Editorial: Game Over for Climate Legislation

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By Bart King The game is over for federal climate change legislation in the United States, and we lost. A majority of lawmakers in both houses of Congress, a motivated administration, a devastating oil spill and a willing public were not enough to establish a new energy policy that would reward renewable resources and phase out the use of fossil fuels. Hopes were high when our basketball-loving president came in with a numerical advantage in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The financial crisis ate a lot of time off the clock, as did the struggle to win on health care and pass Wall Street reforms. Along the way, Democrats lost the supermajority when one of their key players went down, and team unity dissolved as moderates, with eyes on midterm elections, became more interested in scoring points for corporate farms and coal companies. In the end, team climate change never even got a good shot off. I was one of those overly optimistic fans who thought we could win it all—a strong cap-and-trade program combined with an ambitious renewable energy standard requiring the production of 25 percent renewable energy by the year 2020. But as the season progressed, […]

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