Warner: Global warming bill paved way for action

WASHINGTON

A bid to attack global warming by putting limits on most greenhouse gas emissions collapsed Friday in the Senate, 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 complex "cap-and-trade" plan put together by Warner, a Republican, and Independent 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 - including presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama - indicated their support for the plan.

California Sen. Barbara Boxer, the bill's floor manager, acknowledged that not every senator who backed limiting debate also supported the bill but said the showing was better than she had expected. Some voted as a gesture of good faith to show their interest in continuing to work on the legislation, she said.

The bill would have put increasingly tighter limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2012.

It called for electric utilities, energy companies and other companies to be issued annual emission allowances. Companies investing in anti-pollution technologies and reducing their emissions would have been able to recover their costs by selling their excess allowances.

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," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

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 the debate has given Obama and McCain an outline of the kind of compromises needed to get meaningful climate-change legislation through Congress.

Friday's outcome triggered a barrage of recriminations from interest groups that had worked for months to advance or stop the legislation. Environmentalists generally agreed the vote was a sign of progress toward meaningful legislation on climate change, while energy companies and utilities argued the bill was fundamentally flawed.

"Proponents of the bill just didn't do their homework," Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, said in a prepared statement. "While the Senate has held many hearings on the topic generally, this past week saw a number of new proposals laid down in rapid succession - without benefit of a hearing, an economic analysis, or an environmental assessment."

"Unfortunately, the Senate Republican leadership, backed by 'Big Oil' and coal and a presidential veto threat, made clear this week that they are intent on blocking action on global warming," sai d J.R. Tolbert, a field organizer for Environment Virginia, a Charlottesville-based group. "Next time around, the polluters and their allies in Congress won't get off so easy."

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