It's time the Democrats in Congress realized how dangerous anti-environmental congressmen like John Dingell (D-MI), Rick Boucher (D-VA), and Nick Rahall (D-WV) are to the future of the party. To have such prominently anti-environmental behavior from three powerful congressmen at a time when the American public is yearning for environmental leadership is blatantly unacceptable and a peril to the party's political future. It is also a roadblock to our efforts to transitition to an energy-scarce future and mitigate global warming while incurring as little hardship and suffering as possible.
If anyone hasn't noticed, more and more Republicans are "coming around" on environmentalism lately. Only in a pretend kind of way, to be sure, but enough to fool a decent chunk of the American public. Observe how Bush's non-announcement on greenhouse gas emissions last week ahead of the G8 summit got the American press to bite. Republicans everywhere (well, maybe not here) are starting to rub the dirt from their eyes and pay passing lip service to environmental matters.
Politically, environmentalism is going to be the golden key for the foreseeable future. Because the Republican Party has been so wrong for so long on the environment, Democrats could own the issue without being so impressive themselves. Now, it is time for Democrats to take a strong, meaningful stance on renewable energy, global warming, peak oil, peak gas, protection of natural resources, biodiversity, limiting sprawl, water management, disaster mitigation, farmland preservation, and food policy, or else the party is deemed to fail in the political arena. This is because all these issues are issues that Americans are increasingly going to have to care about.
Hence, giving power to people like Dingell, Boucher, and Rahall, considering what each has done recently to be worse than many Republicans on the environment, is political suicide for the Democratic Party. It has to stop or else the gains made in 2006 will be for naught. More importantly, by trying to nationalize their own special interests' wants when such interests conflict with the well being of the American people, these three threaten to compromise our transition to new energy sources. They need to wake up and smell the coffee: it's not about them, it's about doing what's right for the well being of all people and the earth. If Nancy Pelosi and other sensible Democrats knew what's right for them, they would sweep them off their perch before their bills get any further.
If you're wondering by now what these three did to deserve this, simply read The Lighthouse Keeper's top-rec-listed diary on Dingell and Boucher's draft legislation reportedly, among other evils, prohibiting states from enacting regulations on limiting emissions from their auto fleets, and thus nullifying California's landmark legislation.
Then read about Nick Rahall's Subtitle D of H.R. 2337, which would
"essentially outlaw the generation of electricity from new wind power plants in the United States and even phase out power production from existing wind turbines."
(clarquistador also diaried about Rahall's machinations as well. Apologies if I'm missing others who diaried on it.)
Democrats must reject the industry pandering of these Democrats and embrace the party's environmental bright spots. Policies like Earl Blumenauer's Food and Farm Bill of Rights, or Bernie Sanders' and Barbara Boxer's gold standard emissions cap legislation (yes, even though Sanders isn't officially a Dem).
We all know how large a role the environment played in the 2006 elections. A wind energy engineer and an organic farmer ousted two industry-crony fat cats, to name just two examples. The environment is playing an even bigger role now, and that is why we just cannot accept such environmentally damaging legislation by Dingell and Boucher, and by Rahall. At the very least, they need to withdraw their controversial legislation (or sections of legislation). At the most, they need to be ousted from committee chairmanship (in Dingell's and Rahall's case, at least, not sure if Boucher's a chair of anything). They may have some very good stances on other issues, but, like I said before, it would be unacceptable to let their controversial policies go forward.