Barack Obama pleads with Congress to pass historic climate change bill

Package that would slash US emissions likely to win approval despite opposition from Republicans and Democrat rebels

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 26 June 2009

Democrats in Congress are poised to vote through a sweeping energy and climate change bill tomorrow that could deliver on one of Barack Obama's signature election promises and galvanise international efforts to agree action on global warming.
The vote, which for the first time could see the US commit itself to cutting back the carbon emissions that cause climate change, prompted a frenzied last-minute PR offensive, with Obama making his third appeal in 48 hours for Congress to act on energy reform.
Passage of the bill, which would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and offer incentives for energy efficiency and the development of clean energy technology, would hand Obama a personal victory at a time when he has run into strong opposition over the trillion-dollar price tag on his other main election promise, healthcare reform.
In a speech from the White House rose garden, Obama said the bill would create millions of green jobs and lay the foundations of a stable economy.
"I can't stress enough the importance of this vote," he said. "We cannot be afraid of the future, and we cannot be a prisoner of the past."
He also said the reforms were overdue, and crucial to demonstrating US leadership on the world stage. "We have been talking about this issue for decades and now it's time to act."
In Washington and beyond, the vote is seen as a historic moment, both for Obama's political agenda and international efforts to reach a climate change treaty at Copenhagen in December.
"This legislation is a game changer of historic proportions," said Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who is one of the authors of the bill. "The whole world is waiting to see if Barack Obama can arrive in Copenhagen as a leader of attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
The bill could allow America to claim a leadership role in international negotiations, diplomats said. "If this goes through, it's a very big achievement – no question," said one diplomat.
The bill sets less aggressive targets on reducing emissions than the EU has pledged, and is more generous to polluting industries than Obama had wanted. But he said: "This is a huge ocean liner, the US economy, and the question is, can we start changing [its] direction? Ten years out, it's not going to look as if the changes are massive. Twenty years out, suddenly you start really getting huge impacts. Thirty years out, you had a transformative difference in the economy. And that's how we've got to look at it."
The interventions from Obama capped an intensive lobbying effort for the bill by the White House and administration officials, Al Gore, and a broad coalition of environmental and business groups. The run-up had seen America's oil, gas and coal industry increase its lobbying budget by 50% in the first three months of the year to try to kill the bill. The spoiler campaign has run to hundreds of millions of dollars and involves industry front groups, lobbying firms, television, print and radio advertising, and donations to pivotal members of Congress.
The last-minute push came as the Democratic house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, went over the vote-counts. The Democrats have enough representatives to win but dissidents from farm and rustbelt states needed to be won over.
Democrats grew increasingly confident of the bill's passage earlier this week when its most formidable opponent in Congress, the Democratic chair of the house agricultural committee, said he would now push for its passage after winning concessions. "We think we have something here now that can work with agriculture," said Collin Peterson, who led the Democratic opposition to the bill. "I think we will be able to get the votes to pass this."
The stakes could not be higher. A defeat would destroy the last chances of enacting crucial energy legislation before the UN treaty negotiations at Copenhagen. It could also rebound on other items on Obama's to-do list. The bill must also be passed by the Senate before Obama signs it into law, and while the Democrats face a tougher fight there, tomorrow's likely victory would give them a burst of momentum.
The bill has faced almost uniform opposition from Republicans in the house, who say it amounts to a hidden energy tax. They have also argued that the bill would dramatically raise electricity prices – a claim debunked with the release of a cost analysis by the non-partisan ­Congressional Budget Office showing it would cost the average family a total of $175 (£107) by 2020, and would save poor families about $40.
The bill, now swollen to about 1,200 pages, would bind the US to reduce the carbon emissions from burning oil and coal by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and more than 80% by 2050.
It envisages measures to promote clean energy – from a development bank for new technology to new, greener building codes and targets for expanding the use of solar and wind power.
But there were concerns among ­environmentalists yesterday that the concessions had dangerously weakened the bill, and that the Senate could water down the green measures further.
After the reduction of the original ­emissions-cut target to 17% and the granting of far more free pollution permits for the cap-and-trade scheme than originally envisioned, the most significant concessions include how farmers are rewarded for practices that reduce carbon ­emissions, and a four-year delay in new regulations that would have cut the profits of corn-based ethanol and encouraged the ­development of non-food biofuels instead.
However, Henry Waxman, who has been leading the bill through Congress, argued that the most important element of the bill had come through the hard ­bargaining process intact.
"We have not given away the essentials of the bill because the essentials are the reduction of carbon emissions."
Most environmental organisations said the bill – though not as rigorous as they would have liked – was as stringent as could be expected from Congress and were hopeful of making improvements in the future. However, Greenpeace late yesterday said it could not support the bill, and called on Congress to defeat it.
" To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called
for at this pivotal moment in history," the organisation said.