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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

New Climate Campaign Will Tout Science, Build Consensus for Action, Sen. Kerry Says

by Dean Scott

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 Supporters of action in the U.S. to deal with climate change are considering new strategies to rekindle support for a climate change bill and expand renewable energy sources following the demise of Senate cap-and-trade legislation last year. They are starting with a campaign meant to “revalidate” climate science and the urgent need for action, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Jan. 11.

“We are working now to rebuild a coalition and a consensus on a national basis that will revalidate the urgency and the science effectively” that could be the cornerstone of reviving future congressional action, Kerry said in a speech at the Center for American Progress. “I think there is a coalition out there waiting to rebuild,” according to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, who fell short in trying to get a climate and energy bill to the Senate floor in July.

With broad climate action off the table for at least two years given the Republican takeover of the House and the loss of six Senate Democrats in the November elections, environmental groups and other backers of U.S. action are strategizing now on how best to proceed.

Some say the best hope for paving the way for congressional action in 2012 is a consistent message, including at the grassroots level, that highlights how rising sea levels and increasing global temperatures is already impacting local communities. Kerry said the public also will see more of an emphasis on how curbing greenhouse gas emissions can have public health benefits, such as through improved air quality.

“I was with somebody the other day who is going to be engaged in the public campaign of this,” Kerry said, who argued that doctors and patients routinely make health decisions based on the likelihood of success and not the certainty demanded by many skeptics of climate research.

In the health arena, a patient may “walk into a doctor's office and you get a diagnosis that tells you you've got a certain kind of cancer” and be given an 80 percent chance or better of survival undergoing one type of treatment, Kerry said. By comparison, roughly 99 percent of climate scientists have reached a consensus linking human actions to climate change, “and yet we’re not behaving like a normal patient” by addressing the underlying problem, the senator said.

Kerry acknowledged that in the short-term, the Senate is likely to address energy and climate in a piecemeal fashion. But he said clean energy advocates and environmental groups could use the next couple years to “reach America” and bolster grassroots support for comprehensive climate action.

“I’m convinced that we're going to rebuild a consensus,” Kerry said. “We'll start with energy and ultimately we're going to wind up, I hope, creating the job base and the energy future for our country” by meeting the broader challenges of energy independence and climate change, he said.
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