Global Warming Bill Heads to Full Senate

A US Senate committee approved a version of a bill designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions and sent it to the full Senate, according to an article in the San Jose Mercury News (see excerpt below.)

In a landmark effort to tackle global warming, a Senate committee Wednesday approved a sweeping program to slash greenhouse gas emissions through the first half of this century and mandate a low-carbon future for the U.S. economy.
"This is the most far-reaching global warming bill in the world," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment Committee, who was jubilant and tearful after the 11-8 vote that sends the bill to the Senate floor next year.
The measure still faces significant obstacles in the Senate and the House, and the Bush administration disagrees with some of the bill's mandates. But the bill's backers say political and moral momentum are on their side.
"This is historic, and it sends a message to the Senate, White House and the world that the United States is ready to get into this fight and lead," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., one of the co-sponsors of the 300-page measure.
The 10 Democrats and independents on the committee were joined by one Republican, John Warner of Virginia - the other co-sponsor - who predicted the bill would force members of Congress and presidential candidates "to do their homework and take a stand."
The measure would establish a cap-and-trade program, administered by two new federal boards, and set emissions limits that get tougher every year after 2012.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

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Lieberman and McCain Urge Climate Action

In this editorial from the Boston Globe, Connecticut Independent Senator Lieberman and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain urge the US Congress to act quickly and decisively on the problem of climate change:

To confront this challenge, we have reintroduced the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act. The bill, which has growing bipartisan support, would harness the power of the free market and the engine of American innovation to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough and quickly enough to forestall catastrophic global warming.

Wall Street analysts and industry executives have predicted the eventual enactment of a bill such as this for some time. Late last month, a group of prominent industrial leaders, including two executives of coal-intensive electric power companies and a major oil company, urged Congress and the president to enact measures that align with the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act. Perhaps the inevitable is now imminent. We must seize the initiative.
How can Congress close the deal to prevent catastrophic global warming while it still has the chance? In the same way it has enacted every other major environmental law in the past 30 years.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

A Climate Change Skeptic's parting shot

The departing chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James M. Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, held a hearing to denounce the "real villain" in the Climate Change debate: the media. Read all about it in Washington Post and Baltimore Sun editorials.
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