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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (319)	6/13/2005 6:40:12 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 24210

Some Republicans warming to curbs on carbon emissions Three plans for dealing with greenhouse gases are met with hope, skepticism By JULIET EILPERIN Washington Post WASHINGTON - Republicans who have historically dismissed calls for federal action on global warming are seeing a political benefit to embracing some curbs on heat-trapping gases, prompting a flurry of Capitol Hill negotiations that could ultimately shift the nation's policies on climate change. This transformation will be on full display as early as next week, when several senators are expected to jockey to try to attach rival climate change proposals to the Senate energy bill. Three factions — John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.; Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. — are offering competing plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. "We need to deal with global warming, not only because it's the right thing to do, it's the smart political and diplomatic thing to do," said Hagel, who has written three bills with Democrats aimed at promoting development of clean technology at home or abroad. "There is some political payoff in this." Though most environmentalists see this as a sign of progress, some are worried the Senate may adopt a weak climate change proposal that would undermine more meaningful attempts to cut heat-trapping gases in the United States. The McCain-Lieberman proposal would establish a cap-and-trade system that, in the worst-case scenario, would in 2010 freeze carbon emissions at their then-levels. Bingaman's bill calls for carbon emitters to slow their emissions to mid-2012 levels by 2020, with the provision that industry could buy its way out of the cap if carbon credits become prohibitively expensive. Hagel's package includes voluntary limits and aims to cut carbon emissions by offering generous incentives for technological development. "The only bill that guarantees reductions is the McCain-Lieberman Act," said Fred Krupp, president of the advocacy group Environmental Defense. James Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that although Hagel's and Bingaman's proposals have merit, their provisions would most likely allow global temperature rise of more than two degrees Fahrenheit. But not all Republicans, and not all major utility executives, feel the same way. American Electric Power president and chief executive Michael Morris, whose company is the biggest U.S. consumer of coal, at 75 million tons a year, said he thinks it's "ill-advised to burden our American manufacturers when our competitors" in China and India do not face the constraints. He added that he thinks carbon controls are inevitable, but only in 20 or 30 years when cleaner technologies exist. The National Association of Manufacturers also opposes greenhouse emissions limitations: On Monday it plans to release a report saying carbon emissions limits and other measures could deprive the U.S. of 1.3 million jobs in 2020 compared with a pro-energy development strategy. chron.com