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Environmental groups face their future in climate-change debate
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The bill's chances, already bad, will get worse if Republicans gain seats, as is widely predicted, in the midterm elections.
"If it's not addressed in a lame-duck session of Congress, it will have been punted to the next generation," said David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.
Environmental groups have won some victories in recent years, opposing individual coal-fired power plants and pressuring banks to stop funding "mountaintop removal" coal mines.
But for the green movement, this year's defeat was more than a loss; it was a reckoning, a signal that it had overestimated its influence.
Even in the hottest year on record, even with a historic oil spill polluting the Gulf of Mexico, even with a Democratic Congress and a friendly White House, it couldn't win the fight it had picked. In fact, in the Senate it couldn't even start it.
"The oil industry has tremendous reach and control in the United States Senate," said David Di Martino, a spokesman for Clean Energy Works, a coalition of more than 60 groups that includes big names such as the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund. "Our mistake was miscalculating . . . how far into the Senate it went."
Looking back, some environmentalists say their problem was timing; once the economy perks up, their logic goes, prospects will improve. Others blame implacable Republican opposition (though a number of conservative and coal-state Democrats also balked), or a president who they say didn't push hard enough and focused first on issues such as health care and financial regulation. The White House blames them back, for not winning any Senate Republicans over to support the climate bill.
But some activists from smaller groups say the problem is within environmentalism itself. To them, the Senate defeat showed that green groups don't have enough of Washington's two currencies of power: money and angry voters. To them, it's significant that no senator seems in danger of being voted out of office this November for denying the environmentalists the climate bill they wanted.
Spreading the message
This week, oil and coal groups will start a series of pro-industry rallies around the country, repeating a strategy that worked well last summer. In Wisconsin last week, environmental groups were trying to get their message across first.
On Wednesday, a coalition of environmental and labor groups called the "Blue Green Alliance" came to Green Bay during a tour of 30-plus cities. They arrived in a blue bus painted with a windmill, smiling workers - and a painted message that was resilience bordering on denial.
"The Job's Not Done," the bus said, meaning the climate bill.
"A new green job can be waiting out there for you" if the bill is passed and stimulates the growth of renewable energy, said Mark Westphal, representing a United Steelworkers local. "I'm here today to tell the United States Senate to get on board."
