Nov. 9

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will begin marking up the Warner-Lieberman climate change bill Wednesday, Dec. 5.

Deliberations could well be lengthy enough to spill over to Dec. 6, committee chair Barbara Boxer told reporters late Thursday afternoon. Two more hearings on the bill co-sponsored by John Warner, R-Va., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., are scheduled for Nov. 13 and 15.

"The goal is to get a really good bill out of this committee," Boxer, D-Calif., said, adding that she didn´t expect the full Senate to begin debating the bill until early 2008.

What´s known as America´s Climate Security Act advanced out of an environmental subcommittee Nov. 1. The seven members of the Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection Subcommittee, chaired by Lieberman, passed it on a 4-3 vote.

The almost economy-wide measure introduces a cap-and-trade system covering power plants, transportation and factories. Caps would begin at the 2005 emissions level in 2012, dropping 19 percent to 1990 levels in 2020 before falling 63 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Boxer´s announcement about the markup came after committee members met Thursday afternoon during an informal briefing with congressional staffers about bill details. Earlier that day, five witnesses testified before the committee about the measure.

Committee Republicans have been complaining that Boxer is trying to rush the bill to a vote too quickly. In mid-October, Republican Sens. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, George Voinovich of Ohio, David Vitter of Louisiana, Larry Craig of Idaho, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Kit Bond of Missouri wrote a letter labeling the review process as "potentially troubling."

"Climate change is a serious and complex issue that deserves our full attention," Voinovich stated during Thursday´s hearing. "So I´m asking, could you slow it down?"

But Boxer countered his comment, pointing out that 20 hearings already have been devoted to the topic of climate change. She read a message from Warner, who wrote that the environment committee failed to take up an earlier measure written by Lieberman and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., tackling climate change.

"This committee had a chance to hold hearings à and did not," Warner wrote. "We are making up for lost time in this Congress."

It´s no secret Democrats want to have an acceptable bill to curb global warming in hand by December when world leaders meet for post-Kyoto Protocol discussions in Bali, Indonesia. The Kyoto pact, which the United States refused to sign, expires in five years. It calls on 36 industrialized nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases by roughly 5 percent.

"We cannot afford to do nothing," Boxer said at the hearing. "We cannot afford to pass a weak bill. We must pass the strongest bill we can, but we must remember that the perfect cannot be the enemy of the very good."

 

To subscribe or visit go to:  http://www.wastenews.com