuade nervous Democrats they won’t suffer politically for taking another tough vote this year.

 

“When you get your butt kicked, like we did [after the House energy vote], it focuses the mind,” said Steve Cochran, director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s National Climate Campaign. “We found out that this is not something to hide from but something to lean on — even in places where coal is king and Blue Dogs were perceived to be running for cover.”

 

Climate bill supporters say they have spent the summer building precisely the kind of grass-roots network that health care didn’t have, with grass-roots operations in more than 20 states.

 

A “climate war room” — funded by more than 60 labor, business, faith, agriculture and environmental groups — has been set up to coordinate ad dollars and communications.

 

The groups are enlisting military veterans and point to polling showing a majority of Americans support changes to U.S. energy policy being developed by Congress and the administration.

 

Despite the push, White House advisers say privately that they are very reluctant to have lawmakers take another tough vote after health care this fall.

 

In June, the House narrowly passed a major climate bill that critics attack as a massive tax increase on the middle class. A Senate vote could come late this fall, or in the first few months of 2010.

 

A senior congressional Democrat said a Senate vote is more likely in the first quarter of next year. “We can’t make people walk the plank again this fall,” the Democrat said. “I think it would be detrimental to climate change to jam it through.”

 

Environmental groups such as the one founded by former Vice President Al Gore know that delay can mean doom in Washington, and that it might be easier to jam cap-and-trade legislation through this fall than to give critics the winter to ridicule it in ads and — perhaps worse — in rowdy town hall meetings.

 

With this in mind, green groups are briefing congressional leaders and vulnerable lawmakers on a new poll showing that three Democrats in very tough districts did not suffer a backlash for voting for an energy bill that includes a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon dioxide emissions. 

 

The legislation is also likely to include incentives for new green technology, job creation, conservation and global coordination on carbon levels.

 

Allan Rivlin, a partner in the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, said the firm’s summer polling in the districts of Democratic Reps. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, Thomas Perriello of Virginia and Baron Hill of Indiana found that “the conventional wisdom is wrong.”


 

The cap-and-trade movement is trying to persuade Democrats that they won't suffer for taking another tough vote. Photo: AP

Repower America activists organized by the Alliance for Climate Protection, founded by Gore in 2006, have sent 250,000 letters to members of Congress in the past few months and last week delivered about 50,000 to senators in their home states.

 

Over the summer, the group held a Made in America Jobs Tour that included 50 events in 22 states.

 

“It’s a serious battle, and we’re taking it on,” said Maggie Fox, the group’s chief executive officer. “When a member walks in a parade and gets called a traitor, that’s a big deal. And so our job is not just to be on the ground in these states, which we’re doing, but to build intensity.”

 

“Our charge is actually to help those people all over the country who know we need to do this,” she added. “And it’s the next generation who provides us with a lot of that intensity: It is their issue, and they’re inheriting this world. They don’t want to hear that it’s inconvenient to deal with it. Our challenge is to give voice to them.”

 

The war room released a poll this month showing strong support in battleground states for a clean energy and climate policy.

 

Benenson Strategy Group, which polled for the Obama presidential campaign, previewed the message in a polling memo sent to Democratic allies: “Voters know that Big Oil and special interests have blocked energy reform for decades to protect their profits and that we’re sending billions of dollars to hostile foreign regimes, which hurts our economy, helps our enemies and puts our security at risk.”

 

Activists hope Obama will go to the Copenhagen summit, suggesting the United States would be in a much stronger position to show global leadership if he could say both the House and the Senate have passed tough bills — even if the legislation has not gone through a joint House-Senate conference committee and been signed into law.

 

“This administration has done a pretty remarkable job of lining up a bunch of administrative action to show they mean business on this in the absence of legislation,” Fox said.

 

“The world is looking for not just the administration’s shift but really a political shift in the country, which is measured through action in the House and the Senate,” she said. “When you accept the scope of this challenge, you want to step into it in a very aggressive way.”

 

Kendra Marr contributed to this story.


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