U.S. Rep. Allan Mollohan (D-WV) is first to admit he’s got all the reason in the world to resist climate legislation. 

Hailing from the heart of coal country, he knows that energy policy can have serious consequences for mining towns.  Yet Mollohan was a key player in establishing the America’s Climate Choices study.  He is a member of the subcommittee that funds the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association, which sponsored the study.  In 2007, when the most recent assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clear a link between human activities and global warming, he said, many people thought we simply needed to stop driving SUVs and start driving Priuses.  (“By the way,” he added, “I own one of each.  Straddling like a good politician should.”)  But Mollohan recognized that such a simple strategy would leave crucial questions unanswered.  For instance, he said, what does sea level change mean for restoration of Louisiana wetlands?  How can we keep Californians supplied with fresh drinking water when the Sierra Nevada’s snowpack is dwindling? 

Mollohan cited an old line from Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes who, when asked why his team ran the ball so often, said that when you pass the ball only three things can happen, and two of them are bad.  When science and policy intersect, Mollohan said, five things can happen, and four of them are bad: The science can be ignored, muzzled, co-opted by industry or misused.  To illustrate the misuse of science, he said, “See George Will, February 2009.”

Nevertheless, Mollohan said, Congress needs the committee’s guidance.  Political problems like whether to raise taxes may be difficult to solve, he said, but they are essentially simple: raise taxes, cut spending, or combine the two.  But climate change involves incredibly complex systems, and Congress needs a set of actionable recommendations to help them address the problem.  He also said that citizen involvement is crucial.

Those sentiments were echoed by U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), who also made the intriguing claim that the term “climate change” was insufficient to convey the situation’s urgency to the public.  When pressed, though, Gordon declined to offer an alternative term.  He urged the committee and other scientists to move quickly to take advantage of a president and members of Congress who have shown an openness toward science. 

When asked by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press whether he could offer a target we should aim for on parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide, Gordon said he didn’t know the right number. 

Then, after a brief pause, he added, “The number that really matters is 218,” referring to the number of House votes needed to pass climate legislation.

At the outset of this group of posts from Washington D.C., I’d like to direct readers to the Web site of the Summit on America’s Climate Choices, from which they can access general information about the summit and the study it aims to outline, as well as the Committee on America’s Climate Choices and its panels.  The site does a fine job of explaining everything, so I won’t try to reinvent that wheel.

I should also mention that I hope to soon post video of presentations by Jane Lubchenco, Susan Solomon, Robert Socolow and Stephen Schneider.  Until then, you can watch the summit via webcast.

Day one of the summit was an interesting mix of good humor and sobering talk - two things that will be needed to meet the 2010 deadline for a final report on the study. 

In his opening remarks, Albert Carnesale, who chairs the Committee on America’s Climate Choices, said decision makers are the study’s primary audience.  “This study is not about what the individual should do.  This is about people who implement policies” he said.  Later, though, Carnesale said that his original sense of the audience had shifted since Congress requested the study.  “What I underestimated was the sheer size and breadth of the audience that cares about this,” he said.  “There’s no question that, ultimately, it will be the voter who will determine what America’s response will be.” 

When asked what made this study different from others, and whether it wouldn’t merely delay action further, Carnesale pointed out that this study was specifically requested by Congress, with the question, “What should we do?”  And the world is watching the committee, according to Diana Liverman of the University of Arizona and Oxford University.  “There is enormous interest and hope” in other countries, where the summit is seen as a small-scale version of the upcoming United Nations meeting in Copenhagen, said Liverman, who serves as vice-chair of the Panel on Informing Effective Decisions and Actions Related to Climate Change.

And that hope may be well-founded, according to Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, who said that the staff of Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) will today release a draft of a comprehensive climate bill that Krupp said will become ”the greatest environmental legislation our country has ever passed.”

“We’re in a race to determine whether we can save ourselves from ourselves,” Krupp said.  “And surely we can.”