The resolution, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (right) and Environment and Public Works ranking member Tom Carper (left), is the latest pressure from Democrats on Republicans to acknowledge the scientific consensus behind climate change. | Alex Wong/Getty Images energy & environment Senate Democrats to offer unanimous climate resolution that’s not the Green New Deal

All 47 members of the Senate Democratic caucus plan to introduce a resolution Tuesday urging Congress to act immediately on climate change, a Democratic leadership aide tells POLITICO.

The resolution will not include firm targets for emissions reductions, but it offers a rallying point for Democrats who have been divided over the ambitious Green New Deal resolution introduced earlier this month by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the Senate will vote by this summer on the original resolution, but there is no guarantee the unified Democratic alternative would come to the floor.


The resolution, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Environment and Public Works ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del)., is the latest pressure from Democrats on Republicans to acknowledge the scientific consensus behind climate change and outline concrete plans for addressing it.

“Until they in the majority put a plan on the floor as to what they would do with climate change, they don’t have much standing,” Schumer said earlier Tuesday, calling McConnell’s planned vote a “sham.”

Democrats plan to pressure Republicans to support the new climate resolution, the leadership aide said. Targets could include moderates like Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), both up for reelection in 2020.

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Text of the resolution was not immediately available, but it will not include any definitive targets or timetables, such as the Green New Deal's call for a 10-year mobilization to get net U.S. carbon emissions down to zero. The leadership aide said the resolution will state that climate change is real and caused by humans, and it will call for the U.S. and Congress to act immediately to address it.

“We cannot, we will not allow cynicism to win,” Carper said in a floor speech. “We as Democrats may not agree about exactly how to address climate change, but we all agree it’s happening. We agree human activity is the main cause and we agree we must act now.”

McConnell said earlier Tuesday the chamber is expected to vote on the Green New Deal resolution offered by before the chamber goes on August recess.

Republicans said it would be cowardly for Democrats — especially those running for president — to effectively dodge by voting present en masse.

“If they don’t the courage to vote for something that they have co-sponsored or sponsored, what kind of president are they going to be?” John Barrasso of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, told reporters.

Seven current or likely presidential candidates — Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) — are co-sponsors of the Green New Deal resolution, but none have definitively said how they would vote if McConnell puts it on the floor.

“This is an opportunity to go on record about measures that ought to be taken by the United States on a unilateral basis to address the problem and it’s a debate we’ll have,” McConnell said. “If this is such a popular thing to do and so necessary, why would one want to dodge the vote?”

While youth activists have been swarming Capitol Hill this week to build support for the Green New Deal resolution — including a protest in McConnell's office Monday where dozens were arrested — they seemed cautiously optimistic about Democrats coalescing around a narrower alternative.

“Climate change is now a top issue for voters and this shows that Democrats are noticing that," said Stephen O’Hanlon, a spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, a relatively new environmental group that has been organizing the Green New Deal demonstrations. O'Hanlon said the group would have more to say once the text of the new resolution is released.

RL Miller, co-founder of Climate Hawks Vote, another group that has been pressuring Democrats from the left, called the new resolution a "positive step" toward new climate policies.

"If passing the Green New Deal is like running a marathon, this is the ‘getting off the couch’ part of the training program," she wrote in an email.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), one of the Senate's most outspoken climate hawks, is not co-sponsoring the Green New Deal but called the new resolution a great step that would help focus the conversation on actual solutions to the problem.

“I’m not too deeply concerned with the tactics here,” he told POLITICO. “I’m just happy we’re talking about climate change. It’s a planetary emergency and it’s about time we talked about climate change, and I look forward to what Republicans propose to do about it other than confirm Andrew Wheeler.”

Before they floated the unity resolution, many Democrats had been coalescing around a strategy of voting "present" on the Green New Deal in order to thwart McConnell's attempt to highlight divisions within their caucus.

“I’d be fine if we all decided to vote present because I don’t think we should be engaged in trying to facilitate McConnell using the floor as political theater,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a co-sponsor of the resolution, told reporters Monday. “When it’s an effort to own the libs, he thinks about the floor a little bit differently.”

But there was at least one holdout to that approach. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), top Democrat on the Energy Committee, scoffed at the idea of voting present — “I’m not a present guy” — and said he was "not for" the underlying resolution.

“I’ve got to deal in the real world,” Manchin told reporters Tuesday morning ahead of a Democratic caucus lunch meeting and before the unity resolution was introduced. “I got to deal realistically. I want to reduce the carbon footprint — we can do that but you have to do research and development, and acknowledge you’re going to have to use fossil in the near future for some time.”

Despite that feeling from their most conservative member, the overall mood in the caucus is that Democrats should not allow McConnell to distract from their overarching goal: Enacting ambitious legislation to combat climate change as quickly as possible.

“We need to be unified around aggressive action on climate change and that should be what unites us,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told POLITICO before the Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday.

