"Climate Fog" The Nation

[amborin]

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"... public opinion data on climate point to a deeper problem with the way the capping of carbon has been sold, both by Democratic lawmakers and progressive activists--that is, as a bill that seems to have nothing to do with catastrophic climate change. "Make no mistake: this is a jobs bill," President Obama said about the House-passed version of cap and trade...

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....all true, of course, so far as it goes: cap and trade will create strong incentives for innovation in an economy that badly needs them and will begin re-engineering the fossil fuel economy in a way

....proponents of a cap in carbon emissions chose this messaging strategy. They've done a ton of polling and focus-grouping, and there's overwhelming evidence that people don't care enough about the climate to motivate any broad support; that immediate concerns like jobs dwarf abstract ones like carbon dioxide. And prophecies of doom have a strong chance of backfiring and causing paralysis instead of catalyzing support....

But in so overwhelmingly focusing their rhetorical energy away from the central argument about climate, the good guys have created a vacuum that the armies of reaction have rushed to fill....

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This quasi bait-and-switch may seem as if it can scratch out a victory now, but once healthcare reform is finished, and the full wrath of the right wing is brought to bear on cap and trade, that support is going to weaken. There are other ways to create jobs, Republicans will argue. There are other ways to reduce our dependence on foreign oil ("drill, baby, drill"). What Democrats will have to argue is that cap and trade does all those things and might also save us from global disaster. But unless we make the climate case alongside the other ones, we won't be able to make that argument..."

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<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091221/hayes>