The oil spill and the forests

Hopes of a massive US compliance market for REDD carbon credits, raised last spring by the passage of a REDD-tinted, cap-and-trade-based climate & energy bill through the US House of Representatives, have rested since then on the chances of a similar bill being passed by the Senate. Following the passage of health care reform and substantial progress on financial sector reform, that august body had appeared poised to pick up, finally, where the House had left off. A bipartisan bill, sponsored by Senators John Kerry (D), Lindsey Graham (R) and Joseph Lieberman (??), was to have been launched last Monday. That's when Arizona's immigration politics and the Gulf of Mexico's spilled oil chanced to intervene. The ultimate impact of these events on prospects for REDD and for global climate agreement as a whole, remains uncertain, with the altered political landscape presenting new risks, as well as new opportunities, for the climate and energy legislation. 

In the first act, Senate Democratic leaders, sensing political opportunity in Arizona's draconian new immigration law, began toying with the idea of letting immigration reform jump the legislative queue, ahead of the energy bill. At this point, in an apparent fit of pique, Senator Lindsey Graham, the energy bill's Republican co-sponser, withdrew from the bill's planned launch. 

Even as negotiators tried to resolve the dispute over the order of play, an unfolding environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico began to take center stage. As estimates of both the rate of oil leakage, as well as the amount of time needed to stem the flow (weeks? months?), continued to increase, there was a notable silence from the "Drill, baby, drill!" crowd. As a result, President Obama's recently announced willingness to open large areas of the U.S. Continental shelf to oil drilling, made as part of a bid to gain Republican support for a not-so-grand compromise on energy, no longer seemed to be such an astute move. Or, at least, not a well-timed one.

While a path to legislative success based on gaining Republican votes through the carrot of increased offshore oil drilling seems to be closing, it seems possible that a new and brighter path may be starting to emerge. This new opportunity is based in the broadest sense on the increased environmental awareness of the American electorate which will inevitably follow in the wake of this disaster. Ironically, the extent of this awakening will depend in part on the extent and duration of the disaster, which at this point remains highly uncertain. and dependent on a variety of technological and weather-related unknowns. But should Americans continue to see nightly images of beaches, wetlands and estuaries despoiled by tar and dead fish, birds and marine mammals, political pressures for clean energy will undoubtedly mount. It also seems likely that evolving environmental attitudes in one area (oil drilling) may even spill over (sorry!) into other related areas like climate change awareness. Exploiting this opportunity would require the Obama Administration either to admit that, in the face of new evidence (just look on your beaches), it was reversing its decision on offshore drilling or, at least, to acknowledge that it no longer considered drilling to be an essential element of a climate and energy bill.

In initial signs that this new and perhaps powerful logic for reform is beginning to take hold, the Obama Administration and Democratic leaders are all beginning to connect the dots. Following Sunday's Presidential visit to Louisiana, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Monday refused to rule out the possibility that the ban on drilling could be reinstated. On Tuesday, the Administration's top energy advisor Carol Browner, referring to the legislation, noted that "There's more than one way to get it done." And yesterday, House Speaker Nany Pelosi noted that the spill added urgency to the energy bill. These statements reflect the Administration's need to be seen as responding in adequately to the disaster -- unlike it's predecessor's response to Hurricane Katrina -- but also a sense that they are grasping and beginning to exploit the opportunity that it is presenting.

This process has the potential to put Republicans in a position not unlike that which they have been facing on the financial reform legislation, whereby their "just say no" approach withered in the face of an obvious need to take action in the face of an undeniable disaster. As unfortunate as it would be for America's already damaged coasts, the Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 may ultimately prove to be the environmental equivalent of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. If so, the world's tropical forests may end up owing a debt to an oil-soaked American coastline.