US Senate Bills Take Opposing Tactics on Warming
Date: 14-Feb-05
Country: USA
The bills are among the US attempts to cut greenhouse emissions after President George W. Bush early in his first term pulled out of the UN's Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Senators Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican, this week reintroduced their bill on Thursday.
The bill would require a reduction in carbon dioxide emission levels to 2000 levels by the year 2010 by capping the overall greenhouse gas emissions from the utility, transportation, and industrial sectors. It would create a market for individual companies to trade pollution credits, modeled on the successful US acid rain gas trading program created by the US 1990 Clean Air Act.
The original bill fell short of a majority in the Senate in October 2003 by a vote of 55 to 43.
The Kyoto pact, which is to be launched on Feb. 16, calls for greenhouse gas markets and is also modeled on the Clean Air Act. In theory, its greenhouse gas caps on developed nations are legally binding.
Trade on Europe's greenhouse gas market set up by Kyoto has already begun.
Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who helped lead a Senate effort against the Kyoto accord, is expected to introduce three global warming bills next week. The bills would not create mandatory emissions caps. Rather, they would seek to reduce emissions through incentives and technology, said Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry.
Hagel is scheduled to speak about global warming at the United Nations next week after the Kyoto pact is launched.
