CAP Details What’s Missing in New Yorker Climate Bill Story

Dan Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, says Ryan Lizza’s much-talked-about New Yorker story on why the climate bill did not pass the Senate leaves out a few key details.

Lizza’s story shows that, in many cases, the White House and the Senate were not on the same page on climate legislation.

But, in a piece on CAP’s website, Weiss writes:

Lizza gives short shrift, however, to the real reasons Senate passage of climate legislation was impossible in 2010: the deep recession, unified and uncompromising opposition in the Senate, and big spending by oil, coal, and other energy interests.

While it didn’t touch on the economy, Lizza’s story seemed to get the “uncompromising” opposition in the Senate part right, detailing the difficulty senators faced in finding Republican support for the bill. And though the story didn’t lay out the money the oil industry spent on lobbying, many of its nearly 10,000 words were devoted to the major role industry played in behind-the-scenes negotiations.