Greens Call On Brown With Talk Of Jobs

Feb 8, 2010 — Politico

Lisa Lerer

It’s no secret that Scott Brown, the Senate’s newest Republican, will oppose health care reform. But what about the president’s energy and climate agenda?

That’s one of the most intriguing questions churning on Capitol Hill as Brown takes his seat amid a renewed push for Senate action on comprehensive legislation aimed at expanding and cleaning up the energy sector.

His past is checkered on the issue.

Brown received strong environmental ratings in the state Legislature, but he campaigned against the House version of energy reform during his Senate bid. In a recent Boston Globe interview, he praised and condemned pieces of President Barack Obama’s message during the State of the Union.

“I thought his, uh — looking at the approach on nuclear power, solar, hydro, limited drilling, I agree with that,” he said, but he labeled Obama’s call for a cap-and-trade system a “job killer.”

The House bill does include such a program, which would cap carbon emissions and allow businesses to trade or sell pollution credits to meet those limits. But the Senate is already moving in a different direction, which could give Brown more running room.

“He says he wants to be a problem solver,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the lone Republican working to draft a comprehensive climate bill. “Well, here are two big problems for the world and the nation, and they are dependence on foreign oil and a polluted environment.”

Graham and other climate advocates — from Bay State environmentalists to the White House — started urging Brown to break with the Republican Party on energy before he was even sworn into office last week.

Environmental groups ran ads targeting Brown on climate issues almost immediately after his win. This week, Repower America, a group founded by former Vice President Al Gore, started running television ads on cable networks in the state. The greens are also planning letter-writing campaigns, meetings with staff and protests at Brown’s town hall meetings.

“He’s out of step with the voters in Massachusetts on this issue, and we’ll make sure he knows that,” said Lora Wondolowski, executive director of the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters.

Other business and environmental groups in the state are also scrambling to set up their own meetings with Brown and his staff.

“I want him to understand that we employ thousands of thousands of people who work on environmental and energy issues,” said Dan Moon, president of the Environmental Business Council of New England. “He needs to understand that, and he may not understand that yet.”

Brown did seem to have a grasp of the issue when he was serving in the Legislature.

As a state senator, he voted to allow the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an agreement between Northeastern states requiring power plants to either reduce greenhouse gas emissions or buy credits for their use, which is similar to the cap-and-trade system proposed by Obama.

“Reducing carbon dioxide emission in Massachusetts has long been a priority of mine,” Brown said in a news release at the time. “Passing this legislation is an important step ... towards improving our environment.”

On the campaign trial a month ago, he repudiated that vote, saying he didn’t realize the new system would raise electricity rates.

But state environmental advocates dispute that. “I still have the [display] boards sitting in my office from when we presented to the joint committees to get RGGI passed,” said Seth Kaplan at the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation. “We said it would have the net effect of reducing bills — not rates.”

Brown also supported the Green Communities Act, which increased renewable energy in the state, and the Global Warming Solutions Act, requiring emitters to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

Those votes won him an 82 percent score on the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters election scorecard — the highest rating of any Republican in the Legislature in 2008.

It’s those kinds of views that are spurring climate advocates. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the sponsor of a Senate climate bill, met with Brown shortly after the special election, as did Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Ian Bowles, the Massachusetts secretary of energy and environmental affairs, plans to meet with Brown in the next few weeks.

“I’m optimistic that the experience in the state is so overwhelmingly positive and bipartisan that he’ll bring that perspective to the Senate,” said Bowles. “I’m confident Sen. Brown will be a forceful ally for the economic interests of Massachusetts.”

Opponents of the legislation dismiss the significance of Brown’s vote, saying the larger issue with the legislation is whether Democrats will move forward with a controversial agenda item as a difficult election season looms.

“There’s nothing imminent in terms of legislation, but I’m sure there’ll be some kind of pulse check at some point,” said Matt Letourneau, spokesman for Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.

David Winston, a Republican consultant who polls on energy issues, said the “dynamic here is: ‘What is the Democratic leadership going to do?’ It’s not a question of where Brown is at. One of the messages from his race was: ‘What about the economy, and what about jobs, and are you on the right topic?’”

Proponents of an energy and climate bill couldn’t agree more with that assessment — and that’s why they think they might have an edge with Brown. They say that the economic benefits of a climate bill for Massachusetts could persuade him to get more involved with the legislation.

With an active venture capital community, advanced research into clean energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and growing energy businesses in the state, state leaders say opposing a bill could be politically difficult for Brown, who will face reelection in 2012.

“We’re going to be the disproportionate beneficiary for all this investment in clean energy, and I think that’s been widely understood, acknowledged and agreed upon in our state,” said Bowles.

“There’s a bipartisan consensus in the state that clean energy is an enormous opportunity for Massachusetts,” he added.

Scott Segal, an energy lobbyist with Bracewell & Giuliani who represents utilities and coal companies, conceded that “the notion that he might be part of an effort to reach a middle ground is fair commentary. But the notion that he would cross over and vote for a particularly extreme climate bill is wishful thinking on the part of the environmental community.”

That said, Segal said getting a meeting with Brown is a “priority” for his firm.