Senate Starts Debate on Global Warming Bill

The Senate will begin debate on a bipartisan global warming bill that would represent the first serious effort by the United States to legislate a fix to climate change, even if its goals fall a bit short of the marks scientists have coalesced around. It passed out of committee after a nine-hour hearing yesterday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Warner-Lieberman bill would set up a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide, starting in 2012, that would set the goal of reducing emissions by 62% from 1990 levels by 2050. Scientists working with the United Nations, along with the Democratic presidential candidates, have said that an 80-90% reduction is needed to stave off the worst consequences of global warming.

Still, the bill would require major changes to the way America does business, generates power, manufactures goods and gets people and products from here to there. It would drastically reduce pollution and require both the development of new energy technologies and the improvement in the efficiency of existing technologies. It would be a breakthrough. If it can win support of the whole Congress, and President Bush, that is.

It has already won praise from across the world, where delegates from 190 nations are meeting in Bali to hammer out a post-Kyoto Protocol scheme for reducing world emissions. Whatever plan comes out of Bali would, coincidentally, begin in 2012 as well.

COMMENTS ()