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US Climate Bill Dies in US Senate
Debate Lays Foundation for Action Next Year

After a week of debate on the floor of the US Senate, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act was pulled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday without a vote on whether to approve the bill.

The legislation, which mandated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to 2005 levels by the year 2012, by 15% of 2005 levels by 2012, and by 70% of 2005 levels by 2050, would have established an economy wide cap-and-trade system to achieve these reductions.

Just prior to the kick off of debate last week, President Bush indicated he would veto the bill if it made it to his desk. The bill was also caught up in partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill, ultimately being stalled by a Republican-led filibuster in which Senators used tactics to prevent the bill from coming up for a vote or amendment.

Senate rules dictate that debate can be ended by a vote of 60 Senators, but backers of the bill were only able to muster 48. As a result, the Democratic Senate leadership withdrew the climate bill without consideration of any amendments or an up-or-down vote on the legislation.

Here's how the debate shaped up:

Many Republican Senators criticized the bill for being too complex, for creating a large bureaucracy, and perceived it as being too costly to the US economy.
At the same time, many environmentalists have criticized the bill as being too weak, citing its mandated reductions made by it were not sufficient to protect against the effects of large scale global warming.
Perhaps most telling, a group of ten moderate Democrats indicated they would not support the bill unless it provides protections for consumers and workers, includes forestry and farm-derived carbon offsets, and pre-empts state climate laws.

While Republican presidential candidate John McCain did not vote for the bill in its current form, he did express interest in pursuing the debate, stating that the bill "needs to be debated, amended, improved, and ultimately, enacted." A major sticking point of Senator McCain’s involved the lack of support for expansion of nuclear power. Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama was not present to vote on the bill, although he has been generally supportive of a cap-and-trade approach.

Nonetheless, considerable deliberation was made on the legislation in the months prior to floor debate. Although there were major issues yet to be resolved, including the ratio of allocated allowances to auctioned allowances, the use of international carbon offsets, and international trade considerations, the Lieberman-Warner bill outlined a comprehensive approach to controlling greenhouse gas emissions. It should provide a strong foundation for continuation of the debate in the next Congress, which will begin in January 2009.

Source: http://news.google.com