Et Tu, Senator Reid?

There's an awfully disturbing story about national environmental hero Senator Harry Reid in the current issue of Portfolio. It details how the Senate Majority Leader has created a pipeline of pork and political favors to his home state -- Nevada -- and the heartbreaking environmental damage it has wrought.

Is schizophrenia required for Congressional membership and leadership? Does it explain the deeper causes of the debacle over the energy bill? Does it throw into relief the limits of what Reid -- and Warner and Lieberman and the rest of the Senate -- are really going to be able to deliver to solve climate this year?

Yes, yes, and yes. Especially when you factor in the latest reality shift within the Beltway: polluters now want climate law enacted before Bush leaves office.

Surprise, surprise.

The Schizophrenia...

On the one hand, Reid is the opponent of coal-fired power plants, the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, and drilling in the Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He scores almost perfectly for his environmental voting record. He's set aside millions of acres of wilderness areas.

But then there's his support for a $3 billion project that is going to tap -- and perhaps drain -- an ancient aquifer and pipe its water hundreds of miles to feed the unsustainable and breakneck growth of Las Vegas, where housing stock grew 50% over the last decade.

Peter Waldman writes:

In his home state, Reid often leaves the local green movement seeing red, for he is the godfather of and rainmaker for the two Nevada industries—the casino-real-estate-development nexus and hard-rock mining—that critics say are the state's leading despoilers and polluters.

Nevada is a peculiar place. There isn't much water there. The federal government still owns 87% of the land there. Voter turnout in Las Vegas is an abysmal 8%, so the southern part of the state is "essentially run by a plutocracy of 50 gaming and real estate bosses." Reid's eldest son, Rory, is the chairman of the county's Board of Commissioners, which has authority over land use decisions. And from Washington, Reid has served his home state's big money interests. You can read the full article for the blow-by-blow account.

.....The Energy Bill....

Reid needs the help of his fellow Senators to send pork back home. That also means he's obligated to help them in return in a familar dance -- the mutual-backscratching-tit-for-tat-cha-cha. With this in mind, the gutting of the energy bill, which Pelosi delivered from the House in fine shape to Reid's senatorial hands, was inevitable. They all knew the score.

Did Reid really have chance to end billions of dollars in oil subsidies? Or temper the ethanol giveaway to Big Corn? Or maintain support for renewable energy -- the climate solution without a geographic home? He went through the motions, calling vote after vote, until a bill acceptable to the White House and most other senators emerged from the captivating political theater.

.....And Now Warner-Lieberman

So what can we now realistically expect from the leadership of Harry Reid on Warner-Lieberman? It's a bill that still rests on the bedrock of giveaways to polluters, and that's not going to change. If anything, the bill will get watered down -- from the natural erosion inherent in the dealmaking. Not to mention the folly of trying to introduce an economy-wide price signal during a recession in an election year.

There's only one path of leadership open to Reid that can come close to healing his occupational schizophrenia: artfully put on the brakes and wait for the cavalry to come over the hill in '09.

There's much afoot that will ease the way for needed climate legislation and force Congress to abandon its dysfunction. For one, there will be a new president, in all likelihood, a game changer. Imagine a pendulum swing that goes as far to doing right by the climate as things are now wrong. Wow. There's the Clean Air Act and Massachusetts v. EPA and the bipartisan climate leadership of more than two dozen states that will also make its mark. And every day we see yet another civic effort entering the great national discussion on climate and energy.

Sure the polluters want to get the job done this year. Isn't that evidence enough to keep your powder dry, Mr. Reid?

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