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SNOWE, COLLINS INTRODUCE LEGISLATION TO CONFRONT GLOBAL WARMING TODAY
January 16, 2007
WASHINGTON – Senators Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins today introduced critical legislation to confront global warming with a strong bipartisan group of their Senate colleagues including Senators Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ). The most bipartisan of the Senate proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across all major sectors of the US economy, the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act quickly won endorsements from the National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
“With overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is adversely impacting the health of our planet, the time has come for the Congress to take action,” said Snowe. “Manmade greenhouse gas emissions that enter the atmosphere today will last for generations to come, threatening our oceans, our environment and our economic well-being. It is beyond dispute that we cannot afford the price of inaction. This legislation takes concrete steps by using a fair, market-based system to once and for all demonstrate leadership on climate change and reduce emissions in the United States.”
“I’ve traveled north to the Arctic and south to Antarctica, and I've seen signs of the changing climate in both places and almost everywhere in between,” said Collins. “The world’s climate is changing, from top to bottom. With 2006 the warmest year in United States history, it is clearly time to act. The Climate Stewardship Act is a powerful bill that takes advantage of market mechanisms to address global warming without harming the economy. I’m pleased to join senators McCain and Lieberman in cosponsoring this important bill.”
The 2005 version of the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act would have capped US greenhouse gas emissions at year 2000 levels without mandating further reductions. The new bill will gradually constrict the emissions cap, such that it reaches approximately one third of 2000 levels by 2050. Those long-term reductions will forestall catastrophic, manmade climate change, provided the world’s other major economies follow suit within the next decade. Like the 2005 version, the reintroduced bill controls compliance costs by allowing companies to trade, save, and borrow emissions credits, and by allowing them to generate “offset” credits by inducing non-covered businesses, farms, and others to reduce their emissions or capture and store greenhouse gases. The reintroduced bill, however, increases the availability of borrowing and offsets in order to control costs further.
This bill was first introduced to curb global warming using a market-based system in 2003. The US Senate voted on the measure that year, and on the reintroduced bill in 2005. In June 2005, the Senate passed a resolution calling for the enactment of legislation to reverse the persistent growth of global warming pollution without harming the US economy and while encouraging the country’s major trading partners to take comparable action.
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