Graham sasy that he won't support bill without MORE offshore drilling

[karynnj]

This likely does kill the bill unless Collins, Snowe and Brown can be pulled in. What is really asinine is that what will likely end expanding off shore drilling is economics, not the new constraints Kerry put in. As long as the oil company is genuinely held responsible, the risk will likely be too big to insure except at a very high premium.

"In the worsening midst of the worst oil disaster in U.S. history, Sen. Lindsey Graham said last night that the climate bill he helped author does not allow enough new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and that’s why he won’t support it.

The South Carolina Republican told Reuters last night that the bill’s other two sponsors, Democrat John Kerry and Independent Joe Lieberman, had “greatly compromised” the bill’s original plans to expand offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf.

“You’ll never get my vote,” he said, without more allowances for fossil fuel extraction."

http://trueslant.com/jeffmcmahon/2010/05/25/lindsey-graham-oil-drilling/

I hope that Kerry leads a filibuster to fight any expansion to offshore drilling in an energy only bill - if it comes to that.

[karynnj]

1. Excellent article calling out the environmentalists on the likelihood of a better bill

Well, OK. In the idealized world inhabited by dreamy activists and academic economists, legislation putting a price on carbon pollution would be a relatively simple undertaking. Tax it at the refinery or mine mouth, collect the revenue, hand it out to the taxpayers, and watch the energy playing field level out, giving the low-carbon resources a fighting chance to compete against fossil fuels no longer able to use the atmosphere as a free garbage can.

Sign me up. But first, show me a strategy for obtaining 60 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House that goes beyond finger-wagging. Show me the names and the arguments that will win the day. And convince me that waiting until 2011 or 2012, when Congress is likely to have more talk radio camp followers who ascribe climate change to sunspots or to Al Gore's vivid imagination, will yield a more favorable political environment than passing Kerry-Lieberman into law this year.

Because if you don't have a realistic political strategy for passing a tougher bill that meets your specifications, if you trash the only vehicle that has a fighting chance of putting a price on carbon this year, if you make it impossible to pass anything before the fall election campaign, you will have made Jim Inhofe's day. You will have enabled the flat-earthers whose strategy of denial and delay, if successful, would dramatically jack up the costs of remediating carbon pollution, allow China to win the race to build the clean energy industries of the 21st century, and perpetuate the oil dependence that bankrolls the worst regimes on the planet.

If you have that realistic strategy, great. As the Beatles sang in Revolution, if "you say you got a real solution, well you know, we'd all love to see the plan."

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/republican/kerry-lieberman-climate-bill-0521#ixzz0ozynaBoh

Reading the last line, I immediately thing of the great photo of him and Kerry. Even then, he eventually favored the activists like Kerry to the far left of that time.