Although the House of Representatives' passage of a climate bill earlier this year aired many of the controversies, the Senate version will likely face challenges and changes in its path to a vote, while the White House looks to affirm its leadership on climate change prior to the U.N. climate conference in December in Copenhagen.

After several months of delays because of the healthcare debate, Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., unveiled the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act Tuesday. The bill calls for a stronger cap on emissions than the House version, seeking a 20 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 compared with the House's 17 percent reduction.

"We don't need to be sending billions of dollars overseas, some of which finds its way to the support of jihadists, terrorists in various countries," Kerry said Tuesday. "We can invest that money right here at home and put our future back in our own control."

Kerry highlighted climate legislation as the new linchpin of U.S. economic and security stability, while Republican senators responded that the proposed cap-and-trade policies would hurt jobs in the natural resource industries and weaken the economy.

"Despite an earnest attempt, including eight months of deliberation and negotiation to refashion the obvious, Senators Boxer and Kerry produced yet another massive energy tax that will destroy jobs, raise electricity and gasoline prices and make America less competitive," Oklahoma's Sen. James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate energy committee, said in a statement.

"While I've noted that the Democrats have the votes to pass this bill through the … committee, that does not mean Republicans will stand down."

No Republican senators were on hand to support the bill's unveiling Tuesday. It has also drawn mixed support from moderate Democrats in areas reliant on natural resources industry.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., opposed the bill because he said it would hurt the coal industry, calling it "a disappointing step in the wrong direction."

On the same day that Boxer and Kerry presented their bill, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said that the agency is ready to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial facilities under the Clean Air Act.

While Congress has indicated it would rather pass its own legislation, the potential EPA rule could give senators room to step away from the controversial bill.

"The EPA yesterday basically gave a lot of senators a lot of cover to vote against cutting off debate, essentially killing the bill," said Patrick Michaels, a senior environmental studies fellow at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.

Michaels, who said he doesn't think the Senate Democratic leadership can muster the necessary 60 votes to block a filibuster, called the targets laid out by the Kerry-Boxer bill "hardly moderate."

After facing markup in the Environmental and Public Works Committee that Boxer chairs, the bill must traverse other Senate committees, such as Finance, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources and Foreign Relations, with jurisdiction.

Support for the bill will be more about the effects on regional industries than partisanship, said Tony Kreindler, climate spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund.

"What the House was really successful in doing is coming up with a framework that was fair and equitable for different regions of the country, for different states that have different energy mixes," he said.

With the climate bill playing second fiddle to the healthcare revamp, it's unlikely that it will get through Congress to the president by the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December.

"The key there is going (to Copenhagen) with enough so the (United States) has leadership for credentials in the negotiations (and) a big part of that is going to be how far we get in the Senate and, importantly, how much support that effort has from a diverse group of senators," Kreindler said.

"We're going to need the White House to show some leadership, just to focus the minds of the people on the Hill."

earlier related report
Southeast Asia gains climate clout after typhoon
Bangkok (AFP) Oct 1 - A deadly typhoon that scythed through Southeast Asia has underscored the area's vulnerability to climate change -- but it may have also finally given regional nations a voice at crucial environment talks.

Delegates from 192 countries are meeting in Bangkok until October 9 in a desperate bid to thrash out the draft text of a global warming treaty that world leaders aim to sign in Copenhagen in December.

Small nations most likely to suffer the effects of global warming have in the past been overshadowed in climate talks, with major greenhouse gas emitters such as the United States, Europe, China and India taking centre-stage.

But after Typhoon Ketsana killed more than 300 people in the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos this week, Southeast Asian nations suddenly found themselves with a podium from which to call on richer nations to do more.

"These countries (in Southeast Asia) in a way are the canary in the mine, they're the ones that will be confronted by the impacts of climate change if we fail to reach an agreement in Copenhagen," UN Climate Chief Yvo de Boer told AFP.

He said Southeast Asia's long coastlines and high population density make it one of the world's most vulnerable areas if global warming continues, and that the "frequency and severity of those kinds of extreme weather events decreases as a result of ambitious climate change policy."

"We're in a region that's going to be incredibly impacted by climate change -- that goes for the coastal cities that are likely to be impacted by sea level rise that are already affected by severe storms, flooding, changing weather patterns," he said.

The Philippines made an impassioned plea at the Bangkok talks on Wednesday, saying that Typhoon Ketsana showed the need for developed nations to cut emissions.

The disaster-prone country's chief negotiator Secretary Heherson Alvarez said that if the storm spurred richer countries to act then "the ruin and the pain may not have been in vain".

The Bangkok talks have been mired in the same row between developed and developing nations as previous climate negotiations -- over who should cut carbon emissions and pay for the necessary steps.

Poorer nations effectively say they will not slow their development and the West must cut back first on emissions, as well as paying for the cost of adapting to climate change.

Developing countries will need up to 100 billion dollars (80 billion euros) a year for 40 years to combat the effects, a World Bank report said on Tuesday.

Richer nations say that the developing nations, especially the major emitters of tomorrow, should also pledge to curb their output of greenhouse gases.

The debate has until now left Southeast Asian nations on the sidelines, since they are generally asking for aid to help cope with the effects -- without having the negotiating clout linked to emissions cuts pledges.

But that could now be changing.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia's most populous nation, took a stand at the talks earlier this week when officials said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was planning to cut emissions by up to 26 percent by 2020.

Indonesia is one of the leading forest destroyers and the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, according to some climate experts, but has also been a key advocate for a scheme to pay countries to conserve carbon-absorbing forests.

Regional nations could also gang together under the banner of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc.

"ASEAN countries have a much better chance of addressing climate change collectively rather than individually," Catherine Wong Mei Ling, a research associate at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, wrote in Singapore's Straits Times this month.

"The grouping can also more easily secure funding and technology transfers as a regional bloc by offering developed countries access to a wider market."

Indonesia's national climate change committee head, Agus Purnomo, said however that such a stance was hard to achieve.

"A united ASEAN position would be difficult. It's not completely closed off but there have been no agreements because all the countries are very different," Purnomo told AFP.

In the meantime, individual nations are increasingly taking their own measures.

Vietnam, where Typhoon Ketsana killed 74 people, is taking climate change "very seriously" and had started to commit funds and resources to combating its effects, said Koos Neefjes, climate change adviser to the UN in Hanoi.

The island state of Singapore is also vulnerable. A spokesman from the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources said it had commissioned a study to help Singapore identify and plan for adaptation measures.

(UPI and AFP Report)

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News