On the death of the climate bill | David "Climate Nuremberg" Roberts - Grist

As Jon noted, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has officially announced that there will be no climate bill this year. But Jon's post doesn't fully convey the extent of the capitulation. What's happened is total and complete surrender. There's no silver lining in this cloud.

Not only will the bill not contain any restrictions on greenhouse gases -- not even a watered-down utility-only cap -- it won't even contain the two other key policies that would have moved clean energy forward: the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) and the energy efficiency standards.
...
Blame where it is due: I'm frustrated with Obama's passivity on this issue. I'm frustrated with Reid. I'm frustrated with the environmental movement. But we should be clear about where the bulk of the responsibility for this farce ultimately lies: the Republican Party and a handful of "centrist" Democrats in the Senate. They are the ones who refused to vote for a bill, no matter how many compromises were made, no matter how clear the urgency of the problem. They are moral cowards, condemning their own children and grandchildren to suffering to serve their own narrow electoral interests. There isn't enough contempt in the world for them.

Twitter / David Roberts

Now I'm in the #NN10 panel on international climate negotiations. Because I was only 98% depressed and needed to get to 100%.

Twitter / bradplumer

Hm, maybe if @drgrist and I had been able to convince Journolist to give a f*ck about climate, we'd have a bill by now.

Climate bill tabled, blame game begins - POLITICO.com Print View

One exasperated administration official on Thursday lambasted the environmentalists – led by the Environmental Defense Fund – for failing to effectively lobby GOP senators.

“They didn’t deliver a single Republican,” the official told POLITICO. “They spent like $100 million and they weren’t able to get a single Republican convert on the bill.”
...
“The absence of direct, intense presidential leadership doomed this process,” said Eric Pooley, author of “Climate War,” a just-published book that chronicles the past three years of debate on global warming. “We did have a window there, and now the window is shut. It’s more about prying it back open than anything else.”
...
Several other swing vote Democrats never came close to playing ball. Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill avoided climate bill advocates and journalists who cover the issue. And when she was cornered, she warned of the political consequences to moderates — and the Democratic majority -- if they were pressed to vote for a carbon cap. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller argued the legislation had little resonance on Capitol Hill or back home.
...GOP lawmakers who are poised to assume leadership positions if they win the House or Senate this November include well-known skeptics on climate science, most notably Joe Barton on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Jim Inhofe in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.