EDF energy assessment 23/07/10

After weeks of intense negotiations among EDF and other environmental organizations, Senate Leaders, the White House, and some sympathetic members of the utility industry, we are still several votes short of the 60 required to break a Senate filibuster.

Because of this, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that the Senate will not take up a limit on global warming pollution before the August recess, though it "may" consider it in September.

The Crisis Isn't Going Away: 2010 is on pace to become the warmest year on record, following the warmest decade on record: 2000-2009. Glacial and polar ice continues to melt at astonishing rates, worsening the threat of sea level rise, coastal flooding, and threatening the supply of drinking water for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Year by year and decade by decade, these and other very serious trends will get worse and worse with no end in sight.

Squandering the House-Passed Bill: To pass legislation, you need to move bills through both houses of Congress. The House of Representatives has already cast a clear, solid vote on this. If the Senate fails to act now, all that hard work will have been wasted and we'll have to start from scratch next year with a new Congress likely to be less inclined to act responsibly.

Inaction Now Only Makes It Harder Later: Science, not politics, is ultimately in charge of this crisis. And the science is very clear. We must begin cutting our emissions now to avoid even more dramatic cuts later. A delay of two or three years only makes the necessary pollution cuts all the more severe and disruptive to our economy and way of life.