White House Hosts Climate Huddle

Photo by ~mvi~, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigberto/2770838680/">via Flickr</a>.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


For months now, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has been promising that the climate and energy bill he’s authoring with Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) will be released sometime soon. Last week, his spokesman told me their bill would be made public in the “coming weeks.” But it’s well known that the trio is not introducing anything until they have 60 senators lined up behind them–and from what I hear from Senate staffers, it’s not clear that they are anywhere near that number yet.

But that could change. Key senators and a number of swing voters on the issue are huddling at the White House this afternoon for a closed-door session with administration officials. In addition to the authors, Democrats Max Baucus (Mont.), Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), and Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.) are on the guest list. On the Republican side, Susan Collins (Maine), Judd Gregg (N.H.), George LeMieux (Fla.), Richard Lugar (Ind.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) have been invited.

The invite list is a pretty good guide to the senators who are seen as crucial votes if anything is to be passed this year. Cantwell and Collins have their own competing climate legislation, and there’s been a lot of chatter about whether they would sign onto the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill if it incorporates enough of their ideas. Rockefeller last week introduced a bill to delay Environmental Protection Agency regulation of carbon dioxide for one year to protect coal states and give the Senate more time to act. Murkowski has been leading efforts to block EPA rules forever, because she says regulating greenhouse gases should be the job of Congress. And Brown has been the key Democrat negotiating for measures to protect trade-exposed, energy intensive industries in a climate plan. The list reflects not only key senators but key constituencies that need to be won over.

From the administration, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack are expected to attend. While White House climate and energy adviser Carol Browner has said that the administration does not plan to offer a legislative outline to the Senate, the participation of cabinet members in today’s meeting indicates high-level engagement in the negotiations.

Environmental advocates are taking this meeting as a signal that there may actually be forward movement on legislation soon, despite the countless obituaries that have been written for climate policy.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate