Environmentalists are putting an interesting spin on this week’s Republican victory in the Senate against far-reaching climate change rules, saying the votes show GOP support for taking action against climate change is rising, not weakening.
Republicans patted themselves on the back Tuesday evening after passing not one, but two resolutions that would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s contentious greenhouse rules for power plants, including the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate change agenda, the Clean Power Plan.
Most scientists say greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, are causing the Earth’s climate to change, resulting in more severe weather, droughts and coastal flooding.
The resolutions were approved Tuesday by a 52-46 vote. Because the measures, called “resolutions of disapproval,” do not require a 60-vote threshhold to pass, a simple majority was able to approve them.
Jeremy Symons, associated vice president of political affairs for the large activist group Environmental Defense Fund, reacted with optimism, despite his group’s firm support for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and the president’s climate agenda.
“This was a good day for the Clean Power Plan, for U.S. climate leadership, and for a clean energy future,” Symons said in a blog post. “Why? Because today’s votes showed that the Clean Power Plan has gained support in the Senate since a test vote earlier this year,” he said.
The votes also showed that the Senate “is well short” of the support it needs to override a promised presidential veto of the resolutions, Symons added. Republicans will need a two-thirds majority to block the president.
“The measures that were passed narrowly today are going nowhere,” he added. In addition, support for the Clean Power Plan has grown due to a contingent of Republicans who have made support for climate change a key priority in their bids for re-election.
The three Republicans include Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois, who Symons says “broke from” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to support the Clean Power Plan. A test vote from March showed the GOP garnering a 57-43 vote opposing the emission rules.
Symons says with Obama going to Paris, Nov. 30-Dec. 11, to sign onto a United Nations emissions reduction deal on climate change, “it’s important to put today’s votes in context.” He says the votes were more about “political theater” than actually rolling back the president’s plan.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said as much in a floor speech Tuesday, saying that without a two-thirds majority voting in favor of the resolutions, they will be vetoed.
Inhofe said the votes will show the president that a majority of the country does not support the rules, including the 27 states challenging the rules in federal appeals court.
“This is going to be passed,” he said ahead of the votes on Tuesday. “It’s going to be vetoed by the president. It’s going to come back for a veto override. And everyone is going to be on record,” he said.
The chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee also said it would create uneasiness among global leaders in Paris, who will be looking for certainty that the Clean Power Plan will succeed.
“It reminds me of Copenhagen back in 2009,” when the last major U.N. global deal on climate change floundered. “They were all going over there,” including Obama and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., he recalled. At that time, the Democrats had control of both the House and Senate, “and they put on quite a show over there.”
Democrats assured global leaders that “we are going to pass cap-and-trade” legislation, to limit economy-wide emissions, Inhofe said. “And I went over at the very last press conference and told them they weren’t telling the truth. We’re not going to pass it. In fact, there were not 30 votes to pass it in the Senate, at that time.”
Inhofe and other Republicans on his committee this week touted new polling data that shows global warming is now number 15 on a list of public priorities, when it once had been higher. The GOP says the cost of the emissions rules is discouraging the public from being more supportive of efforts to deal with climate change.
Symons says just the opposite. He says “since the rule’s release this summer, public support for limits on carbon pollution have only increased.” A poll conducted by Public Policy Polling this month for the environmental group Sierra Club shows that 60 percent of voters in Iowa support the Clean Power Plan, while 70 percent of voters in Illinois and 64 percent in Virginia “support it.”
On Thursday, Collins joined with the top Democrat on the energy committee, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, in requesting that the Government Accountability Office do a “comprehensive study of the costs and risks that climate change poses to the federal government.”
The senators also asked GAO to evaluate which federal policies could do the most good in battling climate change.
