Former Vice President Al Gore fielded questions yesterday from E&E on the Senate climate debate, including efforts to win over moderate Democrats and Republicans and potential provisions that could warrant a presidential veto. Gore was in Washington, D.C., to promote his new global warming book, "Our Choice."
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| Former Vice President Al Gore |
Darren Samuelsohn: Let me get your reaction, to start off with, to the passage of the bill. She had to obviously do some procedural move to make this happen, but ...
Al Gore: Yeah, well, I think that Barbara ... Senator Boxer has done an extraordinary job. I congratulate her and the majority on the committee for reporting out this bill.
I would urge those tempted to be concerned about the lack of Republican support to consider the challenge it posed to the majority on the committee.
It was, in the main, a delaying tactic, in my view, and the simple fact is this bill will turn out to be a very important component of a larger bill that will itself be subjected to exactly the analysis that the minority is seeking.
Senator Kerry and Senator Boxer, with the leadership of Senator Harry Reid, will combine the output of all six committees to draft legislation that includes EPW's legislation as a centerpiece, along with the Energy Committee's output, Foreign Relations and the other committees involved.
And then they will have, no doubt, a full opportunity to get a CBO analysis. As Senator Boxer rightly said, most all the elements of this legislation have already been thoroughly analyzed.
I believe she not only did the right thing, but would have faced justifiable criticism if she gave Senator Inhofe veto power over the committee's ability to play its role as one of the six committees in this process.
So, I think it's an important victory for climate today, and one more important step toward the Senate enacting comprehensive legislation.
Darren Samuelsohn: Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Judd Gregg, Lisa Murkowski, basically all the Republicans that you're going to need to get 60 votes, expressed concern this week and said Boxer, please don't move this bill without the EPA analysis.
Are you concerned that her decision to go forward without the Republicans is going to jeopardize your ability to get 60 votes?
Al Gore: I think that the pending CBO analysis that they want will more than answer that objection.
Darren Samuelsohn: You do upset them in terms of the process though. I mean, do you think that these senators are going to entrench to their corners at this point and not come out because of this move?
Al Gore: I hope not and, given the forthcoming CBO analysis, I don't think it would be justified in doing so.
Darren Samuelsohn: Max Baucus voted "no" today. He said that he wants to try and change the emission targets from 20 percent down to 17 with maybe rising up if developing countries do something, or even 14 percent.
And if it goes the other direction than you want to go, how do you maintain the environmental integrity of this bill but also satisfy Max Baucus and many other coal-state moderate Democrats?
Al Gore: That is an important example of the challenge that faces the sponsors going forward.
But I have great confidence in their ability to navigate this difficult terrain and, again, not only will this bill be integrated with the other committee products, assuming it passes, it will then be taken to a conference committee that will face the further challenge of reconciling the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill.
So, it's premature to judge what the final outcome will be. Also with Senator Graham, Senator Lieberman and representatives of the White House taking part in this process with Senator Kerry and Senator Boxer and Senator Reid, I have every confidence that they will find a formula that attracts 60 votes.
Darren Samuelsohn: If the House bill were to reach the president's desk and you were the president, at 17 percent emission targets for 2020, would you veto such a bill?
Al Gore: No. Much will depend on the details of the final product, but the number itself, though far less ambitious than I would like to see, must be assessed in the context of this difficult political environment in which opponents of the bill have a lot of power and influence over the Congress.
And the important thing is to get an agreement that starts this historic change process and once it is under way I believe it's inevitable that the reductions will turn out to be much easier than the opponents have claimed.
And the best-managed businesses will race ahead in anticipation of further reductions in coming years, and we will see a very different political environment emerge as they gain confidence in their ability to make deeper reductions.
Darren Samuelsohn: Safety valves, free allowances, a lot of these other provisions that have been around, what of those in your mind would be veto justifiable? Is there anything that's sort of on the table that if you were president you would draw a line in the sand and say, "No, I can't have a safety valve," for example?
Al Gore: Sure, but rather than singling out one provision, I will depend, once again on the oft-quoted remark from Hugo Black, "I'll know it when I see it."
But there's more than one devil lurking in the details of this emerging legislation and some of them could be so devilish as to warrant a veto. But just as I have expressed enormous respect for the legislative craftsmanship of Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, similarly, I have the same kind of respect for John Kerry and Barbara Boxer.
And they're not going to produce a final product that doesn't meet the threshold of what we'd all recognize to be a major step forward in this process.
Darren Samuelsohn: Senators Dorgan, Conrad, Lincoln, Ben Nelson, in the hallways, repeatedly have told us, Dorgan on the Senate floor, "I'd rather do an energy bill and save climate for later."
What do you say to those senators who are also critical for 60 votes who want to focus on the energy bill that passed out of Bingaman's committee and take up climate at a later date?
