Not the End. Not the Beginning of the End. Perhaps the End of the Beginning
San Francisco -- I was sitting in the annual Sierra Club staff awards ceremony, listening to President Allison Chin read the Board of Directors' commendation to Greg Haegele, my deputy, awarding Greg the John Muir award, the Sierra Club's highest honor. Allison was citing Greg's leadership in the Climate Recovery Partnership, the Club's integrated effort to deal with the Climate Crisis, when my cell phone signaled I had a text message -- one that I had been waiting for.
It was from our policy director, Debbie Sease, letting me know that, by the narrowest of margins, 219 to 212, the House of Representatives had just passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill, a critical next step in the success of America's struggle to become part of the solution, not the problem, in solving the climate crisis.
This victory came only after the Club, its allies in the faith community, the hip-hop community, organized labor, business, scientists, and the environmental community pulled out all the stops in an unprecedented mobilization. And it came for a piece of legislation that lays the groundwork -- but does not do the job. A shift of the votes of only four members of the House would have defeated it, and sent us all back to square one.
Depending on how you look at it, that is all either good news or bad news. The bad news is how far America had to go -- and still has to go -- in creating a national dialogue about energy and climate, one that looks to the future and not the past, one that brings us together as a nation in a transformational effort to redefine the meaning of the 21st century. This bill should have been able to be stronger -- the vote should not have been this close -- we should not have had to work this hard.
The good news is that, thanks to leadership by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, and President Obama, we kept on moving -- America did not stall out. And the Sierra Club was a critical part of the chorus of hope that kept this momentum going.
But now we must make this moment signify not just the laying of a cornerstone but the launch of a continuous commitment to the construction of a great Cathedral of the future -- one in which people don't measure their success, or their prosperity, or their power, by the short-sightedness of their vision and the rapidity with which they are spending down their inheritance.
As is always true in the legislative process, there was ugly sausage-making -- and much that was transactional, compromising, and inadequate. But as Winston Churchill said, "You can count on the United States of America to do the right thing -- after exhausting all the alternatives." Perhaps, tonight, we had exhausted all the alternatives.
