I imagine that there is a lot of hurting going on right now at desks and on couches across the country from D.C. to San Francisco. If you follow environmental news, the depressing word just got out. Some of the headlines include "Senate Democrats abandon comprehensive climate bill" (Washington Post) and "Democrats pull plug on climate bill" (Politico).

This is one of those times where I feel like our government is totally inept. The Democrats have the largest majority they have had in a long time and they can't even pull off a piecemeal climate bill. They are scared about elections in November and maybe justifiably so. With Democrats poised to lose some seats in the election, it only seems like getting a bill passed is going to become harder. I feel like we should vote out the underachievers we have in office (even though this won't be productive). They make all of this talk about protecting the earth and the build up leads to nothing.

Andrew Revkin, who writes the New York Times' Dot Earth climate blog, even seems resolutely disappointed. He usually tries to be something of an impartial guide who provides climate information and data to the public so they can make up their own minds-- a premise that is perhaps kind of bullshit itself. As an aside, in fairness he's regularly tried to articulate the intricacies of his "neutral-like" role before (even here on Ecopolitology). But I'm still honestly confused.

In any case, earlier today he summarized what went wrong with the climate bill and provides one interesting suggestion about the prospects of a climate bill in the future:

Could it be that the White House has concluded what some political analysts have quietly told me — that only a Republican president could muster the Senate votes to pass a meaningful climate bill? That sounds strange initially but isn’t so strange when you consider the history of major environmental legislation and note that a moderate Republican could bring his or her base and lure many Democrats, while a Democrat is unlikely ever to lure sufficient Republican support to get 60 votes on a climate bill.

Someday, perhaps, Obama or a successor will discard convention and take the lead on this challenge, despite its sweep and complexity. Whatever you think of the space race as a national mission, no one was marching in the streets in the early 1960s demanding that the United States land a man on the moon.

Yet  a president chose to make that goal a prime, positive focus of a generation.

Who’s next?

Maybe he's right. Maybe someone like Mitt Romney or Charlie Crist or even Arnold Swarznegger (yeah I know- I probably misspelled his name) will be the one to really get the United States on a path that helps us reverse our negative impact on the earth.

Obama doesn't seem to be the guy. He's probably thinking he's going to try a serious climate bill again in about 2.5 years if he gets re-elected. But that's a big "if" I guess.

Alright, time to go drown my sorrows in a cold beverage and get back to it tomorrow with new optimism. This is kind of like losing the Super Bowl. There's always next year right?

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