Senate Launches Climate Debate

WASHINGTON-The Senate voted Monday to spend 30 hours debating a sweeping climate change bill sponsored by Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

Debate on the bill, which aims to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. today. President Bush has threatened a veto.

“To do nothing is not an option,“ Warner said on the Senate floor before the 74 to 14 vote to take up the first major pollution-curbing bill in three years.

The bill would cap U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions and set up a trading system for companies to buy and sell emissions allowances. The market-based system is estimated to generate $6.7 trillion over 40 years, billions of which would be invested in new, cleaner technologies.

But Bush, urging the Senate to defeat the bill, said Monday that the bill would impose roughly $6 trillion in new costs on the economy.

“There’s a much better way to address the environment than imposing these costs on the job creators, which will ultimately have to be borne by American consumers,“ the president said.

Despite the veto threat, Warner urged fellow Republicans to join the bill.

“Take the hands off the brake and let it go,“ he said at a news conference with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairman of the environment committee, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.

Warner pointed to a provision that would allow the president—with congressional approval—to waive portions of the bill if the new regulations hurt the economy.

The bill aims to cut carbon emissions by two-thirds of current levels by 2050.

Billions of dollars in emission credits would go to states with heavy coal or manufacturing industries that could be sold to invest in cleaner technology.

“Coal is our most abundant in the ground energy resource in America, and we’ve got to use it,“ Lieberman said.

Several Republicans and the oil and gas industry have argued against the bill, saying it will cost Americans much more while doing little to improve the environment.

“The emissions would be just transferred overseas. You wouldn’t reduce emissions. You would move jobs overseas associated with fuel production, and you increase the cost here,“ said Lou Hayden, a policy analyst for the American Petroleum Institute.

Environmental groups hailed the bill as a start to rein in greenhouse gases, but they want more regulation.

“In the Southeast, we’ve relied so much on coal already. We should focus on alternatives,“ said Nat Mund of the Southern Environmental Law Center.