How the Dems sold us out on climate change

Excerpts from ‘The Great Climate Sellout’, by Ruth Conniff (from The Progressive):

“Given a historic opportunity to do something about the biggest threat to the health and safety of the entire world, Obama and the Democrats ultimately decided to do nothing. Before they dropped their efforts at passing a climate change bill, though, they went through a process that is truly remarkable for its cravenness in attempting to give away the store to the very polluters the legislation was supposed to regulate.

“As they worked on the bill, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham held a series of meetings with lobbyists from the big oil companies, the nuclear industry, truckers, and, of course, the Chamber of Commerce (which ThinkProgress last week revealed is soliciting contributions from foreign corporations for the explicit purpose of influencing the outcome of this year’s midterm elections) in order to offer them special favors and protection from over-regulation…

“No, the effort failed in part because Obama started giving away massive gifts to industry before the Senators had a chance to extract promises of support for the bill. As Lizza puts it, ‘Obama had served the dessert before the children even promised to eat their spinach.’

“Obama issued new nuclear loan guarantees, and delayed implementation of carbon caps, without coordinating with the Senators who wanted to dangle these favors in exchange for industry lobbyists’ backing of their climate change bill. The biggest giveaway was the President’s massive, and spectacularly ill-timed, announcement that he would open up the entire Eastern Seaboard to new offshore drilling…

“So on the one side there were the Democrats–Kerry and Obama–giving industry everything it wanted, and on the other side were the Republicans, also demanding favors for industry, but scared of looking even slightly concerned about the future of the planet.

“If we are going to save ourselves, we are going to have to overcome that enormous democracy gap.” (full article at The Progressive)