Environment Forum

John Kerry has had it up to HERE with “The Flat Earth Caucus”

You remember John Kerry, right? Tall, silver-haired, urbane enough to be accused of being French. But there’s a feisty side to the senior senator from Massachusetts, and it was on display at a forum on energy and economic growth, where Kerry teed off on congressional Republicans and others who doubt the seriousness of the challenge of climate change.

“After a while you get exasperated and jaded and frustrated about it all,” Kerry told The New Republic forum at the National Press Club. “I’ve had it just about up to here with America’s indifference to the realities of this crisis … the United States is like an ostrich putting its head in the sand.”

How do you feel about the U.S. political establishment, Senator Kerry? “I don’t know what’s happened to us in the body politic of this country where facts and science seem to be so easily shunted aside and disposed of in favor of simple sloganeering, pure ideology and little bromides of politics that are offered up, that offer no solution to anything but might get you through an election.”

Your Republican colleagues in Congress? “In the Republican party … about half the class that came in (to Congress) this year doubts that humans have anything to do with climate change or that climate change is happening … The Flat Earth Caucus is growing.”

How about the billionaire Koch brothers? “The Koch brothers are funding a lot of efforts to prevent us from doing anything (about climate change). They funded this climate doubters Berkeley study in the hopes that one study out of thousands would … show that all the rest of this stuff is fabricated ideological bunk from the left.” (As it turned out, and as Kerry noted, the Berkeley Earth Science Project agreed with most other studies that climate change is occurring and human activities fuel it.)

Kerry said he was troubled that China is now “winning the clean energy race,” with Germany second and the United States slipping to third.

“I think America’s greatness, America’s capacity to lead, is really on the line,” he said. “And I see it and feel it as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the many conversations I have with leaders in various parts of the world … I just see them and feel them doubting our resolve, doubting our capacity, doubting whether we’ll really be there in almost anything … whether our political system will let it happen.”

from Tales from the Trail:

Former political enemies join hands to save the world?

Nearly six years ago,  Senator John Kerry and Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens were mortal political enemies.

As a major backer of President George W. Bush's re-election effort in 2004, Pickens contributed millions to a right-wing ad campaign questioning Kerry's record as a Vietnam war hero. The ads, which Kerry disputed, put him on the defensive and may have contributed to the Democrat's failure to win the White House.

On Wednesday, the billionaire and the Massachusetts senator sat side-by-side in the Capitol's ornate Senate Foreign Relations Committee room, where Kerry presides as its chairman.

Their mission: To spread the word about the legislation Kerry and Senator Joseph Lieberman have written to tackle global warming by reducing U.S. consumption of dirty-burning fossil fuels blamed for climate change.

"If you look at life looking backwards and standing in one place, you're going to waste your time," Kerry told a small group of reporters when asked about the new relationship with the man he now calls "Boone." "Six years ago was six years ago," Kerry said.

Both Kerry and Pickens talked about the need to reduce America's reliance on foreign oil, which the Kerry-Lieberman bill aims to do. Pickens talked in patriotic tones about the need to make America energy independent within 10 years. "I don't care whether you use natural gas, ethanol, the battery.  You can use anything, just so it's American," said Pickens, who turns 82 this week.

Patriotism aside, Pickens stands to gain financially from the climate change bill that Kerry hopes to push through the Senate this year.

Sarah Palin’s new focus

Admit it: we all wondered just what Sarah Palin would turn her time and talents to after she announced her resignation from the Alaska governor’s job, and now she’s given what looks like an answer. In an op-ed column in The Washington Post, Palin took a swipe at Washington insiders and the mainstream media for ignoring the economy, and then tipped her hand.

“Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges,” she wrote. “So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be: I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.”

In a brief story about this, we noted that Palin’s plans for spurring the U.S. economy include offshore drilling, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and exploring the possibility of nuclear power in every state.

We’re not the only ones who noticed Palin’s opening salvo. Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress Action Fund saw her column as “the first stop on Gov. Palin’s comeback tour.” In his opinion, Palin is definitely mulling a presidential run.

“She wants to make sure that she’s still seen as serious and relevant,” Weiss said. “Her policies, though, isolate her in the corner with big oil and big coal and Rush Limbaugh … It would not surprise me if she shows up in Iowa talking about ethanol or New Hampshire talking about nuclear power or in Louisiana talking about oil. That would appeal to primary or caucus-going voters on those states.”

Weiss told me he can’t wait for the Palin campaign, but others weren’t so enthusiastic. Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that will take up U.S. carbon-capping legislation in September, took time out from a hearing to pour cold water on Palin’s contention that tackling the causes of climate change would send the U.S. economy into a tailspin.

“Sarah Palin wrote this naysaying op-ed piece on why we shouldn’t move forward …” Boxer said. “So I would just tell the American people to take a look at history. Every single time we’ve gone forward to go after pollution, the naysayers have been wrong about the predictions, wrong about the gloom and doom and we have in fact led the world.”