U.S.: Green Groups Battle Over Climate Bills in the Senate

[This from Grist]
[links here: http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2007/10/25/ ]
By Brian Beutler, Grist, October 25, 2007.

"When writer and climate activist Bill McKibben took to the pages of The Washington Post late last month to demand that legislators and activists back the most ambitious climate-change bill in the U.S. Senate, it was more than a call to action -- it was a public salvo in a contentious behind-the-scenes battle... The really impassioned wrangling over climate legislation is going on not in the halls of Congress but within the environmental community itself. McKibben... and activist-oriented groups like Friends of the Earth are calling for no 'half-measures' or compromises, while more establishmentarian groups like Environmental Defense (ED)are embracing moderate legislation on the grounds that it might actually pass. Other green groups are staking out their ground in between… Much of the focus right now is on the America's Climate Security Act... by Sens. Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and Warner (R-Va.)... Environmental Defense is enthusiastically praising [it] -- but not yet formally endorsing... Said ED's Tony Kreindler, it 'looks to be a very strong bill. Perhaps more tellingly, [he] said, 'I think the political process is now behind Lieberman-Warner... Boxer said she would bring it to the floor... [She] seems willing to set aside her own bill and work on moving Lieberman-Warner forward… The Natural Resources Defense Council considers the Sanders-Boxer bill the 'gold standard,' but David Doniger [of] NRDC's climate center, says they've been 'engaged in discussions with the Lieberman-Warner people.' A press release from the organization... notes with some tepidity, 'Although this bill is a strong start, NRDC supports changes that would improve the bill'... The Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and Earthjustice, among other groups, are taking similar stances... This strategy stands in sharp contrast to that of ambitious groups like Friends of the Earth and 1Sky, a new campaign formed specifically to push for aggressive climate action. They believe that anything short of the best bill in the Senate now could spell disaster... McKibben believes much the same... As McKibben told Grist, 'There are people in D.C. who are such good dealmakers that the deal is as important to them as the climate itself.'"