Three US senators are seeking to radically overhaul stalled climate legislation by proposing to dump broad cap-and-trade provisions and take a sector-by-sector approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, a White House official and leading US newspaper reported.
Despite strong doubts, a climate bill is possible in this election year and Senator John Kerry, a 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, vowed last week to press ahead with a compromise climate bill that he said would win broad support.
The new bipartisan bill could target individual sectors and move away from a system used in Europe and hotly debated in the US in which companies would be forced to buy and sell the right to pollute, a process that caps and eventually reduces emissions blamed for heating the earth.
“Senators [are] considering sector-by-sector, market-based measures as a means to reduce emissions,” an administration official said.
The Washington Post on Saturday reported that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham declared “cap-and-trade is dead” in a private meeting with several environmental leaders this week.
Graham, Kerry and Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent, have been working for months on a bipartisan effort to pull together a workable measure after the House of Representatives passed a cap and trade climate bill last June.
The administration of US President Barack Obama, while saying the Environmental Protection Agency could move independently to regulate emissions, is keen for Congress to pass its own legislation.
The administration says a comprehensive energy bill would help the country embrace more efficient renewable energy while creating jobs and also giving the US a leadership role in stalled global efforts to battle global warming.
Environmental groups that helped shape the house bill have been worried that the bill may be watered down. But in the face of tough opposition from senators in coal and oil states some are becoming more pragmatic.
“It looks like they are pursuing an interesting hybrid approach,” said Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defense Fund. “Our preference is still for cap and trade, but we’re open to looking at this new plan if it cuts pollution and addresses the concerns of undecided senators.”
However, any legislation faces stiff opposition from Republicans and, now that Democrats have lost their super majority in the Senate, strong doubts persist that a bill will pass this year.
A Reuters poll last week of 12 Democratic and Republican senators found lawmakers did not believe it would be possible to pass a climate bill this year.
The Washington Post said the senators were looking at cutting greenhouse gases by targeting three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry.
The paper said power plants would face an overall cap on emissions that would become more stringent over time. Gasoline might face a carbon tax, with the proceeds going toward development of electric vehicles.
Industrial facilities would be exempted from a cap on emissions for several years before being phased in.
In measures that could attract votes from Republicans, the newspaper said legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore, provide assistance for building nuclear power plants and encourage clean coal technology.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS