BP stands first for Brian Plumer then for British Petroleum -- I'm pretty sure DuPont is the firm and not Pierre "Pete". TS is Theda Scocpal. When I knew her (OK when I took freshman physics from her husband Bill) she was one of the few Marxists at Harvard (I think the only one in the Sociology department).
BP: So around 2007, Republicans were becoming more skeptical of climate policy. Yet the main climate strategy in D.C. was to craft a complex cap-and-trade bill amenable to businesses like BP and DuPont in the hopes that those companies would bring in Republican votes.
TS: I think a lot of environmental groups were under the impression that the Republican Party is a creature of business, and that if you can make business allies, you can get Republicans to do something. But I don’t think the Republican Party right now is mainly influenced by business. In the House in particular, ideological groups and grassroots pressure are much more influential.
Sent there by Kevin Drum who writes about why cap and trade died in 2010. He wrote "Unlike healthcare reform, where you could essentially buy off the opposition, there are big costs to cap-and-trade for certain states and senators simply aren't going to ignore that." I nodded my head and thought yep hard to get votes from West Virginia. Then well I can imagine a vote for cap and trade from John D Rockefeller whose lack of sympathy for big business and fossil fuels is well known.
Don't let anyone ever tell you that history doesn't have a sense of humor.
No comments:
Post a Comment