Democratic Senators preparing to lead an all-nighter of climate speeches on Monday admitted a climate change bill would collapse in today’s Congress – but said they hoped to prime the politics for 2015 and the 2016 presidential race.



More than two dozen Democratic Senators signed on to participate in an all-night session of speeches on climate change which was scheduled to run from about 6.30pm on Monday night to the start of the working day on Tuesday.

It is not a filibuster, unlike September’s marathon speech against Obamacare by the Texas Republican Ted Cruz. The senators conceded that a climate bill in this Congress would almost certainly fail.

“Tonight is not about a specific legislative proposal,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, from Rhode Island and one of the leaders of the speech marathon.

“We have got a little bit more work to do to open up the political space on this. I think if we want immediately to a vote we wouldn’t be successful,” he told a conference call with reporters. “If we make this an issue in 2014, if we make this a debate that Republican presidential candidates have to address, I think we can do that.”

For the moment, however, Whitehouse conceded: “It would be premature.”

Instead, the senators said they planned to spend much of Monday night calling out Republicans in Congress as climate deniers, using the high-visibility moment to help create the political space needed to get a bill rolling. The senators also indicated they would be calling out Republicans for their connections to the conservative oil-billionaire Koch brothers.

Such assertiveness on climate change represents a big change for Democrats, the senators said. Climate change was a toxic issue in Congress after 2010, when the last attempt at a climate bill died in the Senate.

Since then the White House, Obama administration officials and members of Congress have fallen silent on the issue while Republicans have taken up opposition to climate regulations as a core part of conservative ideology.

The Democratic senators said that era was over. President Barack Obama made climate change one of the top priorities of his second term; secretary of state John Kerry last week adopted climate change as his signature issue; and the Pentagon has identified climate change as a threat to national security.

There is also more willingness among Democrats in the Senate to address climate change. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, last week defined climate change as the worst problem facing the world today.

Climate change was seen as a decisive factor in recent Democratic victories in the Senate and in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Arguably most importantly, it has become an important issue for some big Democratic donors. The former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, for example, has pledged to spend up to $100m in the 2014 mid-term elections to support candidates who support action on climate change.

The senators said they hoped eventually to get energy-state Democrats on board, and win back Republicans such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain who had supported climate change legislation in the past.

It will however be an uphill climb. A majority of Republicans in Congress deny the existence of climate change or oppose action on it, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP). The CAP said 56% of Republicans in the House and 65% in the Senate either deny the existence of a human role in climate change or oppose action.

Despite newfound assertion from the White House, many Democrats are still wary of coming out in favour of climate-change regulations.

About half of Democrats in the Senate were staying away from Monday night’s session. They included senators from energy-rich states and those fighting close re-election battles.

“It’s important to build this as an opening salvo,” said Martin Heinrich, of New Mexico.