Hybrid Living

There's no getting around it -- we have to lead with the debacle that ended in the death of the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill this week. Yeah, the bill was flawed, but it was still a start. We expected heated debate. We didn't expect to see politics at its absolute worst.

Between making Senate clerks read aloud the entire 491-page Boxer amendment, to the GOP memo that encouraged members to focus only on making political points and to ignore real policy debate, this was not a distinguished week for Republicans. And the Democrats probably should have focused more on getting organized than waking up members for petty late night votes.

It's no wonder this bill fell flat on its face.

In other EnviroWonk news from the past (two!) weeks:

• British lawmakers are considering a new way to control per capita emissions: personal carbon quotas.
• ExxonMobil may not be completely sold on climate change, but they have reached consensus about one thing: The millions of dollars they've been giving to groups who promote the scientific uncertainty of global warming -- they're not going to do it anymore.
• We managed to sneak in not one, but two posts about our home state of Montana, but with good reason! First, we caught up with the governor, a potential VP candidate, and then we covered our primary, which turned out not to be as relevant as we once anticipated.
• Those hockey-loving provinces of Ontario and Quebec have made their own power play against the federal government over emissions.
• Post-Kyoto negotiations have started. Don't hold your breath -- it's going to be a while before officials reach a new agreement.
• The German Conservative party may slash solar subsidies.
• And to just keep the international theme going, the UN has banned ocean seeding, at least for now.