How Harry Reid's cynical game playing doomed climate legislation, and a hope for its resurrection

A panel appointed by President Barack Obama has bolstered the argument for climate change and energy legislation and maybe won some coal state votes for such a measure.

The panel found promise in so-called carbon capture technology--in which carbon dioxide emitted by burning such fossil fuels as coal, oil and natural gas--is buried instead of being released into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the number one gas responsible for global warming.

But here’s the catch for carbon capture, the panel found. It’s likely to be expensive, at least to begin with, and it won’t happen without a price placed on the release of carbon dioxide.

And Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader from Nevada, has sacrificed any meaningful legislation to reform America’s energy picture for his own political ends.

Here’s how. Earlier this summer, Reid precipitously decided to move immigration reform to the top of the agenda, ahead of climate change and energy legislation. It was a purely political move, designed to appeal to Hispanic voters in Nevada, where Reid faces a tough race. And it was a nakedly cynical move, too, that guaranteed that neither climate change legislation nor immigration reform would happen.

That’s because Sen. Lindsay Graham, the occasionally sane Republican from South Carolina, had been working with Democrat John Kerry and Independent Joe Lieberman on climate and energy legislation and when Reid put immigration ahead of it, Graham backed out.

Ironically, Graham had also been providing some bipartisan support for immigration reform as well, and pulled out of that initiative as well, dooming hope for such reform this year as well.

Reid had to know all that would happen, and he sacrificed two critically important pieces of legislation, and the opportunity to make that legislation happen, to his own political ends.

Does anybody wonder why folks can’t stand Congress?

In any case, here’s hoping that the next Congress will act in a more serious manner, and take care of such important matters as energy reform and climate legislation, which both President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain supported in the 2008 campaign. Then we can go forward with such technologies as carbon capture, and use them to bridge the way to a clean energy future.