More Lieberman-Warner

Matt's extremely correct when he says:

Bush is remorselessly opposed to anything that would even be in the neighborhood of an adequate response to climate change. He opposes any mandatory reductions in carbon emissions, and preventing catastrophic climate change requires large mandatory reductions in carbon emissions.

This makes the Lieberman-Warner enterprise of trying to craft a more moderate, more business-friendly climate change plan that can attract broader support look possibly quixotic.

Indeed. Maybe some reporter out there with fantastic access to the administration or to Lieberman and Warner has some greater insight, but my impression is that even these two influential senators won't be able to sway the president on this. And if that's true, something like Lieberman Warner only makes sense if Democratic leaders have decided that no possible realignment of the Congress in 2008 will pave the way for something stronger. In other words, it's odd timing for people to be leaping to compromise measures, especially on this issue.

Bernie Sanders touched on this a bit yesterday, but most of what happens in the Congress is perfect fodder for compromise. Maybe Senator Stevens wants a gazillion dollars for another bridge project, but others, led by Senator Beutler, thinks Stevens only needs a million dollars, and through negotiation, some compromise is reached and the bridge is built. It's not perfect, but it works OK.

Climate change, by contrast, is a unique issue in that compromising on it may very well be deadly. Combating it isn't an effort that has emerged because it's a convenient one for a liberal party with a liberal theory of government. In fact, I imagine that if Democrats had a say in the matter, there wouldn't be any global warming and they wouldn't have to take all these terrible political risks in the fight against it.

Rather, it's a problem of laboratory science that needs to be solved correctly. In a lab, if what you need are 4 widgets and you know that 5 furballs + 3 balloons yields 4 widgets + 4 Hydrogens, then you don't haggle with the lab technician over the number of furballs you can use. If you need some water, and you have some hydrogen, then turning on the heat in the room won't do anything. You genuinely need to spark the system with oxygen. In the same way, the only reason to default to compromise on climate change is if compromise is really the only way forward. And we simply don't know if that's the case yet.