Guest blog: A Murkowski win would embolden Big Oil & Dirty Coal

Nick Santos is a former 1Sky policy fellow and now works with The Environmental Consumer in California. The author's opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the 1Sky campaign.-- Luis

It's been a busy week for climate change in the Senate. Today is the vote on Senator Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK) "Dirty Air Act," a Senate resolution of disapproval of EPA's endangerment finding. Earlier this week, Senator Murkowski published an op-ed in The Hill pushing for her resolution, to which 1Sky Campaign Director Gillian Caldwell thoroughly responded in a post of her own.

What we need to understand about the Murkowski Resolution is that it is more important than it seems at first glance. The resolution looks like a mere rebuke of the President and the EPA's actions, but it is a calculated political maneuver. Murkowski is trying to redefine the debate and her opening bid is taking a shot at the most concrete effort yet at regulating the nation's biggest polluters. For the sake of the nation, including the increasing majority of Americans that support clean energy, this resolution must not pass.

Given the ongoing human-made disaster in the Gulf, including revelations about a second leaking well, I'm blown away that Murkowski has 41 cosponsors on this bill. Here we have senators who are watching the oil spill unfold, and then going back to the Senate and saying we should do nothing -- or regress and do worse than nothing by reprimanding the EPA for its legal, court-mandated, and science-based actions.

Murkowski says that, instead of EPA action, we should work with ACELA (American Clean Energy Leadership Act), the bill that passed out of the Energy and Natural Resources committee last June. The problem here is that ACELA was bad when it was released and now is downright stale, failing to address the realities of today in its expansion of offshore drilling and inadequate implementation of renewables. Many of ACELA's provisions, specifically the renewable energy requirements, are actually worse than business as usual. In stating that we should use that in place of Clean Air Act requirements for coal, Murkowski misses the point. We need both. We need comprehensive energy and climate legislation. It is not an either/or proposition, and the final result must be stronger than ACELA and include an ambitious carbon cap.

In the long run, this vote likely sets the stage for more disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill. By blocking the increase in the liability cap for spills and trying to block similar efforts, Murkowski and her cosponsors are showing oil and coal companies that a chunk of the Senate is closing its eyes and plugging its ears regarding accountability for polluters or the negative, unaccounted for results of their actions. What reason would an oil or coal company have to change its behavior if Congress' first energy-related action after the biggest environmental disaster of our time is in their favor?

In the Bali climate negotiations in 2007, a delegate from Papua New Guinea told the United States representative: "If you're not willing to lead, then get out of the way." That time has come again. Senator Murkowski, you are clearly not ready to lead on this issue, despite your statement in your op-ed that "we can, and should, take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." Please get out of the way and stop trying to get polluters off the hook.

Please call your Senators now and tell them to vote no on the Murkowski Resolution.