"Tropical deforestation is a major contributor to global warming. It contributes about 15 percent of all greenhouse emissions according to most recent estimates," said Douglas Boucher of the Union of Concerned Scientists and chairman of the tropical forest and climate coalition, speaking to reporters.

"To give you an idea of what that means in terms of scale, that is larger that the entire emissions of the European Union," he said.

"It's also larger than the entire emissions of the global transportation sector -- every car, train, plane, boat on the planet all combined," he said.

Boucher urged US lawmakers to pass a sweeping energy bill currently being debated by Congress.

The climate and energy bill that already has passed in the House is being hotly debated in the Senate, was introduced by Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Kerry. The bill aims to protect the environment, add millions of jobs and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

But environmental groups have criticized the legislation for allowing offshore oil drilling and for what it called "billions in giveaways to corporate polluters" as well as a weak emissions reduction goal.

Boucher said fighting deforestation is also a cost-effective way to achieve a slowing of climate change.

"It's clearly an important part of any solution to the problem of global warming," he said.

"It's also a particularly affordable way to attack the problem of global warming. Several major studies show across the board that the cost of reducing emissions for tropical deforestation is considerably less that the cost of reducing from just about every other sector available."

Greg Fishbein, of the group Forest Carbon Program, said that studies show between seven and 10 billion dollars is needed to cut deforestation in half by 2020.

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