Did D.C.'s blizzard bury climate change legislation?

Sunday, February 14, 2010; A19

The Post asked political and environmental experts whether the record snowstorms buried climate change legislation this year. Below, responses from Christine Todd Whitman, Kenneth P. Green and Steven F. Hayward, David G. Hawkins, Douglas E. Schoen, Emily Figdor and Ed Rogers.

CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN

Environmental Protection Agency administrator from 2001 to 2003; governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001; chair of the Republican Leadership Council

It shouldn't, but it will. Among the reasons winter storms will make this issue more politically challenging are overreach and simplification -- on both sides of the debate. "An Inconvenient Truth" brought the issue of climate change to the fore, but many of the charts implying that the world's end is near were overly dramatic.

Calling what is happening simply "global warming" is misleading. There will be many changes along the way, including periods of colder temperatures. Some of this semantic debate is important. Using the term "climate change" rather than "global warming" prevents people such as Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) from being able to claim that this is all a hoax.

It is also overreach to imply that humans are the sole cause of climate change. Our activities are exacerbating natural phenomena, making us part of the problem, but the Earth and its climate have been changing since its formation. Because of human activity, things are changing faster than nature or humans can adapt, and the sooner we take steps to slow the changes, the better off we will be.

Scientists have long predicted that one consequence of climate change will be more frequent and more severe storms. They can't predict where and when storms will occur, but their extreme magnitude reflects climate change. Yet let's not forget, even as we dig out from the blizzard, that 10 of the past 11 years were the warmest on record -- that should tell us something.

KENNETH P. GREEN AND STEVEN F. HAYWARD

Resident scholar and F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow, respectively, at the American Enterprise Institute

The corpus of climate legislation was already cooling before Snowmageddon. The cold wind that buried its chances this year didn't come off the snow burying Washington: It came off horrific unemployment reports, lackluster economic growth, massive Tea Party rallies and vicious town hall meetings. After the breakdown in Copenhagen, the explosion of "Climategate" and the election of Scott Brown, the Democrats' rapid pivot to focus on jobs was inevitable.

There may be an energy bill, or a jobs bill with a lot of "green energy/green jobs" folderol, but that bill won't have a strong climate title. It shouldn't. Given how little influence the United States had on the Copenhagen negotiations, imagine how little we'll have at the next U.N. meeting if we've committed to greenhouse gas controls. Once we've bound ourselves, why would our economic competitors match our level of self-imposed economic bondage? People who think the Chinese are waiting on U.S. leadership are a few shovels short of a clean driveway: The Chinese are waiting for U.S. leadership on climate like they're waiting for U.S. leadership on freedom of speech, religion, assembly and property rights.

DAVID G. HAWKINS

Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate programs

Just as a group of cancer-free, cigarette-smoking 75-year-olds does not disprove that smoking causes cancer, a handful of snowstorms does not counter the massive evidence that we are changing the Earth's climate. What is that evidence? We know the gases produced when we burn fossil fuels trap heat in the atmosphere; emissions of those gases have grown enormously in the past 100 years; the concentrations of those gases in the atmosphere have grown in lock step; global average temperatures have increased over the same period, and natural influences on temperature can explain only a small fraction of that increase. We also know that the resulting changes in climate have already had detectible impacts on ecosystems, droughts, precipitation patterns and other features important to human well-being. People who hype the snowstorms to oppose action on climate are charlatans.

Fortunately, a growing number of lawmakers understand there are solutions that will create jobs and enhance energy security while cutting the pollution that contributes to climate change. They are joined by business leaders, labor, veterans, religious groups and others who know that waiting to act would be a huge, costly mistake. Sens. John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, Joseph Lieberman, Maria Cantwell, Susan Collins and others are making serious efforts to develop a bill that can pass the Senate. Common sense will prevail, even here in Washington.

DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN

Democratic pollster and author

The recent bout of wintry weather and the overall political climate have almost certainly killed climate-change legislation this year.

The science that supports the causes and effects of global warming has become increasingly open to doubt and question. The weather this winter, particularly in the past week or so, makes it more difficult to argue that global warming is an imminent danger and suggests that global warming may well not be as inexorable a force as some believe.

Further, the political downside to supporting the legislation is unambiguous. Americans are primarily concerned with jobs and the economy. Any significant effort spent on other legislation will reignite charges, originally hurled during the lengthy and unsuccessful health-care debate, that the White House and Democrats in Congress are out of touch with voters' needs.

EMILY FIGDOR

Federal global warming program director of Environment America

The snowstorms that ground the nation's capital to a halt only underscored the need for bold action to fight global warming. Heavier, more frequent snowstorms are just what scientists predict in a warming world, as extreme weather events -- whether blizzards or heat waves -- become more common.

Yet the legislative environment is uncertain. Within weeks, the Senate is slated to vote on a measure that would block President Obama from enforcing the Clean Air Act to fight global warming. The vote is expected to be a nail-biter, thanks to a frenzied lobbying campaign by America's biggest polluters. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska -- ironically, the state most directly, rapidly and dramatically affected by global warming -- plans to offer a resolution that would strike at the heart of the Clean Air Act, a law with a nearly 40-year track record of cutting dangerous pollution to protect Americans' health and the environment, and of spurring technological innovation. This vote is a true test of whether lawmakers will act to protect the public and allow America to compete economically in the coming decades or if Big Oil and Coal call the shots in the Senate. If the resolution passes, it will indeed bury real legislation on the issue this year.

ED ROGERS

White House staffer to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; chairman of BGR Group

There is global climate science and then there is the Global Warming Movement. The movement hijacked the science a long time ago, and it has had its share of setbacks lately. Its leaders have tried to stiff-arm their way past errors, lies, fraud, pointless tax increase proposals and some really peculiar posing in Copenhagen.

Now they have suffered a coup de grace: public ridicule brought on by a record-breaking blizzard blasting their East Coast home base. The movement was already dead in Congress for 2010 (its climate-change bill has been sidelined), but Snowmageddon buried it. How could it be that heat waves evidenced global warming, but so did a cold wave? The public isn't buying it anymore.

In November, the public will give a cold shoulder to a bunch of intellectually frozen hypocrites who demand economic sacrifice to solve a problem that voters don't see or feel. At least for a while, the left will have to think up a new way to dictate a lifestyle for the rest of us. Maybe now the science can continue without the clumsy overreaching of the movement's priestly class.