Al Gore: In these circumstances, with the entire international community focused on what the United States does, it would be worse than having no bill at all to have legislation only included the energy components and did not include reductions in global warming emissions.
Darren Samuelsohn: How often do you talk to Senator Reid about this?
Al Gore: He's called a number of times. He and I are very close friends. I think he's doing an extraordinary job, and I guess the short answer is often.
Darren Samuelsohn: What about Boxer and Kerry?
Al Gore: The same.
Darren Samuelsohn: President Obama?
Al Gore: Less frequently, but through his key assistants, often.
Darren Samuelsohn: How do you think Harry Reid has handled sort of the ghost of Byrd-Hagel as we've gone forward?
Al Gore: Skillfully. The history of this issue, which you personally witnessed, makes it important to anticipate the ratification struggle that will come in the aftermath of a treaty, whenever that's reached and I think they've handled it skillfully.
Darren Samuelsohn: Is there a concern in your eyes of pushing for a vote too soon and having short of 60 votes before Copenhagen, for example?
Al Gore: I would like to see legislation passed before Copenhagen for lots of reasons, but getting 60 votes is crucial and I defer to the expertise of Senators Reid, Kerry, and Boxer on that central point. And I think that it's obviously necessary to acknowledge the newly prominent role of the CBO in reviewing these large pieces of legislation, whether climate and energy or health care.
And they have a challenging roadmap and I think they're doing the very best that they can. And I think that if they succeed in producing a consensus product that has good prospects of 60 votes and publish it before Copenhagen, then I think that's second-best to having a final legislative product. And we will have to do the best that we can in Copenhagen with what they do produce.
Darren Samuelsohn: There's a chicken-and-an-egg scenario that has been here forever and some environmentalists would say let's go to Copenhagen with the conference report or with a Senate bill or what we're probably going to Copenhagen with. If you were in the White House what would you prefer to be at the negotiation table with? Would you prefer to have the law or would you prefer to have something just short of the law in order to then come back and ...
Al Gore: Well, I would prefer to have the law, but they face a daunting political challenge in putting together enough votes to get a law by then. It is what it is, which is the saying we always fall back on when it's not what it's not.
Darren Samuelsohn: I mean, some senators are actively saying I'd rather see what the United States brings back before I have to vote. Senator Lugar, for example. Senator Voinovich, for example.
Al Gore: Well, the chicken does come before the egg. At whatever step in the evolutionary process, the egg produces a new chicken. We'll do the best we can with it.
Darren Samuelsohn: Are you worried that Obama potentially could sign something in Copenhagen or Vice President Biden, just like you did in Kyoto, and bring it back and it can't be approved in the United States Senate and we end up in the same place that we were in the late '90s?
Al Gore: The history of that experience has made them properly sensitive to making sure that the odds are good for approval of a final product. And there is, of course, a number somewhere between 60 and 67 that would justify an all-out campaign for approval of a treaty that was based on legislation that did get the votes or more.
And the new position of the Chamber of Commerce and other former intransigent opponents does create the possibility that they can get to a consensus product.
I think there's much stronger grass-roots support from these states and districts than the conventional wisdom now has it. And the mood, as I read it in the Senate, is more favorable toward the idea of doing the work and getting it resolved than the conventional wisdom now has it, but we shall see in the final product.
Darren Samuelsohn: There are some House Democrats who voted for the bill reluctantly and there are some Senate Democrats who are obviously wrestling with this, Blanche Lincoln for example, but the same thing in the House. And they look at the elections from the other day, obviously it's just two states, the two state governor races, but worry about the Republican potential wave, I guess, in 2010.
What do you say to Democrats who are nervous politically about voting for this in the next nine months or the House Democrats who already have who are worried about getting swept out of office?
Al Gore: Well, every four years the results in Virginia and New Jersey have an impact with an astonishingly short half life. And as Stephen Colbert said last night, he calls it now the 2009/2010/2012 election referendum ... I can't remember his phrase, but it was very funny.
You know, as if this is ... you know, the be all and end all. But it doesn't stay that way very long. Much more important is the fact that those in the House who cast what felt like very difficult votes for them on Waxman-Markey have gotten a boost in the polls from their support of legislation. And the polls in their districts show that very clearly. That's really a significant political fact on the ground.
Darren Samuelsohn: Do they need the Senate to pass the bill though to actually come back and say, "Hey look, this is a law" as opposed to like the Btu efforts in '93?
Al Gore: Yes. Yes, I think the Btu PTSD is a factor in this debate.
Darren Samuelsohn: So, are they vulnerable then if the Senate doesn't act? Do you think, in a way, that they wouldn't be? Yeah, are they vulnerable if the Senate doesn't act?
