I met the incomparable Elly Jackson. What a fuckin' baller. We talked about her favorite word (cunt) and I gave her an Orangina label from a juice bottle. Nice hug too. What a badass.

So Predictable

This last Thursday the latest big climate bill predictably failed in the Senate. Not just failed, like didn’t get enough votes, or even couldn’t break a filibuster. No, it got pulled from the legislative calendar. There wasn’t even a single minute of debate before it came to a rather pathetic end, without so much as a self-satisfied “well, at least we tried” whimper. It’s rather funny though, if not delusional, how many pundits and green lobbyists talked incessantly about how this was going to be the time. And yet this is the fourth such failure, after the three previous failures in ’03, ’05, and ’08.

I mentioned that this bill had no chance to every green intellectual I know and the most common reaction was one typical of our era defined by non-stop Hope branding. They laughed me off as irrelevant, or at the very least unimportant. They talked about how the cap could be simplified to just the utility sector. They trusted blindly in the power of Harry Reid. All the while, the bill lost it’s only Republican co-sponsor months ago and didn’t have anything close to the votes. And the biggest giveaway of all that it had zero chance? There’s 2 BLEEPIN’ weeks left on the legislative calendar and they haven’t even voted on the Supreme Court nominee, the BP spill response, or any budgets. And it’s, rather ironically, hotter than hell in DC and everyone just wants to get mandatory votes out of the way and flee to their summer vacations. Even with a strong coalition and Presidential support, both completely lacking in this half-assed effort, the calendar itself doomed this initiative. Trying to tackle the largest environmental legislation in history one week after passing a two year financial reform effort, and two weeks before vacation is either a) greenwash- political campaigning or b) delusional and impossible.

I’ll use that very dangerous word again- hope. I sincerely hope that this town will think rationally for a moment. And rather than letting every staffer, lobbyist and interest group on the Hill insert their page into the next aspiring climate bill, that we use a little Econ 101. We won’t have declining emissions until we replace dirty energy with clean energy. And we won’t ever have clean energy unless it is cheaper than dirty. And seeing as dirty energy can literally be scooped or dug out of the ground, and all amount of disaster and environmental catastrophe will never quell our appetite, and all the well-intentioned retrofitting and Prius rebates in the world will not reduce emissions so long as the world is growing, China and India are modernizing, and coal is abundant, the only way to achieve this is through altering the price of dirty energy. The equilibrium of supply and demand is determined by the price. Price is the only mechanism. And we wouldn’t even have to do anything- just put this gem of a bill on the calendar! 19 pages, no buy-offs, a clear price signal, how refreshing! http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1337

To me it is obvious that those who have so strongly pushed for cap and trade meant well. Emissions targets, done the right way without too many offsets or free allowances, will reduce emissions. But it is just too complicated for most Americans or businesses to accept. And it tries to buy off so many groups that some will inevitably perceive themselves to be the losers and pose strong opposition, or throw some elbows at the trough to try and get theirs. A price is very simple. And it is equitable. Above all, cap and trade is a cynical structure. It seeks to hide the price increase of GHGs with a new name. “Cap and trade” is still a vague and confused topic to most Americans. The Greens know this, and they mistakenly think it will make it more appealing politically. How many failures must we endure before we realize this isn’t true? Will number four be enough? White House pollsters and media consultants explicitly told staff not to mention the climate change or price part, just green jobs. They've been saying fluffy, lazy stuff like this for a long time, and guess what, the White House wasn't any better served by it. Shit still didn't sell. If you're going to go out, why not do it at least authentically, discussing the issues directly. Their branding didn't help at all. Maybe a few of these slick 3 Blackberry toting, $5,000 suit NYC media types actually, gasp, don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Maybe they're overpaid losers, not the winners we always assume them to be. What the fuck do they know about policy, about climate change? And why would we purposefully play the American people. No. We should be as direct as possible.

