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Paging Hugh Bennett: The dust up over climate legislation
Posted Apr 29, 2010 by Asher Miller
[Excerpt] In the convoluted world of U.S. politics, a debate broke out last weekend over climate change and immigration, but not for the reasons you might think.
No, the debate wasn’t about how much internal migration might occur because of droughts, floods, and rising sea levels (imagine the Hurricane Katrina diaspora multiplied one hundred fold) or how many hundreds of millions of people around the world might attempt to cross borders in the coming decades as a result of the same climatic events.
No, the debate arose when Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatened to pull his support of a Senate climate bill he and Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Lieberman (IND-CT) were about to announce because of Democrats’ plans to fast-track immigration reform.
Said Graham: “I want to bring to your attention what appears to be a decision by the Obama Administration and Senate Democratic leadership to move immigration instead of energy. Unless their plan substantially changes this weekend, I will be unable to move forward on energy independence legislation at this time. I will not allow our hard work to be rolled out in a manner that has no chance of success.”
He added, “Moving forward on immigration — in this hurried, panicked manner — is nothing more than a cynical political ploy.”
It’s not unusual for events to trigger seemingly unrelated outcomes or for politicians to use these as openings to advance an agenda, sometimes with great ingenuity...
Originally published 29 April, 2010 at Reuters
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