By Dale Eisman, The Virginian-Pilot
A bid to attack global warming through limits on most future greenhouse gas emissions collapsed in the Senate this morning, but supporters, including Virginia Sen. John Warner, predicted similar legislation will gain a majority once a new president takes office.
“I’m very delighted... that we laid the foundation for this very important legislation,” Warner told reporters. Congress and the next president must act “hand-in-hand to put America in a leadership position” in attacking climate change, he said.
The “cap-and-trade” plan put together by Warner, a Republican, and independent Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was pulled from the Senate floor after supporters could get only 48 of the 60 votes needed to limit debate.
Six other senators who were not present for the vote sent letters indicating their support. California Sen. Barbara Boxer, the bill’s floor manager, said the showing was better than she had expected.
Opponents, most of them Republicans, had dozens of amendments at the ready in what the bill’s backers charged was a plan to talk the legislation to death. Supporters of the bill were ready to compromise, but opponents “were not prepared to legislate seriously,” claimed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
The bill, championed principally by Warner, Lieberman and California Democrat Barbara Boxer, 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.
Critics charged that the complex legislation would have sent already record-high energy prices skyrocketing, crippling the nation’s economy.
Despite the bill's failure, supporters and opponents agreed that the debate has given presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain - who both support the cap-and-trade concept - an outline of the kind of compromises needed to get meaningful climate-change legislation through Congress.
For more on this story, stay tuned to PilotOnline.com and see Saturday's Virginian-Pilot.
Comments (1)
Let's Cap and Trade (i.e. vote them out of office) Leiberman, Warner and everyon else that voted for this thing.
Posted by Elmer Beaureguard | June 6, 2008 11:56 AM
Posted on June 6, 2008 11:56