We should just level with the American people. Do not underestimate them or try to hide the ball. Tell them we need to make clean energy more affordable and investment-worthy by making people pay for their pollution. And then tell them that this won’t cost them anything more, because we’ll rebate all the taxes right back into their bank account. This seems so obvious, but what any political pollster will tell you is that you can’t mention taxes. But what if we did? What if we had a straightforward debate on this? If the President laid out all the options for solving climate change- e.g. cap and trade, renewable portfolios, regulations, carbon tax or feed-in tariffs/subsidies. And then explained how a carbon tax is the best method. Why not? Because it makes too much sense.

Until then, R.I.P. cap and trade:

http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2010/07/time_to_bury_cap_and_trade_and.shtml

Bloodless Revolution

I had a great Fourth of July. It's one of my favorite holidays. But it seems to be a holiday, really like all the others, where the real meaning and symbolism of the day is getting all but lost, the gulf between reality and those who celebrate it ever-widening. The Fourth seems to consist of tens of millions of drunk, or at least cheesily exhuberant revelers, apparently celebrating the spirit of violent uprising, independence, and bloody revolution with PBR, American Eagle and pre-made charcoal, and tens of thousands of gun-wielding young men and women squatting in the heat of the Middle East, gun in their hands, risking their lives for us, carrying on the original tradition in the most authentic way possible some three centuries later. But there is little in between.

DC on the Fourth is overtaken by the kind of people that proudly sport Americana striped shorts, bald eagle insignied button-up shirts, red, white and blue flashing sunglasses, and kids desperately looking for a party. Some like the kids I walked by on the way home, so desperate for a good time that they shoot fireworks at passerbyers. And we should celebrate. But I wish there was a little more substance to this tradition. Something that actually spoke to the principles America aspires to, and inteprets what the Declaration of Independence is supposed to mean twenty generations on.

Would it be too much to ask the Smithsonian to host a debate, or some intellectually relevant forum of any kind, every year in conjunction with their three day rock festival and nod to the fads of the year? It could be entertaining, not an academic lecture of theorists, but two popular thinkers in the public realm passionately arguing out something unqiquely American. Christopher Hitchens v. Malcolm Gladwell, Jeff Sachs v. Bill Easterly, Lou Dobbs v. Bill Maher, Tony Bourdain v. Alan Richman, Bill O'Reilly v. Rachel Maddow, Al Gore v. Jim Inhoffe, come to mind. To debate what it is we think freedom is, what America is today, why America is the greatest. What it means to be independent in a 21st century increasingly defined by anything but the nation-state, like online networks, international crises and global corporate financial meltdowns. To try to instill a sense, if only orally, of depth, substance, resistance to this day. To at least get the blood pumping a little more and not just the blood alcohol content. The fireworks would look that much more splendid if there was some tiny morsel of intellectual foundation for the day. They could just have it right on the main stage there, for like an hour. It would be fun, and meaningful. A little genuine appreciation and consideration to go with those nine hours of continuous drinking and grilling. Miller's ad of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others break dancing with a bunch of bonnet wearing ass-shaking hoes while shooting canons is the perfect allegory. We may not even celebrate the spirit of this day, more force the day to conform to our current norms and compulsions.

I crossed paths with countless star-spangled drunk-ass revelers shouting "God bless America!" on the Fourth. That's great. But I didn't hear a single person articulate where America finds itself in this new ever-changing, less predictable, more competitive world. Precisely how America is so independent, and from what. I didn't see anyone in other words show that they love America and the countless who died for it any more than they love NASCAR or David Archelleto, in fact maybe that's exactly what they do love about America. I'm beginning to think it's because more and more of us have no clue. Revolutionaries, it seems, are becoming a species at risk of extinction, replaced by those who use their likeness to make a buck, or worship them, ironically in light of our forefathers' violent resistance to the very idea of a class of the earthly divine, e.g. the Crown, as a sort of God. I wonder what these revolutionaries would think of celebrating our independence with splendid demonstrations of submission.