WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama’s Senate allies launched a major push Tuesday behind sweeping legislation to battle climate change, with time running short before a high-stakes global summit in December.
“Today, we begin the formal legislative process to lead the world in rolling back the urgent threat of climate change,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the lead author of a Senate bill to create a cap-and-trade regime.
Obama, showing during a trip to Florida that he will not wait for lawmakers to act, was to unveil the largest-ever upgrade of the U.S. electricity grid, in a $3.4 billion bid to unleash a new era of renewable energy consumption.
Some 100 firms, manufacturers, utilities, and cities will get awards worth from $400,000 to $200 million to help build a nationwide “smart energy grid” to cut costs and improve reliability of the creaking system.
In Washington, Obama’s secretaries of energy, interior and transportation, as well as his Environmental Protection Agency chief, were urging senators to act quickly to curb pollutants blamed for global warming.
The administration power-players were to appear before the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee as it opens three days of hearings on legislation written by Obama’s Democratic allies to fight climate change.
Obama has said he wants to make as much progress as possible to reassure skeptics at the December global talks in Copenhagen that the United States is pressing ahead with aggressive climate change remedies.
But Obama aides have already warned that the legislation may clear Boxer’s committee but not the full Senate before the U.N. climate change conference—a delay that could cripple hopes of a major new international treaty.
Kerry crafted the legislation with the committee’s chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who said as the hearing began that “our bill is the best way to proceed.”
“It provides flexibility to businesses and powerful incentives to drive innovation. It helps consumers, workers, agriculture, transportation, energy efficiency, wildlife, cities, counties, and it will launch an economic transformation,” she said.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a cap and trade emissions regime in June, and the Senate is now poised to take up the measure with a new poll showing nearly six in 10 Americans support such a plan.
Under the expected cap-and-trade regime, the government would set the total level of domestic emissions allowable and then allocate quotas to companies.
Firms that emit less than their quota would be allowed to sell their surplus allocation to others that exceed theirs. Those in excess could also face fines.
The House bill calls for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by 2050. The Senate’s slightly more ambitious bill calls for a 20-percent cut by 2020.
The Senate text also makes a push for nuclear energy research and training, and promotes natural gas as a clean energy source.
About sixty percent of respondents to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey said they favor such an approach, while 37 percent said they oppose it.
The survey’s error margin was plus or minus three percentage points.
Obama’s Republican foes have mostly rejected the administration’s approach, with some warning it would inflict severe economic pain on traditional industries as the U.S. economy makes the transition to cleaner energy.
“The bill is no doubt ambitious, but it’s also extremely costly,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a longtime climate change doubter, said as the hearing began, disputing an Environmental Protection Agency study that found it would cost most U.S. families no more than 30 cents per day.
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