| The Insanity Continues: House panel releases climate change proposal for next Congress |
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| Written by Avery Palmer, CQ Politics | |||
| Tuesday, 07 October 2008 | |||
According to Markey, the greatest
challenge the planet has ever faced is not hunger, poverty, or AIDS. It's global warming. Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee released Tuesday their long-awaited draft legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft includes notable differences from a climate change bill ( The proposal by Chairman John D. Dingell , D-Mich., and Rick Boucher , D-Va., will provide a starting point for debate in the House next year. The lawmakers were under increasing pressure to release legislative text after the House decided not to take up climate change legislation in this Congress. In a memorandum to committee members, Dingell and Boucher attributed the delay to the complexity of the issue. “Our work has been predicated on the belief that a thorough, deliberative and purposeful examination of the facts would yield the best result,” said Dingell and Boucher, chairman of the subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality. The draft will “move the debate forward and guide us on how to proceed,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif. Like the Senate bill, the Dingell-Boucher measure would cap emissions of greenhouse gases and set up a market-based program for businesses to trade emissions credits. But the early years of the House panel’s proposal would be less aggressive than in the Senate bill. The draft would require 6 percent emission reductions by 2020, compared to 19 percent in the Senate bill. But the targets would ramp up in later years to require 80 percent reductions by 2050. The Senate proposed 71 percent reductions by that year. Dingell and Boucher said this would allow time for the deployment of clean energy technology, particularly carbon capture and sequestration from coal-fired power plants. “In the early years of the program, caps would be set at a level that is realistically achievable to ensure that firms are able to adjust gradually,” they said. The bill also proposes controversial limits on the ability of states to implement their own emissions caps. Some states, including California, have begun to create their own emissions-reduction programs. Another provision, which the draft presents as one of several options, would preempt state motor vehicle emission standards. A group of states led by California has been trying to limit emissions from cars and trucks, but the Bush administration has refused to grant them a waiver to do so. Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, objected that this part of the bill reflects the demands of the Detroit auto industry, a close ally of Dingell. “These options are straight from the playbook of the Big Three. They appear to have been drafted in the boardroom of General Motors,” he said. 3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved." |
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