Our media lies to us, shakes our public servants down for campaign air time and sets them up to be legally bribed by corporate big money interests.
After we elect our public servants they're owned by big money and we can't get any positive legislation passed, without enormous giveaways to big money, making the legislation ineffective for its intended purpose.

We need to take the money out of our elective process.
Media is gouging our democracy, preventing it from functioning effectively.
This is a bipartisan issue, in that big money owns both sides of the aisle.
Media reform can be accomplished through the FCC licensing process.

Only then can we expect to see positive legislation enacted without compromise or capitulation to big money interests at the expense of our Nation's best interests.

I'm not sure what you mean by “will your impatience turn to action?” I'm already doing absolutely everything I can. If we could turn out the lobbyists and pass a better bill, I'd be ecstatic.

But yes, I'm pretty darn frustrated with the Republicans right now. If more than a tiny handful of them had been willing to get on board, the bill wouldn't have included so many concessions to the coal-state Dems, and it might actually have some teeth.

Look, if energy bills increase, I can afford it. I work from home. I'd be eating veggies from my garden if our spring hadn't been so damn cold and dry.

But this bill will force painful choices on the families who are hardest hit by this recession. It will mean lost jobs. It will mean debt for those living paycheck to paycheck. You might be really, really scared about Paul Broun, but not being able to pay the rent is scarier than any such abstraction, I assure you.

I don't know what to make of your unwillingness to wait any longer. Will this bill make you feel less impatient? When it fails in the Senate because Democrats don't want to risk a filibuster (and they won't, btw, Al Franken be damned), will your impatience turn to action, or will you be satisfied to blame it's failure on the whipping boy Republicans?

Hear, hear!

Plenty of third-party and grassroots groups are out there trying to educate the populace. For example, ever hear of the Transition initiatives? http://transitionculture.org

I welcome skepticism, but I don't welcome the organized denial lobby that is well-funded by the industrial interests that are persistently trying to shed doubt about what is essentially settled science. As Justintime has asserted repeatedly on other threads on this topic, the politics (and skepticism about proposed solutions) should follow the science, not try to attack it.

But yes, it would be great if lobbyists weren't involved in crafting legislation. Any ideas how we might accomplish that reform?

Who does understand the problem? Scientists have decades determining that there is global warming. Not because they were looking to win over Republicans, but because science requires a high degree of diligence. Scientists don't want to create headlines, only to be proven wrong a few years down the road.

We have identified that there is a problem, but we do not know how to safely manage it. I have heard for decades about the need to do something immediately. It has given us a host of silly legislation, from banning DDT to arbitrary CAFE standards (not sure if they have always been called that).

Decades of environmental hysteria have done nothing to inhibit global warming. We have a unique opportunity, with a relatively environmentally conscious congress and a charismatic president, to really educate people on how to live sustainably. Let's do that instead of pawning off environmental woes created by industry on the American people.

Christians must be honest in their relationship with God. If one takes stewardship of God's creation seriously and wants to lead political action on climate change, or at least to lead others in an honest effort to reverse global warming, it is dishonest to say that some ineffective compromise is good. If even bloggers on this blog can detect a false note in one's affirmations, then certainly God is able to perceive it and whatever one wishes will not be granted in prayer..

In fact, no one had read the bill before it passed. Apparently, the manager's amendment (last minute changes to the bill made by the Committee Chairmen) that was adopted in the Rules Committee the night before the bill came to the floor made numerous changes to the bill but had not actually been incorporated into the bill by the time it came to the floor. While many of the changes were probably inconsequential we don't know and neither did the Congressmen who voted on the bill.

Now we're learning about various vote buying provisions that were inserted at the last minute to get wavering Democrats to support the bill. How much more of this will come to light over the next week or so? I realize this is how politics has been done for a long time, but I thought there was supposed to be change. This bills stinks and the process stinks.

See article below for a reality check:

Source: Mother Jones, June 22, 2009
As the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill nears a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, environmental groups are “teetering at the edge of existential crisis,” writes Josh Harkinson. “Almost all environmental groups agree that Waxman-Markey is far from ideal,” but some are supporting it, while others “believe the bill is so deeply flawed it might actually make matters worse.” Critics say the bill “lines the pockets of polluters with little to show for it. The most it would cut carbon emissions by 2020 is 17 percent below 1990 levels, nowhere near the 25 to 40 percent reduction sought by scientists and international climate negotiators.” Other concerns are that the bill may decrease clean energy production, as it would overrule higher renewable mandates in states like California; it would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants; and it would auction just 15 percent of emissions permits, giving a whopping 50 percent “to the fossil fuel industry for free.” Some environmentalists blame the United States Climate Action Partnership, “a coalition of industry and moderate environmental groups,” for sticking with a “quietly hammered out” agreement developed during the Bush administration. Others criticize President Obama, “who spoke out in favor of auctioning off pollution permits during his campaign … but is now thought likely to sign whatever bill crosses his desk.” Meanwhile, the industry front group Cooler Heads Coalition is planning efforts to oppose the bill, with “scientific skeptics and legislative critics,” reports Greenwire.

lhttp://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/war-over-waxman-markeyegislative critics,.

And if China, India or other developing countries don't follow suit the planet is doomed anyway. This bill will mean nothing except a lot of our tax dollars going to subsidize large companies that can cash in on renewable energy and carbon allowances.

This is an extremely expensive way to do this. What's the ROI on this bill? What is my money going to actually achieve, here?

Look, if people can tour the gas chambers and deny the holocaust, then I seriously doubt that anything will convince the global warming deniers.

All I want is a chance that my grandchildren (and since I married off a son earlier this month, that's become a real possibility) to have a habitable planet to live on. I don't think that's too much to ask.

The forces (climate change, energy and resource depletion) that are threatening that livability for our posterity need to be addressed. And so for those who think the ACESA is a bad bill, I would like to extend Anothernonymous' challenge: if you don't like this bill, what do you propose that we should do to address these critical issues?

“I'm betting that it would take confirmation of global warming on a “Fox Nation” promo to convince some folks here that global warming isn't a conspiracy.”

I'd say there's about a snowflake's chance in AD 2100 of that happening.

I'm betting that it would take confirmation of global warming on a “Fox Nation” promo to convince some folks here that global warming isn't a conspiracy. But hope I'm proven wrong.