Al Gore: I don't know the answer to that question, but surely some of them believe that and I do think that's a factor in the handling of the Senate bill. But I'm not very good at political punditry. I do think that the substance of this is ultimately going to drive the outcome.
Darren Samuelsohn: Probably one of the best, I would say, political pundits out there given your experience. Let me ask you this, you set up expectations in Bali. I remember you speaking about, this was in the moments of the Bush ...
Al Gore: When there was an impending walkout at Bali.
Darren Samuelsohn: Yeah. You set up expectations. You said, "Leave some space blank, the next president is coming."
Al Gore: Yeah.
Darren Samuelsohn: The next president will be in Copenhagen and there is already a lot of angst about what the United States is going to be able to bring to the table. Have you set up expectations that are going to be impossible to meet?
Al Gore: Well, I think the world as a whole has expectations that are not shaped by any statements from me so much as the reality of this unprecedented crisis that has to be addressed.
And somehow we have to meet those expectations, not for political reasons, but because of the moral obligation that we have to our children and future generations because of the still worsening dependence of the U.S. on vulnerable sources of foreign oil and because of the continuing need to create millions of new jobs and combat the lingering effects of the recent recession.
Those expectations come from the reality that we live in and somehow we have to meet them.
Darren Samuelsohn: Some blame is going to be put on the United States in Copenhagen; I think it's pretty clear. Yvo de Boer said that there won't be a full verifiable treaty coming out of Copenhagen and everyone has sort of been focused here on United States Senate now to be the key to that.
So, if you were the president in Copenhagen, you know, what do you tell Obama to say? What do you think Obama should say when he never really gets hit with criticism from the small island states, from the Europeans that the United States is ... they're not going to say probably that he's the same as Bush, but they're going to probably say that they're not meeting expectations?
Al Gore: I think it's premature to describe the circumstances that the president will have to deal with. Between now and then, he will have important meetings in both China and India.
Between now and then, the ongoing legislative process in the Senate will produce some kind of result, whether it's a consensus draft or something else. So let's wait and see what the circumstances are.
Darren Samuelsohn: You said he's going to Copenhagen. Do you think he's going to be there the first week or the second week? When do you think President Obama is actually going to step foot in Copenhagen?
Al Gore: Well, I haven't said he is going. I've said that I hope he will go, and I expect that the circumstances will be such that he will choose to go. But he hasn't told me that he's made the decision to go, nor has anyone speaking on his behalf. Nevertheless, I think it's likely that he will go, and I hope very much that the political situation in the Senate will give him a stronger rather than weaker hand.
Darren Samuelsohn: If you were the president, if you had been elected in 2000 and had served two terms, where do you think we would be on climate change here in 2009? You'd be now retired in Tennessee, but what do you think would have been accomplished in your two terms?
Al Gore: Well, I would have certainly encountered the same fierce resistance that President Obama has encountered. I like to think that we would be much farther down the road compared to the eight years of retrogression, but that's as far as my hubris alarm will allow me to speculate.
Darren Samuelsohn: Do you think you would have been able to get a cap-and-trade bill through what would have been, I guess, a Democratic Congress?
Al Gore: Well, I like to think so, but I'm certainly respectful of the degree of difficulty all parties are facing and, like them, I also learned a lot from the Kyoto experience.
This is the most difficult challenge our civilization has ever confronted, and it's not surprising that we have to take more than one run at it to get it done.
But against that backdrop, the world community and the U.S. have been moving very strongly toward a strong consensus that we really have to solve this crisis.
All around the world the determination has been growing steadily. The glass is not only half full, here in the U.S. it's 60 percent full. And with the billion-dollar advertising campaigns, five climate lobbyists for every single member of Congress and the huge role played by the carbon lobbies, it is remarkable that 60 percent of the American people are strongly in favor of legislation.
And that's reality that ultimately will determine the outcome. How soon remains to be determined.
Darren Samuelsohn: Last one for you. Do you think if you were running for a Senate seat right now in Tennessee, given your record on this issue, you could get elected?
Al Gore: Well, I'm not running for a Senate seat. As you've heard me say before, I'm a recovering politician. But I think there is strong support for this legislation even in Tennessee. Several of the House members did support it. They've been helped by it.
Darren Samuelsohn: Alexander and Corker do not sound like players, nor are they interested, it sounds like, in supporting what is moving forward at this time.
Al Gore: Well, Tennessee has, throughout its history, oscillated between being an almost completely Democratic state and an almost completely Republican state.
As a border state in the upper South, as a state that both seceded from the Union and then split with the part of the state, rejoining the Union, it has always been a place in which the moderate center decides the direction the voters want to go in. And the continued building up support for tackling this crisis is ongoing in Tennessee as well.
Darren Samuelsohn: Thank you.
[End of Audio]
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