Dec 7 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - John Myers Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.

Legislation requiring cuts in global warming greenhouse gases passed a U.S. Senate committee this week with a little-known provision earmarking billions of dollars to conservation and wildlife projects.

The new money, more than $175 billion over two decades, would go toward research, buying and managing sensitive habitat and taking additional action to help wildlife survive climate change.

In the Northland, warming temperatures are being named as a factor in declining moose numbers, and are predicted to be a problem for lynx, trout and walleye.

The legislation -- sponsored by U.S. Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va. -- passed the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on Wednesday by an 11-8 vote. It now goes to the full Senate.

It is the most sweeping global warming proposal ever to advance in Washington, requiring mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide and other human-caused greenhouse gases that many scientists say are causing the Earth's atmosphere to warm at an unnatural rate.

The bill requires large carbon producers such as power plants and oil refineries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions collectively, beginning in 2012, by about 2 percent each year -- the minimum level scientists say is needed to avoid catastrophic climate changes.

The cuts must hit 15 percent below current carbon emission levels by 2020 and 70 percent by 2050. That's short of the 80 percent cut some scientists say is needed by mid-century, but 70 percent appears to be the deepest cuts the Senate is willing to accept. President Bush opposes any mandatory carbon cuts.

The bill allows for auctions of emissions allowances under a so-called cap-and-trade program and would be above and beyond existing federal conservation programs.

Mostly unknown in the bill are provisions that would earmark 18 percent of those sales to pump an estimated $9 billion annually into land and wildlife conservation efforts. More than $175 billion would be available from 2012 through 2030, according to an analysis by the National Wildlife Federation.

"It's very innovative, and a lot of conservation groups worked to get that provision in there," said Gary Botzec, executive director of the Minnesota Conservation Federation, an organization of sportsmen's groups. "This is going to be helpful to Lake Superior and the Great Lakes and all of Minnesota's outdoors ... To take the proceeds from this new kind of auction and cap-and-trade system and funnel some of that back to the states for habitat, that's fantastic." Under the bill, more than one-third of the windfall from carbon auctions would go to state and tribal fish and wildlife agencies, while the remainder would go to the U.S. Department of the Interior (parks and wildlife refuges), the Land and Water Conservation Fund (used to acquire sensitive lands), the U.S. Forest Service (to enhance federal grasslands), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (to restore sensitive estuary ecosystems) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (also for coastal and estuary projects).

"This is an historic moment," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who leads the committee, when the bill advanced. "What happened here today will not go unnoticed. The whole world is watching." But critics said the bill would strap the U.S. economy and consumers, and predicted fuel and electric bills would increase by as much as 35 percent.

"This is all pain and no gain," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who voted against the bill.

Dozens of environmental, conservation, hunting and fishing groups support the legislation.

"Science shows us that there is still time to overcome problems caused by climate change if we act soon and prepare properly," said Steve Moyer, vice president of government affairs for Trout Unlimited, in a statement. The bill "is the strong medicine needed to cure the scourge of climate change and to help fish and wildlife" survive in a warmer world.

The Senate committee also added to the legislation a low-carbon standard for gasoline and oil that demands a 5 percent cut in the carbon content of transportation fuels by 2015 and a 10 percent cut by 2020.

Some groups say the Lieberman-Warner bill doesn't go far enough to solve the problem of rising temperatures, and environmental groups lobbied for deeper carbon cuts. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., offered an amendment to require an 80 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050. The amendment failed.

"The most important thing is to get something passed, to get something started," Lieberman said, saying the deeper cuts would not pass the full Senate.

House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher said Thursday that legislation similar to the Senate bill would advance in the House early in 2008.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.