Monday, Aug. 2, 2010

The meek inherited the earth.

In the midst of the supposed greatest environmental disaster in history, the BP oil spill, the Obama administration ducked any fight to cap carbon pollution.

Sept. 11 gave us the Patriot Act.

Wall Street’s collapse, the bank bailout. BP, nothing.

A 100,000-barrel spill in 1969 in Santa Barbara, Calif. — two days of the BP gusher output — drove Richard Nixon to create the EPA and to sign the Clean Air Act.

June 15 the president, considered a better communicator than Ronald Reagan, delivered his first address from the Oval Office. He could have paralleled crude spewing into the Gulf with carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, but such words as “carbon,” “emissions,” “greenhouse” or “pollution” never left his lips.

“We don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get” off our fossil fuel addiction, Obama said. If the president doesn’t talk about it, his foes, who scream bloody murder at every turn about everything, inherit control of the battlefield by default. It’s like health care all over again, where policy details were delegated to Congress. No plan of its own, letting the Senate bicker it to death or saddle us with some feel-good, watered-down compromise that kicks the can down the road some more without tackling real threats. Instead of meeting big polluters head on, they will be courted with giant subsidies we can’t afford and global warming is shelved on the back burner, another victim of the stealth strategy of backroom dealing.

During July in this area, there were seven 90-degree days and 21 in the mostly high 80s. There were only three days in the 70s — of which Saturday, July 31, was one. July 23 was the hottest day, reaching 94. The coolest temperature, a morning low of 48, occurred way back on July 1. This on top of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirming that June was the warmest on record.

The combined global land and ocean temperature was 1.22 degrees F above 20th century averages.

According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, 2010 is well on its way to becoming the warmest year worldwide since 1880 — the earliest data for which global data is available.

A comprehensive energy and climate bill was the centerpiece of President Obama’s environmental agenda. He talked about it for years because global warming was central not only to his presidency, but the planet we inhabit.

Instead of pitting the American people against corporate polluters, they get seated at the negotiating table and showered with expanded drilling for the BPs and more taxpayer subsidies for coal and nuclear than clean renewable energy.

Like health care, letting your opponents define the debate means demonizing a phrase such as “cap and trade” to scare citizens. All those weeks of oil gushing into the Gulf didn’t translate into any sense of urgency or willingness to lead, even though a June poll showed 76 percent of Americans believe their government should address climate pollution.

Instead, Congress is considering a down-sized proposal limited to electric utilities — the same climate policy George W. Bush campaigned on in 2000. No wonder they call this Bush’s third term. While the window of opportunity slid shut in 2009, the energy industry and its conservative allies had all the time needed to sharpen their anti-climate talking points.

Like “death panels” of the health debate, climate pollution penalties were cast as job-killing, economy-wrecking “taxes.”

Obama also promised to push for comprehensive immigration reform. No bill, yet protesters massed in Arizona rather than wasting ire on the president. After 18 months, that broken promise has seen Obama’s support soften in the Hispanic community, where two-thirds supported his White House bid.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., may introduce a constitutional amendment “that changes the rules. Birthright citizenship is a mistake. If you come here illegally and have a child, that child is not automatically a citizen.” An estimated 11 million to 12 million people are in this country illegally; 72 percent of Americans fault the government for not enforcing the law.

Which party will be held accountable in November?