Pelosi Heroic on Energy Bill, But Sea Change Still Needed

By all accounts, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is emerging from the battle over the energy bill with much-earned swagger -- the centerpiece being a 35 mpg auto fuel economy standard by 2020, a clear victory over Rep John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat, the auto industry's primary ally and one-man speed bump.

"Fuel Bill Shows House Speaker's Muscle" was the NYT Sunday headline. I can see her smiling at that mainstream media verdict over a leisurely brunch, another moment that ranks right up there with taking her place next to Cheney, and together looking over the President's shoulder as he delivered his State of the Union.

The political pendulum, which in the 2006 mid-term election changed direction, is clearly picking up momentum, but will its arc swing far enough to solve climate? Despite Pelosi's victory and others that will surely follow, politics-as-usual by itself will not be able to correct the habits of business-as-usual, and that's why the rumblings of the sea change whose approach we are hearing is a welcome sound.

Pelosi is surely the advance guard of possible change. She took on Dingell, 81, the senior-most member of the House who was first elected when Pelosi was still in high school. Not only did she prevail on the mileage standard. She also thwarted a clever attempt by the old bull to take some teeth out of the Supreme Court ruling that gave the EPA authority to regulate CO2. As the NYTimes observes, Pelosi's got a firm grip.

She is clearly in charge as Congress heads into these last critical weeks of the year, seeking to clinch legislative victories.

The Energy Bill now moving out of the House is a signature achievement, and it's got more to offer than auto fuel economy alone. It includes a Renewable Energy Standard that requires 15% of energy in the US to be from clean sources like wind and solar by 2020. It includes billions in subsidies for clean energy. It also includes beefed up energy efficiency and building standards.

But.

The RPS standard is hardly the reach we need. The bill doesn't include an end to billions in subsidies to fossil fuel interests, because Bush threatened a veto if such a measure was in the bill. And the bill does include a massive boost to biofuels - even though the corn ethanol boom has been a bust to just about everyone except agribusiness interests. That's politics, for sure, I get it. And that's the point.

As much as politics can achieve, there's a limit to what it can do by itself. And that's why calling this bill "historic" is a bit over the top. There's a difference between making history, and something taking too damn long to accomplish -- because our political culture is too beholden to powerful special interests like the auto industry and its guard-dinosaur.

Every Democratic candidate for the presidency has advocated a fuel economy standard higher than is in the energy bill. Passing this bill means we won't get another bite at the auto efficiency apple for a decade or more. The new standard - 35 mpg - is just barely sufficient and it doesn't bring us to parity with the EU or even China. So how come not one of the erstwhile candidates said, "Time out! Not enough! We'll do better when we take office." Or, "Okay, good start, but tack on that measure to end oil subsidies, and let the S-O-B veto the bill if he dares. It'll help us sweep even more Democrats into office and it will mean Detroit will have to deal with us on the next go round. Nothing to lose."

That's Jimmy Stewart talking in a modern-day send-up of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, I guess, with a predictable Hollywood ending, but not candidates in elections-as-usual. You don't take on Big Oil during the Big Oil Presidency when you're counting electoral votes. Pelosi has pushed the envelope as far as anybody can. Two steps forward, one step back - the Washington cha-cha.

But listen Madam Speaker, it sounds like help is on the way to shake up politics-as-usual and strengthen your hand.

Last week we heard from McKinsey company and 150 multinationals, pointing the way to climate action, and the UN explaining the need for human solidarity in a divided world. The evangelical community - about 1/4 of the US population - by no means turning liberal, is struggling to articulate and embrace the social and political meaning of a commitment to "creation care." Three big time governors put together a spot calling on Washington for climate action. New York's Mayor Bloomberg is on his way to Bali soon to talk to the world as a counterweight to the official US delegation to the climate talks. From every walk of life you care to look at, Americans are calling on the feds to solve climate. And despite the energy bill, Washington has yet to catch up.

The new demand also has new energy, the energy of youth. The best example of this I could find are contained in the words -- and the performance -- of a slam poet named Just Greg. He's captured all the signs and portents in a litany called There's Something in the Water, which rocked the audience at the recent Powershift Youth Summit. He sent chills up my spine. That something that's in the water is what is conjuring the sea change that's still needed to solve climate -- all the high crimes and misdemeanors that are ruining this planet that no law emerging from politics-as-usual will resolve.

Just Greg. What a great name. He's the one that's got his nose to the wind, sniffing the direction of history. Listen to what the poet-historian, this slamming Homer, found in the water, and you'll see what Seamus Haney, meant when he instructed us in the Cure at Troy that once in a great while hope and history rhyme. From the Cure at Troy:

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.

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