US: November 5, 2007
WASHINGTON - A milestone, a landmark and "the political center of gravity is
finally shifting on global warming."
Those accolades greeted a US Senate subcommittee's approval on Thursday of a
bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions, mostly because it is the first of a
dozen such measures that might have a chance of becoming law.
The approval vote -- 4 to 3 -- means the bill will be debated in the full
Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by longtime environmentalist
Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Boxer, a California Democrat, has indicated she wants the full committee to
approve the measure by year's end. That would dovetail with a global
conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia in December. Hearings could
start next week.
"We are finally on our way toward preventing the ravages of unfettered
global warming," Boxer said in a statement after the vote. Beforehand, she
told the panel: "This is a landmark day ... this is an issue whose time has
come."
The bill -- formally known as America's Climate Security Act and informally
by the names of its sponsors, Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner -- is
different from earlier efforts because of its details on how a US plan to
cap carbon emissions and trade credits for them would work.
"People have said we need a Manhattan Project, we need a moon-shot project
to combat global warming," said Lieberman, a Connecticut independent. "This
is it."
But Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who is skeptical about global
warming, said the measure would put a heavy economic burden on US citizens.
The Bush administration has opposed mandatory limits on carbon emissions,
arguing that they could hurt the US economy and urging voluntary measures
instead.
SUPPORT FROM COAL-STATE SENATORS
The bill also features a provision that would require publicly traded
companies to tell the Securities and Exchange Commission about any material
risks they run as a result of climate change -- from damage due to increased
wildfires, more severe hurricanes and worse droughts to the costs of
complying with new regulations.
The bill has support from senators in coal-rich states, including Max
Baucus, a Montana Democrat. Warner, the bill's co-sponsor, is a Republican
from Virginia, another coal state.
Lawmakers from coal states have opposed previous carbon-capping bills, which
took aim at coal as a big emitter of carbon dioxide, one of several
"greenhouse gases" that most scientists believe trap heat and raise global
temperatures.
The latest bill recognizes coal's role in global warming but offers
financial incentives to develop clean coal technologies.
That provision rankled some environmental groups.
"The Lieberman-Warner bill will reward corporate polluters by handing them
pollution permits worth almost half a trillion dollars," Erich Pica of the
group Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. "The levels of
pollution-rewarding giveaways in this bill are truly obscene."
"Polluters must pay for the damage they do to our planet -- period," the
Sierra Club's Carl Pope said in a statement.
Even so, he supported sending the bill to the full committee.
So did the National Environmental Trust's Philip Clapp, who noted a shifting
"center of gravity" on global warming.
"The question is no longer whether the US will act to cut its global warming
pollution, but by how much and how soon," said Clapp.
Elizabeth Thompson of Environmental Defense hailed the vote as "much more
than a milestone," saying the bill offered "a real chance of enacting a
mandatory cap on emissions in this Congress."
Story by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
