Sen. Tom Carper is working on a bill that takes aim at power-plant pollutants. Greens turn to small-scale issues

Climate change wasn’t the only environmental issue on Congress’s agenda over the past three years — it just seemed that way.

With the cap-and-trade bill dead in the Senate, lawmakers and environmental groups are looking to shine the spotlight on a slew of problems that received almost no attention in recent years, such as acid rain, overfishing, polluted drinking water and toxic chemicals in consumer products.


“It’s quite obvious for the last several years that the climate debate has sucked up all the oxygen from other environmental issues,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of the nonprofit group Clean Air Watch. “After the fighting and exhaustion of climate, there are a lot of other issues waiting in the queue.”

Addressing climate change means controlling emissions of carbon dioxide, the ubiquitous pollutant that’s produced by almost every form of economic activity: driving, manufacturing, farming and using electricity. It also means regulating a gas that causes no immediate, discernable harm: Scientists say that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could cause widespread environmental damage over the coming century — but it doesn’t cause immediate harm to individuals. That abstract nature of the issue has made it exceptionally tough to legislate, say many climate change advocates.

In the coming year, environmentalists and their friends in Congress are likely to focus on smaller, more bang-for-your-buck environmental bad guys: discrete pollutants produced by only one sector or industry that have an immediate impact on human health — and are more accessible in the minds of voters.

The absence of climate change on the agenda “does sort of clear the deck,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) told POLITICO. “So we’ll try to fill that vacuum.”

Carper and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) are teaming up on a bill to crack down on the power plant pollutants sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which cause acid rain and mercury, which causes asthma and damage to the nervous system.

The pair has tried to move such a bill for over a year, but staffers say they faced difficulty scheduling a hearing in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which was consumed with climate change issues. In the wake of the climate bill’s demise, however, staffers say the acid rain bill could see a vote next month.

And although new regulations on acid rain chemicals and mercury won’t have nearly the sweeping environmental impact of regulating carbon dioxide, they do have something going for them that the climate bill didn’t: bipartisan support and a realistic chance of success.

“There are a number of Democrats and Republicans who, even if we can’t pass climate legislation, would like to pass clean air legislation,” Carper said. “We’re hearing encouraging sounds from senators as diverse as [Barbara] Boxer and [Jim] Inhofe,” he added, referring to the infamously partisan chairwoman and ranking Republican of the Senate environment panel.

Similar smaller-scale environmental issues are also on the move. On Tuesday, Boxer chaired a hearing on regulating environmental toxins that could contribute to autism. Last week, House Democrats Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois introduced a bill that would for the first time regulate toxic chemicals in personal products, such as makeup and deodorant. And House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has a plan to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act, which regulates industrial chemicals in consumer products and hasn’t seen an overhaul in 32 years.

“This is something people connect to immediately. This is something where industrial pollution occurs in the womb,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which is pushing Congress to revisit many of these smaller-scale pollutant issues.

Cook also sees an opening in the next couple of years to strengthen the Safe Drinking Water Act. Lawmakers in the Northeast fear that drinking water supplies are being contaminated as companies inject toxic chemicals in the ground to extract new supplies of natural gas. Western members are grappling with perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket flares that has contaminated water supplies in California and Nevada, where the Defense Department has dumped rocket equipment.

To some environmental groups that have devoted countless hours, media campaigns and lobbying expenditures over the past years to tackle climate change, a new focus on a handful of smaller issues seems depressing — an acknowledgement of the defeat on the biggest issue of all.

But Cook said it could also offer an opportunity to build new momentum and coalitions before the inevitable return of the climate debate.

“If you build in the American people’s mind the idea that Congress is taking on environmental issues one at a time, if you have a successful run politically — that could make it easier to build up support the next time you come back to this,” he said.