L.A. Times Examines Efforts to Craft Senate Compromise on Climate

The Los Angeles Times today examined how Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has emerged as a key player in the determination by the Senate to come up with an acceptable climate bill that "would put new limits on greenhouse gas emissions and spur production of renewable energy." Wrote the Times: "Surprising as it may seem, the heart of those senators' strategy is to woo special interests--major electric utilities, steel and cement producers, farmers and coal and oil companies."

Brown was quoted as saying: "I know, it doesn't sound like me. I really do think this is different. I think people understand that if industry doesn't--if this doesn't work for them, if this doesn't keep them in business ... it hurts the country."

For example, the Times noted: "In the case of efforts to craft a climate bill, business support is deemed so crucial that, before meeting with President Obama and some swing-vote senators at the White House last week, the bill's architects sat down with a group of industry lobbyists ... . In blunt terms, the senators asked the lobbyists what the bill needed to say to receive industry backing."