Liberal groups growing frustrated over Obama role in climate debate

Major environmental and liberal groups are pressing President Barack Obama to play a stronger role in crafting climate change legislation and shepherding it through the Senate, claiming their members are "deeply frustrated" by inaction to date.

Nine members of the Clean Energy Works coalition — including the Al Gore-led Alliance for Climate Protection, the environmental and labor BlueGreen Alliance and the Center for American Progress — sent a letter to Obama Friday asking his administration “to take the next essential steps” in getting a bill through a very divided Senate.

“A rapidly growing number of our millions of active members are deeply frustrated at the inability of the Senate and your Administration to act in the face of an overwhelming disaster in the Gulf, and the danger to our nation and world,” the groups wrote.

They want the Obama administration to write a bill with key senators to cut greenhouse gas emissions and oil use, directly respond to the Gulf spill and to push the Senate to act on a bill before the August recess. “White House leadership is the only path we see to success, just as your direct leadership was critical in the passage of the recovery plan, health care reform, and other administration successes,” they wrote.

Other groups signing the letter are the Environmental Defense Fund, League of Conservation Voters, Environment America, Natural Resources Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The groups give props to Obama for his recent calls for broad energy legislation, including his emphasis on the topic in his first-ever Oval Office address last month.

But Obama “has to directly engage with his staff at a detailed level in producing a bill inclusive of carbon limits that will win 60 votes in the Senate,” Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp told reporters Thursday. “If he doesn’t do that, then everything he’s done so far will lead to nothing.”

White House aides were seen on Capitol Hill this week for meetings with Senate offices on putting together a bill, sources said. This includes a meeting Wednesday with an aide to Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) regarding her efforts with Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) to craft a carbon-pricing plan limited to electric utilities.

But Bingaman himself — in a C-SPAN interview scheduled to air Sunday — placed doubts on even that type of scaled-back climate plan winning 60 votes in the Senate this year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is struggling to find the right strategy and legislative package to anchor Senate approval this month of an energy bill driven by legislative efforts to address the spill. He had an Oval Office meeting Thursday with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on the broader legislative agenda but did not announce any decision afterward on how to move an energy bill.