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WASHINGTON — The debate on global warming and energy policy accelerated on Tuesday as two senior House Democrats unveiled a far-reaching bill to cap heat-trapping gases and move the country quickly from dependence on coal and oil. The draft measure, written by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sets a slightly more ambitious goal for capping greenhouse gases than President Obama’s proposal, requiring a reduction in emissions of 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. President Obama’s plan envisioned a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases linked to global warming by roughly 80 percent by 2050. The Waxman-Markey bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, emerges at a time when many Americans, and their representatives, are wary of wide-ranging environmental legislation that could raise energy costs and potentially cripple industry. The bill also comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is about to exert regulatory authority over greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The bill would pre-empt that effort and create a new cap-and-trade scheme to control carbon emissions. The new bill would require every region of the country to produce a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal by 2025. A number of lawmakers from some regions of the country, particularly the Southeast, call that goal unrealistic because the natural resources and technology to meet it do not currently exist. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/us/politics/01energycnd.html?_r=1&hp
WASHINGTON — The debate on global warming and energy policy accelerated on Tuesday as two senior House Democrats unveiled a far-reaching bill to cap heat-trapping gases and move the country quickly from dependence on coal and oil. The draft measure, written by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sets a slightly more ambitious goal for capping greenhouse gases than President Obama’s proposal, requiring a reduction in emissions of 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. President Obama’s plan envisioned a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases linked to global warming by roughly 80 percent by 2050. The Waxman-Markey bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, emerges at a time when many Americans, and their representatives, are wary of wide-ranging environmental legislation that could raise energy costs and potentially cripple industry. The bill also comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is about to exert regulatory authority over greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The bill would pre-empt that effort and create a new cap-and-trade scheme to control carbon emissions.
