Kaine's all-nighter on climate change

Sen. Tim Kaine was among two dozen Senators to pull an all nighter this week to discuss climate change. And perhaps like those of us (naming no names) who’ve gone through some white nights getting set for a mean calculus exam, he kicked off his comments saying: “This is at the beginning, kind of a math problem folks.”

The math, said Kaine, starts with 6 billion. That’s as in tons of greenhouse gases that went into atmosphere in 2005. The math problem (the prof would have called it a mini-max exercise): Try to get that number down, keep the price of energy affordable, reduce pollution and add jobs.

Tidewater Virginians, he told his fellow Senators, have big stake in this. Only New Orleans is more vulnerable than Hampton Roads to the sea level rise that comes when polar ice caps melt.

“I have friends who live in Hampton Roads in an historic neighborhood where homes have been occupied for 150 years who just in the last 15 years their home has become completely unable to be occupied. They cannot sell it. There's no way the bank will take it back. There's no way anyone will issue insurance to them,” he said. Virginia’s farmers, forests and tourism businesses are all at risk.

Kaine said the United States has already shown it can reduce greenhouse cases, through energy efficiency, natural gas, renewable energy and tougher fuel stanrards for cars and trucks. He said more innovation is the key.

“I want to talk now for a second about a specific Virginia issue because I am not sure how many folks who are in this all-nighter speaking on this come from states that have coal and that produce coal and Virginia does,” he continued.

He said people in Southwest Virginia – “That's where my wife's family is from” – are worried about new Environmental Protection Agency rules meant to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plans. But he figures since coal accounts for 37 percent of U.S. electricity generation, “which means we need coal, we're going to be using it for a while.” But for a long term future, “the challenge is to convert coal to electricity with less pollution than we do today.”

Reducing pollution is tough, but “When we were kids and my wife was growing up in Richmond where we now live, nobody, and I mean nobody, fished or swam in the James River in downtown Richmond. You would be taking your life into your hands if you swam or if you ate fish that you caught in that river ... But come and see what the Clean Water Act has meant to my hometown. You can swim or fish in the James River today and you can eat the fish that you catch. You can see herons and bald eagles there that were never there before”

So: math and geography in that all-nighter. And, in Kaine’s view, reason to hope on the climate change debate.

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