Sen. Brown Has a Lot Invested in Outcome of Climate-Change Issue
October 11, 2009
Source: Columbus Dispatch
By Jonathan Riskind
In a small, crowded room just inside a Capitol entrance, Sen. Sherrod Brown on Wednesday stood next to a man who symbolizes the Ohio Democrat's long-term vision for his home state's economic future.
But Brown's short-term challenge is trying to keep a climate-change bill from harming Ohio and, perhaps not so incidentally, dealing a major blow to his political prospects when he comes up for re-election in 2012.
Famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr and other "green energy" proponents came to Capitol Hill last week to lobby for a climate-change bill they say can reduce fossil-fuel-generated greenhouse-gas emissions and still rev up the country's economy by sparking big advances in solar, wind and other alternative energy technologies.
Doerr is part of a clean-energy business coalition called We Can Lead, and Brown was the enthusiastic leadoff batter at the group's media conference.
A climate-change bill crafted "in the right way" can spark a new industry in the United States "in a way we haven't done in a long time," Brown said.
Brown's dream is to turn Ohio into a booming Silicon Valley of clean energy, featuring retooled factories and retrained workers producing everything from solar panels to turbines for windmills.
But first, he has to find a way to keep a climate-change bill from sending a still-coal-dependent, still-economically struggling Buckeye State from reeling under the weight of a cap-and-trade system that penalizes utilities and other companies that produce greenhouse-gas emissions above certain levels.
It's not a new dilemma for Brown. It is one he has grappled with for months, one he has known he would face from the day he took office in 2007. He is in a battle to balance the interests of his environmentalist backers, who generally applaud Brown's voting record, and his allies in the labor unions to whom manufacturing jobs are so vital.
As he left the Capitol Wednesday after the clean-energy event, Brown noted that he doesn't even serve on the key committees that will be most responsible for crafting a climate-change bill. Yet, when he left that crowded room, a bevy of Capitol Hill reporters followed him, leaving behind the rich, powerful and influential Doerr and other businessmen.
That's because Brown has become viewed on Capitol Hill as one of the most vital individual senators on the climate-change issue.
Part of it is that he is from the political barometer and swing state of Ohio, but part of it is through his own hard work. He is expending much of his political capital and perhaps most of his political future on turning Ohio into a green-jobs mecca.
Brown has worked to placate not just the unions but the normally GOP-friendly manufacturers, as well. The National Association of Manufacturers has endorsed Brown's proposal for a $30 billion manufacturing revolving-loan fund.
The headline on a story this month in the inside-the-Beltway publication The Hill proclaimed, "Climate bill hinges on Ohio's Sen. Brown."
Brown is not a small thinker. He clearly is aiming to use the climate-change bill to also advance his trade agenda, one that involves, in his view, leveling the international business playing field.
He told the Capitol Hill reporters on Wednesday that one way a climate-change bill could avoiddevastating states like Ohio would be to place a tariff on imports from countries that don't have similar emissions-reduction standards. Unless the climate-change bill uses that or other methods to protect Ohio manufacturers and electricity producers, the "votes aren't there" to pass the legislation, Brown said.
