Sen. Warner-backed bill on climate change fizzling out

WASHINGTON

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.

Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com