Last year, a far more modest climate-change bill fell well short of a simple majority in the Senate.
As they watch President Obama's ambitious health care plan crumble, the advocates of a comprehensive bill to combat global warming are turning their sights to a more modest package of climate and energy measures that they believe has a better chance of clearing Congress this year.
In an inevitably more modest way, given the challenges of climate and geography, the hope is that success will beget success in the same way as the virtuous circle that has powered the summer Olympians from 36th in the medal table in Atlanta to third in London.
Living within our means, adopting a more modest foreign policy, abolishing nuclear weapons and combating climate change are radical goals in today's political climate.
The report calls this "a fundamental challenge to marine organisms and ecosystems".The second sort of problem, in which the climate's influence is more modest and manageable, includes its effects on health.
My friend Andy Revkin, whose indispensable Dot Earth blog is where serious climate conversation takes place, prefers to emphasize more modest projects aimed at bolstering the city's resilience.
As the world gathers in Paris to pursue the possibility of a limited and modest climate accord, the planet continues to become more interconnected and interdependent than ever before.
These targets are more modest than America's obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, the agreement on climate change signed by the Clinton administration in 1997 and rejected as too costly by President Bush.
And so far, the best plan offered by American politicians — the Climate Stewardship act sponsored by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman — has an even more modest goal: it aims to cut emissions in the United States merely to 2000 levels by 2010.
The president first pledged to tackle climate change in his 2009 inauguration address, a commitment he reiterated four years later, but despite more modest achievements on fuel efficiency standards and renewable energy investment, a comprehensive legislation was blocked in the Senate.
