Hot to Trot
Is it hot in here, or is it just me? I think I need to “take a stand” and get some air.
As 600 scientists meet this week in Paris to finalize the first worldwide assessment in six years of the evidence on global warming, lawmakers on Capitol Hill searched for a political consensus yesterday on how to address climate change.
In a prolonged Senate hearing that one senator compared to “open-mike night,” several lawmakers spoke in passionate terms about a need to put a cap on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions before global warming’s effects become irreversible, while others sketched out possible policy compromises on the contentious issue. In a separate House hearing, a bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned whether the Bush administration has been suppressing climate science.
Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee who has pressed to regulate greenhouse gases for several years, said he did not want his children and grandchildren chastising him for inaction in decades to come.
“I don’t want them to say, ‘What did you do about it? What did you do about it when you had an opportunity? Weren’t you in the Senate?’ ” Carper asked, adding that he hoped to tell them, “I tried to move heaven and Earth to make sure we took a better course.”
The panel’s chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), said several hours into the hearing that lawmakers would heed the warnings of Carper and others, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.): “I think this is the moment we will take a stand.”
Oh dear, she didn’t really say that, did she? Well, if Barack Obama says we have a problem, then how could I be audacious enough to hope otherwise?