Environmental News 15.1.15 Part IV: Go Bernie, GO! Scare the crap out of presidential hopefuls in the senate with your climate change ploy - with OUR blessing. I KNEW I liked this guy – Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) – for a reason and now here is some proof of my faith in him. The House of Reps in the US has passed the Keystone XL Pipeline and now the Senate is set to pass it too BUT to do this the Senate Republicans have to pick off a few more Democratic votes to override Barack Obamas promised veto. Thats why Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has proposed an open amendment process, hoping to drum up bipartisan support before the Senate votes next week. Enter Senator Bernie Sanders. He plans to introduce a sense of Congress resolution that simply affirms climate change is real, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and must be addressed. It would say that Congress “is in agreement with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific community” and climate change has already caused devastating problems in the United States and around the world. This climate amendment is pure messaging and though does nothing to address the problems of global warming it WILL put many Senators in an uncomfortable situation. During the midterms, Republicans were anxious to ignore questions about man-made global warming ducking reporter and constituent questions about pollution with excuses like, Im not a scientist. A vote on Sanders resolution is tougher to dodge however and though Republicans want no part in this, Senate Majority Leader McConnell HAS promised to conduct a fair and open amendment process, which means any number of potential presidential candidates in his ranks — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) — could be faced with a choice between swallowing Sanders poison pill or going on the record as climate change deniers. (This supposes that McConnell wont tweak his definition of open process and bury the Sanders amendment, which he probably will.) newrepublic/article/120760/senate-will-vote-sanders-climate-amendment-keystone
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 23:37:53 +0000
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