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When Senator Lindsay Graham recently pulled his support for the much-anticipated Climate Change bill the move was expected to kill the legislation, and many environmentalists were not mourning its loss. Following Graham’s announcement I spoke with Tyson Slocum of the Public Citizen’s Energy Program on Uprising, who said the bill would have done more harm than good. But it appears that Graham’s support was not the lynch-pin holding the coalition together. On Wednesday Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman introduced the American Power Act into the Senate. Explaining the legislation in an article on Grist,Org, Kerry speaks to environmentalists and says, “A comprehensive bill written purely for you and me – true believers – can’t pass the Senate no matter how passionately I fight on it.” So what did Senator Kerry fight for? The Power Act requires heavy investments in the coal, nuclear, and natural gas industries. If an international agreement on emissions caps is not reached, the bill punishes developing countries by taxing their imports. Big agri-business will be exempt from mandatory carbon reductions. And in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that has already pumped 3.5 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to devastate local economies and wildlife, the American Power Act not only allows new off-shore drilling but encourages it by offering States financial incentives for new drilling projects.

GUEST: Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth.

Find out more at www.foe.org.