Posted on 06/05/2008 9:09:39 PM PDT by Red Steel
Legislation to combat global warming by putting limits on greenhouse gas emissions appeared headed to defeat as Democrats and Republicans accused each other of manipulating Senate rules to impede it.
Opponents of the bill, co-authored by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, are "trying to fritter away the time" that Senate leaders had set aside for debate, Democratic Sen. John Kerry charged.
On Wednesday, Republicans forced Democrats to have the 492-page bill read aloud on the floor, taking up more than nine hours. Majority Leader Harry Reid then scheduled a showdown vote for this morning on a motion to limit additional debate on the proposal.
Proponents of the climate-change bill need 60 votes to limit debate and all but conceded Thursday that they won't get them. If they fail, Reid is expected to pull the bill off the Senate floor.
Republicans accused Reid of moving to end debate prematurely, insisting that amendments they hoped to propose were not intended simply to talk the legislation to death.
Also figuring in the debate is an unrelated dispute over judicial appointments. Republicans said Reid broke a deal to bring several of President Bush's judicial nominees to a vote; they forced Wednesday's reading of the climate bill as a protest.
The bill, championed principally by Warner, independent Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, would place increasingly tighter limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2012.
Electric utilities, energy companies and other firms covered by the legislation would be issued annual emission allowances. Companies that invest in anti-pollution technologies and reduce their emissions could recover their costs by selling their excess allowances - a method known as "cap and trade."
Even if the bill fails, both sides agreed that the debate has given presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain - both supporters of the cap-and-trade concept - an outline of the kind of compromises needed to get meaningful climate-change legislation through Congress.
Sen. George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, said Democrats had tried to ram the bill through without fully considering its impact on an already faltering U.S. economy. He said he would like to see provisions to protect his state's coal industry - as would Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat whose state also produces coal.
The bill's opponents claim that technologies to trap and sequester greenhouse gases produced by industry are unproven. In debates through the week, they argued that as emission limits tighten, the price of allowances and thus the price of energy will increase.
In Ohio, Voinovich claimed, the legislation would increase natural gas prices by 80 percent and gasoline prices by 70 percent, reducing the average family's annual disposable income by $2,000 per year.
But the legislation's supporters cite studies that forecast a much smaller impact. The Bush administration's Energy Information Agency, for example, puts the additional monthly cost to consumers at only $2.50 a month by 2030 and $6 by 2050.
Warner, whose retirement in January will end a 30-year Senate career, opposed a similar bill in 2005. He has told reporters that he changed his mind after hearing from retired military officers concerned that climate change will trigger political upheaval around the world and draw the United States into new conflicts.
In a news conference Thursday with Warner and Lieberman, retired Adm. Joe Lopez, a former commander of NATO forces in Europe, said climate-change legislation should be seen as a effort to prevent future wars over energy and water resources.
"The U.S. cannot do this alone... but we have to lead," Lopez said.
what a bunch of Bravo Sierra. give us a break
Kill bill.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I dig the hunter taking aim at the penguin.
Dingy is a slimy bastard. More here.
Are you kidding me!!! There must of been some truly wacky assumptions, perhaps cold fusion powers the country, to come up with numbers like that. If the costs are so low then people will not change their behavior and CO2 admissions will not change.
He’s (Rush) taking aim at algore.
What kind of asshole would kill a defenseless penguin? Now if the penguin were armed with an AK-47 it would be justified.
Perhaps the penguin is brainwashed henchman (henchbird?) of the Goreacle.
In my youth it was Hubert Humphrey. These days it’s Bush and Warner and Lieberman. Why can such blow-hards do so much damage, then die leaving producers who never even knew them to do so much heavy lifting?
Maybe subconsciously I thought it would be funny if the penguin took a bullet for algore. I dunno.
I wouldn’t put it past liberals to use the wildlife they claim to love as a human shield to save themselves from a bullet.
Let’s see:
1. Cap and Trade policies for reducing pollution are more efficient than command and control by government policies.
2. No policy is good when it is reacting to a hoax.
So as 1 indicates, IF we had a warming problem great enough to accept the harm to the economy that reducing CO2 levels would cause, Cap and Trade would be an efficient policy. However a policy changed that would hurt the economy due to a hoax is a bad idea.
As an aside, why do people in countries who would benefit from global warming like Canada and Sweden support policies reduce it?????
Nevermind.
The Goreacle could play the part of The Penguin in a new Batman film...
The Goreacle could play the part of The Penguin in a new Batman film...
I thought Danny Devito did a good job as the Penguin.
Sure, but the Goreacle could play the Penguin in the line of Batman films. Batman versus a deluded huckster peddling his “green” religion.
I love gridlock!
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