Dec 12 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Mary E. O'Leary New Haven Register, Conn.

The next two years offer hope that the country can seriously start to tackle the problem of global warming and set in motion the best approach to biofuel development, according to a major environmental activist.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, at a press conference at Yale University Monday, said the case is building for legislation to cap the carbon emissions associated with global warming.

With a Democratic majority in Washington and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., now head of the Environment Committee, Beinecke expected the 111th Congress to put new legislative proposals on the table early on.

"We feel we need to develop a cap and trade system that starts reducing carbon very quickly so that we can reach the goal of an 80 percent reduction in our carbon emissions by 2050," she said.

Beinecke said this will require increased energy efficiency, increased fuel efficiency of cars and a dramatic increase in the amount of solar and wind energy, while the scientific community figures out how to capture carbon from power plants fueled by coal.

Beinecke, who was being honored as a Dwight Hall Distinguished Mentor at Yale, said 50 percent of electricity in the U.S. is still generated by coal with more than 100 coal plants on the drawing boards.

She said there is a race going on by utilities and the coal companies that the plants be approved before new regulations are developed on carbon capture.

"That's a huge problem," Beinecke said.

Beinecke, who has served on the governing board at Yale and whose family funded the Beinecke Rare Book Library at the university, said the rise of sea level associated with global warming will have a major impact on every country that is heavily populated along its coastal areas.

She said the devastation suffered by New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina will become more common as global warming progresses.

"People who live in developing countries are particularly vulnerable, particularly those who live in poverty," she said.

Beinecke said the fact that potential U.S. presidential candidates, from Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., to Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barak Obama, D-Ill., have already targeted global warming, bodes well for the future.

"Everyone is wrestling with it," she said.

Her organization also has set other goals, including backing intensive research and development on the best biofuel to help replace petroleum products as an energy source.

She said there is an investment frenzy to find the best method and she wants to steer that to the most environmentallyfriendly option, which would be switchgrass, rather than corn.