Broad coalition calls on Congress to aid greenhouse gases fight

 

May 8 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Elwin Green Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Congress needs to enact legislation to hasten the adoption of technologies to help businesses improve their energy efficiency and reduce their environmental impact, an Alcoa spokesman said yesterday.

Lee Califf said Alcoa's former Chief Executive Officer Paul O'Neill determined in the late 1990s that "there was no longer a question about the science of climate change -- that it was a real issue and something that required attention and action." Now, he said, Alcoa's greenhouse gas emissions from operations are about 30 percent below their 1999 level.

But while such voluntary action is important, "it will not get us where we want to go" in controlling emissions, he said.

In a press briefing sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, Mr. Califf was joined in the call for new legislation by Jerome Ringo, president of the Apollo Alliance, a largely labor-based coalition that seeks to free America from dependence on foreign oil while creating 3 million new jobs; Jeanette Pablo, spokeswoman for PNM Resources, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based energy holding company; and Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups focused on sustainability.

They did not come down firmly on whether it would be better to implement a tax on carbon emissions or a so-called "cap and trade" system that would set a ceiling on emissions and grant credits to companies with lower emissions that could be traded to companies with higher emissions.

"The goal is to send the right market signal, that it have clarity, and that it happen sooner rather than later," Ms. Lubber said, "We may need several pieces of legislation that are not inconsistent."

The organizations were responding to a report issued last week by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. The U.N. panel's fourth assessment report generated a flurry of comments even before its official release Friday, when its "Summary for Policymakers," published in February, expressed 90 percent certainty that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity were causing climate change. Previous reports had not expressed such a high level of certainty.